ENIn this chapter, I will focus on the question of how and through which local government networks and mechanisms Soviet Lithuania’s goal for greater political autonomy was expressed. The claim made here is that it was more favourable for autonomy with a horizontally consolidated nomenklatura rather than the clan of a vertical nepotistic leader. I will try to unravel the problematic tangle of autonomy as political, economic, and social autarky from Moscow and the dependence of the first secretary’s clan by harnessing the social network and trust approaches used by rational choice theory authors (Farrell, 2004). The central apparatus in Moscow was most concerned that a republic’s leadership should manage the confidence it had been entrusted with to ensure the system’s legitimacy: to prevent political nationalism, timely appropriate capital investments, and achieve the realization of state plan economic indicators. This chapter also analyses the expression of anti-Soviet sentiments in society and the impact of a non-Soviet position on the Soviet government nomenklatura network in Soviet Lithuania under the leadership of the first secretary, Petras Griškevičius (1974-1987). [Extract, p. 149]