  It is a simple fact that a subgroup generated by a subset $A$ of an abelian
group is the direct sum of the cyclic groups $\langle a\rangle$, $a\in A$ if
and only if the set $A$ is independent. In [5] the concept of an $independent$
set in an abelian group was generalized to a $topologically$ $independent$
$set$ in a topological abelian group (these two notions coincide in discrete
abelian groups). It was proved that a topological subgroup generated by a
subset $A$ of an abelian topological group is the Tychonoff direct sum of the
cyclic topological groups $\langle a\rangle$, $a\in A$ if and only if the set
$A$ is topologically independent and absolutely Cauchy summable. Further, it
was shown, that the assumption of absolute Cauchy summability of $A$ can not be
removed in general in this result. In our paper we show that it can be removed
in precompact groups.
  In other words, we prove that if $A$ is a subset of a {\em precompact}
abelian group, then the topological subgroup generated by $A$ is the Tychonoff
direct sum of the topological cyclic subgroups $\langle a\rangle$, $a\in A$ if
and only if $A$ is topologically independent. We show that precompactness can
not be replaced by local compactness in this result.
