LITUANUS LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   Volume 31, No.1 - Spring 1985 Editor of this issue: Antanas Klimas ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 1985 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

LITUANUS DATA BANK

A. V. DUNDZILA

* Bronius Kviklys, one of the most productive Lithuanian authors residing in the United States, was honored with the Golden Order by Pope John Paul II. The medal, "Augustae Crucis Insignia Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice", first established in 1888, was presented in September, 1984. Mr. Kviklys is completing his six volume Lithuanian language work titled "Lietuvos bažnyčios" (The Churches of Lithuania). The four published volumes span some 2,000 pages and thousands of illustrations, they were very well received. The series contains parish by parish, historical information and includes numerous recent facts on religious oppression.

* The name of the Lithuanian artist Čiurlionis was approved for the Asteroid No. 2420 by international authorities in 1894. The asteroid was discovered by Soviet astronomers in 1975. It orbits the sun in the asteroid belt beyond Mars and is estimated to be some 8 km. in diameter. Its orbital period is slightly more than four years.

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911) was a distinguished Lithuanian composer and, during his later years, a very original abstract painter (LITUANUS, 1957 No. 3, 1975 No 2). The use of Čiurlionis name for an asteroid attests to the international significance of his art. It may also be viewed as a compliment to the Lithuanian cultural aspirations by the Soviet ruling circles. The discovery coincided with the centennial festivities commemorating Čiurlionis' birth.

* The formation of the Baltic Studies Fund was officially announced at the 1984 Montreal Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, Inc. (AABS). AABS is active in the promotion of research and education in Baltic studies and, among other things, publishes the quarterly "Journal of Baltic Studies". For additional information contact the Executive Director, AABS, 231 Miller Road, Mahnah, N.J. 07430 USA.

* The Rev. Juozas Preikšas, 58, was ordained a bishop in Soviet-occupied Lithuania's Roman Catholic Church on December 2, 1984 in Kaunas. The ceremony was performed by Archbishop Liudas Povilionis who was recently advanced to the rank of archbishop by Rome.

In an almost parallel development, Soviets have demanded the recall of Archbishop Julijonas Steponavičius, according to the West German daily "Die Welt". For several decades now Archbishop Steponavičius has been barred by the Communists from administrating his Diocese of Vilnius. The Soviets complain that the barred Archbishop "does not cooperate sufficiently" with them. Reportedly, this message was brought to Rome by Bishop Povilionis, subsequently elevated to the higher rank.

* Latvia's capital city Riga's Sunday black market, closed by the police in early 1983, has been revived in a suburbian forest. Up to 200 individuals deal in pre-Soviet and emigree books, art works and periodicals.

* The LITUANUS Data Bank recommends several bulletins for additional information on current events in the Baltic countries:

— "Baltic Bulletin", published by the Baltic American Freedom League, P.O. Box 29657, Los Angeles, CA 90029 USA.

— "ELTA Information Bulletin", 1611 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 2, Washington, D.C. 20009 USA.

— "Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania", published by the Lithuanian R.C. League of America, 351 Highland Blvd., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11207.

The Data Bank gratefully acknowledges excerpts from the above three sources, as well as others, as noted.

Norman Mailer on Lithuania

by VICTOR A. NAKAS 

Special to the LITUANUS Data Bank

The August 19, 1984 issue of "Parade" magazine, a Sunday newspaper supplement that boasts a readership of 51 million, carried an article written by one of America's most renowned and prolific authors, Norman Mailer, entitled "A Country, Not a Scenario." In the article, Mailer recounts his observations based on a 15-day visit to the Soviet Union. The piece is interesting, sometimes insightful, often provocative; unfortunately, in places, it is also deeply flawed. Mailer's article is especially noteworthy for the student of Baltic affairs because his visit included tours of Moscow, Leningrad and Lithuania.

Mailer says that he studied Russian for two weeks prior to embarking on his journey. He modestly compares this preparation and his subsequent sojourn to a child suddenly finding himself among adults. Still, he argues, "a child can have a good sense of the true emotions in the air when he enters a room full of adults."

The author's metaphor is apt, but needs to be taken a step further: A child, no matter how richly blessed with intuition and intelligence, will be ignorant of many things that adults have been taught or have directly experienced. So it is with Norman Mailer, especially when he touches upon Lithuania. This is evident from the first sentence of his article, which begins, "Having been in Russia recently for 15 days..." Two paragraphs later, he tells the reader that his visit took him to Moscow, Leningrad and parts of Lithuania. If Mailer is aware of the fact that Lithuania is not part of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, he gives no indication of that to the reader. In fact, he uses the terms Russia and Soviet Union interchangeably. Such carelessness—dare we call it intellectual slothfulness?—is in itself not remarkable. After all, many U.S. newspapers, led by the otherwise highbrow "New York Times," stubbornly persist in their attempt to institutionalize this misnomer. What makes this inaccuracy born of oversimplification surprising in Mailer's article is that it flies in the face of his stated purpose for writing the piece in the first place: to present a glimpse of a complex, multifaceted U.S.S.R.

Pity the poor reader who is not a student of Soviet life, especially the one born after World War II who has no memory of the Baltic States. He can come to no other logical conclusion from Mailer's article than that Lithuanians are really Russians who are called Lithuanians simply because they happen to live in a region—in this case a republic—called Lithuania, much as Americans who live in the state of Iowa are called lowans. Intentionally or not, Mailer subtly reinforces this misconception when he says, "Passing through the flat farmlands of Lithuania between the cities of Vilnius and Kaunas, one could be in Iowa."

On his tour of the Lithuanian countryside, Mailer marvels at the vitality of what he witnesses:

"One has heard so much of Soviet lacks that one is prepared to greet a giant but wounded dinosaur. Instead, the country is not without a certain visible substance... Already, in early spring, winter wheat is showing its first green, the silos rise frequently, and bizarre modern villages show concrete apartment houses on the plain that rise 10 or 15 stories."

Mailer takes his impressions of the "visible substance" of the Lithuanian countryside and generalizes it for the entire Soviet Union. Is the generalization true? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Perhaps more important, did Mailer ask himself the right questions and thereby make an informed generalization? Did he ask himself: Is what I am seeing more the fruit of sovietization or the fruit of the Lithuanian worker? Is the Lithuanian worker who planted the wheat and built the silos and apartment houses quite similar to a Russian worker, or is he very different? Are there cultural/sociological factors distinguishing Lithuanians from Russians, Lithuanians from Armenians, Lithuanians from Uzbeks, etc. that must be weighed before one generalizes from impressions gained in touring one small part of the Soviet Union? Mailer gives no evidence of having posed these questions. How much confidence, then, can or should the reader have in Mailer's conclusions? Of course, if to Mailer "Soviet" means "Russian" and "Russian" equals "Soviet", these types of questions are not merely irrelevant—they are incomprehensible.

Nowhere is Mailer's failure to understand the context of what he was observing made more painfully clear than in his touching description of Mass in Vilnius:

"In Lithuania, in the city of Vilnius, I happened to wander into a Roman Catholic church around twilight. Mass was being celebrated, and the church was filled to capacity, with old women, a few men, a few adolescents. The service was fervid. It was also beautiful I do not know if I ever attended a Catholic service that was more intense. The point, however, was that my entrance into the church was casual, and the exit as easy. I was alone, and no policemen were outside, at least none that I could see. My own good simple tourist's reaction: "Holy cow, it's not that big a deal here anymore to go to church."

Had Mailer done his homework before leaving the United States for his trip abroad, he would have known that it is still a 'big deal' to go to church. He would have known that in Lithuania to be a professed Catholic is to be a second-class citizen. Page after page of Lithuanian Catholic samizdat (the illegal status of which is in itself an indictment of the regime's antagonistic policy toward religion) documents cases of elementary and high school teachers ridiculing church going students in the classroom and lowering their deportment grades; of young believers being denied admission to universities for professing their faith; of middle-aged Catholics losing their jobs for petitioning the government to respect the religious rights of its citizens; of the old and infirm being denied visits by members of the clergy and even the ministration of last rites. Had Mailer troubled to acquaint himself with the religious situation in Lithuania before his trip, he would have known of the government's unrelenting campaign to silence activist priests and laity through imprisonment and exile. The amazing thing is not that it is not a "big deal" to go to church in Lithuania—it is a much bigger deal than Mailer apparently imagines—but that Lithuanians continue to openly profess their faith in spite of the high personal costs involved, and in defiance of continuing government repression of the movement for religious freedom.

Toward the end of his piece, Mailer provides an anecdote that builds up to the moral of his article, which runs something like this: Let us (Soviets and Americans) not fear and distrust one another; instead we should seek mutual understanding. The anecdote he tells is of a Lithuanian-American who returned to Lithuania to visit relatives. Like most visitors to Lithuania, she was not supposed to travel outside Vilnius without official permission, which can be difficult to obtain. The American woman's relatives, who were from the country and wanted her to visit their village, told her not to worry and coaxed her into leaving Vilnius. But the visitor's fears were justified:

"It was an exceptional case, and her relatives had no understanding of exceptional cases. So soon as they started to drive her around town, they were followed by another car. This was startling to her relatives. They were farm people. Something like this had never happened before—to them."

Mailer sums up:

"...[My] point is that these country people in Lithuania were less afraid of the authorities than was their visitor. They had not been living with our image of them. In fact, in this case, the American woman was right and the natives were wrong, but whatever else, her relatives were obviously not dwelling in prodigious daily fear."

Several qualifications to this story are in order. First, as thousands of Baltic-Americans who have visited their relatives over the past several decades know, it is not "exceptional" to be followed when visiting Vilnius,or Riga, or Talinn. They know also that there is considerable risk involved in leaving the capital without permission and that the penalty can be banishment from the republic. Thus, as a rule, if one goes to visit, say, his mother or grandmother's grave 50 kilometers outside Vilnius, one does it on the sly, taking appropriate steps to shake off all unwelcome escorts. Second, if thousands of Baltic-Americans know the rules of this game, it is most certainly common knowledge among the Baltic populace. The country folk in the story must have been the ones who were truly exceptional— bumpkins through and through.

Once again, Mailer is guilty of generalizing (i.e. the Soviets do not share the American view that the Soviet system is a thing to be feared and reviled) from the flimsiest of evidence, in this case from an event that he did not even experience first-hand. It takes but one counter-anecdote to cast doubt on the validity of his generalization. In 1972 my brother and I traveled to Lithuania on a five-day visa. Unfortunately, we did not have permission—and could not obtain it—to leave Vilnius for a visit to the birthplace of our grandparents. We were intent on leaving the city surreptitiously anyway. However, one set of relatives, all of them rural dwellers, vehemently protested these plans, arguing that the authorities would learn about the trip and deny both my brother and me, as well as other members of our immediate family, permission to return to Lithuania ever again. We relented and stayed put in Vilnius. Fear won out, but it was the fear of the Lithuanians living under Soviet rule, not the fear of the Americans, that was the deciding factor.

Though the two anecdotes related above are contradictory, one does not necessarily invalidate the other. They are both pieces in the same Soviet puzzle that Mailer set out to describe for his reader. One anecdote can, however, be a central piece in the puzzle, while another—because it is atypical, for example—may be of minor significance in solving the puzzle. So it is in the latter instance with Mailer's story about the Lithuanian-American tourist, for the reasons enumerated previously.

The problem with Mailer's article is that he did not gather a sufficient number of pieces of the puzzle and rashly tried to infer from those he did possess what the completed puzzle would look like. One can wholeheartedly endorse his premise—that there should be more understanding between the American and the Soviet peoples—without accepting either his analysis or his conclusions, or approving of what appears to have been a forced attempt to make his observations fit his premise. Mailer's conclusions are especially suspect when he draws them from his experiences in Lithuania—a unique case in the U.S.S.R. because of its Roman Catholic roots, mass-based dissident movement and tradition of independent statehood—and tries to extrapolate his impressions for the situation in other parts of the U.S.S.R. Worse still, as demonstrated most strikingly by his statements on the church in Vilnius, Mailer's observations about Lithuania are not even entirely valid for Lithuania itself.

Lithuanian "Prisoners of Conscience" In Soviet Camps

Information on Lithuanian "prisoners of conscience" in Soviet camps was published in the August 31,1984, issue of the Munich-based USSR News Brief on human rights.

Edita Abrutienė and Jadvyga Bieliauskienė are among the twelve prisoners in the women's political camp in Barashevo, Mordovian ASSR. Bieliauskienė was one of the five women who started a strike at the beginning of 1984.

A. Andreika was one of the participants in the hunger strike on April 3, 1984, in the men's political camp in Barashevo, Mordovian ASSR (Zh Kh-385/3-5), in support of a demand for the end of a punishment cell system.

Musikevičius, a soldier who was born in Lithuania, was arrested at the end of 1983. He was charged under Article 64 of the Russian Criminal Code ("anti-Soviet agitation") and sentenced to ten years strict regime camp. In March 1984 he arrived at camp Zh Kh-385/3-5 in Barashevo, Mordovian ASSR.

A New Issue (63) of the Lithuanian "Chronicle"

The 63rd issue of the Lithuanian "Chronicle", dated July 1, 1984, was received in the West. The underground journal continues its coverage of the impact on Lithuania of the 500th anniversary of Lithuania's patron saint, St. Casimir. Participants in the commemoration of the anniversary continue being harassed and interrogated. Several articles rebuke anti-Catholic propaganda and fabrications in the official press. The "Chronicle" informs that Mečislovas Jurevičius, a "prisoner of conscience" who completed a three-year term in strict-regime camps, returned to Lithuania on March 27. There are excerpts from letters of the two recently imprisoned priests, the Revs. Alfonsas Svarinskas and Sigitas Tamkevičius. House-searches and interrogations are described in detail. According to the journal, the Lithuanian Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs, Petras Anilionis, threatened Archbishop Julijonas Steponavičius with deportation for his "improper meddling". Anilionis also offered to increase the quota of the students at the Theological Seminary in Kaunas if the Church hierarchy agreed that the sentenced priests, the Revs. Svarinskas and Tamkevičius, were "anti-state criminals". Vladas Lapienis, who has been in hiding, according to the latest information, addresses another statement, dated March 9, 1984, to the LSSR Procurator and the head of LSSR State Security on his right to express his ideas. The journal includes a detailed survey of discrimination against religious students.

The 40th and 41st Issues of Underground "Aušra"

The 40th (December 1983) and 41st (February 1984) issues of the underground journal "Aušra" (The Dawn) have reached the West. The 40th issue publishes several articles on the 50th anniversary of the 1933 transatlantic flight by Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas, whose single-engine plane crashed in East Prussia on its way from New York to Lithuania. The two aviators are compared with other great Lithuanian achievers, including the fighters against Soviet tyranny. "Aušra" informs about the communist attempts to whitewash the 1893 massacre of Lithuanian Catholics in Kražiai by the cossacks. The Soviet Communist Party and the Politbureau are compared with a degenerate character in one of E.T.A. Hoffmann's tales. The concluding segment of the long study, "Forty Years", covers the period of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, 1941-1944.

The 41st issue of "Aušra" continues the discussion of the massacre of Kražiai. The writer and member of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group, Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė (1906-1983) is eulogized in a special article, which also provides information on her writings. An article compares the charges against the Rev. Sigitas Tamkevičius and his subsequent sentencing with Nazi and racist justice. An article on "Clerical Elements in the Service of Hitlerites", which was published in the CP daily "Tiesa", is sharply rebuked. The recent governmental strictures on the mailing of parcels and books to and from Lithuania is denounced in an article, "Increasing Limitations".

Lithuanian "Prisoner of Conscience" Invited to Brooklyn College

The Humanities Institute of Brooklyn College extended a teaching invitation to Vytautas Skuodis, an American-born geologist serving a seven-year term in strict-regime camps to be followed by five years of exile. The invitation was delivered to Moscow by a Brooklyn College professor attending an international geologists' conference there in August, 1984.

Skuodis was given maximum punishment under Article 68 of the LSSR Criminal Code ("anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda") at his trial in Vilnius on December 22,1980. The 55-year old associate professor of geology was accused among others, of authoring a statistical study of atheist propaganda. He maintained that his study was based on factual data. Skuodis was also a member of the now defunct Lithuanian Helsinki Group and first lay member of the Catholic Committee for the Defense of Believers' Rights, which has since gone underground.

In a letter addressed to Skuodis, Professor Robert Viscusi, Director of the Humanities Institute, writes that the Institute "wishes to invite you to deliver a lecture... exploring relationships between research in the basic sciences and problems of environmental protection. We would like you to approach this theme from the point of view of your vast experience in hydrogeology and geological engineering".

Skuodis was born in Chicago in 1929. His family returned to Lithuania shortly thereafter. He still is an American citizen.

Since his arrest, Skuodis' wife and two daughters have been under regular surveillance, subjected to periodic searches and harassed on the job.

Baltic Activity in Sweden

The Baltic activity in Sweden, "Svenska Dagbladet" writes, is a constant irritant to Moscow. The KGB is making strong efforts to infiltrate and divide the Baltic organizations. Quite a few Soviet diplomats were expelled from Sweden for secretly collecting information about the Baltic refugees.

Mr. Heinrich Mark, former chairman of the Estonian National Committee in Sweden, maintains that the Baits there have not lost their faith in the eventual recovery of independence by the Baltic nations. This goal is now sought by the third generation of Baits in Sweden. Mark recalls that for many years the Estonians in Sweden have been asking the Social Democratic government for support. Finally, the Minister of Education, Ragnar Edennmann relented and made the following statement to the Estonian delegation: "I am a historian. I do know that all dictatorships have eventually collapsed. Therefore you will be granted the support."

The activity of the Baltic organizations in Sweden does affect their native countries in various ways, Dr. Germanis told the correspondent of "Svenska Dagbladet". In the eyes of Moscow's propaganda, Stockholm is a "center of ideological enemies".

V.F.W. Asks for Investigation of O.S.I. Activities 

"Deferential" Links With KGB Denounced

The U. S. Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) have condemned the persecution of naturalized American citizens on "evidence" provided by the Soviet secret police, according to a Washington-based periodical. "The Spotlight" has published in its October 8,1984, issue the text of a resolution on the activities of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) which was passed at the VFW's National Convention in Chicago.

The resolution states that "for the most part, the U.S. press has mysteriously chosen to maintain a hands-off position as to publicizing these shameful trials" of naturalized American citizens. The OSI has "freely admitted that its chief source for denouncements of American citizens through frequent deferential consultations in Moscow is the ... KGB". The resolution calls the OSI "in effect... the willing and subservient, official American government tool of the Russian (Soviet) empire strategically placed in the offices of the U.S. Department of justice".

The KGB, according to the resolution, was created for the "express purpose of spreading disinformation and creating havoc in other lands" and is "famed for the absence of veracity in its international adventures". That same KGB "currently furnished the OSI doctored tapes and so-called 'witnesses' and 'victims' of the Americanized refugees even though events in question occurred some 40 years ago". The resolution says that "harassment and persecution of Americanized citizens by the OSI... has been so intense that at least two former refugees have committed suicide" and others are threatening to do so rather than be deported.

Soviet Disinformation Activities

Tomas Schuman, former editor of Novosti Press Agency (a front for disinformation and organized within the KGB's intelligence network), reported to the Baltic American Freedom League on Soviet methods of influencing American public opinion through the manipulation of the American press. "Soviet propaganda is too boring to be effective", said Schuman, "the greatest successes of Soviet propaganda are achieved thanks to American mass media."

Novosti Press Agency was created in 1961. Seventy-five percent are KGB intelligence officers and the other 25% are co-opted by the KGB. "Within the KGB there is a department cynically called the Department of Disinformation. We worked directly under that department," said Schuman. He continued, "I escorted thousands of Western journalists through the Soviet Union... the American press treated us as ordinary journalists. At times, I risked my own career and freedom to try to explain that they were actually talking to an intelligence officer."

As an example of the simple and primitive but effective use of disinformation, Schuman displayed a 1967 issue of Look magazine on which he had personally worked while editor for Novosti. This particular issue covered the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution—"from the first page to the last page, it is a bunch of lies but it is presented as a collection of opinions and research by American journalists."

In concluding, Schuman said, "This selection of propaganda clichés is so simple and primitive it does not take an expert in propaganda to see through these lies, but big monopolized media like the LA. Times, New York Times, the TV networks keep lying to the people... The result is a change in the perception of reality. The majority of American public do not perceive the real danger of the Soviet Union."

(Baltic Bulletin)

An Article on Occupied Lithuania From a Concentration Camp

An article about totalitarian depredations in occupied Lithuania, which was written in a Soviet concentration camp in 1982, has reached the West in 1984. Its author, Balys Gajauskas, has served twenty-five years in a Soviet camp, from 1948 to 1973. Shortly after his release, he was again arrested and in 1978 sentenced to 10 years in hard labor concentration camp and five years of internal exile for collecting historical information on the Lithuanian anti-Soviet guerilla movement. This verdict amounts to a death sentence against him.

Excerpts from the article follows:

... The Bolshevik empire and Hitler's Germany divided East Europe between themselves. As a result of this conspiracy, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have been burdened with the yoke of occupation for more than 40 years. We have many times declared that we disagree with such a rightless political situation. The nation resisted even when the situation was hopeless, because it was unable to tolerate continuous terror, humiliation, and the disregard of the most elementary human rights. We were to weak to wage a fight against a giant empire, but our armed resistance did not capitulate—the occupying power destroyed it.

... The desire for freedom has not become extinguished, despite the passage of time. An enslaved nation must fight for its freedom. If it cannot gain freedom immediately, it must wait for a propitious moment. But it should not wait passively for its lucky hour: it must contribute to the recovery of freedom. A nation must avail itself of the means of struggle that are available... A nation that fails to struggle not only for its physical but also for its cultural existence may become quickly denationalized...

... The Bolsheviks were creating an empire of a new type, and therefore they thoroughly reviewed the national question. They did not follow the crude (czarist) policy of denationalization and Russification and replaced it with a more flexible policy. The practice of the czarist empire had demonstrated that denationalization of peoples and forcible imposition of a foreign language is difficult. And so the Bolsheviks declared that all nations have equal rights... But as time went on and the Bolsheviks took firm hold of power, they began to impose the Russian language on other nations...

... The security organs and the militia in Lithuania occasionally use the Lithuanian language, but most of their documents are written in Russian. These organizations must suppress any manifestation of national resistance and therefore they employ many Russians. These are the most reactionary props of the occupation power in Lithuania.

... There is no such thing as the Soviet people... There is a community that consists of the Party brass and of the directors of plants and agencies. They are all alike in all the (Soviet Union) nations and they constitute a new class that stands above the people... To them one also must add the members of the state security organs who represent the most reactionary segment of the "Soviet people"... This new class exploits the nations...

A Portrait of Late Helsinki Group Member

Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė—A Profile in Courage

Additional biographic information on Mrs. Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė, a member of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group who died in 1983, was published in the 41st issue of the underground Aušra (The Dawn, February, 1984).

Excerpts follow:

"... In 1941, when Lithuania was assaulted by another, German, occupation, Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė was almost seized by the Gestapo for her efforts to save certain individuals. Yet during the second Soviet occupation, her good deeds were disregarded. On March 16,1946, she was arrested and sentenced to ten years...

"She passed the Gulag test in a heroic fashion, her head raised, without tears and lamentations. Siberia was not her major calamity. She experienced a much more painful blow when both her sons perished in the struggle against the second Soviet occupation... The death of her sons was probably the main reason for her sentencing.

"... She also wrote The Camp Tales (Lagerio pasakos), a cycle of stories on the childhood of her sons who perished (in battle), and put together a third collection of poems, Rasos ir ašaros (Dew and Tears)... She liked Akhmatova, Gumilev, Pavlikovskaia and translated their poems into Lithuanian...

"... In addition to her literary labors, O. Lukauskaitė-Poškienė was engaged in a very important activity, which required unusual courage and a spirit of heroic fortitude—she joined the public and open struggle against the violations of human rights in the Soviet socialist system. The cowards' dictum—"You can't blow against the wind"—was totally alien and unacceptable to her. By joining the Lithuanian Helsinki Group, she seemed to continue the campaign of her dead sons...

"Shortly before her death, the poet experienced a very significant spiritual change... She went to confession and received the Holy Communion as well as the Extreme Unction...She died on December 4,1983... and was buried on December 6. Her funeral was very impressive... People came to it from the most distant corners of Lithuania. A solemn Mass for her soul was celebrated at the Šiauliai church. Funeral orations, sermons, hymns, as well as poems resounded at her grave..."

Books, Articles, And Magazines

Joseph Ehret: Russian Imperialism and Messianism. "Gesta Dei per Russos"—Their Sources, Forms and Consequences. Washington, ELTA, 1984. (Sponsored by the Lithuanian National Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 21073, Woodhaven, N.Y. 11421, U.S.A.).

Tomas Venclova: / am Grateful to Orwell. An interview with the Lithuanian poet and critic—"On Language, Literature and Lithuania", Index on Censorship, London, No. 4,1984.

"Separate But not Independent" by Marite Sapiets, Index on Censorship, No. 5,1983. An article on religion in the Soviet Union, which contains much information on the Catholic Church in Lithuania.

V. Stanley Vardys: Die Frage der Menschenrechte in Estland, Lettland und Litauen (The Question of Human Rights in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). A special reprint from Acta Baltica, vol. XXII, 1984.