On 8 February 1976 the official newspaper Tiesa [Truth] published the following report:
“For services to the consolidation of socialist legality and active participation in public life, Mikolas Ignotas, member of the supreme Court of the Lithuanian SSR, has been awarded the Honorary Diploma of the Supreme Court of the Lithuanian SSR”.
In December 1975 M. Ignotas was the presiding judge at the trial of Sergei Kovalyov (CCE 38.3).
According to reports from Lithuania, M. Ignotas, Secretary of the Party organization at the Supreme Court, took on the trial of Kovalyov after some of his colleagues had on plausible-sounding pretexts refused to take part in it.
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On the morning of 4 February, at the Belorussky station in Moscow, Birute Pasiliene (CCE 34.7 [10]) was detained after arriving from Klaipeda. She was told that she was suspected of a theft which had occurred in the next carriage.
and she was taken to the police station and searched; her papers were confiscated.
After this she was dispatched by plane to Vilnius (with an escort).
Here she was interviewed by the KGB, while a search was being carried out at her home in Klaipeda in the presence of her husband. The search-record stated that the search was being conducted in connection with Case 345, because anti-Soviet material had been found on B. Pasiliene in Moscow. The search was conducted by Major Markevičius. The confiscated material included the ‘Moscow Appeal’, an interview and statements by A. Solzhenitsyn, the article ‘At the Command of Conscience’ by T. Khodorovich, and other items.
On 5 February, in Vilnius, Jonas Volungevicius (CCE 36.7) was forcibly detained after refusing to obey a telephone summons to go to K a B headquarters.
During the interrogation he was asked to explain how his autobiography had been found at the home of Birute Pasiliene. Volungevicius refused to answer.
On 6 February Albertas Zilinskas (CCE 36.7) was summoned for interrogation by Brilys, an official of the Lithuanian K G B operations section. Brilys was interested in A. Zilinskas’s trip to Klaipeda to see Birute Pasiliene. Pasiliene, J. Volungevicius and A. Zilinskas are former political prisoners.
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In November 1975 the first issue (number 1/41) of the journal Ausra (Dawn) came out in Lithuania; it has been revived after an interval of 100 years.
The introductory article explains the aims and nature of the journal: the rebirth of the Lithuanian people’s cultural life and national consciousness, and the realisation of the influence exerted by the ‘occupation’ on the national and cultural life of Lithuania. The issue includes: a translation of A. Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Live not by Lies’, the speech of Jonas Jurasas at the ‘Sakharov Hearing’ in Copenhagen in October 1975, and an article on Bishop Motejus Valancius, the great proponent of Lithuanian culture and enlightenment, on the hundredth anniversary of his death. Valancius is particularly famous for founding temperance societies, at first in Lithuania but later also in Russia.
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From the ‘Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church,’ (LCC Chronicle)
No. 20 (8 December 1975)
The issue begins with a section on “M. Tamonis — A Victim of State Security”.
A biographical note on him from the Small Soviet Encyclopaedia is quoted.
An account is given of M. Tamonis’s letter to the CPSU Central Committee, dated 25 June 1975, which conveys ‘his unfounded faith in the goodwill of the Communist Party leadership’. In the letter Tamonis asks in particular for a referendum about the restoration of sovereignty to the Baltic republics, he suggests that discrimination against believers should cease, and that the infringement of civil rights should end. It was right after this that A long obituary is published, written by the dead man’s friends. (Tamonis’s death was reported in CCE 38.19 [8]).
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In a declaration to the President of the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR, dated 15 September 1975, Bishop Julijonas Steponavicius says that for 15 years now he has been prevented from fulfilling his duties and has effectively been in exile in Zagare, although no charges have been brought against him; he was merely informed that the situation resulted from an order of the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR. The declaration describes the activities of the bishop as apostolic administrator of the Vilnius archdiocese in the years 1958-61, activities which led to his persecution by the authorities (although he never broke the law).
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The article ‘Save Nature in Lithuania!’ is reminiscent of a letter sent in 1966 by a group of intellectuals (21 people) to the then First Secretary of the Central Committee, Snieckus, and the President of the Council of Ministers, Sumauskas. The forecasts made by the authors of the letter concerning the destructive results of construction of oil refineries and other projects then in progress, have been justified.
The pollution of the Baltic Sea’, the article says, ‘also violates the international obligations of the Soviet Union’. The article presents evidence showing that the protection of nature in Lithuania is far worse than in Western countries or in the RSFSR. The main point made by the article is that Moscow is indifferent to the state of nature in Lithuania, while the Lithuanian leaders are afraid to come to its defence.
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A successful three-hour strike by bus-drivers in Siauliai is reported; it was caused by a cancellation of bonuses. The strike was on 1 October 1975.
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On 28 September 1975 Father Sigitas Tamkevičius (CCE 32.10, CCE 36.7), rector of the church in Simnas, sent a declaration to the head of the Lithuanian KGB.
He pointed out the infringements of the law which had occurred during a search of his house and the interrogations that followed. Although six months have gone by since the search, the confiscated objects have not been returned to him; these were: cassette recordings of sermons, a notebook and sermon notes, part of a typewriter (minus the letters), and LCC Chronicle (7 & 8). S. Tamkevičius declares: ‘I consider it unlawful to persecute people because of the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church, for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gives every Soviet citizen the right to distribute any truthful information’; he refuses in future to give any evidence about such matters.
On 30 October Fr Tamkevičius was summoned to the executive committee of the town soviet of Simnas, where a KGB official let him read the answer to his declaration: LCC Chronicle had been attached to a criminal case; the fate of the remaining confiscated objects would be decided in the course of the pre-trial investigation.
S. Tamkevičius has been transferred to another parish.
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A number of cases have been reported of the authorities hindering religious activity and the expression of religious feeling: crosses outside houses have been demolished; a statue has been secretly removed from a churchyard; fines have been imposed for teaching children religious knowledge; an orderly and a nurse have been sentenced for inviting a priest to visit a dying man in hospital.
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This time, in the regular section on ‘The Soviet School’ only two cases are reported of teachers taking action against religious pupils.
This section also gives an account of the speech made by Central Committee member Sinkevicius to an August conference of teachers in Sakiai. Sinkevicius spoke of the unusual attention being paid to Lithuania, which he had noticed when he was abroad. He also said that he had read 16 issues of the LCC Chronicle and he warned the teachers:
“Any lack of tact shown by a teacher in conversations with a religious pupil or his parents will appear in detail in this journal, without any exaggeration, with the name, school and date given, and will be distributed not only in our country, but also abroad.”
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A Chronicle of Current Events 