This section is largely based on material from the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church [LCC Chronicle], Nos. 36 & 37; Aušra, issue 14; and Perspektivas, issues 5, 6 and 7.
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THE ARREST OF RAGAISIS
In September 1978 the Lithuanian Supreme Court heard the case of Romualdas Ragaisis, charged with refusing to give evidence as a witness during the investigation and trial of V. Petkus (CCE 50.5). The Judge was J. Jasiulevicius and the Procurator J. Murauskas.
When Ragaisis’s acquaintances and friends tried to get into the courtroom they were not admitted, the reason given by secretary N. Vaigauskaite being that it was ‘a closed trial’. The accused, however, did manage to obtain permission for most of those who wanted to enter the courtroom to do so.
Ragaisis pleaded not guilty and explained that he did not — either in the past or present — consider Petkus’s activities to be criminal; that Investigator Daugalas had behaved ‘with him, a witness, as though he were an accused, and this gave Ragaisis the right to refuse to give evidence; that he and his family had been continually harassed and slandered; and that in refusing to take part in Petkus’s trial, he had been registering a protest against injustice.
The Procurator asked the court to take into account — when deciding on the punishment — Ragaisis’s character reference, in which he was described as a good worker.
The court imposed the maximum penalty — six months’ corrective labour with a 20 per cent wage deduction.
On 9 January 1979 a search was conducted at Ragaisis’s flat in connection with a charge of involvement in a forbidden trade and speculation. 34 spectacle-frames (Ragaisis is a skilled optician), 470 roubles and several amber ornaments belonging to his wife and daughter were confiscated, as were a number of of samizdat texts, notebooks and personal letters. After the search Ragaisis was arrested.
Investigator V. Benetis said, in reply to Ragaisis’s wife, who asked what her husband was charged with, that the charges were irrelevant. No matter what they were, he would still get his five years.
Romualdas Ragaisis is a former political prisoner, who from 1961 to 1965 served in the Mordovian camps for distributing proclamations and raising the Lithuanian national flag. In recent years he has taken part in collective protests against the arrests of B. Gajauskas, V. Petkus, A. Ginzburg and Yu. Orlov. He was deprived of his Vilnius residence permit and his flat.
The Lithuanian Helsinki Group has issued ‘Document No. 14’ in defence of Ragaisis. This is a protest addressed to the Presidium of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet. It is signed by three members of the Group: Ona Lukauskaite-Poškiene, Fr, Karolis Garuckas and Fr. Bronius Laurinavičius (who joined the Group at the beginning of 1979). Members of the Catholic Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights (CCE 51.14) have associated themselves with this protest, as have a further 40 people, including three Estonians — Mart Niklus, Enn Tarto and Erik Udam.
On the day of Ragaisis’s arrest a search was conducted in connection with the same case at the home of Julius Sasnauskas (CCE 47.5). The journals Ausra, Devos ir Tevinija (God and the Motherland) and Rupintojelis, the original of A. Terleckas’s article “Once again about the Jews and Lithuanians” [note 11], together with its Russian translation, and his ‘Open Letter to Viktor Kalnins’ (this issue “Samizdat Update”, CCE 52.17 [4, 5]) were confiscated — 49 items in all.
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In Rasos cemetery in Vilnius lies the grave of the Unknown Soldier in memory of the Lithuanian soldiers who gave their lives in the Polish- Lithuanian War of 1920. In recent years, on 16 February, which is Independence Day (an official holiday in pre-war Lithuania), wreaths woven with red and green ribbons (the colours of the national flag) have been laid on this grave. The same wreaths have been laid on the nearby grave of J. Basanavičius, a prominent Lithuanian writer and political activist [note 12].
Incidents in which people taking part in these ceremonies have been detained and subjected to interrogation are widely known. This year, as in the past, the laying of wreaths took place under the close observation of KGB agents. They did not, however, interfere with the ceremony.
In Kaunas on 16 February the flag of Independent Lithuania was raised over a school building.
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On 31 December 1978 Angele Paskauskiene, a resident of Jurbarkas, sent a statement to the First Secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party Central Committee. In the statement she set out the history of her relations with the KGB.
In the summer of 1962 the 13-year-old schoolgirl, Angele Paskauskiene, together with the group of like-minded peers who had gathered around her, composed and distributed in Jurbarkas a leaflet containing appeals to ‘brother Lithuanians’ to ‘fight for a free and independent Lithuania against the Bolsheviks’. The group was discovered, the girl subjected to interrogations by the KGB, and expelled from school. She was later sent to a psychiatric hospital for ‘anti- Soviet propaganda’. There, for a two-month period, she underwent a course of powerful drugs, which, in PaSkauskiene’s words, seriously damaged her health (before going into hospital she already had a heart condition resulting from rheumatic fever).
At the end of 1974 Angele Paskauskiene, by that time the mother of two children, was arrested, charged with anti-Soviet propaganda and sent for treatment in a special psychiatric hospital (CCE 37.7 [4]), from which she was released soon afterwards.
At the end of 1977 Paskauskiene began to receive visits from KGB officer K. Janukonis. These started to grow more frequent when Paskauskiene was found at work typing a statement to the First Secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party. KGB officers also visited Paskauskiene in hospital, where she was sent when her heart condition worsened.
At the end of December 1978 Janukonis went to Angele Paskauskiene’s home on an ‘unofficial visit’.
‘He pretended to be a friend who was worried about my fate. He claimed that the statement I wrote to you [that is, the First Secretary of the Central Committee, Chronicle] was anti-Soviet in character and that as a result I might suffer greatly. He promised to leave me in peace and persuaded me to write a statement, dictated by him, to the KGB.
‘This statement said that in October 1978, while I was in hospital in Vilnius, the Dubinskas couple were supposed to have visited me to collect my statement and send it to you. Instead, a woman I did not know came and told me that she knew everything and that she was supposed to send my statement. Sometime later I saw the above-mentioned statement, which had by now acquired an anti-Soviet colouring, in a flat, the address of which escapes my memory. Janukonis did not allow me to date this dictated statement. But this was not to be the end of the matter.’
Janukonis made another visit. He wanted to ‘help’ me remember the appearance of the woman who sent my statement and the address of the flat where I saw it.
Paskauskiene requests protection from further visits by KGB officers.
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Father Sigitas Tamkevičius (CCE 51.14), a member of the Catholic Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights, was fined 50 roubles for disturbing the public peace: on 1 November 1978, All Souls’ Day, he headed a procession of believers to the town cemetery to offer up prayers (CCE 51.14).
Tamkevičius protested against the decision to fine him. The case was to have been heard on 1 December 1978 in Vilkaviskis district people’s court. Before the hearing started believers filled the courtroom. They sang hymns and read prayers together in the corridors and outside the court building. The presiding Judge, Stankaitis, postponed the hearing, as it had ‘not been possible’ to obtain some paper or other from the town Soviet Executive Committee.
The second session took place on 10 January 1979. On the order of Judge Shlenfuktas police-officers threw people out of the corridors and vestibule of the court building into the street. Nor did those believers who had filled the courtroom succeed in attending the hearing, because the session was transferred to a small room on the first floor.
The Judge tried to prevent Tamkevičius from making the speech he had prepared. In protest, Tamkevicius left the courtroom.
The former decision to levy the fine was upheld.
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At the end of 1978 all town and district soviet executive committees received special questionnaires about the activities of the church.
They contained ten questions altogether, including the following:
- How do clerics carry out the Statute on Religious Associations? Which violations are most characteristic? Do clerics interfere in family, work or school matters? Who teaches children the catechism? Which priests own cars?
- At the same time all rectors of churches received forms containing the following questions:
- How many school-age children have been christened? How many adults have been christened? How many people have been given their first communion?
In connection with the census being carried out in Kaunas, on 22 November 1978 a seminar for future ‘census-takers’ was organized. Those attending were told that ministers of religion should be considered as ‘not working anywhere’. In the column ‘education’, ‘special secondary should be entered, and not under any circumstances ‘higher’.
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At the end of 1978 the Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs, Petras Anilionis, met Bishop Liudvikas Povilonis and asked him questions such as:
- Can the Roman Pope consecrate someone a cardinal without the sanction of State authority?
- Can an exiled bishop be made a cardinal?
- Can an ordinary priest be made a cardinal?
Soon after this, at the beginning of 1979, the administrator of the Vilnius archdiocese, Ceslovas Krivaitis, resigned from his post. Father Algis Gutauskas, rector of the church of St Teresa, was elected to take his place.
LCC Chronicle (37) attributes these changes to the authorities’ fears that the new Pope might make either Steponavičius or Sladkevičius, two bishops exiled to remote Regions of Lithuania, a cardinal. It was for this reason that A. Gutauskas, well known for his connections with the Polish clergy (to which Pope John Paul II belongs), was promoted to a key post in the Lithuanian Catholic hierarchy. As LCC Chronicle asserts, C. Krivaitis could not count on being made a cardinal, as he had compromised himself too much by his KGB connections. ‘
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The journal Perspektivas (see ‘Samizdat Update’) mentions a ‘Union of Lithuanian Communists for the Secession of Lithuania from the USSR’ and a ‘Movement for the Secession of Lithuania from the USSR’ (this is evidently the same organization), and also an ‘Action Group to Defend the Lithuanian Language’.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 