Lithuanian unrest worry to Kremlin

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32967, 13 July 1972, Page 10

Lithuanian unrest worry to Kremlin

(By

CHRIS CATLIN.

. A.A.P.-Reuter correspondent through N.Z.P.A )

MOSCOW, July 12. I Hundreds of arrests in the Soviet Baltic Republic of Lithuania, continuing resentment among her Roman Catholics, and the suicides of three Lithuanians who burned themselves to death, point to fresh, potentially-explo-sive problems for the Kremlin. Since last March, when more than 17,000 Lithuanian Roman Catholics petitioned the Soviet Union leadership, alleging discrimination against their Church, reports of unrest reaching Moscow through usually reliable channels have become steadily more dramatic. In a country where such news is usually suppressed by official censorship, an over-all picture of what is happening in the Baltic republic — what gave rise to the disturbances at this particular time, and the extent of public involvement—is virtually impossible to piece together. But if the reports are accurate, two factors at least appear especially worrying for the leadership in Moscow. These are the involvement of young Lithuanians; and the possibility of a chain reaction linking religious and nationalist discontent.

In the official view, Lithuanians have no reason to complain of repression of their religion, or of their national aspirations. According to the Soviet Union news media, the first suicide victim suffered from a mental disorder, and the two days of riots that followed his death involved only “hooligans and teen-age loafers.” Usually reliable sources painted a different picture of the riots that flared in May after the self-immolation of Roman Kalanta, aged 20, in Kaunas, Lithuania’s secondlargest city. The sources said that young demonstrators were shouting “Freedom for Lithuania!” and that several hundred persons were arrested, and that nonLithuanian paratroop units were used to quell the disturbances. The authorities were jolted again in June by another outburst of feeling against Soviet Union authority, according to the latest reports from the republic.

The occasion was an international handball tournament last month in Vilnius, the republican capital.

The sources say that student spectators refused to stand for the Soviet Union national anthem, waved Lithuanian flags, and distributed anti-Soviet posters.

About 150 are said to have been arrested.

These young people, like Kaianta and the second suicide victim, a plumber, aged 23, belong to a generation that can have no personal memories of independent Lithuania.

Few are old enough to have had direct experience of the anti-Soviet partisan movement, “The Forest Brothers,” which fought on into the 19505.

The second victim, identified only by his surname of Stonis, is reported to have set fire to himself on May 29, the day after the police had stopped him and three friends from flying the Lithuanian flag at a town fair in Varena, in south-west Lithuania. The Lithuanian Communist Party leadership realised it had problems with young people before recent events turned the spotlight on them. Last year, a local Communist leader, Mr Antanas Snieckus, complained about some of the younger generation’s attitudes. “We cannot help being put on our guard by the fact that a part of our youth commits anti-social actions, that the individual youths and young girls permit unwholesome opinions and hostile actions, and are out on the road of crime,” he told the Lithuanian party congress. “They sometimes remember their rights well, but completely forget their high duties to society.”

i For the Establishment, these duties include unwavering loyalty to the Soviet motherland — a motherland controlled from Moscow — and support for the officially athiest Communist Party. But a young Lithuanian can also look to alternative points of reference: politically, to the West, where he may have relatives among emigre groups; and. in religious matters, to the Vatican. The first could officially be considered treasonable; " the second, undesirable. Listening to Western radio broadcasts is publicly discouraged, and the local leadership regularly hits out at their former compatriots abroad. But in spite of these efforts — perhaps even because of them — not all young Lithuanians are prepared to take the Communist line on trust. Some parents apparently do not want them to do so. The Roman Catholic petition complained that two priests were imprisoned for teaching children the Catechism, and that young believers in school were made to speak, write, and act against their consciences. After the dealth of Kalanta, himself a Roman Catholic, the Kaunas authorities were said to have restricted movement in and out of the city. Word recently reached Moscow that an elderly worker in Kaunas, Mr Andrus Hukavichus, had followed the example of Kalanta on June 3, and that another man had tried unsuccessfully to bum himself to death, using acetone, six days later in the same Lithuanian city.