Ordeal by Fire

For the past three months a series of grisly suicides has ignited mass protest demonstrations in Lithuania, thus illuminating the long-smoldering grievances held by citizens of this remote corner of the Soviet Union.

The trouble began in May, when Roman Kalanta, 19, a member of the Young Communist League, sat down in a park in Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city, and set fire to a gallon of gasoline he had poured on himself. On the day of Kalanta's burial, thousands of young mourners flooded the streets of Kaunas shouting "Freedom for Lithuania!" A young girl lay down in the street and spread her arms in the form of a cross. When the local police manhandled her, the rioting started. Hundreds counterattacked with fists, sticks and stones. When the police proved unable to quell the demonstrators, tough riot-control troops were called in. The angry young people reportedly killed a policeman, stoned a bookstore selling Communist literature and threw a fire bomb into the local Communist Party headquarters. A sitdown strike was staged by workers in a synthetics factory. Five hundred people were arrested, of whom 200 have been jailed or are awaiting trial.

Since Kalanta's suicide, three other Lithuanians have also set themselves on fire in political protest. Further evidence of how high tensions are running in Lithuania came last month at an international handball tournament in Vilnius, which suddenly turned into an anti-Russian demonstration. Students jeered the Russian players and cheered the foreign participants. They refused to stand for the Soviet national anthem, passed out anti-Soviet leaflets, and even hoisted the national flag of independent Lithuania. Most recently, the Soviets dismissed Lithuania Agitation and Propaganda Chief Pranas Mishutis, the man in charge of keeping the lid on Lithuanian unrest.

Brutal Annexation. These unprecedented protests spring from the deep-seated patriotism of the 3,000,000 Lithuanians, most of whom are Roman Catholics. Their anti-Russian feelings are longstanding; the country suffered 120 years of oppression under the czars, and after 22 years of independence was brutally annexed by the U.S.S.R. in 1940. Emboldened by the example of Russia's own dissidents, Lithuanians have become increasingly vocal in their protests against Soviet religious and ethnic repression. No fewer than 17,000 Lithuanians signed an open letter that was sent to the United Nations this year deploring the deportation of Catholic bishops, the arrest of priests, and the closing or destruction of churches. Perhaps the most moving appeal was made by Simas Kudirka, the Lithuanian sailor who was sentenced to ten years at hard labor for having attempted to escape aboard a U.S. Coast Guard vessel in 1970. At his 1971 trial, Kudirka cried: "All I demand is an independent Lithuania, one that is not occupied by any army, and has a free, democratic system of elections."

The harsh treatment of Lithuanian dissenters suggests that the Kremlin views the disturbances as a dangerous precedent for other non-Russian peoples under Soviet rule--notably the Latvians, Estonians and Ukrainians--who are also showing signs of unrest.

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