Preface

Rasa Tautvydas arrived in Kaunas, Lithuania a couple of months before we did. The
following is her account of the events leading up to the night that we arrived;
When I graduated from college twenty years ago, I had the unique
opportunity to work in Lithuania. Lithuania had declared independence from the
USSR on March 11, 1990. A handful of intellectuals from physicists to musicians
played a dangerous but crafty game with the USSR government. They took
advantage of existing Soviet laws and of Gorbachevs glasnost (openness) to
regain their countrys independence, an independence lost after forceful
incorporation into the Soviet Union after World War II.

It was a peaceful

revolution, dubbed the Singing Revolution because demonstrations included the

singing of national folk songs, an act forbidden under Soviet rule.

In response to Lithuanias declaration of independence, the Soviet

government imposed an economic blockade in June 1990. By the time I arrived
in November, inflation was rising and fewer and fewer goods were available for
purchase. Along with my salary, I received ration tickets for cigarettes, vodka,
and toilet paper among other items. If I saw a long line, I knew that I should get
in it too.
The dark days of the fight for independence deepened. By late December,
rumor began to spread that something more serious was about to happen.
Gorbachev wasnt pleased with Lithuanias actions, and he was finding that an
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economic blockade was not enough to stifle the drive for independence.
Beginning in early January, Soviet tanks moved into the capital city of Vilnius
along with several other key cities, and Soviet troops began taking over
government and infrastructure buildings. The Soviets ultimate goal, take over
the parliament building and regain governance of Lithuania.

Rather than hide, the Lithuanians took to the streets. Vytautas Landbergis,
a professor of music by training and Lithuanias newly elected leader, asked the
nation to gather outside government buildings and to protect them from
occupation. Busloads of people flowed into the capital. They came from all over
the country and kept vigil day and night despite the frigid winter weather.

Wanting to join the demonstrators, I drove to Vilnius from Kaunas with

friends both native Lithuanians and Lithuanian-American like myself. It was
January 12, 1991. Little did we know that in the early hours of January 13, the
Soviets would resort to brutal violence against peaceful demonstrators.

We initially stood outside the radio and TV tower, a structure resembling

Seattles space needle. Under grey skies and black umbrellas with temperatures
hovering near freezing, our voices joined those of over a thousand other
Lithuanians. As a slushy rain fell, we sang songs of loss and longing. We sang
songs of hope. We sang songs of joy and humor. Young and old stood defiant in
the rain and the cold.
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By evening the temperatures dropped, and we drove to the Parliament

building in downtown Vilnius, a contemporary architectural structure that
contrasted with the Baroque architecture of Vilnius old town, the classical style
of an adjacent library and the stoic apartments that surrounded the parliament
square. Rock and roll blared from massive loudspeakers perched on the library
steps. The atmosphere felt more like a festival than a vigil: the young flirted and
checked each other out, older couples walked arm in arm; others offered hot cups
of broth, soup and sandwiches that they had made at home.

The music of

folksongs, accordions, fiddles and laughter filled the air. Young and old danced
folk dances. But by the early hours of January 13, the atmosphere turned somber
as news spread that the tanks were coming.

We felt the tanks approach before we saw them, a deep vibration that
rumbled up from the ground, through your body and into your heart. We watched
as they rolled down a distant highway. Then we heard explosions in the distance
and the rat-a-tat-tat of machinegun fire. The radio and TV tower was under
attack.

The radio announcers continued to broadcast over the loudspeakers. The

crowd of over 10,000 outside the Parliament building now stood silent. The radio
crackled as the announcer, a young woman, described events as they unfolded.
We could hear the guns firing in the background as she told us that she was in the
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broadcast studio, that she had just locked the doors, that the paratroopers were in
the building and running up the stairs. Then we heard muffled words spoken in
Russian and banging on the door. She continued, We will continue broadcasting
as long as we are alive, this is The Republic of Lithuania radio. Then silence.
The radio and TV tower was occupied.

The silence was palpable, and it was more than the cold of below freezing
temperatures that caused me to shiver. Vytautas Landsbergis then came out again
and asked that all women and children leave. The crowd of ten thousand linked
arms and waited for the tanks. Standing near the Parliament entrance, I linked
arms with a Russian woman on one side of me, a Lithuanian on the other. No one
in the crowd left. Looking over the sea of people standing shoulder to shoulder in
the square, I knew there would be no way out when the tanks turned on us.

Then the ground shook, the deep rumble of approaching tanks.

We

waited, our hands and feet growing numb. As the darkness of night faded to
dawn, the Parliament building remained unoccupied. The tanks had turned away.
Lithuania remained free. Much later I learned that the crowd had been too big,
even for the Soviets. As the USSR was learning, the world was watching. In the
aftermath, the world learned that Soviet Special forces had shot unarmed civilians
and drove their tanks over peaceful demonstrators. The final count, 13 dead, and
over 600 wounded.
Quoted from Life As I Know It. www.odysblog.com
4

Chaos in Lithuania

On January 13, 1991 we arrived in Vilnius by train in the midst of a snowstorm. Since it
was already late at night, we had expected to stay overnight in Vilnius before continuing on to
Kaunas, some sixty-five miles to the east, the following day. But the university officials sent a
car for us, and we drove as fast as we could, though we could barely see the road ahead of us.
There had earlier been some shooting along this thoroughfare. We were glad it was dark, and
snowing.
When we visited the school the next day, the outside walls of the main building were
covered with childrens drawings: of airplanes with bombs dropping, stick figures of human
beings crushed under tanks. Citizens had mutilated their identity cards and internal passports by
thrusting them on to spikes in wooden posts in front of the university. The city was occupied by
Russian troops. Several young American-Lithuanian men who had been teaching there were sent
home. The Russian army was forcibly enlisting any young man they could find on the street.
As I learned later from one of my students, serving in the Soviet army was perilous.
The foot soldiers came from various ethnic groups in the Soviet Union which had their own
languages and customs, although all were forced to learn the Russian language. When the
Russian officers left the barracks in the evening, the living quarters often became chaotic, with
soldiers fighting, even killing one another. When it came to doing dirty work, it was the newly
enlisted who performed the task. Those who had been in the army for some time simply refused
orders to do such work.
The newly reopened university had put up barricades around their administrative
building, formerly used by the Communists as their headquarters, in the center of the city. Some
5

classes were held in the administrative building, but most were held in whatever rooms might be
available from one end of the city to the other, along Laisves Alle (Freedom Avenue). The
precious library books had been distributed to various academic departments around the city.
Within a week after our arrival, some of the officials from the American Consulate in
Leningrad met with the Americans at the university. They cautioned us that they could not offer
us any protection and that we had best return to the states. We had fled from China. We were not
going to flee from Lithuania. We did take the precaution of hanging a pouch around our neck
with our passports and the little money we had in dollars, in case we should have to head for the
border on a moments notice. As for the Lithuanians, they expected disaster at any moment; they
were used to being deported to Siberia.

Children were expected to have warm clothing

immediately available at all times, even in the midst of summer. Otherwise, they would not
survive the Siberian weather.
For the next six months we shared the first floor of a house with a woman who was
supposed to be a teacher, although I never saw her with papers to be graded or books to be read.
I should not say never. On one occasion a grade book and some papers were ostensibly
displayed on the dining room table, in case we should be suspicious. She used the dining room
as her living room and a little room in the back of the house as a bedroom. We shared the
kitchen and bathroom, and had our own living room and bedroom. Her husband lived upstairs;
they were, she said, separated.
The chandelier in our living room had a bulb missing. I wouldnt be able to recognize
a listening device if I saw one, but in the military I had been in an intelligence outfit, and knew
how the system worked. So when we were home, Jytte and I spoke both Danish and English,
sometimes starting a sentence with one language and ending it with another. Occasionally, we
6

would throw in a Swedish word, or some Chinese. I knew that they would have to send the tapes
to Moscow for translation. Obviously to them, we were trying to conceal something, but of
course we never said anything of importance.
The Lithuanian-American academic dean of the university and her family were living
in a house that the KGB had used to entertain women. They were able to find a few of the
bugs in their home. On one occasion, the parents left their children with the housekeeper, who
went out temporarily to get some milk. While she was gone, some men entered the house, ran
up the stairs, and trashed several of the rooms. The children were, of course, terrified. Whenever
I was in the deans office to communicate some important information, I wrote it down on paper,
not speaking a word.
As a matter of fact, the dean was a heroine to all of Lithuania. The Communist Party
Headquarters in Kaunas had had a small TV station. Fifteen minutes after the station in Vilnius
was taken over by the Russians, she was on the air, broadcasting from Free Lithuania.
Consequently, her face was recognized by Lithuanians all over the country, and news broadcasts
were transmitted from the university every evening for several months.
The chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages, Viola, was a LithuanianAmerican woman with a Masters of Business Administration degree. Her only experience in
teaching English was to a class of foreigners in California. Shortly after our arrival, we were
having lunch together with her and four other Lithuanian English teachers.

She began to

complain about how tired she was. She had been broadcasting on TV every evening, and needed
a rest. Couldnt one of them take over that evening? She didnt have a clue as to what she was
asking.

To appear on TV broadcasting from Free Lithuania would be a certain life sentence to

Siberia, if not a death sentence, should the Russians regain the control they had lost. I could see
the fear in the eyes of three of the teachers, who refused to help. The older woman, Johanna,
spoke up. Ill do it for you. I knew then who the spy was in the department. I later found out
that she lived in the KGB apartment building.
Vytautas Magnus University has an amazing history. After the First World War, in
1918, Lithuania tasted independence as a nation for a short time. Vilnius was still a part of
Poland; so the newly formed government was established in the central city of Kaunas. On
February 16, 1922 the university was founded; so we were there to celebrate its seventieth
anniversary.
In March of 1943 the school was taken over by the Germans, and studies were
suspended. During the summer of 1944, as the Russians regained control of the country, a third
of the faculty fled to the West before the Iron Curtain descended. They were dedicated to
preserving Lithuanian culture. Most overseas Lithuanians now insist that their children learn
Lithuanian, an ancient language unlike any other Indo-European speech, closest to Sanskrit.
The university was re-established in 1989 by local and immigrant scholars as a liberal
arts institution modeled after American universities, the first two years being devoted to studies
in a broad range of subjects, while the last two are devoted to a major subject. Under the
Communist system a group of perhaps fifteen students would take all courses together. Under
the new system the students had a choice as to what classes they would attend among a variety of
subjects. You can imagine the chaos which resulted from trying to schedule classes in rooms
spread across the city so that students could get from one class to another on time. But, as one

English teacher said to me, crossing the threshold into the university was the first taste of
freedom she had ever experienced.
Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union in March of 1989, but to
make an announcement is one thing, to create a reality is something else. Few countries dared to
face the wrath of the Russians. The first country to recognize Lithuanias independence, soon
after our arrival, was Iceland. The second was Denmark. Jytte wore a pin with a Lithuanian and
Danish flag together. Taxi drivers refused to accept her money when they realized that she was
Danish.
Near the house where we lived was a roundabout where the Russians had placed a
tank as a memorial of their occupation. The Lithuanians painted the tank pink and put up a
wooden cross, which the Russians cut down. A large metal cross was soon erected. Another
was installed in honor of Iceland. The third was dedicated to Denmark. Icelandic and Danish
flags hung from the balconies along Freedom Avenue.
Shopping for goods along Freedom Avenue was a challenge. Many things were
rationed; so we were given coupons to buy certain essentials. The coupon for toilet paper was
the same one used to buy vodka. You had to choose between one or the other. In any case, toilet
paper was in short supply. Our landlady had to go to Vilnius to get ours.
The department stores had few goods to sell. The mannequins in the windows were
draped with clear plastic. Nevertheless, the Lithuanian women were not only beautiful, but also
elegantly dressed, in clothes that they had probably sewn themselves. I even purchased two
tailor-made suits, although I had to find the lining fabric myself. After scouring the city, I
managed to find one roll in a small shop hidden in a back alley which sold a little bit of
everything, including washing machines.
9

Every student at the university was required to learn English. Six six-semester-hour
courses were offered. By the end of the sixth course a student was expected to be fluent in
English. I was assigned to teach the highest level. At the end of the semester, I gave the
students the Test of English as a Foreign Language exam, taken by foreign students who wish to
study at an American university. All but one student received a score high enough to get him
into any American college. One-third scored above the grade for entrance to a graduate school.
The Lithuanian students were determined to learn English.
One semester I taught Business English, while the other section dealt with British
literature. Business English was a difficult course for Communist students. Theirs was a cash
economy. There was no such thing as checking accounts and transfer of funds from one bank to
another, let alone credit cards. I had to begin by showing the students my checkbook and
explaining how it was used. Their first question was: If I took one of your checks and filled it
out, would I be able to get the money?
Half way through the course three of my students asked if they could switch from
credit to audit. I was a bit puzzled. Why would they not want credit for their hard work,
especially since they were required to take the sixth level course? All three were auditing one
section of the course while taking the other for credit, and they knew they could get a better
grade in the other section. They were spending twelve hours rather than the required six to
improve their Englishin addition to their other coursework!
A few months after I had begun teaching at Vytautas Magnus, I was informed that the
Norwegian government had offered to our students twelve full scholarships to their prestigious
International Summer School at the University of Oslo attended by five hundred students from
around the world. As teacher of one of the two sections of sixth level English, I had the
10

opportunity to choose six of the twelve who would be going. I was not yet sure who were the
best in my class, but I summoned six to remain after class so that I could give them the good
news. They were to spend six weeks during the coming summer in Oslo, Norway, but would
have to get busy at once filling out the necessary paperwork. I expected a joyous response. I
could have been talking about the weather. There were no smiles, no emotions at all.
From their point of view I was speaking utter nonsense. They were living behind the
Iron Curtain. Very few got Soviet passports to travel abroad. They would never see Norway! I
was being too cruel even to suggest the possibility. I still have no idea how the university was
able to get passports for them.
The following fall those six students gathered together with me to show the pictures
they had taken while in Norway. One of them said, quite simply: Im beginning to believe in
miracles. One of my students had received the highest grade in the course of studies she
pursued.
During the summer of 1991 the crisis in the relationship between Lithuania and Russia
reached a boiling point.

Gorbachev, as the leader of Russia, was more tolerant than his

predecessors, but a conservative group of Russian officials was disconcerted by his tolerance,
and a coup against Gorbachev was instigated on August 18, 1991. The fate of Lithuania was in
peril.
The citizens of Lithuania were again summoned to Vilnius to protect the parliament
building. They streamed into the central square by the thousands from all over the country. In
Kaunas the library books were once again distributed throughout the city.

Russian soldiers

occupied the TV station at the university. The general in charge of military operations was
ordered to take further actions, but refused to do so until the commands were in writing.
11

Boris Yeltsin stood on the top of a tank in Moscow, in front of the Russian parliament,
to defy the leaders of the coup. The Russian troops occupying the TV station in Kaunas threw a
rock out the window with a note attached: We support Yeltsin. By August 21 the coup was
over. Its leaders had fled Moscow. When the Russian troops retreated from the university, they
were greeted with flowers from the Lithuanians. On September 6 the Russian government
recognized Lithuanias independence.
It was raining outside, but Jytte insisted we go out into the streets. She remembered
May 5, 1945, the day when the Germans had declared the Danes free from occupationthe joy
of the people streaming by the thousands to celebrate. But in Kaunas there was no one in the
streets. Apparently the Lithuanians could not believe they were actually free from Russian
dominance.
A few days later a celebration was held in the main square, directly opposite from the
universitys main building. A contingent of Lithuanian soldiers in their new uniforms marched
by. In the square, on a tall pedestal, stood a statue of the Angel of Liberty, standing erect with
wings high above her shoulders and a spear in her right hand. It was the custom that newlyweds
came immediately after the wedding ceremony to that statue, where the bride would lay her
bridal bouquet at the feet of the angel. Before the formal ceremony began, an old man grabbed
the microphone and gave an impassioned speech. We did not need to understand what he was
saying.
As mentioned earlier, Communist countries relied solely upon cash to make payments.
There was no such thing as checks or credit cards. When we first arrived in Lithuania, we were
cautioned not to accept anything higher than a twenty-five rouble note, the Russian currency
being the only one available in the Soviet Union. A few days later the Russian government
12

announced that new notes were being issued for fifty roubles and higher. The old notes would
soon become worthless, and the citizens had three days during which they could exchange a
limited amount of the old for the new.
People did not trust the banks. For a time foreigners who placed their foreign currency in
bank accounts suddenly had no access to their funds. So most Soviets stashed their money under
their mattresses, in large denominations. As a result of the new government regulations the
money they had saved for retirement was now worthless. The official exchange rate was $1.60
for one rouble. In fact we could get twenty-five roubles for a dollar, if we had any dollars.
When Lithuania became independent, money became an immediate problem. The gold
which they had used to back their litvas during their brief independence after 1920 was stored in
banks overseas. The Lithuanians engaged a German firm to print Lithuanian currency, but the
company did not do a satisfactory job, and another batch of money had to be created. In the
meantime, wages were paid in roubles, which the Russians were increasingly unwilling to send
to countries which had broken away from the Soviet Union. By the time we left Lithuania, half
of my wages were paid in coupons which had no inherent value and were used immediately. A
few years later the dollar was worth 25,000 Russian roubles.
My wages were 600 roubles a month, the second highest in the department. Having
gained their freedom from Russia, the Lithuanians were determined to practice democracy to the
hilt. We had a department meeting in which the wages of everyone were decided and voted on.
When we came to Johanna, the KGB agent, someone suggested that she be given 610 roubles.
With piercing eyes she looked around the room to see if anyone dared to vote no. All said
yes."

13

Immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, the International Monetary Fund loaned
Russia $11 billion to help them stabilize their economy. Soon afterward, $11 billion showed up
in the Swiss bank accounts of high Communist officials. The Russian state-owned factories
were sold off to Communist cadres at ridiculously low prices. The Communists became the new
entrepreneurs, the mafia. There were three rooms in the universitys administration building
which had not been turned over to VMU by the Communist Party. Behind locked doors the
newly rich were operating. I had three of them in my Business English class.
I began the fall semester with a normal twelve-hour teaching load, but the academic dean
pleaded with me to offer Business English to businessmen in Kaunas and Vilnius: three hours on
Wednesday evenings in Kaunas, three hours at the university in Vilnius on Saturday mornings. I
had three or four English teachers assisting me with the course in both cities, so they could learn
how to teach the subject matter themselves. I ended up with eighteen hours of teaching.
Then a crisis arose in the Department of Foreign Languages. We were already beginning
to teach juniors at the university, who were supposed to be concentrating on their major field.
But the department had not yet created the course work for its majors. Viola was totally
incompetent, and the two Lithuanian-American women teaching in the department refused the
chairmanship. I was asked to take on the job. Suddenly I was chairman of a department with
sixty teachers, half of whom, since they were teaching languages other than English, I could not
communicate with since I did not know Lithuanian.
The academic dean wanted a curriculum similar to those in America, so that any graduate
from VMU could easily enter a masters degree program in the U.S. And it had to be ready for
approval by the universitys faculty bylike yesterday. There was a slight problem. I had no
idea about who would be teaching the courses. The professors would likely be recruited from
14

America, perhaps to teach for one year, but what would be their field of special interest? When
my proposal was presented to the faculty, I attended the meeting to answer any questions, but
could not understand a word of what was going on. My secretary translated for me. I do
remember there was a chairman of another department present who was apologizing to the
faculty for his former connections to the Communist regime.
Hiring and firing is a normal part of a department chairmans job. On occasion, I could
handle the situation myself.

At other times it was my immediate supervisor, the division

chairman, who spoke Lithuanian. Not long after the semester began, a student representing his
English class came to me complaining about their teacher. Im certain that under Communism
students were never able to assert such independence of judgment. Fortunately, at the time there
were several Mormon missionaries in Kaunas, one of whom was interested in teaching English.
The teacher in question was called into my office. I am sure my secretary expected all hell to
break loose. I began the conversation with the English teacher.
Im not sure if you were informed as to the circumstances under which you were hired,
I said. We were waiting for an American to teach your course, and now she has arrived. Ill
arrange for you to be paid until the end of the month. We greatly appreciate your help. It was a
little white lie, of course. But the English teacher left quietly, and my secretary was very
pleased.
The American-Lithuanian who taught German was a bit more difficult to handle. He had
just received his doctorate in German language and literature in the States. The university had
very little foreign currency at its disposal, and the rouble was not convertible to Western
currency. Anyone coming from the West had to pay his own travel expenses to Lithuania; so we
had to take whomever we could get. The students began to complain about the erratic behavior
15

of the Lithuanian-American German teacher, but it would be a difficult situation for me to handle
since he was my liaison with the teachers who taught languages other than English. So it was
my immediate superior who relieved him of his teaching duties after the first semester.
The first time I personally observed his erratic behavior was when the Australian
ambassador was in my office. The only other male among the English teachers had been invited
by the Lithuanian community in Australia to come there to study for a Ph.D. I was speaking
with the ambassador about the difficulties for him to travel to Australia, since he did not have
any western currency and roubles were non-convertible. My office was across the hall from my
secretarys, whose door contained a large, frosted-glass window. Suddenly, there was a loud
noise and the splintering of glass. The American-Lithuanian German teacher had stormed out
the door. I thought that would be the end of our negotiations, but despite the fracas, the
ambassadors government did pay for the young teachers plane ticket to Australia.
The second time was during the visit of the Vice President of the United States Dan
Quayle. He gave a speech in front of the parliament building that had been besieged by the
Russians. As American citizens we were part of the convoy that followed him to the American
Embassy after his speech, one of the last vehicles. The German teacher sat in the front seat,
waving his hand at the crowds in the same manner as the Queen of England waves to her
subjects.
Then there was the French teacher who had come from France to help us out. She had a
nervous breakdown and had to be relieved of her duties while she recuperated, but fortunately it
was not necessary to fire her. She had fallen in love with the academic deans chauffeur, and
when he broke off the affair, it was more than she could handle.

16

The most difficult situation involved the teachers of Italian. As far as I know, there was
only one Lithuanian in the city who knew Italian; he was teaching our Italian courses. He was
much in demand, especially by the local opera theater, and was not meeting regularly with his
classes; so I had to give him a reprimand. The second semester, however, he had an opportunity
to travel to Italy to study Italian, and I gave him a strong recommendation.
A local Catholic priest became aware of our difficulty. He had traveled to Rome and had
met there an Italian who spoke Lithuanian. Arrangements were made for the Italian to come to
Kaunas for the spring semester, since he was willing to pay his own travel expenses. He
presented his papers to me, in Italian, and from what I could guess, they looked to be in order.
The only problem was that in communist countries there was no such thing as mental
illness, only political aberration. If you were to talk to a Lithuanian medical student, as I once
did, about schizophrenia, he would not have the slightest idea what you were talking about.
The Italian was living in the apartment building purchased by the university for foreign
teachers. Some of his neighbors began to complain about his reports of strange creatures coming
out of the radiators, and the longer he stayed, the more deranged he became. A chaotic country
is not the best place for a mentally disturbed person to be. He was relieved of his teaching
duties, and turned over to the priest who had recommended him, to be watched over while
arrangements could be made for his return to Italy.
He escaped from the priests home, however, and got into a fight on the streets, probably
with some husband who became furious over his advances to his wife. The Italian liked to
proposition women whom he met on the street. In any case, during the altercation he lost his
passport, his money, and his return plane ticket to Italy.

17

The only recourse the university had was to turn him over to the Italian Consulate to be
sent home at the consulates expense. The Italians in Vilnius had just arrived and could not
handle the situation.

He had to be sent to the Italian Consulate in Leningrad (later St.

Petersburg). Sakalauskas, a member of the department, was given the job of accompanying him.
On the first attempt he took the Italian to the airport for the flight from Vilnius to
Leningrad, but he refused to get on the plane. He said it was not going to the right place. They
returned to the university. On the second attempt he got the Italian to the airport and got him on
the aircraft, but he got off again. It was not the right plane. After he got off the second time,
they were finally able to get him on again and close the door. The aircraft took off. He insisted
he was on the wrong plane and forced his way into the cockpit, Sakalauskas behind him, who
explained, in Russian, what the problem was. Seated for the last time, the Italian spent the rest of
the flight trying to feel the woman in the seat behind him.
On arrival in Leningrad, Sakalauskas wanted to phone the Italian Consulate, but did not
dare leave him alone. Catching a taxi, they drove to the consulate on a Friday afternoon, only to
discover that they were not expected. Sakalauskas left, and took the next flight home. It was
now the Italians problem.

During the fall semester we had a wonderful opportunity to accompany a student folk
dancing group to Riga, the capital city of Latvia. Jytte and I rode with the students on the bus.
They were dancing in the aisle. Viola rode with the rector in the university car. The students
stayed at the university. Arrangements of us adults were made at a small hotel in the city. The
rector and Viola had adjoining rooms, while Jytte and I had our separate room. The next

18

morning the rector and Viola came down the stairs, hand in hand, the rector with a Cheshire cat
smile on his face.
Understandably, Viola and I were not on the best of terms. When the division head
called the first department meeting of the academic year to announce my appointment as the new
chairman, I brought along a bouquet of flowers to present to Viola for her service to the
department. She threw them in my face.
It should have been no surprise, therefore, that Viola waited until the end of the fall
semester to announce that she would be leaving the university. That meant, of course, that I had
to find a replacement for her in a very short time. I was able to hire a young woman who was
teaching English in the Middle East and was unhappy with her job there. The process, however,
was fraught with the difficulties of communicating with the world beyond the Iron Curtain.
Making a phone call to Vilnius was difficult enough. The line was always busy; so it was
necessary to dial the number, hear the busy signal, hang up the phone, and immediately dial
again. If you managed to get through in five or ten minutes, you were lucky. Calls to countries
outside the former Iron Curtain had to go through Moscow, and to be booked at least three days
in advance. During the Cold War, such calls had, of course, to be monitored. If there was a busy
signal, or no one answered the phone, the call had to be rebookedthree days later.
Letters were also problematic. Overseas Lithuanians often sent cash by mail to relatives,
since funds could not be transferred through the banking system. A ten-dollar bill was a months
wages in Lithuania. The mail carriers could not be relied upon not to open the letters and steal
the money. A bag of overseas correspondence was once found in the city dump. As a result, a
letter from abroad immediately became registered mail when it entered the country. My last

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correspondence with the woman who replaced Viola finally reached her several months after she
had arrived to begin teaching.
The rectors office did have a fax machine, which was able to send and receive without
delay. It was our only reliable contact with the Western world.
During the spring semester several Russians from the Ukraine visited the university.
They were starting a business college and were looking for materials they could use. They gave
my secretary a bouquet of flowers to get on my good side. She hated Russiansany Russians. I
was the one who sympathized with them and gave them a copy of the book, teachers manual,
and tapes which I used in my Business English courses. They even invited me to come down
and teach Business English in their new school, but my secretary strongly advised against it.
They did give me a picture in watercolor, which we still have hanging on our wall at home.
After the spring semester had started, a local secretarial college was closed down, and
their students were transferred to our university. I had to give them an English Placement Exam
to determine their level of English. I found an exam, but there were no instructions regarding
levels of placement, and administered it to the young women in a very crowded room. A few
weeks later a number of them came into the office, complaining that the English courses they
were in was too difficult for them. I spoke to my secretary about how I must have really fouled
up the process of determining their level.
Dont worry, she said. They cheated on the test.
As a matter of fact, a number of teachers in the high schools encouraged their pupils to
cheat. If their students did not do well on the tests, the teachers would be blamed for their
failures.

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Given the raging conflicts going on around us, I tried as best as possible to remain neutral
and unbiased. The rector and the academic dean, both Lithuanian-American, were constantly at
loggerheads, and my secretary was embarrassed by the newspaper reports of their conflicts. I
could not read the newspapers and was too busy to listen to gossip, so I did not know what the
conflict was all about, and did not care to know.
Viola and one of the English teachers, Loretta, had gone to Bergen in Norway to establish
connections with the Bergen university. The Norwegian university offered a full fellowship,
room and board to any of our English teachers who wanted to study there for a year. We held a
department meeting to determine who should take advantage of their offer. There were only two
who were qualified to study in Norway, Loretta and Violetta. One of the young AmericanLithuanian teachers got up and openly denounced Loretta as a communist sympathizer. I knew
that, but I also knew that she worked very hard as my liaison to the English teachers. In the end I
proposed a compromise: that we recommend candidates, one to go next year and the other the
following year. We would leave it up to the administration who should go first.
It was Loretta who got to go first. By the time she returned, however, she was ostracized
and ended up teaching English as a Foreign Language in Japan. She and her South American
husband now live here in the U.S. Of all the Lithuanian teachers she is the one who has kept
regularly in touch with us at Christmas.. Violetta got her Ph.D. in Norway and has been
department chairman since her return to Lithuania.
***
As soon as Russia declared Lithuanias independence, the countries of the western world
began to establish relationships with Lithuania. The Scandinavian countries in particular offered

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assistance in any way that they could. The result was an accomplishment which gave me the
greatest joy of my academic career.
It began with a delegation from Linkping University in Sweden. While the Academic
Dean was visiting my office, I mentioned the fact that my English teachers had never escaped
from the Iron Curtain, and we reached an agreement that I should bring a group of them to
Sweden after the end of the spring semester. Seventeen were able to sign up for the trip. My
only demand was that they must not have previously been abroad, which eliminated Johanna, the
KGB agent, and Loretta.
First of all, we had to get passports for the teachersLithuanian passports. They proudly
showed them to me when they arrived. No more Soviet documents!
Then there was the matter of transportation: tickets on the ferry from Gdansk, Poland to
Sweden, and a bus to drive us from Kaunas to Linkping. The cost of transportation had to be
paid in foreign currency. No problem. I knew that the city of Linkping had given the officials
of Kaunas a large sum of money for cultural exchanges; so my secretary and I went to the
mayors office to request some assistance. Our petition was denied. The money from Sweden
could be used only if some of the city officials were also included in the trip. The old communist
thinking still prevailed.

Fortunately, the Nordic Council, funded by all the Scandinavian

countries, had just opened an office in Vilnius, and they were more than willing to cover the
travel costs.
At the last moment our plans were almost derailed. We would have to cross the border
between Lithuania and Poland to get to the ferry. The road was a two-lane country road. During
the Russian occupation there had been little traffic on it. Now, however, the traffic was miles
long waiting to get over the border; it could take several days, and we had to be in Gdansk in
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time to catch the ferry. We were to leave on the weekend, and Friday afternoon my secretary
and I raced to the office of the Minister of Transportation in Vilnius to get his permission to go
to the head of the line. He was just about to leave his office for the weekend. We got his written
permission.
Early the next morning a group of seventeen elegantly dressed women boarded a bus
headed for Sweden. There were no rest stops on the road. I had once been a tour guide for an
Elderhostel group which traveled to Finland, and by bus from there to Leningrad for a few days.
On the tour was a man who needed to use the toilet frequently, but the bus we were to use in
Russia did not have such a facility, and he refused to make the trip. I had suddenly to arrange for
a newer bus which had a toilet. I had no such problem with these ladies. There were places
alongside the road where the bus would stop, and everyone went out into the bushes. That was
the communist custom.
We reached Gdansk late in the evening and parked the bus in a parking lot. We would
sleep in it during the night. I was absolutely exhausted and fell asleep immediately.

The

women got out and explored the city under the moon and the stars. They were too excited to
sleep.
The next day we boarded the ferry for the overnight trip to Sweden, and waited for our
bus to come on board. It was the last vehicle to board, just before the ferry left. The bus drivers
were apparently smuggling something, for we had to go through customs in Sweden as well, but
the officials were not able to find anything. We could not afford cabins, so the women sat in
reclining chairs in the bow of the ship. The bus drivers, however, had a cabin reserved for them.
The teachers arranged for me to have the cabin instead.

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At Linkping we were met by the Academic Dean. The university owned a beautiful,
modernized cottage, an old gatekeepers house for the lock at the end of a canal which emptied
into the lake. About half of the teachers were housed there. The rest were in empty apartments
scattered around the town. I shared one such apartment with one of the women. She told me she
had once had an opportunity to travel abroad during Soviet times, but in order to do so she would
have had to spy for the KGB, and she refused to do so.
The dean also gave each of us the equivalent of $100 in Swedish kroner, and she made
sure that our refrigerators were filled with food, so that we would not have to use our money for
such necessities. She had put an ad in the newspaper asking local residents to invite these
Lithuanians to their homes for a meal. Every teacher visited two homes during the week.
We were all invited to the elegant home of the chairman of the Department of English
Philology, situated on the outskirts of the city and connected to a large estate. We served
ourselves in the kitchen before sitting down at tables set up on the lawn. Our host had a number
of bottles of French wine and a container filled with orange juice, presumably for those who did
not drink alcohol. All of the teachers headed for the orange juice, even a second time.
I happened to be alone with our host in the kitchen when I went in for seconds.
I hope you are not offended that they all drank the orange juice, I said.
Well, as a matter of fact, I am, he replied.
You must understand that orange juice is the nectar of the gods. They have not seen it
for years.
Later on, they went for the French wine.
As we were leaving, our hostess gave us a bowl of bananas which she had on her dining
room table.
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I had tried to teach Business English to some of the teachers so that they would be able to
give the course. They had no trouble with the English, but they simply could not understand the
western banking system. So I had requested that we visit a bank while we were in Sweden.
After escorting us through the bank and explaining how the system worked, the bank officials
invited us to an elegant luncheon in their dining room, with open-faced sandwichesand a large
bowl of fruit. As we were about to leave, I noticed a group of the Lithuanians huddled around a
bank clerk. They were opening a savings account with some of their Swedish money.
I later discovered I had been playing cupid during the trip. A Swedish professor fell in
love with one of my teachers. They later married and had a least one child. We received a card
from them with a picture of the father holding his daughter; he looked exhausted.
The day before we returned to Lithuania was my sixtieth birthday. The celebration took
place at the gatekeepers house. It happened to be a Swedish holiday; so the sun shone and the
Swedish flags were waving in the wind. There was a long table filled with delicious food. All
the teachers were present, as well as the Academic Dean. I sat at the end of the table, in an
armchair decorated with flowers. The two bus drivers seized my chair and lifted it into the air
while the teachers shouted, Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
After we finished eating, I was surrounded by a group of my colleagues and decided to
give them a short lecture. No matter how little others may appear to appreciate you, you must
always remember one thing: Lithuanias ability to become part of the greater world outside the
old Soviet Empire depends upon communication. As you have yourself experienced every day
while here in Sweden, the ability to communicate with Western countries depends upon a
command of English. You spent many years gaining the knowledge which you are now passing
on to your students. You labored in the darkness while waiting for the miracle to occur, even
25

while doubting it would ever occur. Nevertheless, you were prepared, and your students will
forever be grateful for that.
* * *
This year Vytautas Magnus University is celebrating its 90th anniversary. There are 7000
Bachelor of Arts students, 2000 Master of Arts students, and 250 Ph.D. students. Twenty-five
languages are taught, including Japanese, Turkish and Ancient Greek. Over 500 courses are
conducted in English.

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