Bonn

Following the footsteps of Gorbachev: In January 1990, two months before Lithuania’s independence was re-established, the head of the Soviet empire visited the Lithuanian village of Bridai. Contemporary witnesses remember the days before and after the 11th of March. By Monika Griebeler and Vytenė Stašaitytė

“Our village has no history. It was constructed on an open field where there were only a few farms. The best specialists were brought here from all over the republic; they laid out streets and built houses,” says town administrator Rasa Šiškuvienė.

Indeed the village does have a history, however, and a ghastly one. Witnesses are still alive to tell it. Perhaps Bridai only became such a model Soviet village because the resistance here was exterminated at the roots. “All of the residents of Bridai were deported following the war. Before that, it was a very Lithuanian, patriotic village. Farms were firmly established here,” remembers Adelė Jokubaitytė-Bekasovienė-Kazėnienė. She is one of those who were removed – to Siberia. Today, she lives in the new nursing home in Bridai.


After the abolishment of compulsory labour, the people were given the chance to purchase their own land, and Jokubaitytė-Bekasovienė-Kazėnienė’s family had paid the price for their 45 hectares entirely during the war. Like many other people at the time, however, the family had no time to enjoy their property: when the Soviets marched into Lithuania, the land was taken from the people. The residents were either deported or even shot dead if they aided the Lithuanian partisans in the forests. The majority of the more than twenty families who lived in the area around Bridai were taken to Siberia says Jokubaitytė-Bekasovienė-Kazėnienė.

Then seventeen, she wanted to become a teacher. She was worried that the pupils might not obey her as a young teacher, but she was unable to give it a try. The KGB, disguised as partisans, shot her mother, her uncle and a seamstress who happened to be visiting. The girl ended up in the salt pits of Irkutsk.

Dual-class society: displaced persons and residents

She did not return to Lithuania from Siberia until after the death of Stalin. Due to her status as a displaced person she was unable to find work that suited her teacher training for a long time. She therefore first worked in a linen factory and then in a duck hatchery. Not until later – through connections – did she find a secretarial position.

Gorbachev’s visit didn’t matter to her. “What did this Gorbachev want? I lived in Šiauliai and took care of my family and my own affairs,” says Jokubaitytė-Bekasovienė-Kazėnienė. Her younger brother, who had also returned from Siberia to Bridai, also did nothing. “The brother of his wife was a member of the Communist Party. And my brother has lower status – he was a displaced person, a good-for-nothing, someone with an ‘unclean heart.’” reports Adelė Jokubaitytė-Bekasovienė-Kazėnienė.


She can understand that the residents of Bridai could be satisfied with life in the Soviet Union, she says. Yet, people who shared her fate did not have an easy time of it. “If Gorbachev came here, then this kolkhoz must have been truly exemplary. But, it didn’t make us any happier.” Jokubaitytė-Bekasovienė-Kazėnienė instead joined the Lithuanian freedom movement Sąjūdis and wrote her memoirs How We Were Annihilated.

The 11th of March: joyful celebrants or calm observers

Yet the 81-year-old reacts a bit defensively to the question today of whether she was happy when Lithuania’s independence was announced on the 11th of March 1990. “No question about it. Of course!”

Jonas Klusas, the former tractor driver, heard the news after he and his wife had gone to bed. He took it calmly and without fear, he recalls. Was he happy? “It’s not bad now. I’d like to respond to the statement by Vytautas Landsbergis (editor’s note: the first head of state of Lithuania after it re-established independence in 1990), ‘Money won’t make you happy...’ by saying ‘Without money, you’re a fool...,’” sighs Klusas.

“We here in Bridai are typical Lithuanians – passive observers. We neither wept that we lost something, nor did we rejoice that something new began,” Rasa Šiškuvienė, the town administrator of Bridai, weighs up.


The former kolkhoz head Aloyzas Jocas says that he welcomed the 11th of March with joy and great expectations. Not to just suddenly conform with the mood in the nation either, but because they had felt that way for quite awhile. “We ran through the fields like madmen and joined the Baltic Way with tears in our eyes. The members of the kolkhoz rushed there in their cars, we also had a van,” Jocas remembers. His wife adds that some people from Bridai – a year after Gorbachev’s visit – drove to Vilnius to defend the nation’s independence.

“We are not complaining. But, we didn’t complain before either – we were doing fine. We could travel wherever we wanted – though of course not abroad,” Jocas remembers. “It was always not possible to buy a car whenever one wanted. In the final years we were able to buy about four Zhigulis for the kolkhoz people – and there were fifty on the waiting list.” His wife adds that it also wasn’t easy to buy shoes back then.

Although the change brought many good things, they were not always good, Jocas thinks. “I will never forget, after all the reorganization, a letter arrived from the new government. It said that a kolkhoz director can receive a salary that was twenty times higher than that of a worker.” Earlier, the chairman earned two and a half times more; if a worker earned 200 rubles, his boss got 250 rubles. “This twenty times more was incredible for me! I even made a phone call to Vilnius. And I found out that it truly was possible. Did I do it? No. My conscience would not have allowed it,” says Jocas. What he cannot comprehend is why accusations are raised against people who worked conscientiously under the Soviet system – even today.




Part 1: Gorbachev’s Visit to Lithuania’s Model Soviet Village