GAJAUSKAS, BALYS (Lithuanian: Balys Gajauskas, born February 24, 1926, in the village of Vygreliai, Gražinai parish, Vilkaviškis district, Republic of Lithuania). Imprisoned for 25 years for his ties to the partisan movement. A second time for human rights activities. 37 years in captivity.
During the German occupation, he worked as an electrician on the railway in Kaunas; during the Soviet occupation, he worked at the “Dailė” combine. From 1946, he was an accountant at the Kaunas City Executive Committee. As a teenager, Gajauskas distributed leaflets, carried out tasks for the partisans, and collaborated on an underground newspaper. He was arrested in April 1948 with a weapon and literature.
He was convicted on September 18, 1948, under Articles 58-1 “a,” 58-10, 58-8, and 58-11 of the RSFSR Criminal Code for his connection to the partisan movement. The sentence was 25 years in labor camps. He served his time in the city of Balkhash (Kazakhstan), working at a molybdenum mine, and later in Zhezkazgan. From 1956, he was in the Mordovian camps. In captivity, he mastered many languages; he could read in virtually all European languages and also knew Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. He was released on May 3, 1973, upon completion of his term.
He lived in Kaunas, working as a construction worker and electrician. He was arrested for a second time on April 20, 1977, by the investigative department of the KGB of the Lithuanian SSR, accused of conducting “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” He was sentenced by the criminal division of the Supreme Court of the Lithuanian SSR on April 14, 1978, under Article 68 Part II of the Lithuanian SSR Criminal Code to 10 years of imprisonment in special-regime camps, followed by 5 years of exile, and was declared an especially dangerous recidivist. He was incriminated for authoring and distributing samizdat, including the “Chronicle of Current Events,” and for translating Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel “The Gulag Archipelago” into Lithuanian. On July 27, 1978, in the special-regime camp ZhKh-385/1-8 in the village of Sosnovka (Mordovia), Gajauskas married Irena Dumbrytė.
After their marriage registration, they had a general visit—in the presence of the administration—for two hours. While in captivity, Gajauskas consented to membership in the Lithuanian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords (founded on November 25, 1976). An independent Helsinki Group operated within the camp, which included Gajauskas, B. REBRYK, O. TYKHYI, V. ROMANYUK, E. Kuznetsov, and A. GINZBURG. The group, in particular, drafted and smuggled out a document about religious persecution in the camp. Through his wife, Irena Gajauskienė, he passed on a number of his articles and documents from other political prisoners, including Ukrainians.
To stop the flow of information, all prisoners of the Mordovian special-regime camp ZhKh-385/1-8 were transported en masse on March 1, 1980, to the Urals, to the special-regime section VS-389/36-1 in the village of Kuchino, Chusovoy raion, Perm oblast. The prisoners had all their belongings confiscated, and their clothes were replaced. However, even from there, Gajauskas managed to pass his articles, as well as the notes of his cellmate V. STUS, now known as “From the Camp Notebook,” to his wife during a visit in the first half of 1983. Gajauskas always signed his articles with his own name, indicating the date and place of writing. His last articles, written in Kuchino, were titled “Occupied Lithuania” and “On the Condition of Workers in the Soviet Union.”
In the autumn of 1983, Gajauskas refused to petition for a transfer from the special regime to a strict one and remained in the special-regime barracks. Gajauskas was repeatedly punished with confinement in the ShIZO (punishment cell) (for a total of 157 days) and deprived of visits and parcels. After receiving yet another notification that a visit had been canceled, Gajauskas’s mother fell ill and died. During the last 4 years of his imprisonment, he had no visits. Two KGB officers came from Lithuania and showed him one of his articles published in a foreign journal. “Do you know what this is?” “No, I don’t.” “Take a look.” “So what?” “You know very well what this means—a new term.” Gajauskas did not deny the article but did not confirm his authorship either. The camp KGB officer, Vasilenkov, told him frankly: “You may not get out of here.”
On April 17, 1986, in the work cell, his cellmate, a former criminal named Boris Romashov, attacked Gajauskas. First, he struck him from behind on the head with a screwdriver. When Gajauskas lost consciousness and fell under the worktable, he stabbed him twice with the screwdriver blade in the heart area (fortunately, at an angle, so it missed the heart) and several more times in other places. In total, Romashov inflicted 12 wounds. Gajauskas was discharged from the hospital within 12 days so the incident could be recorded as “minor bodily harm.” Romashov received 15 days in the punishment cell, and no criminal case was opened.
On April 19, 1987, at the end of his prison term, Gajauskas was sent into exile in the Khabarovsk Krai. He worked as a watchman in a fishing kolkhoz in the village of Chumikan on the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk. On May 17, 1987, the newspaper “Moskovskiye Novosti” published an article with harsh attacks on political prisoners Gajauskas and P. RUBAN.
On August 23, 1988, a rally was held in Vilnius in Vingis Park to commemorate the anniversary of the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. According to official estimates, 100,000 people participated. The speakers demanded, among other things, the release of prisoners of conscience, including Gajauskas. The head of the Lithuanian SSR KGB stated in an interview, published on September 16, 1988, in the newspaper “Sovetskaya Litva,” that “taking into account the new political conditions, the Supreme Court of the USSR has submitted proposals to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to release S. Tamkevičius and B. Gajauskas from further serving their sentences by way of a pardon.”
On October 14, 1988, the Prosecutor of the Lithuanian SSR announced in the press that a special commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR had decided to release the political exiles Gajauskas, V. PETKUS, S. Tamkevičius, and H. Išmantas, as well as the political prisoner I. Pakuckas.
On October 28, 1988, picketing of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania began, demanding the swift release of political prisoners. That same evening, A. Brazauskas appeared on national television. He announced that the political prisoners had already been released.
In July 1989, Gajauskas was rehabilitated by a decree of the Supreme Court of the Lithuanian SSR. He was elected a deputy of the Seimas and headed the commission for investigating KGB activities. He participated in preparing materials for publication on the partisan movement in Lithuania, in the creation of the Institute of National Remembrance, in international human rights conferences, and is a board member of the Museum of the History of Political Repression and Totalitarianism “Perm-36,” which operates on the site of camp VS-389/36.
He has visited Ukraine multiple times. He lives near Vilnius.
Bibliography:
Biographical note provided by B. Gajauskas.
Interview with B. Gajauskas by Vakhtang Kipiani in Vilnius in 1995.
Interview with Balys Gajauskas and Irena Gajauskienė by Vasyl Ovsiyenko in the city of Chusovoy, Perm oblast on October 2, 2000: https://museum.khpg.org/1264671701;
Vasyl Stus: A Poet and a Citizen. A Book of Memoirs and Reflections / Compiled by V. Ovsiyenko. – Kyiv: Klio Publishing House LLC, – 2013. – pp. 77-79.
International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Lyudyny.” – 2006. – pp. 1–516; Part 2. – pp. 517–1020; Part 3. – 2011. – pp. 1021-1380;
Gajauskas, Balys, pp.1105-1107: https://museum.khpg.org/1264630513 Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Last read on May 16, 2016. GayauskasBalis Characters 6,700
