Student Valentinas Ardžiūnas

Student Valentinas Ardžiūnas (1933–2007) studied the Lithuanian language and literature at the Faculty of History and Philology. He was born in the village of Pagaržviliai, Prienai district, into a family of civil servants. As a member of the anti-Soviet organization ‘Jaunoji Lietuva’ at the secondary school of Prienai (from 1949), at the age of just seventeen Valentinas was first sentenced for ten years in a labour camp for his anti-Soviet activities and his ties with partisans (in 1951). Since he was a juvenile, his sentence was reduced, he was allowed to finish school and enter Vilnius University. Officially, he studied here from 1956 to 1958, however, on 15 March 1957 he was transferred to correspondence course for ‘a negative ideological influence on his co-students’, but actually for active anti-Soviet activities and organized public actions of disapproval of ‘Soviet reality’. He was arrested at the end of the same year and on 6 June 1958 student Valentinas Ardžiūnas, 24, was sentenced for the second time. He was given a six-year term in a labour camp for his anti-Soviet opinions, critical views on the existing order, and ‘praise of the life in bourgeois Lithuania’. These charges were supplemented with keeping ‘harmful’ anti-Soviet literature in his possession.

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