Vilnius University Will Honor People Who Expelled from the University during the Years of Occupation

On June 29th at 3:00 PM, during the end-of-year celebration at the Church of St. Johns, Vilnius University (VU) will honour 36 members of its community who suffered under totalitarian regimes and were expelled from VU with Memory Diplomas.

Established seven years ago, the VU Memory Diploma symbolizes the acknowledgement of past mistakes in its history and serves as a tribute to former community members who experienced injustice. Memory Diploma and the public award ceremony, established seven years ago, are part of the history research-based initiative „The Recovering Memory". This diploma and the ceremony of awarding them are part of „The Recovering Memory" initiative based on historical research. Its aim is to assess the impact of totalitarian regimes on the VU community, to discover the victims of these regimes, and to symbolically bring them back to the community.

Among the nominees – well-known people

This year, VU rector Prof. Rimvydas Petrauskas, will personally award two Memory Diplomas. One will be awarded to former student Andrius Tučkus, who was expelled from the university twice (from different study programs) "for incompatible Soviet student behaviour ." The second diploma will be personally received by former VU employee, Priest Julius Sasnauskas, who, on December 14th, 1979, did not come to work at the VU Museum of Progressive Scientific Thought because he was detained and sentenced for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. He received a one-year and six-month prison sentence and a five-year exile for this.

"I first encountered the KGB in school. Several of us were taken out of class for questioning. By then, we were already familiar with several political prisoners, which aroused suspicion. They tried to recruit us or intimidate us. Perhaps the first time was somewhat frightening, but by the second time, I knew who I was and what I had chosen," says Priest J. Sasnauskas.

The remaining 34 symbolic diplomas will be received by the closest relatives of the nominees. Among them this year are the relatives of renowned participants in the political cases of the Lithuanian Literature Department at Vilnius University, including Meilė Lukšienė-Matjošaitytė, Vanda Zaborskaitė, Irena Kostkevičiūtė, Aurelija Rabačiauskaitė, and Stasė Litvinaitė.

"My mother, Meilė Lukšienė, while working at the Lithuanian Literature Department of Vilnius University, always felt responsible for the fate of the nation. She sought to cultivate well-rounded young personalities, shape their loyalty to humanistic values, and nurture their national consciousness based on a non-primitive understanding of culture. Together with like-minded individuals at Vilnius University, she tried to realize these goals by surpassing the boundaries set by Soviet totalitarian ideology. The moral strength of her and my father, Kazys Lukša, shaped us, their children, and became an inherent part of our lives, for which I am immensely grateful to my parents," says Ingė Lukšaitė, the daughter of M. Lukšienė.

According to historian Prof. Arūnas Streikus, the famous case of the Lithuanian Literature Department, in which the affected members of the VU community are only receiving Memory Diplomas today, sadly, when they are no longer with us, is one of the darkest pages in the history of VU during the occupation period. It was the final act in the drama of Sovietization that lasted for more than a decade at VU. It was one of the few, if not the only, acts of such scale of non-compliance with political oppression at VU during the Soviet era. It can even be called a kind of rebellion against the system.

"The situation at the Lithuanian Literature Department caused the most concern for the university's party organization and the republican party nomenclature. Several young lecturers, who considered themselves disciples of Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, questioned the dogmatic, Stalinist interpretation of Lithuanian history and literary heritage that had been established during the first decade of the occupation. The Lithuanian Literature Department, allegedly dominated by Putinas' students, was called the main breeding ground for dangerous revisionism within the University. Therefore, it is not surprising that a regime that could not tolerate such a situation for long gradually ousted all the rebels from the University," says the historian.

Honoured over 200 people

Today, about a thousand people could qualify for the memory diploma: Lithuanians, Poles, and Jews. The latter two groups were expelled from universities during the Nazi occupation solely because of their nationality. During the Soviet era, the reasons for expulsion became more focused on individuals' political views, disloyalty to the regime, personal or family exile, connections with Lithuanian partisans and resistance, and social origin.

At the beginning of the Nazi occupation, Vilnius University had to dismiss or remove around 650 Jews, about 80 individuals of Polish nationality, and several hundred Lithuanians who were also deprived of the opportunity to work or study at VU during the first and second Soviet occupation. Currently, over 200 individuals have been found and honoured with symbolic diplomas, including well-known figures such as dissident, politician, and public figure Antanas Terleckas, signatory of the Act of Independence of Lithuania Algirdas Endriukaitis, Professor Pranciškus Baltrus Šivickis from the Department of Histology and Embryology, the first Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics Professor Antanas Žvironas, and student Chlounė Meištovskis, whose biography provided the impetus for this initiative.

The search for other expelled individuals is still ongoing. Therefore, The VU invites individuals who have been expelled from the VU as a result of political regimes or those who knew such people in their circle to make inquiries at  to be honoured with the Memory Diploma.