Lithuanian Catholics on trial

Abstract

Oit 29 December 1974, an article entitled Slanderers are Punished appeared in Sovetskaya Litva. The article concerned the trial (2-24 December) in Vilnius of five Lithuanians, including a certain Petras Plumpa, who were charged with producing and distributing anti-Soviet literature. According to the article, the accused men copied and disseminated literature which was full of hatred for Soviet society, incited people to act against the State and was also published abroad. Further details on this literature were not given. Yet some time previously, in Octobe~ 1974, an appeal on behalf of Plumpa and others arrested with him, sent by five Lithuanian Catholic priests to the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR and re-addressed to the World Council of Churches by Dr. Sakharov, had already revealed that the charges were connected with the distribution of the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church and other religious literature. This was confirmed in May 1975 in issue No. 13 of the Chronicle. Four of the defendants-Petras Plumpa, Povilas Petronis, Jonas Stasaitis and Virgilius Jaugelis-were among those listed in the appeal sent by the J five Catholic priests in October. The others mentioned in the appeal, J. Grazis and N. Sadunaite, are now being tried. Grazis appeared as a witness at ,this trial. The fifth defendant was A. Petrubavicius, who seemed to have taken part in copying and distributing the anti-Soviet literature, but was charged with causing a road accident (which apparently had little connection with the case). Petrubavicius pleaded guilty to the charge and during the trial acted mainly as a prosecution witness. J. Stasaitis was charged with setting up printing presses for producing prayer-books and a duplicating machine on which the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church was reproduced. He did not regret producing the prayerbooks, but had repented of his work on the Chronicle and acted partly as a prosecution witness. P. Petronis was charged with copying the Chronicle, prayer-books and other religious literature. He was 63 years old and when asked by the prosecution why he was not engaged in socially useful work, replied that he had started work at the age of six and had worked fulltime for 41 years-as well as studying for his qualifications as a doctor's assistant. He had now decided to devote the rest of his life to the service of the Church. P. Plumpa, a married man with two children, was the main defendant. He had previously spent seven years in a labour camp