By Vladimir Pronin, Ukraine
Q: Dear Nicholas Martinovich, our readers with great sympathy are following your already 9th year in prison in the present bourgeois Lithuania. How did you fall into the hands of the Lithuanian secret service or was there collusion by the Byelorussian authorities?
A: I was taken in by a devious method that was planned in advance. On January 15, 1994 I was to meet a delegation from the Communist parties of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and with the participation of a delegate from the Communist Party of Byelorussia and a representative from the Union of Communist Parties-CPSU.
One of our members, Professor Ermolavichus who was going to meet the delegates was arrested on the street. Only one member of the delegation knew my telephone number, phoned me and said that no one was there to meet them. I then went out to greet the delegation, but as I approached them, I saw the presence near a corner the Ambassadors of Byelorussia and Lithuania. I was approached by a security agent in civilian clothes. He told me that since there was coming the visit of President Bush to Minsk, I should be placed under guard and a representative of the Byelorussian Secret Service motioned me into the car, and only then did I realize I was being abducted and was being taken across the border to Minsk, Byelorussia.
On the way, I saw the delegates standing near a telephone booth from which they phoned me, but I was unable to warn them as to what had happened.
Arriving in Minsk, I was taken to the Prosecutor General where I was asked to sign my arrest order and only then I found out that there was collusion between Byelorussian prosecutor and his counterpart in Lithuania. An agent in a tavern where I was having lunch had a progressive newspaper in his pocket and after a few words between us, he departed and the trap was set. The press told all sorts of lies but I was arrested officially in Minsk and given over to the Lithuanian authorities.
I must say that the Supreme Soviet of Byelorussia took a principled position and exposed the collusion between the secret services of both countries. Shushkewich knew about this collusion, but did not stop it from being fulfilled.
Q: What kind charges were thrown against you. Did you admit to any of these charges?
A: The prosecutor of Lithuania charged me with 37 points of political acts. I refuted all of these charges, point by point and I pointed out that the illegal separation of Lithuania from USSR was done by the highest organs of power there. I defended the actions of the Communist Party of Lithuania during the Gorbachev traitorous acts and his cronies in Lithuania. I told the court that I am a Communist, a Marxist-Leninist and consider that socialism is the highest form of society and it is not against the law to try and improve the well being of the people.
Q: How many other Lithuanian communists fell into the hands of the bourgeois administration?
A: After the events in 1991 the Lithuanian authorities arrested 19 communists plus other defenders of socialism, unity with other peoples of USSR, veterans and many Soviet members of the Security Service of Lithuania. Practically the whole of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania were arrested on fabricated charges.
Q: The present bourgeois Lithuanian government is hell-bent to join NATO and thus they feel that they will be able to save their skins from the people. How are the Lithuanian people looking at this?
A: The Lithuanian peopled never had the opportunity to voice their opinions or to hold a plebiscite on this question. During a telephone opinion poll done by TV channel LNK, the question was asked as to when was it better to live in Lithuania, out of those that answered, 5,237 people answered that it was better under socialism and the Soviet Union, and only 2,066 replied that it is better now. But if this opinion poll asked the working class and the farmers, who are suffering now even more economically, they certainly would reply that it was much better under the existence of the Soviet Union and socialism and I feel that Socialism again will come back to Lithuania.
Q: Even though you were sentenced to 15 years in jail, and are serving already 9 years, you were elected as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania. Under what kind of conditions are party members working under now?
A: Yes, the XXII Congress of the CP of Lithuania, not looking at the fact that I am in jail, elected me as the General Secretary. Our comrades are working under the most difficult economic and political conditions. As you know, the present Lithuanian government had banned the Communist Party, thus one part of the leadership works underground while the other part works from immigration. The Communist party has very deep roots in the Lithuanian people. There are working people and even capitalism cannot live without the working class. Communist Party is living and will be living, you cannot take that away from the workers…this is the classic situation in this 21st Century.
Click here to return to the May 2003 index.