To the Finland border
Krickus, Richard J.
To the Finland border RICHARD J. KRICKUS THE FIRST DAY of June 1980, a warm Sunday evening in Vilnius, Lithuania. Vladys Sakalys is walking with his wife and son in the center of town. He turns to...
...Now he is in the garrison yard, still no one in sight...
...Sakalys muses, "If I make it, I'll send that bastard a postcard...
...His luck has run out...
...A surge of energy flashes through his body...
...That particular date and locale were chosen because forty years earlier the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been signed in the Soviet capital...
...Subjected to physical beatings, psychological torture, and -inhumane conditions during past imprisonment, he is now certain that he will die in captivity...
...Afterward he is told he could have walked across the underguarded bridge...
...In a secret protocol to the 1939 pact, the fate of the Baltic states was sealed...
...It is a tricky and strenuous maneuver...
...He walks steadily, controlling his desire to run, keeping close to the warehouse and the garage...
...He consults his map...
...That evening he boards a train for Petrozavodsk, feigning drunkeness once again...
...he does not wish her to see him arrested...
...He has now embarked on the most treacherous part of his journey: as a fugitive fleeing toward Finland, he can be shot dead on sight...
...ON JUNE 26 Sakalys boards a night train and travels four hundred miles north to Leningrad...
...Making certain that his wife and son have left the square, he then turns around and heads back toward the church, walking slowly until, reaching the corner of the building, he begins to run...
...He starts running...
...For the next several weeks the underground hides him...
...Minutes later Sakalys is surrounded by a dozen Swedes...
...He is crestfallen, confused, frightened...
...After walking several hours, he is confronted with a lake, a large one, but he can see the other side...
...Just as he is straggling onto the shore it passes again...
...If he can make it, he will be free...
...With some of the other petitioners, Sakalys, an optician, had traveled to Moscow on August 23, 1979...
...Once again, luck...
...From there he sees the shore line, the distance is not far-but he can see a watch tower on the mainland...
...What if someone sees him...
...After hastily dressing, he continues walking, then spots a barbed wire fence which he crawls under...
...But several weeks later the USSR got Lithuania too - except for the west shore of the Sesupe River...
...The boy finally understands and says, "Sweden...
...Then late on a Friday afternoon, May 30, he is taken from his home and driven to KGB headquarters...
...he will be arraigned later and a sentence of at least ten years is likely...
...He must enter the water again and swim about four hundred yards to another island...
...he lets it pass and swims to the other side...
...He asks the youngster in English, "Sweden or Finland, Sweden or Finland...
...They take him into a nearby house where the police arrive...
...In 1941, not many months before the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, they sold the Lithuanian territory under their control to the Kremlin for $7.5 million in gold...
...He decides to walk directly through the camp at about 5:00 AM...
...To guide him in his 1,200-mile odyssey, all he will have is a small map, which he tore from an old atlas, and a compass...
...Sakalys believes that a close friend was, in effect, killed by the KGB when he was forced to undergo an operation that no responsible doctor would have allowed, given the patient's weakened condition...
...With the exception of several sap-gatherers, the only life he observes are reindeer, wood grouse, and the flora of Karelia...
...He is overjoyed as he continues walking...
...As the hour approaches, his stomach knots and he begins to sweat...
...For a while he is able to get some work done...
...He comes upon a small cottage...
...But ahead he sees a clearing-on the other side is Finland...
...He continues moving west...
...Sakalys remembers that border areas on Soviet maps are distorted to confuse fugitives from "socialist justice" and enemies of the USSR...
...The dogs have stopped barking...
...when, he reasons, the inhabitants will be sleeping most soundly...
...When he regains his composure, he presses on and a few miles further confronts another obstacle, a nine-foot-high electrified fence...
...What are the climate and terrain like...
...When the whistling stops, he begins to move, but it starts again...
...How does he scale the fence without being electrocuted...
...He recalls the words of a prison guard who once told him, "You can't fly to the moon, you can't escape to the West, you'll always be with us...
...One thing is clear: he must backtrack...
...Contemplating his options he asks himself two questions...
...This means he must walk back toward the fence and then proceed north...
...but suspicious, he decided to swim it even in his weakened condition...
...This last prospect is of special concern...
...Their country, numbering 3.4 million people, is not large in the Soviet scheme of things, but Lithuanian opposition to Russian hegemony underscores the fact that most people living in the USSR are not Russians and the opposition to Russian chauvinism will spread in the 1980s...
...After more than four hours of interrogation, he is allowed to leave...
...The youngster then turns his back on the bedraggled stranger and continues tinkering with his fishing pole...
...If they are some distance, they might assume he belongs there...
...Sakalys is momentarily confused, then approaches the boy, and mimicking someone making a phone call he mouths the word "police...
...A steady rain falls, he cannot stop and light a fire, he is cold, tired, and the insects and brambles are tearing his skin and clothing...
...Fortunately the wind is blowing away from Sakalys...
...Then he finds an ice cream wrapper...
...The knowledge gleaned from these "Gulag seminars'' will help Sakalys in his escape...
...Clinging to it with his arms, he plants his feet against the wooden fence post, carefully placing them between the wires...
...He gets off at the city of Idel and enters the forest...
...Reaching the top of the tee, he pulls up the limb and tosses it as far as he can away from the fence...
...a wanted poster carrying his photograph is being circulated throughout the country...
...Unable to stay in one place long enough to work, and not wanting to jeopardize the safety of his collaborators, he decides to flee-"to the West...
...It's also good because it means he is close to the Finnish border...
...Now however, he thinks about the opportunity he will have to inform the world about what's uppermost in the minds of the Lithuanian underground: publicizing the contents of the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact...
...The first person he encounters is a young boy fishing...
...During that time he had married a young Lithuanian woman, Genovaite, who had been born in Siberia-her parents, like thousands of other Lithuanians had been deported there during World War II...
...He hopes to lose his pursuers in the maze of narrow streets and alleys which crisscross old-town Vilnius...
...An hour later his mood changes when he realizes that he is on an island...
...It rains incessantly and even when he finds a haystack to rest in, Sakalys sleeps fitfully because he is wet and cold...
...OP TO THIS POINT Sakalys has dwelt upon two things: the sorrow of leaving his wife and two children, and the desire to run from his captors...
...She had a six-year-old daughter, Indra,from a previous marriage and they had a nine-month-old son, Narimantas...
...On several occasions Sakalys had talked with inmates who were former border guards, and with a soldier who once crossed the Soviet frontier into Iran...
...Estonia and Latvia have been annexed into the Soviet Union . . . essentially as a result of the occupation of the Baltic states by the Soviet army.'' The Baltic Declaration and Sakharov's statement were distributed to Western newsmen, outraging the Soviet authorities...
...Sakalys refuses to discuss Terleckas and Sasnauskas or renounce the petition even though he is reminded that some of his associates have been committed to mental hospitals...
...This time it is close enough for him to see that it is a Soviet patrol boat...
...I stayed there a couple of days before I realized-when a drank was put in a room next to mine-that I was in jail...
...Ann's Church, Sakalys tells his wife that they must say goodbye at the steps of the church...
...the lake shouldn't be there...
...He stops, crawls up the hill and, reaching the top, cautiously peers over it...
...Estonia and Latvia were to go to the Soviet Union and Lithuania to Germany...
...Sakalys concludes that he is about seven miles from the frontier...
...As he travels through the forest, however, his anxiety subsides...
...He is the author o/Pursuing the American Dream (Anchor/Doubleday...
...The petition cited Soviet and international law to justify its demands...
...He retreats back into the underbrush and considers his next move...
...On the fourth of July he is approaching a knoll when he hears a strange sound...
...The closer he got to the border, the more wary he would have to be...
...The next several days are tough ones...
...As they approach St...
...Using it, he says, "I'm Lithuanian, I'm not Russian...
...Later he has to crawl under another fence, but this time he hears dogs barking-they are on his trail...
...He turns to his wife and tells her he is about to be arrested...
...A pastime of prisoners in Soviet camps is discussing how one can escape from the USSR...
...To avoid conversations which might reveal his identity, he pretends to be drunk, sleeping most of the time in the luggage rack...
...The boy looks puzzled, then turns and dashes toward his home...
...Along with several other foreign languages, Sakalys knows a little Estonian, a language with many words in common with Finnish...
...He has not eaten for two days, and without nourishment he cannot complete his journey to Sweden...
...He cannot dust his tracks too liberally with the flakes lest the guards see or, in the clear Arctic air, smell them...
...He must swim about eight hundred yards...
...As Sakalys moves north, however, he sees a clearing ahead...
...Who lives there...
...If they observe him up close, he is finished...
...Three young border guards are skipping stones across a lake...
...He will travel by train to northern Russia, walk across the sparsely populated Karelia region through the cover of the forest, enter Finland, and proceed to Sweden...
...ALTHOUGH IN FINLAND, Sakalys is still in grave danger...
...That's bad because he must avoid more guards with their dogs...
...All day Saturday Sakalys ponders his next move...
...This time he runs and comes face to face with the whistler-a large black bird...
...The next day he sees several villages but is afraid to approach anyone...
...Then he learns that signators to the Baltic Declaration are being arrested...
...The sound of the barking dogs grows louder and, pulling his olive green sweatshirt as far down as possible over his blue pants, he crawls across the * 'no man's land.'' He enters the forest and is terrified when he hears a whistle close by...
...Under a Soviet-Finnish agreement, the Finns are obligated to send him back to the USSR...
...compelling the West German government to declare it null and void-just as Bonn had renounced the Munich Pact under pressure from Czechoslovakia-underlining the fact that the Baltic States did not voluntarily join the USSR but were subjugated by the Red army...
...At best, it is only a matter of weeks before the arraignment...
...Sakalys repeats the words...
...Later he says that, had he not endured so much cold, hunger, and exhaustion while in Soviet prison camps, he never would have been tough enough to survive the hardships of his flight...
...The days go by and his journey is uneventful, but his sneakers are beginning to unravel and his clothes are now full of holes and tears...
...He knocks at the door...
...Ten days later on July 19, after four days without food, he reaches the Finnish-Swedish border, which is separated by a wide river with ominous rapids...
...Vytautas Kazhys, whom he had met years before...
...As he breaks out of the woods he stops...
...At the next farmhouse, he decides, he will take a chance and ask for help...
...Is it close to population centers or remote from human settlements...
...During that period at least he can continue working for the underground...
...Sakalys RICHARD J. KRICKUS teaches political science at Mary Washington College in Virginia...
...On it is the word "Helsinki...
...The old Finn breaks out in a grin...
...Even more unlikely, who would think it possible that one would walk right through a border garrison during the season of eternal light...
...He lives there today in Brooklyn...
...To attempt the near-impossible flight from the USSR is probable death, but that fate is preferable to the one that awaits him in the Gulag...
...To enter it, one must have a special passport...
...Suppose the inhabitants decide to turn him in out of political conviction or, more likely, take one look at him and conclude he is a dangerous criminal...
...After recuperating in Sweden for six weeks, Sakalys was allowed to go to the United States...
...How does one get there without being detected...
...He succeeds...
...He will have perhaps a month or two before he is caught...
...They run the risk, however, of heightening ethnic self-awareness among the non-Russians who, unlike the Russian dissidents, represent a potentially massive source of opposition to the regime...
...They put me in a hotel...
...Kazhys questions him about two of the people who had signed the petition -Antanas Terleckas and Julius Sasnauskas-and demands that he renounce the Baltic Declaration...
...He gets off at Leningrad and purchases food, a knapsack, and mothballs...
...He swims across a small stream and proceeds north for a while, then turns west, chilled by the water but warmed by the thought that he might actually reach freedom...
...The guards have spotted him...
...He hits upon a bold plan...
...It is 3:00 A.M...
...In spite of the pangs of hunger and the pain which racks his body, Sakalys sleeps a little more soundly in Finland...
...Who would be looking for a fugitive in this remote area of Karelia...
...A year earlier Vladys Sakalys was one of forty-five people who had signed a petition demanding that' foreign troops'' be withdrawn from the Baltic countries and that they be allowed to determine their own political destinies...
...He knows he is in Finland when he comes upon a neatly stacked woodpile...
...Surveying the camp, he observes no one stirring about...
...They have a dog with mem but it too is preoccupied with the game...
...and letting the world know that after forty years of Soviet rule, Lithuanians are still risking their lives to gain independence...
...When he reaches the other side, Sakalys is shoeless, his clothes are tattered, his face is grossly swollen due to countless insect bites and brushes with the undergrowth, and he is running a high fever...
...as far as he can see to his right and left is fifty yards of cleared land...
...The ploy works...
...By signing the petition Sakalys knew that he had forfeited the happiness of the past year and a half...
...but during the summer in the far north of Sweden people are often out and about, enjoying the perpetual daylight...
...The man's countenance remains unchanged...
...Retreating back into the cover of the forest, Sakalys ponders his next move...
...He lives there today in Brooklyn.States...
...How are dogs thrown off one's tracks...
...To his right is the fence, to his left an impassable body of water, and dead ahead a hundred border guards...
...Mustering up his courage, he starts walking...
...To have crossed this barrier is elating...
...Sakalys continues his trek and then, ahead of him, sees a lake...
...Blocking his way is a border garrison, He counts four buildings...
...Vladys Sakalys was first interrogated and beaten at the age of thirteen for "anti-Soviet" activities...
...He decides to go into hiding...
...It is slowly opened by an old man who looks at him sternly...
...He feels good, the sky is clear, and the sun is bright- and then he almost walks into a trip-wire...
...Indeed, among the interrogators is an "oldfriend," Lt...
...Tying his possessions in his clothes and strapping the bundle on top of his head with his belt, he swims to the shore...
...After taking several probing hikes looking for solid ground leading west, he realizes that he is on a peninsula...
...He is trapped...
...He continues walking in what he believes is a westward direction but his legs are shaky-he must have food...
...Then he jumps to the ground, landing in soil freshly plowed to detect footprints...
...He is without map or compass, having lost them while swimming, and it is conceivable that he can walk aimlessly in the forest until he dies or is apprehended by the police...
...maybe he can find a land route to Finland or, at the very least, a lake he can traverse without fear of drowning...
...In recent years many people associated with the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania and other "illegal publications" and protest movements have died under mysterious circumstances...
...The prospect that he will succeed is slim, but he has no other choice...
...At last, he is across the garrison yard, no alarms, no dogs barking-he's made it...
...He cannot climb back over the fence and look for another route because this time he will be unable to cover his tracks...
...The farmer gives him a large loaf of bread, some butter, and a map showing him the best way to get to the nearest Swedish border town, Haparanda...
...If the "Polish disease" spreads to the Soviet Union, these are the people most likely to be affected by it...
...He fills the hole left by the limb and walks slowly backwards smoothing the soil and breaking several mothballs over the ground to throw the dogs off his scent...
...Anywhere within sixty-two miles of the frontier is a closed zone...
...two of them are large barracks-housing fifty men apiece he reckons-and the others look like a warehouse and a garage...
...He is about to slip into the water when he spots a patrol boat...
...Sakalys believes the Soviet authorities are manipulating Russian nationalism to compensate for the USSR's economic difficulties...
...When he returned from Moscow to Lithuania Sakalys expected to be arrested, but the months pass and the long anticipated "visit" from the KGB does not occur...
...The agents following them are perplexed when Sakalys leaves his family and proceeds to walk toward them...
...loved his wife, adored his children, and took pleasure in his work, but he could not remain silent in the face of the injustice which had befallen his country...
...The Kremlin has never acknowledged the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which categorically refutes Moscow's contention that the Baltic countries voluntarily associated with the USSR and justifies the Baits' demands for self-determination...
...It was a bit of luck," he says later, because the incident realerted him never to forget he was a hunted man in grave danger...
...Looking about him, he finds a large tree limb, carries it to the fence, and presses it into the ground...
...It turns out to be a large one-he cannot see the opposite shore...
...Nothing, he thinks, is ever so neat in the Soviet Union...
...he has spent fifteen of his thirty-eight years in prison camps-and knows what to expect...
...Andrei Sakharov, in "A Statement of Russian Democrats," endorsed the Baltic Declaration, the petition Sakalys had signed: ". . . Lithuania...
...A host of pertinent questions had arisen: How far is the nearest border...
Vol. 108 • September 1981 • No. 17
