Lukša left university to join Lithuania’s anti-Soviet resistance

Stasys Lukša abandoned his studies after Soviet security officers detained and assaulted him, later joining Lithuania’s armed anti-Soviet resistance, LRT reported. His story is being remembered through Vilnius University’s “Returning Memory” initiative.

The initiative honours university students and employees who, under totalitarian regimes in the 20th century, were expelled or prevented from continuing their studies, research or work. A symbolic memory diploma recognises that academic paths interrupted during the occupations are also part of the university’s history.

Lukša, who used the partisan codename Juodvarnis, was the youngest son of Ona and Simanas Lukša. He was born in 1926 in Juodbūdis village, in the Veiveriai district of Marijampolė County. After attending primary school in Juodbūdis and a lower secondary school in Veiveriai, he continued his education in Kaunas.

His brother Antanas remembered him as a tall, slim young man with thick dark hair and grey eyes. He was calm, thoughtful and talented in the arts.

The Lukša family became involved in anti-Soviet resistance at an early stage. During the Nazi occupation, Stasys’s older brothers Jurgis Lukša-Piršlys, Juozas Lukša-Daumantas and Antanas Lukša-Arūnas, who were students at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, took part in underground activities and distributed clandestine publications.

When the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania for a second time in 1944, the family decided not to leave their homeland. The brothers obtained weapons for self-defence, and resistance became the position of the entire family rather than a series of individual actions.

In autumn 1945, the People’s Commissariat for State Security, known as the NKGB, targeted the underground structures of the young Tauro partisan district. Arrests, searches, surveillance and the destruction of underground networks also reached the Lukša family.

Older brothers Juozas and Jurgis joined the partisans, while Stasys, who was not yet directly involved in the underground, tried to remain in Kaunas and continue his studies. But the family could no longer live normally after coming under Soviet security surveillance.

After failing to find the older brothers, NKGB officers interrogated Stasys, beat him, confiscated his documents and ordered him not to leave Kaunas without their knowledge.

The interrogation made clear to Stasys that he could no longer return to an ordinary life. Without documents, injured and aware that the possibility of living legally was disappearing, he moved to areas less accessible to Bolshevik control. Together with Juozas, he began preparing for life as a partisan by gathering clothing and ammunition and servicing weapons.

On the night of January 1, 1946, the brothers said goodbye to their family. Their mother, Ona, blessed her sons and sent them on a path where the pursuit of Lithuania’s freedom became inseparable from personal risk and the threat of death.

From January 1, 1946, Stasys Lukša served in the 2nd Company of the Geležinis Vilkas Detachment, part of the Tauro partisan district. Using the codename Juodvarnis, he took part in combat operations and helped publish underground press.

The newspaper Kovos keliu was published first by the Geležinis Vilkas Detachment and later by the Tauro partisan district. Underground publications were one of the resistance’s most important forms of activity: they maintained contact between the partisans and society, spread information and encouraged people not to accept the occupation authorities.

In 1946, Lukša’s path briefly returned to the academic world. He and Juozas travelled to Vilnius for underground activities, where he needed to create a legal identity that would allow him to live in the city, move around and carry out resistance assignments.

Using the name Antanas Petraitis, Stasys enrolled in the Faculty of Chemistry at Vilnius University. The brothers had to make the documents themselves, including a military document, a certificate of social background, a school-leaving certificate and a certificate confirming deregistration with the militia.

Because social background could be an obstacle to studying in the Soviet system, the family farm owned by Stasys’s father was recorded as considerably smaller in the documents.