Gintaras Stankevičius

Gintaras Stankevičius (1958–?) was born in Vilnius into a family of civil servants. In 1976, he graduated from Vilnius 39th (Salomėja Nėris) Secondary School. That same year, he applied and was accepted to study History in the part-time group at the Faculty of History of Vilnius Vincas Kapsukas State University. In January 1977, by the Order of the Rector, he was removed from the student list “for behaviour incompatible with the status of a Soviet student.” In his explanation to the Pro-Rector, Stankevičius wrote that on 23 January 1977 Rimantas Grigas, who was most familiar with the building of the Vilnius Central Post Office, disappeared for a moment during a class meeting and came back carrying a Lenin bas-relief. His classmates urged Grigas to return the bas-relief to its original place, but he refused to do so. Stankevičius did not specify the motivation behind this act in his statement. He wrote that when they were crossing the Green Bridge with their classmates, a militia vehicle approached them; Grigas threw the bas-relief into the Neris River, but because it fell on the ice in the river, he ran away. Stankevičius and Marcinkevičius were taken to the Lenin District militia station and interrogated. Both were subsequently expelled from the university.

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