09/08/2026
Ruta's brave and beloved aunt inspired her to fight for Lithuania's independence.
As a child, writer Ruta Tumenaite thought she was just helping her aunt - whether it was typing up manuscripts in her aunt's windowless pantry, or going on mysterious trips to the countryside...
What she didn't know was that her aunt, Jadvyga Bieliauskiene, was one of Lithuania's most fearless anti-Soviet dissidents. And what Ruta was really doing was typing up and delivering dissident literature.
"I served as a disguise. An elderly woman traveling with a girl," she says.
Lithuania, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, was occupied by the Soviet Union in the 1940s - and Ruta's aunt Jadvyga spent her life fighting for her country's freedom.
"I think she was a classic dissident," says Ruta. "A person who cannot condone the lies, who feels that they cannot live against their conscience."
Jadvyga spread dissident literature and organised underground poetry readings. In 1981 she petitioned the authorities to stop persecuting religious believers.
Before long, the secret police, the KGB, arrested her and sent her to a penal colony.
This was her second time in a Soviet labour camp having been sentenced to many years in the Arctic Circle for helping Lithuanian partisans fighting the Soviets.
Although that first penal colony had been physically brutal - the second one was mental torture.
Stuck in a cramped space with nine other women, Jadvyga never knew whom she could trust - or who would turn against her.
And yet, she organised the smuggling of a letter to then US president Ronald Reagan.
The letter, written on a tiny scroll, contained a plea for help, not just for Jadvyga, but for all the women political prisoners jailed with her.
Reagan became interested in her case. Nevertheless Jadvyga served her full term, only to step through Ruta's door again in 1986.
"I see this stooped, emaciated old woman. She is so gaunt. She has lost weight... But her eyes are shining and the smile so full of love."
When Lithuania's independence movement began, two years later, 17-year- old Ruta was inspired by her aunt to join.
She helped spread the word to Lithuanians living abroad and stood in front of rallies with an audio recorder - becoming known as 'the girl with a dictaphone'.
She remembers those early acts of protest as something beautiful.
"The feeling was of such an overwhelming goodness and goodwill and of love," she says. "And I believe that there's a human capacity for that in all the decisive moments of history."
After her death in 2009, Jadvyga became an icon, and part of Lithuania's national story. But for Ruta, she remained her beloved, and fearless aunt.
🎧 Outlook https://bbc.in/4pP8ytW
