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Army Deserters Find Refuge at Hospital Ward

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

In a corner ward of a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Vilnius, 26 deserters from the Soviet army waited nervously Monday, protected from the military arrest they fear only by three nurses, a Red Cross flag and a locked door.

The young men in the hospital ward are perfectly sane, but they have been inside the hospital for a week. They sought shelter there when the non-Communist government of Lithuania first offered them the feeble protection of the Red Cross and sanctuary in the hospital, where the army might hesitate to take them away.

These deserters and 840 other Lithuanians, officials here say, have left their Soviet army units to return home in the last two weeks, since Lithuania declared its independence March 11. They are at the center of a tense showdown between authorities in Moscow and government leaders here.

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Soviet officials have demanded that the young men, among an estimated 30,000 Lithuanians serving in the Red Army, return to their units and have threatened to use force if they do not voluntarily comply.

But Lithuanian leaders say any widespread attempt by military authorities to drag unwilling deserters back to their units could be a flash point for demonstrations on a scale not yet seen here.

The republic’s leaders say the deserters have no obligation to serve in an army of what they view as a foreign country. They have offered their full support to the deserters and whatever protection the tiny state can muster.

Late last week, three Soviet officers arrested one young deserter after nightfall on a central Vilnius street. But it was the only such confirmed detention, and so far Soviet army officials have not made good on their threat to collect the deserters on a large scale.

Nevertheless, parents of deserters report late-night visits to their homes by military officials and surveillance outside by officers looking for the men who have left their units.

In the meantime, the deserters wait. The 26 who have taken refuge in the psychiatric hospital have become something of a cause celebre here--their whereabouts an open secret among nearly everyone in town, including dozens of visiting foreign journalists.

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That publicity may be the only protection they have. While Lithuania’s new leaders made ringing speeches in the first days of their tenure about “defending our boys,” last weekend, the republic’s president, Vytautas Landsbergis, acknowledged that there is little his government can do to prevent the young men from being taken back to their units by force.

He advised army deserters not to stay at home or with relatives, to take refuge in churches or to vanish into hiding places of their own.

Most seemed to have simply disappeared. Anyone asking here about the whereabouts of young men who have left the army gets a curt shrug from their family and friends. Go to the churches, and priests will say they have not seen them. Go to the office in the Supreme Council building here where the Lithuanian government is registering deserters, and the staff will say there is none to be found.

“The deserters? You won’t find them today,” said Egle Taurinskaite, 25. “I think that every parent has hidden their child, that’s what I think.”

The deserters sheltering in the Vilnius Hospital for the Mentally Disabled are between the ages of 18 and 21, and with the trust of youth, they believe firmly in the leaders of their home republic, the first freely elected government they have ever known.

They say they are sure their hiding place is only a temporary stop, a prelude to negotiations that eventually will set them free of their military service.

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“I am not afraid,” said Darius Baceulis, 20. “I expect the Lithuanian government will do something about this. And nobody would dare to attack the Red Cross.”

In the hospital ward, the smell of cabbage soup is stifling and the young men pace the dreary halls or read comic books and magazines or look at rock music videos on television.

They came to the hospital after Lithuanian Red Cross officials told the republic’s leaders that they would offer deserters food and shelter for as long as both are needed.

The nurses say they pity the deserters, but the young men say they would rather be together than alone--and rather locked up in a gloomy hospital ward than at their army bases.

They complain of fierce hazing in the army and abuse from Russian officers, which they say is because they are from the Baltic states.

“We were sick and tired of serving in the Soviet army, and independence was a signal for us to leave,” said Dacis Vycockis, 20. “We know the Soviet laws pretty well, and we knew what they would do if we left, but nevertheless this is what we chose. It’s like rebelling against the Roman Empire. It is a rebellion of slaves.”

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Gudanec Zhilvinas, 19, was serving in an army construction brigade in a small Latvian town when he heard that independence had been declared in Lithuania. He and his friends discussed what to do in the barracks late that night, he said.

The next day, 13 of them, all Lithuanians, walked off the base and into the woods. They walked 25 miles, circling through the woods most of the day. Then they boarded a bus and came home.

“I am afraid to stay with my family because the soldiers might kidnap me, so I am here,” Zhilvinas said. “What else am I to do?”

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