Letter from former Gulag prisoner Algirdas Statkevicius to President Ronald Reagan expressing gratitude for citizenship, 08/14/1988

Algirdas Statkevicius, MD 6547 Washtenaw Avenue Chicago, IL 60629 August 14, 1988 The Honorable Ronald Reagan The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: My name is Algirdas Statkevicius, MD. I am a Lithuanian and a citizen of the U.S.A. I came to the United States on May 21, 1988, after having spent more than 12 years in prisons of the Soviet Gulag, including seven years in psychiatric hospitals. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you, Pre- sident, and your government for recognizing me as a U.S. citizen and for continuous demands directed to the Soviets to release me from Gulag prisons and allow me to emigrate to the U.S.A. I had been imprisoned on three different occasions for va- rious reasons: first, for my participation in the Lithuanian resistance movement immediately after World War II; secondly, for participating in the Moscow demonstrations which demanded the repeal of the pact that Hitler and Stalin had made in 1939; and thirdly, for my participation in the Lithuanian Helsinki group. My last imprisonment was concluded on January 9, 1987, and on the 25th of August of that same year the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad issued my U.S. passport. Mr. President, half of my life was spent living under the conditions of a Communist state. Those conditions did not evolve gradually, but became a spontaneous way of life in Russia after the Revolution in October of 1917. Lenin, the originator of the Communist State, established conditions of extreme amorality, and following him, Stalin and his successors continued to advocate brutality to its extreme limits. At the present time, during Gorbachev's reorganization period, the Soviet pursuit of pease is deceiving, without sin- cerity, aimed at continuing and escalating the existance of to- talitarianism. Today the Soviet empire is continuously slandering, torturing, physically and morally killing the many Socrates of