Context

In addition to the background for these letters from Vaiva mentioned here and here, I thought I should note that at that time, in 1973, telephone calls between Lithuania and the U.S. were effectively forbidden. Letters were the only form of communication (and they were being read by the KGB). That's why Vaiva's letters seem at times like journal entries.

Even when I made my first trip to Lithuania with Vaiva in June 1980, international calling was restricted. Vaiva and I went to a "telephone building" across the park from our hotel, where she ordered a phone call from a clerk behind a teller's window. We waited until her name was called, and then she was allowed to go to an assigned telephone booth. I think she prepaid for some number of minutes, 5 or 10, and she called her parents in New Haven, to let them know we were OK. We assumed the KGB was listening to the call—after all, they were not shy about tailing us.

After Lithuanian independence we could talk on the phone when we were separated by the ocean, and we did. But the result is that I don't have the kind of written record for the 1990s that I have of this earlier period.