see Greek left strengthens victory ATHENS — “A great victory”’ pro- claimed the Communist daily paper Rizospastis following the second round of Greece’s municipal elections Oct. 24 which saw 222 cities and towns won by left-democratic forces. Right wing par- ties managed to hold only 49 municipa- situations took place in other centres in the second round. In addition to KKE mayorality vic- tories, (won on straight KKE support alone), a large portion of the 176 PASOK victories were won with KKE backing. The Oct. 24 outcome also decisively answered PASOK logic of ‘‘going it alone”’ and proves that anti-communism and discrimination are not accepted by the Greek people. The picture that shapes up in Greece = today is this: one where right-wing con- trol in the municipalities has been re duced to 49 — and even these are now question. The large majority of Greek citie towns and villages are now in democ: hands. The working class areas such lities, none of them major centres. In the breakdown of victories, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) won 46 mayorality races, the Socialist Party 176 (with KKE support) and the right- wing parties 49. The huge success of unity slates was a victory, proclaimed the KKE, for ‘‘real ‘change’. The cooperation of the demo- cratic forces’ ensured the election of democratic municipal governments, with the decisive contribution of the KKE, especially in the big centres of Athens, Pireus and Thessalonika. The KKE election in Chania, a large city on Crete, is of special significance as were other advances which show KKE policies being supported far beyond the “traditional” left. One example was the city of Patra where, after the first round, the Socialist Party (PASOK) won 40% of the vote compared to KKE’s 30%. But following round two, the KKE won with 55% - compared to PASOK’s 45%. Similar “American bases out of Greece!”, “Down with the bases of death !’, urges the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) during recent anti-NATO demonstrations. From rural poverty to world renowned scientist By LEE LORCH - From rural poverty to world renown as a scientist. This is the path which socialism enabled Academician V. Statulevicius to travel. Born in 1929 ona seven hectare farm 100 km northeast of Vilnius, he is now in Canada for the second time, as director of the Institute of Mathematics and Cybernetics in Vilnius, capital of Soviet Lithuania. He was first in Canada in 1974 when he was one of the few selected from around the world to give invited addresses to the Inter- national Congress of Mathematicians held here that _ year. He is now spending a month here on invitations from York University and the Universities of British _ Columbia and Montreal. _ Statulevicius has made similar scientific visits to numerous countries, on this continent, in Asia, in west and east Europe, and is known to his colleagues as a creative, good-humored person, generous in sharing his ideas. The Institute he heads is now world famous. It was established only after the defeat of the Nazis. When he was born, Lithuania did not have socialism. _ : Its historic capital was not part of the country. His family Was very poor. By 1941 he had been able to have only _ four years of school. In 1940, Lithuania joined the USSR, and the Soviet _ authorities promptly added four more years of schooling to the curriculum, but in 1941 the Nazis occupied Lithuania and closed Statulevicius’ school. It was too expensive for a poor village boy to travel and live at one of the few distant schools which the Nazis had allowed to remain open. _ Things changed in 1944 when Soviet power was re- established. Statulevicius was appointed chairman of a _milk and cream separating centre. In 1945 he attended an school which trained collective farm leaders. _ Later, he graduated from high school as an external University for Deprived _ A big change came in his life when he learned there was a “‘rabfak”’ at Vilnius University. This was a special school taught in the evenings by the regular university teaching staff to enable working-class and peasant youth, especially those who had been denied schooling by the fascist occupiers, to prepare for university. This he completed in 1947, winning a gold medal. The “‘rabfak’’ (abbreviation for ‘workers’ faculty’’) PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMPFBER 5 1982—Page 8 was more than just classrooms. Because of the enorm- ous variety in student preparation such a school is hard to organize. Its students were trained in socialist respon- sibility as well as in academic subjects. Studying at night, Statulevicius was a team leader helping to rebuild the city by day. The director of the ‘‘rabfak’’ had not yet completed his own university studies. This was Jonas Kubilius, who later became an internationally respected mathematician and president of Vilnius University, and who paid warm individual attention to the new talents being encouraged to emerge. From 1949 to 1954, Statulevicius attended Vilnius University where instruction is in the Lithuanian lan- guage. Leningrad and Moscow universities had under- taken to provide special assistance to train an intelligent- sia and scientific community for Lithuania and he went to Leningrad for his graduate studies. By 1957 he was back in Vilnius to help build scientific life in his home republic. His work has been recognized by foreign hon- ors and invitations, by the Lithuanian State Prize, and . jointly with two others, by two separate prizes from the prestigious Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as well as by three Orders given by the Government of the USSR. In 1966 he became director of his Institute. First Woman Under the direction of Statulevicius, 33 men and women have earned the degree of Candidate of Science, the equivalent of our Ph. D., and have become recog- nized scientific workers in their own right. The institute he leads employs about 250 scientific workers, equally divided between men and women. About 110 have Ph.D. degrees and about a dozen have earned a rare and still higher degree, the Soviet Doctorate, which has no paral- lel in North America. Two of his personal students have also been invited to Canada. One, Aldona Aleskeviciene, presided over a session of the International Probability Conference held in Montreal in August 1981. She was the first Lithuanian woman ever to get a higher degree in mathematics, achieved in 1964. Last year she was awarded the (high) Doctor’s degree and with it the title and salary of full Professor. Quite a few other Lithuanian women mathematicians now have the equivalent of our Ph.D. Like Statulevicius, she comes from what was, under the old regime, a poor village family. When she finished Vilnius University, it was after attending a teacher train- Sort of international one-sided limbo, and into an suburban Athens, Pireus and salonika; the cities of Larissa, Prevoi a .Kojani, Kardista are in solid working class hands. An interesting phenomenon occ in the Glifada region, considered right-wing stronghold, the U.S. flee! recreation area where bars, prostituti and drugs abound. To the surprise everyone, a solid KKE victory achieved — proof again the Greek peop! have had enough of NATO, dependen and U.S. bases. Commenting on the election outcom KKE leader Florakis said, ‘“The Gree people are solidly behind the an imperialist, anti-monopoly change th has been promised them (by PASOK The ability of the government to Greece out of the wolf den of NATO and the European Economic Community to follow a really independent course dé pends very much on whether government wishes it. ‘‘The Greek people have shown th they wish it.” ~ In Soviet times Lithuania has de- veloped a prestigious scientific com- || munity of international note. Only the | Soviet Union’s raising of educational | opportunity ensured that children of i! the poor under the old regime, like Academician V. Statulevicius, now di- rector of the Institute of Mathematics and Cybernetics in Vilnius, received any education at all. Today he is teaching new generations of scientific workers and helping to raise the scien- tific and technological level of his republic and the-entire USSR. 7 ing college, and she had thought only of becoming 9, technical assistant when she joined the staff of the Mathematics and Physics Institute in 1958. But the the director, a physicist, quickly noticed her talents 2 reclassified her as a-scientific worker so that she cov pursue full-time graduate studies while being emplo at the institute. Raising Level of Life. These careers, while those of particularly talen' people, are both exceptional and typical. ‘‘Full n gem of purest ray serene, the dark unfathomed caves ocean bear:”’ For Soviet society, the experience of the develop’ ofa world famous centre of mathematical research led! people of exceptional merit on a world scale and workif®_ to raise the level of Lithuanian life and Soviet and w science, suggests that such gems have been brought light under socialism. ~ No wonder that many Canadian scientists continue invite Soviet colleagues to visit and to share theif thoughts, despite the earlier Clark government’s unl lateral suspension of the valuable scientific exc program which had been operating until then. No wonder that many scientists and those conce! with the development of Canadian science keep pressing the Trudeau government to reactivate these exchange believing them to be in the interests of Canadian scien® and of proper and peaceful international relations. Such scientists say that Canada is losing much more than it afford to lose by allowing its government to place it into creased dependence on the U.S. scientific establis ment. Professor Lee Lorch of York University is a Fellow the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Cou cil of the American Mathematical Society.