RAY OF LIGHT

The red flags that swamped Paris in the late 1960s were waved by hippies who had little idea about what communism was like. Similarly, the thousands of young people with long hair whose frustration with the Soviet regime moved them to storm the streets of the Lithuanian city of Kaunas in 1972 had little experience of the capitalist world.

Whether anti-capitalist or anti-communist, the slogans and symbols used by rebellious students on both sides of the iron divide were the same. They were inspired by the same music, like the Beatles, whatever the Soviet censors allowed.

But one key difference between them was that the young people of Kaunas, stunned by the death of 19-year-old Romas Kalanta, the anniversary of which is commemorated this week, knew what it was to be denied an identity, a nationhood, under the suppression of an empire.

Kaunas suffered a crackdown from which it never really recovered. With the freedom of movement found today in the Baltic states, it's hard to imagine those dark days. The Kaunas uprising was dealt with by General Margelov, head of the USSR airborne landing forces known for his cruelty in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Severe repression began, particularly against cultural figures, whom the communists blamed for creating an anti-Soviet atmosphere in Kaunas. One popular play, "Barbora Radvilaite," about the wife of a 16th century ruler in Poland and Lithuania, was forbidden. Jonas Jurasas, the director of Kaunas Drama Theater, was fired. He later emigrated to the West. Modris Tenisons, the director of Kaunas Pantomime Theater, was forced to return to his native Riga.

Many feel that Kaunas became more provincial because of the heavy repression following the 1972 rebellion. The life was squeezed out of the city. Kaunas still has that feel.

Most of the demonstrators were in their teens or early twenties, and it was easy for the KGB to crush their lives. They were dismissed from their schools. After that, most could work only in cemeteries or cleaning the streets. With the strain of everyday KGB surveillance, some succumbed to alcohol. Others disappeared in psychiatric hospitals.

Yet the events of 1972 altered the Lithuanian mentality. Although much of what happened failed to filter through into the outside world - and the rest of Lithuania - because of a total information blockade, the forbidden Lithuanian national flag was often boldly raised in schools in Vilnius and provincial towns every independence day, Feb. 16. Although Romas Kalanta's father was a World War II Soviet army veteran, the Kalanta family, like many others, secretly celebrated independence day after 1972 with a special dinner.

The world welcomed another nation this week, East Timor. The Timorese also know what it is like to be in the grip of a foreign empire. The decline of the nation state is prophesied in the West. But elsewhere the sense of pride in national identity is strong.