Pyatras P. Grishkyavichus, Lithuanian Party Chief

Pyatras P. Grishkyavichus, 63, longtime Communist Party chief in the Soviet Baltic republic of Lithuania. Grishkyavichus had been first secretary of the Lithuanian party since 1974. He was also a member of the party’s policy-making Central Committee and a deputy in the Supreme Soviet, the nation’s nominal parliament. After the 1941 German invasion, Grishkyavichus, a member of the Komsomol Communist Youth League, fled eastward with the Red Army. He fought with the Soviet forces in 1942 and in 1943 was parachuted into German-occupied Lithuania, where he joined up with a partisan unit. Grishkyavichus joined the Communist Party in 1945 after the Soviets had driven the Germans from Lithuania. In Moscow on Saturday of unannounced causes.