 Known as a jolly musician who played many instruments at country weddings, including the guitar, fiddle, concertina, and a pipe of his own making, Stankevičius was killed by the NKVD in the Labanoras Forest when Kazimira was just one year old.Prunskienė attended Vilnius University, earning her degree in economics in 1965 and later earned her doctorate from the same university in the same subject during the late 1980s.Afterwards, she stayed on at the University first as an instructor, then as a senior associate in the Department of Industrial Economics.