Zigmas Angarietis
Zigmas Angarietis
Interior commissar of Soviet Lithuania, a Lithuanian communist leader killed in the Great Terror
He urged that Lithuania remain an independent state, yet imagined that independence as socialist.
A Lithuanian communist leader, he was commissar for internal affairs of Soviet Lithuania and Litbel in 1918 and 1919. In exile he worked in the Comintern and wrote the history of the Lithuanian labour movement; arrested in 1938, he was shot in 1940.
Career timeline
- 1906Joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (Central Committee member from 1907)
- 1909Arrested and sentenced to four years' katorga, later exiled to the Yenisei province
- 1917Deputy commissar for Lithuanian affairs in Petrograd, editor of Tiesa
- 1918–1919Commissar for internal affairs of the first Soviet Lithuanian government
- 1920Secretary of the Lithuanian CP's Foreign Bureau (Comintern executive representative from 1921)
- 1926–1935Chairman of the Comintern International Control Commission