Founder of the Lithuanian Communist Party who headed Soviet Lithuania and Litbel
When Lenin demanded he recruit more Lithuanians into the Red Army, he refused, warning it would erode what support his government had.
Founder of the Lithuanian Communist Party, he headed the Soviet government of Lithuania from December 1918 and Litbel in 1919, without winning peasant support. After the defeat he handled Baltic affairs in the Comintern and died in Moscow in 1935.
Career timeline
1903Joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party
1914Met Lenin in Kraków
1917Joined the Bolsheviks in Petrograd; commissar for Lithuanian affairs
1918Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party; editor of Tiesa
1918–1919Headed Soviet Lithuanian government, then Litbel's Council of People's Commissars
1923–1935Worked on the Comintern Executive Committee
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
The communist who ruled Soviet Lithuania for 34 years
In 1949–50, when Moscow moved to purge the old generation of Lithuanian communists, Sniečkus confronted Stalin directly. Lithuania became the only republic where not a single pre-Soviet communist was arrested.
The longest-serving Soviet republican leader, heading the Lithuanian Communist Party for 34 years (1940–1974). An underground communist who drove Sovietization, he later buffered Moscow's interference and preserved space for the Lithuanian language and culture.
Career timeline
1920–1921Head, Alytus underground committee, CP of Lithuania
1921–1925Worked at CP of Lithuania publishing house, Smolensk
1925–1926Staff, CP of Lithuania representation at Comintern Executive Committee
1933–1936Staff, CP of Lithuania representation at Comintern Executive Committee
1927–1930Secretary, CC of CP of Lithuania (underground), responsible for agitation and organization
1936–1939First Secretary, CP of Lithuania (illegal, Kaunas)
1940.06–08Director, Department of State Security of Lithuania
1940–1974First Secretary, CP of Lithuania (34 years)
1942–1944Chief, Lithuanian Partisan Movement Staff
The only Lithuanian to sit in the CPSU Politburo and the last pro-Moscow party leader, imprisoned for the January Events
In 2000, President Adamkus offered him a pardon; he refused: 'I am not guilty before the motherland.'
Born in Alytus, Lithuania, he worked as a labourer from 1942 before rising through the Communist Party apparatus to become, after the CPL split in 1989, the first secretary of the pro-Moscow Lithuanian Communist Party (CPSU platform). In opposition to the March 1990 declaration of independence, he appealed to Gorbachev for military intervention and led the National Salvation Committee, which provided the political cover for the Soviet assault on the Vilnius television tower in January 1991. Fourteen civilians died in the operation; he was arrested in Minsk in 1994 and sentenced in 1999 to twelve years for anti-state organization and complicity in murder. He refused a presidential pardon, declaring himself not guilty before his homeland, and was released on 13 January 2006.
Career timeline
1942–1944Carpenter and machinist in Udmurtia
1944–1955Komsomol and party work; graduated Vilnius Pedagogical Institute
1963–1976Senior researcher, Institute of Party History; professor, Vilnius Engineering-Building Institute
1976–1990Professor of scientific communism, Vilnius Pedagogical Institute
1990–1991First Secretary, CC, CPL (CPSU platform)
1990–1991Member, Politburo, CPSU Central Committee
1991–1994Fled to Belarus
1994–2006Arrested, sentenced to 12 years; released January 2006
The communist who split his party from Moscow and became independent Lithuania's first president
When Gorbachev flew to Vilnius in January 1990 to press him to reverse the party's split, he did not yield: the congress had decided, and not even he had the authority to undo it.
A manager of the Soviet Lithuanian economy, Brazauskas became first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party in 1988 with Sajudis's backing, and in December 1989 led the party's decision to split from the CPSU, the first ruling party of a union republic to break with Moscow. After independence he won the first direct presidential election in 1993, showing that a former communist could come to power by ballot, managed relations with Russia while opening the road to NATO and the EU, and served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
Career timeline
1965–1967Minister of Construction Materials Industry, Lithuanian SSR
1967–1977First Deputy Chairman, Gosplan, Lithuanian SSR
1977–1987Secretary, Central Committee, Communist Party of Lithuania
1988–1989First Secretary, Central Committee, Communist Party of Lithuania
1989–1990First Secretary, Independent CPL (split from CPSU)
1990Chairman, Presidium of Supreme Soviet, Lithuanian SSR
1993–1998President of the Republic of Lithuania
2001–2006Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania
The musicologist who led the first nation out of the Soviet Union
On the night of 11 March 1990, when the act restoring independence passed without a vote against, he declared from the chair that Lithuania was once more an independent state: the first republic to walk out of the USSR, and the Kremlin's first notice of secession.
A Lithuanian musicologist and the leading authority on the painter-composer Ciurlionis, Landsbergis joined the founding of the reform movement Sajudis in 1988 and became its chairman. On 11 March 1990, as chairman of the Lithuanian Supreme Council, he carried the act restoring independence, becoming head of the first republic to declare its departure from the USSR. He held that independence through Moscow's economic blockade and the bloody suppression attempt of January 1991, and later served as speaker of the Seimas and a member of the European Parliament, the patriarch of the Lithuanian right.
Career timeline
1955Graduated from the Lithuanian Conservatory (now Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre)
1978–1990Professor at the Lithuanian Conservatory and Vilnius Pedagogical University
1988–1990Chairman of the Sąjūdis Seimas Council
1989–1990People's Deputy of the USSR Congress of People's Deputies
1990–1992Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania (head of state)
1993–2003Chairman of the Homeland Union (Conservative Party)
The Sąjūdis philosopher who launched the 2-million-signature campaign demanding Red Army withdrawal
After a long while of hesitation, I made up my mind to see 'what makes socialism.' After a few years it was absolutely clear.
Lithuanian philosopher and politician who taught philosophy at Vilnius University and edited the cultural journal Kultūros barai. He joined the Lithuanian Communist Party in 1973 but broke with it during perestroika; as a founding member of Sąjūdis (1988), he became the movement's theorist and launched a 2-million-signature campaign demanding the withdrawal of the Red Army from Lithuania. He was a central figure in the trilateral planning of the Baltic Way with the Estonian and Latvian popular fronts, and served as deputy prime minister (1990–1991) in the Landsbergis-Prunskienė cabinet. After independence he founded the Lithuanian Centre Union, served in the Seimas (1992–2000), and opposed EU membership as a surrender of sovereignty.
Career timeline
1957–1962Studied philosophy, Vilnius University
1965–1968Editor, Kultūros barai journal
1973–1989Lecturer in philosophy, Vilnius University
1988–1990Founding member and council member, Sąjūdis
1989–1990People's Deputy, USSR Congress of People's Deputies
1990–1991Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania
