Vincas Mickevičius Kapsukas

Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas ( Russian Винцас Мицкявичюс-Капсукас Winzas Mizkjawitschjus-Kapsukas ; born March 26, ^jul. / 7. April  1880 ^greg. In Būdviečiai , district Vilkaviškis , Russian empire ; † 17th February 1935 in Moscow , USSR ) was a Lithuanian political activist, first chairman of the Communist party of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos komunistų partija ) and Prime Minister of the short-lived Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Lithuanian: Lietuvos-Baltarusijos Tarybinė Socialistinė Respublika ; abbreviated Li (e) tbel , Li (e) tbel or LietByel ).

Life

Early years and political activity before 1917

Mickevičius-Kapsukas came from a well-to-do peasant family and attended high school in Marijampolė from 1890 to 1897 . After he had completed this, he entered the seminary in 1897 in Seinai , which now belongs to Poland , but had to leave it the following year because of anti-Tsarist activities. In October 1901 he went to the German Reich, where he worked as editor of the magazines Ūkininkas ("The Farmer") and Varpas ("The Bell"), which appeared in Tilsit and were banned in the Tsarist Empire .

In 1903 he joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Socialdemokratų Partija ; LSDP) and in 1904 founded the social democratic youth organization Draugas ("friend"), which became the nucleus of the later Lithuanian Social Democratic Workers' Party , which in September 1905 with the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party merged. Mickevičius-Kapsukas has now become a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the LSDP. The position he took, that one should join the Bolsheviks in Russia, did not find a majority within this body.

During the Russian Revolution of 1905 he organized workers' strikes in Marijampolė and the Suvalkija region . Because of this activity he was finally arrested and banished by the tsarist authorities to the Yenisei region in Siberia . Only after he had managed to escape exile in 1913 did he come into closer contact with the Bolsheviks. Even before the start of the First World War, he and other members of the "met Foreign offices " LSDP of the then to Austria-Hungary belonging to Cracow with Lenin together.

Political activity after 1917

Mickevičius-Kapsukas spent the first years of the war in exile in Great Britain and Switzerland. After the February Revolution , he returned to Russia in 1917 and joined the Bolsheviks. In the same year he took part in the October Revolution in Petrograd and was responsible for Lithuania in the “ People's Commissariat for Nationality Issues ”. After coming illegally to Vilnius at the end of November 1918 , he was immediately accepted into the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania and henceforth headed the party work. As chairman of a " Lithuanian Provisional Revolutionary Government of Workers and Peasants ", which he had been since December 8, 1918, he was also instrumental in the proclamation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Tarybų Socialistinė Respublika ) on December 16 of the same year. However, this found little support in the population and also stood in opposition to the " Lithuanian State Council " (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Taryba ), which for its part had already declared Lithuania's independence on February 16, 1918. Help for the Lithuanian communists finally came when the Red Army marched into Vilnius on January 5, 1919. Just two days later, the communist government under Mickevičius-Kapsukas began its work in Vilnius.

Meanwhile, the Taryba from Kaunas organized the "national resistance", which was directed not only against the Lithuanian communists and their Russian helpers, but also against the German free corps fighters in the country who wanted to maintain their country's influence in the Baltic States despite the war defeat . This phase of uncertainty and chaos also saw the merger of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic with the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic on February 27, 1919 to form the Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Mickevičius-Kapsukas acted in the newly created Soviet republic as chairman of the “ Council of People's Commissars ” and thus quasi as head of government.

When Vilnius was conquered by Polish troops in the Polish-Lithuanian War on April 21, 1919, the government under Mickevičius-Kapsukas initially moved the seat of government to Minsk . After this was also occupied by Polish troops, the government took office in Smolensk . As the entire LitBel territory finally came under the control of enemy troops in the course of the Polish-Soviet War , the Soviet Republic was declared dissolved on August 25, 1919. However, Mickevičius-Kapsukas returned to Vilnius when the Red Army took possession of the city again in July 1920. Since his efforts to trigger a socialist revolution in Lithuania had failed, the Polish-Soviet war had ended in Soviet defeat and an independent Lithuanian state had been established, Mickevičius-Kapsukas had lived in Moscow as a Soviet citizen from late 1921. He remained a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania, whose statehood he was still strictly opposed to. He was also active within the Comintern . Mickevičius-Kapsukas died a little more than five years before the forced "reintegration" of Lithuania into the now socialist Russian state as a result of the German-Soviet border and friendship treaty in August 1940.

Mickevičius Kapsukas as a person

In a letter to his wife that remained incomplete due to his death, Vincas grants Mickevičius-Kapsukas an insight into his personality. It says:

“… Family matters always came second to me. Above all, I lived and worked for the idea that I believed in and that shone through the hardest hours of life. Since I consciously began my political life, I have lived and worked for the working class, for their liberation from the capitalist yoke. Everything was given to this idea ... "

reception

Soviet postage stamp (1957)

A cult around Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas could only fully develop after the Second World War and was promoted by Lithuania's long-term Communist Party leader Antanas Sniečkus (1903–1974). For example, the city of Marijampolė was renamed Kapsukas between 1956 and 1989 , and the University in Vilnius also bore his name between 1955 and 1990. In addition, the numerous monuments erected during the socialist period commemorated Lithuania's first communist head of government. After the proclamation of an independent Lithuanian state in March 1990, the memory of the country's now unloved son was erased as much as possible and all these sculptures were removed. Some of them were - together with numerous other "leftovers" from communist times - "disposed of" in the Grūto parkas and can be viewed there.

The Soviet Post honored Mickevičius-Kapsukas in 1957 by issuing a special stamp .

Web links

• Article Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D077150~2a%3D~2b%3DVincas%20Mickevi%C4%8Dius-Kapsukas

References and comments

1. ↑ All information in this article is based on Joachim Tauber and Ralph Tuchtenhagen: Vilnius. Little history of the city. Cologne-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20204-0 , pp. 178, 183 and 247 as well as the corresponding information in the Lithuanian Grūto parkas .
2. ↑ Quoted from Tauber and Tuchtenhagen (2008), p. 183.