Lithuanian Council

(Lietuvos Taryba), a bourgeois-nationalist body of power in Lithuania; organized Sept. 18–22, 1917.

The Lithuanian Council was headed by A. Smetona and consisted of representatives of various bourgeois parties. It collaborated closely with the high command of the German occupation troops. On Dec. 11, 1917, during the Brest negotiations between Soviet Russia and Germany, it adopted a declaration on the “eternal bonds of alliance between the Lithuanian state and Germany,” a betrayal of the Lithuanian people. On Feb. 16, 1918, it adopted the demagogic Act of Lithuanian Independence, and in June 1918 it declared Lithuania a monarchy and offered the “royal crown of Lithuania” to the German prince von Urach. In November 1918 the council organized the state apparatus of bourgeois Lithuania and, until the convocation of the bourgeois Constituent Seimas in May 1920, headed the counterrevolutionary forces fighting against Soviet power and working with the German occupation troops to suppress it in Lithuania.