Pranas Eidukevicius

(also Frants Vikent’evich Eiduke-vich). Born Sept. 25 (Oct. 7), 1869, in Kybartai, in what is now Vilkaviákis Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died Mar. 7, 1926, in Moscow. One of the organizers of the Communist Party of Lithuania. Member of the Communist Party from 1918.

The son of a railroad worker, Eidukevičius was himself a metalworker. He joined the revolutionary movement in the late 1880’s, working first in Kaunas and then in Riga and Grodno. He took part in the Revolution of 1905–07 in Lódź and in Vilnius. From 1906 to 1918, Eidukevičius was a member of the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania and a contributor to the Bolshevik newspapers Sotsial-demokrat and Pravda. He was arrested several times.

Eidukevicius was chairman of the Central Bureau of Workers’ Trade Unions in Vilnius from 1915 to 1918. He began working in the party’s underground in May 1918. In October, he helped organize the First Congress of the Communist Party of Lithuania and was elected chairman of the Central Committee. Eidukevičius helped establish Soviet power in Lithuania and was chairman of the presidium of the Vilnius city soviet. After the fall of Soviet power in Lithuania in 1919, he held high government and economic posts in the RSFSR. Eidukevičius was a delegate to the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B).