Antanas Snechkus

(Antanas Shiečkus). Born Dec. 25, 1902 (Jan. 7, 1903), in the village of Būblēliai, in what is now Sakiai Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died Jan. 22, 1974, in Druskininkai. Soviet state and party figure. Hero of Socialist Labor (1973). Member of the CPSU from 1920.

The son of peasants, Snechkus began working as a telegraph technician in 1919. In 1920–21 he headed the Alitus Underground Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania (CPL). From 1921 to 1925 he worked in the publishing house of the Central Committee of the CPL in Smolensk, and from 1925 to 1926 on the delegation from the CPL to the Executive Committee of the Communist International. After the fascist coup in Lithuania in December 1926, Snechkus worked in the underground in Kaunas. He was co-opted by the Central Committee of the CPL and later became the committee’s secretary.

Snechkus was arrested in 1930 and sentenced to 15 years at hard labor. In 1933, after an exchange of political prisoners between the USSR and Lithuania, he came to Moscow. Until 1936 he was deputy representative of the CPL to the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Simultaneously, he was a party investigator for the International Control Commission of the Communist International. In 1935 he graduated from the International Lenin School.

From 1936 to 1939, Snechkus was first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPL, living illegally in Kaunas. He was arrested in 1939 and sentenced to eight years in prison. After Soviet power was restored in Lithuania in June 1940 he became first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPL and served in this capacity until 1974. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) he headed the republic staff of the partisan movement. Beginning in 1941 he was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and in 1952 he became a member. He was a deputy to the first through eighth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Snechkus was awarded eight Orders of Lenin, three other orders, and various medals.