Rekašius, Vladas

Born May 3 (15), 1893, in the village of Vijoliškis, in what is now Biržai Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died Mar. 13, 1920, in Plungė. Participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia. Lithuanian poet. Member of the Communist Party from 1914.

In 1914, Rekašius, the son of a worker, helped edit the Social Democratic newspaper Vilnis (The Wave) in Riga. He was subsequently arrested and exiled to Tomsk Province. Escaping from exile in 1916, he engaged in party work in Estonia and served as a member of the Tartu Committee and the Bureau of the North Baltic Organization of the RSDLP. After the February Revolution of 1917, Rekašius worked in Moscow and was secretary of the Bogorodsk Committee of the RSDLP(B). He participated in the October Revolution of 1917. In 1918 he served as chairman of the Viatka sovnarkhoz (regional economic council). In 1918 and 1919, Rekašius took part in the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power in Lithuania and was chairman of the Kupiškis District Revolutionary Committee. In 1919 and 1920 he occupied the post of secretary of the Telšiai Raion Underground Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania. Rekašius was murdered by bourgeois nationalists.

In Rekašius’ poetry the motifs of revolutionary struggle, freedom, and the socialist future were dominant. Rekašius translated into Lithuanian the Internationale as well as several works by H. Heine and other writers.