Zigmo Ionovich Angariecio

(real family name Aleksa). Born June 13, 1882; died May 22, 1940. Revolutionary figure; one of the leaders of the Communist Party (CP) of Lithuania.

Angariecio was born to a peasant family in the village of Obelupiai, Vilkaviŝkis District (now in the Lithuanian SSR). He studied at the Warsaw Institute of Veterinary Science until his expulsion in 1904 for participating in antiwar demonstrations. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania in 1906. At the Seventh Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania, held in 1907, Angariecio was elected to its Central Committee (CC). In 1908–09 he edited the newspaper Darbininku zodis (Workers’ Word). In 1909 he was arrested and sentenced to four years at hard labor and in 1915 was exiled to Angara. Here he wrote a number of articles which were printed abroad in Lithuanian Social Democratic newspapers under the pseudonym Angarie&o.

From 1917 he lived in Petrograd, where he edited the newspaper Tiesa (Truth); served as the secretary of the Lithuanian regional committee—the Lithuanian section of the Petrograd organization of the RSDLP (Bolshevik); and was a member of the Petrograd committee of Bolsheviks. Angariecio was a member of the Central Bureau of the Lithuanian section of the CC RSDLP(B) and took part in the October armed uprising in Petrograd. He became deputy commissar for Lithuanian affairs in the People’s Commissariat for the Nationalities of the RSFSR in December 1917. During the Brest peace negotiations he sided with the “left communists.”

From November 1918 he was engaged in underground work in Vilnius and was a member of the CC of the Communist Party of Lithuania. At the end of 1918 and beginning of 1919, Angariecio was people’s commissar for internal affairs of the first Soviet government of Lithuania. In 1920 he became secretary of the External Bureau of the CP of Lithuania and in 1923 a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CP of Lithuania. Angariecio was a representative of the CP of Lithuania in the Executive Committee of the Comintern in 1921 and a delegate to the Third through Seventh Congresses of the Comintern; he was elected a member of the International Control Commission at the Fifth through Seventh Congresses and was secretary of the commission between 1926 and 1935. He was a delegate to the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference and to the Sixth, Eighth, Tenth, and 12th through 17th Congresses of the Party.

Angariecio was editor of Kommunistas (Communist, 1918–32), the journal of the Lithuanian CP, and other journals. He is the author of The History of the Revolutionary Movement and the Struggle of the Lithuanian Workers (vols. 1–2, 1921), brochures, and many articles on the history of the Communist and labor movements and on problems of philosophy.