The Workers' Group of Lithuania () was a front organization of the Communist Party of Lithuania that participated in the elections to the First and Second Seimas of Lithuania in 1922 and 1923. Members of this group became known as Kuopininkai ("groupers").
The Communist Party and various communist organizations were outlawed in Lithuania. Therefore, to participate in the elections, a new political group was created. The Workers' Group received roughly 5% of the vote and five of its candidates were elected to the First Seimas. They were obstructive and destructive, and the press openly referred to them as "Bolshevik agents".
The First Seimas was deadlocked and was dismissed in March 1923. The counterintelligence section of the General Staff of the Lithuanian Army issued an order to arrest members of the Workers' Group in April 1923. About 200 people were arrested, and 92 of them tried by a military court. The court proceedings started after three years, only after the left-wing victory in the elections to the Third Seimas of Lithuania. All defendants were acquitted and released on 12 June 1926. The following day, communists organized a rally that almost turned into a riot. It caused a scandal in Lithuania and was presented as a major threat to Lithuania and its military by the conservative press.
Historical background
Lithuania declared independence in February 1918, but was able to start organizing its government institutions only after the German defeat in World War I in November 1918. In December 1918, Lithuania was invaded by the Bolshevik forces who established the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. As a result, the Communist Party of Lithuania and various communist organizations were outlawed in Lithuania on 7 February 1919. The armed conflict with the Red Army ceased by September 1919 and the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty was concluded in July 1920. However, communists continued to pose a threat to Lithuania's security and their organizations remained illegal but continued underground operations.
Preparation for the elections
The Communist Party of Lithuania boycotted the elections to the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania in May 1920 as they hoped for a socialist revolution that would make the assembly irrelevant. The 2nd World Congress of the Communist International in July–August 1920 resolved that communists in democracies should participate in parliamentary elections and use government institutions to spread communist ideology. This forced the Lithuanian communist to change their tactics.
Elections to the First Seimas of Lithuania were held on 10 and 11 October 1922. The Communist Party began discussing and preparing for this election in October 1921. In January 1922, Zigmas Angarietis (who lived in Moscow) sent an instruction to prepare a candidate list under the name of Workers' Group.
In total, the communists presented 74 candidates for the election. They were selected by the local party committees (raikoms) and approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. All candidates had to be members of the party and willing to follow party's orders. The party then used legal labor unions to officially register the candidates with the electoral commission.
Platform
The first public announcement of the Workers' Group was published on 16 July 1922 in the legal communist newspaper Žarija (Ember) edited by Liudas Adomauskas. The announcement painted a dire situation in Lithuania where unemployment and poverty were on the rise. It called for the creation of a unified workers' front and contained a list of 21 political, mainly populist, agenda items. No other political party seriously considered joining the workers' front, which the communists portrayed as a "betrayal" of workers.
These items included improving workers' conditions (e.g. livable wage, 8-hour workday, unemployment and health insurance, et.) and guaranteeing their rights and freedoms (e.g. freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, etc.). Other items concerned the confiscation of large landholdings and their distribution to poor peasants, revocation of martial law, release of political prisoners, abolition of indirect taxes, etc. Only one item concerned foreign policy and called for "ceasing any military adventures" against the Soviet Union and rejection of any treaty with the Second Polish Republic.