Jurgis Smolskis | |
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File:Jurgis Smolskis.jpg | |
Personal details | |
Born | Kamajai, Kovno Government , Russian Empire | 3 May 1881
Died | 6 July 1919 Pakriaunys, near Obeliai, Lithuania | (aged 38)
Nationality | Lithuania |
Political party | Lithuanian Social Democratic Party |
Spouse | Germaine Geelens (Verviers 1888 – Brussels 1960) |
Children | Jurgita Smolski (Verviers 1920 - Namur 2012) |
Alma mater | University of St. Petersburg |
Profession | Lawyer, journalist, writer, revolutionary politician |
Known for | Executed |
Jurgis Smolski (Lithuanian: Jurgis Smolskis-Smalstys, Russian: Юрий Осипович Смольский (Yuri Osipovich Smolski), French: Georges Smolski) was a lawyer, writer, journalist and politician, revolutionary organizer from 1904 in the region of Rokiškis, Upper Lithuania (Aukstaitija) until his death at the beginning of Lithuanian independence.
Spiritual heir from the Lithuanian national revival movement in modernity, in struggle for democracy, social justice and cultural and linguistic freedom, he suffered the imprisonment of the Russian imperial regime and meanwhile exile in Western Europe.
Jurgis Smolski returned to Lithuania at the beginning of independence as a regional representative and developed public and secular education. During the 1919 civil war, he was arrested arbitrarily and shot under the orders of ultra-reactionary officers of the national army being organized. His social and cultural commitments are admired by the liberal currents of the first republic, and stigmatized by the authoritarian regime established after the 1926 Lithuanian coup d'état .
From 1955, accepted but censored as a left wing precursor of the Soviet regime, its literary and patriotic contribution has been recognized since the return of independence by Lithuanian historiography. Due to the opaque situation of the archives before 1990 and the disappearance of the witnesses, gaps remain in his biography as in all the Baltic history of the twentieth century, while the critical research is refined. Citizen of the world following his exile, mastery of languages (Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, German, French ...) and open-mindedness, Jurgis Smolski also contributed to the notoriety of his homeland.
Personal life
Smolskis is a son of Juozapas Smalstys and Karolyna Grižaite, who are farmers of Kamajai. He is the eldest of many siblings. Recognized as a gifted pupil at the parish primary school, he enrolled into a Catholic seminary. At the age of fifteen, he voluntarily left to complete his secondary education at the Riga's Russian Gymnasium [1].
Smolski studied at the Faculty of Law of the University of St. Petersburg from 1900 to 1905. While studying, he approached social democracy and disseminated the clandestine press and literature in Lithuanian.
Entrance into politics
In 1904, he organized the congress of the youth organization of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) at the manor of Vladas Sirutavičius in Kairiškiai. Smolski directs the organization of the LSDP in Kamajai from 1905 to 1906. He supported the unionization of agricultural workers and peasant claims,[6] and organized demonstrations throughout Upper Lithuania.
In the autumn of 1905, the tsarist administration is forced to withdraw from Kamajai where a "republic" is proclaimed. At a local open meeting, Jurgis Smolski forces the police commissioner to wear a red flag. The authorities are trying to foment a pogrom against the many Jewish inhabitants of the town, which Jurgis Smolski prevents with the solidarity of the different communities. In retaliation, the Cossacks fire with cannon on the family house[7] of the Smalstys.
In 1906, in Vilnius, he is a member of the LSDP Committee.
1907 Imprisoned in Yalta, Jurgis Smolski escapes by name substitution during a transfer to Simferopol. He exiles himself in Western Europe via Tilsit (East Prussia).
1907–1913 He stays in Kraków (then in the Austrian Empire) and in Switzerland. A student at the New University of Brussels, in the course of Professor Guillaume De Greef, he meets a Belgian teacher, Germaine Geelens, in the movement of the pedagogue Ovide Decroly . Jurgis Smolski participates in the political activities of the exiles and in the press, in particular to prepare the legal bases of a national banking system.[8] With his wife “Maine” Geelens, he comes back to Russian Lithuania in June 1914.
1914–1917 One year after the outbreak of the World War, the German army occupies Lithuania. The couple lives in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where Jurgis Smolski heads the underground organization of the LSDP. In the autumn of 1916, during an attempted emigration through the Trans-Siberian railway, he is arrested near Irkutsk and imprisoned in Kostroma, where the Vilnius Public Prosecutor's Office retreated. His health is deteriorating; he survives thanks to the support of his wife and is transferred to a Moscow prison. Freed by the revolution of February / March 1917 and the fall of Russian Empire, he led the legalized Lithuanian Social Democratic Party and moved closer to the Bolshevik faction, participating in the drafting of the newspaper Tiesa (The Truth).
In June, in the Lithuanian Seimas (Parliament) of Petrograd, he represents and leads the LSDP group.
1918 From January to April in Moscow, during a famine winter, J. Smolski organizes the supply and repatriation of Lithuanian refugees. Following the peace of Brest-Litovsk, he returned to his formally independent homeland and was elected chairman of the regional committee of Rokiškis. In December, he is in charge of the People's Education Department of Rokiškis County.
1919 After the collapse of the German Empire and the end of the World War, the Red Army occupies two-thirds of the territory of Lithuania and supports the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic led by the communist intellectual Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas . The soviet elected in Vilnius also includes LSDP, Menshevik and Jewish Bund delegates. Most of the administration remains in place and Jurgis Smolski continues to exercise his responsibilities in Rokiškis. While his PSDL comrade Steponas Kairys participates in the coalition government folded in Kaunas, the national army in training relies on officers close to white Russians. In offensive against the Bolsheviks ("Reds") and rivals of the Polish Pildsuski, the "Whites" are themselves divided into supporters of the Entente, and German Freikorps of the Baltic. The White Guards occupied Panevežis and Rokiškis at the end of May 1919 and the rest of Upper Lithuania during the following month. Arrested on June 26 by the troops of Colonel Vincas Grigaliūnas-Glovackis, Jurgis Smolski is imprisoned in Pakriaunys near Obeliai and sentenced by a court martial to six years of fortress.[9] On July 6, during a transfer, he was shot in the nearby forest on the pretext of an escape attempt. His death and the White and anti-Semitic Terror against hundreds of left-wing suspects arouse indignation in the region, speaking out in petitions, and among the progressive circles of Kaunas. Colonel Glovackis, who does not forgive Smolski for his secular and revolutionary commitment, forbids the burial at Rokiškis and any procession, to avoid the risk of political protest.[10]
Returning exhausted at her parents in Verviers , his widow Germaine Geelens, gives birth in February 1920 to a posthumous girl, Jurgita. Back to Lithuania as a teacher on the return of a rule of law, she filed for justice in a Kaunas court. Under pressure from ultra-reactionary elements of the army, the Court acquitted the responsible officers and sentenced the executing soldier to a symbolic prison sentence.
Works and posterity
The most popular literary work of J. Smolski is the comedy Nutrūko ("The Break") (1906), widely interpreted by amateur theater groups. Many works-poems, short stories, plays have been destroyed or have remained handwritten.[11] From 1962 to 2005, his daughter Jurgita Smolski traveled several times to Lithuania under Soviet rule, and since 1990 independent Lithuania. She published her father's biography and encouraged research about. In 1996, she founded the Smolski – Geelens Foundation to support graduate students in history at the University of Vilnius at the Free University of Brussels. In 2009, a memorial to Jurgis Smalstys-Smolskis is inaugurated in Pakriaunys at the execution site. On the occasion of the centenary of his death, a stele with a portrait of the couple was deposit in the name of the descendants from Belgium.[12]
Bibliography
- Audroms siaučiant,[When the Storms Raged, an anthology of revolutionary writers published at Valstybine Grožines Literatūros Leidykla Vilnius, 1955.
- KAMAJAI – Monograph published by Versmés, Vilnius, 2016.
- Kazys MISIUS. 1905–1906 mete revoliucijos įvykiai Kamajuose [The Events of 1905–1906 in Kamajai] -
- Berl KAGAN. Kamajų žydai [The Jews of Kamajai] -
- Kazys MISIUS. Lietuviškos spaudos draudimo metai Kamajų apylinkėse [The years of ban of the Lithuanian press in the Kamajai region]
- Kazys MISIUS. Rašytojas socialdemokratas Jurgis Smalstys-Smolskis [Social Democrat writer Jurgis Smalstys-Smolskis] -
- KIRVELIS, Dobilas, Jurgis Smolskis-Smalstys ir jo seima (J.S. and his family) in the magazine Gaires 10/2011.
- SMOLSKI, Georgette, Jurgis Smolskis, Un destin lituanien [A Lithuanian Destiny], L'Harmattan, Paris, 2001
- SMOLSKI, Jurgita, Mano Tevas [My father], translated in Lithuanian by Vytautas Kauneckas, Ed. Vaga, Vilnius, 1967.
- SMOLSKI, J. Maine, Vieno gyvenimo šviesa [Maine, The Light of a Life] /, translated from French by I. Mikalkevičienė.Vilnius, 1998.
References
- ^ Picture in College uniform, at about 16, and oral family transmission
- ^ Family archives
- ^ Family archives
- ^ Family archives
- ^ VARNAS, Adomas, Ant Politikos Laktu,[On Politics Elbow] Ed. "Vaivos", Kaunas, 1922
- ^ See his contributions to the journal Ukininkas (The Farmer) and the short story Vasaros Rytas [Summer Morning], 1906)
- ^ For the Tsarist period, extracts from the Archives of the Lithuanian SSR, reported in 1965 as a microfilm in Russian to Jurgita Smolski. Probably at the State Archives of Lithuania
- ^ Lietuvos žinios, [Lithuanian News], April 17, 1910
- ^ L’armée de l’ordre en Lituanie, [The Army of the Order in Lithuania] 5 sheets typed in 1919, from the hand of Germaine Geelens. Family archives. In French with Lithuanian translation on http://fle.paixactive.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Larm%C3%A9e-de-lordre-en-Lituanie-FR-LT-1.pdf
- ^ GRIGALIŪNAS-GLOVACKIS, Vincas, Generolo atsiminimai [Memories of a General], Lietuvos kariuomenés istorija [Military History of Lithuania] Vilnius, 2017, pages 64 and 75-76.
- ^ For different pseudonyms, ee On line Catalogue of Library of Vilnius University
- ^ http://fle.paixactive.org/memoire-balte