Mackevicius, Antanas

Born June 2 (14), 1828, in the village of Morkiai, Raseiniai District, present-day Kelme Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died Dec. 16 (28), 1863, in Kaunas. Revolutionary democrat; leader of the 1863 peasant uprising in Lithuania.

Mackevičus was of noble descent. He studied at the University of Kiev and graduated from a theological seminary in 1853. Under the influence of the peasant movement and the progressive social thought of Russian and Polish revolutionary democrats, he concluded that it was necessary to fight against the landowners and tsarism, for the abolition of serfdom, and for the transfer of the landowners’ lands to the peasants through armed struggle. Mackevičus advocated union of the liberation struggle of the Lithuanian, Polish, and Byelorussian peoples with the Russian revolutionary movement. He became a Catholic priest in 1853 and began to preach his views to the peasants.

In 1863, after the publication of the manifestos of the Polish Central Committee and the Lithuanian Committee in Vilnius on an uprising, Mackevičus headed a peasant detachment of several hundred men; he later fought in the combined rebel army under the command of Z. Sierakowski. After Sierakowski’s death, Mackevičrus was the leader of rebel detachments throughout Kovno Province. On Dec. 5(17), 1863, he was captured and later executed.