Mykolas Burokevičius

Mykolas Burokevičius (October 7, 1927 – January 20, 2016) was a communist political leader in Lithuania. After the Communist Party of Lithuania separated from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), he established alternative pro-CPSU Communist Party of Lithuania in early 1990, and led it as the First Secretary of Central Committee until its ban in 1991. He was the only Lithuanian to serve in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, and did so from 1990 until its ban in 1991.

He was born in Alytus, Lithuania in 1927. In 1942, a young Burokevičius was employed as a carpenter and a machinist at a plant in Udmurtia. In 1944 he became a member of the Lithuanian Communist Party where he worked as a chief of department and instructor. He graduated from the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute (now the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences) in 1955 and the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in 1963.

In 1963 he became a research fellow at the Institute of the History of the Party of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party. He died in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2016, aged 88.

After the Communist Party of Lithuania voted to separate from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in December 1989, he became the Secretary General of the Moscow-backed communist party and on March 4, 1990 he gained the title of the First Secretary.

His party's political programme stated that one of its goals was to maintain Lithuania as part of the USSR. Seven members of Burokevičius' party were elected during the Supreme Council of Lithuania elections on 24 February 1990. The Supreme Council declared reinstantment of Lithuania's independence during its first session in March.

On 11 January 1991 the pro-CPSU CPL sent an ultimatum to the Government of Lithuania, ordering it to comply with USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev's public requirement that the Supreme Council would immediately reinstate the legal force of the USSR and Lithuanian SSR Constitutions. The requirement was voiced one day earlier. The party added that failing that it might create the "Lithuanian National Rescue Committee" (Lithuanian: Lietuvos nacionalinio gelbėjimo komitetas), "which would take care of the matters of the future of the LSSR" - and eventually did so. During its lifetime, the party established several organizations meant to be alternative ministries.

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