When Juozas Adomaitis-Šernas fled East Prussia due to troubles with the police, Kriaučiūnas became responsible for editing and publishing Varpas and Ūkininkas.

He attracted German police attention after he directed a Lithuanian historical play by the Birutė Society in early 1895.

In 1904, Petras Vileišis offered him a job publishing the first Lithuanian daily Vilniaus žinios (he resigned in January 1906).

When the issues were confiscated by the school officials, he found a way to obtain Aušra and other illegal Lithuanian publications via Petras Kriaučiūnas (no relation) in Marijampolė.

[1] Trying to avoid conscription to the Russian Army,[4] he emigrated to Tilsit in East Prussia (now Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast) in fall 1889.

[5] When Juozas Adomaitis-Šernas fled East Prussia due to troubles with the police, Kriaučiūnas became responsible for editing and publishing Varpas.

[6] Kriaučiūnas joined the cultural Birutė Society and directed its first amateur theater performance in February 1895 (it was a historical drama about the Siege of Kaunas (1362) by Aleksandras Fromas-Gužutis).

It was part of a larger operation by the Tsarist police directed against the Sietynas Society which saw arrests of 35 Lithuanian book smugglers.

[2] During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Kriaučiūnas and Jonas Basanavičius raised the idea of organizing the Great Seimas of Vilnius which took place in December 1905.

[10] Kriaučiūnas was elected to the board of the National Democrats Party [lt] (Tautiškoji demokratų partija) which was established right after the Great Seimas.

[1] In December 1915, together with Saliamonas Banaitis, Adomas Jakštas, and others he published a proclamation with a proposal for a Lithuanian–Belarusian–Latvian confederation along the historical traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

[9] He worked as a notary[1] and published articles with memoirs in Lietuva, Rytas, Lietuvos aidas, Naujoji Romuva, and other periodicals.