The plečkaitininkai ("plečkaitists"), named after Jeronimas Plečkaitis, was a group of Lithuanian political opponents of the authoritarian regime of Antanas Smetona active abroad from 1927 to 1935.
[1] Plečkaitininkai did not enjoy any significant support in Lithuania, but the Lithuanian government used the threat of this group as one of the arguments for suppressing free press and spying on leftist organizations.
[2] The military coup d'état of December 1926 installed the government of President Antanas Smetona and Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras that dissolved the Third Seimas (parliament).
The opposition, mainly members of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania and Lithuanian Popular Peasants' Union, attempted to overthrow Smetona's regime and organized the failed Tauragė Revolt on 9 September 1927.
[4] At the time, Lithuania–Poland relations entered a particularly hostile phase and there were fears that war might break out any moment over the bitter territorial dispute in the Vilnius (Wilno) Region.
[4] Poland allowed plečkaitininkai to organize a military group in Lida, which at its peak in December 1927 numbered 74 people, and supplied it with cash, weapons, and instructors.
[1] The group, officially known as the Defense Guard of the Political Émigrés of the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos respublikos politinių emigrantų gynimo gvardija),[4] believed that Smetona's regime was fragile and that it could be overthrown by an armed coup.
[7] Lithuanian news agency ELTA claimed that the group was planning to bomb a train that Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras took from Geneva.
[1] Ideological differences continued to widen, and Plečkaitis, accused of spying for the Lithuanian security agencies,[1] was removed from LSDOU in March 1929.
[13] In June 1929, the government adopted a special law which provided strict sentences, including death penalty, to plečkaitininkai and their supporters while promising awards to those who helped capture them.