1935 Suvalkija farmers' strike

Memorial stone in Veiveriai erected in 1977

The farmers' strike in Suvalkija was a civil unrest in interwar Lithuania in 1935. It mostly affected Suvalkija (southern Lithuania) where farmers demanded aid to help with a severe economic crisis.

The strike was caused by more than threefold decrease in prices of agricultural goods due to the collapse of Lithuanian exports. Germany (the largest trading partner) ceased Lithuanian imports due to the worsening political situation (territorial claims to the Klaipėda Region and specifically the trial of Neumann and Sass), while England (the second largest export market) enacted protectionist policies due to the Great Depression.

As a result, farmers could not pay their loans or taxes and their discontent was fanned by the outlawed Communist Party of Lithuania. Their demands were mostly financial (e.g. lower taxes, deferral of loans), but there were also political demands to replace the authoritarian regime of President Antanas Smetona. They began organizing in May 1935 and started a general strike (refusal to pay taxes or sell their products) on 20 August 1935. Mass protest rallies soon turned into violent clashes with the police (most notably in Veiveriai on 27 August), which left five strikers dead. By December 1935, the strike subsided and turned into terrorist incidents aiming to intimidate local officials and those who refused to join the strike. A police officer was shot and killed in November 1936.

A total of 253 people were tried by a military court for their involvement with the strike. Nineteen people were sentenced to death, of which five were executed, while the rest were pardoned. The government blamed the opposition parties (particularly the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party and the Lithuanian Popular Peasants' Union) for inciting the strike and suspended them in November 1935. Further, all political parties (except the ruling Lithuanian Nationalist Union) were banned in February 1936.