Jewish National Autonomy

As in the other Baltic countries, the public life of the Jewish community in Lithuania was based on national autonomy, a new political and organisational model, of which the aim, nature and the content were determined by the local political, economic and social conditions.1 In Latvia, Jewish autonomy, which existed from 1919 to 1934, was limited to just the education system.2 Jewish national autonomy in Lithuania had specific features as well.
When Max Soloveichik became the minister for Jewish affairs, he founded the Provisional Public Council, an advisory body to manage Jewish affairs. He strove for the institutional restructuring of local Jewish communities, and pronounced a decree for democratic elections to the councils of local communities to be held at the end of 1919. Although the object of the elections was to restructure the organisational structure of communal institutions, it was organised on a political basis. At that time, the political life of Lithuanian Jews consisted of numerous different political-ideological groups, which participated in public life and exerted a strong influence on public opinion. Depending on their ideological attitudes, these parties formed three large groups.