Lithuania's first president who led the declaration of independence, later leader of the 1926 coup
Before leaving the presidential palace he declared, "I do not want to make Lithuania a bolshevik country with my own hands."
Chairman of the Lithuanian Council, he signed the 1918 declaration of independence and as first president from 1919 led the governments that fought the Red Army, Bermondt's troops and the Poles. He built an authoritarian regime after the 1926 coup and, fleeing the Soviet occupation of 1940, died in a fire in the United States in 1944.
Career timeline
- 1902Graduated in law from St. Petersburg University; journalist and national activist in Vilnius
- 1917Chairman of the Council of Lithuania
- 1918Signed the Act of Independence (16 February)
- 1919First President of Lithuania
- 1925Chairman of the Lithuanian Nationalist Union
- 1926Led the December coup; returned as president and ruled with authoritarian powers
Lithuanian writer who led the “People’s Government” of 1940 and resigned after Molotov told him the Baltic states would join the USSR
Born to a peasant family in the village of Subartonys in the Dzūkija region, he took his pen name from Krėvė, the name villagers gave his family. He received a doctorate in philology at Lviv in 1908, taught in Baku and in 1919 became Lithuania’s consul in Azerbaijan. From 1922 he taught Slavic literature at the University of Lithuania, and he is counted a classic of Lithuanian literature. After the Soviet occupation of June 1940 he joined the “People’s Government” as foreign minister and acting prime minister, but on the night of 1 July Molotov told him in Moscow that all the Baltic states had to join the Soviet Union; he returned and resigned. In 1941 he became the first president of the Lithuanian SSR Academy of Sciences. In July 1944 he left for Austria before the Soviets returned, and from 1947 he taught at the University of Pennsylvania until his death in 1954.
Career timeline
- 1908Doctorate in philology, University of Lviv
- 1919Lithuanian consul in Azerbaijan
- 1922Professor of Slavic literatures, University of Lithuania
- 1940Foreign minister and acting prime minister of the People’s Government
- 1947–1953Taught at the University of Pennsylvania
Lithuania's first prime minister, later leader of the far-right Iron Wolf
Dissolving the Seimas in 1928, he quipped that he had promised to hold elections but had made no promise about the year.
Prime minister and foreign minister of Lithuania's first cabinet in November 1918, he later fought the Vilnius question in Paris and at the League of Nations. Prime minister again after the 1926 coup, he led the far-right Iron Wolf, broke with Smetona and died in a Soviet prison in 1942.
Career timeline
- 1910Master's degree in history and philology, St. Petersburg University
- 1916Professor at Perm University; joined the Party of National Progress
- 1918First prime minister and foreign minister (Nov); head delegate to the Paris Peace Conference
- 1918–1920Foreign minister in successive cabinets
- 1926Member of the Third Seimas; prime minister and foreign minister after the December coup
- 1928Border treaty with Germany; de facto leader of the far-right Iron Wolf
- 1929Ousted by President Smetona and exiled
- 1934–1938Imprisoned after the failed coup; exiled to France in 1938
Catholic bishop of Telšiai in Lithuania, executed in 1946 on charges that included supporting the partisans
Born to a family of well-off Lithuanian farmers, he studied in Saint Petersburg, at the Sejny Priest Seminary and at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In the First World War he was a chaplain in the Russian Imperial Army, and from 1927 he was rector of the Telšiai priest seminary until the Soviet occupation closed it in 1940. He became bishop of Telšiai in 1943 and refused to retreat to the West in 1944. Accused of anti-Soviet activities including support for the partisans, he was arrested by the NKVD in December 1945 and again in February 1946, and refused an offer of a pardon in exchange for cooperation. Sentenced to death for treason on 28 August 1946, he is believed to have been executed on 18 November and was buried in a mass grave at Tuskulėnai Manor in Vilnius. At his trial three Jews testified that he had helped Jews hide. His beatification process began in 1990.
Career timeline
- 1910Ordained priest
- 1916–1917Chaplain of the 10th Army of the Russian Imperial Army
- 1927–1940Rector of the Telšiai priest seminary
- 1943Became bishop of Telšiai
- 1946Arrested by the NKVD and executed
