People of the Revolution and the USSR

Lithuania state institutions Nationalism 1874–1944 ✕ Died in a fire

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.

Lithuania state institutions Nationalism 1883–1942 ○ Died in prison

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.

Lithuania state institutions Nationalism 1895–1979 ○ Died in exile

Lithuanian officer and envoy in Berlin who founded the Lithuanian Activist Front behind the June Uprising of 1941

Mobilised into the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War, he was the first to enlist in the Lithuanian armed forces after independence in 1918, and on 1 January 1919 his men raised the Lithuanian flag over Gediminas’ Tower in Vilnius. He became Chief of the General Staff in 1925 but had to resign after opposing the 1926 coup. He was envoy to Germany in 1927–1930 and 1938–1941. After the Soviet occupation of 1940 he founded in Berlin the Lithuanian Activist Front, which sought to restore independence by working with the Nazis; named prime minister of the provisional government in 1941, he was held under house arrest by the Germans. In 1944 he was arrested for a memorandum demanding a Lithuanian government. After the war he settled in the United States, working at the Library of Congress. His antisemitic writings have made dedications in his honour controversial.

Nationalism 1909–1954 ✕ Executed

Officer who founded the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters in 1949 and led the partisan resistance as its chairman

Born in Palanga, he graduated from the War School of Kaunas in 1929 as an artillery officer and studied at the School of Applied Artillery in Fontainebleau, France, in 1936–1938. In the deportations of June 1941 his sister’s whole family was sent to Siberia; under the German occupation he retired rather than serve the Nazis. In 1944 he joined the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, and when the Red Army returned he joined the Lithuanian Liberty Army and the partisans, rising to the leadership. In February 1949 he founded the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters and became its chairman, working to unify the partisan units and give their struggle a legal framework. Paralysed by a cerebral haemorrhage in December 1951, he was arrested on 30 May 1953, interrogated in Moscow by Beria and executed in Butyrka prison in 1954. In 2009 he was officially named the fourth President of Lithuania.

Nationalism 1918–1957 ✕ Executed

Partisan commander “Vanagas” who led the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters from 1952, the last commander to be captured

Born to a Lithuanian immigrant family in New Britain, Connecticut, he came to Lithuania at the age of three. He graduated from the War School of Kaunas in 1940 and worked as a teacher, and after the NKVD pressured him to spy on his students he joined the partisans in early 1945 under the nom de guerre Vanagas (“Hawk”). He commanded the Dainava military district and the Southern Lithuania Region, published underground newspapers, and in 1949 became first deputy chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters. Succeeding Jonas Žemaitis as its leader in 1952, he ordered an end to armed struggle in favour of passive resistance. Betrayed by a former classmate, he was arrested in October 1956, tortured and executed in November 1957. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has alleged that a unit he commanded in the June 1941 uprising took part in killing Jews; the Lithuanian government denies this.

Nationalism 1921–1951 ✕ Killed by the MGB

Lithuanian partisan leader who crossed the Iron Curtain in 1947 to seek Western support and was killed by the MGB after returning

Born to a farming family in the village of Juodbūdis near Kaunas, he joined the Catholic youth organisation Ateitis and the far-right, antisemitic and anti-Soviet Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) at secondary school, and was imprisoned by the NKVD during the Soviet occupation of 1940–1941. After the Red Army returned in 1944 he worked in the Kaunas underground, joined the armed resistance in 1946 and commanded the Birutė brigade of the Tauras military district. At the end of 1947 he crossed the Iron Curtain with partisan documentation for the West, was trained by French intelligence and the CIA, and wrote Fighters for Freedom. Parachuted back by the CIA in 1949–1950, he was killed by the MGB near Pabartupis in the autumn of 1951. According to several witnesses he took part in the Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas in 1941; the Lithuanian government denies this.