- GRINIUS Kazys (1866-1950),
third Presiden of the Republic of Lithuania, born in Salema, county
of Marijampole, on Dec. 17, 1866. He was the son of Vincas and Ona
(Vosyliute) Grinius, who owned a medium-sized farm of 18 ha and
raised 9 children. After gradulating from high school in
Marijampole, he studied medicine at the University of Moscow from
1887-1893. His first assignment as a practicing physician | was in a
division of the Russian fleet located in the Caspian Sea. Upon
returning to Lithuania in 1894, he undertook private practice in
Suduva (southern Lithuania), mainly in the city of Marijampole,
where he asserted himself not only as a popular physician, but also
as a leader in the Lithuanian national movement.
- Grinius joined the Lithuanian
resistance against the Tsarist regime while still in high school. He
belonged to a club of patriotic Lithuanian students, reading and
propagating outlawed Lithuanian newspapers (see Press Ban). In
Moscow he was a member of the secret Lithuanian Student Association,
serving as its president from 1891-1892. Later, as a young
practitioner of medicine, he threw himself info underground
activities in southern Lithuania, and his offices (in Marijampole,
Virbalis, Naumiestis, Pilviskiai) became stations for purveyors of
the underground press and for fugitives from police persecution and
prisons. Grinius profession provided good cover for these
clandestine activities, as it made it difficult for Russian secret
police to distinguish between bona fide patients and fighters
of the resistance. Even so, Grinius did not escape arrest by the
Tsarist administration in 1906, 1908, 1910 and 1911.
- Grinius was an important member of a
group of national liberals known as varpininkai, who
consisted of contributors, editors, patrons and subscribers of the
monthly Varpas (The Bell, 1889-1905). The founder and editor
of the newspaper was Vincas Kudirka (q.v.), whose closest friend and
collaborator was Grinius. The latter helped in raising funds for the
newspaper, solicited subscriptions, wrote articles and took over the
editorship after Kudirka's death in 1899. Some of the activists
grouped around Varpas founded the Democratic Party of Lithuania in
1902, which later changed its name to the Peasant Populist Union.
Grinius was one of its leaders, actively participating in the
working out of its programs and for some time editing its organ, the
daily Lietuvos zinios (News of Lithuania).
- When the outcome of the 1905 revolt
brought more cultural freedom to Lithuania, Grinius and his first
wife Joana (Pavalkyte) helped establish a
Lithuanian theater, a chorus, and an elementary school in
Marijampole and led the fight to legalize the cultural association Sviesa
(The Light), which acquired 15 chapters and over 1,500 members.
After the beginning of World War I Grinius and his family retreated
to Russia, where his wife and daughter Graiina perished in the civil
war. In 1919 he reached France via Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea,
and served as chairman of the Lithuanian repatriation commission in
Paris for half a year. About 1,000 Lithuanians were returned from
Germany to their homeland, including prisoners of war and others
arrested and drafted into concentration camps.
- Having returned to Lithuania, Grinius
was elected in 1920 to the Constituent Assembly and to the next
three parliaments (1922-26). From June 19, 1920 to Feb. 1, 1922, he
was prime minister. His administration concluded two significant
international agreements. The first was a peace treaty between
Lithuania and Soviet Russia, made in Moscow on June 12, 1920,
whereby Soviet Russia recognized the sovereignty of the Lithuanian
State and forever renounced all rights to Lithuanian territory as
defined by that treaty. The second was an armistice convention with
Poland signed at Suvalkai (Suwaiki) on Oct. 7, 1920. Two days later
Poland violated this convention by occupying a large part of eastern
Lithuania, including the capital city Vilnius (Q.v.). The boundary
between Lithuania and Latvia was determined by arbitration in 1921.
- In the parliamentary elections of
1926, the Peasant Populist Union won a plurality of seats (22 out of
85) and formed a coalition government with the Social Democrats and
several national minority parties. On June 7, 1926 this
left-of-center majority elected Grinius as President of the
Republic, with Mykolas Slezevicius, another Peasant Populist Union
leader, as prime minister. Their administration negotiated another
important treaty with the Soviet Union, namely the non-aggression
pact of Sept. 28, 1926. Although relatively successful in foreign
policy, the Grinius-Slezevicius regime roused opposition on the home
front by its liberal policy of allowing considerable latitude to the
activities of extremist elements on the left. In consequence, a
number of military officers, supported by some
- of the parties which had lost in the
1926 elections, executed a bloodless coup d'etat on the night
of Dec. 16-17, 1926. President Grinius was compelled to resign, and
an era of authoritarian government was inaugurated in Lithuania.
- Grinius returned to his old duties in
the municipal administration of Kaunas, where he had worked from
- 1922-1926 as director of Health
Services, a post in which he continued until 1935. An advocate of
the principles of preventive medicine, he urged efforts on
a national scale to combat the causes of disease and to improve
housing, working, and nutrition conditions. He devoted particular
attention to tuberculosis and to the mortality of infants and
mothers. For 20 years he served as chairman of the anti-tuberculosis
society, which maintained several sanatoriums, dispensaries and
cummer colonies. The tubercular sanatorium in Kaunas was named after
him. From 1923-1939 he was chairman of an association called Pieno
Lasas (Drop of Milk), which concerned itself with care for
children and mothers. Grinius was a member and consultant of several
other organizations devoted to social work and medical service. He
wrote over 200 articles on topics of medicine and hygiene, besides
editing several
periodicals in these fields.
- In 1942, during the German occupation,
Grinius and two other political leaders, Prof. J. Aleksa and Msgr.
M. Krupavicius, presented the German authorities in Kaunas with a
memorandum outlining German actions that were unacceptable to
Lithuanians, including the killing of Jews and the expropriation of
Lithuanian farms. The German authorities responded by deporting
Grinius to a remote village under police supervision; his advanced
age saved him from arrest, but the other two signatories were
deported to Germany and likewise kept under police supervision. In
the summer of 1944, when the Russian army drove out the Germans and
reoccupied Lithuania in turn, Grinius withdrew to the West and found
shelter at the Displaced Persons' camp at Hanau. In 1947 he
emigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago, Illinois. For
some time he represented his party in the International Peasant
Union. He died in Chicago on June 4, 1950, and lies buried in the
Lithuanian National Cemetery. Two volumes of his Memoirs were
published, in Tubingen (1947) and in Chicago (1962).
-
Text from the ENCYCLOPEDIA
LITUANICA I-VI. Boston, 1970-1978
Kazys Grinius (December 17, 1866 in Selema - April
4, 1950 in Chicago). Supporter and ideologist of the creation of the
democratic state system and civic society in Lithuania. One of the
founders of the Lithuanian Democratic Party in 1902, he took part in
drafting its program. Author of the 1906 Program of the Party. The third
President of the Republic of Lithuania (June-December 1926). Ideologist of
the liberal wing of the Lithuanian national movement, contributor to the Varpas
newspaper, member of its editorial committee and one of the editors.