Aleksandras Stulginskis, Date of Birth, Date of Death

    

Aleksandras Stulginskis

Second President of Lithuania (from 19 June 1920 until 7 June 1926)

Date of Birth: 26-Feb-1885

Date of Death: 22-Sep-1969

Profession: politician, farmer, diplomat, journalist

Nationality: Lithuania

Zodiac Sign: Pisces


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About Aleksandras Stulginskis

  • Aleksandras Stulginskis [?l??k's?^?ndr?s st?l?'g??^n?s?k??s] (listen) (February 26, 1885 – September 22, 1969) was the second President of Lithuania (1920–1926).
  • Stulginskis was also acting President of Lithuania for a few hours later in 1926, following a military coup that was led by his predecessor, President Antanas Smetona, and which had brought down Stulginskis's successor, Kazys Grinius.
  • The coup returned Smetona to office after Stulginskis's brief formal assumption of the Presidency. He began his theological studies in Kaunas and continued in Innsbruck, Austria.
  • However, he decided not to become a priest and moved to the Institute of Agricultural Sciences in University of Halle.
  • He graduated in 1913 and returned to Lithuania.
  • There he started to work as a farmer.
  • He published many articles on agronomy in Lithuanian press.
  • In 1918 he started to publish journals Ukininkas ("Farmer") and Ukininko kalendorius ("Farmer's Calendar"). During World War I he moved to Vilnius.
  • He was one of the founders of the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party and the head of its Central Committee in 1917.
  • He signed the memorandum for the president Woodrow Wilson, addressing the question of the recognition of the Lithuanian statehood by the United States.
  • Contrary to Smetona's views, Stulginskis was oriented towards the Entente.
  • He was one of co-organizers of the Vilnius Conference.
  • After, he was elected to the Council of Lithuania. On February 16, 1918, he signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania.
  • He was an advocate of the democratic republic as the form of the Lithuanian state.
  • Thus, he strongly opposed the idea of monarchy (actually, Mindaugas II was the King of Lithuania from 11 July to 2 November 1918).
  • In independent Lithuania Stulginskis was in charge of organizing the national army to defend the country against the aggressions of Bolsheviks and Poles. Many times served as a minister, May 1920 – 1922 he was Speaker of the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania and thus acting president of the republic.
  • 1922-1926 he was the second President of Lithuania.
  • Stulginskis was Speaker of the Seimas 1926-1927. He withdrew from politics in 1927, and worked on his farm.
  • In 1941 Stulginskis and his wife were arrested by the Soviet NKVD and deported to a gulag in the Krasnoyarsk region, while his wife was deported to the Komi area.
  • After World War II in 1952 he was officially sentenced by the Soviet authorities to 25 years in prison for his anti-socialist and clerical policies in pre-war Lithuania. Released after Joseph Stalin's death in 1956, he was allowed to emigrate, yet he refused and returned to Lithuanian SSR.
  • Stulginskis settled in Kaunas, where he died on September 22, 1969, aged 84, the last of the Signatories of the Act of Independence of Lithuania.

Read more at Wikipedia

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