Antanas Smetona

Antanas Smetona (born Aug. 10, 1874, Ukmergė District, Lithuania, Russian Empire—died Jan. 9, 1944, Cleveland) was a Lithuanian statesman and journalist who in 1919 became the first president of Lithuania and later returned to power as an authoritarian head of state for the last 13 years of his country’s independence.

After the Russian Revolution of 1905 broke out, Smetona, who had recently graduated from law school (1902), became editor of the first Lithuanian daily newspaper, Vilniaus Žinios, and of the Democratic Party’s organ, Lietuvos Ūkininkas; he was also elected to the presidium of the Vilnius Diet, which proclaimed Lithuanian autonomy within the Russian Empire (1905). Although the intensity of political activity declined after the revolution was suppressed, Smetona continued his journalistic career, editing the journal Viltis (1907–13) and founding Vairas (1913), which later became the organ of the Nationalist Party.

During the German military occupation of the country in World War I, Smetona was unanimously elected president (in September 1917) of the Lietuvos Taryba, or Council of Lithuania, and, after the Taryba proclaimed Lithuania’s independence (1918), he served as provisional president of the republic (April 1919–June 1920). In 1921 he served as chairman of the Lithuanian delegation at Riga for the settlement of the Latvian–Lithuanian boundary dispute.

After the military coup d’état of Dec. 16–17, 1926, organized by a right-wing Nationalist group and backed by the Christian Democrats, Smetona was again elected president of the Lithuanian Republic. He was reelected in 1931 and in 1938. On June 15, 1940, when Lithuania was occupied by Soviet forces, he fled to Germany and thence, in March 1941, to the United States.