The 150th Birth Anniversary of Kazys Grinius

Dr. Kazys Grinius (1866-1950) was the third and the last democratically elected president of the inter-war Lithuania. When Lithuania regained its independence in 1918, Grinius became a member of the National Assembly as a member of the Peasant Populist Party. He served as Prime Minister from 1920 until 1922, and signed a treaty with the Soviet Union. He was elected President by the Third Seimas, but served for only six months, as he was deposed in a coup led by Antanas Smetona, under the pretext that there was an imminent communist plot to take over Lithuania.