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- History
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- JONAS
VAILOKAITIS, JUOZAS VAILOKAITIS
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- Prepared
by “Encyclopedia Lituanica”. II. Boston, 1972. P.
23-24
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- VAILOKAITIS,
Jonas (1886-1944), financier and
industrialist, signatory of the Declaration of
Independence, born on June 25, 1886 in Piktzirniai,
county of Sakiai. He was educated at the Institute of
Commerce and Industry in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1912
he and his brother established a bank in Kaunas, which
bought up estates whose owners were no longer able to
maintain them, subdivided the land into smaller units,
and sold them to Lithuanian farmers. This was a way of
impeding the country's colonization, preventing the
Russian government from taking over such estates and
assigning them to Russian colonists. Elected to the
Council of Lithuania during the Vilnius Conference
(1917), he together with the other Council members
signed the Declaration of Independence on Feb. 16, 1918.
In 1920 he was elected on the Christian Democratic Party
ticket to the Constituent Assembly, where he chaired the
finance and budget commission. Subsequently he devoted
himself to business and economic pursuits. He founded
and directed, among others, the following large
concerns: Ukio Bankas in Kaunas; Maistas,
a meat processing plant which in 1925 was sold to a
group of co-operatives; a brickyard, the largest in the
country; the joint-stock company Metalas; a
wholesale textile trading company; import-export
companies. With these establishments he contributed
greatly to the development of Lithuania's agriculture,
trade, and industry. At the time of the first Soviet
occupation in 1940 he withdrew to Germany, where he died
on Dec. 16, 1944 in Blankenburg.
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- VAILOKAITIS,
Juozas (1880-1953), Roman Catholic priest and
economist, born in Piktzirniai, county of Sakiai, on
Dec. 17, 1880. He studied at the Theological Seminary of
Seinai and took his master's degree at the Theological
Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was ordained
priest (1905). From 1907-10 he was editor of the
Catholic weekly Saltinis (The Source), in the
pages of which he took a stand against Russian rule in
Lithuania. For these unfavorable articles the government
brought him to trial several times, sentencing him to
monetary fines or imprisonment. During World War I he
lived in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg), where he
organized and headed the Peasants' Union (Liaudies
Sajunga), an organization that brought together
Lithuanian Catholic workers in the Russian capital;
edited the newspaper Vadas (The Leader); and as
soon as circumstances permitted, he assisted Lithuanian
war refugees to return to their country. Not long after
his own return, he was arrested by the Bolsheviks when
they occupied Vilnius in 1919; he and several others who
had been arrested at the same time were released in
exchange for communist agents. In 1920 he was elected to
the Constituent Assembly and in 1922 to the First
Parliament, both times on the Farmers' Union ticket.
Besides his duties as priest and his work in Catholic
action, he was actively involved with rebuilding the
economy of Lithuania; he worked closely with his brother
Jonas Vailokaitis in financial and industrial
establishments. He was a generous benefactor of
charitable and cultural organizations and provided the
funds for about 200 student scholarships. During the
first Soviet occupation he was deported to Siberia in
1941 and was returned to Lithuania in 1953. He died in
Pastuva, county of Kaunas, on Aug. 2, 1953.
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