Background
Grinius was born in Selema, near Marijampolė, in the Augustów Governorate of Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania).
Grinius was born in Selema, near Marijampolė, in the Augustów Governorate of Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania).
He studied medicine at the University of Moscow and became a physician.
In 1896 he was one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania (Lithuanian Social Democratic Party). Foreign some time they lived in Virbalis. During World War I they lived in Kislovodsk.
They were buried in Kislovodsk cemetery.
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.
(Smetona took the Presidency after two others held the office for less than a day each)
When Nazi Germany invaded Lithuania in 1941, Grinius refused to collaborate with the Germans because of his opposition to the occupation of Lithuania by any foreign power. He fled to the West, when the Soviet army reoccupied Lithuania in 1944, and emigrated to the United States in 1947.
He died in Chicago, Illinois, in 1950.
After Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, his remains were returned and buried there.
As a young man, he became involved in Lithuanian political activities, and was persecuted by the Tsarist authorities. When Lithuania regained its independence in 1918, Grinius became a member of the National Assembly as a member of the Peasant Populist Party.