Vladas Mironas (; 22 June 1880 – 18 February 1953) was a Lithuanian Catholic priest and politician. He was one of the twenty signatories of the Act of Independence of Lithuania and served as the Prime Minister of Lithuania from March 1938 to March 1939.
Mironas attended Mitau Gymnasium where his classmate was Antanas Smetona. They became friends and Mironas spent most of his life supporting Smetona's political ambitions. After graduating from the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy, Mironas was ordained priest in 1904 and joined the Lithuanian cultural life in Vilnius. He was a member and co-founder of numerous Lithuanian societies and organizations, including the Lithuanian Education Society Rytas. He attended the Great Vilnius Seimas in 1905. He was a parish priest of Choroszcz (1907–1910), Valkininkai (1910–1914), and Daugai (from 1914). In 1917, he attended Vilnius Conference and was elected to the Council of Lithuania as its second vice-chairman. On 16 February 1918, he signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania. In late 1918, Mironas joined the Party of National Progress which merged into the Lithuanian Nationalist Union and was continuously elected to its leadership. He was elected to the Third Seimas in May 1926.
The coup d'état in December 1926 brought the Nationalist Union to power and Smetona became the President of Lithuania. In 1929, Mironas became the chief chaplain of the Lithuanian Army helping ensure its loyalty to Smetona. He had substantial influence in the new regime and handled some sensitive tasks, including attempting to mediate the conflict between Smetona and Augustinas Voldemaras. His contemporary diplomat Petras Klimas referred to Mironas as the éminence grise (grey eminence) of Smetona. Mironas became the successor of Juozas Tūbelis (Smetona's brother-in-law) as the Prime Minister of Lithuania after the Polish ultimatum in March 1938 and as the chairman of the Lithuanian Nationalists Union in January 1939. Mironas considered the duties of Prime Minister to be a "heavy and unbearable burden" and his government did not introduce any significant reforms. He was replaced by Jonas Černius after the German ultimatum and the loss of the Klaipėda Region in March 1939.
Mironas then retired from politics. After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in June 1940, Mironas was arrested by the NKVD in September 1940 but was freed from Kaunas Prison at the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. He was arrested again by the Soviets in August 1944 and agreed to became an informant. However, he was reluctant to cooperate and withheld information. He was arrested in January 1947 and sentenced to seven years in prison. He died at the Vladimir Central Prison in 1953.
Biography Early life and education Vladas Mironas was born on 22 June 1880 in near Čedasai in the present-day northern Lithuania. He had at least four brothers. The eldest brother Antanas inherited family's farm of about .
After attending a primary school in Panemunis, Mironas enrolled at Mitau Gymnasium in 1892. At the time, a number of future prominent Lithuanians were students at the gymnasium. They included Antanas Smetona, Mykolas Sleževičius, Juozas Tūbelis, Vladas Stašinskas, Petras Avižonis, . Their teachers included the Lithuanian linguist Jonas Jablonskis who gathered various Lithuanian intellectuals, supported and distributed the banned Lithuanian publications, organized Lithuanian activities. 33 Lithuanian students (including Smetona and Mironas) were expelled from the gymnasium for refusing to pray in Russian. Smetona and two others managed to secure an audience with Ivan Delyanov, Minister of National Education, who allowed the Lithuanians to pray in Latin and the expelled students to continue their education.
Mironas did not return to Mitau and transferred to Vilnius Priest Seminary in 1897. There he joined a secret group of Lithuanian clerics organized by Jurgis Šaulys. The group shared Lithuanian publications to learn more about Lithuanian language, culture, and history. In 1901, he continued his studies at the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy where he earned a candidate degree (he needed another year to get a master's degree in theology). In 1904, Mironas was ordained as a priest and assigned as a chaplain to several schools in Vilnius.
Activist in the Russian Empire In Vilnius Mironas joined the Lithuanian cultural life in Vilnius. In 1905, he published a Lithuanian translation of two Catholic textbooks by Dionizy Bączkowski which were printed by the Józef Zawadzki printing shop. The same year, together with other priests, he submitted a petition to Bishop of Vilnius Eduard von der Ropp to allow masses and sermons in the Lithuanian language (at the time, only the Church of Saint Nicholas, Vilnius, conducted services in Lithuanian).
In December 1905, Mironas attended the Great Seimas of Vilnius which discussed Lithuania's political future. He represented the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party and helped organizing its meetings after the Seimas, but did not officially join the party. Mironas participated in the founding meeting of the Constitutional Catholic Party of Lithuania and Belarus organized by Bishop von der Ropp. He was elected to its presidium and managed to add the issue of Lithuania's autonomy to its political program, but quickly withdrew from the party as it was dominated by Poles who did not support Lithuanian political ambitions.
Mironas financially supported and otherwise assisted with the publishing of Lithuanian periodicals Vilniaus žinios as well as Viltis and Vairas (edited by Smetona). He also assisted with the establishment of various Lithuanian societies, including the Society of Saint Casimir that published Lithuanian books, organizational committee of the First Lithuanian Art Exhibition, the Lithuanian Mutual Aid Society of Vilnius, Society Vilniaus Aušra (predecessor of the Lithuanian Education Society Rytas). Further, he was a member of the Lithuanian Scientific Society and Rūta Society which organized amateur theater performances.
Vilnius region In 1907, bishop von der Ropp was exiled to Tbilisi. Lithuanian activists decided to send a delegation to Pope Pius X to request that a Lithuanian would be appointed as the next Bishop of Vilnius. Mironas was selected as a member of the delegation. Perhaps in retaliation for this, he was reassigned from Vilnius to Choroszcz by the diocese administrator Kazimierz Mikołaj Michalkiewicz. This assignment far from Lithuanian cultural centers interrupted Mironas's public work. In 1910, he was reassigned as parish priest to Valkininkai (at the same time, he was the dean of Merkinė) which allowed him to resume public work.
In October 1911, together with Alfonsas Petrulis and Jonas Navickas, Mironas established a publishing company that published newspaper Aušra every two weeks (142 issues published before it was discontinued in 1915). The newspaper was intended for Lithuanians living in Vilnius area. In 1912, he established a local chapter of the Lithuanian Catholic Temperance Society. In January 1913, Mironas was elected to the board of the newly established Lithuanian Education Society Rytas which organized and maintained Lithuanian primary schools. Mironas personally assisted with the establishments of 28 such schools. In February 1913, he was elected an honorary member of the Society of Saint Zita of Lithuanian female servants.
At the end of 1914, Mironas was reassigned to the Daugai parish. There, he established a chapter of the Lithuanian Society for the Relief of War Sufferers. Using his status within the Roman Catholic Church, he was able to travel more freely and procure supplies for the war refugees. He also continued to work on establishing Lithuanian primary schools (about 90 schools were established by a committee he chaired). As the war progressed, he was drawn into political discussions. In July 1917, he was one of the 19 signatories of a memorandum to the German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg in which Lithuanians defended themselves against Polish territorial ambitions.
Council of Lithuania
As German military advances stalled, German leadership rethought their strategy for occupied Lithuania. The policy of open annexation was replaced by a more subtle strategy of creating a network of formally independent states under German influence (the so-called Mitteleuropa). To that end, Germans asked Lithuanians to establish an advisory council (Vertrauensrat). Mironas became a member of the 22-member organizing committee which organized the Vilnius Conference which in turn elected the 20-member Council of Lithuania in September 1917. Mironas was elected second vice-chairman the council (Smetona was its chairman).
Mironas attended most of the sessions of the council. He also chaired ten meetings in January 1918 when council members held heated political debates regarding the Act of 11 December 1917 which called for "a firm and permanent alliance" with Germany. Smetona and Mironas supported the act and argued with four leftist members who resigned in protest. After heated debates, Smetona stepped down as chairman and Mironas stepped down as vice-chairman of the council on 15 February and the Act of Independence of Lithuania was adopted on 16 February 1918. While Smetona returned as chairman of the council, Mironas refused leadership positions and remained just a member.
Mironas supported the idea of monarchy in Lithuania and voted for inviting Wilhelm Karl, Duke of Urach, to become the King of Lithuania. During 1918, the Council of Lithuania became involved in selecting the new Bishop of Vilnius. Reportedly, Mironas was considered as a candidate, but he refused. Eventually, Jurgis Matulaitis-Matulevičius was selected as a compromise between conflicting Polish and Lithuanian ambitions.
Independent Lithuania Outside the government As Lithuania worked to establish its independence, Mironas continued to serve as a priest in Daugai. During the Polish–Lithuanian War, he was briefly arrested by Poland in August and December 1919. In March–June 1920, Mironas and Jonas Vileišis toured various communities of Lithuanian Americans collecting donations. During the May 1923 elections to the Second Seimas, Mironas served as a chairman of the local electoral committee in Daugai. During the September 1923 census, he chaired census committees in Daugai, Varėna, and .
In late 1918, Mironas joined the Party of National Progress which merged into the Lithuanian Nationalist Union and was repeatedly elected to its leadership. He devoted efforts to managing its finances, administration, and publications. Mironas ran as a candidate to the First Seimas in October 1922, but the party fared poorly and no members of the Nationalist Union were elected. Together with Antanas Smetona and Augustinas Voldemaras, Mironas was elected to the Third Seimas in May 1926. However, he did not speak during any of the Seimas sessions. His ecclesiastical superiors disapproved of his political activities because he did not join the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party. Bishop Juozapas Kukta removed him as dean of Merkinė. Mironas then moved to Kaunas and become more involved in politics.
Adjacent to the government The December 1926 coup brought the Lithuanian Nationalist Union to power. Antanas Smetona become the President while Augustinas Voldemaras became the Prime Minister. In September 1927, Mironas was elected to the central committee of the Nationalist Union and was tasked with editing its magazine . He was also one of the leaders of the Pažanga publishing company that published Lietuvos aidas, the official newspaper of the Lithuanian government, and other publications of the Nationalist Union. Despite being involved with publishing periodicals, he wrote very little – only 11 articles by him are known between 1911 and 1934.