page_title: Kipras Bielinis
section_title: Independent Lithuania
hierarchical_section_title: Kipras Bielinis / Biography / Independent Lithuania
caption_attribution_description: English: Kipras Bielinis, member of Šiauliai city concil and member of Seimas, 1918 Šiauliai, Lithuania Lietuvių: Šiaulių tarybos ir seimo narys Kipras Bielinis, 1918 m., Šiauliai
context_page_description: Kipras Bielinis was a Lithuanian politician, one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party in interwar Lithuania.
  Bielinis was a son of Jurgis Bielinis, one of the best known Lithuanian book smugglers. Bielinis attended a gymnasium in Riga, but was expelled for his social-democratic activities. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania and along with Steponas Kairys was one of its leaders until his death. Bielinis was an active participant in the Russian Revolution of 1905 delivering some 30 public anti-Tsarist speeches across Lithuania. He was arrested by the police together with other members of the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party in November 1907 and was sentenced to four years of hard labor and then exile to the Irkutsk Oblast. After the February Revolution, he moved to Petrograd and returned to Lithuania in summer 1918. Bielinis was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania in April 1920, Second Seimas in May 1923, and the Third Seimas in May 1926. A member of the opposition to the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party, he was one of the most active speakers during the parliamentary sessions.
context_section_description: After the February Revolution, the Russian Provisional Government announced an amnesty to political prisoners and Bielinis arrived to Petrograd in summer 1917 where he rejoined the activities of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania. He briefly worked at the Lithuanian section of the People's Commissariat for Nationalities. He returned to Lithuania in summer 1918 and started organizing local administration in Šiauliai. He continued to work at the administration keeping its finances as the city changed hands during the Lithuanian–Soviet War and organized partisan groups to fight the West Russian Volunteer Army. Bielinis helped reestablishing the Social Democratic Party in Lithuania and was named as one of the five board members in its registration with the Lithuanian government. The party faced pressure both from the illegal and more radical Communist Party of Lithuania and the Lithuanian government which treated it with suspicion. Bielinis was among 13 social democrats elected the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania in the April 1920 elections. His election profile stated his profession as bookkeeper.
  Bielinis was an active member of the Constituent Assembly and a member of the parliamentary commissions on local self-governments, finance and budget, and education. He spoke frequently against the new Constitution of Lithuania and particularly its provisions for the President of Lithuania. He believed that a president posed danger to democracy and could lead to absolutism and monarchism. As a member of the opposition to the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party, he spoke frequently against various proposals, e.g. against mandatory religious education in schools, provision of salaries to members of the clergy, or taxation of cooperatives, and presented several interpellations. He was not elected to the First Seimas in October 1922. He then traveled to United States from December 1922 to May 1923 visiting various communities of Lithuanian Americans, delivering speeches, and collecting donations for various social democratic causes in Lithuania. He was reelected to the Second Seimas in May 1923 and the Third Seimas in May 1926. Bielinis was one of the most active speakers during the parliamentary sessions. He spoke 247 times during 130 sessions out of 246 total sessions of the Second Seimas. He most frequently spoke about the state budget and other financial matters. Bielinis and other social democrats protested the coup d'état of December 1926 that brought President Antanas Smetona to power. 
  In addition to parliamentary work, Bielinis and Steponas Kairys were the most prominent leaders of the Lithuanian social democrats. Bielinis was periodically reelected to the central committee of the Social Democratic Party, becoming its chairman in 1923 and 1925. From March 1921 to January 1923, he was also editor-in-chief of the social democratic newspaper Socialdemokratas (Socialdemocrat). After the dismissal of the Third Seimas in March 1927, political activities of the opposition parties were restricted until all parties except for the ruling Lithuanian Nationalist Union were banned in 1936. Bielinis and Kairys attended the 4th congress of the Labour and Socialist International in Vienna in 1931, but more active political work in Lithuania was difficult. They both were briefly arrested in April 1929 when police searched the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party and found copies of the illegal Pirmyn (Forward) newspaper published by the plečkaitininkai. On 1 January 1928, Bielinis became chief of accounting at the Lithuanian Chamber of Agriculture. He also became director of the craft section at the Chamber encouraging traditional crafts such as weaving, knitting, ceramics. Bielinis organized a cooperative Marginiai (Assortment) to sell craft production and was its chairman. In 1921, he co-founded a cooperative book publishing company Kultūra (Culture) in Šiauliai. He was a board member of other cooperatives, including a bank and an insurance company. He was elected chairman of the Health Insurance Fund in Kaunas (these insur
caption: Bielinis in 1918
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