page_title: Juozas Purickis
section_title: Journalists' Union
hierarchical_section_title: Juozas Purickis / Journalism and public work / Journalists' Union
caption_attribution_description: Board of the Lithuanian Journalists' Union. Sitting, from left: V. Rastenis, E. Turauskas. J. Purickis (chairman), J. Gerulaitytė; standing, from left: J. Paleckis, A. Gricius, J. Kardelis, V. Kemežys, A. Bružas.
context_page_description: Juozas Purickis was a prominent diplomat and journalist in interwar Lithuania and served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from June 1920 to December 1921.
  Purickis studied at the Kaunas Priest Seminary and Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, but never practiced or performed pastoral work. He married in 1926 and was officially defrocked in 1929. He continued his studies at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and in 1916 earned his doctorate of theology with a thesis on the Reformation in Lithuania. During World War I, he joined the efforts to establish independent Lithuania – he worked at the Lithuanian Information Bureau established by Juozas Gabrys, raised money for the Lithuanian prisoners of war and war refugees, attended the Lithuanian conferences in Switzerland. Together with Konstantinas Olšauskas, Purickis attended Vilnius Conference and presented on the German proposal to establish Kingdom of Lithuania.
context_section_description: In fall 1925, Purickis was elected as chairman of the board of the Lithuanian Union of Writers and Journalists. In 1929, when the union had 71 members, it was decided to split it into the separate Lithuanian Writers' Union and the Lithuanian Journalists' Union. Purickis became chairman of the new journalists' union and chaired it until his death. During its founding meeting in April 1929, the union declared that it is a professional association that unites journalists regardless of political or religious views. It grew to 101 members in 1932 and 141 members in 1936, and became a member of the International Federation of Journalists. During the last two years, Purickis organized 58 official union meetings and 25 monthly journalists' Thursdays and strictly enforced attendance among the members of the union. In addition, the union organized various events, such as the 100th anniversary celebration of the first Lithuanian periodical Nusidavimai apie evangelijos prasiplatinimą tarp žydų ir pagonių in 1932, annual fundraising balls, educational courses in journalism (at the time, there were no specialized schools or university classes in Lithuania), the first journalist congress in summer 1933.
  The union proposed to create a special pension fund for journalists because many of them worked as independent contractors and were not entitled to any of the state social guarantees. The union also pursued discounts for journalists, such as for public transport tickets, telephone service, theater admission. Purickis particularly cared to increase international cooperation. Together with Edvardas Turauskas, director of the Lithuanian news agency ELTA, he worked to create the Baltic Press Entente between Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian journalists in 1931. During Purickis' tenure, the entente organized three meetings in which journalists discussed cooperation, information exchange, and coordination of political views (this was particularly important for Lithuania as Latvian press often republished anti-Lithuanian texts from Polish periodicals). The Journalists' Union also searched for contacts with journalists in Finland (mostly via writer and diplomat Ignas Šeinius), Czechoslovakia (which had similar anti-Polish foreign policy due to the unresolved Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts), Soviet Union (which was visited by a large group of Lithuanian journalists in 1934), Belgium, United States. Three of Purickis' ideas – publishing a journal on journalism, establishing a disciplinary commission, and building a vacation retreat in Giruliai near Klaipėda – were completed and implemented already after his death.
caption: Board of the Lithuanian Journalists' Union around 1932. Purickis sits third from the left.
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