Jonas Budrys

Jonas Budrys (born Jonas Polovinskas, 10 May 1889 – 11 September 1964) was a counterintelligence officer and later a Lithuanian diplomat. He is best known as the commander of Lithuanian forces during the Klaipėda Revolt in January 1923. The region was a League of Nations mandate administered by the French. Budrys led a small Lithuanian military force into the region and successfully took control. Klaipėda was incorporated into Lithuania as an autonomous region. After the revolt, Budrys served as Lithuania's representative to the region and its first governor until 1925. He was later Lithuanian consul to East Prussia and New York City. His son, Algis Budrys, became a science fiction writer.

Early life Polovinskas was born in Kaunas in 1889 but grew up on a nearby farm. Despite the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in June 1940, the consulate continued to function as a diplomatic representative of independent pre-war Lithuania thus preserving legal state continuity of Lithuania. Budrys continued to serve as the consul until his death from a heart attack in 1964.

In New York, Budrys published English-language Short Economic Outline of Lithuania (1938). His memoirs about his counterintelligence work in 1921–1923 were published posthumously in Brooklyn and Hartford (1967) and republished in Lithuania in 1991.