Liudas Adomauskas

Liudas Adomauskas (8 April 1880 – 16 August 1941) was a Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest turned communist activist and politician.

Ordained priest in 1903, he became a socialist sympathizer during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He renounced his priesthood in 1921 and joined the Communist Party of Lithuania. However, he was soon arrested and released in 1934. After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in June 1940, he joined the new communist government becoming chairman of the People's Seimas, People's Commissar of State Control, and judge of the Supreme Court of the Lithuanian SSR. After the German Nazi occupation of Lithuania, he was executed in the Ponary massacre.

Biography Russian Empire Adomauskas was born on 8 April 1880 in near Salantai, then part of the Russian Empire. In 1898–1903, he studied at the Kaunas Priest Seminary. He was ordained in 1903. In 1903–1914, he served as a vicar in various towns in Lithuania (Kelmė, Rietavas, Raguva, Tryškiai, Anykščiai). In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, he became a chaplain in the Imperial Russian Army. He returned to Lithuania in May 1918, and served as a vicar in Palonai until he renounced priesthood in 1921.