Jonas Biliunas

Born Mar. 3, 1879, in the village of Niuroniai, now Anikščiai Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died Dec. 8, 1907, in Zakopane, Poland. (His remains were transferred to Aniksciai in 1953.) Lithuanian writer.

Son of a peasant, Biliunas was expelled from the University of Dorpat for revolutionary activity. He was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania. In 1903 he went abroad and studied in Leipzig and Zurich. He appeared in print in 1898. Biliunas was the first writer in Lithuanian literature to portray the workers and the growth of their class consciousness—the short stories “Unemployed” (1903) and “The First Strike” (1903). The short stories “Lamp of Happiness” (1905) and “On the Neman” (1905) and the novella A Sad Story (1907) depict the hard life of the toilers and the struggle with the exploiters.