Andrius Bulota

Andrius Bulota (; 16 November 1872 – 16 August 1941) was a Lithuanian lawyer and politician in the Russian Empire. He was a member of the Second and Third Russian State Dumas (1907–1912) and the Russian Constituent Assembly (1918).

Educated at the Saint Petersburg University, Bulota worked at the district court of Tallinn (1898—1903) and then as an attorney. He joined Lithuanian cultural and political life. He supported the publication of Lithuanian newspaper ''Varpas'' and was one of the founders of the Lithuanian Democratic Party. He actively participated in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Great Seimas of Vilnius, and was briefly arrested by the Tsarist police. As a member of the Trudoviks, he was elected to the Second and Third Russian State Dumas. He spoke hundreds of times at the Duma on issues ranging from local Lithuanian matters to introducing a bill granting women equal voting rights. As an attorney, Bulota worked on the defense in several political trials including those of Ilya Fondaminsky, signers of the Vyborg Manifesto, Vincas Kapsukas.

At the outbreak of World War I, Bulota organized aid for the war refugees and traveled to the United States and Canada to raise funds from Lithuanian communities for the relief efforts. Upon return in 1917, as a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, he joined various Russian political institutions, including the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, Provisional Council of the Russian Republic, and Russian Constituent Assembly.

After the Bolshevik takeover, he returned to Lithuania and settled in Marijampolė. There he founded Marijampolė Realgymnasium which was closed by the Lithuanian government in 1925 for supporting communist causes. After his nephew made an attempt on the life of Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras in 1929, Bulota was briefly jailed at the Varniai concentration camp and then ordered to leave Lithuania. He returned to Marijampolė in 1930. After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in June 1940, Bulota joined the new Soviet regime and headed the legal department of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian SSR. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Bulota was arrested and executed in the Ponary massacre on 16 August 1941. Provided by Wikipedia