Vaclovas Bielskis

Vaclovas Bielskis (1 May 1870 – 16 September 1936) was a Lithuanian leftist activist.
Educated as an engineer at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, Bielskis worked at a steal factory in Ukraine until he was able to return to Lithuania in 1905. He settled in Šiauliai where he became an administrator of the estates of Alexandra Zubova (mother of Vladimir Zubov). During World War I, he evacuated to Saint Petersburg where he was an active participant of the February Revolution and chairman of the Petrograd Seimas which attempted to organize a Lithuanian political center in Russia. In 1919, he was people’s commissar of agriculture in the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia (Litbel). In 1923, he returned to Šiauliai where he was director of the Gubernija brewery and was elected to the city’s council as a representative of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania. He was also active in Lithuanian cultural life. He was one of the co-founders and chairmen of the Kultūra Society.