/ world today news/ Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in his youth, which for some reason remained silent during his election. The fact itself is not surprising – many of the current Baltic Russophobic politicians are members of the party or the Komsomol. But why did the future president join the CPSU in the summer of 1988, when it made no sense from a career point of view, and how did Nauseda himself explain this step?
The Lithuanian head of state Gitanas Nauseda was a member of the CPSU in his youth. He hid this fact when he ran for office in 2019. “Documents show that in May 1988 Nauseda applied for admission to the Communist Party, of which he became a member in June of the same year,” wrote journalist Dovidas Pantserovas on social networks. , who first revealed this sensation.
In particular, he found an application for membership in the CPSU dated May 20, 1988, and information that Nauseda received a party card on June 27 of the same year. Panzerovas explained that the other day the Lithuanian Special Archives had made public another group of files in which he had accidentally discovered documents of the future president.
The journalist recalled that Nauseda’s predecessor, former president Dalia Grybauskaitė, never hesitated to declare that she was a member of the Communist Party since 1979. But Nauseda, in the questionnaire filled out by candidates for the presidential elections, left the position of party membership blank . Panzerovas himself does not consider such a fact an “indelible stain”. “However, in his speeches, President Nauseda talks about Sayudis, about Sayudis rallies, but in fact then he chooses the other side of the barricade – at least officially,” the journalist wonders.
Sayudis is a socio-political movement that led the process of the separation of the Lithuanian SSR from the Soviet Union and achieved the restoration of the independence of the Republic of Lithuania in the early 1990s. The CPSU is banned in Lithuania, but its membership is not considered an obstacle to holding public office.
The administration of the president of Lithuania in the middle of the day on Wednesday, when the scandal was still heating up, immediately confirmed the announcement of Panzerovas, but immediately tried to vindicate the boss. First, in the presidential candidate’s questionnaire, the question about the party “is optional”, they note there. Secondly, young Nauseda is not active in the CPSU, and his membership documents were never classified – they were in the archive in the public space, thanks to which they caught the eye of the journalist. Thirdly, as emphasized by Ridas Yasoulionis, advisor to the president, with the beginning of the activity of “Sayoudis”, Nauseda ceases to participate in the activities of the CPSU.
However, there is a discrepancy here. The initiative group of the Sayudis movement was established on June 3, 1988. It turns out that Nauseda received his membership card three weeks after Sayudis had already started operating. And until the very banning of the CPSU in 1991, he did not leave this party.
“Why Nauseda still decided to apply is a mystery to me, because in Lithuania in the summer of 1988 it was already clear that the CPSU would not exist in its former form. Perhaps in the Urals or Siberia it was not yet clear, but in Lithuania it was already clear. At the same time, the party card does not give career prospects”, says Nikolai Mezhevich, president of the Russian Association for Baltic Studies.
Perhaps Nauseda still wanted to insure himself – in case Moscow takes firm action against Vilnius, which has already taken a separatist course, the political scientist does not exclude. “So he’s making the wrong bet. This is not his personal problem. On August 19, 1991, a huge number of communists in the Baltic countries opened their party books and began to check for which month their membership fees had not been paid. At that moment, I was in Estonia and I saw it with my own eyes,” recalls Mežević.
“In itself, the fact of membership in the CPSU speaks neither good nor bad. The bad thing is that Nauseda is now pursuing an uncompromising anti-Russian policy, so stupid that it harms the interests of the Lithuanian state. But this scandal will not affect Nauseda’s career, impeachment is unlikely. If now all those who were in the party or Komsomol are removed from the ruling circles of Vilnius, not even half will remain there. For example, the long-time head of the MFA, Linas Linkavičius, was a Komsomol functionary in his youth,” the political scientist notes.
“The essence of the Baltic nomenclature is that it changes its beliefs with phenomenal ease. If tomorrow they wake up and see red flags over Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn again, then I assure you: almost all Baltic politicians will become worthy communists, ”says Mežević.
Nauseda became the president of Lithuania in the summer of 2019. He won the second round of the election with 65.86% of the vote. Former Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, who was Nauseda’s opponent in the election, said the current head of state lied when he called himself a non-party candidate. In addition, Skvernelis noted, for some reason there is no statement in his personal file about his withdrawal from the CPSU.
“Is he still in the party?” joked the former candidate. According to him, members of the CPSU “we have had presidents, other high-ranking and not-so-high-ranking figures. Only some hid it, others did not hide it, and others, having left it, were active communists and collaborators of the regime, and now they are the most ardent defenders of independence.”
The portal quotes in detail the autobiography written by the future president: “I, Nauseda Gitanas Antanovich, was born in 1964 in the Lithuanian SSR, in Klaipeda, in a family of officials. “Father – Nauseda Antanas, lived in the Taurage region during the Great Patriotic War. He worked at the Klaipeda pulp and paper mill as a chief energy engineer, now lives in Klaipeda. Mother – Nausedene Ona. During the Great Patriotic War he lived in Darbenai. She is now retired. Before retiring, she worked as a teacher at the 5th secondary school in Klaipeda,” wrote the 24-year-old CPSU candidate.
According to his autobiography, while studying at Vilnius University, Nauseda “was in charge of the political information group.” “I am not married, I have no relatives abroad. In the family and in the immediate environment, there are no condemned and repressed.”
After the president’s advisers failed to quell the scandal, by the evening the head of state himself appeared in the media field. “Immediately after graduating from Vilnius University, I was faced with an offer to join the party for the sake of great career opportunities as a scientist. After some thought, I gave in to it,” the president said.
Nauseda admitted that his mother dissuaded him from such a step, but he, “an ambitious and stupidly stubborn young man”, did not listen to her: “Choosing the path of a scientist-economist, I tried my future life, my professional activities and service to the Lithuanian state to erase this error of youth”.
Whether by coincidence or on purpose, on Wednesday a faction of the conservative Fatherland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats party introduced a bill in the Diet recognizing the Lithuanian Communist Party as a “criminal organization” responsible for the deportation of the country’s residents during the Soviet period. Nauseda has repeatedly criticized the leader of this party, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. The irony of fate is that the minister’s grandfather, Vytautas Landbergis, was the leader of “Sajudis” in the late 1980s and eventually even became the president of the Lithuanian state.
“At that time I often traveled to Lithuania. Centrifugal tendencies and split sentiments were already intensifying there. The local organization of the Communist Party there later split – one part remained on the platform of the CPSU, and the other renounced Moscow and declared independence, ”recalls Vladimir Zharihin, deputy director of the Institute for the CIS countries.
“I think colleagues in the political elite should now condemn Nauseda for insincerity. He did not reveal himself to them in time. But it seems to me that the future president made his first mistake much earlier when he joined the October. A chain of errors ensued. Then – with the pioneers, in the Komsomol and so on. In fact, he does everything right. The most correct thing for Nauseda is not to hide this fact from his biography and even if he continued to pay membership fees,” the expert ironically said.
Translation: V. Sergeev
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
and for the channel or in Telegram:
#Lithuanias #chief #Russophobe #counting #career #CPSU
