Gitanas Nauseda, current President of Lithuania, exposed as former member of USSR Communist Party

It has been revealed that Gitanas Nauseda, the current President of Lithuania, is a former member of the Communist Party of the USSR.

According to information published on social this Wednesday, April 5, by journalist Dovydas Pancerovas, the current President of Lithuania, Gitanas Nauseda, was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

“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”, Pantserovas wrote, as reported by gazeta.ru.

As evidence to back up his claim, the journalist cited fragments of documents recently published by the special archive of the republic. According to this information, during the period when anti-communist rallies of the Sąjudis movement were taking place in the country, Nauseda joined the Communist Party.

His application for admission to the CPSU was apparently submitted on May 20, 1988, and his party card was subsequently issued on June 27 of the same year.

When running for President in 2019, Nauseda did not fill out the party membership item on his application form. However, that is not mandatory. As a result of the information made public by Pancerovas, the political opponents of the Lithuanian leader have reproached him over this fact.

The Communist Party is banned in Lithuania, but membership in it before the cessation of activity in 1991 is not an obstacle to occupying top posts. Pancerovas himself believes that membership in the CPSU is not an ‘indelible stain’ on the official’s biography.

Nauseda publicly associates himself with Sąjudis, which, according to Pancerovas, “is somewhat inconsistent with the fact that he joined the opposite camp”.

Commenting on the situation, the office of the President of Lithuania stated that all documents on Nauseda’s membership in the Communist Party, “in which he was not active”, are in the public domain in the state archive, as reported by TASS.

“President Gitanas Nauseda was admitted to the KP in May 1988. Documents about this are stored in the State Archives and are in the public domain. Since the beginning of the activities of Sąjudis, Nauseda did not participate in the activities of the KP”, stated a response from the President’s public relations group to the BNS inquiry.

On Wednesday, the faction of the Union of the Fatherland – Lithuanian Christian Democrats in the Seimas – registered a bill: “on recognising the Communist Party of Lithuania as a criminal organisation responsible for the deportation of the country’s inhabitants during the Soviet period”.

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