Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has described joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a “youthful indiscretion”.
“Nevertheless, I committed myself to the life of a scholar economist and strived to erase my youthful indiscretion later in life with my professional activity and service to the state of Lithuania,” Nausėda said in a comment sent to BNS on Wednesday.
The president said he wanted to pursue a career as a scientist after completing his economic studies at Vilnius University.
“Soon after my studies, I was tempted to join the party for the sake of a better chance to pursue a scientist’s career. I thought about it for some time before finally giving in,” Nausėda said. “I was an ambitious and foolishly stubborn young man and I even ignored my mother’s attempt to talk me out of this.”
When the initiative group of the national revival movement Sąjūdis was formed in June 1988, and the national revival process began, the president said he focused on it, rather than on the activities of the Communist Party.
“I did not participate at all in the activities of the party I had just unluckily joined,” he claimed.
He later told the TV3 channel that his foreign policy stance is now very clear.
“Is there any ambiguity in my foreign policy, in my relations with Russia, in my statements towards Russia? Do I have any ambiguous positions on Ukraine? All of my professional and now political activities have nothing to do with what I did in 1987,” Nausėda said.
Nausėda joined the Communist Party in the late 1980s, just around the time when Lithuania started an independence movement, it was reported on Tuesday.
When running for the presidency in 2019, Nausėda did not indicate his membership in the Communist Party in his bio and left the question about present or past political affiliations blank in the official questionnaire of the Central Electoral Commission.
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According to the President’s Office, the question in the questionnaire was optional. Speaking with TV3, the president said he never mentioned this fact in his biography because no one asked him about it.
“I considered it to be a questionnaire of the Republic of Lithuania. If it was the Republic of Lithuania, then it dated from March 11, 1990 [the restoration of Lithuania’s independence]. I certainly have not belonged to any party since March 11,” Nausėda told TV3.
The president also said the revealed information was intended to compromise him in the run-up to the presidential election in Lithuania next year: “I would say the actions that have been carried out recently are projected to 2024, although I have neither decided nor announced yet whether I will stand for re-election.”
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