Lithuanian lawmakers on Tuesday gave their initial backing to a bill that would declare the Lithuanian Communist Party as a criminal organisation.
Fifty-two MPs voted in favour of the bill, four were against and 43 abstained.
Under the bill drafted by a group of MPs from the ruling conservative Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD), the LCP would be recognised as a criminal structure that established a dictatorship in Soviet-occupied Lithuania between 1940–1941 and 1944–1990. It would be declared responsible for the “genocide” of Lithuanian citizens, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the forced collectivisation of citizens by the occupying power.
“While we are deeply concerned about historical justice and the events in Ukraine, which directly affect our security, we are still not being completely truthful with our history. The role of the Lithuanian Communist Party, as an organisation of the same occupying regime, in consolidating and supporting the occupying regime in Lithuania is still not legally defined,” conservative MP Audronius Ažubalis, one of the authors of the bill, , said when presenting it in the parliament, Seimas.
Aidas Gedvilas, a member of the non-attached group of MPs, asked why the bill, while holding the LCP to have been a criminal organisation, does not bar its members from standing for elections or positions in the civil service.
According to Ažubalis, the draft is based on the “German model of de-Nazification” where ordinary members of the National Socialists were not persecuted but were given the opportunity to “reform themselves by their own work and to be loyal to the new state”.
Eugenijus Gentvilas, leader of the Liberal Movement political group, said that the LCP, which split from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, should be viewed differently from the CPSU’s Lithuanian branch. He said that a number of LCP members were later signatories of the March 11 Act of Independence and their memory has been regularly honoured in the Seimas hall.
The bill states that former members of the Communist Party and the Komsomol (The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), running for the presidency, parliament seat, the European Parliament, and mayorship would be required to officially declare this fact in their biographies.
The bill was put on the Seimas’ plenary agenda last July, on the last day of the extended spring session, but was removed from the agenda at the request of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party political group.
It was argued at the time that the bill violated the provisions of the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council and the principle of equal treatment.
In October, the parliament amended the country’s Electoral Code and now all candidates running in various elections are required to declare their former membership in all political organisations and the period of their membership, including their former membership of the Communist Party.
The Lithuanian Communist Party was founded in 1918 and banned after Lithuania regained independence in 1991.
During the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on December 20, 1989, the Lithuanian Communist Party split from the CPSU and a year later changed its name to the Lithuanian Democratic Labour Party.
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