Algirdas Brazauskas

Brazauskas on a visit to the United States in 1998

Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas ( listen ^{? / I} ; born September 22, 1932 in Rokiškis ; † June 26, 2010 in Vilnius ) was a Soviet-Lithuanian communist and Lithuanian social democratic politician . He was President and most recently Prime Minister of his home country .

Career in the Soviet Union

Algirdas Brazauskas came from a family of officials in the small town of Rokiškis in northern Lithuania. After graduating from secondary school in Kaišiadorys near Kaunas in 1951, he began studying hydrotechnology at the Polytechnic Institute in Kaunas . In 1956 he graduated as an engineer .

He then worked in various positions for the government of the Lithuanian SSR and the Communist Party . From 1965 he was Minister for Building Materials in the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet and from 1967 deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee . In the 1980s he was Central Committee Secretary for Industry and in this capacity was also responsible for energy issues. During the protests against the expansion of the Ignalina nuclear power plant , he earned a reputation as a reformer and a politician critical of Moscow.

Communist leader

In October 1988 he was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania (KPL). Under his leadership, the party broke away from the CPSU in December 1989 , gave up its monopoly of power and changed to the social democratic party Lietuvos democinė darbo partija (LDDP, German: Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party ). Brazauskas was elected chairman at the founding party convention in December 1990 and was able to secure her dominance in the politics of independent Lithuania. To this day, the party, now trading as LSDP , is one of the parties in Lithuania with the largest number of members.

He is one of the 124 signatories of the Lithuanian declaration of independence of March 1990 and, as deputy prime minister of the first government under Kazimiera Prunskienė (March 1990 – January 1991), was one of the leading figures in independent Lithuania from the start.

President of Independent Lithuania

After the 1992 elections he became President of Parliament and as such also acting President (as the successor to Vytautas Landsbergis , the leader of the Sąjūdis independence movement and staunch anti-communists). In February 1993 the Lithuanians elected him President of Lithuania with 60% of the votes cast. Brazauskas held this office until February 1998. After he had decided against running again, he was replaced by Valdas Adamkus .

Prime Minister of Lithuania

In January 2001 he was elected chairman of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija / LSDP), which emerged from the merger of the LDDP and the old Social Democratic Party founded in 1896 . Shortly afterwards, in July 2001, he also took over the office of Prime Minister after the conservative-liberal coalition under Rolandas Paksas lost its majority in parliament after a few months in office. The following coalition of the Social Democratic Party and the New Union / Social Liberals ( Naujoji Sąjunga (Socialliberalai) ) under Parliament President Artūras Paulauskas ruled with a comfortable majority and brought a period of political stability that coincided with very positive economic development and, most recently, membership of NATO and the EU ( Spring 2004).

Despite this generally positive (economic) development and its (relatively) high popularity, the governing coalition that formed the electoral alliance “Work for Lithuania!” (“Už Darbą Lietuvai!”) Before the parliamentary elections in October 2004, suffered a bitter defeat and fell behind the newly founded Labor Party ( Darbo partija ) of the entrepreneur Viktor Uspaskich . Nevertheless, Brazauskas managed to secure continued participation in the government for his party (or his electoral alliance) in November 2004 in a coalition with the Labor Party and to secure the office of prime minister for himself.

On June 1, 2006, Brazauskas submitted the resignation of the government to the President after there had been disagreements with the coalition partner Labor Party over the selection of new ministers from its ranks. The government majority had already been lost in March 2006 when the New Union left, and seven members of the Labor Party left the parliamentary group at the beginning of May. The government could no longer be sure of its majority in parliament. On the same day, President Valdas Adamkus confirmed the previous finance minister, Zigmantas Balčytis, as provisional prime minister until a new government was formed.

criticism

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After the 2004 election, he was repeatedly the target of critics who accused him of being a political turn-neck . Brazauskas warned against the Labor Party and played it down as populist , but after the election he formed a coalition with it. Brazauskas said: "If we now start counting who said what to whom when, we will never come to a coalition."

Brazauskas knew how to show himself as a caring father of the country (regardless of whether as president or prime minister), who was always open to all sides for the good of the country. His brawny, often shirt-sleeved demeanor - Brazauskas on the hunt is an often seen image - made him popular among the population. However, the twists and turns and also scandals of the last (government) years damaged his popularity.

Personal

Algirdas Brazauskas was married to Kristina Brazauskienė for the second time since 2002 , had two daughters from her first marriage to Julija Brazauskienė and five grandchildren. After his death, the Lithuanian Catholic Church, led by Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevičius, refused to allow the ex-president to be laid out during Holy Mass in Vilnius Cathedral because of his lifestyle and membership of the Communist Party.

Algirdas Brazauskas Middle School

In 2000, the secondary school in Kaišiadorys , where Brazauskas graduated in 1951, was renamed “Algirdas Brazauskas Middle School” . This renaming was not without controversy due to the earlier practice in the Soviet era, when even cities were named after communist party sizes ( Kapsukas , Sniečkus ).

Honors

Lithuanian special stamp (2012)

• On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Lithuanian Post issued a special stamp in honor of Brazauskas in 2012 .
• Honorary Citizen of Vilnius , since 2015

Web links

Commons : Algirdas Brazauskas  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Algirdas Brazauskas in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Declaration of resignation by the Brazauskas government on May 31, 2006 (lit.)
2. ↑ quoted from www.delfi.lt, November 3, 2004
3. ↑ Hannes Gamillscheg: Lithuania: No place in the cathedral for the dead . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . July 3, 2010 ( fr.de [accessed on March 26, 2018]).
4. ↑ Algirdas Brazauskas Middle School. Archived from the original on March 30, 2009 ; Retrieved June 8, 2014 . 
5. ↑ http://search.delfi.lt/search.php?c=dns&q=Kai%C5%A1iadori%C5%B3+Algirdo+Brazausko+vidurin%C4%97+mokykla (link not available)

predecessor	Office	successor
Eugenijus Gentvilas	Prime Minister of Lithuania July 3, 2001 - June 1, 2006	Zigmantas Balčytis