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OPINION
by Andrius Kulikauskas (Eičiūnai, Alytus district, Lithuania)
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On February 9, Laurynas Kasčiūnas, member of Lithuania’s Parliament (Seimas) since 2016, was elected chairman of the Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats, upon receiving 13,488 votes, 78% of the vote. He replaced Gabrielius Landsbergis, who resigned after their party’s poor performance in the 2024 elections to Seimas, where it was voted out of power, dropping from 50 seats to 28.
Upon election, Kasčiūnas vowed, “We will strive to be a party worthy of the trust of all of Lithuania’s people. We will bring together the brightest minds for the strategic interests of the state.” One litmus test he will face is whether he will admit he has been morally wrong in his deplorable defense of Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika.
Born in 1982, now 43 years old, Kasčiūnas ventured into politics through the extremist, anti-Israel Lithuanian National Democratic Party, which accused Jews of world domination. In 1999 he was the chairman of the Young Lithuanian National Democrats, and from there rose to become deputy to Mindaugas Murza, the party’s notorious neo-Nazi leader. In 2003, Kasčiūnas worked, unsuccessfully, through “Už nepriklausomą Lietuvą” to keep Lithuania out of the European Union. Subsequently, he has characterized this all as the mistakes of his youthful enthusiasm.
In 2012, he received a PhD in social science from the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science for his thesis, “Implications of EU Internal Integration for External Europeanisation: Case Studies of Ukraine and Russia”.
In 2011, he become a member of Lithuania’s leading conservative party, the Homeland Union – Christian Democrats, which has roots in Sąjūdis, the nationwide movement for reform (Gorbachev’s “perestroika”), which united Lithuanians to win independence from the Soviet Union. In his first term in Seimas, he was active in the Commission for the Cause of Freedom and the National Historical Memory. On August 13, 2019, he and fellow Seimas member Audronius Ažubalis used the Seimas portal to demand that Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius state his position regarding an article published by the portal politico.eu, Plaque by plaque, Lithuania confronts its wartime past.
Kasčiūnas proclaimed, “The article, which presents the opinions of three people (Dovid Katz, Jonas Noreika’s granddaughter Silvia Foti, and Grant Gochin), is tendentious, biased, full of slander and lies, lacking historical argumentation.”
On April 6, 2020, after the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania ruled against Grant Gochin, and in favor of the Lithuanian Genocide Center, Kasčiūnas and Ažubalis publicly demanded that Foreign Minister Linkevičius and Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius reconsider their positions on Jonas Noreika, and that the Minister inform Lithuania’s diplomats of the official Lithuanian position regarding Jonas Noreika.
From March to June, 2019, I and Evaldas Balčiūnas worked for Grant Gochin to investigate Jonas Noreika’s crimes against humanity. I authored his query, attended the court hearings, spoke on Grant’s behalf, and heard the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court’s verdict on March 27, 2019. That court specifically explained that “…the Court cannot take on the Center’s prescribed functions nor its powers…”. It was not going to do the job of the historians, but was simply going to rule on whether the Genocide Center’s answer to his question was thorough, unbiased and did not abuse power. Simply put, the court determined that the Genocide Center had the right to give false answers, so long as they were thorough, unbiased, and not an abuse of power. Kasčiūnas and the Genocide Center, however, claimed the ruling validated these falsehoods. They insistently condemned those who spoke the truth about Noreika’s crimes in July 1941 as Lithuanian Activist Front rebel leader in Telšiai District, and from August 1941, as Šiauliai District Chief in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.
Kasčiūnas also served on the Committee on National Security and Defence, becoming Deputy Chair on July 25, 2019, and then Chair from November 19, 2020 until March 25, 2024. On that day he replaced Arvydas Anušauskas as Minister of National Defense. Historian Arvydas Anušauskas is also a defender of Jonas Noreika, having served as the academic reviewer of the hagiography by Viktoras Ašmenskas, “Generolas Vėtra” (General Storm), which sanctified him as a Lithuanian hero, both anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi. I once found myself next to Anušauskas, photographing documents, side-by-side, at the Lithuanian Special Archives (Lietuvos Ypatingasis Archyvas). I praised his books, then asked him, What should we do with the documents that we discover about the crimes of humanity of those (lietuvių tautos valios reiškėjai) who spoke the will of the Lithuanian people? He turned to me, with a fatherly smile, “Reikia mokėti nematyti.” (One must know how to not see.)
As the leader of the opposition, Kasčiūnas spoke with TV3 about his plans. Here in translation:
“In my life there were mistakes. I always admitted them, apologized, but went on — stood up and went on. In this there is a certain strength in a person, that he can stand up and move forward.
“I have a very good feel for the party’s pulse because in all the time I have been in the party, I have wholeheartedly visited the local chapters. I feel that the party also needs attention, that people need attention. One must start with such things as intellectual discussions, which we lack… I think that we need to do what is popular in America, where there are active, energetic people in the local chapters, who help people through the prism of volunteering, which is to say, people asks for help in some regional center, and so we need to be the ones who could direct and advise.
“I also think about how we must think more globally as well —- about support for Ukraine, that in the party there arise structures that would better coordinate support for Ukraine. A political party must have its own football team, a political party must have its own basketball team, for their are young people who perhaps are less interested in intellectual discussion but want to join our activity through sport. We will certainly work with the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union (Šauliai), and with other organizations, which strengthen our defence.”
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The ten-kilometer trek from Raižiai to Butrimonys
Yesterday, I saw Kasčiūnas speak at the Independence Day celebration on February 16, 2025, in Raižiai, Alytus District. I live in Eičiūnai, a village not too far away. I am grateful to live in a free Lithuania and concerned that Russia may take our freedom away. I was heartened to see 350 people show up for a ten kilometer trek through the countryside from Raižiai to Butrimonys. This annual trek commemorates Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisan guerillas who lost their lives in 1944-1953. Most of the participants wore camouflage. They were Šauliai, some young men, but mostly high school students, Junior Šauliai apparently organized by their teachers, mostly patriotic women, from all around. Raižiai is a Tartar village with an active wooden mosque and an obelisk in honor of Vytautas the Great.
After Kasčiūnas spoke, and walked by me, I took the opportunity to ask him if he cared about the crimes that Jonas Noreika’s rebels committed. He answered that this was a discussion about the facts. I said they murdered 4,000 Jews and executed 300 Lithuanians. Noreika brought the organizers of the mass murders (his subordinates Povilas Alimas in Plungė and Bronius Juodikis in Telšiai) to Kaunas to show their support for Lithuania’s Provisional Government. Kasčiūnas replied that he based his position on the facts provided by the Genocide Center, Lithuania’s official institution.
At Lithuania’s February 16th Independence Day festivities in Butrimonys
I then pointed out that the Genocide Center was defending false information as I knew from my research on behalf of Grant Gochin. He then exclaimed: Don’t tell me about Grant Gochin! Grant Gochin is a Russian agent. I asked, what is the evidence for that? He then said that Grant Gochin is trash (šiukšlė). I said how can you think about other human beings in such a way? He said that he didn’t want to have anything to do with anybody related to Grant Gochin. “Pasitraukite!” Get away from me!
But I stood my ground. He pushed at me with the side of his arm, repeatedly, perhaps seven times, but I stood my ground as I kept talking. Various people tried to step in between us but Kasčiūnas kept leaning up and pushing on me, Get away from me!, and I kept holding my ground saying, You get away from me!
Then the trekkers started moving and we walked alongside each other, talking with my voice raised so that he and others could hear me. I said we should talk about Ukraine. He said that suited him better. I suggested that Lithuania should send soldiers and others to Ukraine to take on the noncombat roles of Ukrainian soldiers so that the latter could go to the front. Then I talked about my thoughts on peacemaking, how to love your enemy, how to look at everything from their point of view. If we could find 10 Russians (Putin supporters) and 10 Ukrainians who could converse for a year on what they truly wanted, then we would have the plan for peace that the world has come to wish for. Why can’t Crimea be an independent country? What can’t Donbass likewise? Why couldn’t the Pope offer to rename the Vatican to Vladimir, in honor of Russia’s president and Ukraine’s president and St. Vladimir who baptized the whole region, if only Russia were to withdraw from Ukraine? Finally, a lady pulled him away to talk with him.
I share this episode to give a window into Laurynas Kasčiūnas’s mind and also into the state of democracy in Lithuania, what one can do as a dissident, as things stand. Hopefully, Kasčiūnas’s dream will come true, that his party can be worthy of the trust of all of Lithuania’s people, and they can bring together the brightest minds for the strategic interests of the state.