Jonas Lapėnas and the Tautininkai: Why the Lts Did Not Become a Party

chapter 8 Jonas Lapėnas and the Tautininkai: Why the lts did not Become a Party

The roots of the Lithuanian Tautininkai Union (Tautininkų Sąjunga, lts) can be found in the Lithuanian national movement’s national ideology that was form ing at the end of the 19th Century. Its representatives, like Smetona, struggled to strengthen the position of Lithuanian social groups and at times expressed national discontent with the domination of foreigners in Lithuania, dissatis faction with what was not Lithuanian. Smetona himself at first belonged to the Lithuanian Democratic Party and participated in several of its conventions. In an organizational sense the Tautininkai arose from the right wing of the Democratic Party and from the supporters of Viltis and later Vairas who had split with it. The Tautininkai group was not large. The Tautininkai paid little attention to organizational questions. There was no party activity, no list of members even when leaders of the National Progress Party, such as Tumas, returned from Russia and joined the Lithuanian groups. Only on November 8, 1919, were the statutes of the National Progress Party, the predecessor of the lts, registered in the Citizens’ Protection Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These established a single organizational system for the party. The lowest unit of the party was the cell; in districts they combined into regions that were headed by administrations. A central executive organ, the Central Committee, was cho sen by a plenary session of party members. At the end of 1919 this committee began to organize a party. Smetona’s biographer Merkelis asserted that at the beginning of his public life Smetona “was clearly a right liberal,” trying to unite extreme currents, and that he remained a liberal until he became President of the Republic for the second time.319 The antiparliamentary tendencies could not show themselves openly in the Tautininkai program that was drawn up to establish particular positions in the Seimas. But the tendencies to seek dictatorship were clear in the activities of Smetona and other Tautininkai leaders and in the pages of their press. Their inclination toward one party and one current rule was already evidenced at the end of 1919 as they pushed the liberal forces and Social Democrats out of government, and, with the help of the Christian Democrats, ruled alone. The fifth cabinet of ministers, led by Ernestas Galvanauskas, which carried out the policy of the Tautininkai majority, introduced a stricter political regime and

Jonas Lapėnas and the Tautininkai 133 restricted the opposition press, although the Tautininkai would later idealize the period of 1918–1920 and take pride in their role in reestablishing the Lithuanian state. Petras Leonas, one of the liberal activists, confirmed Smetona’s negative view of parliamentarism. Describing Smetona’s speech at a state reception in March 1920, he wrote, “He expressed doubt whether the Constit uent Assembly will know how to rule the state and whether it would be strong enough. I do not know whether any one else noticed this thought of Smetona’s, but it burned itself into my memory as a basic thought of a person seeking dictatorship.”320 In the first years of independence, the small National Progress Party could not compete in elections with the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party. It failed to win a seat in the Constituent Assembly in 1920 and then again in the elections to the First and the Second Seimas. Once pushed out of the heights of power, Smetona, in the opposition to any government, became one of the most important propagators of Tautininkai ideology, the creator of the Tautininkai line in the new political conditions. He was the most illustrious Tautininkai jour nalist. From 1921 to 1924 he edited the party’s newspapers Lietuvos balsas (Voice of Lithuania), Tėvynes balsas (Voice of the Fatherland), Krašto balsas (Voice of the Country), and as the government closed one after another, also Vairas and other onetime publications. When Vairas was revived in Kaunas in 1923, replacing the daily Krašto balsas, Smetona edited it, but the Raštas company (members: Smetona, Yčas, Noreika, Tamošaitis, Voldemaras, Tūbelis, Krėvė-Mickevičius) published it.321 It was twice as big and decorated with the work of Petras Rimša. It was similar to the earlier publication in Vilnius but there could be no talk of quiet cul tural character – Vairas became a weapon in the political struggle. It did not pay fines and was suppressed, but it later continued in single publications: Skeveldrų rinkinys (Set of Fractions, February 28, 1924), and Irklas, (The Oar) later renamed Tautos vairas (September 25, 1924). According to the press law of that time a newspaper that was stopped by the authorities could not reappear for two weeks; loopholes were filled with single-issue publications. While in the opposition the Tautininkai laid out their views and plans rather openly. In considering principles of the Provisional Constitution of the Constituent Assembly, they wrote that the president should not just be leader of the armed forces, but should have the power to dissolve the Seimas, and also to have a veto power on current legislation.322 It was a Tautininkai achievement that the president did not become a powerless observer of events, although other polit ical parties understood this to be a demand that the leader of the state have dictatorial power. In 1922 Smetona wrote about the advantages and shortcom ings of monarchic and presidential power, not concealing his own sympathies