Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas (22 September 1932 – 26 June 2010) was the fourth president of Lithuania, in office from 1993 to 1998. He also served as Prime Minister of Lithuania from 2001 to 2006. Brazauskas was the first democratically elected president of post-Soviet Lithuania.
He also served as head of the Communist Party of Lithuania that broke with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Brazauskas was born in Rokiškis, Lithuania. Brazauskas traces his family back to the 18th century. In the village of Mikailiškiai (now Radviliškis District Municipality). His father was Kazimieras Brazauskas (1906–1997) and mother was Sofija Brazauskienė (née Perezilevičiūtė; 1904–1979). He finished Kaišiadorys High School in 1952 and graduated from Kaunas Polytechnic Institute in 1956 with a degree in civil engineering. He later served as a Conscript sailor in the Soviet Navy, serving as a Fire controlman on board the Riga-class frigate Rosomakha until 1960. In 1967, Brazauskas started working in the Governmental Planning Committee, as a Committee's head's assistant. In 1974, Brazauskas received a PhD in economics.
He divorced his first wife, Julija, with whom he had two daughters; he married Kristina Butrimienė in 2002.
In the Lithuanian SSR and early independent Lithuania
Brazauskas held various positions in the government of Lithuanian SSR and Communist Party of Lithuania from 1965 onwards:
1965–1967, the minister of construction materials industry of Lithuanian SSR
1967–1977, deputy chairman of State Planning Committee of Lithuanian SSR.
1977–1987, secretary of Central Committee of Communist Party of Lithuania.
In the 1980s, he transformed himself from a Communist Party apparatchik to a moderate reformer. He was seen as cautious by nature, and when confronted by the tide of nationalist feeling in the Soviet Union, Brazauskas initially believed that the USSR might be reconstituted as a looser federation of independent, but communist, states. In seeing the tide of an independent democracy, he joined the reformist cause observing in 1990 that "We are realists now, and we cannot be propagating any utopian ideas. It's no secret [that] the Communist Party has a dirty history."
In 1988, he became the first secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania. Under his leadership, the majority of the Communist Party of Lithuania supported the Lithuanian independence movement, broke away from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and transformed itself into social-democratic Democratic Labour Party of Lithuania (now merged into the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party). Brazauskas was Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (head of state) from 15 January until 11 March 1990.
Though he sought to avoid a breach with Moscow in 1989, as leader of Lithuania's Communist Party, he formally severed the party's links with Moscow. This was rare in that no other local communist party organizations in the former Soviet Union dared to take this step. Some historians and journalists have later suggested that this act was the earliest certain indication of the inevitability of the demise of the Soviet Union.
After the 1992 parliamentary elections, the first since 1938, he became speaker of parliamentary and acting President of Lithuania on 25 November 1992. He then won the presidential election in a single round with 60 percent of the vote and was confirmed as president on 25 February 1993. He immediately suspended his membership in the Democratic Labour Party; the Constitution does not allow the president to be a formal member of a political party during his tenure.
Political scientist and diplomat Laimonas Tallat-Kelpša described Brazauskas's presidency as an "ambusher regime". Though he was elected with the backing of his political party, the Democratic Labour Party, he attempted to stay within the limitations of constitutional powers and avoid direct intervention in politics - except in moments of crisis, when he would "leave his ambush" and demand actions from the elected government.
He proposed Democratic Labour Party politician Adolfas Šleževičius as Prime Minister, who formed the Šleževičius Cabinet, but avoided interference in cabinet choices and allowed Šleževičius to form his cabinet. By 1994, the president's relations with his party's cabinet had turned cold, and Brazauskas stated that he "could not agree [with him] on the simplest things". In late 1995, Šleževičius entered a scandal regarding his actions during the collapse of the Lithuanian bank Lietuvos akcinis inovacinis bankas - the prime minister withdrew his assets from the bank a day before it stopped its activities. After the Democratic Labour Party's central committee expressed their continued confidence in him, Brazauskas suddenly demanded his resignation, which prompted parts of the LDDP, alongside the opposition, to force him to resign after a vote of no confidence.
Brazauskas supported Lithuania's accession to NATO and the European Union, though he was initially sceptical towards the United States and membership in NATO, and described Homeland Union proposals of demanding reparations from Russia to be "the politics of a hunched hedgehog". He supported pragmatic relations with Russia. However, he played an important part in the early 1993 diplomatic crisis with Russia, in which Russia suspended negotiations on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Lithuania. After a personal phone call with Russian president Boris Yeltsin, negotiations were renewed and the withdrawal was completed.
In 1995, speaking before the Knesset, Brazauskas officially apologized for the Lithuanian people's actions during the Holocaust.
In spite of high approval ratings, he decided not to seek reelection, endorsed Artūras Paulauskas presidential campaign and later handed the presidency to his democratically elected successor, Valdas Adamkus, on 25 February 1998.