Election posters in Vilnius, 1993.
Stasys Lozoraitis was named by Lithuanians as the “president of hope” (Vilties prezidentas) and “the only chance to try again”. But in the first presidential elections in 1993, he lost out to a former member of the Lithuanian Communist Party – Algirdas Brazauskas.
“I worked for Lithuania for 50 years, did not serve [in the army], did not make an oath to another country, and I was born under a Lithuanian passport,” proclaimed Stasys Lozoraitis, as he arrived back to a free country in 1993.
Years after serving as Lithuania’s unofficial ambassador in Washington while the country was still occupied by the Soviet Union, he represented what many hoped would be the country’s turn to the West and a final break with Moscow.