Arvydas Anušauskas

He has a son named Martynas Leonas, who was born in February 2020.

In 2015, he married Lina Bulanovaitė, a former history student who was 27 years younger than him.

His wife Lina (Bulanovaitė) Anušauskienė, whom he married in 2015 when she was a 24-year-old history graduate student, has no known substantial personal wealth or business interests – indicating the family’s assets derive mainly from Arvydas’s income.

He was born on 29 September 1963 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Arvydas Anušauskas is a Lithuanian historian and politician.

His marital status was listed as divorced in his Seimas biography by 2008 (prior to his 2015 marriage).

He was awarded the academic title of Associate Professor (Docent) in 2001.

He earned a PhD in Humanities from Vytautas Magnus University in 1995.

In 1989, Anušauskas graduated from the Faculty of History of Vilnius University with a diploma in history.

From 2002 to 2008, Anušauskas served as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of History at Vilnius University.

He was a visiting associate professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University from 2002 to 2007.

From 1997 to 2008, he was Director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Department at the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania.

He was an Associate Professor at Vilnius Pedagogical University (now Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences) from 1996 to 2006.

In 1996–1997, he was a visiting associate professor at the Faculty of Humanities of Vytautas Magnus University.

Arvydas Anušauskas has spent virtually his entire career in the public sector (as a historian, academic, and government official), meaning his income has come primarily from state-funded salaries.

From 1989 to 2000, he worked as a research fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History.

He was the scientific editor of the journal "Genocidas ir rezistencija" (Genocide and Resistance).

He served as Lithuania’s Minister of National Defence from late 2020 until his resignation in March 2024 in the Ingrida Šimonytė government.

Arvydas Anušauskas has been a member of the Seimas (Lithuanian Parliament) since 2008, serving in the 2008–2012, 2012–2016, 2016–2020, 2020–2024, and 2024–2028 legislatures.

During the 2008–2012 term, he was also a member of the Seimas delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

He officially became a Member of the Seimas on 17 November 2008, when the newly elected 2008–2012 Seimas convened for its first sitting.

He has been a member of the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) since 2007.

He is a member of the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrat Party (Tėvynės sąjunga–Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai).

Since December 2024, he has been the Chair of the Seimas Anti-Corruption Commission.

As of the 2024–2028 term, he is a member of the Seimas Committee on Economics.

From 2016 to 2020 he was Deputy Chair of the Seimas Commission for Parliamentary Scrutiny of Criminal Intelligence.

During 2008–2012, Anušauskas served as Chairman of the Seimas National Security and Defence Committee (NSGK).

In the 2024 parliamentary elections, he was re-elected in the Kalniečių constituency (No. 15).

He was elected to the Seimas in the 2020 elections representing the Kalniečių single-member constituency (No. 15) in Kaunas.

In the 2020 parliamentary elections, Anušauskas switched to Kaunas and won the Kalniečių single-member constituency, unseating the incumbent Aušra Papirtienė (who had represented that district in 2016–2020).

After serving a Vilnius constituency in 2012–2016, Anušauskas shifted to Kaunas in 2020. Running in the Kalniečių single-member district, he secured 34% in the first round and then won the run-off against Aušra Papirtienė with roughly 57% of the vote, thus flipping that seat to TS-LKD.

In the 2016 parliamentary election, Arvydas Anušauskas was elected to the Seimas via the Homeland Union’s national party list.

He did not run in a single-member district in 2016; instead, Anušauskas was re-elected to the Seimas via the Homeland Union’s national list (the party won 20 seats in the multi-member constituency that year, and his position on the list secured him a mandate).

In the 2012 elections, Arvydas Anušauskas won a single-member Seimas seat in Vilnius (Senamiesčio-Žvėryno constituency), becoming one of the few Homeland Union candidates to secure a constituency win in that election.

In the 2008 parliamentary elections, Anušauskas entered the Seimas for the first time via the Homeland Union’s nationwide list. He won a seat as one of the party’s proportional representatives (the 2008–2012 term), since TS-LKD’s strong list performance brought him into parliament.

In the 2008 parliamentary election, Anušauskas was ranked 23rd on the Homeland Union’s candidate list but rose to 13th place after preferential votes were counted, earning him a Seimas seat.

Anušauskas first attempted to enter the Seimas in the 2004 parliamentary elections via the Homeland Union’s multi-member list, but he did not win a seat that year.

According to his 2022 asset declaration, Anušauskas (together with his spouse) declared about €71,784 in total assets and €12,089 in liabilities. This included a newly inherited apartment valued at €60,000, a car worth ~€12,000, only €1,784 in savings, and a personal debt of €5,900.

The significant increase in Anušauskas’s declared assets in 2022 was due to inheritance. He inherited his late parents’ apartment (worth about €60k) in Vilnius, which he added to his declaration and clarified publicly. His 93-year-old mother continues to reside in that flat.

Anušauskas’s income comes entirely from public sector employment. As a Member of Seimas, his base monthly salary is set by law (on the order of €3,000–€3,500 gross in recent years, higher if holding committee positions). During his 2020–2024 tenure as Minister of National Defence, he earned roughly €4,800 gross per month (the standard ministerial salary).

His public disclosures indicate no significant private business interests or outside income. Anušauskas has not reported any substantial assets beyond his state salaries, book royalties (which are relatively minor), and the apartment he inherited. This reinforces that his net worth growth aligns with official income streams.

He is legally required to declare his assets and income annually to Lithuania’s State Tax Inspectorate; his public asset declarations over the past decade show modest wealth (such as an apartment and savings), commensurate with his public service income and without irregular surges.

For most of the past decade, Anušauskas owned no real estate and showed very limited savings in his declarations. He and his wife lived in a rented home (despite his eligibility for a free MP apartment), and he publicly noted that after their child’s birth they prioritized expenses over savings, resulting in near-zero declared savings.

In the mid-2000s, Anušauskas’s earnings as an academic were modest – for instance, a Vytautas Magnus University associate professor earned about 4,494 LTL per month in 2007 (roughly €1,300) – whereas as a government minister by 2021, his gross monthly salary was about €4,847.

No unexplained changes in Anušauskas’s wealth have been flagged by authorities or media – any growth in his net worth appears to align with his earned income and routine transactions (e.g., gradual savings accumulation or property sales).

In August 2023, Lithuania’s Prosecutor General opened a pre-trial investigation into Defence Minister Anušauskas for possibly disclosing sensitive information (about tank procurement) from a State Defence Council meeting.

In October 2022, MP Agnė Širinskienė accused Anušauskas of disclosing a state secret to his wife Lina by warning her of the coming war in Ukraine weeks in advance, though the Seimas ethics panel chose not to investigate the claim.

In 2012, after publishing a list of KGB officers, Anušauskas stated that a list of secret KGB agents in Lithuania was being prepared for public release.

In 2018, Arvydas Anušauskas was honored with the Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania.

In 2013, he was awarded the 4th Class Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana by the President of Estonia.

He received the "Lithuanian Diplomacy Star" honorary award from the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2012.

In 2007, Anušauskas won a prize in the Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission’s "Pragiedruliai" contest for television programs.

He served as a volunteer in Lithuania’s national defence forces in 1990 and is a reserve member of the Lithuanian Armed Forces.

He is the author or co-author of 26 books and has written 14 documentary film scripts, mostly on historical subjects such as Soviet terror, the KGB, and intelligence.

He speaks Russian, English, Polish, and French in addition to his native Lithuanian.