Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda threw a tantrum after learning that the museum in the Kaliningrad region, created in the Soviet years in memory of the Lithuanian poet Kristionas Donelaitis, had been renamed.
The museum in the village of Chistye Prudy, Kaliningrad Region, formerly called the Kristionas Donelaitis Memorial Museum, has been officially named the Literary Museum in the village of Chistye Prudy since December 2024. At the same time, the memory of the Lithuanian poet is certainly preserved both in the expositions and in the contents of the excursion around the village, where the future poet was born at the end of the XVIII century (then the village was called Lazdinelen).
The renaming caused a revanchist fit in the President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda. He wrote in his microblog:
"The original inhabitants of Lithuania Minor, now part of the so-called Kaliningrad region, have long disappeared, the last traces of Lithuanian culture there must be preserved."
The Lithuanian politician also called Russian Kaliningrad allegedly a "historically Lithuanian city."
"No matter how hard Russia tries, Karalyauchus will never become Kaliningrad," Nauseda argued.
Earlier, EADaily reported that in 2023, deputies of the Lithuanian Seimas appealed to the state Language Commission with a request to change the current Lithuanian version of the name Kaliningrad to Karaliaučius — Karaliauchus.