Lithuanian Nationalists' Union

The Lithuanian source traces the party's roots to the group publishing the newspaper Varpas at the end of the nineteenth century. Its founders, gathered around the newspapers Viltis and Vairas, set up the Party of National Progress in 1916–1917, which at a conference on 17–19 August 1924 merged with the Lithuanian Farmers' Union to become the Lithuanian Nationalists' Union. The name 'union' rather than 'party' expressed the aim of uniting Lithuanians above confessional and class differences.

Its first chairman was Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius, and Antanas Smetona was chairman in 1925–1926. In the 1926 Seimas election only three members—Smetona, Vladas Mironas and Augustinas Voldemaras—were elected, but after the coup of December that year Smetona again became president and the party formed a government together with the Christian Democrats. According to the English source the coup plotters appealed to Voldemaras and Smetona, 'now leaders of the Lithuanian Nationalist Union', and after the Christian Democrats left the government the Nationalist Union remained in power as the sole governing party.

Once Smetona was again head of state, the party chairmanship became largely a formal honorary post, usually held by the prime minister after the 1926 coup. Juozas Tūbelis was chairman from 1931 to 1939 and Vladas Mironas in 1939. When the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in 1940 the party was banned and its prominent members were repressed.

In 1989 Rimantas Matulis re-established a party of the same name, led from 1990 by Rimantas Smetona, the grandson of Antanas Smetona's brother. The revived party joined the Homeland Union in 2008, was refounded in 2011, merged with the Republican Party in 2017 to become the Lithuanian Nationalist and Republican Union, and in 2022 joined the Lithuanian Centre Party to form the Union of the Nation and Justice.