Česlovas Gedgaudas (also known as Chester Gegaudas,[1] February 2, 1909 – July 19, 1986) was a Lithuanian diplomat, translator, polyglot, and amateur historian.
[2] He is best known for his pseudohistorical book In the Search for Our Past, in which he promoted the claims of Jurate Rosales and Aleksandras Račkus that the Goths and Vandals were Baltic peoples, and not Germanic or Slavic.
[citation needed] Gedgaudas' best-known work is the book In the Search for Our Past (Lithuanian: Mūsų praeities beieškant), first published in 1972 in Mexico City, and then republished in Lithuania in 1994 and 2018.
In it, Gedgaudas talks about his theory that the Balts, or Lithuanians, inhabited a large part of Europe, and that the Goths, Vandals and Veneti were actually a Baltic people.
It is considered a pseudohistoric work,[2] and the linguist Zigmas Zinkevičius classifies Gedgaudas, Jurate Rosales and Aleksandras Račkus as being in the same school of thought.