History of Lithuania
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The history of Lithuania dates back to settlements founded about 10,000 years ago,
On 16 February 1918, Lithuania was re-established as a democratic state. It remained independent until the onset of World War II, when it was occupied by the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Following a brief occupation by Nazi Germany after the Nazis waged war on the Soviet Union, Lithuania was again absorbed into the Soviet Union for nearly 50 years. In 1990–1991, Lithuania restored its sovereignty with the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. Lithuania joined the NATO alliance in 2004 and the European Union as part of its enlargement in 2004.
Before statehood
Early settlement
The first humans arrived on the territory of modern Lithuania in the second half of the 10th millennium BC after the glaciers receded at the end of the
Speakers of North-Western Indo-European might have arrived with the Corded Ware culture around 3200/3100 BC.[5]
Baltic tribes
The first
The
Lithuania, located along the lower and middle
The
The Lithuanian tribe is thought to have developed more recognizably toward the end of the first millennium.[10] The first known reference to Lithuania as a nation ("Litua") comes from the Annals of the Quedlinburg monastery, dated 9 March 1009.[14] In 1009, the missionary Bruno of Querfurt arrived in Lithuania and baptized the Lithuanian ruler "King Nethimer."[15]
Formation of a Lithuanian state
From the 9th to the 11th centuries, coastal Balts were subjected to raids by the Vikings, and the kings of Denmark collected tribute at times. During the 10–11th centuries, Lithuanian territories were among the lands paying tribute to Kievan Rus', and Yaroslav the Wise was among the Ruthenian rulers who invaded Lithuania (from 1040). From the mid-12th century, it was the Lithuanians who were invading Ruthenian territories. In 1183, Polotsk and Pskov were ravaged, and even the distant and powerful Novgorod Republic was repeatedly threatened by the excursions from the emerging Lithuanian war machine toward the end of the 12th century.[16]
In the 12th century and afterwards, mutual raids involving Lithuanian and Polish forces took place sporadically, but the two countries were separated by the lands of the
From the late 12th century, an organized Lithuanian military force existed; it was used for external raids, plundering and the gathering of slaves. Such military and pecuniary activities fostered social differentiation and triggered a struggle for power in Lithuania. This initiated the formation of early statehood, from which the Grand Duchy of Lithuania developed.[7] In 1231, the Danish Census Book mentions Baltic lands paying tribute to the Danes, including Lithuania (Littonia).[18]
Grand Duchy of Lithuania (13th century–1569)
13th–14th century Lithuanian state
Mindaugas and his kingdom
From the early 13th century, frequent foreign military excursions became possible due to the increased cooperation and coordination among the Baltic tribes.
From the early 13th century, two German crusading
In 1236 the pope declared a crusade against the Lithuanians.[21] The Samogitians, led by Vykintas, Mindaugas' rival,[22] soundly defeated the Livonian Brothers and their allies in the Battle of Saule in 1236, which forced the Brothers to merge with the Teutonic Knights in 1237.[23] But Lithuania was trapped between the two branches of the Order.[21]
Around 1240, Mindaugas ruled over all of
In 1250, Mindaugas entered into an agreement with the Teutonic Order; he consented to receive baptism (the act took place in 1251) and relinquish his claim over some lands in western Lithuania, for which he was to receive a royal crown in return.[25] Mindaugas was then able to withstand a military assault from the remaining coalition in 1251, and, supported by the Knights, emerge as a victor to confirm his rule over Lithuania.[26]
On 17 July 1251,
In 1260, the Samogitians, victorious over the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Durbe, agreed to submit themselves to Mindaugas' rule on the condition that he abandons the Christian religion; the king complied by terminating the emergent conversion of his country, renewed anti-Teutonic warfare (in the struggle for Samogitia)[30] and expanded further his Ruthenian holdings.[31] It is not clear whether this was accompanied by his personal apostasy.[7][30] Mindaugas thus established the basic tenets of medieval Lithuanian policy: defense against the German Order expansion from the west and north and conquest of Ruthenia in the south and east.[7]
Mindaugas was the principal founder of the Lithuanian state. He established for a while a Christian kingdom under the pope rather than the Holy Roman Empire, at a time when the remaining pagan peoples of Europe were no longer being converted peacefully, but conquered.[32]
Traidenis, Teutonic conquests of Baltic tribes
Mindaugas was murdered in 1263 by Daumantas of Pskov and Treniota, an event that resulted in great unrest and civil war. Treniota, who took over the rule of the Lithuanian territories, murdered Tautvilas, but was killed himself in 1264. The rule of Mindaugas' son Vaišvilkas followed. He was the first Lithuanian duke known to become an Orthodox Christian and settle in Ruthenia, establishing a pattern to be followed by many others.[30] Vaišvilkas was killed in 1267. A power struggle between Shvarn and Traidenis resulted; it ended in a victory for the latter. Traidenis' reign (1269–1282) was the longest and most stable during the period of unrest. Tradenis reunified all Lithuanian lands, repeatedly raided Ruthenia and Poland with success, defeated the Teutonic Knights in Prussia and in Livonia at the Battle of Aizkraukle in 1279. He also became the ruler of Yotvingia, Semigalia and eastern Prussia. Friendly relations with Poland followed, and in 1279, Tradenis' daughter Gaudemunda of Lithuania married Bolesław II of Masovia, a Piast duke.[7][31]
Pagan Lithuania was a target of
Vytenis, Lithuania's great expansion under Gediminas
The family of Gediminas, whose members were about to form Lithuania's great native dynasty,[35] took over the rule of the Grand Duchy in 1285 under Butigeidis. Vytenis (r. 1295–1315) and Gediminas (r. 1315–1341), after whom the Gediminid dynasty is named, had to deal with constant raids and incursions from the Teutonic orders that were costly to repulse. Vytenis fought them effectively around 1298 and at about the same time was able to ally Lithuania with the German burghers of Riga. For their part, the Prussian Knights instigated a rebellion in Samogitia against the Lithuanian ruler in 1299–1300, followed by twenty incursions there in 1300–15.[31] Gediminas also fought the Teutonic Knights, and besides that made shrewd diplomatic moves by cooperating with the government of Riga in 1322–23 and taking advantage of the conflict between the Knights and Archbishop Friedrich von Pernstein of Riga.[36]
Gediminas expanded Lithuania's international connections by conducting correspondence with Pope
The reign of Grand Duke Gediminas constituted the first period in Lithuanian history in which the country was recognized as a great power, mainly due to the extent of its territorial expansion into Ruthenia.
In the 14th century, many Lithuanian princes installed to govern the Ruthenia lands accepted
Algirdas and Kęstutis
Around 1318, Gediminas' elder son Algirdas married Maria of Vitebsk, the daughter of Prince Yaroslav of Vitebsk, and settled in Vitebsk to rule the principality.[36] Of Gediminas' seven sons, four remained pagan and three converted to Orthodox Christianity.[7] Upon his death, Gediminas divided his domains among the seven sons, but Lithuania's precarious military situation, especially on the Teutonic frontier, forced the brothers to keep the country together.[43] From 1345, Algirdas took over as the Grand Duke of Lithuania. In practice, he ruled over Lithuanian Ruthenia only, whereas Lithuania proper was the domain of his equally able brother Kęstutis. Algirdas fought the Golden Horde Tatars and the Principality of Moscow; Kęstutis took upon himself the demanding struggle with the Teutonic Order.[7]
The warfare with the Teutonic Order continued from 1345, and in 1348, the Knights defeated the Lithuanians at the Battle of Strėva. Kęstutis requested King Casimir of Poland to mediate with the pope in hopes of converting Lithuania to Christianity, but the result was negative, and Poland took from Lithuania in 1349 the Halych area and some Ruthenian lands further north. Lithuania's situation improved from 1350, when Algirdas formed an alliance with the Principality of Tver. Halych was ceded by Lithuania, which brought peace with Poland in 1352. Secured by those alliances, Algirdas and Kęstutis embarked on the implementation of policies to expand Lithuania's territories further.[43]
The two brothers and Gediminas' other offspring left many ambitious sons with inherited territory. Their rivalry weakened the country in the face of the Teutonic expansion and the newly assertive Grand Duchy of Moscow, buoyed by the 1380 victory over the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo and intent on the unification of all Rus' lands under its rule.[7]
Jogaila's conflict with Kęstutis, Vytautas
Algirdas died in 1377, and his son
Jogaila agreed to the
By that time, for the sake of its long-term survival, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had initiated the processes leading to its imminent acceptance of European Christendom.[7] The Teutonic Knights aimed at a territorial unification of their Prussian and Livonian branches by conquering Samogitia and all of Lithuania proper, following the earlier subordination of the Prussian and Latvian tribes. To dominate the neighboring Baltic and Slavic people and expand into a great Baltic power, the Knights used German and other volunteer fighters. They unleashed 96 onslaughts in Lithuania during the period 1345–1382, against which the Lithuanians were able to respond with only 42 retributive raids of their own. Lithuania's Ruthenian empire in the east was also threatened by both the unification of Rus' ambitions of Moscow and the centrifugal activities pursued by the rulers of some of the more distant provinces.[46]
13th–14th century Lithuanian society
The Lithuanian state of the later 14th century was primarily binational, Lithuanian and Ruthenian (in territories that correspond to the modern Belarus and Ukraine). Of its 800,000 square kilometers total area, 10% comprised ethnic Lithuania, probably populated by no more than 300,000 inhabitants. Lithuania was dependent for its survival on the human and material resources of the Ruthenian lands.[47]
The increasingly differentiated Lithuanian society was led by princes of the
The Ruthenian princes were Orthodox, and many Lithuanian princes also converted to
German,
Towns developed to a much lesser degree than in nearby Prussia or Livonia. Outside of Ruthenia, the only cities were Vilnius (Gediminas' capital from 1323), the old capital of Trakai and Kaunas.[7][9][29] Kernavė and Kreva were the other old political centers.[36] Vilnius in the 14th century was a major social, cultural and trading center. It linked economically central and eastern Europe with the Baltic area. Vilnius merchants enjoyed privileges that allowed them to trade over most of the territories of the Lithuanian state. Of the passing Ruthenian, Polish and German merchants (many from Riga), many settled in Vilnius and some built masonry residencies. The city was ruled by a governor named by the grand duke and its system of fortifications included three castles. Foreign currencies and Lithuanian currency (from the 13th century) were widely used.[7][50]
The Lithuanian state maintained a patrimonial power structure. Gediminid rule was hereditary, but the ruler would choose the son he considered most able to be his successor. Councils existed, but could only advise the duke. The huge state was divided into a hierarchy of territorial units administered by designated officials who were also empowered in judicial and military matters.[7]
The Lithuanians spoke in a number of Aukštaitian and Samogitian (West-Baltic) dialects. But the tribal peculiarities were disappearing and the increasing use of the name Lietuva was a testimony to the developing Lithuanian sense of separate identity. The forming Lithuanian feudal system preserved many aspects of the earlier societal organization, such as the family clan structure, free peasantry and some slavery. The land belonged now to the ruler and the nobility. Patterns imported primarily from Ruthenia were used for the organization of the state and its structure of power.[51]
Following the establishment of Western Christianity at the end of the 14th century, the occurrence of pagan cremation burial ceremonies markedly decreased.[52]
Dynastic union with Poland, Christianization of the state
Jogaila's Catholic conversion and rule
As the power of the Lithuanian warlord dukes expanded to the south and east, the cultivated
Catholic influence and contacts, including those derived from German settlers, traders and missionaries from Riga,
Jogaila was baptized, given the baptismal name Władysław, married Queen Jadwiga, and was crowned King of Poland in February 1386.[57][58]
Jogaila's baptism and crowning were followed by the final and official Christianization of Lithuania.[59] In the fall of 1386, the king returned to Lithuania and the next spring and summer participated in mass conversion and baptism ceremonies for the general population.[60] The establishment of a bishopric in Vilnius in 1387 was accompanied by Jogaila's extraordinarily generous endowment of land and peasants to the Church and exemption from state obligations and control. This instantly transformed the Lithuanian Church into the most powerful institution in the country (and future grand dukes lavished even more wealth on it). Lithuanian boyars who accepted baptism were rewarded with a more limited privilege improving their legal rights.[61][62] Vilnius' townspeople were granted self-government. The Church proceeded with its civilizing mission of literacy and education, and the estates of the realm started to emerge with their own separate identities.[52]
Jogaila's orders for his court and followers to convert to Catholicism were meant to deprive the Teutonic Knights of the justification for their practice of forced conversion through military onslaughts. In 1403 the pope prohibited the Order from conducting warfare against Lithuania, and its threat to Lithuania's existence (which had endured for two centuries) was indeed neutralized. In the short term, Jogaila needed Polish support in his struggle with his cousin Vytautas.[52][54]
Lithuania at its peak under Vytautas
The
Vytautas had been frustrated by Jogaila's Polish arrangements and rejected the prospect of Lithuania's subordination to Poland.
In 1395, Vytautas conquered Smolensk, and in 1397, he conducted a victorious expedition against a branch of the Golden Horde. Now he felt he could afford independence from Poland and in 1398 refused to pay the tribute due to Queen Jadwiga. Seeking freedom to pursue his internal and Ruthenian goals, Vytautas had to grant the Teutonic Order a large portion of Samogitia in the Treaty of Salynas of 1398. The conquest of Samogitia by the Teutonic Order greatly improved its military position as well as that of the associated Livonian Brothers of the Sword. Vytautas soon pursued attempts to retake the territory, an undertaking for which needed the help of the Polish king.[67][68]
During Vytautas' reign, Lithuania reached the peak of its territorial expansion, but his ambitious plans to subjugate all of Ruthenia were thwarted by his disastrous defeat in 1399 at the Battle of the Vorskla River, inflicted by the Golden Horde. Vytautas survived by fleeing the battlefield with a small unit and realized the necessity of a permanent alliance with Poland.[67][68]
The original Union of Krewo of 1385 was renewed and redefined on several occasions, but each time with little clarity due to the competing Polish and Lithuanian interests. Fresh arrangements were agreed to in the "
Secure in the west, Vytautas turned his attention to the east once again. The campaigns fought between 1401 and 1408 involved Smolensk,
The decisive war with the Teutonic Knights (the Great War) was preceded in 1409 with a Samogitian uprising supported by Vytautas. Ultimately the Lithuanian–Polish alliance was able to defeat the Knights at the Battle of Grunwald on 15 July 1410, but the allied armies failed to take Marienburg, the Knights' fortress-capital. Nevertheless, the unprecedented total battlefield victory against the Knights permanently removed the threat that they had posed to Lithuania's existence for centuries. The Peace of Thorn (1411) allowed Lithuania to recover Samogotia, but only until the deaths of Jogaila and Vytautas, and the Knights had to pay a large monetary reparation.[72][73][74]
The Union of Horodło (1413) incorporated Lithuania into Poland again, but only as a formality. In practical terms, Lithuania became an equal partner with Poland, because each country was obliged to choose its future ruler only with the consent of the other, and the Union was declared to continue even under a new dynasty. Catholic Lithuanian boyars were to enjoy the same privileges as Polish nobles (szlachta). 47 top Lithuanian clans were colligated with 47 Polish noble families to initiate a future brotherhood and facilitate the expected full unity. Two administrative divisions (Vilnius and Trakai) were established in Lithuania, patterned after the existing Polish models.[75][76]
Vytautas practiced religious toleration and his grandiose plans also included attempts to influence the Eastern Orthodox Church, which he wanted to use as a tool to control Moscow and other parts of Ruthenia. In 1416, he elevated Gregory Tsamblak as his chosen Orthodox patriarch for all of Ruthenia (the established Orthodox Metropolitan bishop remained in Vilnius to the end of the 18th century).[66][77] These efforts were also intended to serve the goal of global unification of the Eastern and Western churches. Tsamblak led an Orthodox delegation to the Council of Constance in 1418.[78] The Orthodox synod, however, would not recognize Tsamblak.[77] The grand duke also established new Catholic bishoprics in Samogitia (1417)[78] and in Lithuanian Ruthenia (Lutsk and Kyiv).[77]
The
Vytautas' greatest successes and recognition occurred at the end of his life, when the Crimean Khanate and the Volga Tatars came under his influence. Prince Vasily I of Moscow died in 1425, and Vytautas then administered the Grand Duchy of Moscow together with his daughter, Vasily's widow Sophia of Lithuania. In 1426–1428 Vytautas triumphantly toured the eastern reaches of his empire and collected huge tributes from the local princes.[80] Pskov and Veliki Novgorod were incorporated to the grand duchy in 1426 and 1428.[78] At the Congress of Lutsk in 1429, Vytautas negotiated the issue of his crowning as the King of Lithuania with Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and Jogaila. That ambition was close to being fulfilled, but in the end was thwarted by last-minute intrigues and Vytautas' death. Vytautas' cult and legend originated during his later years and have continued until today.[80]
Around the first half of the 15th century
The
During the period, a stratum of wealthy landowners, important also as a military force, was coming into being,[83] accompanied by the emerging class of feudal serfs assigned to them.[66] The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was for the time being largely preserved as a separate state with separate institutions, but efforts, originating mainly in Poland, were made to bring the Polish and Lithuanian elites and systems closer together.[75][76] Vilnius and other cities were granted the German system of laws (Magdeburg rights). Crafts and trade were developing quickly. Under Vytautas a network of chanceries functioned, first schools were established and annals written. Taking advantage of the historic opportunities, the great ruler opened Lithuania for the influence of the European culture and integrated his country with European Western Christianity.[78][83]
Under Jagiellonian rulers
The Jagiellonian dynasty founded by Jogaila (a member of one of the branches of the Gediminids) ruled Poland and Lithuania continuously between 1386 and 1572.
Following the deaths of Vytautas in 1430, another civil war ensued, and Lithuania was ruled by rival successors. Afterwards, the Lithuanian nobility on two occasions technically broke the union between Poland and Lithuania by selecting grand dukes unilaterally from the Jagiellonian dynasty. In 1440, the Lithuanian great lords elevated Casimir, Jogaila's second son, to the rule of the grand duchy. This issue was resolved by Casimir's election as king by the Poles in 1446. In 1492, Jogaila's grandson John Albert became the king of Poland, whereas his grandson Alexander became the grand duke of Lithuania. In 1501 Alexander succeeded John as king of Poland, which resolved the difficulty in the same manner as before.[68] A lasting connection between the two states was beneficial to Poles, Lithuanians, and Ruthenians, Catholic and Orthodox, as well as the Jagiellonian rulers themselves, whose hereditary succession rights in Lithuania practically guaranteed their election as kings in accordance with the customs surrounding the royal elections in Poland.[69]
On the Teutonic front, Poland continued its struggle, which in 1466 led to the Peace of Thorn and the recovery of much of the Piast dynasty territorial losses. A secular Duchy of Prussia was established in 1525. Its presence would greatly impact the futures of both Lithuania and Poland.[84]
The
Lithuania needed a close alliance with Poland when, at the end of the 15th century, the increasingly assertive Grand Duchy of Moscow threatened some of Lithuania's Rus' principalities with the goal of "recovering" the formerly Orthodox-ruled lands. In 1492, Ivan III of Russia unleashed what turned out to be a series of Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars and Livonian Wars.[86]
In 1492, the border of Lithuania's loosely controlled eastern Ruthenian territory ran less than one hundred
In the north, the Livonian War took place over the strategically and economically crucial region of Livonia, the traditional territory of the Livonian Order. The
Toward more integrated union
The Polish ruling establishment had been aiming at the incorporation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into Poland since before the Union of Krewo.
Legal evolution had lately been taking place in Lithuania nevertheless. In the Privilege of Vilnius of 1563, Sigismund restored full political rights to the Grand Duchy's Orthodox boyars, which had been restricted up to that time by Vytautas and his successors; all members of the nobility were from then officially equal. Elective courts were established in 1565–66, and the Second Lithuanian Statute of 1566 created a hierarchy of local offices patterned on the Polish system. The Lithuanian legislative assembly assumed the same formal powers as the Polish Sejm.[89][90]
The Polish Sejm of January 1569, deliberating in
Lithuanian Renaissance
From the 16th to the mid-17th century, culture, arts, and education flourished in Lithuania, fueled by the
An influential book dealer was the humanist and bibliophile Francysk Skaryna (c. 1485—1540), who was the founding father of Belarusian letters. He wrote in his native Ruthenian (Chancery Slavonic) language,[93] as was typical for literati in the earlier phase of the Renaissance in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After the middle of the 16th century, Polish predominated in literary productions.[94] Many educated Lithuanians came back from studies abroad to help build the active cultural life that distinguished 16th-century Lithuania, sometimes referred to as Lithuanian Renaissance (not to be confused with Lithuanian National Revival in the 19th century).
At this time, Italian architecture was introduced in Lithuanian cities, and
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795)
New union with Poland
With the Union of Lublin of 1569, Poland and Lithuania formed a new state referred to as the Republic of Both Nations, but commonly known as Poland-Lithuania or the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth, which officially consisted of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was ruled by Polish and Lithuanian nobility, together with nobility-elected kings. The Union was designed to have a common foreign policy, customs and currency. Separate Polish and Lithuanian armies were retained, but parallel ministerial and central offices were established according to a practice developed by the Crown.[90] The Lithuanian Tribunal, a high court for the affairs of the nobility, was created in 1581.[95]
Following the death of Sigismund II Augustus in 1572, a joint Polish–Lithuanian monarch was to be elected as agreed in the Union of Lublin. According to the treaty, the title "Grand Duke of Lithuania" would be received by a jointly elected monarch in the Election sejm on his accession to the throne, thus losing its former institutional significance. However, the treaty guaranteed that the institution and the title "Grand Duke of Lithuania" will be preserved.[96][97]
On 20 April 1576 the congress of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania's nobles was held in Grodno which adopted an Universal. It was signed by the participating Lithuanian nobles who announced that if the delegates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania will feel pressure from the Poles in the Election sejm, the Lithuanians will not be obliged by an oath of the Union of Lublin and will have the right to select a separate monarch.[98] On 29 May 1580 a ceremony was held in the Vilnius Cathedral during which bishop Merkelis Giedraitis presented Stephen Báthory (King of Poland since 1 May 1576) a luxuriously decorated sword and a cap adorned with pearls (both were sanctified by Pope Gregory XIII himself). Such ceremony manifested the sovereignty of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and had the meaning of elevation of the new Grand Duke of Lithuania, thus ignoring the stipulations of the Union of Lublin.[99][100]
Languages
The
Western Lithuania had an important role in the preservation of the Lithuanian language and its culture. In Samogitia, many nobles never ceased to speak Lithuanian natively. Northeastern East Prussia, sometimes referred to as
Religion
The predominantly
By 1750, nominal Catholics comprised about 80% of the Commonwealth's population, the vast majority of the noble citizenry, and the entire legislature. In the east, there were also the Eastern Orthodox Church adherents. However, Catholics in the Grand Duchy itself were split. Under half were Latin Church with strong allegiance to Rome, worshiping according to the Roman Rite. The others (mostly non-noble Ruthenians) followed the Byzantine Rite. They were the so-called Uniates, whose church was established at the Union of Brest in 1596, and they acknowledged only nominal obedience to Rome. At first the advantage went to the advancing Catholic Church pushing back a retreating Eastern Orthodox Church. However, after the first partition of the Commonwealth in 1772, the Orthodox had the support of the government and gained the upper hand. The Russian Orthodox Church paid special attention to the Uniates (who had once been Orthodox), and tried to bring them back. The contest was political and spiritual, utilizing missionaries, schools, and pressure exerted by powerful nobles and landlords. By 1800, over 2 million of the Uniates had become Orthodox, and another 1.6 million by 1839.[112][113]
Grand Duchy, its grandeur and decline
The Union of Lublin and the integration of the two countries notwithstanding, Lithuania continued to exist as a grand duchy within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for over two centuries. It retained separate laws as well as an army and a treasury.[114] At the time of Union of Lublin, King Sigismund II Augustus removed Ukraine and other territories from Lithuania and incorporated them directly into the Polish Crown. The grand duchy was left with today's Belarus and parts of European Russia, in addition to the core ethnic Lithuanian lands.[115] From 1573, the kings of Poland and the grand dukes of Lithuania were always the same person and were elected by the nobility, who were granted ever increasing privileges in a unique aristocratic political system known as the Golden Liberty. These privileges, especially the liberum veto, led to political anarchy and the eventual dissolution of the state.
Within the Commonwealth, the grand duchy made important contributions to European economic, political and cultural life: Western Europe was supplied with grain, along the
The Commonwealth was greatly weakened by a series of wars, beginning with the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukraine in 1648.[118] During the Northern Wars of 1655–1661, the Lithuanian territory and economy were devastated by the Swedish army in an invasion known as the Deluge, and Vilnius was burned and looted by the Russian forces.[108] Before it could fully recover, Lithuania was again ravaged during the Great Northern War of 1700–1721.
Besides war, the Commonwealth suffered the
The Constitution of 3 May 1791 was a culmination of the belated reform process of the Commonwealth. It attempted to integrate Lithuania and Poland more closely, although the separation was preserved by the added Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations. Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, 1793 and 1795 terminated its existence and saw the Grand Duchy of Lithuania divided between the Russian Empire, which took over 90% of the Duchy's territory, and the Kingdom of Prussia. The Third Partition of 1795 took place after the failure of the Kościuszko Uprising, the last war waged by Poles and Lithuanians to preserve their statehood. Lithuania ceased to exist as a distinct entity for more than a century.[29]
Under Imperial Russia, World War I (1795–1918)
Post-Commonwealth period (1795–1864); foundations of Lithuanian nationalism
Following the
In 1812, the Lithuanians eagerly welcomed
The Poles and Lithuanians revolted against Russian rule twice, in 1830-31 (the November Uprising) and 1863–64 (the January Uprising), but both attempts failed and resulted in increased repression by the Russian authorities. After the November Uprising, Tsar Nicholas I began an intensive program of Russification and the University of Vilnius was closed.[121] Lithuania became part of a new administrative region called the Northwestern Krai.[122] In spite of the repression, Polish language schooling and cultural life were largely able to continue in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the failure of the January Uprising.[102] The Statutes of Lithuania were annulled by the Russian Empire only in 1840, and serfdom was abolished as part of the general Emancipation reform of 1861 that applied to the entire Russian Empire.[123] The Uniate Church, important in the Belarusian part of the former Grand Duchy, was incorporated into the Orthodox Church in 1839.[124]
The Polish poetry of Adam Mickiewicz, who was emotionally attached to the Lithuanian countryside and associated medieval legends, influenced ideological foundations of the emerging Lithuanian national movement. Simonas Daukantas, who studied with Mickiewicz at Vilnius University, promoted a return to Lithuania's pre-Commonwealth traditions and a renewal of the local culture, based on the Lithuanian language. With those ideas in mind, he wrote already in 1822 a history of Lithuania in Lithuanian (though still not yet published at that time). Teodor Narbutt wrote in Polish a voluminous Ancient History of the Lithuanian Nation (1835–1841), where he likewise expounded and expanded further on the concept of historic Lithuania, whose days of glory had ended with the Union of Lublin in 1569. Narbutt, invoking the German scholarship, pointed out the relationship between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit languages. It indicated the closeness of Lithuanian to its ancient Indo-European roots and would later provide the "antiquity" argument for activists associated with the Lithuanian National Revival. By the middle of the 19th century, the basic ideology of the future Lithuanian nationalist movement was defined with linguistic identity in mind; in order to establish a modern Lithuanian identity, it required a break with the traditional dependence on Polish culture and language.[125]
Around the time of the January Uprising, there was a generation of Lithuanian leaders of the transitional period between a political movement bound with Poland and the modern Lithuanian nationalist movement based on language. Jakób Gieysztor, Konstanty Kalinowski and Antanas Mackevičius wanted to form alliances with the local peasants, who, empowered and given land, would presumably help defeat the Russian Empire, acting in their own self-interest. This created new dilemmas that had to do with languages used for such inter-class communication and later led to the concept of a nation as the "sum of speakers of a vernacular tongue."[126]
Formation of modern national identity and push for self-rule (1864–1918)
The failure of the
Russian nationalists regarded the territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania as an East Slavic realm that ought to be (and was being) "reunited" with Russia.[128] In the following decades however, a Lithuanian national movement emerged, composed of activists of different social backgrounds and persuasions, often primarily Polish-speaking, but united by their willingness to promote the Lithuanian culture and language as a strategy for building a modern nation.[127] The restoration of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania was no longer the objective of this movement, and the territorial ambitions of its leaders were limited to the lands they considered historically Lithuanian.[108]
In 1864, the Lithuanian language and the Latin alphabet were banned in junior schools. The prohibition on printing in the Lithuanian language reflected the Russian nationalist policy of "restoration" of the supposedly Russian beginnings of Lithuania. The tsarist authorities implemented a number of Russification policies, including a Lithuanian press ban and the closing of cultural and educational institutions. Those were resisted by Lithuanians, led by Bishop Motiejus Valančius, among others.[108] Lithuanians resisted by arranging printing abroad and smuggling of the books in from neighboring East Prussia.
Lithuanian was not considered a prestigious language. There were even expectations that the language would become extinct, as more and more territories in the east were slavicized, and more people used Polish or Russian in daily life. The only place where Lithuanian was considered more prestigious and worthy of books and studying was in East Prussia, sometimes referred to by Lithuanian nationalists as "Lithuania Minor." At the time, northeastern East Prussia was home to numerous ethnic Lithuanians, but even there
The language revival spread into more affluent strata, beginning with the release of the Lithuanian newspapers Aušra and Varpas, then with the writing of poems and books in Lithuanian many of which glorified the historic Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The two most prominent figures in the revival movement, Jonas Basanavičius and Vincas Kudirka, both originated from affluent Lithuanian peasantry and attended the Mariampol Gymnasium (secondary school) in the Suwałki Governorate. The school was a Polish educational center, Russified after the January Uprising, with Lithuanian language classes introduced at that time.[129]
Basanavičius studied medicine at the
Russian restrictions at Marijampolė secondary school were eased in 1872 and Kudirka learned Polish there. He went on to study at the University of Warsaw, where he was influenced by Polish socialists. In 1889, Kudirka returned to Lithuania and worked on incorporating the Lithuanian peasantry into mainstream politics as the main building block of a modern nation. In 1898, he wrote a poem inspired by the opening strophe of Mickiewicz's epic poem Pan Tadeusz: "Lithuania, my fatherland! You are like health." The poem became the national anthem of Lithuania, Tautiška giesmė: ("Lithuania, Our Homeland").[131]
As the revival grew, Russian policy became harsher. Attacks took place against Catholic churches while the ban forbidding the Lithuanian press continued. However, in the late 19th century, the language ban was lifted.
Large numbers of Lithuanians had emigrated to the United States in 1867–1868 after a famine in Lithuania.[135] Between 1868 and 1914, approximately 635,000 people, almost 20 percent of the population, left Lithuania.[136] Lithuanian cities and towns were growing under the Russian rule, but the country remained underdeveloped by the European standards and job opportunities were limited; many Lithuanians left also for the industrial centers of the Russian Empire, such as Riga and Saint Petersburg. Many of Lithuania's cities were dominated by non-Lithuanian-speaking Jews and Poles.[108]
Lithuania's nationalist movement continued to grow. During the
After the Russian entry into World War I, the German Empire occupied Lithuania and Courland in 1915. Vilnius fell to the Imperial German Army on 19 September 1915. An alliance with Germany in opposition to both tsarist Russia and Lithuanian nationalism became for the Baltic Germans a real possibility.[138] Lithuania was incorporated into Ober Ost under a German government of occupation.[139] As open annexation could result in a public-relations backlash, the Germans planned to form a network of formally independent states that would in fact be dependent on Germany.[140]
Independence (1918–1940)
Declaration of independence
The German occupation government permitted a
In the meantime, an attempt to revive the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a socialist multi-national federal republic was also taking place under the German occupation. In March 1918,
Nevertheless, a Belarusian unit named 1st Belarusian Regiment (Pirmasis baltgudžių pėstininkų pulkas), commanded by Alaksandar Ružancoŭ, was formed mainly from Grodno's inhabitants in 1919 within the Lithuanian Armed Forces, which later also participated in supporting the Independence of Lithuania during the Lithuanian Wars of Independence, therefore many members of this unit were awarded with the highest state award of Lithuania – Order of the Cross of Vytis.[144][145] Moreover, a Lithuanian Ministry for Belarusian Affairs (Gudų reikalų ministerija) was established within the Government of Lithuania, which functioned in 1918–1924, and was led by the ethnic Belarusian ministers such as Jazep Varonka, Dominik Semashko.[144] The ethnic Belarusians were also included into the Council of Lithuania,[146] and the Belarusian political leaders initially requested for a political autonomy of the Belarusian lands with the Belarusian language as the official language in them within the restored Lithuania before losing all control over the Belarusian territories to the Poles and Soviets.[147]
In spite of its success in knocking Russia out of World War I by the terms of the
On 1 January 1919, the German occupying army withdrew from Vilnius and turned the city over to local Polish self-defense forces. The Lithuanian government evacuated Vilnius and moved west to
From April 1919, the Lithuanian–Soviet War dragged on parallel with the Polish–Soviet War. Polish troops captured Vilnius from the Soviets on 21 April 1919.[149] Poland had territorial claims over Lithuania, especially the Vilnius Region, and these tensions spilled over into the Polish–Lithuanian War. Józef Piłsudski of Poland,[d] seeking a Polish-Lithuanian federation, but unable to find common ground with Lithuanian politicians, in August 1919 made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Lithuanian government in Kaunas.[151] According to a 1924 publication of Lithuanian President Antanas Smetona, following a successful recapture of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius from Poland, the Lithuanians planned to expand further into the Belarusian territories (the former lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) and considered granting an autonomy to the Belarusian territories, as requested by the Belarusian side, therefore had kept the Lithuanian Ministry for Belarusian Affairs in force, moreover, Smetona noted that there were a lot of pro-Lithuanian sympathies among the Belarusians.[152][153]
The Belarusian unit of the Lithuanian Armed Forces in Grodno was disbanded by the Poles following the annexation of it by the Polish Armed Forces in April 1919, while the soldiers of this unit were disarmed, looted, and publicly humiliated by the Polish soldiers, who even ripped off the Belarusian officers insignias from their uniforms and trampled these symbols with their feet in public, as documented in the historical documents sent by the Belarusians to the temporary Lithuanian capital Kaunas because this unit refused to carry out the Polish orders and stayed loyal to Lithuania.[154][155] Following the annexation of Grodno, the Lithuanian yellow–green–red, Belarusian white–red–white flags, and signs with the Coat of arms of Lithuania were torn off and the Polish gendarmes dragged them on the dusty streets for ridicule; instead of them, the Polish signs and flags were raised in their place everywhere in the city.[154][156] Soldiers and Catholic officers of the Belarusian regiment in Grodno were offered to join the Polish Army, while those who refused were offered to leave or were arrested, put into the concentration camps or deported from the native land by the Poles, part of the Belarusian soldiers and officers of this regiment evacuated to Kaunas and continued serving for Lithuania.[154][157][158]
The Lithuanian Army, commanded by General Silvestras Žukauskas, withstood Red Army advance near Kėdainiai and in the spring of 1919 the Lithuanians recaptured Šiauliai, Radviliškis, Panevėžys, Ukmergė.[159] By the end of August 1919, the Soviets were pushed out of Lithuanian territory and the Lithuanian units reached Daugava.[159] The Lithuanian Army was then deployed against the paramilitary West Russian Volunteer Army (Bermontians), who invaded northern Lithuania.[159] There were around 50,000 of Bermontians and they were well armed by Germany and supported German and Russian soldiers who sought to retain German control over the former Ober Ost.[159] West Russian Volunteers were defeated and pushed out by the end of 1919.[159] Thus the first phase of the Lithuanian Wars of Independence was over and Lithuanians could direct attention to internal affairs.[159]
Democratic period
The Constituent Assembly of Lithuania was elected in April 1920 and first met the following May. In June it adopted the third provisional constitution and on 12 July 1920, signed the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty. In the treaty the Soviet Union recognized fully independent Lithuania and its claims to the disputed Vilnius Region; Lithuania secretly allowed the Soviet forces passage through its territory as they moved against Poland.[160] On 14 July 1920, the advancing Soviet army captured Vilnius for a second time from Polish forces. The city was handed back to Lithuanians on 26 August 1920, following the defeat of the Soviet offensive. The victorious Polish army returned and the Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty increased hostilities between Poland and Lithuania. To prevent further fighting, the Suwałki Agreement was signed with Poland on 7 October 1920; it left Vilnius on the Lithuanian side of the armistice line.[161] It never went into effect, however, because Polish General Lucjan Żeligowski, acting on Józef Piłsudski's orders, staged the Żeligowski's Mutiny, a military action presented as a mutiny.[161] He invaded Lithuania on 8 October 1920, captured Vilnius the following day, and established a short-lived Republic of Central Lithuania in eastern Lithuania on 12 October 1920. The republic was a part of Piłsudski's federalist scheme, which never materialized due to opposition from both Polish and Lithuanian nationalists.[161]
For 19 years, Kaunas was the temporary capital of Lithuania while the Vilnius region remained under Polish administration. The League of Nations attempted to mediate the dispute, and Paul Hymans proposed plans for a Polish–Lithuanian union, but negotiations broke down as neither side could agree to a compromise. Central Lithuania held a general election in 1922 that was boycotted by the Jews, Lithuanians and Belarusians, then was annexed into Poland on 24 March 1922.[162] The Conference of Ambassadors awarded Vilnius to Poland in March 1923.[163] Lithuania did not accept this decision and broke all relations with Poland. The two countries were officially at war over Vilnius, the historical capital of Lithuania, inhabited at that time largely by Polish-speaking and Jewish populations between 1920 and 1938.[164][165] The dispute continued to dominate Lithuanian domestic politics and foreign policy and doomed the relations with Poland for the entire interwar period.[165]
For administrative purposes, the de facto territory of the country was divided into 23 counties (lt:apskritis). A further 11 counties (including Vilnius) were allocated for the territory occupied by Poland (see also Administrative divisions of Lithuania).
The Constituent Assembly, which adjourned in October 1920 due to threats from Poland, gathered again and initiated many reforms needed in the new state. Lithuania obtained international recognition and membership in the League of Nations,[e] passed a law for land reform, introduced a national currency (the litas), and adopted a final constitution in August 1922. Lithuania became a democratic state, with Seimas (parliament) elected by men and women for a three-year term. The Seimas elected the president. The First Seimas of Lithuania was elected in October 1922, but could not form a government as the votes split equally 38–38, and it was forced to dissolve. Its only lasting achievement was the Klaipėda Revolt from 10 January to 15 January 1923. The revolt involved Lithuania Minor, a region traditionally sought by Lithuanian nationalists[122] that remained under German rule after World War I, except for the Klaipėda Region with its large Lithuanian minority.[166] (Various sources give the region's interwar ethnic composition as 41.9 percent German, 27.1 percent Memelländisch, and 26.6 percent Lithuanian.)[167][168]
Lithuania took advantage of the Ruhr Crisis in western Europe and captured the Klaipėda Region, a territory detached from East Prussia by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and placed under a French administration sponsored by the League of Nations. The region was incorporated as an autonomous district of Lithuania in May 1924. For Lithuania, it provided the country's only access to the Baltic Sea, and it was an important industrial center, but the region's numerous German inhabitants resisted Lithuanian rule during the 1930s. The Klaipėda Revolt was the last armed conflict in Lithuania before World War II.[108]
The
Authoritarian period
The
The Seimas thought that the coup was just a temporary measure and that new elections would be called to return Lithuania to democracy. Instead, the legislative body was dissolved in May 1927. Later that year members of the Social Democrats and other leftist parties tried to organize an uprising against Smetona, but were quickly subdued. Voldemaras grew increasingly independent of Smetona and was forced to resign in 1929. Three times in 1930 and once in 1934, he unsuccessfully attempted to return to power. In May 1928, Smetona announced the fifth provisional constitution without consulting the Seimas. The constitution continued to claim that Lithuania was a democratic state while the powers of the president were vastly increased. Smetona's party, the Lithuanian Nationalist Union, steadily grew in size and importance. He adopted the title "tautos vadas" (leader of the nation) and slowly started building a cult of personality. Many prominent political figures married into Smetona's family (for example, Juozas Tūbelis and Stasys Raštikis).
When the
As tensions were rising in Europe following the annexation of the Federal State of Austria by Nazi Germany (the Anschluss), Poland presented the 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania in March of that year. Poland demanded the re-establishment of the normal diplomatic relations that were broken after the Żeligowski Mutiny in 1920 and threatened military actions in case of refusal. Lithuania, having a weaker military and unable to enlist international support for its cause, accepted the ultimatum.[165] In the event of Polish military action, Adolf Hitler ordered a German military takeover of southwest Lithuania up to the Dubysa River, and his armed forces were being fully mobilized until the news of the Lithuanian acceptance. Relations between Poland and Lithuania became somewhat normalized after the acceptance of the ultimatum, and the parties concluded treaties regarding railway transport, postal exchange, and other means of communication.[170]
Lithuania offered diplomatic support to Germany and the Soviet Union in opposition to powers such as
Adolf Hitler initially planned to transform Lithuania into a satellite state which would participate in its planned military conquests in exchange for territorial enlargements.[172] When Germany and the Soviet Union concluded the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 and divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, Lithuania was assigned to Germany at first, but that changed after Smetona's refusal to participate in the German invasion of Poland.[108][173] Joseph Stalin agreed to cede Polish areas initially annexed by the Soviet Union to the Greater Germanic Reich in exchange for Lithuania entering the Soviet sphere of influence.[172]
The interwar period of independence gave birth to the development of Lithuanian press, literature, music, arts, and theater as well as a comprehensive system of education with Lithuanian as the language of instruction. The network of primary and secondary schools was expanded and institutions of higher learning were established in Kaunas.[29] Lithuanian society remained heavily agricultural with only 20% of the people living in cities. The influence of the Catholic Church was strong and birth rates high: the population increased by 22% to over three million during 1923–1939, despite emigration to South America and elsewhere.[108] In almost all cities and towns, traditionally dominated by Jews, Poles, Russians and Germans, ethnic Lithuanians became the majority. Lithuanians, for example, constituted 59% of the residents of Kaunas in 1923, as opposed to 7% in 1897.[174] The right-wing dictatorship of 1926–1940 had strangely stabilizing social effects, as it prevented the worst of antisemitic excesses as well as the rise of leftist and rightist political extremism.[174]
World War II (1939–1945)
First Soviet occupation
Secret protocols of the
In spring 1940, once the Winter War in Finland was over, the Soviets heightened their diplomatic pressure on Lithuania and issued the
Immediately following the occupation, Soviet authorities began rapid
Occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany (1941–1944)
On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.[176] In Franz Walter Stahlecker's report of October 15 to Heinrich Himmler, Stahlecker wrote that he had succeeded in covering up actions of the Vorkommando (German vanguard unit) and made it look like an initiative of the local population to carry out the Kaunas pogrom.[178] The German forces moved rapidly and encountered only sporadic Soviet resistance. Vilnius was captured on 24 June 1941,[179] and Germany controlled all of Lithuania within a week. The retreating Soviet forces murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 people, mostly ethnic Lithuanians[174] (see Rainiai massacre). The Lithuanians generally greeted the Germans as liberators from the oppressive Soviet regime and hoped that Germany would restore some autonomy to their country.[180] The Lithuanian Activist Front organized an anti-Soviet revolt known as the June Uprising in Lithuania, declared independence, and formed a Provisional Government of Lithuania with Juozas Ambrazevičius as prime minister. The Provisional Government was not forcibly dissolved; stripped by the Germans of any actual power, it resigned on 5 August 1941.[181] Germany established the civil administration known as the Reichskommissariat Ostland.[108]
Initially, there was substantial cooperation and collaboration between the German forces and some Lithuanians. Lithuanians joined the
Before
Second Soviet occupation
In the summer of 1944, the Soviet Red Army reached eastern Lithuania.
Soviet period (1944–1990)
Stalinist terror and resistance (1944–1953)
The
Lithuanian armed resistance lasted until 1953. Adolfas Ramanauskas (code name 'Vanagas', translated to English: the hawk), the last official commander of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters, was arrested in October 1956 and executed in November 1957.
Soviet era (1953–1988)
Soviet authorities encouraged the immigration of non-Lithuanian workers, especially Russians, as a way of integrating Lithuania into the Soviet Union and encouraging industrial development,[29] but in Lithuania this process did not assume the massive scale experienced by other European Soviet republics.[192]
To a great extent,
The national developments in Lithuania followed tacit compromise agreements worked out by the Soviet communists, Lithuanian communists and the Lithuanian intelligentsia. Vilnius University was reopened after the war, operating in the Lithuanian language and with a largely Lithuanian student body. It became a center for Baltic studies. General schools in the Lithuanian SSR provided more instruction in Lithuanian than at any previous time in the country's history. The literary Lithuanian language was standardized and refined further as a language of scholarship and Lithuanian literature. The price the Lithuanian intelligentsia ended up paying for the national privileges was their much increased Communist Party membership after de-Stalinization.[196]
Between the death of Stalin in 1953 and the glasnost and perestroika reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s, Lithuania functioned as a Soviet society, with all its repressions and peculiarities. Agriculture remained collectivized, property nationalized, and criticism of the Soviet system was severely punished. The country remained largely isolated from the non-Soviet world because of travel restrictions, the persecution of the Catholic Church continued and the nominally egalitarian society was extensively corrupted by the practice of connections and privileges for those who served the system.[108]
The communist era is represented in the museum of Grūtas Park.
Rebirth (1988–1990)
Until mid-1988, all political, economic, and cultural life was controlled by the
Independence restored (1990–present)
Struggle for independence (1990–1991)
In early 1990, candidates backed by
On 15 March, the Soviet Union demanded revocation of the independence and began employing political and economic sanctions against Lithuania. On 18 April, Soviets imposed economic blockade of Lithuania which lasted until the end of June. The Soviet military was used to seize a few public buildings, but violence was largely contained until January 1991. During the January Events in Lithuania, the Soviet authorities attempted to overthrow the elected government by sponsoring the so-called National Salvation Committee. The Soviets forcibly took over the Vilnius TV Tower, killing 14 unarmed civilians and injuring 140.[199] During this assault, the only means of contact to the outside world available was an amateur radio station set up in the Lithuanian Parliament building by Tadas Vyšniauskas whose call sign was LY2BAW.[200] The initial cries for help were received by an American amateur radio operators with the call sign N9RD in Indiana and WB9Z in Illinois.[citation needed] N9RD, WB9Z and other radio operators from around the world were able to relay situational updates to relevant authorities until official United States Department of State personnel were able to go on-air. Moscow failed to act further to crush the Lithuanian independence movement, and the Lithuanian government continued to function.
During the national referendum on 9 February 1991, more than 90% of those who took part in the voting (76% of all eligible voters) voted in favor of an independent, democratic Lithuania. During the
Contemporary Republic of Lithuania (1991–present)
As in many countries of the former Soviet Union, the popularity of the independence movement (Sąjūdis in the case of Lithuania) diminished due to worsening economic situation (rising unemployment, inflation, etc.). The Communist Party of Lithuania renamed itself as the Democratic Labour Party of Lithuania (LDDP) and gained a majority of seats against Sąjūdis in the Lithuanian parliamentary elections of 1992.[201] LDDP continued building the independent democratic state and transitioning from a centrally planned economy to a free market economy. In the Lithuanian parliamentary elections of 1996, the voters swung back to the rightist Homeland Union, led by the former Sąjūdis leader Vytautas Landsbergis.[202]
As part of the economic transition to
Despite Lithuania's achievement of complete independence, sizable numbers of
On 27 April 1993, a partnership with the Pennsylvania National Guard was established as part of the State Partnership Program.[203]
Seeking closer ties with the West, Lithuania applied for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership in 1994. The country had to go through a difficult transition from planned to free market economy in order to satisfy the requirements for European Union (EU) membership. In May 2001, Lithuania became the 141st member of the World Trade Organization. In October 2002, Lithuania was invited to join the European Union and one month later to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; it became a member of both in 2004.[29]
As a result of the broader
Dalia Grybauskaitė (2009–2019) was the first female President of Lithuania and the first president to be re-elected for a second consecutive term.[206] She was succeeded by Gitanas Nausėda in 2019.[207] On 11–12 July 2023, the NATO summit was held in Vilnius, which was attended by heads of state or government members of NATO countries and its allies.[208]
Historiography
Krapauskas (2010) identifies three main tendencies in the recent historiography. The "postmodern school" is heavily influenced by the French
See also
- History of Vilnius
- List of hillforts in Lithuania
- List of rulers of Lithuania
- Northern Crusades
- Prime Minister of Lithuania
- Politics of Lithuania
- Black ceramics in Lithuania
Notes
- ^ Historically, there has been a scholarly dispute concerning the origin of the Balts. According to one major point of view, the Baltic peoples descend directly from the original Indo-European arrivals, who might have settled this part of Europe possibly as far back as about 3000 BC as the archeological Corded Ware culture. The linguistic argument has been the most "archaic" status of the Lithuanian language among the existing Indo-European languages of Europe. The competing idea takes into account the many words common to both the Baltic and Slavic languages and postulates a shared, more recent Balto-Slavic ancestry. There has been no agreement regarding which archeological formation such hypothetical Proto-Balto-Slavic community would correspond to.[6]
- ^ This tiny fraction of Catholics in the early 17th century Grand Duchy is given by Kasper Cichocki (1545–1616), a Catholic parish priest near Sandomierz, who wrote on the subject of the extent of the heresies in the Commonwealth. According to Wacław Urban, Calvinism and Eastern Orthodoxy predominated, and were followed by Catholicism and the Polish Brethren, with Lutheranism being numerically the least significant of the Christian denominations in Lithuania.[110]
- ^ The widely used term "Russian Jews" is somewhat misleading, because the Jews within the Russian Empire were allowed to live only within the Pale of Settlement, as determined by Catherine the Great. The Pale coincided largely with the territory of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, under Russia the western part of the Empire.[116]
- ^ Piłsudski's family roots in the Polonized gentry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the resulting point of view (seeing himself and people like him as legitimate Lithuanians) put him in conflict with the modern Lithuanian nationalists (who in Piłsudski's lifetime redefined the scope of the "Lithuanian" connotation), by extension with other nationalists, and also with the Polish modern nationalist movement.[150]
- Treaty of Riga, it had become clear that the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was not going to be reestablished.[108]
- ^ It was a sizable force in comparison with the similar number (20,000) of underground anti-communist fighters operating at that time in Poland. Poland was a country with an over eight times the population of Lithuania, but legal opposition (the Polish People's Party) was primarily active there in the 1940s.[190]
- ^ About 90% of Vilnius Jews had been exterminated by the Nazis in 1941–1944 and about 80% of Vilnius Poles were deported under the Soviet rule in 1944–1946, which left the city open to settlement by Lithuanians, or possibly Russians.[193]
- Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania is seen by many Lithuanians as a communist rule residue with a nationalistic tint and conflicts over the language of education and naming rights continue, with an uneasy involvement of the government of Poland. The rural Polish-speaking areas are among the economically most depressed regions of Lithuania and high unemployment there has caused significant permanent emigration. The Lithuanian relations with the Russian minority, the actual left-over of the Soviet-imposed settlement, have not been a source of comparable tensions.[194]
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- ^ Ochmański (1982), pp. 79–80
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Further reading
- ISBN 978-609-437-204-9. Archived from the original(PDF) on 28 January 2021. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
- Ališauskiene, Milda, and Ingo W. Schröder, eds. Religious Diversity in Post-Soviet Society: Ethnographies of Catholic Hegemony & the New Pluralism in Lithuania (2011)
- Backus III, Oswald P. "The Problem of Feudalism in Lithuania, 1506-1548," Slavic Review (1962) 21#4 pp. 639–659 in JSTOR Archived 24 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine
- Budreckis, Algirdas M. An introduction to the history of Lithuania (1985)
- Friedrich, Karin, and Barbara M. Pendzich, eds. Citizenship and Identity in a Multinational Commonwealth: Poland-Lithuania in Context, 1550-1772 (2011)
- Gimius, Kestutis K. "The Collectivization of Lithuanian Agriculture, 1944-50," Soviet Studies (1988) 40#3 pp. 460–478.
- Kiaupa, Zigmantas. The History of Lithuania (2005)
- Kirby David G. The Baltic World 1772-1993 (Longman, 1995).
- Kuncevicius, Albinas et al. The History of Lithuania Before 1795 (2000)
- Lane, Thomas. Lithuania: Stepping Westward (2001); 20th century history esp. post 1991 online Archived 17 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine
- Liekis, Sarunas. 1939: The Year that Changed Everything in Lithuania's History (2009)
- Lieven Anatol. The Baltic Revolution (2nd ed. 1994). against the USSR
- Lukowski, Jerzy; Zawadzki, Hubert (2001). A Concise History of Poland. Cambridge Concise Histories. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521559171.
- Misiunas Romuald J. The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940-1990 (2nd ed. 1993).
- Ochmański, Jerzy (1982). Historia Litwy [The History of Lithuania] (in Polish) (2nd ed.). Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich. ISBN 9788304008861.
- Palmer, Alan. The Baltic: A new history of the region and its people (New York: Overlook Press, 2006; published In London with the title Northern shores: a history of the Baltic Sea and its peoples (John Murray, 2006).
- ISBN 9780300105865.
- Stone, Daniel. The Polish–Lithuanian state: 1386–1795 (University of Washington Press, 2001)
- Suziedelis, Saulius. The Sword and the Cross: A History of the Church in Lithuania (1988)
- Thaden Edward C. Russia's Western Borderlands, 1710-1870 (Princeton University Press, 1984).
- Vilkauskaite, Dovile O. "From Empire to Independence: The Curious Case of the Baltic States 1917-1922." (thesis, University of Connecticut, 2013). online; Bibliography pp 70 – 75.
Historiography
- Krapauskas, Virgil. "Recent Trends in Lithuanian Historiography" Lituanus (2010) 56#4 pp 5–28.
- Švedas, Aurimas. In the Captivity of the Matrix: Soviet Lithuanian Historiography, 1944−1985 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2014). 280 pp.
External links
- Pages and Forums on the Lithuanian History Archived 22 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine