Portal:Lithuania
Portal maintenance status: (July 2018)
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Introduction
Lithuania (/ˌlɪθjuˈeɪniə/ (
listen); Lithuanian: Lietuva [lʲɪɛtʊˈvɐ]), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika), is a country in the Baltic region of northern-eastern Europe. Since its independence, Lithuania has been referred to as one of the Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, to the east of Sweden and Denmark. It is bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Kaliningrad Oblast (a Russian exclave) to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 2.8 million people , and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. Other major cities are Kaunas and Klaipėda. Lithuanians are a Baltic people. The official language, Lithuanian, along with Latvian, is one of only two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.
For centuries, the southeastern shores of the Baltic Sea were inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s, the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, the King of Lithuania, and the first unified Lithuanian state, the Kingdom of Lithuania, was created on 6 July 1253. During the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe; present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were the territories of the Grand Duchy. With the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighbouring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772 to 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory.
As World War I neared its end, Lithuania's Act of Independence was signed on 16 February 1918, declaring the founding of the modern Republic of Lithuania. In the midst of the Second World War, Lithuania was first occupied by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. As World War II neared its end and the Germans retreated, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. On 11 March 1990, a year before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania became the first Baltic state to declare itself independent, resulting in the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania.
Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, eurozone, Schengen Agreement, NATO and OECD. It is also a member of the Nordic Investment Bank, and part of Nordic-Baltic cooperation of Northern European countries. The United Nations Human Development Index lists Lithuania as a "very high human development" country.
Regions of Lithuania
Etnographic regions of Lithuania with Sudovia highlighted in light orange.
Suvalkija or Sudovia (Lithuanian: Sūduva or Suvalkija or Užnemunė) is the smallest of the five cultural regions of Lithuania. Its unofficial capital is Marijampolė. People from Suvalkija are called suvalkiečiai (plural) or suvalkietis (singular). It is located south of the Neman River, in the former territory of Vilkaviškis bishopric. Historically, it is the newest ethnographic region as its most distinct characteristics and separate identity formed during the 19th century when the territory was part of Congress Poland. It was never a separate political entity and even today it has no official status in the administrative division of Lithuania. However, it continues to be the subject of studies focusing on Lithuanian folk culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Most of Lithuania's cultural differences blended or disappeared during the Soviet era (1944–1990), remaining the longest in southeastern Lithuania. The concept remains popular among Lithuanian people. A 2008 survey of freshmen and sophomores (first- and second-year students) at Kaunas' Vytautas Magnus University found that 80% of the students continued to identify themselves with one of the regions. Efforts are made to preserve, record, and promote any remaining aspects of the original folk culture. Read more...
Lithuania Minor and the other historical ethnographic regions of Lithuania
Lithuania Minor (Lithuanian: Mažoji Lietuva; German: Kleinlitauen; Polish: Litwa Mniejsza; Russian: Máлая Литвá) or Prussian Lithuania (Lithuanian: Prūsų Lietuva; German: Preußisch-Litauen, Polish: Litwa Pruska) is a historical ethnographic region of Prussia, later East Prussia in Germany, where Prussian Lithuanians or Lietuvininkai lived. Lithuania Minor enclosed the northern part of this province and got its name due to the territory's substantial Lithuanian-speaking population. Prior to the invasion of the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, the main part of the territory later known as Lithuania Minor was inhabited by the tribes of Skalvians and Nadruvians. The land became depopulated to some extent during the warfare between Lithuania and the Order. The war ended with the Treaty of Melno and the land was resettled by Lithuanian newcomers, returning refugees, and the remaining indigenous Baltic peoples; the term Lithuania Minor appeared for the first time between 1517 and 1526. With the exception of the Klaipėda Region, which became a mandated territory of the League of Nations in 1920 by the Treaty of Versailles and was annexed to Lithuania from 1923 to 1939, the area was part of Prussia until 1945. Today a small portion of Lithuania Minor is within the borders of modern Lithuania and Poland while most of the territory is part of the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia.
Although hardly anything remains of the original culture due to the expulsion of Germans after World War II, Lithuania Minor has made an important contribution to Lithuanian culture as a whole. The written standard form of Prussian-Lithuanian provided the "skeleton" of modern Lithuanian, evolved from people close to Stanislovas Rapalionis and graduating from Lithuanian language school established in Vilnius, who were expelled from Grand Duchy during counter-reformation years. Those include notable names like Abraomas Kulvietis and Martynas Mažvydas. During the years of the Lithuanian press ban, most of the Lithuanian books printed using the Latin alphabet were published in Lithuania Minor.
Lithuania Minor was the home of Kristijonas Donelaitis, a pastor, poet and the author of The Seasons, considered a milestone of Lithuanian literature (the first fictional novel written in Lithuanian), and Vydūnas, a prominent Lithuanian writer and philosopher. Read more...
Dzūkija or Dainava is one of five ethnographic regions of Lithuania. Dzūkija is a cultural region defined by traditional lifestyles and dialects of the local Lithuanian population (mostly rural farmers) and has never been defined as a political or administrative unit. Traditionally, Alytus is regarded as the capital of the region, although it is not the largest city in Dzūkija (because Vilnius vicinities lost Lithuanian language centuries ago). Read more...
Samogitia or Žemaitija (Samogitian: Žemaitėjė; Lithuanian: Žemaitija; see below for alternate and historical names) is one of the five ethnographic regions of Lithuania. Žemaitija is located in northwestern Lithuania. Its largest city is Šiauliai. Žemaitija has a long and distinct cultural history, reflected in the existence of the Samogitian dialect. Read more...
Selected counties
Tauragė County (Lithuanian: Tauragės apskritis) is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is in the west of the country, and its capital is Tauragė. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished, and since that date, Tauragė County remains as the territorial and statistical unit. Read more...
Vilnius County (Lithuanian: Vilniaus apskritis) is the largest of the 10 counties of Lithuania, located in the east of the country around the city Vilnius. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished, and since that date, Vilnius County remains as the territorial and statistical unit. Read more...
Alytus County (Lithuanian: Alytaus apskritis) is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is the southernmost county, and its capital is the city of Alytus. Its territory lies within the ethnographic region of Dzūkija. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished, and since that date, Alytus County remains as the territorial and statistical unit. Read more...
Panevėžys County (Lithuanian: Panevėžio apskritis) is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is in the north-east of the country, and its capital is Panevėžys. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished, and since that date, Panevėžys County remains as the territorial and statistical unit. Read more...
Šiauliai County (Lithuanian: Šiaulių apskritis) is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is in the north of the country, and its capital is Šiauliai. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished, and since that date, Šiauliai County remains as the territorial and statistical unit. Read more...
Utena County (Lithuanian: Utenos Apskritis) is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is the country's most sparsely populated county. The capital and the largest city in the county is Utena, which is 95 km (59 mi) from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished. Since that date, Utena County remains as the territorial and statistical unit. Read more...
Selected World Heritage Sites
The Struve Geodetic Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through ten countries and over 2,820 km, which yielded the first accurate measurement of a meridian.
The chain was established and used by the German-born Russian scientist Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve in the years 1816 to 1855 to establish the exact size and shape of the earth. At that time, the chain passed merely through two countries: Union of Sweden-Norway and the Russian Empire. The Arc's first point is located in Tartu Observatory in Estonia, where Struve conducted much of his research.
In 2005, the chain was inscribed on the World Heritage List as a memorable ensemble of the chain made up of 34 commemorative plaques or built obelisks out of the original 265 main station points which are marked by drilled holes in rock, iron crosses, cairns, others.
Measurement of the triangulation chain comprises 258 main triangles and 265 geodetic vertices. The northernmost point is located near Hammerfest in Norway and the southernmost point near the Black Sea in Ukraine. This inscription is located in ten countries, the most of any UNESCO World Heritage. Read more...
The Old Town of Vilnius (Lithuanian: Vilniaus senamiestis, Polish: Stare Miasto w Wilnie, Belarusian: Стары горад Вільні, Russian: Старый город в Вильнe), one of the largest surviving medieval old towns in Northern Europe, has an area of 3.59 square kilometres (887 acres). It encompasses 74 quarters, with 70 streets and lanes numbering 1487 buildings with a total floor area of 1,497,000 square meters. The oldest part of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, it has developed over the course of many centuries, and has been shaped by the city's history and a constantly changing cultural influence. It is a place where some of Europe's greatest architectural styles—gothic, renaissance, baroque and neoclassical—stand side by side and complement each other.
Pilies Street is the Old Town's main artery and the hub of cafe and street market life. The main street of Vilnius, Gediminas Avenue, is partially located in the Old Town. The central squares in the Old Town are the Cathedral Square and the Town Hall Square.
One of the most elaborate architectural complexes is the Vilnius University Architectural Ensemble, which occupies a large part of the Old Town and has 13 courtyards. It was selected to represent Lithuania in the Mini-Europe Park in Brussels.
In 1994 the Vilnius Old Town was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List (No. 541) in recognition of its universal value and originality. The definition of "historic center" itself has a broader meaning than the Old Town, formerly encircled with defensive walls. It embraces the valuable historical suburbs of Vilnius, such as Užupis, which historically used to be outside the city boundaries. Therefore Užupis is often considered a part of the Old Town of Vilnius. Read more...
The Curonian Spit (Lithuanian: Kuršių nerija; Russian: Ку́ршская коса́ (Kurshskaya kosa); German: Kurische Nehrung,
German pronunciation (help·info); Latvian: Kuršu kāpas) is a 98 km long, thin, curved sand-dune spit that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea coast. Its southern portion lies within Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia and its northern within southwestern Lithuania. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site shared by the two countries. Read more...
Kernavė was a medieval capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and today is a tourist attraction and an archeological site (population 272, 2011). It is located in the Širvintos district municipality located in southeast Lithuania. A Lithuanian state cultural reserve was established in Kernavė in 1989. In 2004 Kernavė Archaeological Site was included into UNESCO world heritage list. Read more...
Selected politics articles
- The Speaker of the Seimas (Lithuanian: Seimo pirmininkas, literally translated as Chairman of the Seimas) is the presiding officer of the Seimas, the parliament of Lithuania. The speaker and deputy speakers are elected by the members of the Seimas during the session. Read more...
- The territory of Lithuania is divided into 10 counties (Lithuanian: singular apskritis, plural apskritys), all named after their capitals. The counties are divided into 60 municipalities (Lithuanian: singular savivaldybė, plural savivaldybės): 9 city municipalities, 43 district municipalities and 8 municipalities. Each municipality is then divided into elderates (Lithuanian: singular seniūnija, plural seniūnijos). This division was created in 1994 and slightly modified in 2000. Read more...
Lithuania is divided into three layers of administrative divisions. The first-level division consists of 10 counties (Lithuanian: singular – apskritis, plural – apskritys). These are sub-divided into 60 municipalities (Lithuanian: plural – savivaldybės, singular – savivaldybė), which in turn are further sub-divided into over 500 smaller groups, known as elderships (Lithuanian: plural – seniūnijos, singular – seniūnija). Read more...- The Supreme Court of the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublikos Aukščiausiasis Teismas) is the only court of cassation in the Republic of Lithuania for reviewing effective judgements and rulings passed by the courts hearing criminal cases at the first and appeal instances as well as decisions and rulings in civil cases passed by the courts of appeal instance. Read more...
The following is a list of rulers over Lithuania—grand dukes, kings, and presidents—the heads of authority over historical Lithuanian territory. The timeline includes Lithuania as a sovereign entity or legitimately part of a greater sovereign entity as well as Lithuania under control or occupation of an outside authority (i.e., Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic). The incumbents and office-holders are listed by names most commonly used in English language. Where appropriate, the alternations in Lithuanian, Ruthenian (later Belarusian) and Polish are included. Read more...
The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas), or simply the Seimas (Lithuanian: [sæ̠iˑmɐs]), is the unicameral parliament of Lithuania. The Seimas constitutes the legislative branch of government in Lithuania, enacting laws and amendments to the Constitution, passing the budget, confirming the Prime Minister and the Government and controlling their activities. Read more...
Parliamentary elections were held in Lithuania on 12 October 2008, with a second round on 26 October in the constituencies where no candidate won a majority in the first round of voting. All 141 seats in the Seimas were up for election; 71 in single-seat constituencies elected by majority vote and the remaining 70 in a nationwide constituency based on proportional representation. Together with the elections, a referendum on extending the operation of Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant was held. Read more...- The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania (in Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublikos Konstitucinis Teismas) is a special court established by the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 1992; it began the activities after the adoption of the Law on Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania on February 3, 1993. Since its inception, the Court has been located in the city of Vilnius, Gediminas Avenue. Read more...
The Court's palace on Gediminas Avenue
Presidential elections were held in Lithuania in June 2004. In the first round on 13 June, the former President, Valdas Adamkus, led the vote tally over the former Prime Minister Kazimira Prunskienė. Adamkus defeated Prunskienė in the second round on 27 June. Read more...
Dalia Grybauskaitė (Lithuanian pronunciation: [dɐˈlʲɛ ɡʲrʲiːbɐʊsˈkɐ̂ˑɪtʲeː], born 1 March 1956) is a Lithuanian politician serving as the fifth and current President of Lithuania since 2009. She is the first woman to hold the position and became in 2014 the first President of Lithuania to be reelected for a second consecutive term. Read more...
Saulius Skvernelis (born 23 July 1970) is a Lithuanian politician who has been Prime Minister of Lithuania since 2016. He is also a member of the Seimas. Previously he served as police commissioner, and he was Minister of the Interior from 2014 to 2016. Read more...- This article lists political parties in Lithuania.
Lithuania has a multi-party system with numerous political parties, in which no one party often has a chance of gaining power alone, and parties must work with each other to form coalition governments. As of 2008[update], there are 37 political parties registered with the Ministry of Justice. Read more... - The European Parliament election of 2004 in Lithuania was the election of MEP representing Lithuania constituency for the 2004-2009 term of the European Parliament. It was part of the wider 2004 European election. The vote took place on June 13. Read more...
Selected culture articles
- The government of Lithuania has made provision for ethnic minorities since 1918. A substantial Jewish group that existed up to World War II was almost eliminated in the Holocaust. The Census of 2011 showed that 15.8% of inhabitants belonged to ethnic minorities: the two largest groups were the Poles and the Russians, although the proportions had decreased since independence in 1989. Other minorities include the Samogitians - not classified in the Census - and the historically important Latvian-speaking Kursenieki. Read more...
Tautiška giesmė (pronounced [tɐʊˈtʲɪʃkɐ ˈɡʲɪɛsmeː]; literally "The National Hymn") is the national anthem of Lithuania, also known by its opening words "Lietuva, Tėvyne mūsų" (official translation of the lyrics: "Lithuania, Our Homeland", literally: "Lithuania, Our Fatherland") and as "Lietuvos himnas" (Hymn of Lithuania). The music and lyrics were written in 1898 by Vincas Kudirka, when Lithuania was still part of the Russian Empire. The fifty-word poem was a condensation of Kudirka's conceptions of the Lithuanian state, the Lithuanian people, and their past. Shortly before his death in 1899, the anthem was performed for Lithuanians living in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The first public Lithuanian performance of the anthem took place in Vilnius in 1905, and it became the official national anthem in 1919, a year after Lithuania declared its independence.
"Tautiška giesmė" was reinstated in 1989 shortly before the reestablishment of Lithuanian independence and confirmed in the National Anthem Act (21 October 1991). It was automatically included as the national anthem in 1992, when the new Constitution was ratified after independence from the Soviet Union was achieved. The status of "Tautiška giesmė" as the National Anthem of Lithuania was further confirmed in 1999 with the passage of a national law stating that. Read more...- This is a list of museums in Lithuania.
- Biržai Castle
- Communication History Museum
- Europos Parkas
- Grūtas Park
- Historical Presidential Palace, Kaunas
- House of the Signatories
- Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center
- Kaunas Museum for the Blind
- Klaipėda Castle
- Kretinga Museum
- Lithuanian Art Museum
- Lithuanian Aviation Museum
- Lithuanian Road Museum
- Lithuanian Museum of Ancient Beekeeping
- M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum
- Museum of Genocide Victims
- Museum of the History of Lithuanian Medicine and Pharmacy
- National Museum of Lithuania
- Ninth Fort
- Palanga Amber Museum
- Povilas Stulga Museum of Lithuanian Folk Instruments
- Radziwiłł Palace, Vilnius
- Rumšiškės
- Stalag Luft VI
- Tadas Ivanauskas Zoological Museum
- Tuskulėnai Manor
- Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum
- Vilnius Castle Complex
- Vytautas the Great War Museum
- Žmuidzinavičius Museum
- MO Museum
- The history of the Jews in Lithuania spans the period from the 8th century to the present day. There is still a small community in that country, as well as an extensive Lithuanian Jewish diaspora in Israel, the United States and other countries. For more detail, see Lithuanian Jews. Read more...
Salt-cured ox, the barrel of beer and other food from Lithuania being sent to the feast of the Council of Constance. (Rosgartenmuseum Konstanz, Hs. 1, Richental: Konzilschronik)
Lithuanian cuisine features products suited to the cool and moist northern climate of Lithuania: barley, potatoes, rye, beets, greens, berries, and mushrooms are locally grown, and dairy products are one of its specialties. Various ways of pickling were used to preserve food for winter. Soups are extremely popular, and are widely regarded as the key to good health. Since it shares its climate and agricultural practices with Northern Europe, Lithuanian cuisine has much in common with its Baltic neighbors and, in general, northern countries.
Longlasting agricultural and foraging traditions along with variety of influences during the country's long, difficult and interesting history formed a Lithuanian cuisine.
German traditions have had an influence on Lithuanian cuisine, introducing pork and potato dishes, such as potato pudding (kugelis or kugel) and intestines stuffed with mashed potato (vėdarai), as well as the baroque tree cake known as Šakotis. Lithuanian noblemen usually hired French chefs - French cuisine influence came to Lithuania in this way. The most exotic influence is Eastern (Karaite) cuisine, and the dish kibinai which got popular in Lithuania. Lithuanians and other nations which lived in Grand Duchy of Lithuania also share some dishes and beverages. Lithuanian cuisine also influenced Polish and Ruthenian cuisines.
Despite the apparent richness of the cuisine, Lithuania has a very low prevalence of obesity. 8 Lithuanian restaurants are listed in White Guide Baltic Top 30. Read more...
Several famous Lithuania-related architects are notable for their achievements in the field of architecture. Johann Christoph Glaubitz, Marcin Knackfus, Laurynas Gucevičius and Karol Podczaszyński were instrumental in introducing Baroque and neoclassical architectural movements to the Lithuanian architecture during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.
Lithuania is also known for numerous castles. About twenty castles exist in Lithuania. Some castles had to be rebuilt or survive partially. Lithuanian village life has existed since the days of Vytautas the Great. Zervynos and Kapiniškės are two of many ethnographic villages in Lithuania.
Forty percent of Lithuania's population live in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Alytus, Panevėžys, and Šiauliai. Even though population density has grown within Lithuania, overall, population has declined due to low birth rates and higher death rates. Between 1996 and 2001, the World Bank financed the Lithuania Energy Efficiency Housing Project to renovate thermal temperatures in some of Lithuania's houses, due to Lithuania's cold climate. Read more...- List of official holidays in Lithuania:
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The list of other observances (atmintinos dienos) is set by law and includes a total of 60 days, not including the public holidays above. Read more...
Franciscan Church in Vilnius
As per the 2011 census, the predominant religion in Lithuania is Christianity, with the largest confession being that of the Catholic Church (about 77% of the population is Catholic according to the 2011 census). There are also smaller groups of Orthodox Christians, Evangelical Lutherans, members of Reformed churches, other Protestants, Jews and Muslims as well as people of other faiths.
According to the 2010 Eurobarometer Poll, 47% of Lithuanian citizens responded that "they believe there is a God", 37% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force", and 12% said that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force". Read more...- This article provides an overview of telecommunications in Lithuania, including radio, television, telephones, and the Internet.
The Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania (RRT) is Lithuania's independent communications-industry regulator. It was established under the Law on Telecommunications and the provisions of the European Union Directives to ensure that the industry remain competitive. Read more...
Opera I Lituani (The Lithuanians) - poster from the opera's 19th century production
Music of Lithuania refers to all forms of music associated with Lithuania, which has a long history of the folk, popular and classical musical development. Music was an important part of polytheistic, pre-Christian Lithuania - rituals were accompanied by music instruments and singing, deeds of the heroes and those who didn't return from the war were celebrated in songs. Read more...
Selected universities
- Mykolas Romeris University (Lithuanian: Mykolo Romerio universitetas) is one of Lithuania's largest universities, bearing the name of the Lithuanian legal scholar, judge and father of Lithuania's Constitutional Law Mykolas Römeris. Established after restoration of independence of the Republic of Lithuania in 1990, it became a state university.
Currently MRU enrolls approximately 10,000 students from 38 countries. University Faculties are located in two cities: Vilnius and Kaunas. For International Students University offers Bachelor, Master and Doctoral study programmes in the English language in the field of Social Sciences.
The University is active in various world university organizations including the European Universities Association (EUA) and the International Association of Universities (IAU). MRU has forged international partnerships with over 300 universities, public and private institutions abroad. The MRU Asian Centre, Francophone Studies Centre and King Sejong Institute are also known for their organized events, conferences and numerous lectures. International relations are further enhanced by visits and lectures by researchers, Embassy officials and well known university organization representatives.
Mykolas Romeris University is successfully implementing one of its most important missions – to foster a culture of research and innovation. In 2015 there were almost 900 research papers published and more than 50 academic events organized. There are 6 doctoral studies programmes at the University. Open access to research results is implemented.
In 2015 the new Mykolas Romeris University affiliate, the Social Innovations Laboratory Centre - MRU LAB with 19 laboratories, was opened on campus. The Laboratories seek to apply the latest research results to the needs of society at large. The Research and Innovations Aide Centre has been established at the new Lab building as well. Read more...
The main palace in the Gediminas Avenue
The Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius, Lithuania, is a state-supported conservatory that trains students in music, theatre, and multimedia arts. Read more...
Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) is a public research university located in Kaunas, Lithuania.
Initially established on January 27, 1920, the school was known as "Higher Courses". With an increased rate of staffing and attendance, the school was instituted as the first independent higher education institution within Lithuania by the government on February 16, 1922. Renamed Vytautas Magnus in 1930, the university specialized in four areas: civil engineering, mechanics, electrical engineering, and chemical technology. The turmoil of World War II brought combinations of Soviet, then German, and finally Soviet re-occupation, numerous name changes and an eventual closing of the university in 1943. After re-occupation by the Soviets in 1944, the University reopened and eventually reformed into Kaunas Polytechnic Institute (KPI) and Kaunas Medical Institute in 1946. Under the influence of Perestroika, the Soviet Lithuanian government reinstated the school's university status, and it was renamed the Kaunas University of Technology (KTU). Independence from the Soviet Union brought rapid westernization with a flexible module/credit system and membership to many Western European organizations.
Since the establishment in 1922, the University has produced more than 125 000 graduates.
Following Lithuanian independence, KTU has issued over 1000 doctoral, and 62,000 bachelor's and master's degrees.
With a current academic staff of almost 3000 employees and nearly 17,000 students, KTU stands as the largest technical university in the Baltic States. Read more...
European Humanities University (Belarusian: Еўрапейскі гуманітарны ўніверсітэт (ЕГУ), Lithuanian: Europos Humanitarinis Universitetas (EHU), Russian: Европейский гуманитарный университет (ЕГУ)) is a private, non-profit liberal arts university founded in Minsk, Belarus, in 1992. Following its forced closure by the Belarusian authorities in 2004, EHU relocated to Vilnius (Lithuania) and thus continues its operations as a private university.
EHU offers high-residence and low-residence undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate degree programs in the field of humanities and social sciences. University has been headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, since authorities expelled it from Belarus in 2004. The university intends to return to Minsk.
From 1992 to 2004 EHU was a non-state establishment of undergraduate and post-graduate education in Belarus. In 2004, due to government opposition, EHU was forced to terminate its activities in Belarus. However, thanks to political, administrative, and financial support from the European Union, the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Governments of Lithuania, other European countries, and the United States, NGOs and foundations like MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and others, EHU resumed its operation in Vilnius, Lithuania and opened bachelor's and master's degree programs for Belarusian students in autumn 2005. In March 2006 the Government of Lithuania granted EHU the official status of a Lithuanian university.
After the mass protests of the Belarusian presidential election of 2010, many EHU students and teachers were imprisoned by the KDB. The university said it would work with students to help them in their education despite the circumstances.
In academic year 2016/17 EHU serves around 900 mostly Belarusian students, offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs and promoting research in the humanities and social sciences. About two-thirds of EHU's students attend via online programs and reside in Belarus. About one-third attend courses on campus in Vilnius. Teaching languages – Belarusian, Russian, some courses are taught in English, German and French. EHU ranks second among private universities in Lithuania. Read more...- ISM University of Management and Economics is an institution of undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate education in business, management and economics. The university serves as a centre of market analysis, executive training and academic thought.
ISM was established in Kaunas in 1999 as the first privately owned institution of management education in Lithuania. The main founders of ISM are the BI Norwegian Business School and the Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development fund. The predecessor of ISM was the Business Training Centre, an executive training institution in Lithuania.
Since 1995, when the Business Training Centre began, the intention was to contribute to the development of Lithuanian business community in providing up to date management knowledge. By offering executive courses, management training programs, market research, and personnel evaluation, BMC was recognized as an institution of management training and consulting in Lithuania. Now BMC is the training and consulting department at ISM. Read more... - Building 'C' of the Academy at Vilnia River in Užupis.
Built in 1981, architects Vytautas Brėdikis, Bronius Kazlauskas, Vladislovas Mikučianis, Vytautas Nasvytis.
The Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuanian: Vilniaus dailės akademija, previously State Art Institute of Lithuania) in Vilnius, Lithuania, grants a variety of degrees in the arts.
The Academy traces its roots back to the creation of the Architect Department at the University of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1793. The Department of Painting and Drawing was established in 1797, followed by the Department of Graphics (Engraving), and in 1805 – the Departments of Sculpture and History of art. In 1832, the University was temporarily closed, and reopened in 1919 with departments of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Art. In 1940, the art studies in Lithuania were united under Vilnius art institute and Kaunas art schools. Later, the Academy saw several re-organisations, and in 1990 the name of Vilnius Academy of Arts was reinstated.
The academy began working with UNESCO in 2000, when the UNESCO department of culture management and culture policy was created.
The museum of the Academy holds about 12,000 pieces, ranging from the 16th century to the works of its most recent students and graduates. Read more...
The General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania (Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija) is a state-sponsored institution of higher learning based in Vilnius, Lithuania. It was founded in 1994 by the Lithuanian Seimas, and is overseen by the Ministry of National Defense. Originally known as the Military Academy of Lithuania, it was renamed in 1998 in honor of General Jonas Žemaitis, a commander of the armed anti-Soviet resistance in Lithuania. Read more...- Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (Lithuanian: Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universitetas, LSMU) is a medical school in Kaunas, Lithuania. The present-day Lithuanian University of Health Sciences is a consolidation of two institutions of higher education, Kaunas University of Medicine and the Lithuanian Veterinary Academy. It uses the Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences Kaunas Clinics and the Kaunas Red Cross Hospital as a teaching hospitals. Read more...
Kazimieras Simonavičius University (previously: Vilnius Academy of Business Law, Lithuanian: Vilniaus verslo teisės akademija) is a private university in Lithuania. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania licensed VABL on August 26, 2003. Teaching began in 2004. In 2012, the university changed its name to honor Kazimierz Siemienowicz (ca. 1600–1651), a military engineer and artillery specialist. Read more...- Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) (Lithuanian: Vytauto Didžiojo Universitetas (VDU)) is a public university in Kaunas, Lithuania. The university was founded in 1922 during the interwar period as an alternate national university.
Initially it was known as the University of Lithuania, but in 1930 the university was renamed to Vytautas Magnus University, commemorating 500 years of death of Vytautas the Great, the Lithuanian ruler, well known for the nation's greatest historical expansion in the 15th century.
It is one of the leading universities of Lithuania, has now about 8,800 students, including Master and Ph.D. candidates. There are a little more than 1000 employees, including approximately 90 professors. Read more...
Aleksandras Stulginskis University is a university in Lithuania, in Akademija, west of Kaunas. It was renamed from Lithuanian University of Agriculture in 2011. Read more...- Šiauliai University, established in 1997, is located in Šiauliai, Lithuania. As of 2008, the University was attended by approximately 11,800 students. Read more...
- The academy began its history in 1922 as the Veterinary department under the Faculty of Medicine in Kaunas University. In 1929 the department closed due to lack of funds, but was able to re-open in 1936. In spring of 1943, the LVA, along with other institutions of higher education in Lithuania, was closed. During the postwar period teaching and administrative staff experienced difficulties stemming from a lack of experienced teachers, text books and electricity. In the spring of 1946, a flood destroyed part of existing laboratories, buildings, and all laboratory animals. The academy recovered; in 1974 a scientific sector was established, and the number of students as well as teaching and scientific staff increased. In 2001 the Lithuanian Veterinary Institute and the Lithuanian Institute of Animal Science were incorporated into the Academy's structure. In 2010 the academy was merged with the Kaunas University of Medicine to form the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences. The academy is located in Vilijampolė district, Kaunas.
Teaching facilities at the Veterinary Academy include 12 scientific laboratories, acting under the departments; the Continuing Education Centre; and a library.
Research facilities at the Academy include the Milking Training Centre; the Practical Instruction and Research Centre; the Teaching Farm, which issues healthy herd certificates; the Modern Cold Storage Farm (with teaching rooms); Large and Small Animal Clinics; the Laboratory of Livestock Carcass Classification; Mobile Ambulatory Clinics; and 12 research laboratories.
Lithuanian University of Health Sciences Veterinary Academy has 2 faculties:- Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
- Faculty of Animal Husbandry Technology
- Vilnius University (Lithuanian: Vilniaus universitetas; former names exist) is the oldest university in the Baltic states and one of the oldest in Northern Europe. It is the largest university in Lithuania.
The university was founded in 1579 as the Jesuit Academy (College) of Vilnius by Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, Stephen Báthory. It was the third oldest university (after the Cracow Academy and the Albertina) in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the aftermath of the Third Partition of Poland (1795) and the November Uprising (1830–1831), the university was closed down and suspended its operation until 1919. In the aftermath of World War I the university saw failed attempts to restart it by Lithuania (December 1918) and invading Soviet forces (March 1919). It finally resumed operations as Stefan Batory University in Poland (August 1919), a period followed by another Soviet occupation in 1920, and the less than two-years of the Republic of Central Lithuania, incorporated into Poland in 1922.
Following Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, the university was briefly administered by the Lithuanian authorities (from October 1939), and then after Soviet annexation of Lithuania (June 1940), punctuated by a period of German occupation after German invasion of the Soviet Union (1941–1944), administrated as Vilnius State University by the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1945 the Polish community of students and scholars of Stefan Batory University was transferred to Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. After Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it resumed its status as one of the prominent universities in Lithuania.
The wide-ranging Vilnius University ensemble represents all major architectural styles that predominated in Lithuania: Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism. Read more...
Selected featured articles
- Jacob Gens (1 April 1903 – 14 September 1943) was a Lithuanian Jewish head of the Vilnius Ghetto. Originally from a merchant family, he joined the Lithuanian Army shortly after the independence of Lithuania, rising to the rank of captain while also securing a college degree in law and economics. He married a non-Jew and worked at several jobs, including as a teacher, accountant, and an administrator.
When Germany invaded Lithuania, Gens headed the Jewish hospital in Vilnius before the formation of the ghetto in September 1941. He was appointed chief of the ghetto police force and in July 1942 the Germans appointed him head of the ghetto Jewish government. He attempted to secure better conditions in the ghetto and believed that it was possible to save some Jews by working for the Germans. Gens and his policemen helped Germans in rounding up the Jews for deportation and execution in Ponary in October–December 1941 and in liquidating several smaller ghettos from late 1942 to early 1943. His policies, including the attempt to save some Jews by surrendering others for deportation or execution, continue to be a subject of debate and controversy.
Gens was shot by the Gestapo on 14 September 1943, shortly before the ghetto was liquidated and most of the residents sent either to labor camps or to execution at an extermination camp. His Lithuanian wife and daughter escaped the Gestapo and survived the war. Read more...
Portrait by Karl Gottlieb Schweikart. Kościuszko is shown wearing the Eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati, awarded to him by Gen. Washington.
Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciuszko; February 4 or 12, 1746 – October 15, 1817) was a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer, statesman, and military leader who became a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and the United States. He fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's struggles against Russia and Prussia, and on the U.S. side in the American Revolutionary War. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising.
Kościuszko was born in February 1746, in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate in Nowogródek Voivodeship, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. At age 20, he graduated from the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw, Poland. After the start of civil war in the Bar Confederation in 1768, Kościuszko moved to France in 1769 to study. He returned to Poland in 1774, two years after its First Partition, and took a position as tutor in Józef Sylwester Sosnowski's household. After Kościuszko attempted to elope with his employer's daughter and was severely beaten by the father's retainers, he returned to France. In 1776, Kościuszko moved to North America, where he took part in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army. An accomplished military architect, he designed and oversaw the construction of state-of-the-art fortifications, including those at West Point, New York. In 1783, in recognition of his services, the Continental Congress promoted him to brigadier general.
Upon returning to Poland in 1784, Kościuszko was commissioned as a major general in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army in 1789. After the Polish–Russian War of 1792 resulted in the Second Partition of Poland, he organized an uprising against Russia in March 1794, serving as its Naczelnik (commander-in-chief). Russian forces captured him at the Battle of Maciejowice in October 1794. The defeat of the Kościuszko Uprising that November led to Poland's Third Partition in 1795, which ended the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's independent existence for 123 years. In 1796, following the death of Tsaritsa Catherine the Great, Kościuszko was pardoned by her successor, Tsar Paul I, and he emigrated to the United States. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson's, with whom he shared ideals of human rights, Kościuszko wrote a will in 1798 dedicating his U.S. assets to the education and freedom of U.S. slaves. He eventually returned to Europe and lived in Switzerland until his death in 1817. The execution of his will later proved difficult, and the funds were never used for the purpose he had intended. Read more...
Emma Goldman (June 27 [O.S. June 15], 1869 – May 14, 1940) was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Born in Kovno, Russian Empire (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to a Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892 and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.
In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with 248 others—and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power, Goldman changed her opinion in the wake of the Kronstadt rebellion; she denounced the Soviet Union for its violent repression of independent voices. She left the Soviet Union and in 1923, she published a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. It was published in two volumes, in 1931 and 1935. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Goldman traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto, Canada, on May 14, 1940, aged 70.
During her life, Goldman was lionized as a freethinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and denounced by detractors as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status in the 1970s by a revival of interest in her life, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest. Read more...
The flag of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos vėliava) consists of a horizontal tricolor of yellow, green, and red. It was adopted on 25 April 1918 during Lithuania's first period of independence (in the 20th century) from 1918 to 1940, which ceased with the occupation first by Soviet Russia and Lithuania's annexation into the Soviet Union, and then by Nazi Germany (1941–1944). During the post-World War II Soviet occupation, from 1945 until 1989, the Soviet Lithuanian flag consisted first of a generic red Soviet flag with the name of the republic, then changed to the red flag with white and green bars at the bottom.
The flag was then re-adopted on 20 March 1989, almost a year before the re-establishment of Lithuania's independence and almost three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The last alteration to the current flag occurred in 2004, when the aspect ratio changed from 1:2 to 3:5. Read more...
A bowl of borscht garnished with dill and a dollop of smetana (sour cream)
Borscht (English: /ˈbɔːrʃ,ˈbɔːrʃt/ (
listen)) is a sour soup commonly consumed in Eastern Europe and across Russia. The variety most often associated with the name in English is of Ukrainian origin, and includes beetroots as one of the main ingredients, which gives the dish its distinctive red color. It shares the name, however, with a wide selection of sour-tasting soups without beetroots, such as sorrel-based green borscht, rye-based white borscht and cabbage borscht.
Borscht derives from an ancient soup originally cooked from pickled stems, leaves and umbels of common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium), a herbaceous plant growing in damp meadows, which lent the dish its Slavic name. With time, it evolved into a diverse array of tart soups, among which the beet-based red borscht has become the most popular. It is typically made by combining meat or bone stock with sautéed vegetables, which – as well as beetroots – usually include cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes and tomatoes. Depending on the recipe, borscht may include meat or fish, or be purely vegetarian; it may be served either hot or cold; and it may range from a hearty one-pot meal to a clear broth or a smooth drink. It is often served with smetana or sour cream, hard-boiled eggs or potatoes, but there exists an ample choice of more involved garnishes and side dishes, such as uszka or pampushky, that can be served with the soup.
Its popularity has spread throughout Eastern Europe and the former Russian Empire, and – by way of migration – to other continents. In North America, borscht is often linked with either Jews or Mennonites, the groups who first brought it there from Europe. Several ethnic groups claim borscht, in its various local guises, as their own national dish consumed as part of ritual meals within Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Jewish religious traditions. Read more...- Jogaila (
Jogaila), later Władysław II Jagiełło (Polish pronunciation: [vwaˈdɨswaf jaˈɡʲɛwːɔ] (
listen)) (c. 1352/1362 – 1 June 1434) was the Grand Duke of Lithuania (1377–1434) and then the King of Poland (1386–1434), first alongside his wife Jadwiga until 1399, and then sole King of Poland. He ruled in Lithuania from 1377. Born a pagan, in 1386 he converted to Catholicism and was baptized as Władysław in Kraków, married the young Queen Jadwiga, and was crowned King of Poland as Władysław II Jagiełło. In 1387 he converted Lithuania to Christianity. His own reign in Poland started in 1399, upon the death of Queen Jadwiga, and lasted a further thirty-five years and laid the foundation for the centuries-long Polish–Lithuanian union. He was a member of the Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland that bears his name and was previously also known as the Gediminid dynasty in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The dynasty ruled both states until 1572, and became one of the most influential dynasties in late medieval and early modern Central and Eastern Europe. During his reign, the Polish-Lithuanian state was the largest state in the Christian world.
Jogaila was the last pagan ruler of medieval Lithuania. After he became King of Poland, as a result of the Union of Krewo, the newly formed Polish-Lithuanian union confronted the growing power of the Teutonic Knights. The allied victory at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, followed by the Peace of Thorn, secured the Polish and Lithuanian borders and marked the emergence of the Polish–Lithuanian alliance as a significant force in Europe. The reign of Władysław II Jagiełło extended Polish frontiers and is often considered the beginning of Poland's Golden Age. Read more...
The Act of Reinstating Independence of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Valstybės atkūrimo aktas) or Act of 16 February was signed by the Council of Lithuania on 16 February 1918, proclaiming the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania, governed by democratic principles, with Vilnius as its capital. The Act was signed by all twenty representatives of the Council, which was chaired by Jonas Basanavičius. The Act of 16 February was the result of a series of resolutions on the issue, including one issued by the Vilnius Conference and the Act of 8 January. The path to the Act was long and complex because the German Empire exerted pressure on the Council to form an alliance. The Council had to carefully maneuver between the Germans, whose troops were present in Lithuania, and the demands of the Lithuanian people.
The immediate effects of the announcement of Lithuania's re-establishment of independence were limited. Publication of the Act was prohibited by the German authorities, and the text was distributed and printed illegally. The work of the Council was hindered, and Germans remained in control over Lithuania. The situation changed only when Germany lost World War I in the fall of 1918. In November 1918 the first Cabinet of Lithuania was formed, and the Council of Lithuania gained control over the territory of Lithuania. Independent Lithuania, although it would soon be battling the Wars of Independence, became a reality.
The laconic Act is the legal basis for the existence of modern Lithuania, both during the interwar period and since 1990. The Act formulated the basic constitutional principles that were and still are followed by all Constitutions of Lithuania. The Act itself was a key element in the foundation of Lithuania's re-establishment of independence in 1990. Lithuania, breaking away from the Soviet Union, stressed that it was simply re-establishing the independent state that existed between the world wars and that the Act never lost its legal power.
On 29 March 2017, the original document was found at the Diplomatic archive in Berlin, Germany. Read more...- The history of Lithuania between 1219 and 1295 concerns the establishment and early history of the first Lithuanian state, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The beginning of the 13th century marks the end of the prehistory of Lithuania. From this point on the history of Lithuania is recorded in chronicles, treaties, and other written documents. In 1219, 21 Lithuanian dukes signed a peace treaty with Galicia–Volhynia. This event is widely accepted as the first proof that the Baltic tribes were uniting and consolidating. Despite continuous warfare with two Christian orders, the Livonian Order and the Teutonic Knights, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was established and gained some control over the lands of Black Ruthenia, Polatsk, Minsk, and other territories east of modern-day Lithuania that had become weak and vulnerable after the collapse of Kievan Rus'.
The first ruler to hold the title of Grand Duke was Mindaugas. Traditionally he is considered the founder of the state, the one who united the Baltic tribes and established the Duchy. Some scholars, however, challenge this perception, arguing that an organized state existed before Mindaugas, possibly as early as 1183. After quelling an internal war with his nephews, Mindaugas was baptized in 1251, and was crowned as King of Lithuania in 1253. In 1261, he broke the peace with the Livonian Order, perhaps even renouncing Christianity. His assassination in 1263 by Treniota ended the early Christian kingdom in Lithuania. For another 120 years Lithuania would remain a pagan empire, fighting against the Teutonic and Livonian Orders during the Northern Crusades during their attempts to Christianize the land.
After Mindaugas' death, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania entered times of relative instability, as reflected by the fact that seven Grand Dukes held the title over the course of the next 32 years. Little is known about this period, but the Gediminid dynasty was founded in about 1280. Despite the instability, the Grand Duchy did not disintegrate. Vytenis assumed power in 1295, and during the next 20 years laid solid foundations for the Duchy to expand and grow under the leadership of Gediminas and his son Algirdas. While the Grand Duchy was established between 1219 and 1295, the years after 1295 marked its expansion. Read more...
Józef Klemens Piłsudski[a] (Polish: [ˈjuzɛf ˈklɛmɛns pʲiwˈsutskʲi] (
listen); 5 December 1867 – 12 May 1935) was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State (1918–22) and First Marshal of Poland (from 1920). He was considered the de facto leader (1926–35) of the Second Polish Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs. From World War I he had great power in Polish politics and was a distinguished figure on the international scene. He is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic re-established in 1918, 123 years after the 1795 Partitions of Poland by Austria, Prussia and Russia.
Deeming himself a descendant of the culture and traditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Piłsudski believed in a multi-ethnic Poland—"a home of nations" including indigenous ethnic and religious minorities that he hoped would establish a robust union with the independent states of Lithuania and Ukraine. His principal political antagonist, Roman Dmowski, leader of the National Democrat party, by contrast, called for a Poland limited to the pre-Partitions Polish Crown and based mainly on a homogeneous ethnically Polish population and Roman Catholic identity.
Early in his political career, Piłsudski became a leader of the Polish Socialist Party. Concluding that Poland's independence would have to be won militarily, he formed the Polish Legions. In 1914 he correctly predicted the outbreak of a major war, the Russian Empire's defeat by the Central Powers, and the Central Powers' defeat by the western Allies. When World War I began in 1914, Piłsudski's Legions fought alongside Austria-Hungary against Russia. In 1917, with Imperalist Russia faring poorly in the war, he withdrew his support for the Central Powers and was imprisoned in Magdeburg by the Germans.
From November 1918, when Poland regained its independence, until 1922, Piłsudski was Poland's Chief of State. In 1919–21 he commanded Polish forces in six border wars that re-defined the country's borders. His forces seemed on the verge of defeat in the Polish–Soviet War when, in the August 1920 Battle of Warsaw, they threw back the invading Soviet Russian forces. In 1923, with the government dominated by his opponents, in particular the National Democrats, Piłsudski retired from active politics. Three years later he returned to power in the May 1926 coup d'état and became Poland's strongman. From then on until his death in 1935, he concerned himself primarily with military and foreign affairs.
In international affairs, Piłsudski pursued two complementary strategies meant to secure Poland's independence and to enhance her national security: "Prometheism", aimed at achieving the disintegration of Imperialist Russia and later the Soviet Union into their constituent nations; and the creation of an Intermarium federation of Central and Eastern European states lying between the Baltic and Black Seas; serving as a bridge between Germany and Russia. The proposed Intermarium's central purpose was to secure its peoples against Western and Eastern European imperialisms.
Historian Piotr Wandycz characterizes Piłsudski as "an ardent Polish patriot who on occasion would castigate the Poles for their stupidity, cowardice, or servility. He described himself as a Polish-Lithuanian, and was stubborn and reserved, loath to show his emotions." Though some aspects of Piłsudski's administration remain controversial, he is highly esteemed in Polish memory and is regarded, together with his chief antagonist Roman Dmowski, as a founder of the modern independent Poland. Read more...
Coat of arms of the Gediminids dynasty
The family of Gediminas is a group of family members of Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuania (ca. 1275–1341), who interacted in the 14th century. The family included the siblings, children, and grandchildren of the Grand Duke and played the pivotal role in the history of Lithuania for the period as the Lithuanian nobility had not yet acquired its influence. Gediminas was also the forefather of the Gediminid dynasty, which ruled the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1310s or 1280s to 1572.
Gediminas' origins are unclear, but recent research suggests that Skalmantas, an otherwise unknown historical figure, was Gediminas' grandfather or father and could be considered the dynasty's founder. Because none of his brothers or sisters had known heirs, Gediminas, who sired at least twelve children, had the advantage in establishing sovereignty over his siblings. Known for his diplomatic skills, Gediminas arranged his children's marriages to suit the goals of his foreign policy: his sons consolidated Lithuanian power within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, while his daughters established or strengthened alliances with the rulers of areas in modern-day Russia, Ukraine and Poland.
The relationships among Gediminas' children were generally harmonious, with the notable exception of Jaunutis, who was deposed in 1345 by his brothers Algirdas and Kęstutis. These two brothers went on to provide a celebrated example of peaceful power-sharing. However, Gediminas' many grandchildren and their descendants engaged in power struggles that continued well into the 15th century. Gediminas' grandchildren converted Lithuania to Christianity and inaugurated the first personal union with Poland. Read more...
Selected images
Violeta Urmanavičiūtė, a Lithuanian soprano singer.
Lithuanian artist Jonas Mekas, regarded as godfather of American avant-garde cinema
Yellow, green, and red horizontally shape the flag of Lithuania
A Lithuanian folklore band Kūlgrinda performing in Vilnius
The Picture Gallery in Vilnius' Chodkiewicz Palace
The Great Courtyard of Vilnius University and the Church of St. Johns
Simple Words of Catechism by Martynas Mažvydas was the first Lithuanian book and was published in 1547.
Selected municipalities
Šilalė District Municipality (Lithuanian: Šilalės rajono savivaldybė, Samogitian: Šėlalės rajuona savivaldībė) is a municipality in Tauragė County, Lithuania. Read more...
Simnas surroundings
The Alytus District Municipality (Lithuanian: Alytaus rajono savivaldybė) is a municipality in Alytus County, Lithuania, located in the Dzūkija ethnographic region.
This municipality was founded in 1950, and until 1953 was a part of the Kaunas Province. In 1959, another reorganization of parts of the former Simnas and Daugai municipalities occurred, which included the towns of Simnas and Daugai. In 1962 it was expanded more, attaching part of the former Jieznas municipality. In 1968 parts of the municipality were attached to the Prienai District Municipality and Trakai District Municipality, and 1969 another part of Varėna District Municipality.
The current Coat of Arms of the Alytus district municipality was announced by Lithuanian presidential decree on August 7, 2001. Read more...
Palanga (
pronunciation (help·info)) (Samogitian: Palonga, Latvian: Palanga (also till 1934)) is a seaside resort town in western Lithuania, on the shore of the Baltic Sea. It is the busiest summer resort in Lithuania and has beaches of sand (18 km long and up to 300 m wide) and sand dunes. Officially Palanga has the status of a city municipality and includes Šventoji, Nemirseta, Būtingė and other settlements, which are considered as part of the city of Palanga. Read more...
Kaunas (/ˈkaʊnəs/; Lithuanian: [ˈkɐʊˑnɐs] (
listen); also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania and the historical centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the centre of a county in Trakai Municipality of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. In the Russian Empire, it was the capital of the Kaunas Governorate from 1843 to 1915.
During the interwar period, it served as the temporary capital of Lithuania, when Vilnius, the traditional capital, was considered part of Poland between 1920 and 1939. During that period Kaunas was nicknamed the Little Paris because of its rich cultural and academic life, fashion, construction of countless Art Deco and Lithuanian National Romanticism architectural-style buildings as well as popular furniture, the interior design of the time, and a widespread café culture. The city interwar architecture is regarded as among the finest examples of European Art Deco and has received the European Heritage Label. It contributed to Kaunas being named as the first city in Central and Eastern Europe to be designated as a UNESCO City of Design. Kaunas has been selected as the European Capital of Culture for 2022, together with Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
The city is the capital of Kaunas County, and the seat of the Kaunas city municipality and the Kaunas District Municipality. It is also the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kaunas. Kaunas is located at the confluence of the two largest Lithuanian rivers, the Nemunas and the Neris, and is near the Kaunas Reservoir, the largest body of water in the whole of Lithuania. Read more...
Neringa (
pronunciation (help·info)) or Neringa Municipality (Lithuanian: Neringos savivaldybė) is a municipality of Klaipėda County in westernmost Lithuania, comprising several villages in the Curonian Spit. In terms of population, it is the smallest municipality of the county.
The average wage in Neringa municipality was €12,000 ($14,000), yearly (before tax) or €9,000 ($10,000), yearly (after tax) in 2015. Neringa municipality has the highest wage rate in Lithuania. Higher even than Vilnius municipality. Read more...
Tauragė District Municipality (Lithuanian: Tauragės rajono savivaldybė) is a municipality in Tauragė County, Lithuania Read more...
Selected history articles
The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (Lithuanian SSR; Lithuanian: Lietuvos Tarybų Socialistinė Respublika; Russian: Литовская Советская Социалистическая Республика, Litovskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika), one of the USSR republics that existed in 1940–1941 and 1944–1990, was formed on the basis of the Soviet occupation rule. It was also known as Soviet Lithuania. After 1946, its territory and borders mirrored those of today's Republic of Lithuania (with the exception of minor adjustments at the Belarusian border).
Established on 21 July 1940 as a puppet state, during World War II in the territory of the previously independent Republic of Lithuania after it had been occupied by the Soviet army on 16 June 1940, in conformity with the terms of the 23 August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Between 1941 and 1944, the German invasion of the Soviet Union caused its de facto dissolution. However, with the retreat of the Germans in 1944–1945, Soviet hegemony was re-established, and existed for fifty years. As a result, many western countries (including the United States) continue to recognize Lithuania as an independent, sovereign de jure state subject to international law represented by the legations appointed by the pre-1940 Baltic states which functioned in various places through the Lithuanian Diplomatic Service.
On 18 May 1989, the Lithuanian SSR declared state sovereignty within its borders during perestroika. On 11 March 1990, the Republic of Lithuania was declared to be re-established as an independent state and the declaration (while considered illegal by the Soviet authorities) was recognized by Western powers immediately prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union itself recognized Lithuanian independence on 6 September 1991. Read more...- Kunda Culture, originating from the Swiderian culture, comprised mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities of the Baltic forest zone extending eastwards through Latvia into northern Russia, dating to the period 8500–5000 BC according to calibrated radiocarbon dating. It is named after the Estonian town of Kunda, about 110 kilometres (70 mi) east of Tallinn along the Gulf of Finland, near where the first extensively studied settlement was discovered on Lammasmäe Hill and in the surrounding peat bog. The oldest known Kunda culture settlement in Estonia is Pulli. The Kunda Culture was succeeded by the Narva culture, who used pottery and showed some traces of food production. Read more...
Narva culture or eastern Baltic (c. 5300 to 1750 BC) was a European Neolithic archaeological culture found in present-day Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad Oblast (former East Prussia), and adjacent portions of Poland, Belarus and Russia. A successor of the Mesolithic Kunda culture, Narva culture continued up to the start of the Bronze Age. The technology was that of hunter-gatherers. The culture was named after the Narva River in Estonia. Read more...
The first known record of the name of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuva) is in a 9 March 1009 story of Saint Bruno recorded in the Quedlinburg Chronicle (Latin: Annales Quedlinburgenses). The Chronicle recorded a Latinized form of the russian word for Lithuania - Литва (Litva) (Latinized form: Litua) (pronounced [litua]). Although it is clear the name originated from a Baltic language, scholars still debate the meaning of the word. Read more...
The Lithuanian–Soviet War or Lithuanian–Bolshevik War (Lithuanian: karas su bolševikais) was fought between newly independent Republic of Lithuania and the proto-Soviet Union (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and Lithuanian–Belorussian SSR) in the aftermath of World War I. It was part of the larger Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919. The offensive followed retreating German troops with aims of incorporating the Baltic states and Poland into the Soviet Union and bring victory to the German Revolution. Soviet Russia and the other Soviet republics were de jure independent entities but were de facto in union, they did not officially unite into the Soviet Union until 1922.
By the end of December 1918 Soviet forces reached Lithuanian borders. Largely unopposed, they took one town after another and by the end of January 1919 controlled about ⅔ of the Lithuanian territory. In February the Soviet advance was stopped by Lithuanian and German volunteers, who prevented the Soviets from capturing Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania. From April 1919 the Lithuanian war went parallel with the Polish–Soviet War. Poland had territorial claims over Lithuania, especially the Vilnius Region, and these tensions spilled over into the Polish–Lithuanian War. Historian Norman Davies summarized the situation: "the German army was supporting the Lithuanian nationalists, the Soviets were supporting the Lithuanian communists and the Polish Army was fighting them all." In mid-May the Lithuanian army, now commanded by General Silvestras Žukauskas, began an offensive against the Soviets in northeastern Lithuania. By mid-June the Lithuanians reached the Latvian border and cornered the Soviets among lakes and hills near Zarasai, where the Soviets held out until the end of August 1919. The Soviets and Lithuanians, separated by the Daugava River, maintained their fronts until the Battle of Daugavpils in January 1920. As early as September 1919 the Soviets offered to negotiate a peace treaty, but talks began only in May 1920. The Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty was signed on July 12, 1920. The Soviet Union fully recognized the independent Republic of Lithuania. Read more...
The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by Habsburg Austria, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations.
The First Partition of Poland was decided on August 5, 1772. Two decades later, Russian and Prussian troops entered the Commonwealth again and the Second Partition was signed on January 23, 1793. Austria did not participate in the Second Partition. The Third Partition of Poland took place on October 24, 1795, in reaction to the unsuccessful Polish Kościuszko Uprising the previous year. With this partition, the Commonwealth ceased to exist.
In English, the term "Partitions of Poland" is sometimes used geographically as toponymy, to mean the three parts that the partitioning powers divided the Commonwealth into the Austrian Partition, the Prussian Partition and the Russian Partition. In Polish, there are two separate words for the two meanings. The consecutive acts of dividing and annexation of Poland are referred to as rozbiór (plural: rozbiory), while the term zabór (pl. zabory) means each part of the Commonwealth annexed in 1772–95 becoming part of Imperial Russia, Prussia, or Austria.
In Polish historiography, the term "Fourth Partition of Poland" has also been used, in reference to any subsequent annexation of Polish lands by foreign invaders. Depending on source and historical period, this could mean the events of 1815, or 1832 and 1846, or 1939 (see below), bringing the total number of Poland's names for the ceding of territory to neighboring empires to seven. The term "Fourth Partition" in a temporal sense can also mean the diaspora communities that played an important political role in re-establishing the Polish sovereign state after 1918. Read more...
General Commissioner of Latvia Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, Reich Commissar for the Ostland Hinrich Lohse, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg and SS Officer Eberhard Medem in 1942.
The occupation of the Baltic states by Nazi Germany occurred during Operation Barbarossa from 1941 to 1944. Initially, many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians considered the Germans as liberators from the Soviet Union. The Balts hoped for the restoration of independence, but instead the Germans established a provisional government. During the occupation the Germans carried out discrimination, mass deportations and mass killings generating Baltic resistance movements. Read more...
The Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania or Act of March 11 (Lithuanian: Aktas dėl Lietuvos nepriklausomos valstybės atstatymo) was an independence declaration by the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted on March 11, 1990, signed by all members of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania led by Sąjūdis. The act emphasized restoration and legal continuity of the interwar-period Lithuania, which was occupied by the USSR and lost independence in June 1940. It was the first time that a Union Republic declared independence from the dissolving Soviet Union. Read more...- Early dukes of Lithuania (including Samogitia) reigned before Lithuanians were unified by Mindaugas into a state, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. While the Palemonids legend provides genealogy from the 10th century, only few dukes were mentioned by contemporary historical sources. All of them were mentioned in written sources the 13th century. Data about them is extremely scarce and is usually limited to few brief sentences. The primary sources are the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia and Hypatian Codex. Read more...
The Act of Reinstating Independence of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Valstybės atkūrimo aktas) or Act of 16 February was signed by the Council of Lithuania on 16 February 1918, proclaiming the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania, governed by democratic principles, with Vilnius as its capital. The Act was signed by all twenty representatives of the Council, which was chaired by Jonas Basanavičius. The Act of 16 February was the result of a series of resolutions on the issue, including one issued by the Vilnius Conference and the Act of 8 January. The path to the Act was long and complex because the German Empire exerted pressure on the Council to form an alliance. The Council had to carefully maneuver between the Germans, whose troops were present in Lithuania, and the demands of the Lithuanian people.
The immediate effects of the announcement of Lithuania's re-establishment of independence were limited. Publication of the Act was prohibited by the German authorities, and the text was distributed and printed illegally. The work of the Council was hindered, and Germans remained in control over Lithuania. The situation changed only when Germany lost World War I in the fall of 1918. In November 1918 the first Cabinet of Lithuania was formed, and the Council of Lithuania gained control over the territory of Lithuania. Independent Lithuania, although it would soon be battling the Wars of Independence, became a reality.
The laconic Act is the legal basis for the existence of modern Lithuania, both during the interwar period and since 1990. The Act formulated the basic constitutional principles that were and still are followed by all Constitutions of Lithuania. The Act itself was a key element in the foundation of Lithuania's re-establishment of independence in 1990. Lithuania, breaking away from the Soviet Union, stressed that it was simply re-establishing the independent state that existed between the world wars and that the Act never lost its legal power.
On 29 March 2017, the original document was found at the Diplomatic archive in Berlin, Germany. Read more...
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, after 1791 the Commonwealth of Poland, was a dualistic state, a bi-confederation of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch, who was both the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania. It was one of the largest and most populous countries of the 16th–17th century Europe. At its largest territorial extent, in the early 17th century, the Commonwealth spanned almost 400,000 square miles (1,000,000 km2) and sustained a multi-ethnic population of 11 million.
The Commonwealth was established by the Union of Lublin in July 1569, but the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been in a de facto personal union since 1386 with the marriage of the Polish queen Hedwig and Lithuania's Grand Duke Jogaila, who was crowned King jure uxoris Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland. The First Partition of Poland in 1772 and the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 greatly reduced the state's size and the Commonwealth collapsed as an independent state following the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.
The Union possessed many features unique among contemporary states. Its political system was characterized by strict checks upon monarchical power. These checks were enacted by a legislature (sejm) controlled by the nobility (szlachta). This idiosyncratic system was a precursor to modern concepts of democracy, constitutional monarchy, and federation. Although the two component states of the Commonwealth were formally equal, Poland was the dominant partner in the union.
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was marked by high levels of ethnic diversity and by relative religious tolerance, guaranteed by the Warsaw Confederation Act 1573; however, the degree of religious freedom varied over time. The Constitution of 1791 acknowledged Catholicism as the "dominant religion", unlike the Warsaw Confederation, but freedom of religion was still granted with it.
After several decades of prosperity, it entered a period of protracted political, military and economic decline. Its growing weakness led to its partitioning among its neighbors (Austria, Prussia and the Russian Empire) during the late 18th century. Shortly before its demise, the Commonwealth adopted a massive reform effort and enacted the May 3 Constitution—the first codified constitution in modern European history and the second in modern world history (after the United States Constitution). Read more...- The history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1648) covers a period in the history of Poland and Lithuania, before their joint state was subjected to devastating wars in the middle of the 17th century. The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a more closely unified federal state, replacing the previously existing personal union of the two countries. The Union was largely run by the Polish and increasingly Polonized Lithuanian and Ruthenian nobility, through the system of the central parliament and local assemblies, but from 1573 led by elected kings. The formal rule of the proportionally more numerous than in other European countries nobility constituted a sophisticated early democratic system, in contrast to the absolute monarchies prevalent at that time in the rest of Europe.[a]
The Polish–Lithuanian Union had become an influential player in Europe and a vital cultural entity, spreading Western culture eastward. In the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a huge state in central-eastern Europe, with an area approaching one million square kilometers.
Following the Reformation gains (the Warsaw Confederation of 1573 was the culmination of the unique in Europe religious toleration processes), the Catholic Church embarked on an ideological counter-offensive and Counter-Reformation claimed many converts from Protestant circles. Disagreements over and difficulties with the assimilation of the eastern Ruthenian populations of the Commonwealth had become clearly discernible. At an earlier stage (from the late 16th century), they manifested themselves in the religious Union of Brest, which split the Eastern Christians of the Commonwealth, and on the military front, in a series of Cossack uprisings.
The Commonwealth, assertive militarily under King Stephen Báthory, suffered from dynastic distractions during the reigns of the Vasa kings Sigismund III and Władysław IV. It had also become a playground of internal conflicts, in which the kings, powerful magnats and factions of nobility were the main actors. The Commonwealth fought wars with Russia, Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. At the Commonwealth's height, some of its powerful neighbors experienced difficulties of their own and the Polish–Lithuanian state sought domination in Eastern Europe, in particular over Russia. Allied with the Habsburg Monarchy, it did not directly participate in the Thirty Years' War.
Tsar Ivan IV of Russia undertook in 1577 hostilities in the Livonian region, which resulted in his takeover of most of the area and caused the Polish–Lithuanian involvement in the Livonian War. The successful counter-offensive led by King Báthory and Jan Zamoyski resulted in the peace of 1582 and the retaking of much of the territory contested with Russia, with the Swedish forces establishing themselves in the far north (Estonia). Estonia was declared a part of the Commonwealth by Sigismund III in 1600, which gave rise to a war with Sweden over Livonia; the war lasted until 1611 without producing a definite outcome.
In 1600, as Russia was entering a period of instability, the Commonwealth proposed a union with the Russian state. This failed move was followed by many other similarly unsuccessful, often adventurous attempts, some involving military invasions, other dynastic and diplomatic manipulations and scheming. While the differences between the two societies and empires proved in the end too formidable to overcome, the Polish–Lithuanian state ended up in 1619, after the Truce of Deulino, with the greatest ever expansion of its territory. At the same time it was weakened by the huge military effort made.
In 1620 the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Osman II declared a war against the Commonwealth. At the disastrous Battle of Ţuţora Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski was killed and the Commonwealth's situation in respect to the Turkish-Tatar invasion forces became very precarious. A mobilization in Poland-Lithuania followed and when Hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz's army withstood fierce enemy assaults at the Battle of Khotyn (1621), the situation improved on the southeastern front. More warfare with the Ottomans followed in 1633–1634 and vast expanses of the Commonwealth had been subjected to Tatar incursions and slave-taking expeditions throughout the period.
War with Sweden, now under Gustavus Adolphus, resumed in 1621 with his attack on Riga, followed by the Swedish occupation of much of Livonia, control of Baltic Sea coast up to Puck and the blockade of Danzig. The Commonwealth, exhausted by the warfare that had taken place elsewhere, in 1626–1627 mustered a response, utilizing the military talents of Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski and help from Austria. Under pressure from several European powers, the campaign was stopped and ended in the Truce of Altmark, leaving in Swedish hands much of what Gustavus Adolphus had conquered.
Another war with Russia followed in 1632 and was concluded without much change in the status quo. King Władysław IV then proceeded to recover the lands lost to Sweden. At the conclusion of the hostilities, Sweden evacuated the cities and ports of Royal Prussia but kept most of Livonia. Courland, which had remained with the Commonwealth, assumed the servicing of Lithuania's Baltic trade. After Frederick William's last Prussian homage before the Polish king in 1641, the Commonwealth's position in regard to Prussia and its Hohenzollern rulers kept getting weaker. Read more...
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that lasted from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and Austria.
The state was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the polytheistic Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija.
The Grand Duchy expanded to include large portions of the former Kievan Rus' and other Slavic lands, including what is now Belarus and parts of Ukraine, Poland and Russia. At its greatest extent, in the 15th century, it was the largest state in Europe. It was a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state, with great diversity in languages, religion and cultural heritage.
Consolidation of the Lithuanian lands began in the late 12th century. Mindaugas, the first ruler of the Grand Duchy, was crowned as Catholic King of Lithuania in 1253. The pagan state was targeted in the religious crusade by the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order. The multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state emerged only at the late reign of Gediminas and continued to expand under his son Algirdas. Algirdas's successor Jogaila signed the Union of Krewo in 1386, bringing two major changes in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: conversion to Catholicism and establishment of a dynastic union between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.
The reign of Vytautas the Great marked both the greatest territorial expansion of the Grand Duchy and the defeat of the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. It also marked the rise of the Lithuanian nobility. After Vytautas's death, Lithuania's relationship with the Kingdom of Poland greatly deteriorated. Lithuanian noblemen, including the Radvila family (Radziwiłłs), attempted to break the personal union with Poland. However, unsuccessful wars with the Grand Duchy of Moscow forced the union to remain intact.
Eventually, the Union of Lublin of 1569 created a new state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the federation, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania maintained its political distinctiveness and had separate government, laws, army and treasury. The federation was terminated by the passing of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, when there was supposed to be now a single country, the Commonwealth of Poland, under one monarch and one parliament. Shortly afterward, the unitary character of the state was confirmed by adopting the Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations.
However, the newly-reformed Commonwealth was invaded by Russia in 1792 and partitioned between the neighbours, with a truncated state (principal cities being Kraków, Warsaw and Vilnius) remaining only nominally independent. After the Kościuszko Uprising, the territory was completely partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and Austria in 1795. Read more...- The Soviet Union occupied most of the territory of the Baltic states in its 1944 Baltic Offensive during World War II.[neutrality is disputed] The Red Army regained control over the three Baltic capitals and encircled retreating Wehrmacht and Latvian forces in the Courland Pocket where they held out until the final German surrender at the end of the war. The German forces were deported and the leaders of Latvian collaborating forces were executed as traitors. After the war, the Soviet Union reestablished control over the Baltic territories in line with its forcible annexations as communist republics in 1940. Read more...
The Balts or Baltic people (Lithuanian: baltai, Latvian: balti) are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group who speak the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, which was originally spoken by tribes living in the area east of Jutland peninsula in the west and in the Moscow, Oka and Volga rivers basins in the east. One of the features of Baltic languages is the number of conservative or archaic features retained. Among the Baltic peoples are modern Lithuanians, Latvians (including Latgalians) — all Eastern Balts — as well as the Old Prussians, Yotvingians and Galindians — the Western Balts — whose languages and cultures are now extinct. Read more...
Selected biographies
George Maciunas (English: /məˈtʃuːnəs/; Lithuanian: Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian American artist. He was a founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers. Other leading members brought together by this movement included Ay-O, Joseph Beuys, Jonas Mekas, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell.
He is most famous for organising and performing early happenings and for assembling a series of highly influential artists' multiples. Read more...
Darjuš Lavrinovič, with Lithuania, in 2014.
Darjuš Lavrinovič (Polish: Dariusz Ławrynowicz, born November 1, 1979) is a Lithuanian professional basketball player for BC Prienai of the Lithuanian Basketball League. He is 2.12m (6' 11 1⁄2") in height. He plays the center position. He is also a member of the Lithuanian national basketball team. Lavrinovič was an All-EuroLeague Second Team selection in 2006. Read more...
Eglė Špokaitė (born 1971 in Vilnius) is a Lithuanian ballet dancer, prima ballerina of the Lithuanian National Opera and ballet theater (1989–2011). Founder and artistic director of "Ballet Institute of San Diego" in US. as wells as co-founder and artistic director of "Egle Spokaite Ballet School"in Vilnius, Lithuania. Actress, choreographer and public speaker. Winner of the Lithuanian National Prize, as well as other numerous awards and honors. Lives and works between Vilnius and San Diego Read more...
Marija Gimbutas (Lithuanian: Marija Gimbutienė; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian-American archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis, which located the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Pontic Steppe. Read more...
Franciszek Smuglewicz by Józef Peszka, his student.
Franciszek Smuglewicz, or Pranciškus Smuglevičius, 6 October 1745 – 18 September 1807) was a Polish-Lithuanian draughtsman and painter. Smuglewicz is considered a progenitor of Lithuanian art in the modern era. Some consider him as a spiritual father of Jan Matejko's school of painting. His brother was Antoni Smuglewicz. Read more...
Vincas Kudirka (31 December [O.S. 19 December] 1858 – 16 November [O.S. 4 November] 1899) was a Lithuanian poet and physician, and the author of both the music and lyrics of the Lithuanian National Anthem, Tautiška giesmė. He is regarded in Lithuania as a National Hero. Kudirka used pen names V. Kapsas, Paežerių Vincas, Vincas Kapsas, P.Vincas, Varpas, Q.D, K., V.K, Perkūnas.
Kudirka was born in Paežeriai. He began studying history and philosophy in Warsaw in 1881, but changed his major and began studying medicine the following year. During his studies, he was arrested as a subversive for having a copy of Das Kapital in his possession, and was expelled from the University of Warsaw, but later re-admitted. He graduated in 1889, and worked as a country doctor in Šakiai and Naumiestis.
Kudirka began writing poetry in 1888. Simultaneously he became more active in the Lithuanian national rebirth movement. Together with other Lithuanian students in Warsaw, he founded the secret society Lietuva ("Lithuania"). The following year the society began publishing the clandestine newspaper Varpas ("The Bell"), which Kudirka edited and contributed to for the next ten years. In issue number 6 of Varpas, in September 1898, he published the text of Tautiška Giesmė, which would officially become in 1918, the Lithuanian National Anthem, set to music written by Kudirka himself for a violin.
Kudirka gave much to Lithuanian culture, and also published a collection of Lithuanian popular songs. He was also a noted writer of satire.
He died of tuberculosis at Naumiestis, on 16 November 1899, at age 40. The second half of Tautiška Giesmė was engraved on his gravestone.
On 5 July 2009, a statue of Vincas Kudirka was unveiled beside the Gediminas Avenue, the main street of the capital Vilnius. The unveiling, by dignitaries, including the Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, coincided with festivities marking the 1000th anniversary of the first time Lithuania was mentioned in official chronicles. Read more...
Mindaugas Kuzminskas (born 19 October 1989) is a Lithuanian professional basketball player for Olimpia Milano of the Lega Basket Serie A (LBA) and the EuroLeague. He also represents the Lithuanian national team. Standing at 2.06 m (6 ft 9 in), he plays at the small forward position. Read more...
Kazimierz Siemienowicz (Latin: Casimirus Siemienowicz, Lithuanian: Kazimieras Simonavičius, Polish: Kazimierz Siemienowicz, born c. 1600 – c. 1651), was a Polish–Lithuanian general of artillery, gunsmith, military engineer, and pioneer of rocketry. Born in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, he served the armies of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a ruler of the Netherlands. No portrait or detailed biography of him has survived and much of his life is a subject of dispute.
After contributing his expertise to several battles, Siemienowicz published Artis Magnae Artilleriae in 1650. This treatise, which discussed rocketry and pyrotechnics, remained a standard work in those fields for two centuries. Read more...
Selected economy or infrastructure articles
- A currency (from Middle English: curraunt, "in circulation", from Latin: currens, -entis), in the most specific use of the word, refers to money in any form when in actual use or circulation as a medium of exchange, especially circulating banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a system of money (monetary units) in common use, especially in a nation. Under this definition, US dollars, British pounds, Australian dollars, European euros and Russian ruble are examples of currency. These various currencies are recognized as stores of value and are traded between nations in foreign exchange markets, which determine the relative values of the different currencies. Currencies in this sense are defined by governments, and each type has limited boundaries of acceptance.
Other definitions of the term "currency" are discussed in their respective synonymous articles banknote, coin, and money. The latter definition, pertaining to the currency systems of nations, is the topic of this article. Currencies can be classified into two monetary systems: fiat money and commodity money, depending on what guarantees the value (the economy at large vs. the government's physical metal reserves). Some currencies are legal tender in certain political jurisdictions. Others are simply traded for their economic value. Digital currency has arisen with the popularity of computers and the Internet. Read more... - Transport in Lithuania relies mainly on road and rail networks. Read more...
- Agriculture in Lithuania dates to the Neolithic period, about 3,000 to 1,000 BC. It has been one of Lithuania's most important occupations for many centuries. Read more...
Location of Lithuania
Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe. Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, a full member of the Eurozone, Schengen Agreement and NATO. It is also a member of the Nordic Investment Bank, and part of Nordic-Baltic cooperation of Northern European countries. The United Nations Human Development Index lists Lithuania as a "very high human development" country. Lithuania has been among the fastest growing economies in the European Union and is ranked 21st in the world in the Ease of Doing Business Index.
For further information on the types of business entities in this country and their abbreviations, see "Business entities in Lithuania". Read more...
Lithuanian Railways (Lithuanian: Lietuvos geležinkeliai) is the national, state-owned railway company of Lithuania. It operates most railway lines in the country.
Lithuanian Railways' main network consists of 1749 km of 1,520 mm (4 ft 11 27⁄32 in) broad gauge railway of which 122 km are electrified. They also operate 22 km of standard gauge line and a new ~100 km standard gauge line is under construction at the moment alongside the broad gauge from Šeštokai to Kaunas. A 179 km 750 mm (2 ft 5 1⁄2 in) narrow gauge network, listed as an object of cultural heritage, was split off into a separate company Aukštaitijos Siaurasis Geležinkelis in 2001. 68 km of narrow gauge, serving five stations, are regularly used, employing 12 locomotives.
In 2006 Lithuanian Railways transported 6.2 million passengers and 50 million tonnes of freight. Oil is the main freight item carried. Read more...- This article provides an overview of telecommunications in Lithuania, including radio, television, telephones, and the Internet.
The Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania (RRT) is Lithuania's independent communications-industry regulator. It was established under the Law on Telecommunications and the provisions of the European Union Directives to ensure that the industry remain competitive. Read more... - Lithuania attracts many tourists from neighbouring countries and all over the world. In 2016, 1.5 million tourists arrived to Lithuania. Read more...
- Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. Countries are sorted by nominal GDP estimates from financial and statistical institutions, which are calculated at market or government official exchange rates. Nominal GDP does not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results can vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currency. Such fluctuations may change a country's ranking from one year to the next, even though they often make little or no difference in the standard of living of its population.
Comparisons of national wealth are also frequently made on the basis of purchasing power parity (PPP), to adjust for differences in the cost of living in different countries. PPP largely removes the exchange rate problem, but has its own drawbacks; it does not reflect the value of economic output in international trade, and it also requires more estimation than nominal GDP. On the whole, PPP per capita figures are less spread than nominal GDP per capita figures.
The United States is the world's largest economy with a GDP of approximately $19.39 trillion, notably due to high average incomes, a large population, capital investment, moderate unemployment, high consumer spending, a relatively young population, and technological innovation. Tuvalu is the world's smallest national economy, with a GDP of about $32 million, because of its very small population, a lack of natural resources, reliance on foreign aid, negligible capital investment, demographic problems, and low average incomes.
Although the rankings of national economies have changed considerably over time, the United States has maintained its top position since the Gilded Age, a time period in which its economy saw rapid expansion, surpassing the British Empire and Qing dynasty in aggregate output. Since China's transition to a market-based economy through privatisation and deregulation, the country has seen its ranking increase from ninth in 1978 to second to only the United States in 2016 as economic growth accelerated and its share of global nominal GDP surged from 2% in 1980 to 15% in 2016. India has also experienced a similar economic boom since the implementation of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s. When supranational entities are included, the European Union is the second largest economy in the world. It was the largest from 2004, when ten countries joined the union, to 2014, after which it was surpassed by the United States.
The first list includes estimates compiled by the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook, the second list shows the World Bank's data, and the third list includes data compiled by the United Nations Statistics Division. The IMF definitive data for the past year and estimates for the current year are published twice a year in April and October. Several economies which are not considered to be countries (the world, the European Union, and some dependent territories) are included in the lists because they appear in the sources as distinct economies. These economies are italicized and not ranked in the charts, but are listed where applicable. Read more...
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Selected good articles
Stanisław II Augustus (also Stanisław August Poniatowski; born Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski; 17 January 1732 – 12 February 1798), who reigned as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1764 to 1795, was the last monarch of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He remains a controversial figure in Polish history. Recognized as a great patron of the arts and sciences and an initiator and firm supporter of progressive reforms, he is also remembered as the King of the Commonwealth whose election was marred by Russian intervention. He is criticized primarily for his failure to stand against the partitions, and thus to prevent the destruction of the Polish state.
Having arrived at the Russian imperial court in Saint Petersburg in 1755, he became romantically involved with the future empress Catherine the Great (1762–1796). With her connivance, in 1764 he was elected King of Poland. Contrary to expectations, he attempted to reform and strengthen the ailing Commonwealth. His efforts met with external opposition from Prussia, Russia and Austria, all committed to keeping the Commonwealth weak. From within he was opposed by conservative interests, which saw reforms as threatening their traditional liberties and privileges.
The defining crisis of his early reign was the War of the Bar Confederation (1768–1772) that led to the First Partition of Poland (1772). The later part of his reign saw reforms wrought by the Great Sejm (1788–1792) and the Constitution of 3 May 1791. These reforms were overthrown by the 1792 Targowica Confederation and by the War in defence of the consitution, leading directly to the Second Partition of Poland (1793), the Kościuszko Uprising (1794) and the final and Third Partition of Poland (1795), marking the end of the Commonwealth. Stripped of all meaningful power, Poniatowski abdicated in November 1795 and spent the last years of his life a virtual captive in Saint Petersburg. Read more...- Anton Schmid (9 January 1900 – 13 April 1942) was an Austrian recruit in the Wehrmacht who saved Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania. A devout but apolitical Roman Catholic and an electrician by profession, Schmid was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and later into the Wehrmacht during World War II. Put in charge of an office to return stranded German soldiers to their units in late August 1941, he began to help Jews after being approached by two pleading for his intercession. Schmid hid Jews in his apartment, obtained work permits to save Jews from the Ponary massacre, transferred Jews in Wehrmacht trucks to safer locations, and aided the Vilna Ghetto underground. It is estimated that he saved as many as 300 Jews before his arrest in January 1942. He was executed on 13 April.
After the war, Schmid was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for his efforts to help Jews and was seen as a symbol of the few Germans who defied their government's program of extermination. His reception was more conflicted in Germany and Austria, where he was still viewed as a traitor. The first official commemoration of him in Germany did not occur until 2000, but he is now hailed as an example of civil courage for Bundeswehr soldiers to follow. Read more...
Antanas Smetona and his party were major beneficiaries of the coup.
The 1926 Lithuanian coup d'état (Lithuanian: 1926-ųjų perversmas) was a military coup d'état in Lithuania that resulted in the replacement of the democratically elected government with a conservative authoritarian government led by Antanas Smetona. The coup took place on 17 December 1926 and was largely organized by the military; Smetona's role remains the subject of debate. The coup brought the Lithuanian Nationalist Union, the most conservative party at the time, to power. Before 1926, it had been a fairly new and insignificant nationalistic party: in 1926, its membership numbered about 2,000 and it had won only three seats in the parliamentary elections. The Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party, the largest party in the Seimas at the time, collaborated with the military and provided constitutional legitimacy to the coup, but did not accept any major posts in the new government and withdrew in May 1927. After the military handed power over to the civilian government, it ceased playing a direct role in political life. Read more...
Stephen Báthory (Hungarian: Báthory István; Polish: Stefan Batory; Lithuanian:
Steponas Batoras; 27 September 1533 – 12 December 1586) was Voivode of Transylvania (1571–76), Prince of Transylvania (1576–86), from 1576 Queen Anna Jagiellon's husband and jure uxoris King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1576-1586).
The son of Stephen VIII Báthory and a member of the Hungarian Báthory noble family, Báthory was a ruler of Transylvania in the 1570s, defeating another challenger for that title, Gáspár Bekes. In 1576 Báthory became the third elected king of Poland. He worked closely with chancellor Jan Zamoyski. The first years of his reign were focused on establishing power, defeating a fellow claimant to the throne, Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, and quelling rebellions, most notably, the Danzig rebellion. He reigned only a decade, but is considered one of the most successful kings in Polish history, particularly in the realm of military history. His signal achievement was his victorious campaign in Livonia against Russia in the middle part of his reign, in which he repulsed a Russian invasion of Commonwealth borderlands and secured a highly favorable treaty of peace (the Peace of Jam Zapolski). Read more...
The 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania was an ultimatum delivered to Lithuania by Poland on March 17, 1938. The Lithuanian government had steadfastly refused to have any diplomatic relations with Poland after 1920, protesting the annexation of the Vilnius Region by Poland. As pre-World War II tensions in Europe intensified, Poland perceived the need to secure its northern borders. Five days earlier, Poland, feeling supported by international recognition of the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, decided to deliver an ultimatum to Lithuania. The ultimatum demanded that the Lithuanian government unconditionally agree to establish diplomatic relations with Warsaw within 48 hours, and that the terms be finalized before March 31. The establishment of diplomatic relations would mean a de facto renunciation of Lithuanian claims to the region containing its historic capital, Vilnius (known in Polish as Wilno).
Lithuania, preferring peace to war, accepted the ultimatum on March 19. Although diplomatic relations were established as a result of the ultimatum, Lithuania did not agree to recognize the loss of Vilnius de jure. The government of Poland made a similar move against the Czechoslovak government in Prague on September 30, 1938, when it took advantage of the Sudeten Crisis to demand a portion of Zaolzie. On both occasions, Poland used the international crises to address long-standing border disputes. Read more...
Romualdas Marcinkus (22 July 1907 – 29 March 1944) was a Lithuanian pilot. Marcinkus participated in an early trans-European flight on 25 June 1934, and was the only Lithuanian pilot to serve in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War. In his youth Marcinkus was a Lithuanian multifold football champion and a playing coach for the Lithuania national football team.
While serving in the Lithuanian Air Force, Marcinkus was a paratrooper instructor, and headed the aviation sport and physical education department, and during his later years coached a junior football team. A few months before the Soviet occupation of Lithuania early in the Second World War, Marcinkus left Lithuania and enlisted in the French Air Force. After the Battle of France and the French capitulation, Marcinkus escaped to Britain, where he flew for the RAF. As a pilot for No. 1 Squadron RAF, he took part in various missions, including escorting bombers and night combat. On 12 February 1942, during Operation Cerberus, he was shot down, became a prisoner of war, and was sent to Stalag Luft III.
At Stalag Luft III Marcinkus became an active member of an underground group of prisoners who organized and executed the Great Escape. Marcinkus was responsible for analyzing the German railway schedules – a vital part of the plan. On the night of 25 March 1944, Marcinkus became one of 76 servicemen who escaped the prison camp. After several days he was recaptured by the Gestapo and executed.
At the end of the Second World War, Lithuania lost its independence and Marcinkus was largely forgotten. His memory was kept alive by the Lithuanian émigré press. After Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, more detailed accounts of his life were published there and abroad. Read more...- The House of Mindaugas was the first royal family of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, centered on Mindaugas, the first known and undoubted sovereign of Lithuania. He was crowned as King of Lithuania in 1253 and assassinated ten years later. His known family relations end with children; there is no data on his great-grandchildren or any relations with the Gediminids, a dynasty of sovereigns of Lithuania and Poland that started with Butigeidis ca. 1285 and ended with Sigismund II Augustus in 1572.
Historians have to make considerable assumptions trying to reconstruct the full family tree because of extremely scarce written sources about the early history of Lithuania. The matter is further complicated by the 16–17th century genealogies, most famously the Bychowiec Chronicle, that mixed legends and facts into one. The legends about Palemonids, a noble family from the Roman Empire who settled in Lithuania and gave rise to the Duchy, are quite popular and widespread in these genealogies. The real historical data comes from the Russian and Livonian chronicles, most important of these being the Hypatian Codex. Read more...
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ([mit͡sˈkʲɛvit͡ʂ] (
listen); 24 December 1798 – 26 November 1855) was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor of Slavic literature, and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is counted as one of Poland's "Three Bards" ("Trzej Wieszcze") and is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets and has been dubbed a "Slavic bard". A leading Romantic dramatist, he has been compared in Poland and Europe to Byron and Goethe.
He is known chiefly for the poetic drama Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) and the national epic poem Pan Tadeusz. His other influential works include Konrad Wallenrod and Grażyna. All these served as inspiration for uprisings against the three imperial powers that had partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth out of existence.
Mickiewicz was born in the Russian-partitioned territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was active in the struggle to win independence for his home region. After, as a consequence, spending five years exiled to central Russia, in 1829 he succeeded in leaving the Russian Empire and, like many of his compatriots, lived out the rest of his life abroad. He settled first in Rome, then in Paris, where for a little over three years he lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France. He died, probably of cholera, at Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish and Jewish forces to fight Russia in the Crimean War.
In 1890, his remains were repatriated from Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, in France, to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland. Read more...
Władysław IV Vasa (Polish: Władysław IV Waza; Lithuanian: Vladislovas Vaza; Russian: Владислав IV Ваза, tr. Vladislav IV Vaza; Latin: Vladislaus IV Vasa or Ladislaus IV Vasa; 9 June 1595 – 20 May 1648) was a Polish prince from the Royal House of Vasa. He reigned as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 8 November 1632 to his death in 1648.
Władysław IV was the son of Sigismund III Vasa (Polish: Zygmunt III Waza) and his wife, Anna of Austria (also known as Anna of Habsburg). In 1610 the teen-aged Władysław was elected Tsar of Russia by the Seven Boyars, but did not assume the Russian throne due to his father's opposition and a popular uprising in Russia. Nevertheless, until 1634 he used the title of Grand Duke of Muscovy.
Elected king of Poland in 1632, Władysław was fairly successful in defending the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against invasion, most notably in the Smolensk War of 1632–34, in which he participated personally. He supported religious tolerance and carried out military reforms, such as the founding of the Commonwealth Navy. He was also a renowned patron of the arts and music. He failed, however, to realize his dreams of regaining the Swedish crown, gaining fame by defeating the Ottoman Empire, strengthening royal power, and reforming the Commonwealth.
He died without a legitimate male heir and was succeeded to the Polish throne by his half-brother, John II Casimir Vasa (Jan Kazimierz Waza). Władysław's death marked the end of relative stability in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as conflicts and tensions that had been growing over several decades came to a head with devastating consequences, notably the largest of the Cossack uprisings – the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648) – and the Swedish invasion ("the Deluge", 1655–60). Read more...
The Campaign of Grodno was a plan developed by Johann Patkul and Otto Arnold von Paykull during the Swedish invasion of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a part of the Great Northern War. Its purpose was to crush Charles XII's army with overwhelming force in a combined offensive of Russian and Saxon troops. The campaign, executed by Peter I of Russia and Augustus II of Saxony, began in July 1705 and lasted almost a year. In divided areas the allies would jointly strike the Swedish troops occupied in Poland, in order to neutralize the influence the Swedes had in the Polish politics. However, the Swedish forces under Charles XII successfully outmaneuvered the allies, installed a Polish king in favor of their own and finally won two decisive victories at Grodno and Fraustadt in 1706. This resulted in the Treaty of Altranstädt (1706) in which Augustus renounced his claims to the Polish throne, broke off his alliance with Russia, and established peace between Sweden and Saxony.
The campaign led to Sweden gaining control over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, until the Swedish defeat at Battle of Poltava and the Treaty of Thorn (1709) which restored the Russian-backed Augustus to the Polish throne and forced the remaining Swedes out of the Commonwealth. Read more...
1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania was an oral ultimatum presented to Juozas Urbšys, Foreign Minister of Lithuania, by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, on 20 March 1939. The Germans demanded that Lithuania give up the Klaipėda Region (also known as the Memel Territory), which had been detached from Germany after World War I, or the Wehrmacht would invade Lithuania. After years of rising tension between Lithuania and Germany, increasing pro-Nazi propaganda in the region, and continued German expansion, the demand was expected. The ultimatum was issued just five days after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. The four signatories of the 1924 Klaipėda Convention, which had guaranteed the protection of the status quo in the region, did not offer any material assistance. The United Kingdom and France followed a policy of appeasement, while Italy and Japan openly supported Germany. Lithuania was forced to accept the ultimatum on 22 March. For Germany it was the last territorial acquisition before World War II; for Lithuania it was a major downturn in its economy and morale; for Europe it was a further escalation in pre-war tensions. Read more...
Sejm session at the Royal Castle, Warsaw, 1622
The liberum veto (Latin for "free veto") was a parliamentary device in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was a form of unanimity voting rule that allowed any member of the Sejm (legislature) to force an immediate end to the current session and to nullify any legislation that had already been passed at the session by shouting, Sisto activitatem! (Latin: "I stop the activity!") or Nie pozwalam! (Polish: "I do not allow!"). The rule was in place from the mid-17th century to the late 18th century in the Sejm's parliamentary deliberations. It was based on the premise that since all Polish noblemen were equal, every measure that came before the Sejm had to be passed unanimously. The liberum veto was a key part of the political system of the Commonwealth, strengthening democratic elements and checking royal power and went against the European-wide trend of having a strong executive (absolute monarchy).
Many historians hold that the liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system, particularly in the 18th century, when foreign powers bribed Sejm members to paralyze its proceedings, and the Commonwealth's eventual destruction in the partitions of Poland and foreign occupation, dominance and manipulation of Poland for the next 200 years or so. Piotr Stefan Wandycz wrote that the "liberum veto had become the sinister symbol of old Polish anarchy". In the period of 1573–1763, about 150 sejms were held, about a third failing to pass any legislation, mostly because of the liberum veto. The expression Polish parliament in many European languages originated from the apparent paralysis. Read more...
The Battle of Grunwald, First Battle of Tannenberg or Battle of Žalgiris, was fought on 15 July 1410 during the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War. The alliance of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, led respectively by King Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila) and Grand Duke Vytautas, decisively defeated the German–Prussian Teutonic Knights, led by Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen. Most of the Teutonic Knights' leadership were killed or taken prisoner. Although defeated, the Teutonic Knights withstood the siege of their fortress in Marienburg (Malbork) and suffered minimal territorial losses at the Peace of Thorn (1411) (Toruń), with other territorial disputes continuing until the Peace of Melno in 1422. The knights, however, would never recover their former power, and the financial burden of war reparations caused internal conflicts and an economic downturn in the lands under their control. The battle shifted the balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe and marked the rise of the Polish–Lithuanian union as the dominant political and military force in the region.
The battle was one of the largest in medieval Europe and is regarded as one of the most important victories in the histories of Poland and Lithuania and is also widely celebrated in Belarus. It has been used as a source of romantic legends and national pride, becoming a larger symbol of struggle against foreign invaders. During the 20th century the battle was used in Nazi and Soviet propaganda campaigns. Only in recent decades have historians moved towards a dispassionate, scholarly assessment of the battle, reconciling the previous narratives, which differed widely by nation. Read more...
Jan Karol Chodkiewicz (c. 1560 – 24 September 1621; Belarusian: Ян Караль Хадкевіч, Jan Karal Chadkievič, Lithuanian: Jonas Karolis Chodkevičius) was a military commander of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth army who was from 1601 Field Hetman of Lithuania, and from 1605 Grand Hetman of Lithuania, and was one of the most prominent noblemen and military commanders of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth of his era. His coat of arms was Chodkiewicz, as was his family name.
He played a major role, often as the top commander of the Commonwealth forces, in the Wallachian campaign of 1599–1600, the Polish–Swedish War of 1600–11, the Polish–Muscovite War of 1605–18, and the Polish–Ottoman War of 1620–21. His most famous victory was the Battle of Kircholm in 1605, in which he dealt a major defeat to a Swedish army three times the size of his own. He died on the front lines during the battle of Chocim, in the besieged Khotyn Fortress, a few days before the Ottomans gave up on the siege and agreed to negotiate. Read more...
Kaunas Fortress (Lithuanian: Kauno tvirtovė, Russian: Кοвенская крепость) is the remains of a fortress complex in Kaunas, Lithuania. It was constructed and renovated between 1882 and 1915 to protect the Russian Empire's western borders, and was designated a "first-class" fortress in 1887. During World War I, the complex was the largest defensive structure in the entire state, occupying 65 km2 (25 sq mi).
The fortress was battle-tested in 1915 when Germany attacked the Russian Empire, and withstood eleven days of assault before capture. After World War I, the fortress' military importance declined as advances in weaponry rendered it increasingly obsolete. It was used by various civil institutions and as a garrison.
During World War II, parts of the fortress complex were used by the Nazi Germany for detention, interrogation, and execution. About 50,000 people were executed there, including more than 30,000 victims of the Holocaust. Some sections have since been restored; the Ninth Fort houses a museum and memorial devoted to the victims of wartime mass executions. The complex is the most complete remaining example of a Russian Empire fortress. Read more...
Piotr Skarga (less often, Piotr Powęski; 2 February 1536 – 27 September 1612) was a Polish Jesuit, preacher, hagiographer, polemicist, and leading figure of the Counter-Reformation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to his oratorical gifts, he has been called "the Polish Bossuet".
Skarga is remembered by Poles as a vigorous early advocate of reforms to the Polish-Lithuanian polity, and as a critic of the Commonwealth's governing classes, as well as of its religious tolerance policies. He advocated strengthening the monarch's power at the expense of parliament (the Sejm) and of the nobility (the szlachta).
He was a professor at the Kraków Academy and in 1579 he became the first rector of the Wilno Academy. Later, he served in the Jesuit College at Kraków. He was also a prolific writer, and his The Lives of the Saints (Żywoty świętych, 1579) was for several centuries one of the most popular books in the Polish language. His other important work was the Sejm Sermons (Kazania Sejmowe, 1597), a political treatise, which became popular in the second half of the 19th century, when he was seen as the "patriotic seer" who predicted the partitions of Poland. Read more...- The Polish–Lithuanian and Prussian alliance was a mutual defense alliance signed on 29 March 1790 in Warsaw between representatives of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Prussia. It was signed in the brief period when Prussia was seeking an ally against either Austria or Russia, and the Commonwealth was seeking guarantees that it would be able to carry out significant governmental reforms without foreign intervention.
From the beginning, the alliance was much more valuable to the Commonwealth than to Prussia. Soon after the treaty was signed, the international situation, and changes within the Commonwealth, made the treaty much less valuable to the Prussian side. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth embarked on a series of major internal reforms, seeing the alliance as a guarantee that it had the backing of a powerful neighbor in this process – where in fact Prussia felt those reforms were not in its best interest, and felt threatened by them. When Russia invaded the Commonwealth in May 1792, Prussia refused a request to honor the alliance and intervene, arguing that it was not consulted with regard to the 3rd May Constitution, which invalidated the alliance. A few months later, in 1793, Prussia aided Russia in the suppression of the Kościuszko Uprising. Read more...
The Polish–Russian War of 1792 (also, War of the Second Partition, and in Polish sources, War in Defence of the Constitution (Polish: wojna w obronie Konstytucji 3 maja)) was fought between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth on one side, and the Targowica Confederation (conservative nobility of the Commonwealth opposed to the new Constitution of 3 May 1791) and the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great on the other.
The war took place in two theaters: northern in Lithuania and southern in Ukraine. In both, the Polish forces retreated before the numerically superior Russian forces, though they offered significantly more resistance in the south, thanks to the effective leadership of Polish commanders Prince Józef Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kościuszko. During the three-month-long struggle several battles were fought, but no side scored a decisive victory. The largest success of the Polish forces was the defeat of one of the Russian formations at the Battle of Zieleńce on 18 June; in the aftermath of the battle the Polish highest military award, Virtuti Militari, was established. The war ended when the Polish King Stanisław August Poniatowski decided to seek a diplomatic solution, asked for a ceasefire with the Russians and joined the Targowica Confederation, as demanded by the Russian Empire. Read more...
Countess Emilia Plater (Broel-Plater, Lithuanian: Emilija Pliaterytė; 13 November 1806 – 23 December 1831) was a noblewoman and revolutionary from the lands of the partitioned Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Raised in a patriotic tradition, she fought in the November 1830 Uprising, during which she raised a small unit, participated in several engagements, and received the rank of captain in the Polish insurgent forces. Near the end of the Uprising, she fell ill and died.
Though she did not participate in any major engagement, her story became widely publicized and inspired a number of works of art and literature. She is a national heroine in Poland and Lithuania, all formerly parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. She has been venerated by Polish artists and by the nation at large as a symbol of women fighting for the national cause. She is often nicknamed as a "Lithuanian Joan of Arc". Read more...
LaMelo LaFrance Ball (born August 22, 2001) is an American professional basketball player for SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio. A 17-year-old point guard, he verbally committed to play college basketball for the UCLA Bruins at age 13 but later dropped his college plans to pursue a professional career. Ball played for Chino Hills High School in Chino Hills, California, gaining national exposure in 2015–16 while playing with his brothers: Lonzo, a guard for the Los Angeles Lakers and LiAngelo. His father LaVar grew into a media personality in 2017.
In his first season at Chino Hills, Ball won a state championship and was recognized as one of the top freshmen in the country. As a sophomore, he made headlines after making a half-court shot in December 2016 and returned to prominence following a 92-point game vs. Los Osos High School in February 2017. Throughout his high school years, he was ranked among the top players in his class. In 2017, Ball left Chino Hills after his junior year to sign with Lithuanian team Prienai. In the summer of 2018, he joined the Los Angeles Ballers in the Junior Basketball Association (JBA), before moving to SPIRE.
Ball has over 3.9 million followers on Instagram. He is one of the most publicized high school-aged basketball players, with a signature shoe by his father's company Big Baller Brand and a role on the Facebook Watch reality show Ball in the Family. Read more...
The Euthanasia Coaster is an art concept for a steel roller coaster designed to kill its passengers. In 2010, it was designed and made into a scale model by Julijonas Urbonas, a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London. Urbonas, who has worked at an amusement park, stated that the goal of his concept roller coaster is to take lives "with elegance and euphoria". As for practical applications of his design, Urbonas mentioned "euthanasia" or "execution". John Allen, who served as president of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, inspired Urbonas with his description of the "ultimate" roller coaster as one that "sends out 24 people and they all come back dead". Read more...
Richard Marvin Butkus (born December 9, 1942) is a former American football player, sports commentator, and actor. He played professional football as a linebacker for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL) from 1965 to 1973. Through nine NFL seasons he was invited to eight Pro Bowls, named a first-team All-Pro six times, and was twice recognized by his peers as the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year. Renowned as a fierce tackler and for the relentless effort with which he played, Butkus is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most intimidating linebackers in pro football history.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Butkus played his entire football career in his home state, which began at Chicago Vocational High School. As a college football player at the University of Illinois, he was a linebacker and center for the Fighting Illini. A two-time consensus All-American, he led the Illini to a Rose Bowl victory in 1963 and was deemed the most valuable player in the Big Ten Conference, and in 1964 he was named college football's Lineman of the Year by United Press International (UPI). He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983.
Butkus was drafted by the Bears as the third overall pick in the 1965 NFL Draft. He soon established himself as a ball hawk with his penchant for forcing turnovers. In his NFL career, he intercepted 22 passes, recovered 27 fumbles (a record when he retired), and was responsible for causing many more fumbles with his jarring tackles. His tackling ability earned him both admiration and trepidation from opposing players. According to Hall of Fame defensive end Deacon Jones, Butkus "was a well-conditioned animal, and every time he hit you, he tried to put you in the cemetery, not the hospital." In 2009, the NFL Network named Butkus the most feared tackler of all time.
Butkus is credited with having defined the middle linebacker position, and is still viewed as the "gold standard by which other middle linebackers are measured." He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, and his No. 51 jersey is retired by the Bears. Following his playing career, Butkus began careers in acting, sports commentary, and celebrity endorsement. He is active in philanthropy through the Butkus Foundation, which manages various charitable causes. Read more...
The Vilna offensive was a campaign of the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921. The Polish army launched an offensive on April 16, 1919, to take Vilnius (Polish: Wilno) from the Red Army. After three days of street fighting from April 19–21, the city was captured by Polish forces, causing the Red Army to retreat. During the offensive, the Poles also succeeded in securing the nearby cities of Lida, Pinsk, Navahrudak, and Baranovichi.
The Red Army launched a series of counterattacks in late April, all of which ended in failure. The Soviets briefly recaptured the city a year later, in spring 1920, when the Polish army was retreating along the entire front. In the aftermath, the Vilna offensive would cause much turmoil on the political scene in Poland and abroad. Read more...
The Sejny Uprising or Seinai Revolt (Polish: Powstanie sejneńskie, Lithuanian: Seinų sukilimas) refers to a Polish uprising against the Lithuanian authorities in August 1919 in the ethnically mixed area surrounding the town of Sejny (Lithuanian: Seinai). When German forces, which occupied the territory during World War I, retreated from the area in May 1919, they turned over administration to the Lithuanians. Trying to prevent an armed conflict between Poland and Lithuania, the Entente drew a demarcation line, known as the Foch Line. The line assigned much of the disputed Suwałki (Suvalkai) Region to Poland and required the Lithuanian Army to retreat. While the Lithuanians retreated from some areas, they refused to leave Sejny (Seinai), because of its major Lithuanian population. Polish irregular forces began the uprising on August 23, 1919, and soon received support from the regular Polish Army. After several military skirmishes, Polish forces secured Sejny and Lithuanians retreated behind the Foch Line.
The uprising did not solve the larger border conflict between Poland and Lithuania over the ethnically mixed Suwałki Region. Both sides complained about each other's repressive measures. The conflict intensified in 1920, causing military skirmishes of the Polish–Lithuanian War. Sejny changed hands frequently until the Suwałki Agreement of October 1920, which left Sejny on the Polish side. The uprising undermined the plans of Polish leader Józef Piłsudski, who was planning a coup d'état in Lithuania to replace the Lithuanian government with a pro-Polish cabinet, that would agree to a union with Poland (the proposed Międzymorze federation). Because the Sejny Uprising had prompted the Lithuanian intelligence to intensify its investigations of Polish activities in Lithuania, they discovered plans for the coup and prevented it, arresting Polish sympathizers. These hostilities in Sejny further strained the Polish–Lithuanian relations.
Eventually, Poland and Lithuania reached an agreement on a new border that left Sejny on the Polish side of the border. The Polish–Lithuanian border in the Suwałki Region has remained the same since then (with the exception of the World War II period). Read more...
The 1793 Second Partition of Poland was the second of three partitions (or partial annexations) that ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. The second partition occurred in the aftermath of the Polish–Russian War of 1792 and the Targowica Confederation of 1792, and was approved by its territorial beneficiaries, the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. The division was ratified by the coerced Polish parliament (Sejm) in 1793 (see the Grodno Sejm) in a short-lived attempt to prevent the inevitable complete annexation of Poland, the Third Partition. Read more...
Portrait of Jonas Basanavičius, chairman of the Seimas.
The Great Seimas of Vilnius (Lithuanian: Didysis Vilniaus Seimas, also known as the Great Assembly of Vilnius, the Grand Diet of Vilnius, or the Great Diet of Vilnius) was a major assembly held on December 4 and 5, 1905 (November 21–22, 1905 O.S.) in Vilnius, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, largely inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1905. It was the first modern national congress in Lithuania and dealt primarily not with the social issues that sparked the revolution, but with national concerns. Over 2,000 participants took part in the Seimas. The assembly made the decision to demand wide political autonomy within the Russian Empire and achieve this by peaceful means. It is considered an important step towards the Act of Independence of Lithuania, adopted on February 16, 1918 by the Council of Lithuania, as the Seimas laid the groundwork for the establishment of an independent Lithuanian state. Read more...
Mindaugas (German: Myndowen, Latin: Mindowe, Old East Slavic: Мендог, Belarusian: Міндоўг, c. 1203 – autumn 1263) was the first known Grand Duke of Lithuania and the only King of Lithuania. Little is known of his origins, early life, or rise to power; he is mentioned in a 1219 treaty as an elder duke, and in 1236 as the leader of all the Lithuanians. The contemporary and modern sources discussing his ascent mention strategic marriages along with banishment or murder of his rivals. He extended his domain into regions southeast of Lithuania proper during the 1230s and 1240s. In 1250 or 1251, during the course of internal power struggles, he was baptised as a Roman Catholic; this action enabled him to establish an alliance with the Livonian Order, a long-standing antagonist of the Lithuanians. During the summer of 1253 he was crowned King of Lithuania, ruling between 300,000 and 400,000 subjects.
While his ten-year reign was marked by various state-building accomplishments, Mindaugas's conflicts with relatives and other dukes continued, and Samogitia (western Lithuania) strongly resisted the alliance's rule. His gains in the southeast were challenged by the Tatars. He broke peace with the Livonian Order in 1261, possibly renouncing Christianity, and was assassinated in 1263 by his nephew Treniota and another rival, Duke Daumantas. His three immediate successors were assassinated as well. The disorder was not resolved until Traidenis gained the title of Grand Duke c. 1270.
Although his reputation was unsettled during the following centuries and his descendants were not notable, he gained standing during the 19th and 20th centuries. Mindaugas was the only King of Lithuania; while most of the Lithuanian Grand Dukes from Jogaila onward also reigned as Kings of Poland, the titles remained separate. Now generally considered the founder of the Lithuanian state, he is also now credited with stopping the advance of the Tatars towards the Baltic Sea, establishing international recognition of Lithuania, and turning it towards Western civilization. In the 1990s the historian Edvardas Gudavičius published research supporting an exact coronation date – 6 July 1253. This day is now an official national holiday in Lithuania, Statehood Day. Read more...
The Constitution of 3 May 1791 (Polish: Konstytucja 3 Maja, Lithuanian: Gegužės trečiosios konstitucija
listen (help·info)) was adopted by the Great Sejm (parliament) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a dual monarchy comprising the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Drafted over 32 months beginning on 6 October 1788, and formally adopted as the Government Act (Ustawa rządowa), the legislation was designed to redress the Commonwealth's political defects. The system of Golden Freedoms, also known as the "Nobles' Democracy," had conferred disproportionate rights on the nobility (szlachta) and over time had corrupted politics. The adoption of the Constitution was preceded by a period of agitation for—and gradual introduction of—reforms beginning with the Convocation Sejm of 1764 and the election of Stanisław August Poniatowski as the Commonwealth's last king.
The constitution sought to supplant the prevailing anarchy fostered by some of the country's magnates with a more democratic constitutional monarchy. It introduced elements of political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. It banned parliamentary institutions such as the liberum veto, which had put the Sejm at the mercy of any deputy, who could unilaterally revoke all the legislation that had been passed by that Sejm. The Commonwealth's neighbours reacted with hostility to the adoption of the constitution. Frederick William II's Kingdom of Prussia broke its alliance with the Commonwealth, which was attacked and then defeated in the War in Defence of the Constitution by an alliance between Catherine the Great's Imperial Russia and the Targowica Confederation of anti-reform Polish magnates and landless nobility. The King, a principal co-author, eventually capitulated to the Confederates.
The constitutional procedures of the 1791 legislation were formally performed, consistently with its Articles I-XI (and their Preamble), for less than 19 months. The constitution's legal force was confirmed by the content of the Proclamation of Polaniec in 1794, referring to the Constitution's Articles (particularly Article IV). The Proclamation of Polaniec is attributable to Tadeusz Kościuszko. It was issued during the Kościuszko Uprising. The Grodno Sejm declared the Constitution of 3 May as annulled, but its legal power to do so was questionable on the basis of Article VI of the Constitution of 3 May, which permitted its cancellation only after 25 years from its enactment. The legal and historians' perceptions of the implications of the enactment of the Constitution in 1791, relating to its legal force, remain undemarcated. By 1795, the Second and Third Partitions of Poland ended the existence of the sovereign Polish state. Over the next 123 years, the Constitution of 3 May 1791, was seen as proof of successful internal reform and as a symbol promising the eventual restoration of Poland's sovereignty. The first draft of the Constitution was developed in secrecy, with contribution of several co-authors, including, among others, the king Stanislaw August Poniatowski, Stanisław Staszic, Scipione Piattoli and potentially Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz. In the words of two of its main co-authors, Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj, it was "the last will and testament of the expiring Country."
British historian Norman Davies described the legislation as "the first constitution of its type in Europe". The Constitution of 3 May 1791 was the first to combine the clear division of the executive, legislative and judiciary powers with the monarchic republic legal order. It was drafted in relation to a copy of the U.S. Constitution. However, it does not mean that the Constitution of 3 May was not original. None of the content of the U.S. Constitution Articles was directly paraphrased or otherwise recalled under the Constitution of 3 May. Consistently with the U.S. Constitution, some background features, such as the order of the governmental Articles firstly distinguished the legislative power (Article VI), next the executive power (Article VII), and the judiciary power (Article VIII), with independent judges to be elected in small constituencies. Others have called it the world's second-oldest codified national governmental constitution after the 1787 U.S. Constitution; the U.S. Constitution was the first governmental constitution introducing a clear division of the executive, legislative and judiciary powers, accordingly with the legal and philosophical values influential in the Enlightenment. Read more...
The Siege of Smolensk lasted almost a year between 1632 and 1633, when the Muscovite army besieged the Polish–Lithuanian city of Smolensk during the war named after that siege. Muscovite forces of over 25,000 under Mikhail Borisovich Shein begun the siege of Smolensk on 28 October. Polish garrison under Samuel Drucki-Sokoliński numbered about 3,000. The fortress held out for nearly a year, and in 1633 the newly elected Polish king Władysław IV organised a relief force. In a series of fierce engagements, Commonwealth forces gradually overran the Russian field fortifications, and by 4 October the siege had broken. Shein had become besieged in his camp, and began surrender negotiations in January 1634, capitulating around 1 of March. Read more...
The Lithuanian Civil War of 1389–92 was the second civil conflict between Jogaila, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and his cousin Vytautas. At issue was control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then the largest state in Europe. Jogaila had been crowned King of Poland in 1386; he installed his brother Skirgaila as ruler of Lithuania. Skirgaila proved unpopular and Vytautas attempted to depose him. When his first attempt to take the capital city of Vilnius failed, Vytautas forged an alliance with the Teutonic Knights, their common enemy – just as both cousins had done during the Lithuanian Civil War between 1381 and 1384. Vytautas and the Knights unsuccessfully besieged Vilnius in 1390. Over the next two years it became clear that neither side could achieve a quick victory, and Jogaila proposed a compromise: Vytautas would become Grand Duke and Jogaila would remain Superior Duke. This proposal was formalized in the Ostrów Agreement of 1392, and Vytautas turned against the Knights. He went on to reign as Grand Duke of Lithuania for 38 years, and the cousins remained at peace. Read more...
Comparison of planned and actual territorial changes in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (click on the image for higher resolution). Soviet sphere of influence and territorial acquisitions are in orange.
The Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Lithuania before midnight of June 14, 1940. The Soviets, using a formal pretext, demanded to allow an unspecified number of Soviet soldiers to enter the Lithuanian territory and to form a new pro-Soviet government (later known as the "People's Government"). The ultimatum and subsequent incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union stemmed from the division of Eastern Europe into the German and Russian spheres of influence in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. Lithuania, along with Latvia and Estonia, fell into the Russian sphere. According to the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty of October 1939, Lithuania agreed to allow some 20,000 of Soviets troops to be stationed at several bases within Lithuania in exchange for a portion of the Vilnius Region. Further Soviet actions to establish its dominance in its sphere of influence were delayed by the Winter War with Finland and resumed in spring 1940 when Germany was making rapid advances in western Europe. Despite the threat to the independence, Lithuanian authorities did little to plan for contingencies and were unprepared for the ultimatum.
With Soviet troops already stationed in the country according to the Mutual Assistance Treaty, it was impossible to mount effective military resistance. On June 15, Lithuania unconditionally accepted the ultimatum and lost its independence. The Soviets sought to show the world that this was not a military occupation and annexation, but a legitimate socialist revolution, initiated by the local population demanding to join the Soviet Union. Therefore, the Soviets followed semi-legal procedures: they took control of the government institutions, installed a new puppet government, and carried out show elections to the People's Seimas. During its first session, the Seimas proclaimed creation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and petitioned to be admitted into the Soviet Union. The petition was officially accepted by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union on August 3, 1940. At the same time almost identical processes took place in Latvia and Estonia. Lithuania would not regain its independence until the proclamation of the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania on March 11, 1990. Read more...- The Council of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Taryba, German: Litauischer Staatsrat, Polish: Rada Litewska), after July 11, 1918 the State Council of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Valstybės Taryba) was convened at the Vilnius Conference that took place between 18 and 23 September 1917. The twenty men who composed the council at first were of different ages, social status, professions, and political affiliations. The council was granted the executive authority of the Lithuanian people and was entrusted to establish an independent Lithuanian state. On 16 February 1918, the members of the council signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania and declared Lithuania an independent state based on democratic principles. 16 February is celebrated as Lithuania's State Restoration Day. The council managed to establish the proclamation of independence despite the presence of German troops in the country until the autumn of 1918. By the spring of 1919, the council had almost doubled in size. The council continued its efforts until the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Steigiamasis Seimas) first met on 15 May 1920. Read more...
The Welles Declaration was a diplomatic statement issued on July 23, 1940 by Sumner Welles, the United States' acting Secretary of State, condemning the June 1940 occupation by the Soviet Union of the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and refusing to recognize their annexation as Soviet Republics. It was an application of the 1932 Stimson Doctrine of non-recognition of international territorial changes that were executed by force. It was consistent with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's attitude towards territorial expansion.
The Soviet invasion was an implementation of its 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, which contained a secret protocol by which the two powers agreed to partition and annex the independent states between them. After the pact, the Soviets engaged in a series of ultimatums and actions ending in the annexation of the Baltic states during the summer of 1940. While the area held little strategic importance to the United States, several legations of the U.S. State Department established diplomatic relationships there. The United States and Britain anticipated future involvement in the war, but U.S. isolationism and a foreseeable British–Soviet alliance deterred open confrontation over the Baltics. Welles, concerned with postwar border planning, had been authorized by Roosevelt to issue stronger public statements gauging a move towards more intervention. Loy Henderson and other State Department officials familiar with the area kept the administration informed of developments there, and Henderson, Welles, and Roosevelt worked together to compose the declaration.
The Welles Declaration established a five-decade non-recognition of the Baltic states' annexation. The document had major significance for overall U.S. policy toward Europe in the critical year of 1940. While the U.S. did not engage the Soviet Union militarily in the region, the Declaration enabled the Baltic states to maintain independent diplomatic missions, and Executive Order 8484 protected Baltic financial assets. Its essence was supported by all subsequent U.S. presidents and Congressional resolutions. The Baltic states re-established their independence in 1990–91. Read more...- The history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1648) covers a period in the history of Poland and Lithuania, before their joint state was subjected to devastating wars in the middle of the 17th century. The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a more closely unified federal state, replacing the previously existing personal union of the two countries. The Union was largely run by the Polish and increasingly Polonized Lithuanian and Ruthenian nobility, through the system of the central parliament and local assemblies, but from 1573 led by elected kings. The formal rule of the proportionally more numerous than in other European countries nobility constituted a sophisticated early democratic system, in contrast to the absolute monarchies prevalent at that time in the rest of Europe.[a]
The Polish–Lithuanian Union had become an influential player in Europe and a vital cultural entity, spreading Western culture eastward. In the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a huge state in central-eastern Europe, with an area approaching one million square kilometers.
Following the Reformation gains (the Warsaw Confederation of 1573 was the culmination of the unique in Europe religious toleration processes), the Catholic Church embarked on an ideological counter-offensive and Counter-Reformation claimed many converts from Protestant circles. Disagreements over and difficulties with the assimilation of the eastern Ruthenian populations of the Commonwealth had become clearly discernible. At an earlier stage (from the late 16th century), they manifested themselves in the religious Union of Brest, which split the Eastern Christians of the Commonwealth, and on the military front, in a series of Cossack uprisings.
The Commonwealth, assertive militarily under King Stephen Báthory, suffered from dynastic distractions during the reigns of the Vasa kings Sigismund III and Władysław IV. It had also become a playground of internal conflicts, in which the kings, powerful magnats and factions of nobility were the main actors. The Commonwealth fought wars with Russia, Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. At the Commonwealth's height, some of its powerful neighbors experienced difficulties of their own and the Polish–Lithuanian state sought domination in Eastern Europe, in particular over Russia. Allied with the Habsburg Monarchy, it did not directly participate in the Thirty Years' War.
Tsar Ivan IV of Russia undertook in 1577 hostilities in the Livonian region, which resulted in his takeover of most of the area and caused the Polish–Lithuanian involvement in the Livonian War. The successful counter-offensive led by King Báthory and Jan Zamoyski resulted in the peace of 1582 and the retaking of much of the territory contested with Russia, with the Swedish forces establishing themselves in the far north (Estonia). Estonia was declared a part of the Commonwealth by Sigismund III in 1600, which gave rise to a war with Sweden over Livonia; the war lasted until 1611 without producing a definite outcome.
In 1600, as Russia was entering a period of instability, the Commonwealth proposed a union with the Russian state. This failed move was followed by many other similarly unsuccessful, often adventurous attempts, some involving military invasions, other dynastic and diplomatic manipulations and scheming. While the differences between the two societies and empires proved in the end too formidable to overcome, the Polish–Lithuanian state ended up in 1619, after the Truce of Deulino, with the greatest ever expansion of its territory. At the same time it was weakened by the huge military effort made.
In 1620 the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Osman II declared a war against the Commonwealth. At the disastrous Battle of Ţuţora Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski was killed and the Commonwealth's situation in respect to the Turkish-Tatar invasion forces became very precarious. A mobilization in Poland-Lithuania followed and when Hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz's army withstood fierce enemy assaults at the Battle of Khotyn (1621), the situation improved on the southeastern front. More warfare with the Ottomans followed in 1633–1634 and vast expanses of the Commonwealth had been subjected to Tatar incursions and slave-taking expeditions throughout the period.
War with Sweden, now under Gustavus Adolphus, resumed in 1621 with his attack on Riga, followed by the Swedish occupation of much of Livonia, control of Baltic Sea coast up to Puck and the blockade of Danzig. The Commonwealth, exhausted by the warfare that had taken place elsewhere, in 1626–1627 mustered a response, utilizing the military talents of Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski and help from Austria. Under pressure from several European powers, the campaign was stopped and ended in the Truce of Altmark, leaving in Swedish hands much of what Gustavus Adolphus had conquered.
Another war with Russia followed in 1632 and was concluded without much change in the status quo. King Władysław IV then proceeded to recover the lands lost to Sweden. At the conclusion of the hostilities, Sweden evacuated the cities and ports of Royal Prussia but kept most of Livonia. Courland, which had remained with the Commonwealth, assumed the servicing of Lithuania's Baltic trade. After Frederick William's last Prussian homage before the Polish king in 1641, the Commonwealth's position in regard to Prussia and its Hohenzollern rulers kept getting weaker. Read more... - The Polish coup d'état attempt in Lithuania refers to a failed attempt by Polish statesman Józef Piłsudski to overthrow the existing Lithuanian government of Prime Minister Mykolas Sleževičius, and install a pro-Polish cabinet that would agree to a union with Poland. The Polish intelligence agency, the Polish Military Organization (PMO) was to carry out the coup d'etat, planned to be implemented in August 1919. The coup was designed to seem to be an initiative by local Lithuanians aiming to free their government of German influence. The PMO hoped to rely on the assistance of sympathetic Lithuanian activists. They were thwarted by the lack of cooperation and the unwillingness of sufficient number of Lithuanians to support the Polish cause.
After the Sejny Uprising, a Polish revolt against the Lithuanian authorities in one of the disputed border regions, Lithuanian intelligence intensified its investigation of the Polish minority and sympathizers in Lithuania, and uncovered the planned coup. The Lithuanians, not knowing the membership of the PMO, arrested numerous Polish activists and destabilized the PMO network enough to prevent the coup attempt. Later the full membership list was obtained and the PMO in Lithuania was dissolved. The coup further strained Polish–Lithuanian relations. Read more...
LiAngelo Robert Ball (born November 24, 1998) is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Ballers of the Junior Basketball Association (JBA). Ball has previously played for BC Prienai of the Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL). A 6-foot-5, 215-pound shooting guard, he had originally signed to play with the UCLA Bruins as a three-star recruit but withdrew from the university after he was suspended for a shoplifting arrest in China in November 2017. Ball competed for Chino Hills High School in Chino Hills, California for four years, gaining national exposure in 2015–16 while playing with his brothers: current Los Angeles Lakers point guard Lonzo and former UCLA commit LaMelo Ball. His father LaVar grew into a media personality starting in 2016 with Lonzo's success at UCLA.
At Chino Hills, Ball led his team in scoring for multiple seasons and averaged a state-high 33.8 points per game as a senior. When he was a junior, he helped his team, which starred both of his brothers, complete an undefeated season and win the state championship. In his final season, he drew attention for high scoring outputs, including a 72-point game vs. Rancho Christian School in November 2016 and several efforts of 50 or more points. Through his years with Chino Hills, Ball earned All-Area and All-State honors on multiple occasions. He finished his high school career among the top scorers in CIF Southern Section history. Read more...- The Suwałki Agreement, Treaty of Suvalkai, or Suwalki Treaty (Polish: Umowa suwalska, Lithuanian: Suvalkų sutartis) was an agreement signed in the town of Suwałki between Poland and Lithuania on October 7, 1920. It was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on January 19, 1922. Both countries had re-established their independence in the aftermath of World War I and did not have well-defined borders. They waged the Polish–Lithuanian War over territorial disputes in the Suwałki and Vilnius Regions. At the end of September 1920, Polish forces defeated the Soviets at the Battle of the Niemen River, thus militarily securing the Suwałki Region and opening the possibility of an assault on the city of Vilnius (Wilno). Polish Chief of State, Józef Piłsudski, had planned to take over the city since mid-September in a false flag operation known as Żeligowski's Mutiny.
Under pressure from the League of Nations, Poland agreed to negotiate, hoping to buy time and divert attention from the upcoming Żeligowski's Mutiny. The Lithuanians sought to achieve as much protection for Vilnius as possible. The agreement resulted in a ceasefire and established a demarcation line running through the disputed Suwałki Region up to the Bastuny railway station. The line was incomplete and did not provide adequate protection to Vilnius. Neither Vilnius or the surrounding region was explicitly addressed in the agreement.
Shortly after the agreement was signed, the clauses calling for territorial negotiation and an end to military actions were unilaterally broken by Poland. Polish general Lucjan Żeligowski, acting under secret orders from Piłsudski, pretended to disobey stand-down orders from the Polish military command and marched on Vilnius. The city was occupied on October 9. The Suwałki Agreement was to take effect at noon on October 10. Żeligowski established the Republic of Central Lithuania which, despite intense protests by Lithuania, was incorporated into the Second Polish Republic in 1923. The Vilnius Region remained under Polish administration until 1939. Read more...
The Dano-Swedish War of 1658–60 (Danish: Anden Karl Gustav-krig, Swedish: Karl X Gustavs andra danska krig, Dutch: Zweeds-Nederlandse Oorlog) was a war between Denmark–Norway and Sweden. It was a continuation of an earlier conflict between the two belligerents which had ended just months earlier, after Sweden and Denmark brokered a peace agreement in Roskilde in 1658. In the aftermath of that conflict, the Swedish king Charles X Gustav desired to add the province of Royal Prussia in Poland to the Swedish realm, but his position in the region was not strong enough with the opposition of Brandenburg and Austria. However, the Danes stalled and prolonged the fulfillment of some provisions of the earlier peace; the Swedish king decided to use this as a pretext to attack with an ambitious goal: to vanquish Denmark as a sovereign state and raze the capital of Copenhagen. A quick and decisive defeat of Denmark was however only seen as a means to a greater end. The long-term goal was to wage war in Europe without fearing Danish interference.
The Swedish army surrounded Copenhagen, hoping to starve it into submission. This failed when the Dutch Republic joined the conflict on the Danish side and a reinforcing fleet managed to smash its way through the Swedish naval forces in Øresund. Charles then tried a decisive assault on the city, hoping to conquer it and win the war; this plan likewise failed. Brandenburg, Poland and Austria then also joined the war against the Swedes.
Charles X fell ill in early 1660 and died in February of that year. With the death of the Swedish king, one of the major obstacles to peace was gone and the Treaty of Oliva was signed with the Allies (the Poland, Austria and Brandenburg). However, the Danes were not keen on peace after their recent successes and witnessing the weakness of the Swedish efforts. The Dutch retracted their blockade, but were soon convinced by the Danes to support them again. The French and English intervened for the Swedish and the situation was again teetering on the edge of a major conflict. However, the Danish statesman Hannibal Sehested negotiated a peace treaty without any direct involvement by foreign powers and the conflict was resolved with the Treaty of Copenhagen, where Sweden was forced to return Bornholm to Denmark and Trøndelag to Norway. The treaty of 1660 established political borders between Denmark, Sweden and Norway which have lasted to the present day. Read more...
Tautiška giesmė (pronounced [tɐʊˈtʲɪʃkɐ ˈɡʲɪɛsmeː]; literally "The National Hymn") is the national anthem of Lithuania, also known by its opening words "Lietuva, Tėvyne mūsų" (official translation of the lyrics: "Lithuania, Our Homeland", literally: "Lithuania, Our Fatherland") and as "Lietuvos himnas" (Hymn of Lithuania). The music and lyrics were written in 1898 by Vincas Kudirka, when Lithuania was still part of the Russian Empire. The fifty-word poem was a condensation of Kudirka's conceptions of the Lithuanian state, the Lithuanian people, and their past. Shortly before his death in 1899, the anthem was performed for Lithuanians living in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The first public Lithuanian performance of the anthem took place in Vilnius in 1905, and it became the official national anthem in 1919, a year after Lithuania declared its independence.
"Tautiška giesmė" was reinstated in 1989 shortly before the reestablishment of Lithuanian independence and confirmed in the National Anthem Act (21 October 1991). It was automatically included as the national anthem in 1992, when the new Constitution was ratified after independence from the Soviet Union was achieved. The status of "Tautiška giesmė" as the National Anthem of Lithuania was further confirmed in 1999 with the passage of a national law stating that. Read more...
The Palanga Amber Museum (Lithuanian: Palangos gintaro muziejus), near the Baltic Sea in Palanga, Lithuania, is a branch of the Lithuanian Art Museum. It is housed in the restored 19th-century Tiškevičiai Palace and is surrounded by the Palanga Botanical Garden. The museum's collection of amber comprises about 28,000 pieces, of which about 15,000 contain inclusions of insects, spiders, or plants. About 4,500 pieces of amber are exhibited; many of these are items of artwork and jewelry. Read more...
The First Partition of Poland took place in 1772 as the first of three partitions that ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. Growth in the Russian Empire's power, threatening the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy, was the primary motive behind this first partition. Frederick the Great engineered the partition to prevent Austria, jealous of Russian successes against the Ottoman Empire, from going to war. The weakened Commonwealth's land, including what was already controlled by Russia, was apportioned among its more powerful neighbors—Austria, Russia and Prussia—so as to restore the regional balance of power in Central Europe among those three countries. With Poland unable to effectively defend itself, and with foreign troops already inside the country, the Polish parliament (Sejm) ratified the partition in 1773 during the Partition Sejm convened by the three powers. Read more...
Alexander Berkman (November 21, 1870 – June 28, 1936) was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his writing.
Berkman was born in Vilna in the Russian Empire (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania) and immigrated to the United States in 1888. He lived in New York City, where he became involved in the anarchist movement. He was the one-time lover and lifelong friend of anarchist Emma Goldman. In 1892, undertaking an act of propaganda of the deed, Berkman made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate businessman Henry Clay Frick, for which he served 14 years in prison. His experience in prison was the basis for his first book, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.
After his release from prison, Berkman served as editor of Goldman's anarchist journal, Mother Earth, and later established his own journal, The Blast. In 1917, Berkman and Goldman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiracy against the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Berkman and Goldman soon became disillusioned, voicing their opposition to the Soviet's use of terror after seizing power and their repression of fellow revolutionaries. In 1925, he published a book about his experiences, The Bolshevik Myth.
While living in France, Berkman continued his work in support of the anarchist movement, producing the classic exposition of anarchist principles, Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism. Suffering from ill health, Berkman committed suicide in 1936. Read more...
The Partition Sejm (Polish: Sejm Rozbiorowy) was a Sejm lasting from 1773 to 1775 in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, convened by its three neighbours (the Russian Empire, Prussia and Austria) in order to legalize their First Partition of Poland. During its first days in session, that Sejm was the site of Tadeusz Rejtan's famous gesture of protest against Partition. The Sejm also passed other legislation, notably establishing the Permanent Council and the Commission of National Education. Cardinal Laws were confirmed.
The new legislation was guaranteed by the Russian Empire, giving it another excuse to interfere in the Commonwealth politics if the legislation it favored was changed. Russia was the party most determined to form the Permanent Council, which it saw as further means to control the Commonwealth.
The creation of the Commission of National Education, the Commonwealth's and Europe's first ministry of education, is seen as the proudest and most constructive achievement of the otherwise often-deplored Partition Sejm. Read more...
Žirmūnai (pronounced [ʑɪrˈmuːnɐi] (
listen) is the most populous administrative division (elderate) in Vilnius. It is also a neighbourhood in the Lithuanian capital city Vilnius, encompassing the city district of the same name, built in the 1960s.
Žirmūnai's history has been traced to the late 14th century, when a Lithuanian fishing village was founded across the River Neris from Vilnius' Old Town. Several historic sites in Žirmūnai are internationally significant; it is the home of Lithuania's largest Jewish cemetery, as well as the location of mass graves of soldiers belonging to Napoleon's Grande Armée and victims of the NKGB's and MGB's executions after World War II. Tuskulėnai Manor, built in 1825, and the surrounding Peace Park are important historical and cultural attractions in Vilnius.
The area was given the name Žirmūnai during the early 1960s, when it became the site of an award-winning residential construction project; it was the first city district in the Lithuanian SSR to be constructed applying urban planning concepts established in the USSR at the time. The massive Palace of Concerts and Sports and Žalgiris Stadium are other relics of Žirmūnai's Soviet history. Žirmūnai was important to the industrial sector in the USSR; since that time, this function has been replaced or supplanted by newer businesses, including some of Lithuania's leading companies.
Žirmūnai has undergone major renovation and development in the 21st century. Šiaurės miestelis ("North Town") is an area of Žirmūnai that has rapidly evolved into one of the key business and residential districts of the city. This quarter was used by a number of regimes as a military garrison, and internationally significant historical findings have been made in the area. Read more...
The Livonian War (1558–1583) was fought for control of Old Livonia (in the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia), when the Tsardom of Russia faced a varying coalition of Denmark–Norway, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Union (later Commonwealth) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland.
During the period 1558–1578, Russia dominated the region with early military successes at Dorpat (Tartu) and Narva. Russian dissolution of the Livonian Confederation brought Poland–Lithuania into the conflict, while Sweden and Denmark both intervened between 1559 and 1561. Swedish Estonia was established despite constant invasion from Russia, and Frederick II of Denmark bought the old Bishopric of Ösel–Wiek, which he placed under the control of his brother Magnus of Holstein. Magnus attempted to expand his Livonian holdings to establish the Russian vassal state Kingdom of Livonia, which nominally existed until his defection in 1576.
In 1576, Stefan Batory became King of Poland as well as Grand Duke of Lithuania and turned the tide of the war with his successes between 1578 and 1581, including the joint Swedish–Polish–Lithuanian offensive at the Battle of Wenden. This was followed by an extended campaign through Russia culminating in the long and difficult siege of Pskov. Under the 1582 Truce of Jam Zapolski, which ended the war between Russia and Poland–Lithuania, Russia lost all its former holdings in Livonia and Polotsk to Poland–Lithuania. The following year, Sweden and Russia signed the Truce of Plussa with Sweden gaining most of Ingria and northern Livonia while retaining the Duchy of Estonia. Read more...- Smolensk Voivodeship, showing in red the disputed territory.
The Smolensk War (1632–1634) was a conflict fought between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia.
Hostilities began in October 1632 when Russian forces tried to capture the city of Smolensk. Small military engagements produced mixed results for both sides, but the surrender of the main Russian force in February 1634 led to the Treaty of Polyanovka. Russia accepted Polish–Lithuanian control over the Smolensk region, which lasted for another 20 years. Read more...
The Holocaust in German occupied Lithuania resulted in the near total destruction of Lithuanian (Litvaks) and Polish Jews,[a] living in Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland within the Nazi-controlled Lithuanian SSR. Out of approximately 208,000-210,000 Jews, an estimated 190,000–195,000 were murdered before the end of World War II (wider estimates are sometimes published), most between June and December 1941. More than 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was massacred over the three-year German occupation — a more complete destruction than befell any other country affected by the Holocaust. Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the non-Jewish local paramilitaries, though the reasons for this collaboration are still debated. The Holocaust resulted in the largest-ever loss of life in so short a period of time in the history of Lithuania.
The events that took place in the western regions of the USSR occupied by Nazi Germany in the first weeks after the German invasion, including Lithuania, marked the sharp intensification of the Holocaust.[b]
An important component to the Holocaust in Lithuania was that the occupying Nazi German administration fanned antisemitism by blaming the Soviet regime's recent annexation of Lithuania, a year earlier, on the Jewish community. Another significant factor was the large extent to which the Nazis' design drew upon the physical organization, preparation and execution of their orders by local Lithuanian auxiliaries of the Nazi occupation regime. Read more...
The Prussian uprisings were two major and three smaller uprisings by the Prussians, one of the Baltic tribes, against the Teutonic Knights that took place in the 13th century during the Prussian Crusade. The crusading military order, supported by the Popes and Christian Europe, sought to conquer and convert the pagan Prussians. In the first ten years of the crusade five of the seven major Prussian clans fell under the control of the less numerous Teutonic Knights. However, the Prussians rose against their conquerors on five occasions.
The first uprising was supported by Duke Swietopelk II, Duke of Pomerania. The Prussians were successful at first, reducing the Knights to only five of their strongest castles. Conversely, the duke suffered a series of military defeats and was eventually forced to make peace with the Teutonic Knights. With Duke Swietopelk's support for the Prussians broken, a prelate of Pope Innocent IV then negotiated a peace treaty between the Prussians and the Knights. However, this treaty was never honored or enforced, especially after the Battle of Krücken at the end of 1249.
The second uprising, known in historiography as "The Great Prussian Uprising", was prompted by the 1260 Battle of Durbe, the largest defeat suffered by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century. This uprising was the longest, largest, and most threatening to the Teutonic Order, who again were reduced to five of their strongest castles. Reinforcements for the Knights were slow to arrive, despite repeated encouragements from Pope Urban IV, and the position of the Order looked set to worsen. Luckily for the Order, the Prussians lacked unity and a common strategy and reinforcements finally reached Prussia in around 1265. One by one, Prussian clans surrendered and the uprising was ended in 1274.
The later three lesser uprisings depended on foreign help and were suppressed within one or two years. The last uprising in 1295 effectively ended the Prussian Crusade and Prussia became a Christian German-speaking territory, which assimilated native Prussians and a number of settlers from different German states. Read more...- The rule of the Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland between 1386 and 1572 spans the late Middle Ages and early Modern Era in European history. The dynasty was founded by the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila (Władysław II Jagiełło), whose marriage to Queen Jadwiga of Poland formed a Polish–Lithuanian union. The partnership brought vast territories controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into Poland's sphere of influence and proved beneficial for both the Polish and Lithuanian people, who coexisted and cooperated in one of the largest political entities in Europe for the next four centuries.
In the Baltic Sea region, Poland maintained an ongoing conflict with the Teutonic Knights. The struggles led to a major battle, the Battle of Grunwald of 1410, but there was also the milestone Peace of Thorn of 1466 under King Casimir IV Jagiellon; the treaty created the future Duchy of Prussia. In the south, Poland confronted the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Tatars, and in the east helped Lithuania fight the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Poland's and Lithuania's territorial expansion included the far north region of Livonia.
In the Jagiellonian period, Poland developed as a feudal state with a predominantly agricultural economy and an increasingly dominant landed nobility. The Nihil novi act adopted by the Polish Sejm in 1505 transferred most of the legislative power in the state from the monarch to the Sejm. This event marked the beginning of the period known as "Golden Liberty", when the state was ruled by the "free and equal" members of the Polish nobility.
Protestant Reformation movements made deep inroads into Polish Christianity, which resulted in unique policies of religious tolerance in the Europe of that time. The European Renaissance as fostered by the late Jagiellonian Kings Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II Augustus resulted in an immense cultural flowering (see Renaissance in Poland). Read more... - Sejm during the reign of Sigismund III Vasa (1587–1632)
The general sejm (Polish: sejm walny, also translated as the full or ordinary sejm) was the bicameral parliament of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was established by the Union of Lublin in 1569 from the merger of the Sejm of the Kingdom of Poland and the Seimas of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia and Samogitia. It was one of the primary elements of the democratic governance in the Commonwealth (see Golden Liberty). The sejm was a powerful political institution and the king could not pass laws without the approval of that body.
Duration and frequencies of the sejms changed over time, with the six-week sejm session convened every two years being most common. Sejm locations changed throughout history, eventually with the Commonwealth capital of Warsaw emerging as the primary location. The number of sejm deputies and senators grew over time, from about 70 senators and 50 deputies in the 15th century to about 150 senators and 200 deputies in the 18th century. Early sejms have seen mostly majority voting, but beginning in the 17th century, unanimous voting became more common, and 32 sejms were vetoed with the infamous liberum veto, particularly in the first half of the 18th century. This vetoing procedure has been credited with significantly paralyzing the Commonwealth governance.
In addition to the regular sessions of the general sejm, in the era of electable kings, beginning in 1573, three special types of sejms (convocation, election, and coronation sejms) handled the process of the royal election in the interregnum period. In total, 173 sejms met between 1569 and 1793. Read more...
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