Lithuanian Culture & History

The Guides

The Short Version of the History

Lithuania resisted the crusading orders for centuries and converted only in 1387, the last country in Europe to do so. The Grand Duchy ran from the Baltic to the Black Sea before joining Poland in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; from 1795 it was partitioned into the Russian Empire, printing in the Latin alphabet was banned for forty years, and books were smuggled in by knygnešiai, book carriers. Independence came in 1918 and lasted twenty-two years, with Kaunas as provisional capital because Poland held Vilnius — hence Kaunas's interwar modernism, and the window citizenship by descent turns on.

Then Soviet occupation in 1940, Nazi from 1941, Soviet again from 1944. Around 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was murdered, much of it locally and early; tens of thousands were deported to Siberia, and partisans fought in the forests into the 1950s. Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare independence restored, in March 1990, and Soviet forces killed civilians at the Vilnius TV tower in January 1991; EU and NATO membership followed in 2004, the euro in 2015. Two dates carry the weight: 16 February 1918, independence declared, and 11 March 1990, independence restored — both public holidays, and both legal thresholds in the citizenship rules.

To see it rather than read it: the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius's former KGB building, the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, the Hill of Crosses near Šiauliai, and Trakai Castle for the Grand Duchy.