History of Lithuania
First mentioned in 1009, Lithuania grew to be a significant nation in the Middle Ages. Lithuania became an independent Grand Duchy that eventually stretched across much of Eastern Europe. In the 16th century, it joined with Poland in a personal union under one monarch as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
This union remained until the partitions of Poland in 1795 when Lithuania was itself annexed by Imperial Russia. Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, a smaller Lithuania established its independence in February 1918 as a part of German planned Mitteleuropa, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and then as a republic in November, after Germany's defeat in World War I.
The republic intended to consolidate territories where Lithuanians lived and turned down the idea to re-establish union with Poland. It subsequently was plagued by territorial disputes with Poland (over Central Lithuania and Suwalki) and Germany (over Klaipeda), and it became a dictatorship in 1926. It was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 during World War II.
Communist rule ended after the advent of glasnost and Lithuania proclaimed its renewed independence on 11 March 1990, the first Soviet republic to do so, though Soviet forces unsuccessfully tried to suppress this until September 1991. Lithuania was admitted into the United Nations in September, 1991. Lithuania has since sought closer ties with the West and so became a member of NATO on 29 March 2004 and of the European Union on 1 May 2004.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
|
|
