Historical Lithuania

Commemorating January 1991 Oslo and Vilnius become twin cities

21 January 1991: Soviet military vehicles dominated the streets of Vilnius. Dag Andersen and I presented a letter from Oslo Municipality, signed by Mayor Michael Tetzschner. Oslo offered Vilnius to become its first friendship city in the West. The letter was enthusiastically received by the Vilnius Mayor Arunas Grumadas and Deputy Mayor
Regimantas Ciupaila. Photo: Aftenposten, Norway.

Aage Myhre, VilNews Editor-in-Chief
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

We were two Norwegians working very much with Lithuanian affairs during autumn/winter of 1990-91, Dag Andersen and me. During our visit to Vilnius in January 1991, we showed our respect to President Vytautas Landsbergis in his Parliament office and worked with journalists to spread the message about the Soviet assault to the world.

We also brought with us a letter from the City Council Leader of Oslo, Michael Tetzschner inviting the Mayor of Vilnius to sign a sister city agreement. We handed the letter over to Mayor Arunas Grumadas on 21 January while Soviet troops were standing around in the streets and armoured vehicles roared around us. 

The twin city agreement was signed a few months later, and Oslo became thus the first Western city to enter into such an agreement with Vilnius. I saw it as an important symbol of friendship and solidarity at a difficult time for a country under tremendous pressure and terrible abuse from Lithuania’s power loving neighbour to the east. 

During 1991 I came back to Lithuania several times. I saw more, understood more. The country began in earnest to fascinate me. I was also in Vilnius during the failed coup in Moscow in August 1991, again thrilling days. On the morning of 30 August 1991 I was probably the first person in modern times who got a Lithuanian visa that was legally accepted internationally, stamped into my Norwegian passport. Early morning the 30^th of August 1991, the day when the Lithuanian migration authorities finally could do so in accordance with international rules.

The Soviet Union was finally a horror of the past. Also formally, Lithuania was once again a free and independent country.  50 years of abuse and oppression was over!

Vilnius images, winter 1990-91 

Windows all over Vilnius were taped like this those
January days, in order not to break when the heavy
Soviet vehicles passed by.

Delivery of coal to properties in Pilies g. right in the centre of Vilnius, with horses, 22 years ago. 
People picked the coal up in burlap sacks. Other times the horse driver was simply shovelling
the coal out on the sidewalk in front of the buildings on his ordering list.
Photo: Aage Myhre.

One of the few shop windows in Vilnius in 1990-91.
Photo: Aage Myhre.  

We came via Riga

We were a small group of Norwegians who travelled from Oslo to Vilnius a few days after the infamous Soviet attack and its killings on the 13th of January 1991. It was originally planned as a larger delegation, with parliamentarians, but they had to postpone their trip due to the death of our Norwegian King Olav.

We came to Vilnius via Copenhagen and Riga, whereto Scandinavian Airlines as the first western airline had established a route a few months earlier. Travel insurance cover was 400% higher than normal. The Baltic States were now defined as a war zone.

In Riga we first visited the Radio and Television House. The smoke from the many bonfires around the building lay like a blanket over the area, with a penetrating but good smell of firewood. It was an impressive sight to see the thousands of Latvians who camped around the territory in tents and primitive shelters to protect the freedom of peaceful broadcast against the Soviet perpetrators.

Inside Riga's Old Town there were equally many bonfires and barricades, especially around the Latvian parliament building. Our delegation was given entrance passes, and that night we stood inside the building to show our support and talking to MPs and others who stayed there, many of them around the clock.

In the evening we experienced a rather startling example of the Soviet propaganda machinery when there on the TV news from Moscow was informed that Soviet soldiers had just moved in and taken control of the Parliament and Riga city. Not a single soldier was to see, neither inside nor outside the building, but this was a stunning reminder of how disinformation and propaganda are important parts of any war or conflict.

It was dangerous to embark on the road those days, but the Latvian Customs agreed to drive us, in their red jeeps, to the Lithuanian border next morning. On the Lithuanian side of the border, which still was not established with checkpoints, we were picked up by Lithuanian Lada cars, and not long after we were on the way to Vilnius. We passed convoys of Soviet military vehicles, but arrived without being stopped or subjected to interrogation of any kind.

Our main mission of the trip began…

We, our Norwegian team, together with journalists travelled to Latvia and Lithuania as soon as we could after the Soviet attack in January 1991. The Balts refused to accept the Soviet invasion. They did their utmost to protect their governments and media. Here we are with 'activists' in Riga. For several weeks they made bonfires, staying here in tents night after night to demonstrate against the new Soviet assault.
Photo: Aage Myhre, January 1991.

Without the intense media coverage that took place in January 1991, the outcome could well have become different. The Soviet occupiers could have re-taken control of the Baltic States. Here a journalist from Norwegian Aftenposten interviewing the leader of the Latvian border guards. The international press made a huge effort to make the world know about the Soviet atrocities.
Photo: Aage Myhre, January 1991.

Lithuania – Norway, a strong alliance also today!

Visit to the Lithuanian
Parliament (Seimas)
22 years later

Lithuanian Foreign Ministry issued primitive passes for us,
and we managed to get through a long maze of controls,
barbed wire, concrete blocks and barricades that surrounded
the Lithuanian Parliament those January days in 1991. We got
the opportunity to visit this brave Parliament President,
Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, in his office. Here he
lived day and night for weeks while the Soviets
surrounded the building with troops and tanks.

Text and photos: Aage Myhre, Editor-in-Chief
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

This year I marked 13 January in the Lithuanian Parliament Building, 22 years after I in 1991 stood here in this building, along with Professor Landsbergis and looked out the window at the bonfires, barricades and the huge crowd of unarmed people who had gathered to protect their president and the country's future as a free nation.

I came here today with a group of young Lithuanians, most of them so young that they do not have their own memories of what happened here 22 years ago. Yet the memories of the sad events in January 1991 are very much alive and present for them. They want to remember that freedom and independence is not something you can take for granted, and they want to pursue a political career. They are Lithuania's future politicians. They are the future of young, well-educated, smart leaders that this country a few years ago could only dream about.

I walked around with them in the Parliament this 13th January. I saw their interests, and their pride in belonging to a great nation like this.

I also saw large photographs on the walls, with Lithuania's parliamentary history of the interwar time and from the years after the Declaration of Independence 11 March 1990. The sadness I felt when I walked around in these corridors 22 years was gone, now I felt only joy, and optimism regarding the country's future and its political leaders for the years to soon come.

Entrance to the old part of the Parliament.

HISTORY OF TODAY’S PARLIAMENT BUILDING (SEIMAS)

The construction of the new Seimas building began in April 1976, on the site of a former stadium. By then, the Parliament was still directly depended on the Com­mu­nis­t Par­ty. The legal acts passed by the Supreme Council of the USSR was just a “decoration” of the Soviet order. Selected by sex, nationali­ty, education, pro­fe­ssions, membership in Co­mmu­nis­t or Young Communist or­ga­nisa­tions, the local trade union, so-called de­pu­ties used to convene two or three times per year and voted on the draft legal acts already submitted. Undoubtedly, this was an imitation of government, a spectacle. Indeed, the main lobby could remind one of a the­at­re.

Today’s democratic parliamentarian system got its first test on 11 March 1990, when the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet elected Vytautas Landsbergis president and formally declared Lithuania to be an independent nation. The Soviet President M. Gorbachev rejected the action, insisting that a separation had to be negotiated. In April same year he ordered an economic blockade of Lithuania, cutting off all oil supplies and reducing natural gas flow to one-quarter of the normal level. The blockade ended on 30 June after the Lithuanian Parliament voted to freeze the declaration of independence for 100 days in order to permit negotiations between Moscow and Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Then came 13 January 1991. That was the day when Soviet troops cracked down in Vilnius and the resulting bloodshed made headlines around the world. The action was apparently a bid to stop Lithuania’s independence drive in its tracks. But President Landsbergis and other political leaders wanted it all very differently, making the Parliament building a fortress for democracy and freedom those winter days, with thousands and thousands of unarmed Lithuanians surrounding the building and thereby stopping the Soviet troops from attacking. 

ABOVE: The Lithuanian Parliament building as it looks today.
BELOW: Pictures on the Parliament walls, describing Lithuania’s parliamentarian events in 1990-1991.

ABOVE: Seimas, 11 March 1990, the day Lithuania re-claimed its independence.
BELOW: The same Parliament Hall today. 

Today’s top modern Parliament Hall.  

ABOVE: Barricades and bonfires outside the Parliament in January 1991.
BELOW: This is what is left of the barricades today, covered by a modern glass structure.

BELOW: The Parliament’s entrance hall on 13 January 2013, filled with activities in memory of 13 January 1991.

80 year old Liuda Komarovskaja lost her health by defending the Vilnius TV Tower in the 13 January 1991 events.
She was beaten unconscious by the Soviet soldiers and rushed to the Santariškių Hospital in the outskirts of Vilnius. Here in conversation with Parliamentarian Petras Austrevicius in the Parliament last Sunday. 

ABOVE: Antanas Terleckas, founder and leader of the Lithuanian Freedom League, was awarded the 2012 Freedom Prize at a solemn event at the Lithuanian Parliament on Sunday 13 January. Read more at http://www.15min.lt/en/article/culture-society/freedom-prize-awarded-to-lithuanian-freedom-league-leader-antanas-terleckas-528-296400
BELOW:  A special exhibition about Antanas Terleckas’ life was presented in the Parliament during the13 January commemoration days. 

BELOW: Pictures on the Parliament walls, from interwar sessions. 

The bonfires and
barricades that
saved Lithuania

In January 1991, the Lithuanian Parliament was for weeks surrounded by hordes of people, bonfires, concrete blocks and vehicles that the Lithuanian people had brought there to protect their leader and their elected representatives against the Soviet atrocities against innocent people. Today, exactly 22 years later,
the Parliament is surrounded by peaceful, quiet winter streets.
Top photo: Zenono Nekrošiaus

Text and photos: Aage Myhre, Editor-in-Chief
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

It was not bonfires, concrete blocks, steel beams, barbed wire or tractors which in themselves rescued Lithuania in January 1991. But it was these simple remedies, not weapons, that came to represent the peaceful resistance Lithuanians showed towards their powerful opponent from the east.

I'll never forget the sight of the flames and the large crowd that met me the day I was walking down the Gedimino prospekto towards the Parliament an icy winter day in January 1991. I read a combination of hope and despair in the faces, but first of all I saw determination. This time we will not surrender! The Soviet Union shall not again be allowed to trample us down under its iron heel!

The tactics succeeded. The Lithuanian people united as never before, or since, and the assailants had to withdraw in favour of a free and democratic Lithuania. Some of the symbols of this defining moment in our country's history can still be seen outside the Parliament.

In January 1991 I crossed the barricades to visit President Vytautas Landsbergis
in his Lithuanian Parliament office, while the Soviet troops and tanks continued
to surround the building. 14 years later we visited together what was left of the
concrete barricades from that time. These are now protected by a glass structure. 

1991 

2013

1991 

2013 

It was very touching to see how the Balts acted to keep their newfound freedom and protect their home country during the very difficult January days of 1991. Here, at the entrance to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, the young men have put on homemade clothes that are meant to look like uniforms. They carry rifles and other weapons they have found in their homes. Sand bags have an important symbolic effect. Brave guys!
Photo: Aage Myhre, 18 January 1991. 

If there were those in the West who had not heard of Lithuania before, they almost certainly had by the end of the day 13 January 1991

Heavy tanks were used by the Soviet forces when they attacked the Vilnius TV tower and the Parliament building on 13 January 1991. They were met by a wall of unarmed people who refused to allow the intruders to again take control of their homeland.

Text: Aage Myhre, editor-in-chief
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

"Lithuanians, do not resist, your government has betrayed you. Go home to your families and children." 

This was the repeated announcement from the Soviet military vehicles with loudspeakers on the roofs, so-called sound trucks that rolled through the streets of Vilnius in January 1991. But fortunately for Lithuania and the United Europe that we now take more or less for granted, there was a music professor and a complete small nation that wanted it all differently. 

Had it not been for this peaceful struggle of recovered freedom against an invasion and occupation, the people of the Baltic States never wanted or agreed to, the map of Europe would most likely have looked quite different today. 

If there were those in the West who had not heard of Lithuania before, they almost certainly had by the end of the day 13 January 1991. It was the day that Soviet troops struck in Vilnius. The bloodshed that followed made ​​headlines around the world. The attack was apparently an attempt to stop the Lithuanian independence movement in its very beginning. 

When the smoke of the Soviet weapons ceased, more than a dozen people had been killed, hundreds injured. Soviet’s attack, and especially the killings at the TV tower, brought not only fame and sympathy for Lithuania from around  the world, it was also a defining moment for the Lithuanians themselves. 

The bloodshed meant that a point of no return had been crossed. If there was someone who until now had believed that a peaceful settlement with Moscow was possible, it was now clear to everyone that such a thing was unthinkable.

The 1991 January events took place in Lithuania between January 11 and 13, in the aftermath of the Act of the re-establishment of the State of Lithuania. As a result of Soviet military actions, 14 civilians were killed and more than 1000 injured. The events were centered in Vilnius, along with related actions in the cities of Alytus, Šiauliai, Varėna, and Kaunas.

Professor Vytautas Landsbergis was the central actor in the drama that took place . The colourful, sometimes tempered music professor who was elected Lithuania's president (chairman of the parliament) in March 1990, and from then on become the symbol of the Lithuanian liberation movement. Before the attack in January 1991, his constant talks about breaking free from the Soviet Union, and Lithuania's moral right to do just that, alarmed observers in the West almost as much as in the Kremlin. When the rage was taken completely out of hand in January 1991, Gorbachev seemed as if he did not understand what was happening right in front of him. 

Our little Norwegian delegation met with Landsbergis in the parliament on the 19^th of January 1991. He lived there, entrenched, protected by his own people. Tens of thousands were ‘camping’ outside the building, inside homemade barricades of concrete blocks and barbed wire. Trucks and tractors were also part of the barricades. In a circle further out stood the Soviet forces, ready to attack when the command word would be given. Fortunately it didn’t happen. The pressure had become strong from all around the world. 

We got through the barricades. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had provided us with appropriate admission papers. It was a moving encounter with a brave man we experienced inside. The little stroke that fell the huge oak. World history was created there and then. In front of our eyes. We were the eye witnesses.

 
The editor with President Vytautas Landsbergis in the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas), while the
Soviet troops and tanks continued to surround the building in January 1991. 

Bonfires, day and night, outside the Parliament, January 1991. 
Photo: Aage Myhre.

Bonfires outside the Parliament, January 1991.
Photo: Aage Myhre.

A human barricade surrounding the Parliament, January 1991.
Photo: Aage Myhre. 

With Landsbergis inside the Parliament, 19 January 1991, and his handwritten greeting to the editor. 

Homemade barricades of concrete blocks around the Parliament.
Photo: Aage Myhre.

It was very touching to see how the Balts acted to keep their newfound freedom and protect their home country during the very difficult January days of 1991. Here, at the entrance to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, the young men have put on homemade clothes that are meant to look like uniforms. They carry rifles and other weapons they have found in their homes. Sand bags have an important symbolic effect. Brave guys!
Photo: Aage Myhre, 18 January 1991.  

Inside the city armoured vehicles on rubber wheels were used. It was a bizarre, almost surreal experience to always be spotting, hearing the noise, feel the ground tremble when we were in meetings or trying to get a meal in one of the city's few restaurants.  

The longest and bloodiest
partisan war in modern Europe

LITHUANIA, LATVIA & ESTONIA 1944 – 1953

Text: Aage Myhre, VilNews Editor-in-Chief

Lithuanian 'forest brothers' from the so-called "Vytis" military district.

Pictures: Mostly from the KGB Museum in Vilnius

Tell a Lithuanian that his country was liberated and that peace after WWII was restored on the 9th of May 1945, as the Russians claim. Tell him that this May 2011 it is 66 years since the Soviet Union and the Western world defeated Hitler's Nazi regime, and that Lithuania since then has been a free, happy country in line with what other European countries experienced after they were occupied in 1939 – 1940 and liberated in 1945. Do not be surprised if you get an angry and annoyed look back. For while we in the Western world, in Russia and in other parts of the world joyfully could celebrate the liberation and the recovered freedom after the World War, Lithuania, the other two Baltic states, and Ukraine were forced to realize that one war had been replaced by a new, much bloodier and more protracted war, lasting from 1944 to at least 1953. What we in the west celebrated in May 1945 was by Lithuanians and the other occupied countries experienced only in 1990 –1991.

 
The end of World War II saw a Germany dramatically reduced in size. Before long it was also divided into East and West. Germany's defeat meant that Poland and Czechoslovakia returned to the map of Europe after a six-year absence. But not so for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and northern East Prussia (Kaliningrad) that all remained occupied by the USSR. 

Western radio stations told us, who were lucky enough to grow up on the western side of the iron curtain, thoroughly about the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet intervention in 1956, an uprising that resulted in 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet soldiers losing their lives.

Western television stations showed us in detail what happened when Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968 by more than 200,000 troops from the Warsaw Pact countries Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria - with the outcome that 72 Czechs and Slovaks were killed when they tried to resist. 

However, we got almost nothing to know about the many, many times bloodier uprising against the Soviet that was happening right outside our own front door, in the Baltic States, through nine long years from 1944 to 1953. 

It is estimated that approximately 30,000 Balts and 100,000 Soviet soldiers died in this bloody guerrilla war when Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians withdrew into the woods to organize its powerful armed partisan resistance after the Soviet Union at the end of the second World War, in 1944, pushed the German forces out, and Stalin decided to incorporate the Baltic States into his powerful autocracy instead of giving these countries their freedom and independence back. Today we know that this tragic, involuntary occupation and oppression was to last the whole 47 years, from 1944 to 1991. 

Entering a Siberian Gulag (leaf from Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya's notebook). During the period 1940 – 1953 Stalin’s Soviet deported approximately 600,000 individuals from the Baltic States to Siberia. Around 100,000 of them never returned to their homelands.  

In addition to the 30,000 Balts who died in direct combats with the Red Army during this nine-year guerrilla war, comes all those who died in or on their way to Siberia, all because of their resistance to the Soviet raids home in the Baltics. It is considered that Josef Stalin was responsible for the deportation of not less than 600,000 Baltic people to the permafrost concentration camps and the gulag prisons during these years, and that probably as many as 100,000 of them died during the stay or during the three-month journey where they were stuffed into icy cold, miserable cattle wagons with thin straw mats as mattresses, and very limited food rations to survive on during the long way to the cold hell, thousands of kilometres north and east.

We speak, in other words, about an almost unimaginable and too little known purges of totally 130,000 people from the Baltic States during the very first years after the Second World War. But let us not forget that also the approximately 100,000 Soviet soldiers who died were victims of the same madness that almost a quarter million people were exposed to by an inhuman despot, still by many is regarded as a hero in Russia, Georgia and other former Soviet republics. The despot Adolf Hitler almost pales in comparison. 

In comparison, 58,000 Americans died during the Vietnam War in the years 1960-75, and we were all fed with regular updates on how the war evolved, almost minute by minute.

The distance between the free, western country of Sweden and Lithuania is less than 300 kilometres, shorter than the distance between Vilnius and Klaipeda. But despite the short distance, there was remarkable little information that reached the West about the tragic carnage that took place so close to our own front doors after the war.

We probably had enough to lick our wounds after five years of occupation and the World War II. Even today there are very few people who know much about the bloody Baltic guerrilla war. This is, for example all my Norwegian Encyclopaedia gives of information: 

"The armed resistance against the Soviet regime took the form of guerrilla groups in the forests (forest brothers) and had a large scope. Only in 1953 the armed resistance ebbed out. " 

 
Lithuania’s WWII: Torn apart by two super powers.

Many of the partisans were young men returning to Lithuania from the West after WWII to fight for their beloved home country. Here are three of them, with their official and nick names: K. Sirvys - "Sakalas", J. Luksa - "Skirmantas", B. Trumpys - "Rytis". Very few ‘Western partisans’ returned to the West. Almost all of them were killed by the Soviets.

Partisans, or "forest brothers" as they called themselves, were found in all three Baltic countries, but it was in Lithuania that the major groupings were found. It was also here that the really huge death tolls came. It is considered that 22,000 partisans and 70,000 soldiers from the Red Army and NKVD were killed in Lithuania alone, this in addition to the approximately 60,000 Lithuanians who died in Siberia during the early post war years.

The Lithuanian partisans usually appeared in uniforms, with national insignias and identification of rank as like other nations' armies. It is said that the Lithuanian soldiers always saved the last bullet for themselves; they knew all too well that torture, a symbolic trial and execution by hanging, head shot or group execution awaited them if they were captured.

The post war Guerrilla War in Lithuania is normally divided into three different phases:

- The first phase lasted from July 1944 to May 1946, with violent skirmishes and casualties on both sides. More than 10,000 forest brothers lost their lives in battles and skirmishes during these two years. Partisans captured during this period small towns from the Soviet forces, local quisling units were disarmed and the occupants’ offices were destroyed. But the big losses meant that tactics had to be changed.

- The second phase lasted from May 1946 until November 1948. The Lithuanian units were then divided into smaller groups that hid in well-camouflaged bunkers. During this period a joint command was established for all Lithuanian forces fighting against the occupying army. Contacts were also made contacts with the West in this period, but no help arrived.

- The final phase lasted until May 1953. And despite the brutal oppression and forced collectivization, around 2,000 partisans were still active with their armed resistance against the occupation. During this period, they also worked extensively with informing the Lithuanian people by publishing newspapers, books and leaflets. Circulation varied from a few hundred to 5,000. Such publications lasted until 1959.

There were also parallel battles against Soviet forces in Estonia and in Latvia, but in much smaller scale. Only in Western Ukraine, there was fighting in the same scale as in Lithuania. 

The Forest Brothers often used cellars, tunnels or more complex underground bunkers as their hideouts, such as the one depicted here.

The Baltic Partisan War came mostly to an end by May 1953, two months after Joseph Stalin died. But the last active resistance man in Lithuania shot himself, rather than surrender, as late as 1965, and the last partisan did not come out from his hiding place before 1986, 42 years after the guerrilla war in the Baltics started.

In 1955, the Soviet-controlled 'Radio Vilnius’ offered amnesty to all the partisans who were still hiding in Lithuania's deep forests, and in 1956 the KGB repeated a similar provision. Such amnesty-deals were of course meant only to lure the last forest brothers, so when the famous partisan leader 'Hawk' was taken that the same year, he was immediately given a symbolic trial and executed. Hawk was an American-born Lithuanian who had returned to his home country to fight the Soviet occupation.

Instead of giving themselves over to the Soviet occupiers, many chose to commit suicide, often by exploding a grenade right in their own faces in order to destroy them so much that they would not be identifiable and thereby create a risk to their relatives' lives. Such suicides occurred until around 1960. Many also managed to obtain false identity and get back into society without being detected.

Many of the Soviet Union's atrocities against the Baltic States have only come to light in earnest after 1991 when these countries regained their freedom and independence. A large part of the archives that mentioned the said matters were, however, brought to Moscow to prevent the World from having access to these highly revealing documents.

But, strangely, in 1994 a former KGB officer decided to go to the Lithuanian authorities with detailed information about how torture and executions had taken place at the KGB headquarters in the Vilnius city centre. He told that there had been secret burials for the victims, just on the outskirts of Vilnius. When the huge mass grave he had told about was found and opened, several hundred corpses of partisans were discovered, all in Lithuanian uniforms, and all obviously tortured to death.

One can ask whether it was a fatal mistake for a small country like Lithuania to so aggressively a predominance they had to understand they would not be able to defeat. Admittedly, there is a general perception that Lithuania thereby was avoiding most of the ‘russification’ that Stalin and later leaders implemented in all other Soviet republics. The Russians were simply too afraid of the Lithuanians as a result of the strong opposition during the post-war years, hence the proportion of Russians in Lithuania today represents only 6% of the population, compared to more than 30% in Latvia and around 25% in Estonia.

But the bloodshed in the Baltics, and the incredibly extensive deportations to Siberia, as a result of the partisan opposition, made that these three countries lost too many of their best men and women. The hero status they may have achieved around the world never became significantly large. We in the West did not know what really happened, and when we finally learned, far too many decades have passed to achieve a proper attention for the heroes, the very guerrilla war, the deportations and the unbelievable sufferings the Baltic people underwent on the Siberian permafrost during the 1940s and 1950s.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have paid an extremely high price for their rebellion behaviours, and are unlikely ever to receive the honour and the redress they deserve for their courage to fight the injustice they were subjected to during the ruthless Soviet period.

When World War II ended, the West chose to forget Lithuania

  
The historic meeting near the end of World War II, the Yalta Conference, became fatal for Lithuania. It involved three key allied leaders. Left to right: Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States; and Joseph Stalin, Premier of the Soviet Union. 

For several years after World War the Balts believed that the U.S. and other Allied powers would come to their rescue and help to free them from the Soviet occupation. This was fatal.

The partisan leaders were familiar with the Atlantic Charter, which was signed by Churchill and Roosevelt 12 August 1941 aboard the U.S. cruiser Augusta in Newfoundland, a charter later acceded to on 1 January 1942 by all countries involved in the war against Germany and Japan - including the Soviet Union. This declaration stated that all territorial changes resulting from the war would only take place after the population's own desires, and that any people should have the right freely to choose their form of government.

What the Baltic people did not know, was that their case head was not at all discussed when the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Soviet leader Josef Stalin in February 1945 met in the city of Yalta on the Black Sea to lay the conditions for peace and the post-war period. The Baltic States were totally forgotten; but they did not know about it, and therefore continued the impossible fight against the evil superior force until 1953.

It has been speculated that Roosevelt's failing health may have been the reason why Stalin so easily got the upper hand at the Yalta Conference. The outcome was, in any case, very tragic for the Baltic States, and only in 2005 the American president, George W. Bush came here to apologise on behalf of the United States. Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, was also asked to apologise for the atrocities against the Baltic States in the years after Yalta. But Russia still considers that they 'liberated' the Baltics and sees no reason to excuse themselves. It went even so far that Putin declared Lithuania's President Valdas Adamkus 'persona non grata' after the latter refused to come to Moscow to participate in Russia’s anniversary celebration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany on 9 May 2005.

In the years after WWII a number of Lithuanian agents were amazingly capable of getting in and out of the country several times, and in December 1947 a full delegation travelled to Western Europe to present their case to the Pope and to Western governments. But no countries or leaders dared go into conflict with Stalin's Soviet Union, and Lithuanians call for help was largely met with deaf ears.

Though not quite. Both U.S. and UK intelligence agencies gave their orders to see what might be done to create secret anti-communist organizations and operations behind the Iron Curtain. They also helped to organise the radio stations 'Radio Liberty' and 'Radio Free Europe', which for many years thereafter conveyed useful information to the Baltics. In 1951 came the 'Voice of America' on air, and thus gave hundreds of thousands of Baltic war refugees in the United States a voice back to their home countries at the Baltic Sea.

Unfortunately, the success of the Western intelligence services and their 'relief efforts' very much failed, which in retrospect largely is attributed to the British intelligence officer Kim Philby, the man who in reality was a Soviet spy who unfortunately contributed so actively to the killing of tens of thousands of Baltic people.

The intelligence organizations' attempts to help the Baltic States irritated Stalin violently, and he therefore imposed increasingly tough measures against the uprisings. His NKVD (later renamed the KGB) had more or less free hands to exercise extensive torture against individuals and groups believed being in league with the partisans.  Vague suspicions were enough to allow use of cruel torture methods. Many were hanged or shot without any real form of litigation. A huge number of relatives and family members of the partisans were sent to slave labour camps in Siberia. All private farms were incorporated into collective farms to prevent them from continuing to provide food to the partisans, and many farmers were deported to Siberia. The West's attempts to help got quite the reverse effect. Tyranny had triumphed, and our close neighbours on the Baltic Sea's south coast were once again suffering in a most cruel way.

 
One of the many killed Lithuanian partisans,
Juozas Luksa – "Skirmantas", "Daumantas",
after his death on the 4^th of September 1951.
Photo: KGB

Few in the West know that Lithuania 500 years ago was considered Europe's largest country, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Few in our today's West know the proud and honourable cultural history of the Baltic countries, or that these countries were economically fully on par with Scandinavia until World War II, and few know about the heroic guerrilla war these three nations fought against the mighty Soviet Union after WWII.

During five world war years, the Baltic area became the incredibly bloody and sad battlefield where Stalin and Hitler pushed each other back and forth, with fatal and almost incomprehensible destruction and murders of hundreds of thousands innocent people as result. It was here that the Holocaust saw its very worst outcome on Earth, when 95% of the large Jewish population of Lithuania was exterminated. It was here that Europe's longest and bloodiest guerrilla war and the ensuing mass deportations to Siberia took place through more than a decade during and after WWII. 

Hundreds of thousands of our closest neighbours died just outside our own front door (or were deported to the gulag camps in the permafrost of Siberia). These terrible things happened only 300 kilometres away from Lithuania’s closest Western coast, at the same time as we westerners celebrated our new freedom and the beginning of the new era we today know as the proud, free Western World.

Didn’t we in the West know, or did we prefer not to know?

  INTRODUCTION

This article is born of a frustrated and infuriated Lithuanian American who has watched and listened to the trampling of Lithuania’s history by its neighbors, and even by some of Lithuania’s own historians, for decades. By writing this article, I hope to encourage and inspire Lithuanians worldwide to discard old notions of the Grand Duchy and its Grand Dukes that have been filtered into our conscience by Lithuania’s former oppressors, and other foreigners.

I would like to thank Richard Vitkauskas, Boris Bakunas, and Angele Juraviciene, for providing some of the information contained in this article. 

The trampling of

Lithuania’s history

Many Lithuanian historians continually choose not to understand,
appreciate, and respect the impact and grandeur of Lithuanian history 

Žalgirio Mūšis (Battle of Tannenberg or Grunwald), fought on 15 July 1410, during the Polish–Lithuanian–
Teutonic War, was the most significant, largest, and fiercest battle in medieval European history.
It was Lithuania’s Vytautas the Great, the ultimate warrior king, whose strategic and
tactical genius ensured victory for Lithuania and its allies.
Detail from a painting by Jan Matejko (1878).

By: Jon Platakis

Over 200 years of foreign occupations left our history suppressed, maligned, and if not stolen outright, then at least borrowed by our neighbors. One browses the internet, or leafs through history books and journals about Lithuania, and immediately notices our great Lithuanian names russianized or polonized; Lithuanian historical events are distorted in many versions, such as, Žalgirio Mūšis (Battle of Tannenberg or Grunwald) where descriptions of Vytautas’ participation is minimized or almost non-existent.  It was mostly Lithuanian blood that was shed in this most significant, largest, and fiercest battle in medieval European history. It was Vytautas, the ultimate warrior king, whose strategic and tactical genius ensured victory for Lithuania and its allies (Sven Ekdahl, “The Turning Point in the Battle of Tannenberg-Grunwald/Žalgirio-1410.“  Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, Volume 56, No.2-Summer 2010). This list can go on and on.

Other ethnic groups, Italians, Greeks, etc., have had hundreds of years to rejoice in their history. We Lithuanians are only now beginning to exit our cocoons and to present ourselves to the world. Even though individual Lithuanians, like actress Ruta Lee, or Dr. Birute Mary Galdikas, one the world’s foremost primatologists, have reached the pinnacle of their careers and have garnered fame and fortune, as a group, we live in relative obscurity. The typical man-on-the-street has little or no familiarity of who or what is a Lithuanian.

So, how do we present our nation and its people to the world? Do we continue to allow foreigners to define Lithuanian history, as has been done for over 200 years? Do we persist in calling the largest and mightiest nation in Europe during the medieval period a Grand Duchy? Should we not demolish the myth that Lithuania only had one king?  These are just a few of the questions we must address in order that Lithuania regain its rightful place in world history.

Unfortunately, many of our own Lithuanian historians choose to present our history in a diminished light. In many of our history books Lithuania is referred to as “The Grand Duchy of Lithuania.”  One has to ask why. Rome conquered nations, and was called an empire, Persia conquered nations, and was called an empire. Lithuania conquered nations, was the largest and most powerful in all of Europe (a superpower longer in existence than the United States), stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and was called…a Grand Duchy.  Primary source documents (Livonian Chronicles, 1372; Petras Dunsburgietis, Prussian Chronicles, and many more) emphatically cite Lithuania as, if not an empire, then at least, a kingdom.

It is incomprehensible why many Lithuanian historians continually choose not to understand, appreciate, and respect the impact and grandeur of Lithuanian history. That appreciation and respect of Lithuanian history appears to reside in historians of other nations, as for example, English historian S.C. Rowell, the author of “Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345, who unequivocally  identifies Lithuania as an empire with Gediminas as its ruler.

Lithuania State Day is a national holiday observed on July 6. On this day, Lithuanians honor the coronation of Mindaugas (above), who became the first king of a unified Lithuania in 1253, bringing the Baltic people together under his leadership. Lithuanians should demolish the myth that Mindaugas was our only king.
Paining by Adomas Varnas, 1952.

Likewise, Lithuanians should demolish the myth that Mindaugas was our only king. Nowhere, will one find a state, with the vastness of Lithuania ruled by no other except a king or emperor. Despite voluminous  documentation, i.e., Livonian Chronicles, Prussian Chronicles, correspondence from Popes and Holy Roman Emperors, and even Lithuania‘s mortal enemy, the Teutonic Knights, that recognized Lithuanian kings, many of our own historians do not. Neither kings and queens of England, nor the pagan kings of Norway and Denmark seek, or need the approval of any outside authority to validate their royalty. Emperor Napolean did not require permission to crown himself emperor. Gediminas, for example, carried the official Latin title of, “Gedeminne Dei gratia Letwinorum et multorum Ruthenorum rex.“  “ ...In contemporary Low German, he is styled simply Koningh van Lettowen, mirroring the Latin Rex Lethowye (both “King of Lithuania“) ( Citing British historian S.C. Rowell, 1994).

For those who insist that some foreign authority give its imprimatur to a title of king, consider Vytautas as an example. In January, 1429, Vytautas had already received the title of King of Lithuania, with the backing of the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund. Are we to deny Vytautas’ title as King, simply because he did not undergo a symbolic “crowning” ceremony? Why then, when historical facts and surrounding nations, recognized Lithuanian Kings, many of our own Lithuanian historians do not.

These are but a few examples how we Lithuanians must change our perspective and the outlook others have of our history. After all, what is history but an interpretation of past events. Whichever interpretation garners the most attention and support…voila! It becomes history. We should all keep in mind that history is not static, but constantly evolving as perspectives and interpretations of past events change. Now, this is our time, our chance to present our history in all its epic might, and prevent it from being flung to a dark, dusty corner.

Recently, I have learned of a few Lithuanian historians who appear to dread presenting our history in this positive light, because it might offend some of Lithuania’s neighbors. To them I say, “Historians must interpret and present history based on fact, and not timidity. If one cannot do this, then one is not a historian.”

Lithuania, its history, its culture, and its people, have withstood tyrants and oppressors throughout its history. In recorded annals, Lithuanian history stands second to none.  It is now time for us to rejoice and be proud of it, as we present it to the world with renewed vigor. 

Comments (10)

Sort by: Date Rating Last Activity

+3

Bernard Terway· 3 days ago

Very good article. I am born of Lithuanian parents and proud to show my Lithuanicity (if there is such a word). I am also a retired teacher. It was always interesting to bring up the subject of Lithuania in my classes. Interesting because a huge percentage of the students, probably 99%, never even heard of Lithuania, unless they were avid basketball fans and knew of the basketball team. I put as much about Lithuania as I could in my classes, so at least the students were made aware of the fact that there actually was a country called Lithuania, there is a distinct Lithuanian language and culture. Living in Texas doesn't make it easy to push the Lithuaian identity - people here don't believe there is anyone or anything other than Texas in the world! 
Thank you Jon for this reminder. To this day, I wear my Lithuanian colors, either on a lapel flag pin, a belt buckle with the Lithuanian flag, a t-shirt with Lithuania on it, or maybe even a coffee mug that says "proud to be Lithuanian". EVERYONE in the neighborhood, and everyone I meet knows I am Lithuanian before I leave them.

Reply

0

Rimgaudas Vidziunas· 3 days ago

Exceptionally well written! Think we should nominate Jon Platakis, and vote him into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame

Reply

0

Violeta Rutkauskiene· 3 days ago

Super! Congratulations and Thank You John.

Reply

0

Dr. E. Reilly· 2 days ago

An interesting polemical article. What is needed is a text by an author as authoritative & respected as say, Norman Davies or Robert Conquest, to write a definitive (well researched & documented) text: "The History of the Baltic Nations". 
A title such as this would include the histories of the Old Prussians and other pre-state groups, Lithuanians & Žemaičiai, Latgalians & Latvians (I do make a distinction), Livonians & Estonian groups, as well as the lost peoples: but then, one could not exclude immigrants such as the Scots & Irish (weavers), Germans, Swedes, Old Believers & post-WW2 influx. 
And then there are the various periods of imperialist aggression from Moskova, Berlin, Karków & even Stockholm to be accounted for. 
The region's complexity defies simple narratives and assertions.

Reply

1 reply · active 3 hours ago

0

Jon Platakis· 3 hours ago

English historian, S.C. Rowell has written extensively about Lithuania and the Baltic states during the medieval period, and it would appear that he far exceeds the respect and authoritativeness in this regard of Norman Davies or Robert Conquest.. Rowell's book, "Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe" provided some of the impetus for writing this article.

Reply

+1

B. Kolubinski· 2 days ago

I’m Polish. I have a great respect for the Lithuanian people and Lithuanian history. That’s why, I is not easy to read, that you may treat the 400 years our common history as your occupation. It was the most successful period in the history of our two nations (as always, there were also some difficult issues). Please, visit Krakow. Lithuanian-origin kings were living there and created one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. It is mainly, you Lithuanians, who did it. Please, compare amazing Vilnius to Ryga or Thalin, or to the other cities created by Russians, Germans or Scandinavians for whom the Baltic States were only another territories. You should be proud of your history, our common history. Do Vytautas the Great, pictured in the center of the masterpiece of the Polish painter – Jan Matejko - looks as the Grand Duchy (or King, in a fact) of the occupied nation? No, he looks as a real proud hero, hero of Lithuania and hero of Poland.

Reply

0

Vytautas Sliupas· 1 day ago

To Mr. B. Kolubinski 
I do thank you for your expressed welcome and friendly attitude toward Lithuanians, which is so lacking among my Polish acquaintances. On the question of "occupation" I wish to refer you to two books: First one, the 1911 Polish language "Lenku Apastalai Lietuvoje", by Canon (Kanauninkas) K. Prapuolenis. This issue later in 1913 was translated into Lithuanian and several other languages. The second one, the 2011 entitled "Lenku Skriaudu Lietuviams Istorijos Apzvalga", by Dr. Algimantas Liekis. 
In 1988 my wife and I visited Warsaw and were so impressed by the magnificent painting of Jan Matejko ,"The Battle of Grunwald", that we commissioned an artist to trace it in outline form on a 2.8x1.3 meter cloth. Subsequently my wife and I spent 15 years embroidering a Gobelin which we donated to the Vytautas Museum in Kaunas on the 600 year anniversary of the battle. It was first exhibited in the Parliament building in Vilnius, then it was moved to Kaunas. 
In 1998 we visited Krakow, where at the Jagiellonian University, I researched in the archives for information about my father. Cooperation that I received from the archives' staff was outstanding, for which I am very grateful. The historical City of Krakow, although as you say, city that "was created by Lithuanian-origin kings ... and it is you Lithuanians who did it" unfortunately has very little to show about Lithuanians, except for the King Jogaila (Jagiella). 
Regardless of different opinions held, Lithuania and Poland shared a common history. Current readers should be proud of it, but we still need to retain our individual heritages.

Reply

0

Vytautas Sliupas· 1 day ago

To Dr. E.Reilly 
I agree with your suggestion on the need of inviting authoritative and respected authors to write a well documented text on the "Baltic Nations". Back in 1988-89 I corresponded with Dr. Norman Davies, author of "Poland: God's Playground", and asked to write a similar book about Lithuanians. In his original book a large portion dealt with Lithuanian history. He was agreeable to that task. However, in spite of him having a thorough research already done, he wanted to be hired at an "astronomical" salary, which was beyond our means. 
Later I met with Dr. Robert Conquest at the Stanford University, and inquired about a similar possibility. Unfortunately, at that time, he was working on a book about the Soviet secret police, and could not find time for another task.

Reply

0

Boris Bakunas· 15 hours ago

To Mr. B. Koblunski: 

First, let me acknowledge your appreciation of Lithuanian-Polish cooperation in establishing the one of the most powerful states in Europe during the 16th and early 17th centuries. Currently, Lithuania and Poland are again partners and allies in the European Union and NATO. I hope that this cooperation between two neighboring countries whose histories were intertwined for several centuries continues in an atmosphere of mutual respect and tolerance. 

I do want to point out that nowhere in his article does Mr. Platakis "treat the 400 years of our common history" as a period of Polish occupation. If you read the article again, you will note that Mr. Platakis limits the period of foreign occupation to "200 years," and not 400 as you have written. 

The first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth occurred in 1772. The most recent occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union began in 1940 and ended in July of 1991. During the inter-war period, the Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and its surrounding region was occupied by Poland. Taken together, these occupations add up to just over 200 years of foreign occupation. Today the government of Poland recognizes Vilnius as the capital of Lithuania, so there really is no reason for further territorial conflict between our two neighboring countries. 

However, as Vytautas Sliupas points out, the attitudes of Individual Poles differ in regards to Lithuania. Several of my Polish friends and acquaintances, on learning that I am Lithuanian, immediately remarked that Vilnius was a Polish city. One who grew up and was educated in Poland even said that in the Polish schools he attended during the Soviet occupation of Poland, he was taught that the signers of the Lithuanian Declaration of Independence in 1918 couldn't even speak Lithuanian. 

Comments like these, as well as expressions of anti-Polish sentiment by Lithuanians, do neither of our countries any good. So I ask you to carefully read Mr. Platakis' article again in a detached way, and you may see that it is directed an audience of Lithuanians, particularly Lithuanian historians who uncritically accepted distortions of Lithuanian history made by several foreign historians. 

Dr. Boris Vytautas Bakunas, M. A, M. Ed., Ph. D.

Reply

0

Ruta Lee· 6 hours ago

A beautiful soul, mind, heart and eyeful of information......as are the commentaries! 
Many Thanks for opening the subject of LITHUANIA to the world! 
With admiration 
Ruta Lee

Rimgaudas Vidziunas Exceptionally well written! Think we should nominate Jon Platakis, and vote him into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame

Saturday at 1:06am · Like · 1

Jon Platakis Maybe postumously...LOL

Saturday at 2:54am via mobile · Like · 1

Bartłomiej Kolubiński I’m Polish. I have a great respect for the people and Lithuanian history. That’s why, I is not easy to read, that you may treat the 400 years our common history as your occupation. It was the most successful period in the history of our two nations (as always, there were also some difficult issues). Please, visit Krakow. Lithuania-origin kings were living there and created one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. It is mainly, you Lithuanians, who did it. Please, compare amazing Vilnius to Riga or Thallinn, or to the other cities created by Russians, Germans or Scandinavians for whom the Baltic States were only another territories. You should be proud of your history, our common history. Do Vytautas the Great, in enclosed picture of Polish painter – Jan Matejko - looks as the Grand Duchy (or even King, in a fact) of the occupied nation? No, he looks as a real proud hero, hero of Lithuania and hero of Poland.

Sunday at 10:35am · Like · 2

Jon Platakis And I have great respect for the Poles and their history. One must remember, however, that during a half century of Soviet occupation, Poland was given much more freedom than the Baltic states. It is during this period that Poland was able to disseminate their versions of Lithuanian history while Lithuania was wiped off the map. I certainly do not hold the Polish people of today accountable for what happened 5 or 6 hundred years ago, but in some nationalistic Polish circles the subordination of Lithuanian history to Poland exists. Let's just take a couple of examples, of which their are many. Other nations at the time recognized Jogaila as King of Poland, and King of Lithuania (based on stamps from legal documents and correspondence). However, in Poland he was listed as King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Lithuania. The purpose of this was to not give Lithuania an equal standing with Poland as a kingdom. Another example of how pervasive the idea of Lithuania just being a vassal state of Poland is the fact that Vytautas was given title of King by the Pope and Holy Roman emperor. However, his crown had to be transported through Poland, and never reached Lithuanian borders. Let us also look at the Battle of Grunwald (Zalgiris or Tannenberg). Polish historians, Jan Dlugsz and Zbigniew Olesnicki, revered Polish historians of the time, painted the Lithuanians during the battle as cowards. But, in fact, it was Vytautas who placed his troops at risk, as evidenced by the majority of the casualties that were Lithuanian. There was no accounting that Vytautas' strategy and tactics during this epic battle is what led to Lithuania and its allies to victory over the Teutonic Knights. One also reads history books about Poland, and the fact that Poland's "Golden Age" began with the Jagiellonian dynasty However, nowhere do we see that the progenitor of the Jagiellonian dynasty, was Lithuania's Gediminas. It is interesting that Jogaila, the grandson of Gediminas, took over the Polish throne by marrying Jadvyga, heir to the Polish throne, who was not even Polish. During the Lithuanian/Polish Commonwealth years, these two nations were powerful and accomplished much. But one must remember that Lithuania was always an independent nation, never subordinated to Poland.

Sunday at 7:16pm · Like · 3

Bartłomiej Kolubiński Thank you for your detailed answer. You perfectly sum up this topic, writing that “Lithuania was always an independent nation, never subordinated to Poland”. This has been always the obvious historical fact for me and, believe me, also for the vast majority of Poles. That is why it’s hard and quite painful to understand why many Lithuanians call that historical period as “occupation” and compare the role of Poland in the Lithuanian history to the role of Russia or Germany. If you look at the serious historical books published in Poland after 1989 (not in the XV century, as Jan Dlugosz) you won’t find a single point which may reduce the importance of Lithuania during the Commonwealth years. In our schools, the picture of Vytautas is on nearly every page of history textbook when the Battle of Grunwald is described. Yes, we (most probably Polish aristocrats) stole the Vytautas crown. Yes, we probably did several other unfair things to Lithuania during that years. But, now, when Lithuania and Poland has a unique opportunity, after long years of German and Russian occupation, to communicate to each other in our own words; let’s do not create the “new” history of Commonwelth, and do not let nationalists from both countries to do so. The President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite, standing by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski on the fields of Grunwald in 2010 correctly declared: “This victory reminds us, how much we are able to achieve when we are together”, and this is the best description of our Commonwealth years and hopefully the direction for the future.

Sunday at 8:29pm · Like · 1

Jon Platakis Bartolomiej, my only point is that the proud history of Poland is much better known than that of Lithuania's, and I, and I hope many other Lithuanians will start to take pride in a history that stands with the great nations and cultures of the past. I agree with you that it is important to live in harmony and mutual respect with all our neighbors.

Yesterday at 1:38am · Like · 2

Boris Bakunas To Mr. B. Koblunski:

First, let me acknowledge your appreciation of Lithuanian-Polish cooperation in establishing one of the most powerful states in Europe during the 16th and early 17th centuries. Currently, Lithuania and Poland are again partners and allies in the European Union and NATO. I hope that this cooperation between two neighboring countries whose histories were intertwined for several centuries continues in an atmosphere of mutual respect and tolerance.

I do want to point out that nowhere in his article does Mr. Platakis "treat the 400 years of our common history" as a period of Polish occupation. If you read the article again, you will note that Mr. Platakis limits the period of foreign occupation to "200 years," and not 400 as you have written. 

The first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth occurred in 1772. The most recent occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union began in 1940 and ended in July of 1991. During the inter-war period, the Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and its surrounding region was occupied by Poland. Taken together, these occupations add up to just over 200 years of foreign occupation. Today the government of Poland recognizes Vilnius as the capital of Lithuania, so there really is no reason for further territorial conflict between our two neighboring countries. 

However, as Vytautas Sliupas points out, the attitudes of individual Poles differ in regards to Lithuania. Several of my Polish friends and acquaintances, on learning that I am Lithuanian, immediately remarked that Vilnius was a Polish city. One who grew up and was educated in Poland even said that in the Polish schools he attended during the Soviet occupation of Poland, he was taught that the signers of the Lithuanian Declaration of Independence in 1918 couldn't even speak Lithuanian. 

Comments like these, as well as expressions of anti-Polish sentiment by Lithuanians, do neither of our countries any good. So I ask you to carefully read Mr. Platakis' article again in a detached way, and you may see that it is directed an audience of Lithuanians, particularly Lithuanian historians who uncritically accepted distortions of Lithuanian history made by several foreign historians.

Dr. Boris Vytautas Bakunas, M. A, M. Ed., Ph. D.

15 hours ago · Like · 3

Vijole Arbas Thank you -- I would appreciate a campaign to convince the tour guides at Wawel Castle in Krakow to pronounce and expoud -- King of Poland and Lithuania -- they keep on forgetting our Republic of Two Nations

10 hours ago · Like · 1

Bartłomiej Kolubiński To Mr Boris Bakunas
Let me apologize to Mr Platakis. You are right that nowhere in this article, Mr Platakis is referring to the 400 years of occupation. Writing that, I combined the article and one of the comments published underneath (Dr. E. Reilly wrote: “And then there are the various periods of imperialist aggression from Moskova, Berlin, Krakow & even Stockholm to be accounted for.”). I should have been more precise.
Please, treat the opinions of your Polish friends that “Vilnius was the Polish city” in the positive and tolerant way. We sometimes call Vilnius a Polish city, not to offend you and obviously not to start any territorial conflict, but to stress out that this city has a very special place in our Polish inheritance. We cannot just blank it out. That is why, I’m so happy to see today beautiful Vilnius as a capital of Poland’s best and natural ally – Lithuania.

Prieš 5 val. · 1

Bartłomiej Kolubiński To Ms Vijole Arbas
I fully agree, if any guide at Wawel Caste is saying that, he/she should be more educated. I will pay my attention to that when I am next time in Krakow. Nevertheless, it’s a general question how our two nation should preserve our common history. Visiting both Vilnius and Krakow by the every teenager, as a integral part of the history lessons, should be a good starting point, and good investment for the future.

Prieš 4 val. · Edited · 1