The Three Baltic States refer to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which are located on the Baltic Sea coast. These three countries have a long history, but it seems that we rarely know about the history of these three countries in the course of European history.
Today we talk about how Lithuania came to independence step by step.
Lithuania has been occupied many times by foreign nations in its history, but has a long history of independence and was even one of the great powers for a long time. As a result, Lithuania's nationalist leanings are strong.
At the beginning of the 13th century, the Lithuanian nation was formed and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was established, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was not bad, and began to expand in the surrounding areas, and at its peak the territory was much larger than it is now.
Subsequently, Lithuania and Poland began to approach, mainly the monarch of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania married a Polish princess, and there was this relationship, which made the relationship between the two countries begin to be close. On July 1, 1569, after the union of Lublin, the two countries finally came together to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
However, after decades of unprecedented prosperity, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth gradually began to be overwhelmed in the face of Tsarist Russia. It was not until 1795 that it was divided three times by the increasingly powerful neighbors, the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire, and finally the country was destroyed. Lithuania (except for the Klaipeda Border Region) was incorporated into Russia.
In the 19th century, the Lithuanian revivalist trend began to rise. But in the face of a powerful Tsarist Russia, Lithuania was powerless. However, in the First World War, Lithuania had an opportunity because the territory that originally belonged to Lithuania was occupied by Germany, and Germany knew that Lithuania had long been disobedient to Tsarist rule, so it instigated Lithuanian independence.
After the defeat of Germany, Soviet Russia made a comeback. However, Lithuania, with the help of its old partner of the same independence, forced the Soviet Union to sign the Treaty of Moscow, and Lithuania's independent status was confirmed by the Soviet Union.
But not long after the war, Europe was once again cloudy, and Germany re-emerged and aggressive. And Lithuania has become stormy in the process.
In August 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany signed the infamous Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of Aggression, in which the two sides divided their spheres of influence, and the three Baltic states were all targets of the Soviet Union. So after the war, the Soviet Union just found an excuse to occupy Lithuania.
Although the Soviet Union was driven out by Germany after the Soviet-German War, the Soviet Union soon occupied Lithuania again. This time, unlike world war I, the Soviet Union did not let go and directly turned Lithuania into a union republic.
By the end of the 1980s, however, the Soviet Union was in trouble, and Lithuania was the first to declare independence. The Soviet Union then reacted, sending 500,000 troops to suppress it, but then more and more republics declared independence. The Soviet Union was powerless to return to heaven, and Lithuania eventually became independent.
After independence, Lithuania moved closer to the West, successively joined the European Union and NATO, although the land area is not large, but has long entered the ranks of developed countries.