When the Soviet Union collapsed, why was Lithuania the first to become independent from the Soviet Union? Lithuania, which has been frequently demonized recently, has historically been an eventful and capricious country!
In recent times, Lithuania, a small country unfamiliar to the Chinese people, has frequently become a demon. So, what kind of country is Lithuania? Here, Lao Huang first tells you a point, you will have a perceptual understanding of Lithuania - when the Soviet Union collapsed, the first republic to stand up for independence from the Soviet Union was Lithuania. It can be seen from this that Lithuania has always been a master of peace.
Lithuania, whose full name is the Republic of Lithuania, is located on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, with its capital in Vilnius. It is bordered by Latvia and Estonia to the north, and is known as the Baltic States, Belarus to the southeast, and Kaliningrad Oblast and Poland to the southwest. The land area is 65,300 square kilometers, and the total population is 2.85 million.
With a land area of 65,300 square kilometers and a population of 2.85 million, modern Lithuania is a veritable small country. However, lithuania in history has also been brilliant, that is, the elders often say that "once was wide". Like many countries with territorial ambitions, the history of the growth of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is a history of continuous territorial expansion.
The territorial expansion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania reached a climax under Gediminas, who built a powerful centralized government and established an empire whose territory stretched from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. In 1320, the Russian principality was either vassal to Lithuania or was directly annexed by Lithuania. In 1321 Gediminas captured Kiev and exiled Stanisław, the last member of the Rurik dynasty who ruled Kiev. Gediminas rebuilt Vilnius, the permanent capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
By the time of Vytautas' rule, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had embarked on its largest territorial expansion. Lithuania was the only force in Eastern Europe at the time that could effectively counter the Golden Horde. In 1333 and 1339 the Lithuanian army defeated the Mongol army attempting to retake Smolensk from the Lithuanian sphere of influence. By about 1355, the Moldavian state was established, and the Golden Horde failed to make it vassal. In 1387, Moldavia became a vassal state of Lithuania. By this time, the territory of the Golden Horde up to the Dnieper had been conquered by Lithuania. From the 14th to the 15th century, much of Western Russia, Ukraine and Belarus was the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
After Vytautas' death, Lithuanian relations with the Kingdom of Poland deteriorated dramatically. In July 1569, Poland and Lithuania re-signed the Treaty of Union in Lublin, stipulating that the two countries had a common parliament, a common monarchy and the implementation of a consistent foreign policy, and that the Ukrainian regions that had originally belonged to Lithuania were directly incorporated into the Polish territory, and that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania retained its political independence and had its own government, laws, army, and treasury, known as the Merger of Lublin. Since then, the two countries have formally merged to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, becoming one of the European powers and once dominating Eastern Europe.
There is an old Chinese saying that "prosperity must decline", and after a series of devastating wars, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was divided up and destroyed in 1795 by the Russian Empire, Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Austria. Lithuania, which had been besieging cities and plundering land everywhere, was thus annexed by the newly rising Russian Empire. During world war I, Lithuania was occupied by Germany again, and once again tasted the taste of national subjugation.
At the end of World War I, Lithuania declared its independence on 16 February 1918 and established a bourgeois republic, and on 4 June 1918, the Kingdom of Lithuania was established. However, only 5 months later, the Lithuanian Parliament overturned its own resolution and Lithuania became a republic. Soviet power was established in most of Lithuania's territory from December 1918 to January 1919. A month later, Lithuania and Belarus united to form the Lithuanian Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and in August of the same year, a bourgeois republic was established and independence was declared. On September 28, 1926, the Soviet Union concluded a non-aggression pact with Lithuania.
The great world economic crisis of 1929 intensified the contradictions between Germany, Italy, and Japan; they launched a series of aggressive wars around the world. After the formation of the cradle of war in Asia and Europe, the German army launched an offensive against Poland on September 1, 1939. Subsequently, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and World War II broke out in full swing. The year after the outbreak of World War II, the Soviets occupied Lithuania, which was once again destroyed.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany tore up the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and launched an attack on the Soviet Union in the form of a blitzkrieg, and the Soviet-German War broke out. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Lithuania was occupied by german troops. Three years later, the Soviets reoccupied Lithuania and established the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Lithuania was reluctant to become a member of the Soviet Union, so it always sought the opportunity for independence. When Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and introduced "democratization reforms", many "independent civil organizations" in Lithuania sprung up. The Baltic "human wall movement" in 1989 greatly shook the world. More than 2 million people in the three Baltic countries held hands for 15 minutes to declare to the world their will to break away from the Soviet Union.
In March 1990, Lithuania was the first to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Estonia and Latvia responded. Then, like dominoes, the 12 member states of the Soviet Union changed their flags. On December 26, 1991, the Supreme Council of Soviet Republics of the USSR held its last meeting and declared the cessation of the existence of the USSR and the formal disintegration of the USSR. The Russian Federation became the sole successor state of the Soviet Union. All the property, deposits, diplomatic institutions, embassies and consulates of the former Soviet Union abroad were received by Russia.
Why did Lithuania become a pioneer in the collapse of the Soviet Union? This is in line with the capricious style of its history. In addition, there is also the drive of interests, because during the Soviet period, the interests of some member states were not guaranteed, and the people's living standards improved slowly, which was also one of the important reasons for the disintegration of the Federation. Especially in Lithuania, where milk is the mother, the Gu family ignores everyone's master, and betrayal is sooner or later.
After independence, Lithuania has joined NATO and the European Union successively, and has moved towards a market economy through enterprise privatization, and the economic situation is basically stable. Today Lithuania is a developed capitalist country. According to the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lithuania's GDP in 2017 was 41.9 billion euros, and the GDP per capita was 14802 euros.
The two neutral countries established diplomatic relations in 1991, and the relations in the early stage were quite normal, with high-level mutual visits and economic and trade cooperation, and the results were remarkable. However, in recent times, the Lithuanian side has frequently made a demon, first withdrawing from the "17 + 1" cooperation mechanism, attacking Chinese cotton with some major powers in the middle, and now taking "one China" as a test, which is not a demon, but a rhythm of death.
(Image from the Internet)