Posted on February 16, 2022
This is an update of my post published on February 16, 2011:
A nation has a lot of choices of when to celebrate its “birthday” or its independence. For example, the United States celebrates its independence on July 4, the date in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. Americans could celebrate on the date that the Congress voted to declare independence (July 2), the date the declaration was signed (probably August 2), the date that, years later, the British army surrendered in Yorktown (October 19), or the date almost a year after that, when the Treaty of Paris formally ended the Revolutionary War (September 3). I'm pretty sure we could invent a rationale to celebrate independence on some other dates as well.
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Lithuania is one of the "Baltic nations" that lie to the east of the Baltic Sea. |
Eventually the nation was called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This government was dissolved when Lithuania became part of a Polish-Lithuanian union, and the Russian Empire annexed Lithuania in 1795. Lithuanians rebelled against Russia in November of 1830 and again in January of 1863, but it wasn't until Russia was weakened by World War I, in the early twentieth century (1900s), that Lithuania was able to successfully pull away and re-establish its independence.
Later in the twentieth century, in 1940, the Soviet Union took over Lithuania, and again Lithuanians had to wait for the power that ruled them to weaken. Lithuania was the first country to break off from the Soviet Union in 1990, formally re-establishing independence on March 11, 1990.
One would think that perhaps this latest independence date, March 11, would be celebrated today, but Lithuanians then and now argue that the February 16, 1918, Act establishing Lithuania as an independent nation never lost its legal status. Both dates are acknowledged with receptions and observances, but it is February 16 that is the official holiday.
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The trees were planted so as to depict the Lithuanian flag! |
I learned a lot about Lithuania from this video. Of course, it's very much a video cheering on only the good stuff—a rah, rah propaganda video—but well done and interesting.
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