Outline of Lithuania
During the 14th century, Lithuania was the largest country in Europe, as present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Lublin Union of 1569 Poland and Lithuania formed a new state: the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was finally destroyed by its neighboring countries in 1795. Most of Lithuania's territory was annexed by the Russian Empire, until the Act of Independence was signed on 16 February 1918, which declared re-establishment of a sovereign state. Between 1940 and 1945 Lithuania was occupied by both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany at different times. When World War II was near its end in 1944 and the Nazis retreated, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. On 11 March 1990, Lithuania became the first Baltic republic to declare its restored independence after 50 years of Soviet occupation.
Lithuania became a full member of the Schengen Agreement on 21 December 2007. In 2009, Lithuania celebrated the millennium of its name.Geography of Lithuania
Lithuanian conferences during World War I
In September 1917, Lithuanians organized Vilnius Conference in German-occupied Lithuania and elected the 20-member Council of Lithuania to represent the nation and establish independent Lithuania. The council delegated Konstantinas Olšauskas and Juozas Purickis, who had to travel to Lithuania with fake passports, to the conference in Stockholm in October 1917. The conference was also attended by vice-chairmen of the council Jurgis Šaulys, representatives from Russia (Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, Martynas Yčas, Felicija Bortkevičienė, Stasys Šilingas), United States (Jonas Šliūpas), and Scandinavia (Jonas Aukštuolis, Jurgis Savickis, ). The primary goal was to obtain approval of Lithuanians in Russia and United States for the new Council of Lithuania thus preventing competing claims of representing the nation. While the delegates where skeptical and critical of the council's reliance on Germany, they approved the resolutions adopted by Vilnius Conference and recognized Council of Lithuania as the main representative of the Lithuanian nation.