History of Lithuania
On February 16, 1918, Lithuania was re-established as a democratic state. It remained independent until the outset of World War II, when it was occupied by the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Following a brief occupation by Nazi Germany after the Nazis waged war on the Soviet Union, Lithuania was again absorbed into the Soviet Union for nearly 50 years. In 1990–1991, Lithuania restored its sovereignty with the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. Lithuania joined the NATO alliance in 2004 and the European Union as part of its enlargement in 2004.
Lithuania
After the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), when German diplomats assigned what were seen as Russian spoils of war to Turkey, the relationship between Russia and the German Empire became complicated. The Russian Empire resumed the construction of fortresses at its western borders for defence against a potential invasion from Germany in the West. On 7 July 1879 the Russian Emperor Alexander II approved of a proposal from the Russian military leadership to build the largest "first-class" defensive structure in the entire state – the Kaunas Fortress. Large numbers of Lithuanians went to the United States in 1867–1868 after a famine.Simonas Daukantas promoted a return to Lithuania's pre-Commonwealth traditions, which he depicted as a Golden Age of Lithuania and a renewal of the native culture, based on the Lithuanian language and customs. With those ideas in mind, he wrote already in 1822 a history of Lithuania in Lithuanian – "Darbai senųjų lietuvių ir žemaičių" ("The Deeds of Ancient Lithuanians and Samogitians"), though still not yet published at that time. A colleague of S.Daukantas, Teodor Narbutt wrote in Polish a voluminous "Ancient History of the Lithuanian Nation" (1835–1841), where he likewise expounded and expanded further on the concept of historic Lithuania, whose days of glory had ended with the Union of Lublin in 1569. Narbutt, invoking the German scholarship, pointed out the relationship between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit languages. A Lithuanian National Revival, inspired by the ancient Lithuanian history, language and culture, laid the foundations of the modern Lithuanian nation and independent Lithuania.