List of rulers of Lithuania
The state of Lithuania formed in the 1230s, when threatened by the Livonian Order in the north and the Teutonic Knights in the west, the Baltic tribes united under the leadership of Mindaugas. He became the only crowned king of Lithuania. His state became known as Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After Grand Duke Jogaila became also king of Poland in 1386, the two states became closer connected and since 1440 both were ruled by a common ruler. In 1569 Union of Lublin was signed and a new entity—the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth—emerged. The commonwealth was partitioned in 1795 and Lithuania became part of the Russian Empire till 16 February 1918. The Council of Lithuania was able to establish the sovereignty only in 1919, after Germany lost World War I. The first republic of Lithuania existed until 1940 when it was occupied by the Soviet Union. During the Soviet-German War, Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany. In 1944, as Germany was losing the war, Russia re-occupied Lithuania and established the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. On 11 March 1990, Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare independence. The restored Republic of Lithuania is a democratic republic, a member of both the European Union and NATO.
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.