Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post

But the Baltics practically never were independent countries, always part of other countries. Just for about 20 years or so, they were independent. Russia, Sweden, Germany, Poland and probably some other country have been running part of that area for many decades.
Oh, hanna, what a mistake are you doing? if your teacher said to you that baltics practically never was independent countries then I'll start to doubt if she ever studied history at all... As you know Lithuania also is one of the Baltic countries, so if we never were independent then how it happened that Lithuanian is one of the oldest indo european languages and that in 2009 we celebrated 1000 years anniversary since our country exists??? I guess you didb't know that the first time when name of Lithuania was mentioned was in 1009 and that in middle ages while Lithuania was one of the strongest countries in Europe and it's territory looked like that http://77.79.38.19/mokinys/Svetan%EB...VytautoLDK.png So you know it's very strange that someone coudn't notice that there exist such country which have teritory from Baltic sea to the Black sea. However time passed and Lithuania in 1569 made a commonwealth with Poland and it actually existed till 1795 ( then Russia, Austria and Prusia just simply shared Poland and Lithuania.) Since then The bigest part of Lithuanian territory was joined to Russia. Russians of course forbade Lithuanians to talk in our mother tongue, use it envery day life, started closing churches and tried to make athesists of us. Also as they saw that Lithuanians are not giving up to their rule and still are printing secret books in Lithuanian even if it's forbiden, that they are creating secret schools where teaches their children of Lithuanian language, Russians tried to become our ''friends'' and said that we can write Lithuanian words in Kirilica, however Lithuanians weren't that stupid so that they would do that. They simply didn't read your printed books in Russian. So Lithuanians had to endure this terrible russian policy till started the first WW. Also when in 1905 Russia lost war against Japan and all the world saw that russia isn't as strong as they thought beforethen Didysis Vilniaus seimas was arranged ( Lithuanian parlament) and during it 2000 Lithuanians who came to Vilnius (from Moscow, Odesa, sankt Peterburg, and many other cities of Lithuania and Latvia) come to conclusion that Lithuania won't stop reaching for it's independence. Later on started the first world war which changed the balance of strenghts in the Europe. Also February and October events which happened in Russia was quitea good circumstance which helped to regain our independence. In 1917 there was a conference in Vilnius where was accepted Lithuanian independence declaration and then Lithuania canceled it's diplomatic relations with Russia and Poland and started conversation with Germany. However Germany didn't accepled this independence declaration and did it just in 1918 when on 16th of february Lithuania announced it's independence note, act, or certificate. Ofcouse Russia didn't liked it and there still was fights in 1919-1920 Betvien Lithuanians and der army. However, Lithuanians in 1920 January finally defeated bolsheviks. In 1920 12th of July there was made an agreement where Soviet Russia accepted independence of Lithuania. Then Lithuanians lived in free democratic Lithuanian respublic till second WW started and in 194015th of June Russia again occupied Lithuania. Then lasted long terrible years full of agression against Lithuanians, full of stupid policy which Russians made in my country. And you say that Lithuanians where ruling Lithuania back then? wake up! there might have been few Lithuanians in higher posts but all the orders came to Moscow. Lithuanians cfoudn't say anything against SSRS because they simply would have been deportated to Siberia, or would have been shot right away. And if there are people who says that Baltic countries wanted to be the part of this Soviet union then maybe they can also explain why in 1990 they said that they want to be free and soviet tanks went on alive unarmed people who did nothing wrong at all. How does it looks? http://images.alfa.lt/68/96/23.JPG Anyway, as you see baltic states are free again. Does it still seems to you that these countries never were independent? if so, then try to count how Long Lithuania was independed. I hope that you are better at math than history.. And I don't know if you have ever heard such name like Kārlis Ulmanis. But if you did then you shoud also know that other baltic states also were independent much longer than just 20 years.