Russia’s involvement in World War I amassed over 8 million killed and wounded. Soldiers being sent to the field without weapons surely didn’t help. Soldiers would simply pick up guns from other fallen soldiers. In 1917 the Russian people had enough and led by Vladimir Lenin, with his Marxist ideologies, Tsar Nicholas II became the last Tsar of Russia.
On this day February 16th, 1918, Lithuania declares its independence in the Lithuania Act of Independence. The state of Lithuania was to be governed by democratic values and a cabinet was to be formed; however, the German state continued censoring texts. This didn’t stop the Lithuanians as they illegally printed the act and handed it out. It wasn’t until the German empire loss in WWI that the independent state of Lithuania actually existed when the first cabinet was made in November of 1918.
Fast-forward 72 years – in the meantime Lithuania has become a part of the Soviet Union; Lithuania became the first state to leave the Soviet Union in 1990. Lithuanian officials stated the Act of 1918 had never ceased to have clout and that in 1990, they were implementing it again. Lithuania is located in Northern Europe and is bordered by Poland and Belarus, and it is home to over 3,000,000 civilians.