by dkv | Sep 29, 2018 | Lithuania
His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama made his fourth visit to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia during the summer of 2018. The Baltic nations have long held a special meaning to the Tibetan leader, which you can see exemplified in the picture below when the Dalai Lama met with...
by dkv | Aug 22, 2018 | Lithuania
In 1991 the TV Tower in Vilnius had become the symbol of the Lithuanian struggle for freedom. After nearly five decades of the Soviet occupation, Lithuania re-established its independence from the USSR on March 11, 1990. But the Kremlin refused to accept the will of...
by dkv | Aug 19, 2018 | Lithuania
By late evening of August 21, 1991, the Neo-Stalinist Putsch in Moscow was falling apart. I was a 25 year-old American-Lithuanian, and I’d been living in Lithuania since January 1991. I arrived on January 15, 1991, two days after Soviet tanks and soldiers occupied the...
by dkv | Jul 31, 2018 | Lithuania
On the morning of July 31, 1991, I received a phone call that shakes my soul to this very day each time I remember it. “Something horrible has happened. Come to the InfoBureau at once,” Arvydas said. “I was just in the office, working the nightshift,” I said, glancing...
by dkv | Jan 15, 2018 | Lithuania
In Lithuania, on January 13, 1991, the massacre at the Vilnius TV Tower proved a turning point in Lithuania’s struggle for freedom. Once blood was shed, the rules had changed, and the stakes raised. On January 16, 1991 I witnessed the funeral for a martyr of the great...