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The Dalai Lama’s 1991 Visit to 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...
The Exact Moment Lithuania Became Free: Witnessing the Soviet Withdrawal from the Vilnius TV Tower – Aug. 22, 1991
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...
In Vilnius During The 1991 August Moscow Coup and the deadly KGB attack
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...
Why Lithuanians Must Never Forget the Medininkai Murders of July 31, 1991
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...
Funeral in Kaunas For a victim of the January 13, 1991 Soviet Attack at the TV Tower
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...
Thankful in Lithuania in 1991
The first official Thanksgiving celebrated in Lithuania was back in November 1991. After the collapse of the 1991 August Coup led by Soviet hardliners, Lithuania had finally achieved its independence from the USSR after 50 years of Soviet occupation and had begun the...
The Days In Lithuania After January 13, 1991
I once asked my boss, Chicago-native Rita Dapkute, several years after we both both worked at the Lithuanian Parliament in the Press Office (Information Bureau) during the period when Lithuania was trying to break away from the Soviet Union, “What event was more...