Vilnius is urging EU counterparts not to attend Russia’s upcoming May 9 Victory Day parade marking 75 years since the end of World War 2
Seeking justice for victims of the Soviet regime to heal historical trauma has become a top priority for Lithuania as it marks 30 years since it became the first republic to break away from the USSR.
While Lithuanians have since enjoyed impressive economic growth — notably after joining EU and Nato in 2004 — the Baltic nation of 2.8-million people also struggles with some of Europe's highest rates of suicide, alcoholism and emigration. "A single person can be a perpetrator, a victim and a bystander at different times in their lives. So it is with countries and so it is with culture," he told delegates at the conference.Get our news and views in your inboxLike fellow Baltic states Latvia and Estonia, Lithuania was annexed by the Soviets during World War II and then deeply scarred by the Stalinist-era deportation of hundreds of thousands of its people to Siberia and Central Asia in the 1940s and 1950s.
Moscow recognised Lithuania's independence following a failed coup by communist hardliners in the Soviet capital in August 1991. The USSR was formally dissolved four months later. Moscow insisted the trial was politically motivated. It refuses to recognise the Soviet takeover of the Baltic states as an occupation. Lithuania has never received an apology or reparations.Lamberto Zannier, OSCE Commissioner on National Minorities, warned that 2020"could potentially be a very critical year" as divisions grow over the interpretation of history.
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