date stamped
The photo above is the floor at the front entrance of the tenement building my Vilnius flat was in. It’s in A. Vivulskio gtv, in Vilnius’ “New Town”.
Like so many around here, the flat is perfect inside but the exterior and common parts are badly neglected.
home from home
The reasons are another story.
The point is, Vilnius was part of Tsarist Russia when the building went up. Ahead lay WWI in 1914.
Germany occupied the country in 1915. Lithuania gained independence in 1918.
Germany “gave” Lithuania to the USSR under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, and the Red Army arrived to occupy in 1940. It became part of the USSR.
Soviet style
Germany “liberated” Lithuania in 1941 when it invaded the Soviet Union, and then the Soviet Union liberated it from Germany in 1944.
memorial to victims of occupation
It then became part of the USSR (again) until 1991, when independence resumed.
1991 memorial
That’s a lot of history. In fact, it’s more complicated than that but I won’t bore you with all the details.
Nor will I dwell on all the many victims of the Nazi & Soviet regimes, but they are not forgotten.
© iain taylor 2015