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General Information
Country name: (conventional long form) Republic
of Lithuania, (conventional short form) Lithuania
Area: 65 200 sq km
Population: 3 607 899 (July 2004)
Capital: Vilnius
Population: 542 700
Administrative divisions: (10 counties (apskritys,
singular - apskritis)) Alytaus, Kauno, Klaipedos, Marijampoles, Panevezio,
Siauliu, Taurages, Telsiu, Utenos, Vilniaus
Map of Administrative Divisions
Ethnic groups: Lithuanian 80.6%, Russian 8.7%, Polish 7%,
Belarusian 1.6%, other 2.1%
Government: Parliamentary democracy.
Gained independence from Russia/Germany 1918-1940, and then from the Soviet
Union in 1990
Head of State: President Arturas Paulauskas since 6 April 2004
Head of Government: Prime Minister lgirdas Mykolas Brazauskas
since 2001
Language: Lithuanian is the official language.
Lithuania has a large number of dialects for such a small territory.
Most people also speak Russian
Religion: Roman Catholic (primarily), Lutheran,
Russian Orthodox, Protestant, Evangelical Christian Baptist, Muslim, Jewish
Time Zone: GMT/UTC +1
Electricity: 230V, 50Hz
Weights & measures: Metric
Visas: Lithuania requires visas from most nationalities
except citizens of the Baltic states, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland,
Italy, Switzerland, the UK and the US
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Economy
Lithuania, the Baltic state that has conducted
the most trade with Russia, has slowly rebounded from the 1998 Russian financial
crisis. Unemployment remains high, still 10.7% in 2003, but is improving. Growing
domestic consumption and increased investment have furthered recovery. Trade
has been increasingly oriented toward the West. Lithuania has gained membership
in the World Trade Organization.
Privatization of the large, state-owned utilities, particularly in the
energy sector, is nearing completion. Overall, more than 80% of enterprises
have been privatized. Foreign government and business support have helped in the
transition from the old command economy to a market economy.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) composition by sector:
agriculture 7.1%, industry 26.6%, services 66.3% (2002)
Labor force (by occupation): industry 30%,
agriculture 20%, services 50% (1997)
Unemployment rate: 10.7% (2003)
Industries: metal-cutting machine tools,
electric motors, television sets, refrigerators and freezers, petroleum refining,
shipbuilding (small ships), furniture making, textiles, food processing,
fertilizers, agricultural machinery, optical equipment, electronic components,
computers, amber
Agriculture - products: grain, potatoes, sugar beets,
flax, vegetables; beef, milk, eggs; fish
Exports - commodities: mineral products 23%,
textiles and clothing 16%, machinery and equipment 11%, chemicals 6%,
wood and wood products 5%, foodstuffs 5% (2001)
Exports - partners: UK 13.4%, Russia 12.1%,
Germany 10.4%, Latvia 9.7%, Denmark 5.1%, Sweden 4.2%, France 4.1% (2002)
Imports - commodities: mineral products 21%,
machinery and equipment 17%, transport equipment 11%, chemicals 9%, textiles
and clothing 9%, metals 5% (2001)
Imports - partners: Russia 22.2%, Germany 17.8%,
Italy 5.1%, Poland 5% (2002)
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Money
Currency: The national currency of
the Republic of Lithuania is the litas consisting of 100 centas. At present,
1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 litas denomination banknotes, 1, 2, 5, 10,
20 and 50 centas and 1, 2 and 5 litas denomination coins are in circulation
Currency exchange: Currency exchange isn't a problem in
Lithuania, although cashing travellers' cheques is best done in large cities such
as Vilnius, Kaunas, Siauliai and Klaipeda. Credit cards are common methods of
payment in hotels and restaurants. Marked, torn or simply very used notes will be
refused
Exchange rate indicators: £1.00= 5.00 litas,
$1.00=2.73 litas
Website:
http://www.lb.lt/home/default.asp?lang=e
Banking hours: Mon-Fri 09.00-17.00.
Some banks also open Sat 09.00-13.00
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History
The ancestors of the modern Lithuanians were
known as Balts and probably reached the area from the south-east around 2000 BC.
By the 12th century the Balt peoples were split into tribal groups, all
practising nature religions. The two main groups in Lithuania were the
Samogitians in the west and the Aukstaitiai in the east. In what is now
south-west Lithuania and in neighbouring parts of Poland were the Yotvingians,
also a Balt people, later to be assimilated by the Lithuanians and Poles.
In the mid-13th century Mindaugas, leader of the Aukstaitiai, unified the
Lithuanian tribes for a short time under the Catholic mantle. Pagan
princes fought back, then were subjugated by another Christian, Vytenis,
who became grand duke in 1290. His brother Gediminas, grand duke from 1316
to 1341, took advantage of the decline of the early Russian state to push
Lithuania's borders south and east. It was Gediminas' grandson, Jogaila,
who converted to Catholicism and married the crown princess of Poland in
1386, thus forging a 400-year bond between the states. The Aukstaitiai
were baptised in 1387 and the Samogitians in 1413, making Lithuania the
last European country to accept Christianity. By the end of the 16th
century Lithuania had sunk into a junior role in its partnership with
Poland, especially after the formal union of the two states at the Treaty
of Lublin in 1569. Lithuanian gentry adopted Polish culture and language,
Lithuanian peasants became serfs, and the joint state became known as the
Rzeczpospolita (Commonwealth).
Poland-Lithuania began to cast interested eyes over Livonia (Latvia) and
Estonia, as did Sweden and Russia's Ivan the Terrible. Ivan invaded first
in 1558, initiating the 25-year Livonian War. It took Poland-Lithuania and
then Sweden many years to expel Ivan and his Russian compatriots. After
they managed this in 1592, Catholic Poland-Lithuania and Protestant Sweden
settled down to fight each other in the Baltics. The Swedes won, securing
Estonia and most of modern Latvia. Meanwhile, conflict continued between
Poland-Lithuania and Russia, with the Russians eventually invading the
Rzeczpospolita and annexing significant territory. A Prussian revival in
the 17th century further weakened the Rzeczpospolita, which was eventually
carved up by Russia, Austria and Prussia, with most of Lithuania going to
the Russians.
Lithuania was involved in two Polish rebellions against Russian rule in
the 19th century, and its peasants weren't freed until 1861. The Russians
persecuted Catholics and, from 1864, books could only be published in
Lithuanian provided they used the Russian alphabet, and publications in
Polish were banned altogether.
During WWI Germany occupied Lithuania, but on 11 November 1918, the day
Germany surrendered to the Allies, a Lithuanian republican government was
set up. Matters were complicated by the re-emergence of an independent
Poland. Polish troops took Vilnius in 1919 and retained it, apart from
three months in 1920, until 1939. In 1920 Soviet Russia signed a peace
treaty with Lithuania recognising its independence.
Lithuania suffered a military coup in 1926 and from 1929 was ruled by
Antanas Smetona along similar lines to Mussolini's Italy. But on 23 August
1939 Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop
non-aggression pact, which placed Lithuania under the Nazi sphere of
influence. When Lithuania refused to join the Nazi attack on Poland, it
was placed in the Soviet sphere. Lithuania regained Vilnius in October
1939, when the Red Army invaded eastern Poland; Germany invaded western
Poland at the same time. By August 1940 Lithuania had been placed under
Soviet military occupation, communists were in government and the nation
had become a republic of the USSR. Hitler invaded Lithuania in 1941, and
during the Nazi occupation nearly all of Lithuania's Jewish population was
killed in camps or ghettos. The Red Army reconquered Lithuania by the end
of 1944, and it took until the late 1980s for the nation to take its first
steps towards regaining its sovereignty.
A popular front, Sajudis (The Movement), formed as a direct result of
Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika
(restructuring), and Lithuania led the Baltic push for independence from
the USSR. Sajudis won 30 of the 42 Lithuanian seats in the March 1989
elections for the USSR Congress of People's Deputies and, in December, the
Lithuanian Communist Party broke away from the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union. This pioneering act was a landmark in the break-up of the
USSR and, equally daringly, Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to
legalise non-communist parties. Sajudis won a majority in the elections to
Lithuania's supreme soviet in February 1990, and on 11 March this assembly
declared Lithuania an independent republic.
In response, Moscow carried out weeks of intimidatory troop manoeuvres,
then clamped an economic blockade on Lithuania. Sajudis leader Vytautas
Landsbergis agreed to a 100-day moratorium on the independence declaration
in return for independence talks between the respective Lithuanian and
Soviet governments. However, Soviet hardliners gained the ascendancy in
Moscow, and in January 1991 Soviet troops occupied strategic buildings in
Vilnius, killing 13 people in the storming of the TV tower and TV centre.
Everything changed with the 19 August 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev
in Moscow. The western world finally recognised Lithuanian independence
and so too did the USSR on 6 September 1991. On 17 September 1991
Lithuania joined the United Nations and began to enjoy its rediscovered
nationhood.
In early 1998 the fruits of the Lithuania diaspora became apparent when
Valdas Adamkus, who had spent most of his adult life in Chicago working as
a senior policy expert for the US Environmental Protection Agency, was
elected president. Meanwhile, the country continued an inexorable march
towards full membership of both NATO and the European Union.
Lithuania acceded to the EU in May 2004 and to NATO in the summer of 2004.
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Culture
Lithuania has the most ethnically
homogenous population of the three
Baltic states. Modern Lithuanians are descended from the Balt tribes, and
the Lithuanian diaspora is by far the biggest of any of the peoples of the
Baltic states, mainly due to emigration for political or economic reasons
in the 19th and early 20th century and during WWII. Lithuanians are
stereotypically gregarious, welcoming and emotional, placing greater
emphasis on contacts and favours than method and calculation. Cooler
Estonians and Latvians see Lithuanians as hot-headed and unpredictable.
The independence campaign of the late 1980s and early '90s illustrated the
contrast between Lithuanians and their Baltic neighbours. In Lithuania the
struggle was romantic, daring, cliff-hanging and risky, with at least 20
deaths. In Estonia it was gradual, calculated and bloodless, leading to
the unkind saying that 'Estonians would die for their freedom - to the
last Lithuanian'.
Lithuanian is one of only two surviving languages of the Baltic branch of
the Indo-European language family. Low Lithuanian is spoken in the west
and is a different dialect to High Lithuanian, which is spoken in the rest
of the country. The Catholic Church is a conservative force in Lithuanian
society, and its head is the Archbishop of Kaunas. Russian Orthodoxy is
practised in the country, and there are also Old Believers, a sect of the
Russian Orthodox church that has suffered intermittent persecution since
the 17th century. There are also pagans in Lithuania, highlighted by the
Romuva movement, which has congregations in Vilnius and Kaunas as well as
among Lithuanian communities overseas. The movement works towards
rekindling Lithuania's ancient spiritual and folklore traditions.
The first major fiction in Lithuanian was the poem Metai (The Seasons), by
Kristijonas Donelaitis, describing the life of serfs in the 18th century.
Jonas Maciulis, known as Maironis, is regarded as the founder of modern
Lithuanian literature thanks to the poetry he wrote around the beginning
of the 20th century. Lithuania is also the birthplace of several major
Polish writers, among them Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel prize
for literature.
An interesting Lithuanian folk-art tradition is the carving of large
wooden crosses, suns, weathercocks or figures of saints on tall poles that
are placed at crossroads, in cemeteries, village squares or at the sites
of extraordinary events. In the Soviet period, such work was banned, but
it survived to amazing effect at the Hill of Crosses near Siauliai.
Dairy products and potatoes are mainstays of the Lithuanian diet, and
pancakes are particularly popular. A traditional (and unforgettable) meal
is cepelinai, a zeppelin-shaped parcel of a glutinous substance (allegedly
potato dough), with a wad of cheese, meat or mushrooms in the centre. It
comes topped with a sauce made from onions, butter, sour cream and bacon
bits. Sakotis is a tall, Christmas-tree shaped cake generally served at
weddings, while dinner on Christmas Eve consists of 12 different
vegetarian dishes. Utenos and Kalnapilis are the best local brands of
beer, perhaps preferable to midus (mead), which can be as much as 60%
proof. Those who prefer to make their own decision about when to lie down
should look out for stakliskes, a honey liqueur.
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Environment
Lithuania is the biggest of the three
Baltic states and covers an area
roughly the same size as Ireland. It borders Latvia in the north, Belarus
in the south-east, the Baltic Sea in the west and Poland and the truncated
Kaliningrad Region of Russia in the south-west. It's a predominantly flat
country, and its highest point, Juazapines, measures only 294m (964ft).
Lithuania's Baltic coast extends about 100km (62mi), half of which lies
along the extraordinary Curonian Spit - a pencil-thin 98km (61mi) long
sandbar that's up to 66m (216ft) high.
Just over one quarter of Lithuania is forested, in particular the
south-west of the country. Elk, deer, wild boar, wolf and lynx inhabit the
forests, though you're unlikely to bump into any without some guidance.
Lithuania also has about 2000 otters, and Lake Zuvintas, in the south, is
an important breeding ground and migration halt for waterbirds. There are
five national parks in Lithuania and a number of nature reserves, the
highlight being the Kursiu Nerija National Park, a special environment of
high dunes, pine forests, beaches, a lagoon and seacoasts.
The Lithuanian climate is temperate. From May to September daytime highs
vary from about 14°C to 22°C (57°F to 72°F), but between November and
March it rarely gets above 4°C (39°F). July and August, the warmest
months, are also wet, with days of persistent showers. May, June and
September are more comfortable, while late June can be thundery. Slush
under foot is something you have to cope with in autumn, when snow falls
then melts, and in spring, when the winter snow thaws.
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Geology
Geological structure.
Lithuania is located in the west of the East European platform. The western
and middle areas of the country are located in the Baltic syneclise and the
eastern area is occupied by the Byelorussian anteclise.
The thickness of the Earth’s crust ranges from 45 to 55 km, which is
characteristic of ancient stable platforms. The crust comprises the crystalline
basement and the sedimentary cover. The crystalline basement of the crust occurs
at a depth of up to 2100 m in the Baltic syneclise and rises up to 120 m in the
Byelorussian anteclise area. It is composed of strongly dislocated Archean
and Proterozoic gneiss, magmatite, crystalline schist, quartzite, and granite
formed more than 1.5 milliard years ago.
The sedimentary bed of a thickness
ranging from 200 to 2100 m is represented by terrigenous, carbonaceous and
halogen deposits. The lowermost part of the sedimentary basin is composed
of Vendian and Cambrian clay, sandstone and aleurolite that were replaced by
limestone, marl and argillite in the Ordovician (480 million years ago).
In the Devonian and Carboniferous, sandy – clayey sediments overlapped those
deposits. Carbonaceous halogen deposits, clay, marl and aleurolite accumulated
in the Permian – Mesozoic. Cenozoic deposits locally occur. For the major part,
they are represented by sand, sandstone, clay and marl. In the west and south,
Quaternary sediments overlay Permian and Mesozoic rocks, in the northeast
they overlay Devonian formations.
Geological Map
The greatest thickness of sedimentary deposits is noted in the territory
of Lithuania located in the middle of the Baltic syneclise.
Geological crustal section across Baltic countries
Natural resources.
The overall western area of Lithuania and the adjacent water area of the
Baltic Sea show good prospects for oil and gas. Economically recoverable
Cambrian oil was discovered in 1968 (Shupariaiskoe oil field). In the area of
Kaunas, Permian anhydrite thick layers occur at a depth of 150 – 200 m; in
the northwest, cement limestone locally occurs. Dolomite used in rubble
production is located in Devonian deposits; Neogene deposits comprise glass
sand of high quality. Anthropogenic are deposits of clay, sand and gravel
mixture and construction sand. Peat deposits are abundant. Deposits of chalk
and gypsum occur, ferrous and rare-earth mineralization manifests itself in
crystalline basement, titanium and zircon placer deposits are encountered on
the Baltic seashore. Amber locally occurs. Mineral waters are well known.
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Getting Around
Large towns (with population):
Vilnius (542 700) , Kaunas( 381 300), Klaipeda (193 900), Siauliai (130 500),
Panevezys (116 900)
Buses and trains are the best ways to get around, as they go just about
everywhere. Although buses are quicker and slightly cheaper, train travel
is far from dear: you can track 100km (62mi) on little more than small
change in general seating class.
Driving isn't a bad option since the main
roads are good, traffic is light and distances are small. It's best to
bring your own vehicle, because car rental is very expensive.
Cycle touring hasn't really taken off in Lithuania, but the country's
flatness, small size and light traffic make it good pedalling territory.
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Accommodation
Hotels: Since independence, western-style hotels
and motels have been built in Lithuania in co-operation with foreign firms
Website:
http://www.lithuanianhotels.com
Camping:
Campsites are not numerous. The majority of them are located in the
most picturesque regions: Palanga (on the shore of the Baltic Sea), Trakai
(lake district) and near larger towns
Private Rooms: Travel agencies can arrange rental of
rooms in private homes as well as houses. This is especially popular in
resort regions
Website:
http://www.oldtown-apartments.com
Youth Hostels:
Website:
http://www.balticbackpackers.com
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Further Reading
- Grigialis A.A. et al. The geological structure and oil and gas presence of
Baltic countries. Nedra, Moscow, 1970.
- Geological map of Eurasia. NILZarubezhgeologia, Moscow, 1972.
- Keistutis P. Devenis Ancient Lithuanian and the history of Deltuva.
- Lithuanian Mythological Tales. Translated from Lithuanian by Birute Kiskyte.
VAGA Publishers, 2000, 239 pages, In English.
- Zigmas Kiaupa. The History of Lithuania. Vilnius, Lithuania, 2002, 450 pages,
In English.
- About Lithuania. Published in Vilnius, Lithuania, 110 pages, In English.
- Alfonsas Eidintas. Lithuania in european politics. The years of the first
republic, 1918-1940. Vilnius, Lithuania, 248 pages, In English.
- Lithuania map, Scale:1:400 000. Briedis, Vilnius, 2000,
In Lithuanian, English and German.
- Baltic States and Kaliningrad region Road Atlas. oad atlas of the Baltic
states and Kaliningrad. 72 city and town plans and place name index is included.
Jana Seta, 152 pages.
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