6 times in history when Lithuanians did not get abused - and why we need to learn the lesson

The concept of national pride is a really weird one. Don’t get me wrong – it is cool that one may feel good about where they live because of achievements of several people from their country no matter how long ago that was. In Lithuania we feel pride because Mindaugas and Vytautas did cool stuff half a millennia ago. That’s like a guy from an average American constantly bragging that their father made big money. And that ain’t gonna make you rich. <br><br>But pride is an important thing for Lithuanians. For example, Lithuania got its own supercar – Vantage Power. This is a car, which if you have enough money you may buy. And it does look cool and I’m not gonna be here and bash Lithuanians who are developing it. But however good this car is, I don’t think it should give me national pride to pump up my ego. I have never been in a Vantage Power and probably never will – so I don’t care about it. And I’d rather be happy about what actual feats were achieved by this car.<br><br>And the same thing goes about our pride about not being able to be abused - a linguistic term which refers to how rarely in the history of our country were our people not invaded, oppressed, abused, beaten, exploited and abused in various other ways. That’s a pretty cool feat, that we have achieved a total of six times in the history of our country – not being abused, I mean. It’s pretty much the same thing as a guy saying “I have never had a relationship in my life, but six times I ended up in the relationship, where my partner – a female – respected me as a human.” Other than that, it was some pretty rough ride, but I don’t count those six times as rough relationship, because however good the relationship is it doesn’t negate the existence of those six.<br><br>And this is a pretty important thing to understand – that many times history was twisted in a way to make our ancestors not abused, when in fact they were. That’s why I’m going to list here, chronologically, every time in history our country wasn’t abused in the specified sense. For those six times when our ancestors were respected and loved, we need to look back at history.<br><br>So there is a need for this article. <br><br>You may ask – when was the time when we were not abused. What can we be proud of? So let’s take a look at this article and see when in the history of our country the people were respected and not abused. <br><br>So let’s look at the times when our country wasn’t constantly the center of conflict and a huge target for various enemies throughout history. And there are six of such times. Let’s look at them:<br><br>1. The era of the times of Mindaugas – the only king of Lithuania and the reason why modern-day Lithuania is a state at all. This took place from 1253 to 1263 – ten years in total;<br><br>2. The era of peace under Algirdas and Kestutis – those are the two brothers who administrated Lithuania from Vilnius and Trakai. This peace has lasted from 1345 to 1377 – 32 years;<br><br>3. During the reign of Vytautas the Great – the Grand Duke of Lithuania who expanded territories of the Great Duchy of Lithuania to a great extent. This was from 1392 to 1430 – 38 years;<br><br>4. At a time of dominance of the Radziwill family – the family who expanded their influence in Lithuania and exploited its people a lot. This was from 1511 to 1568 – 57 years;<br><br>5. During an era of dominance of Jan Zamoyski and Stefan Batory – a period during the reign of Stefan Batory when he fought a war against Muscovy and Jan Zamoyski was his most important military commander. This took place from 1576 to 1587 – 11 years in total;<br><br>6. From 1990 to 1995 – when Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union and the administration of Algirdas Brazaukas was the government, which was followed by the administration of Adolfas Šleževičius. This gave us a total of five years. <br><br>It’s important to note that those six times took place throughout the ten centuries of our country. However, there was an extensive period when our ancestors faced a lot of abuse – 671 years in total. And that is pretty much everything you need to know about our country – its people have never been respected - and this takes a toll on how modern Lithuanians live their lives.