Editing History of Lithuania (section)

===Soviet era (1953–1988)===
[[File:Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius, Lithuania, 2021.jpg|thumb|225px|Former [[KGB]] headquarters in Vilnius, containing the [[Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights]].]]
<!-- [[WP:NFCC]] violation: [[File:Snieckus.jpg|thumb|left|250px|[[Antanas Sniečkus]] was the leader of the [[Communist Party of Lithuania]] for 34 years. He was instrumental to the [[Lithuanization]] of Vilnius and helped prevent the city from being [[Russification|Russified]].<ref name="Snyder 93">Snyder (2003), p. 93</ref>{{efn|Vilnius was claimed and contested by Polish, Belarusian and Lithuanian communists before being granted by [[Joseph Stalin]] to the [[Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic|Lithuanian SSR]] in 1944.<ref name="Snyder 88, 93">Snyder (2003), pp. 88, 93</ref>}}]] -->
Soviet authorities encouraged the immigration of non-Lithuanian workers, especially Russians, as a way of integrating Lithuania into the Soviet Union and encouraging industrial development,<ref name="Department of State Lithuania"/> but in Lithuania this process did not assume the massive scale experienced by other European [[Republics of the Soviet Union|Soviet republics]].<ref name="Snyder 94">Snyder (2003), p. 94</ref>

To a great extent, [[Lithuanization]] rather than [[Russification]] took place in postwar Vilnius and elements of a national revival characterize the period of Lithuania's existence as a Soviet republic.<ref name="Snyder 72"/>{{efn|About 90% of Vilnius Jews had been exterminated by the Nazis in 1941–1944 and about 80% of Vilnius Poles were deported under the Soviet rule in 1944–1946, which left the city open to settlement by Lithuanians, or possibly Russians.<ref name="Snyder 72, 91">Snyder (2003), pp. 72, 91</ref>}} Lithuania's boundaries and political integrity were determined by Joseph Stalin's decision to grant Vilnius to the [[Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic|Lithuanian SSR]] again in 1944. Subsequently, most Poles were resettled from Vilnius (but only a minority from the countryside and other parts of the Lithuanian SSR){{efn|The preservation of the rural Polish-speaking minority in the Vilnius Region (the [[intelligentsia]] element was mostly expelled after the war) turned out to be a source of lasting friction. After 1950 Stalin, playing on the Lithuanian against the Polish insecurities, allowed the formation of a network of Polish, communist ideology-preaching schools. This Soviet policy continued also after 1956, despite Lithuanian objections. The Polish community reacted with fear to the rebirth of assertive Lithuanian nationalism after 1988 and attempted to established a Polish autonomy in the Vilnius region in 1990–91. After some Polish activists supported the attempted [[1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt|communist coup in Moscow]] the Lithuanian authorities eliminated the Polish self-rule. The presently existing [[Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania]] is seen by many Lithuanians as a communist rule residue with a nationalistic tint and conflicts over the language of education and naming rights continue, with an uneasy involvement of the government of Poland. The rural Polish-speaking areas are among the economically most depressed regions of Lithuania and high unemployment there has caused significant permanent emigration. The Lithuanian relations with the Russian minority, the actual left-over of the Soviet-imposed settlement, have not been a source of comparable tensions.<ref name="Polskość zapeklowana">''Polskość zapeklowana'' [Polishness cured]. Aleksandra Pezda's conversation with the historian [[Krzysztof Buchowski]]. Gazeta Wyborcza wyborcza.pl 16.03.2012</ref>}} by the implementation of Soviet and Lithuanian communist policies that mandated their partial replacement by [[Russian diaspora in the Baltic states|Russian immigrants]]. Vilnius was then increasingly settled by Lithuanians and assimilated by Lithuanian culture, which fulfilled, albeit under the oppressive and limiting conditions of the Soviet rule, the long-held dream of Lithuanian nationalists.<ref name="Snyder 91-93">Snyder (2003), pp. 91–93</ref> The economy of Lithuania did well in comparison with other regions of the Soviet Union.<ref name="True Lithuania"/>

The national developments in Lithuania followed tacit compromise agreements worked out by the Soviet communists, Lithuanian communists and the Lithuanian [[intelligentsia]]. [[Vilnius University]] was reopened after the war, operating in the Lithuanian language and with a largely Lithuanian student body. It became a center for Baltic studies. General schools in the Lithuanian SSR provided more instruction in Lithuanian than at any previous time in the country's history. The literary Lithuanian language was standardized and refined further as a language of scholarship and [[Lithuanian literature]]. The price the Lithuanian intelligentsia ended up paying for the national privileges was their much increased [[Communist Party of Lithuania|Communist Party]] membership after [[de-Stalinization]].<ref name="Snyder 93-95">Snyder (2003), pp. 93–95</ref>

Between the death of Stalin in 1953 and the [[glasnost]] and [[perestroika]] reforms of [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] in the mid-1980s, Lithuania functioned as a Soviet society, with all its repressions and peculiarities. Agriculture remained collectivized, property nationalized, and criticism of the Soviet system was severely punished. The country remained largely isolated from the non-Soviet world because of travel restrictions, the [[Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union|persecution of the Catholic Church]] continued and the nominally [[Egalitarianism|egalitarian]] society was extensively corrupted by the practice of connections and privileges for those who served the system.<ref name="True Lithuania"/>

The communist era is represented in the museum of [[Grūtas Park]].