As a small but forceful, activist state that sits at the confluence of northern, central, and eastern Europe, Lithuania is well-positioned to provide insight and historical context for its allies across the continent and much further afield. In fact, the link between Ukraine’s fight for freedom and the historical necessity for security guarantees is perhaps most clearly felt in Lithuania. A walk through the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius, focused on Lithuania’s Nazi and then Soviet occupations, presents the same messages and imagery that could be applied today to Ukraine. The cartoons mocking Stalin’s offers for peace can easily be substituted for those of Putin and susceptible leaders who are often all too willing to appease the Kremlin. Like most of the museums in Vilnius and Kaunas, placing a new exhibit on the genocide in Ukraine in the basement of a former KGB prison cell is not an accident but a sharp reminder that the state may have changed in name, but its characteristics have stayed the same. History is never truly history and should not be treated as such, something that small states like Lithuania feel deep in their bones.

This is also true of the moving exhibit at the Tuskulenai Manor and Memorial just a 30 min walk along the Neris River from Vilnius’ Old Town entitled, ‘Homo Sovieticus’, or the Soviet Man. Given Putin is a product of the Soviet system in its waning days, the Soviet Man’s characteristics, mentality, and penchant for bending the rules and reality to his will is an important element of history to discover. Putin is also present here in the form of a cardboard cutout of him in a prison jumpsuit, not part of the main exhibit but as a pop-up art installation. The cutout of Putin reminds guests, of which this particular museum sees very few, that his gaze, and that of the Soviet state and the Soviet Man, still lingers over this corner of Europe. Now, however, it is not a suffocating gaze delivering oppression, but a watchful one, standing guard at the frontier to the political and security union of Europe that is anathema to leaders like Putin who seek to rebuild part of a former empire.

In touring Lithuania, one encounters a spellbinding and fractious examination of its past, one that is both prosperous and troubling, full of hope and shattered dreams, often at the same time and on the same street corners. Vilnius is perhaps Central and Eastern Europe’s most prominent example along with the historical region of Galicia of southeast Poland and western Ukraine, of the fragility of borders and the need for states and peoples to constantly reclaim what was once lost or perceived to be lost. Poland and Lithuania may have co-existed in a commonwealth, one of the largest in Europe, for centuries, but that didn’t stop Poland from claiming a portion of Lithuania in the interwar years and severing the country and its political leadership, not to mention Lithuanians themselves.

There is a lot of remembrance in Lithuania but there are also small yet numerous monuments to forgetting. The statue of Roman Kacew, better known as the famous French writer Romain Gary, is a testament to this, in a land where traveling is part of existing and forgetting is an easy and even necessary virtue if it means the ability to survive. In Jan Brokken’s masterful travelogue through the Baltic states, Baltic Souls, an elderly lady he meets urges him to title his chapter on Gary ‘Roman Kacew from Vilne, so that the name Vilne will live on a little longer.’ Vilne, the Yiddish name for Vilnius that speaks to its long history as one of the leading centres of Judaism in Europe, no longer exists, the woman tells Brokken, only Vilnius exists, and its memory has to be carried on. In a city in which ‘every plot of land has been covered and viewed multiple times from all sides’ in the words of historian Karl Schlogel, the remembrance of those lost as part of the existential struggle for survival forms an inherent part of Vilnius and Lithuania’s identity.

In the many decades since the end of the Second World War, Vilnius and Lithuania have transformed dramatically. Now, Lithuania is a small state with a big purpose, joining its Baltic brethren in taking up the challenge of Europe’s collective security by committing to at least 5% of its GDP on defence, and making sure Europe is fit for a century that increasingly has echoes and leaders of the last one. Perhaps the best example of Lithuania as a small state with outsized power is not in relation to Ukraine but to Taiwan, and its decision in 2021 to allow Taiwan to establish a ‘representative office’ in Vilnius. This led to the withdrawal and expulsion of Lithuania’s diplomats from China before Beijing initiated a full-scale trade war against Vilnius in retaliation. Lithuania survived China’s onslaught, however, and Beijing lifted its embargo on Vilnius only a week later, after Germany, the United States, and other EU member states came to its aid.

This Lithuanian spirit of defiance has a long history. Lithuania, just like Latvia and Estonia, defied Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s warning to Lithuanian deputy prime minister Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius that ‘in the future, small nations will have to disappear.’ Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lithuania and the Baltic states were expected to remain in Russia’s orbit, with one British foreign office memorandum predicting that ‘the Baltic states will attract less attention and less western sympathy’ as the years go on. Instead, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia took on the maxim of Estonian philosopher Uku Masing, writing that ‘the smaller people have a broader horizon precisely because they cannot get past the existence of the bigger ones.’ Lithuania and the Baltic states are unquestionably small, with a total population of less than 8 million. They have long been viewed as the periphery of Europe, not a driving force and certainly not one worthy of providing Europe with a new strategic direction. However, while they may not be vast in size, they are vast in their horizon, constantly scanning for allies and people to remember them in their moment of need.

In 2025, the dynamics have significantly changed, and Lithuania may even determine the future of Europe, as journalist Oliver Moody documents in his new book on the growing importance of the Baltic states and Baltic Sea region. As Moody writes, ‘the Baltic is a source of ideas and optimism,’ clashing with a ‘Europe that often seems tired and conscious of its own relative decline.’ The very source of that optimism and dynamism is likely the fact that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia exist under Milan Kundera’s apt definition of a small nation: ‘one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment.’ The existence of Lithuania and its Baltic neighbours is testament to their internal strength more than it is to any external backing that they have received from other powers. Even their staunchest allies throughout history such as Britain and the United States have at times downplayed their right to stand free amidst greater powers and found the allure of accommodation with Russia to be of a higher strategic priority than the forceful advancement of Baltic interests.

As Ukraine continues its valiant fight for freedom and the defence of Europe against a revanchist Russia, Lithuania and the Baltic states have emerged as Kyiv’s strongest allies and the strategic and moral heart of the Western alliance. They are no longer the periphery but an enlightened and activist core capable of rallying others to their viewpoints, their sense of history, and their conception of victory. As small states, they hold immense sway and know how to choose their battles, never taking anything for granted and reminding their fellow EU and NATO member states that history is never truly history. The museums and memorials of Vilnius, Kaunas, and other Baltic cities are not set in amber but are living and breathing spaces linking current developments to the past and vice versa. There are no truly temporary exhibits in this corner of Europe, rather only ones that connect to a permanent span of history. A history that tends to reappear for all other states but not the small ones, those like Lithuania that do not have the luxury of complacency as they fight to exist.

The views expressed in this article belong to the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.