Invitation of the President of the Republic of Lithuania Gitanas Nausėda to a virtual exhibition

In December 2020, the Centre for Civil Education has introduced virtual exhibition „Victorious Christmas Eve of 1989: Dethronement of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact“, which is now also available in English.

The credo of this virtual exhibition is twofold: to DEFEND and to REMEMBER. The duty of Lithuanian citizens is to defend the national history and historical truth of their nation and state. On the other hand, a no less important duty of our citizens and the state is to remember the most significant historical facts and events, to prevent their falsification, and collectively preserve the historical memory of the nation and its people because, in addition to language, culture, and the land itself, historical memory is the basis for the survival and historical progress of every nation.

The purpose of the exhibition: using copies of the historical documents of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, handed over to Lithuania by the German Government from the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and photo-material from the funds of the Lithuanian Central State Archives, once to remind society, especially the younger generation, of the complicated and tragic fate of the Lithuanian state at the beginning of World War II and the following several decades of the Lithuanian struggle for the restoration of historical truth and national statehood.

On the other hand, it is equally important that in the beginning of the 21st century, the leaders of some states, as if they had forgotten the historic Resolution of the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR on 24 December 1989 and its political and juridical conclusions, once again have tried to proclaim a certain Stalinist “truth” – that in the summer of 1940 the Baltic States were not occupied by but rather “of their own will” and “legally” were incorporated into the Soviet Union. Such attempts to interpret history raise many political questions and threaten Europe’s geopolitical security.

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