title: Claiming a Great Ancient Imperial Past as an Identity Element of a Small Modern Nation
abstract: Lithuanians are a typical East European modern nation, created by the Lithuanian nationalist movement which emerged in the late nineteenth century. Modern Lithuanian identity is ethnolinguistic, resembling national identities of other Baltic countries. Its distinctive feature is the narrative appropriation of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional and multi-cultural empire which in 1569 merged with Poland in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. R