There have always been two Europes when it came to russia.
Western and Southern Europe gets luxury villas, rich tourists, ballet and pseudo-intellectual babble about Tolstoyevsky.
Eastern Europe gets bombs and rapes.
No wonder it’s difficult to find common ground.
I will start a series called Faces of the First Soviet Occupation (1940–41).
One by one, I will share the stories of Lithuanian officers, teachers, priests, public figures, mothers and children — people arrested, deported or executed by the Soviets during the first occupation.
Their names deserve to be remembered.
The Baltics didn’t just survive the Soviet collapse—they became a European and Global powerhouse.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are now punching way above their weight in AI, NATO, and semiconductors.
Here’s how 6 million people rewired Europe—and joined the global game 🧵1/
The Rainiai massacre (June 24–25, 1941) saw Soviet NKVD and Red Army brutally murder 70–80 Lithuanian political prisoners in a forest near Telšiai. Victims, tortured while alive, were mutilated beyond recognition.