Lithuania

This program will explore history and culture with specific emphasis on the Baltic States’ community-based use of “soft power” (music, basketball, mass-protest) to gain independence and help topple the Soviet Union. Lithuania is one of the three Baltic states on the northern edge of Europe. In the medieval period it was one of the powerhouses of Europe, but for the past 500 years its German and Russian neighbors have repeatedly occupied and oppressed them. Students will explore the past century of struggle that included German occupation and the Holocaust, and Russian take-over and mass deportations and cultural destruction, but it will specifically focus on how the Baltic states broke free of the USSR via “soft power” strategies, using singing (choral and punk rock) and sports (especially Basketball) as potent weapons to assert national pride and identity, eventually leading to their independence in 1991. 

 

Our time will be centered in Lithuania’s beautiful coastal city, Klaipeda, at LCC International University, a small American-style university that has one of the nation’s most influential basketball programs. Students will live in the dorms with local students, explore Klaipeda’s charming old city streets, beaches, and forests, and will participate in basketball and English camps for local kids while also studying the history and culture of the Baltic states via trips to Latvia and Estonia and the capital cities of Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn.