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This article is about the demographic features of the population of Lithuania, including population density, ethnicity, level of education, health, economic status, and religious affiliations.
Belarusians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Belarus. Over 9.5 million people proclaim Belarusian ethnicity worldwide. Nearly 8 million Belarusians reside in Belarus, with the United States and Russia being home to more than half a million Belarusians each.
Latvian, also known as Lettish, is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken in the Baltic region. It is the language of Latvians and the official language of Latvia as well as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 1.2 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and 100,000 abroad. Altogether, 2 million, or 80% of the population of Latvia, spoke Latvian in the 2000s, before the total number of inhabitants of Latvia slipped to less than 1.9 million in 2022. Of those, around 1.16 million or 62% of Latvia's population used it as their primary language at home, though excluding the Latgale region it is spoken as a native language in villages and towns by over 90% of the population.
Ruthenian and Ruthene are exonyms of Latin origin, formerly used in Eastern and Central Europe as common ethnonyms for East Slavs, particularly during the late medieval and early modern periods. The Latin term Rutheni was used in medieval sources to describe all Eastern Slavs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as an exonym for people of the former Kievan Rus', thus including ancestors of the modern Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The use of Ruthenian and related exonyms continued through the early modern period, developing several distinctive meanings, both in terms of their regional scopes and additional religious connotations.
Samogitia or Žemaitija is one of the five cultural regions of Lithuania and formerly one of the two core administrative divisions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania alongside Lithuania proper. Žemaitija is located in northwestern Lithuania. Its largest city is Šiauliai. Žemaitija has a long and distinct cultural history, reflected in the existence of the Samogitian language.
The Social Democratic Party of Lithuania is a centre-left and social democratic political party in Lithuania. Founded as an underground Marxist organization in 1896, it is the oldest extant party in Lithuania. During the time of the Soviet Union, the party went into exile, emerging once again in Lithuania in 1989.
Lithuanians are a Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another two millions make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, and Canada. Their native language is Lithuanian, one of only two surviving members of the Baltic language family along with Latvian. According to the census conducted in 2021, 84.6% of the population of Lithuania identified themselves as Lithuanians, 6.5% as Poles, 5.0% as Russians, 1.0% as Belarusians, and 1.1% as members of other ethnic groups. Most Lithuanians belong to the Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the northern part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Lutherans.
Russification, or Russianization, is a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians, whether involuntarily or voluntarily, give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian culture and the Russian language.
Lithuania Minor, or Prussian Lithuania, is a historical ethnographic region of Prussia, where Prussian Lithuanians lived, now located in Lithuania and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia. Lithuania Minor encompassed the northeastern part of the region and got its name from the territory's substantial Lithuanian-speaking population. Prior to the invasion of the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, the main part of the territory later known as Lithuania Minor was inhabited by the tribes of Skalvians and Nadruvians. The land depopulated during the incessant war between Lithuania and the Teutonic Order. The war ended with the Treaty of Melno and the land was repopulated by Lithuanian newcomers, returning refugees, and the remaining indigenous Baltic peoples; the term Lithuania Minor appeared for the first time between 1517 and 1526.
Polonization is the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular the Polish language. This happened in some historic periods among non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially under the influence of Poland.
Russians in the Baltic states is a broadly defined subgroup of the Russian diaspora who self-identify as ethnic Russians, or are citizens of Russia, and live in one of the three independent countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. As of 2021, there were nearly 900,000 ethnic Russians in the three countries, having declined from ca 1.7 million in 1989, the year of the last census during the 1944–1991 Soviet occupation of the three Baltic countries.
The Poles in Lithuania, estimated at 183,000 people in the Lithuanian census of 2021 or 6.5% of Lithuania's total population, are the country's largest ethnic minority.
The Lithuanian minority in Poland consists of 8,000 people living chiefly in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, in the north-eastern part of Poland. The Lithuanian embassy in Poland notes that there are about 15,000 people in Poland of Lithuanian ancestry.
Lithuanization is a process of cultural assimilation, where Lithuanian culture or its language is voluntarily or forcibly adopted.
Following centuries of relative ethnic diversity, the population of modern Poland has become nearly completely ethnically homogeneous Polish as a result of the radically altered borders as well as both the Nazi German and Soviet Russian or Polish Communist campaigns of genocide, expulsion and deportation during and after World War II in the country, in addition to the earlier long processes of Polonization. Nevertheless, multiple ethnic minorities of various origin remain in Poland today, including some newly arrived or grown in size in recent decades.
The government of Lithuania has made provision for ethnic minorities since 1918. A substantial Jewish group that existed up to World War II was almost eliminated in the Holocaust. The Census of 2011 showed that 15.8% of inhabitants belonged to ethnic minorities: the two largest groups were the Poles and the Russians, although the proportions had decreased since independence in 1989. Other minorities include the Samogitians - not classified in the Census - and the historically important Latvian-speaking Kursenieki.
The three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were re-occupied in 1944–1945 by the Soviet Union (USSR) following the German occupation. The Baltic states regained independence in 1990–1991.
Polish autonomy in the Vilnius Region was an idea developed among the Polish minority in Lithuania in 1988, when that country was regaining its independence from the Soviet Union.
The Languages of Poland include Polish – the language of the indigenous population – and those of immigrants and their descendants. Polish is the only official language recognized by the country's constitution and the majority of the country's population speak it as a native language or use it for home communication. Deaf communities in Poland use Polish Sign Language, which belongs to the German family of Sign Languages.
European Foundation of Human Rights or EFHR is an organization established in 2010 in Lithuania in response to the increasing number of human rights violations within the country of Lithuania, and more specifically regarding the rights of ethnic minorities.