Lithuanians

The Lithuanian people are one of the Baltic ethnic groups. They are indigenous to Lithuania, which is home to around 2,378,118 of their people today. There are an additional million or more people who belong to the Lithuanian diaspora. The majority of these people live in countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, and Canada. Their mother tongue is Lithuanian, which together with Latvian is one of the Baltic linguistic family's only two surviving members. The population of Lithuania in 2021 was counted, and the results showed that 84.6% of the people classified themselves as Lithuanians, 6.5% as Poles, 5.0% as Russians, 1.0% as Belarusians, and 1.1% as members of other ethnic groups. The majority of people in Lithuania are members of the Catholic Church, although the Lietuvininkai people who resided in the northern region of what is now East Prussia before to World War II were mostly Evangelical Lutherans.

Lithuania has the most consistent demographic characteristics of any of the Baltic republics. The census that was carried out in 2001 revealed that 83.45% of the population identified themselves as being of Lithuanian ethnicity, 6.74% as being of Polish ethnicity, 6.31% as being of Russian ethnicity, 1.23% as being of Belarusian ethnicity, and 2.27% as being members of other ethnic groups including Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, Tatars, Latvians, Romani, Estonians, Crimean Karaites, Scandinavians, etc.

The majority of Poles live in and around the Vilnius County area. Both the Vilnius District Municipality and the aalininkai District Municipality are home to disproportionately significant Polish populations. The Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania, which is a political party founded on an ethnic minority, is able to exercise political power as a result of this concentration. It is well knowledge that the party's excessively pro-Polish political agenda is the source of tension between the people of Lithuania and Poland. However, during the course of the last decade, it has only had one or two seats in the parliament of Lithuania. As a result, it is increasingly engaged in local politics as a result of holding a majority in a few councils of smaller municipalities.

In spite of the fact that they number close to as many people as Poles, Russians are far more widely dispersed and do not have a dominant political party. The Visaginas Municipality is home to the most notable population (52%) on the island. The vast majority of them are Russian nationals who relocated specifically to take jobs at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. Following the country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, a lot of people of Russian ancestry departed Lithuania.

There have been many changes in the racial and cultural make-up of Lithuania over its history. The decimation of the Jewish people in Europe during the Holocaust stands out as the most significant shift. A little less than 7.5% of the population was Jewish prior to World War II; the majority of Jewish people lived in urban and suburban areas and had a substantial amount of influence in the commercial and artistic sectors. They were known as Litvaks and had a deep-rooted culture. Around thirty percent of the people living in Vilnius, sometimes known as the "northern Jerusalem," identified as Jewish. In the years 1941 and 1942 alone, about 75,000 of the country's Jews were exterminated as part of the Holocaust in the territory of Lithuania that was held by the Nazis. Some survived and eventually moved to the United States or Israel. At the present time, there are around 3,200 Jews residing in Lithuania.