PuńskPuńsk puńsk (Punskas) is a village in the Podlaskie Voivodeship in northeastern Poland, seat of the Gmina Puńsk in the Sejny County. It is located only from the border with Lithuania. The oldest traces of humans in Puńsk territory date back to about 10 000 years BC. In the early medieval ages it was inhabited by the Baltic Yotvingian and Sudovian peoples. In the 13th century, the Teutonic Knights mostly exterminated the local Balts with only few of them surviving. Nowadays only some castle hills (e.g.
1926 Lithuanian coup d'étatThe 1926 Lithuanian coup d'état (Lithuanian: 1926-ųjų perversmas) was a military coup d'état in Lithuania that resulted in the replacement of the democratically elected government with a Nationalist regime led by Antanas Smetona. The coup took place on 17 December 1926 and was largely organized by the military; Smetona's role remains the subject of debate. The coup brought the Lithuanian Nationalist Union, the most conservative party at the time, to power. Previously it had been a fairly new and insignificant nationalistic party.
Poles in LithuaniaThe Poles in Lithuania (Polacy na Litwie, Lietuvos lenkai), also called Lithuanian Poles, 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. During the Polish–Lithuanian union, there was an influx of Poles into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the gradual Polonization of its elite and upper classes. At the end of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, almost all of Lithuania's nobility, clergy, and townspeople spoke Polish and adopted Polish culture, while still maintaining a Lithuanian identity.
