Southernmost of the three Baltic states. The name Lithuania originally referred to a grand duchy established along the Baltic coast to the northeast of Poland around 1250. By the mid-fourteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had expanded into a large state, including substantial territories that today are part of Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine. In 1386, it was joined to Poland in a personal union; the same monarch occupied the thrones of the two states. In 1569, Lithuania confederated formally with Poland in the Union of Lublin, forming a state often called the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita). With the Polish partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795, virtually all of the historic Lithuanian lands were incorporated into the Russian Empire.
