The Freedom Monument in Kaunas was unveiled in 1928, for the tenth anniversary of the restoration of Lithuania's independence. Juozas Zikaras designed the statue, and Vladimiras Dubeneckis designed the pedestal. Kaunas was then the temporary capital. The bronze was cast in Germany, and the whole monument is 40.5 feet (12.35 meters) tall.
Soviet authorities demolished it in the summer of 1950. The damaged statue went to the History Museum and was later kept at the Čiurlionis Museum. Sculptor Bronius Petrauskas restored it in 1966, and it returned to its original site on February 16, 1989.
A reduced plaster copy, restored by Jonas Stanislovas Juodišius, is in the White Hall of the Presidential Palace in Vilnius. The figure also appears on the 1928 Independence Medal, which Zikaras designed, and on a 2000 commemorative coin.
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