LITHUANIA

In the course of the nineteenth century, the general understanding of the name Lithuania underwent significant transformation as the twin doctrines of national self-determination and popular sovereignty spread throughout Europe. Before the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been a large multinational political entity. In the nineteenth century, "Lithuania" had no clear administrative identity, and the Russian government did not recognize the name Litva (Lithuania). In the twentieth century an independent Lithuanian state emerged, significantly smaller than the grand duchy had been, but with a clear eponymous ethnic majority. This evolution left behind the material for considerable controversy as to Lithuania's proper geographic boundaries.

After the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), the territory on the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea that now makes up Lithuania lay divided under three administrations. The bulk of it became part of the Northwest Region of the Russian Empire, a region that the tsarist government insisted was historically Russian. The southwestern part of the territory was included in the Congress Kingdom of Poland, also ruled by Tsar Alexander I of Russia. The western part, including the port then known as Memel but now called Klaip?da, had been a part of East Prussia since the fifteenth century.

national diversity

The administrative center of the Northwest Region and the cultural center of the region was the city of Vilnius (in Polish, Wilno; in Russian and Yiddish, Vilna), which historically had a mixed population. Although it became an important railroad hub, it did not share in the industrialization of the Russian Empire. It stood close to the border between the Russian and German empires, and therefore tsarist authorities deliberately limited its economic growth. Estimates of the ethnic makeup of the city have varied widely. According to the Russian census of 1897, Jews constituted a plurality of the population (40 percent); a German census in 1916 reported a Polish majority (50.1 percent). For Lithuanians, the city was their historic capital; for Jews it was the "Jerusalem of the North"; for Poles it was a regional center of Polish culture. Eventually Belarusans also raised claim to the city. As thoughts of national self-determination developed at the end of the nineteenth century, the city inevitably became an apple of discord.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Polish culture dominated among the nobility of the region, the cities, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy. If somehow called upon to explain their identity, upper-class inhabitants of the region would probably have called themselves "Lithuanians who speak Polish." The population offered strong support to the Polish risings of 1830–1831 and 1863 against Russian rule. After 1863 the Russian administration in the Northwest Region devoted considerable effort to encouraging and pushing Lithuanians to reject traditional Polish influences. Nevertheless Poles remained, to the eve of World War I, a significant political, economic, and cultural force in Lithuanian affairs.

Standing rather apart from the power struggles between Russian administrators and Polish nobility and church hierarchs was the Jewish population of the region, concentrated mostly in cities and villages. Jews had been migrating to this region since the thirteenth century, and Vilna had become a focal point for a distinctive "Litvak" culture, with its own traditions and speaking Yiddish. In the nineteenth century, this region constituted the northern part of the Pale of Settlement, the area to which the Russian government sought to restrict the Jewish population; Jews needed special permission to live in Russian cities outside the Pale. In the middle of the century, many Jews attempted to assimilate into Russian culture, but by the end of the century, stimulated by the growth of the government's anti-Jewish policies, new political-cultural trends were developing, in particular a Jewish working-class movement and Zionism, the idea of creating a new Jewish homeland in the Middle East.

Over the previous centuries ethnic Lithuanian culture had survived basically among the peasantry, most of whom worked as serfs until their emancipation in 1861. A modern national consciousness developed among some lesser nobles in the first half of the century, but a mass movement could take root only after the emancipation. In the aftermath of the rising of 1863, the Russian government encouraged Lithuanian peasants by granting them relatively favorable terms in acquiring land and also by awarding places to the children in schools previously open only to Poles.

At the same time, in an effort to draw the Lithuanians away from Polish influences, in 1864 the authorities banned the publication of Lithuanian texts in Latin characters, demanding instead the use of Cyrillic characters. When the Lithuanians resisted, this amounted to a ban on the publication of Lithuanian books and newspapers. The Russian government lifted the ban only in 1904, after it had become clear that smugglers, enshrined in Lithuanian memory as "book carriers," had undermined whatever hopes the tsarist authorities had placed in the measure. The language and the Roman Catholic religion became fundamental pillars of the growing Lithuanian national consciousness.

The life of Jonas Basanavi?ius (1851–1927), hailed as the "Patriarch of the Lithuanian National Renaissance," illustrated the development of Lithuanian national consciousness and at the same time typified the consequences of tsarist policies. As a student, Basanavi?ius attended a school previously closed to Lithuanians; he studied medicine at Moscow University on a special scholarship for Lithuanians; he then served the Russian government by working as a doctor in the new state of Bulgaria. In 1883 he published the first Lithuanian national newspaper, Aušra (The dawn), which was printed in East Prussia (then part of the German Empire) and then smuggled into Lithuania.

As Basanavi?ius's service in Bulgaria showed, the Lithuanian intelligentsia that emerged after the emancipation of the peasants had only limited possibilities for working within their native region. A typical peasant household might well plan that the first son would inherit the land and the second son should become a priest. The priest could work in Lithuania, and having no children, in turn could contribute to the education of nephews and nieces. In order to remain in Lithuania, however, the nephews and nieces might have to plan to be free-practicing doctors or lawyers. Even artists might not find an audience and therefore have to seek it elsewhere, as did the composer-painter M. K. ?iurlionis (1875–1911), who went to St. Petersburg to make his career.

social and political development

The cities and towns of Lithuania had no significant industry to draw the young people wanting to leave the land. Tsarist policies limited the region's industrial development, and therefore to find work migrants had to travel to other cities in the empire or even go abroad. After 1880, the expanding industrial society in the United States attracted a growing number of immigrants from Lithuania, including Jews. About one-fifth of the Lithuanians who traveled to the United States eventually returned to the homeland, whereas the Jewish migrants, who tended to come to the United States as families, had no intention of returning. The Lithuanian immigrants in the United States contributed extensively to the flow of illegal literature into the homeland, but the new intelligentsia there expressed great fears that the nation was losing its dynamic young power.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscope of political parties and groupings existed in the region. Lithuanians participated actively in the Russian Duma, even forming a voting coalition with Jews in the Kovno (Kaunas) gubernija (administrative unit) to assure the election of Lithuanian and Jewish deputies. The Lithuanians favored social and economic reform and tended to split as much over attitudes toward the role of priests in society as over any other question. Lithuanian Poles split along the same lines as their fellow nationals in the Kingdom of Poland, while Lithuanian Jews tended to split between conservatives, emphasizing religious considerations and the use of Hebrew, and socialists, who favored a more secular life and the use of Yiddish.

When war came in 1914, very few anticipated that in the next four years all three empires that had participated in the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would collapse, and that an independent Lithuanian state would rise. Poles, seeking their own independence, believed that Lithuania should be a part of their new creation. Some Lithuanians at first considered the possibility of recreating a multinational state along the lines of the pre-partition grand duchy, but eventually, while still under German occupation, a distinctively Lithuanian national administration began to take form.

The exact boundaries of the Lithuanian national state became a matter of controversy. There had been no clear political-social-economic-cultural unit identified as Lithuania in the nineteenth century, and therefore, in the restructuring of eastern Europe after the war, Lithuania found itself in a bitter clash with Poland, particularly over the city of Vilnius and its environs. Lithuanians claimed to have the support of the Jewish population in the city, but the Poles had the superior military force and seized the city. The controversy became a major factor in the political instability in eastern Europe throughout the period between the world wars.

See alsoFinland and the Baltic Provinces; Nationalism; Poland; Russia; Ukraine.

bibliography

Aleksandravi?ius, Egidijus, and Antanas Kulakauskas. Car?valdžioje: XIX amžiaus Lietuva. Vilnius, Lithuania, 1996. A major study by two Lithuanian historians that won a Polish historical prize in 2004; also available in a Polish translation.

Atamukas, Solomonas. Lietuvos žyd? kelias. Vilnius, Lithuania, 1998. A scholarly history of the Jews in Lithuania.

Senn, Alfred Erich. The Great Powers, Lithuania, and the Vilna Question, 1920–1928. Leiden, Netherlands, 1966. Deals with the Polish-Lithuanian rivalry for the possession of the city of Vilnius.

——. Jonas Basanavi?ius: Patriarch of the Lithuanian National Renaissance. Newtonville, Mass., 1980. A biography of a key figure in the development of Lithuanian national consciousness.

Wandycz, Piotr S. The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795–1918. Seattle, Wash., 1974. Offers a Polish interpretation of Lithuania's history in the nineteenth century.

Alfred E. Senn