Lithuanian nationalism and the Vilnius question, 1883-1940

239 Pages·2015·54.65 MB·English

by  Mačiulis Dangiras, Staliūnas Darius

Dangiras Maciulis and Darius Staliunas
Lithuanian Nationalism
and the Vilnius Question,
1883-1940
VERLAG HERDER-INSTTTUT • MARBURG -2015
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Umschlagbilder: links: Cover of the journal „Trimitas“ (Trumpet) of the Riflemen’s Union of
Lithuania. Trimitas, 1930, no. 41
rechts: The first watch of Lithuanian soldiers at the tower of Gediminas Castle.
10 28 1939. LNM
ISBN 978-3-87969-401-3
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................. 1
I Under the Rule of the Romanovs........................................................................ 6
II In the Vortex of the First World War................................................................... 45
III A Time of Changes: 1918-1923............................................................................ 63
IV How to Liberate the Capital? (1923-1939)........................................................... 92
V The Recovery of the Capital: 1939-1940.............................................................. 171
In Lieu of a Conclusion............................................................................................... 200
Zusammenfassung........................................................................................................ 207
List of abbreviations.................................................................................................... 210
Bibliography................................................................................................................ 212
Index............................................................................................................................. 234
V
Introduction
There are few cities in Europe which are so mythologized
as Vilnius. I have in mind the stories taken from the
past, which do not necessarily have to correspond to the
facts. The history of this city is so peculiar that it simply
asks to be transferred to the space of a fairy-tale, which
has been done many a time already and the stories dif­
fered no matter who they were told by: Lithuanians,
Poles, Jews or Belarusians.
Czeslaw Milosz1
From the beginning of the 14th century till the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Com­
monwealth, Vilnius was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and at the same
time the cultural and economical centre of the state.2 At the end of the 19th century
Vilnius was one of the regional centres of the western borderlands of the Russian Em­
pire, with about 150,000 inhabitants. What illustrates the official status of Vilnius as
a regional centre best is that until 1912 it was the centre of the governor-generalship.
While in the middle of the 19th century, particularly in the 1860s, the imperial authori­
ties sought to turn this city into a centre of Russian power and carry out so-called Rus­
sification in it, in later decades we see a clear tendency of lessening Vilnius’s influence
(an illustration of this could be the separation of the three provinces that were referred
to as Belarusian provinces from the Vilnius governor-generalship in 1869-1870, or the
abolishment of the governor-generalship itself in 1912). This desire of the imperial au­
thorities to decrease Vilnius’s influence in the region was related to the conviction that
this city had remained a bastion of Polish culture.3 A Russian University was not even
founded in the city, as the authorities feared that the Poles could become established in
it. At the same time, as the former capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the largest
city of the region that had an institution of higher education that had operated for a long
1 Milosz, pp. 148-149.
2 This research was funded by a grant (No VAT-48/2012) from the Research Council of Lithua­
nia.
3 Staliunas, An Awkward City, pp. 222-243.
1
time (until 1832), and the location of many different cultural and scientific institutions,
Vilnius was the informal capital of the region for different national groups.4
According to the 1897 general census of the Russian Empire, the percentage of the
Jews in Vilnius accounted for 40 per cent, that of the Poles constituted 30.9 per cent the
Russians 20 per cent the number of the Belarusians 4.2 per cent, while the percentage of
the Lithuanians stood only at 2.1 per cent.5 The data concerning the national make-up
of the residents of the city of Vilnius collected on different occasions at the beginning
of the 20th century, or the results of the election to the local government or Russian
State Dumas were not very pleasing for Lithuanians: due to the small number of Lith­
uanian voters, Lithuanian figures had no possibilities to be elected to these institutions.
The fact that Lithuanian activists also had no allies in this struggle, as will be shown in
this book, also complicated the situation. Leaders representing one or another nation­
al group of Lithuania did not approve of the political programme of the Lithuanians,
which provided for the creation of territorial autonomy first and later that of an inde­
pendent state “within its ethnographic boundaries” with Vilnius as its capital.
Several attested-to fragments of speeches or conversations of Lithuanian public fig­
ures of that time recorded the complicated situation of the Lithuanians in Vilnius at
the beginning of the 20th century. According to one of the Lithuanian activists, Petras
Klimas, at a charity evening organised by the Lithuanian Society for Support of War
Victims at the beginning of 1915, Father Juozas Baksys first looked at the Lithuanian
social activists sitting in the first rows and then raised his eyes to the ceiling and sighed
in unison with the future President of Lithuania Antanas Smetona: “If the ceiling of
Mikalauja tumbled over now, all of Lithuanianness would disappear in Vilnius...”6
Petras Leonas, after the First World War had come to an end, joked about the situation
in Vilnius as follows: “it would suffice for a group of armed “peoviaks” to arrive in a
large motor-car and take away us, six ministers, plus the Presidium of the Council, and
there would be no Lithuania”.7
Other circumstances also show that the Lithuanian social activists understood the
complexity of the ethno-demographic and political situation. At the beginning of the
20th century, some activists, first and foremost those who belonged to the Catholic
current, suggested that Kaunas should be declared the centre for gathering Lithuanians
together, and not Vilnius.8 Nonetheless, irrespective of all these circumstances, the ma­
jority of the leaders of the Lithuanian National Movement saw Vilnius as the capital of
modem Lithuania; hence, it is important to make clear what arguments determined this
persistent desire of the leaders of Lithuanian Nationalism to create a nation state with
Vilnius as its capital. The Lithuanians’ persistence can only be understood in relation
4 Wendland, Region ohne Nationalist, pp. 77-100.
5 It should be underlined that the “native language” rather than the “nationality” was recorded.
6 Klimas, p. 54. The hall at the Church of Nicholas is meant.
7 Petras Leonas: Mano pergyvenimai [My Experiences], in: LMAVB RS, f. 117, b. 1204,
1. 401. Peoviaks are members of POW (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa [Polish Military Or­
ganisation]).
8 Gudaitis, p. 16; Aleksandravicius, p. 162; Staliunas, Kauno vizija, pp. 59-64.
2
with the Lithuanian national project, first and foremost the geographical image of a
future Lithuania.
The arguments of the nationalists’ claims to a “national territory” can be generalised
in three groups. The first group includes arguments of a cultural-political nature (the
ethnographic principle; arguments that in one way or another could be understood as
espousing “historical rights” to an area); the second group includes arguments connect­
ed to power (the aim to occupy as large a territory as possible as well as strategically
important areas or economically significant centres); and finally the third group, which
uses, geographical arguments (references to “natural” borders, which are supposedly
marked by natural objects such as water bodies, mountains, its presence on an island,
etc.).9 In this book, we shall try to determine which motives were important for Lithu­
anians and how they tried to implement the idea of a national Lithuania with Vilnius.
Researchers also sometimes notice that the ties of national groups can vary with
different parts of what could be called the “national space” or “geo-body”10: we can
separate these parts into the core, the semi-core and the periphery. Generally the main
places of memory (a term coined by Pierre Nora) are tied to the core. Nationalists be­
come much more strongly attached to the core than to the periphery, thus their readiness
to fight for it is always the greatest.11 As has been aptly noticed in studies on national­
ism, for a nationalist it seems that “national territory” is as natural a thing for a person
as having a nose and two ears, and a loss of a part of one’s “national territory” actually
is much worse than simply losing an ear, because in the case of this “national body”
this lost part finds itself on someone else’s “body” which it does not belong to at all.12
The attitude towards the Vilnius issue in the context of the Lithuanian Nationalism
can be interpreted in many ways. Historians who favour the primordialist approach
would consider such a problem as non-existent, as from the beginning of the national
movement all Lithuanians, including the uneducated masses, knew that Vilnius had
been, was and would be the capital of Lithuania. Those following a constructivist ap­
proach would take interest in the arguments of the leaders of the Lithuanian National
Movement and most probably wonder at what at first glance might seem like the irra­
tional choices made by the Lithuanians. The authors of this book favour the ethno-sym-
bolist approach (represented first and foremost by the works of Anthony D. Smith) and
in observing it are obligated not only to analyse the arguments of Lithuanian nation­
alists uttered in support of the thesis that Vilnius should be the capital of Lithuanian
Lithuania, but also take historical tradition into consideration.
The principal objective of the book is to analyse the emergence, evolution and im­
plementation among the masses of the idea of Vilnius as the capital of modem Lithu­
ania, which was nurtured in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century (until 1940).
While analysing the said problems, we will unavoidably have to discuss the strategies
of the symbolic appropriation of Vilnius employed by the Lithuanian intellectual and
9 Colin/Smith, pp. 502-518; Porter, pp. 639-653; Schweiger.
10 WlNICHAKUL, p. X.
11 White.
12 Billig, p. 75.
3
political elite.13 Alongside the symbolic takeover of Vilnius, its Lithuanisation, i.e. the
aim that the majority of the city’s inhabitants would be Lithuanians, was also of great
importance. Lithuanisation of Vilnius was a significant part of the Lithuanian national
project as the character of the state, in line with the nationalistic way of thinking, is for
the most part determined by its capital. The nationalists of the time found it hard to im­
agine a national state with the capital, i.e. the power centre, in which the titular nation
makes up no more than a few percent of its citizens. This goal was achievable not only
by encouraging Lithuanians to relocate to the historical capital, but also “reminding”
denationalized citizens of their ethnic origin. Therefore, this book will inevitably dis­
cuss the efforts of Lithuanians to change the make-up of the inhabitants of Vilnius in
their favour.
This book does not analyse in detail the attitudes held by the Jews, Poles, Belaru­
sians or Russians of the time, but rather to briefly make it clear what kind of counter-ar­
guments the Lithuanian claims to Vilnius were up against. The primary focus here will
lie on the consideration of the Lithuanian case in as much detail as possible.
Thus, this book belongs to the field of nationalism studies. The term nationalism is
understood in the book as an analytical category bearing no negative connotations. It
can be perceived as a social activity aimed at the implementation of a national project
(the ideal), i.e. a nation state, encompassing all fellow-countrymen and nationalizing
them, or, in a narrower sense, as the ideology of the above-described activity. The
phrase national movement is a narrower term which defines a social movement that
pursues the implementation of the above-mentioned ideals until the nation state is cre­
ated, and later passing the function on to the nationalizing nationalism, namely the
political and intellectual elite of the nation state which strives for the said involvement
of the masses.
As the epicentre of the research will focus on the analysis of certain images, Lithu­
anian discourse will be given much attention. Moreover, as the idea of a modem Lith­
uania with Vilnius was rather concrete and leaders of the Lithuanian Nationalism made
attempts to embody it, this research will unavoidably deal with events traditionally
understood as political history, including the history of international relations.14 Neither
traditionally understood political history nor the problems of international relations
play an important role in this book and do not harbour claims to originality, but serve
only as a context. Besides, the book will extensively analyse the process of the nation­
13 The strategies of the symbolic appropriation of Vilnius have already received attention from
historians: Miknys, Vilnius, pp. 108-120; Wendland, Stadgeschichtskulturen, pp. 31-60;
Bumblauskas/Liekis/Potasenko; Smalianchuk, pp. 327-343; D^browski, p. 271; Fish­
man, pp. 157-170; Zasztowt, pp. 87-94; Nikzentaitis, pp. 217-227; Weeks, The War,
pp. 59-74.
14 In this case we can base ourselves on an abundant amount of historiography: Senn; Zepkaite,
Diplomatija; idem, Vilniaus; Tarka, Konfrontacja; Laurinavicius, Lietuvos, 1992; idem,
Politika ir diplomatija; idem, Litewska, pp. 33-64; Lossowski, Stosunki 1918-1920; idem,
Litwa; idem, Stosunki 1921-1939; idem, Ultimatum; Blomeier, pp. 112-116, 147-160; Gim-
zauskas/Svarauskas; Kasparavicius/Libera; Kasparavicius, Don Kichotas, pp. 49-72;
idem, Dvi; idem, Tarp; Zulys, pp. 99-112; Liekis, 1939; Vilkelis; Suvalkg sutartis; Zalys,
vol. 1.
4
alization of the masses. Hence, this research has little to do with the history of towns,
however, is akin to research that focuses on various practices of socialization (through
various myths, cults, festivals, rituals, etc.) that are utilized by national elites.15
The chapters of this book are arranged in chronological order. The First Chapter
analyses why in the late period of the Russian Empire the leaders of Lithuanian Nation­
alism decided to declare Vilnius the centre/capital of national Lithuania, what problems
they faced and how they intended to implement this idea. The Second Chapter deals
with the same problems during the years of the First World War. At that time a new
player appeared - the German occupation government, which greatly contributed to
at least temporary strengthening the positions of the Lithuanians in Vilnius. The Third
Chapter, encompassing the period between 1918 and 1923, is devoted to the tradition­
ally understood political history more than any other part of the book. The often-chang­
ing political situation clearly reveals the determination of the Lithuanian political elite
to make Vilnius the capital of the nation state. During the period from the end of the
19th to the beginning of the 1920s the idea of Vilnius as the capital of modem Lithua­
nia became undoubtedly established as one of the main constituent parts of Lithuanian
Nationalism; what’s more, Vilnius became part of Poland, so in the Fourth Chapter cov­
ering the period from 1923 to 1939, most attention will be focused on how nationalising
nationalism16 (the Lithuanian political elite) instilled this idea in the masses. It is known
from historiography that the Vilnius Liberation Union (VLU) was especially active in
this sphere, so special attention will be given to it. The activity of Vilnius’s Lithuani­
ans, and particularly the support provided to it by the Lithuanian government, will be
of significance to us insofar as how much their activity was realised in the rhetoric of
the Lithuanian Nationalism as an argument substantiating the claims of the Lithuanians
to Vilnius. The last (fifth) chapter of the book is concerned with how the Lithuanian
political elite, having received Vilnius from Stalin in 1939, tried to make it a Lithuanian
city. In the last part of the book we shall not only sum up the main conclusions of the
research, but also briefly review what fate befell Vilnius as the capital after 1940.
We have based our present study not only on earlier research but also on abundant
sources. In analysing the formation of the idea of Vilnius as the centre/capital of na­
tional Lithuania, and the responses of the Lithuanian political and intellectual elite to
the change in the political situation tied to the status of Vilnius, we based our findings
mostly on the periodical press. Newspapers and magazines served as a highly important
source of this study in investigating many other themes. They were what created the
discourse about Vilnius as the capital of national Lithuania. Diaries or other egodoc-
uments will play only a secondary role. We shall make use of unpublished archival
sources in discussing the activity of the VLU and the policy of the Lithuanian authori­
ties in Vilnius in 1939-1940.
Mosse; Franqois/Siegrist/Vogel; Hein.
16 Brubaker.
5
I Under the Rule of the Romanovs
The birth and spread of the idea
The idea that Vilnius was not only a historical capital of Lithuania but that it is also
important to modem Lithuanians was formed at the very beginning of the modem Lith­
uanian National Movement (nationalism). The Lithuanian National Movement could,
in a symbolic sense, be dated back to 1883 when the illegal newspaper Ausra (Dawn)
(1883-1886) intended for the Lithuanians of the Russian Empire began being published
in the so-called Prussian Lithuania. One of the activists of that movement, Mecislovas
Davainis-Silvestraitis, in his poem Tevynainiu giesme (The Song of the Countrymen)
published in 1884, remembers Vilnius not only as “our” old “castle throne” [sosto pilis]
but also expressed hope ”God bless us to have Vilnius/to hear mother’s tongue spoken
there”.1 It is true, in the poet’s opinion the reader might find the term “throne castle”
difficult to understand so it is clarified with a footnote explaining that this means Vilni­
us; and “to acquire Vilnius” most probably was understood rather moderately there - as
the firm entrenchment of the Lithuanian language in the city’s public life. Later the term
“castle throne” (sosto pilis, sostapilis; a capital) was frequently used in the Lithuanian
press without any explanations as to what town it referred to. In fact, it was quite rare
that Vilnius as a historical or future capital was referred to in the Lithuanian publica­
tions at the end of the 19th century. Considerations of the publishers of the newspaper
Ausra or persons related to the newspaper about the potential centre of the Lithuanian
national movement might serve as a confirmation of these statements.
The problem of where the centre of the national movement was to be located had
not been formulated as such at the time Ausra was published, but there were discus­
sions about where it would be possible to move the publication of the newspaper after
the imperial regime had changed, or which town could host the founding of a centre
for a scientific society. Usually either Kaunas or Vilnius was mentioned in these dis­
cussions (sometimes the priority was given to Kaunas)2 while sometimes only Kaunas
1 Vyturys [Mecislovas Davainis-Silvestraitis], p. 10.
2 [Jonas Basanavicius]: Is istorijos musq atsigaiveliavimo. (1873-1883). Atsiminimai
Dr. Jono Basanaviciaus [From the History of our Rebirth. (1873-1883). Reminiscences by
Dr. Jonas Basanavicius], in: Varpas 3 (1903), p. 71; Apie insteigim^ Lietuviszkos moksfu
6
was mentioned.3 Kaunas as a potential centre to carry out activities for the Lithuanian
National Movement in the projects of the Ausra publishers testified to the fact that more
attention was devoted to the practical rather than symbolic aspects.4 Vilnius was seen as
a city that was far too alien to Lithuanians: “Today Vilnius is not mine”, Davainis-Sil-
vestraitis5 wrote with sadness. The above-cited poem Tevynainiu giesme is also imbued
with similar melancholy: “It is sorrowful for a Lithuanian to be in Vilnius;/There is
grave upon grave there;/He sees the destruction of the language there;/Others achieved
greatness there.”6 However, it is in Ausra already that we find texts that deals with the
earlier activity of the Lithuanians in Vilnius. Even the publication of Davainis-Silves-
traitis himself contains some optimistic gleams:
Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania that has lots of memories from our past, has not disappeared
for all of us altogether. Though Polish and Jewish, as well as Russian, are languages that
reign there, all the Catholics consider themselves to be Lithuanian. The Catholics speaking
the Polish language are happy to be of Lithuanian origin and say that the Lithuanian lan­
guage is the language of their ancestors.7
In 1885, the ethnic composition of the inhabitants of Vilnius province was published
in the Ausra. It showed that Lithuanians accounted for nearly a half of the inhabitants
and constituted the largest ethnic group in the province.8 These figures could also be
treated as giving hope that in the long run it would be possible to Lithuanianise the
historical capital.
The fact that little attention was paid to the theme of Vilnius, as well as to this prov­
ince, on the pages of both liberal and Catholic illegal Lithuanian press can also be illus­
trated by the amount of correspondence of this territory. For example, the authors from
Vilnius province accounted only for 10 per cent of all those who wrote in Ausra.9 The
bendrystes (draugystes) [On Founding Lithuanian Science Community], in: Ausra 4 (June
1883), p. 91; Gromatnycia [Writings], in: Ausra 4 (June 1883), p. 119.
3 Jonas Basanavicius’ letter of 24 August 1882 (new style) to M. Sernas, in: Kapsukas,
Rastai, vol. 10, p. 483.
4 We shall come back to Kaunas’ alternative again.
5 Veversys [Davainis-Silvestraitis]: Lietuva ir jos sunus [Lithuania and its Sons], in: Ausra
1 (January 1885), p. 20.
6 Vyturys [Mecislovas Davainis-Silvestraitis], p. 11.
7 Veversis [Mecislovas Davainis-Silvestraitis]: Vilnius, in: Ausra 10 and 11 (October and
November 1884), p. 374. Similarly: Veversys [idem]: Vilnius, in: Ausra 6 (June 1885),
p. 167. Such interpretations are also found in memoirs. Famous Lithuanian Social Democrat
Kipras Bielinis recalls the situation in Vilnius at the beginning of the 20th century as follows:
“When living in Vilnius, with the exception of the parts of the town inhabited by the Jews
where I did not try to speak Lithuanian, I managed to speak Lithuanian with everybody; but
where 1 was not understood or where people did not know how to answer, most often they
explained that they were Lithuanians but they could not speak Lithuanian”: Bielinis, Penk-
tieji, p. 212.
8 Isz Lietuvos [From Lithuania], in: Ausra 4 and 5 (April and May 1885), p. 138.
9 Ochmanski, p. 138.
7