HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF EUROPE

Jon Woronoff, Series Editor

Greece, by Thanos M. Veremis and Mark Dragoumis. 1995.

Romania, by Kurt W. Treptow and Marcel Popa. 1996.
United Kingdom: Volume 1, England and the United Kingdom; Volume 2,
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, by Kenneth J. Panton and Keith A.
Cowlard. 1997, 1998.
Hungary, by Steven Béla Várdy. 1997.
Ireland, by Colin Thomas and Avril Thomas. 1997.
Russia, by Boris Raymond and Paul Duffy. 1998.
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, by Zeljan Suster. 1999.
Belgium, by Robert Stallaerts. 1999.
Poland, 2nd edition, by George Sanford. 2003.
Estonia, by Toivo Miljan. 2004.
Ukraine, by Zenon E. Kohut, Bohdan Y. Nebesio, and Myroslav Yurkevich.
2005.
Bulgaria, 2nd edition, by Raymond Detrez. 2006.
Slovakia, 2nd edition, by Stanislav J. Kirschbaum. 2006.
Sweden, 2nd edition, by Irene Scobbie. 2006.
Finland, 2nd edition, by George Maude. 2007.
Georgia, by Alexander Mikaberidze. 2007.
Belgium, 2nd edition, by Robert Stallaerts. 2007.
Moldova, 2nd edition, by Andrei Brezianu and Vlad Spânu. 2007.
Switzerland, by Leo Schelbert. 2007.
Contemporary Germany, by Derek Lewis with Ulrike Zitzlsperger. 2007.
Netherlands, 2nd edition, by Joop W. Koopmans and Arend H. Huussen Jr.
2007.
Slovenia, 2nd edition, by Leopoldina Plut-Pregelj and Carole Rogel. 2007.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2nd edition, by Ante Čuvalo. 2007.
Modern Italy, 2nd edition, by Mark F. Gilbert and K. Robert Nilsson. 2007.
Belarus, 2nd edition, by Vitali Silitski and Jan Zaprudnik. 2007.
Latvia, 2nd edition, by Andrejs Plakans. 2008.
Contemporary United Kingdom, by Kenneth J. Panton and Keith A. Cowlard.
2008.
Norway, by Jan Sjåvik. 2008.
Denmark, 2nd edition, by Alastair H. Thomas. 2009.
France, 2nd edition, by Gino Raymond. 2008.
Spain, 2nd edition, by Angel Smith. 2008.
Iceland, 2nd edition, by Guđmunder Hálfdanarson. 2009.
Turkey, 3rd edition, by Metin Heper and Nur Bilge Criss. 2009.

10_646_Suziedelis.indb i 1/20/11 11:24 AM

 Republic of Macedonia, by Dimitar Bechev. 2009.
Cyprus, by Farid Mirbagheri. 2010.
Austria, 2nd edition, by Paula Sutter Fichtner. 2009.
Modern Greece, by Dimitris Keridis. 2009.
Czech State, 2nd edition, by Rick Fawn and Jiří Hochman. 2010.
Portugal, 3rd edition, by Douglas L. Wheeler and Walter C. Opello Jr. 2010.
Croatia, 3rd edition, by Robert Stallaerts. 2010.
Albania, 2nd edition, by Robert Elsie. 2010.
Malta, 2nd edition, by Uwe Jens Rudolf and Warren G. Berg. 2010.
Armenia, 2nd edition, by Rouben Paul Adalian. 2010.
Russian Federation, by Robert A. Saunders and Vlad Strukov. 2010.
Kosovo, 2nd edition, by Robert Elsie. 2011.
Lithuania, 2nd edition, by Saulius Sužiedėlis. 2011.

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 Historical Dictionary
of Lithuania
Second Edition

Saulius Sužiedėlis

The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
2011

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 Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.scarecrowpress.com

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2011 by Saulius Sužiedėlis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sužiedelis, Saulius, 1945–

Historical dictionary of Lithuania / Saulius Sužiedelis — 2nd ed.
p. cm. — (Historical dictionaries of Europe)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8108-4914-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7536-4
(ebook)
1. Lithuania—History—Encyclopedias. I. Title.
DK505.37.S89 1011
947.93003—dc22 2010040643
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

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 IN MEMORIAM

Simas Sužiedėlis (1903–1985)

Antanina Sužiedėlienė (1904–1995)

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb vi 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Contents

Editor’s Foreword Jon Woronoff ix

Preface xi
Reader’s Note xiii
Acronyms and Abbreviations xv
Maps xix
Chronology xxiii
Introduction 1
THE DICTIONARY 37
Appendixes
1. Pronunciation of Lithuanian Terms 339
2. Lithuanian Rulers, 1251–1572 341
3. Rulers of the Commonwealth Period (1569–1795) 343
4. Lithuanian Political Leaders since 1918 345
5. Peculiarities of Place and Time 349
Glossary 351
Bibliography 353
About the Author 391

vii

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb viii 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Editor’s Foreword

Few countries have undergone the extremes of Lithuania. An expanding and

thriving grand duchy in the 15th century that dwarfed neighboring kingdoms,
it lost territory and shrank during successive wars and partitions until it dis-
appeared. Then, almost miraculously, it was resurrected after World War I,
only to be swallowed up again, and then finally returned as an independent
state only two decades ago. Even under foreign rule, however, the essence of
Lithuania was preserved, as was the hope of its people. Lithuanians currently
have their own country, in which they have had to revamp their political insti-
tutions, reorganize the educational system, revitalize the economy, and deter-
mine new directions in foreign policy. In some ways they have succeeded and
in others not, but they are now more in control than ever of their own destiny.
The unraveling of Lithuania’s history and explanation of its society is done
through a list of acronyms, an introduction, a chronology, and a multitude of
dictionary entries on crucial people, places, and events. The institutions and
traditions of Lithuania are described, as are the people, the language, and
the culture, and the political, economic, and social situations are outlined—a
significant first step toward knowing this old and new country. Finally, the
bibliography provides areas for further study.
The rebirth of independent Lithuania was a pivotal event in the lives of
many Lithuanians, both those who remained in their country and those who
emigrated, including the author, Saulius Sužiedėlis. Although living in the
United States, he has devoted his studies and much of his career to learning
and teaching about Lithuania in particular and Eastern Europe in general:
from a dissertation on the Lithuanian peasantry to studies of World War II
and the Holocaust in Lithuania, as a teacher of history at several colleges, as
a director of an annual conference on genocide, and as professor of history
at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. In addition, Professor Sužiedėlis
has benefited from new opportunities to teach and conduct research in Lithu-
ania itself. The results of his scholarship are reflected in the new edition of
the Historical Dictionary of Lithuania, which provides additional insight into
a small but vibrant country that deserves to be understood more thoroughly.

Jon Woronoff
Series Editor
ix

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb x 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Preface

At the very outset, one should acknowledge the limitations of this Historical
Dictionary of Lithuania. No single volume can encompass the complexity of
a country whose very name has evoked different geographic, political, and
cultural connotations over the centuries. This volume is intended, rather, as
an introduction for the nonspecialist who needs a guide to the most important
mileposts of Lithuania’s past. This raises the problem of selection, which in-
evitably entails omissions when choosing the more significant personalities,
events, and institutions—a process influenced to some degree by the predilec-
tions and even prejudices of the historian. Hopefully, common sense and the
author’s four decades of study in the field have left some mark in the form of
recognizing the essential features of Lithuanian history.
Above all, I have tried to select information that would be of most inter-
est to the educated general reader unfamiliar with Lithuania’s past but with
some knowledge of general European history. A question I have considered
as a guide is this: If a student were reading a general history of Europe, or of
one of Lithuania’s neighbors, which terms would he or she be most likely to
encounter? The items chosen for the dictionary are intended to be representa-
tive and informative about the political, social, and cultural life of Lithuania
at different stages in the country’s history. I have also attempted, wherever
possible, to demonstrate Lithuania’s place in the life of her neighbors within
the broader context of the European past.
Because of Lithuania’s political isolation during the half century before
1990, many people, including some Lithuanians, fail to appreciate that,
historically speaking, the country is as “European” as France and Italy. The
Renaissance and the Reformation, the movements of national Romanticism
and democracy, the Hapsburgs and the Angevins, all are component parts
of Lithuania’s past. At the same time, Lithuania played a major role in the
history of her Orthodox, eastern Slavic Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian
neighbors whose cultural roots are found in Byzantium. In the 16th century,
the Roman Catholic Grand Duke of Lithuania, after attending a Latin Mass,
would announce his decrees in a derivative of Old Church Slavic, the litur-
gical language of the Russian Orthodox Church. I have tried to convey this

xi

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 xii • PREFACE

unique European cultural experience both in the text and in the choice of the
dictionary’s entries.
Lithuania’s history is a multinational one, involving many languages and
hence different versions of toponyms, personal names, and institutional
designations. Even the terms Lithuania and Lithuanian have meant different
things at different times to different people. With a few exceptions, I have
used the present-day spellings of place-names as utilized by the National
Geographic Society, which means employing the current official language
of each region—hence always Vilnius, not Vilna or Wilno; Suwałki, not
Suvalkai. Where useful, I have also provided alternative versions often en-
countered in the literature. In presenting surnames, I have tried to adhere to
the spelling peculiar to a given person’s nationality, except where widely uti-
lized versions in English-language works dictated otherwise (hence Radziwiłł
rather than Radvila or Radvilas). In my experience, attempts to observe
absolute consistency at the expense of common usage, at least in this regard,
can lead to what are unrecognizable concoctions for most Western readers.
It is my pleasure to thank a number of people who assisted me in the pub-
lication of this book. Dr. Rasa Mažeika of Toronto kindly shared her insights
on some of the more complicated aspects of Lithuania’s medieval past. Prof.
William Urban of Monmouth College (Illinois) helped with his specialty,
the Teutonic Knights and Prussia. Prof. K. Paulius Žygas of Arizona State
University assisted me with the history of art and architecture. Prof. Violeta
Kelertas of the Endowed Chair of Lithuanian Studies at the University of
Illinois–Chicago helped me with literary themes. Edvardas Tuskenis of the
Lithuanian Embassy in Washington provided information on Lithuanian poli-
tics of the 1990s. I owe numerous insights and help with some important de-
tails into recent history to many conversations with Dr. Gediminas Rudis, my
friend and colleague at the Lithuanian History Institute in Vilnius. Gerard J.
Sperry provided invaluable expertise with the maps. I am very grateful to the
editor of the Historical Dictionaries series, Jon Woronoff, for his suggestions
and his patience in accepting long delays in the preparation of the manuscript.
But obviously I alone remain responsible for the facts, interpretations, and
errors found herein. I welcome constructive criticism from the readers in the
spirit of learning.
Finally, there are two people who were crucial to my undertaking this task
in the first place. This dictionary is lovingly dedicated to my father, a medi-
evalist trained at the University of Riga, who taught me curiosity and love of
history, and to my mother, who was among the first women university gradu-
ates in independent Lithuania, and who always stressed a profound respect for
learning. Together, both at home and in exile, they lived the joys and sorrows
of the Lithuanian people during the most volatile of centuries.

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 Reader’s Note
Lithuanian Proper Names and Calendar Dates

Lithuanian is a highly inflected language in which endings rather than preposi-

tions indicate grammatical categories, including cases of proper nouns. Thus,
Vilniaus indicates possessive case (“of Vilnius”) for the country’s capital and
Gedimino (“of Gediminas” or “Gediminas’s”), for the grand duke. Readers
should note that surnames of unmarried girls and women commonly end in
the diminutive suffixes -aitė, -ytė, or -ūtė, appended to the root of the family
name; thus, the President of Lithuania elected in 2009, Dalia Grybauskaitė,
is the daughter of Polikarpas Grybauskas. In the same way, for most married
women, the suffix -ienė is attached to the husband’s surname, as in Alma
Adamkienė, wife of President Valdas Adamkus. Some women have chosen
to utilize the simpler -ė ending or even adopted the masculine form of the
surname as a liberating alternative or after emigration, but the traditional
feminine endings are commonly used even in English-language publications.
Before inclusion within the Russian Empire (1795–1915), Catholic Lithu-
ania utilized the same Gregorian calendar as the West. Under the tsars, the
Julian calendar became official in most of the country. Unless indicated oth-
erwise, this dictionary lists dates according to the calendar that was in official
use in a given locale during the event in question. More details on the issue
of comparative calendars are found in appendix 5.

xiii

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb xiv 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Acronyms and Abbreviations

AK Polish: Armja Krajowa (Home Army)

BDPS Lithuanian: Bendras demokratinio pasipriešinimo sąjūdis
(United Movement of Democratic Resistance)
CC Central Committee
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
EG German: Einsatzgruppen (Special Action Group)
EK German: Einsatzkommando (Special Action Commando)
EU European Union
FPO Yiddish: Fareinikte Partizaner Organizatzie (United Parti-
san Organization)
ICECNSORL International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes
of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithu-
ania (Lithuanian: Tarptautinė komisija nacių ir sovietinio
okupacinių rėžimų nusikaltimams įvertinti)
IE Indo-European (language family)
IRO International Refugee Organization
JBS Journal of Baltic Studies
KGB Russian: Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (Commit-
tee for State Security)
LAF Lithuanian: Lietuvių aktyvistų frontas (Lithuanian Activist
Front)
LDDP Lithuanian: Lietuvos demokratinė darbo partija (Lithuanian
Democratic Labor Party)
LF Lithuanian: Lietuvių frontas (Lithuanian Front)
LKDP Lithuanian: Lietuvos krikščionių demokratų partija (Lithu-
anian Christian Democratic Party)
LKP Lithuanian: Lietuvos komunistų partija (Lithuanian Com-
munist Party, LCP)
LLA Lithuanian: Lietuvos laisvės armija (Lithuanian Freedom
Army)
LLKS Lithuanian: Lietuvos laisvės kovotojų sąjūdis (Lithuanian
Freedom Fighters’ Movement)

xv

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 xvi • ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

LMA Lithuanian: Lietuvos mokslų akademija (Lithuanian Acad-

emy of Sciences)
LNP Lithuanian: Lietuvių nacionalistų partija (Lithuanian Na-
tionalist Party)
LPKTS Lithuanian: Lietuvos politinių kalinių ir tremtinių sąjunga
(Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees)
LPS Lithuanian: Lietuvos persitvarkymo sąjūdis (Lithuanian
Movement for Restructuring)
LSDP Lithuanian: Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (Lithuanian
Social Democratic Party)
LTSR Lithuanian: Lietuvos tarybų socialistinė respublika (Lithu-
anian Soviet Socialist Republic)
MOPR Russian: Mezhdunarodnaya organizatsiya pomoshchii revo-
liutsionerom (International Organization to Aid Revolution-
aries)
MVD Russian: Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del (Ministry of Internal
Affairs)
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NS New Style (Gregorian calendar)
NKGB Russian: Narodny kommisariat gosudarstvennoi bezopas-
noti (People’s Commissariat of State Security)
NKVD Russian: Narodny kommisariat vnutrennykh del (People’s
Commissariat of Internal Affairs)
NSDAP German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
(National Socialist German Workers’ Party)
Ober Ost German: Oberbefehlshaber der gesamten deutschen Streit-
kräfte in Osten (Supreme Commander of All German Forces
in the East)
OKH German: Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Com-
mand)
OKW German: Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme Com-
mand of the Armed Forces)
OMON Russian: Otdely militsii osobennogo naznacheniya (Special
Assignment Militia Units)
OS Old Style (Julian calendar)
POW Polish: Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (Polish Military Or-
ganization)
RAD German: Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service)
RSDWP Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party
RSFSR Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
RSHA German: Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Main Office of Reich
Security)

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 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS • xvii

SA German: Sturmabteilung (Storm Trooper Unit)

SD German: Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service)
SS German: Schutzstaffel (Security Staff)
SSR Soviet Socialist Republic
TS-LKD Lithuanian: Tėvynės sąjunga-Lietuvos krikščionys demokra-
tai (Union of the Fatherland-Lithuanian Christian Demo-
crats)
UN United Nations
UNRRA United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
VLIK Lithuanian: Vyriausias Lietuvos išlaisvinimo komitetas (Su-
preme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania)
VPMLL Lithuanian: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros
leidykla (State Publishing House for Political and Scholarly
Literature)
YIVO Yiddish: Yidisher Visenshaftliken Institut (Institute for Jew-
ish Research)

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb xviii 1/20/11 11:24 AM
10_646_Suziedelis.indb xix
The Medieval State: The Grand Duchy of
Lithuania in the Mid-15th Century

1/20/11 11:24 AM
 The Early Modern State: The Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth after the Union of
Lublin (1569)

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb xxi
Republic of Lithuania:
1923–1940 Border
Changes

1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Republic of Lithuania in 2010

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 Chronology

c. 2000 BCE Bronze Age culture spreads to Lithuania.

c. 100 CE Tacitus briefly describes the tribes inhabiting the eastern Baltic
coast in his history titled Germania.
790–900 Viking and Danish raids and incursions among the Baltic tribes
are noted in historical sources.
997 St. Adalbert (Vojtech) is martyred in Prussia.
1009 The name of Lithuania is mentioned for the first time in a historical
source, the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg.
1201–1202 Archbishop Albert founds the city of Riga. Knights of the
Sword begin to subdue Latvian tribes and establish a German presence in the
eastern Baltic.
c. 1230 Teutonic Knights conquer Prussian tribes and begin a campaign to
impose Christianity on the Lithuanians.
1251 Mindaugas adopts Christianity and is crowned King of Lithuania.
1263 Mindaugas is assassinated.
1295 Vytenis ascends to the throne, strengthens the Lithuanian state, and
campaigns against the Teutonic Knights.
1316–1341 Under Grand Duke Gediminas, Lithuania develops diplomatic
ties with the West and expands into the Russian lands.
1345–1377 Grand Duke Algirdas governs Lithuania with his brother
Kęstutis, conquers most of Ukraine, and expands Lithuanian borders east-
ward, twice attacking Moscow.
1382 Kęstutis, Lithuania’s last pagan ruler, is murdered at the castle of
Krėva.

xxiii

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 xxiv • CHRONOLOGY

1386 Grand Duke Jogaila (Pol. Jagiełło) is crowned King of Poland as

Władysław II, initiating the Jagiellonian dynasty. Lithuania is acknowledged
as a separate state in dynastic union with Poland.
1387 Final conversion of Lithuanians to Catholicism begins.
1392 Vytautas as grand duke becomes the de facto independent ruler of
Lithuania.
1410 15 July: Teutonic Knights decisively defeated at Grünwald (Tan-
nenberg).
1430 Grand Duke Vytautas dies.
1440 20 March: Grand Duke Žygimantas (Sigismund) is assassinated in
Trakai.
1529 The First Lithuanian Statute is issued and becomes the legal code for
the Grand Duchy.
1547 Publication of the Mažvydas Catechism, the first known book in the
Lithuanian language, in Königsberg, East Prussia.
1561 The Duchy of Courland becomes a vassal state of Poland-Lithuania.
1569 1 July: Union of Lublin establishes the Polish-Lithuanian Common-
wealth. Lithuania’s Ukrainian possessions are transferred to Poland.
1572 7 July: Death of King Sigismund II Augustus ends the Jagiellonian
Dynasty.
1579 Jesuits found the University of Vilnius.
1611–1612 Polish-Lithuanian forces occupy Moscow during Muscovy’s
Time of Troubles.
1655 Lithuanian nobles sign the Treaty of Kėdainiai in an unsuccessful at-
tempt at union with Sweden.
1660 Treaty of Oliwa ends war with Sweden.
1667 30 January: Treaty of Andrusovo transfers Smolensk and Kiev to
Muscovy.
1683 John III Sobieski defeats the Ottoman Turks and lifts the siege of
Vienna.
1700–1721 The Great Northern War involves Russia, Poland-Lithuania,
and Sweden.

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 CHRONOLOGY • xxv

1708–1711 Famine and plague kill the majority of the population in Samo-
gitia and East Prussia.
1733 1 February: King Augustus II the Strong dies in Warsaw.
1763 5 October: The death of King Augustus III ends the Saxon period of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1768 24 February: Poland-Lithuania signs a treaty of eternal friendship
with Russia, effectively becoming a protectorate of the tsars. 29 February:
Polish and Lithuanian gentry opposed to Russia proclaim the Confederation
of Bar.
1772 5 August: Russia, Austria, and Prussia agree to the First Partition of
Poland-Lithuania.
1791 3 May: The Diet of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth adopts a
modern constitution intended to reform the state’s political and social struc-
ture.
1793 23 January: Russia and Prussia sign an accord providing for the Sec-
ond Partition of the Commonwealth. Lithuania loses Minsk to Russia.
1794 24 March: Polish and Lithuanian gentry launch an anti-Russian
revolt led by Thaddeus Kościuszko. 12 August: Tsarist forces occupy Vil-
nius. 10 October: Polish revolutionary forces are defeated at Maciejowice.
Kościuszko is wounded and captured. 5 November: Gen. Alexander Su-
vorov’s forces capture Warsaw. 16 November: Rebel commander Tomasz
Wawrzecki surrenders to the Russian army, effectively ending the uprising.
1795 24 October: Austria, Russia, and Prussia agree to the final partition of
Poland-Lithuania. Most of Lithuania comes under the rule of the tsarist em-
pire. 25 November: Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last king of Poland
and grand duke of Lithuania, abdicates.
1797 15 January: The governments of Austria, Prussia, and Russia an-
nounce an agreement in St. Petersburg formally abolishing the Polish-Lith-
uanian state.
1807 22 July: The Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw abolishes serf-
dom, including in the state’s Lithuanian-speaking districts in the north.
1812 24 June: Napoleon’s army crosses the Nemunas River at Kaunas
on the way to Moscow. December: The retreating remnants of Napoleon’s
Grand Army enter Vilnius.
1830 November: An armed uprising begins against tsarist Russia in Poland
and then spreads to Lithuania.

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 xxvi • CHRONOLOGY

1831 January: A revolutionary committee in Vilnius takes command of

the November uprising in Lithuania. October: Remnants of the Polish Army
cross into Russia, ending the November uprising.
1832 May: The University of Vilnius is closed. Tsar Nicholas I adopts a
campaign of Russification and initiates anti-Catholic policies.
1840 The Lithuanian Statute is abolished and Russian law is introduced
into Lithuania.
1861 19 February: Tsar Alexander II announces the Emancipation Mani-
festo.
1861–1862 Anti-Russian demonstrations and agitation are on the rise
throughout Poland and Lithuania.
1863 22 January: The second large-scale anti-Russian insurrection begins
in Warsaw. 1 February (NS): A Lithuanian rebel committee in Vilnius an-
nounces a provisional government and calls for revolution against Russian
rule. May: Governor-General M. N. Muravyev arrives in Lithuania and be-
gins a massive suppression of the revolt.
1864–1865 The Russian government enacts decrees banning the publica-
tion of Lithuanian books in the Latin alphabet.
1869–1870 Bishop Valančius of Samogitia begins organizing the illegal
publication of Lithuanian books to circumvent the press ban.
1883 Publication of Aušra (The Dawn), the first modern Lithuanian peri-
odical.
1889 January: Publication of Varpas (The Bell), the first Lithuanian secu-
lar political periodical, edited by Vincas Kudirka.
1893 November: Cossacks and Russian police massacre Catholic protest-
ers during a confrontation at the monastery and church of Kražiai, intensify-
ing anti-tsarist sentiments in Lithuania.
1896 The Lithuanian Social Democratic Party is established.
1904 24 April: The Russian government lifts the ban on Lithuanian publi-
cations in the Latin alphabet. 10 December: Vilniaus žinios (Vilnius News),
the first legal daily newspaper in the Lithuanian language, is published.
1905 21–22 November: Some 2,000 delegates attend the Great Lithuanian
Assembly in Vilnius, the first Lithuanian political convention. Delegates
demand an autonomous and democratic Lithuania within a new Russian
federation.

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 CHRONOLOGY • xxvii

1905–1907 Strikes and demonstrations erupt in Vilnius and other Lithu-

anian towns and villages. Peasants attack tsarist institutions and demand an
end to national and religious discrimination.
1906 Lithuanians and Jews elect a joint slate of deputies to the Duma in St.
Petersburg.
1914 1 August: World War I begins. Lithuanian leaders declare loyalty to
the tsar.
1915 September: The German army occupies Vilnius. Tsarist authorities
evacuate about a half-million inhabitants from Lithuania to the Russian in-
terior.
1917 11 December: The Lithuanian National Council known as the Taryba
declares the formation of a Lithuanian state allied to Germany.
1918 16 February: The Taryba declares the restoration of an independent
Lithuania without ties to any foreign state. 3 May: The Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk places the western regions of the former Russian Empire under Ger-
man control. 11 November: Augustinas Voldemaras heads the first Lithu-
anian government.
1919 February–April: A Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet Republic is es-
tablished in Vilnius but is short lived. Western Lithuania remains under the
jurisdiction of the independence government.
1920 May: The Constituent Assembly (Lithuanian, Steigiamasis Seimas)
is elected and begins drafting a constitution. 12 July: Soviet Russia signs a
peace treaty with Lithuania and renounces all claims to Lithuanian territory.
26 August: The Lithuanian army enters Vilnius. 7 October: The Suwałki
Agreement with Poland leaves Vilnius under Lithuanian administration. 9
October: Polish forces under Gen. Lucjan Żeligowski occupy Vilnius.
1921 22 September: Lithuania is admitted into the League of Nations.
1922 28 July: The United States recognizes Lithuania both de facto and de
jure. 12 December: Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan announce the de
jure recognition of Lithuania.
1923 9–15 January: Lithuanian volunteers seize Klaipėda (Ger. Memel)
from the French garrison enforcing the Allied mandate. 15 March: The Con-
ference of Ambassadors recognizes Polish claims to Vilnius. 18 April: The
Polish parliament decrees the annexation of Central Lithuania.
1924 5 May: Lithuania signs the convention with the Conference of Am-
bassadors providing for Lithuanian sovereignty over Klaipėda Territory.

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 xxviii • CHRONOLOGY

1926 17 December: A military coup overthrows the center-left government

of President Kazys Grinius and Prime Minister Mykolas Sleževičius. Antanas
Smetona is appointed president.
1927 The Nationalist Union disbands the Seimas, bans political parties, and
consolidates its power under an authoritarian regime led by Smetona.
1933 7 July: Stepas Darius and Stasys Girėnas attempt a nonstop flight
from New York to Kaunas, but are killed in a crash near Soldin, Germany.
1934–1935 Lithuanian authorities arrest, prosecute, and sentence Klaipėda
Nazis and place them on trial in Kaunas.
1935–1936 Violent agrarian strikes erupt in southwestern Lithuania.
1937 May: Lithuania unexpectedly wins the second European basketball
championship in Riga.
1938 17 March: Polish ultimatum to Lithuania demands that diplomatic
relations be established. 19 March: Lithuania accepts Polish demands. 12
May: A new and more authoritarian constitution is adopted.
1939 22 March: German troops occupy Klaipėda Territory following Ber-
lin’s ultimatum. 28 March: Gen. Jonas Černius heads a national unity govern-
ment. 22–28 May: Lithuania wins the third European basketball champion-
ship, held in Kaunas. 23 August: The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty
(Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) is signed in Moscow. Lithuania is assigned to the
German sphere of influence. 1 September: World War II begins. Lithuania
declares neutrality. 28 September: The German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship
(Second Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement) transfers Lithuania to the Soviet
sphere of influence. 10 October: Lithuania and the USSR sign the Treaty of
Mutual Assistance providing for Soviet military bases in Lithuania and the
return of Vilnius. 28 October: Lithuanian troops enter Vilnius.
1940 May: Soviet dissatisfaction with Lithuania’s enforcement of the mu-
tual assistance pact is publicly expressed in the Soviet press. 7 June: Prime
Minister Antanas Merkys is summoned to Moscow. 14 June: The USSR
issues an ultimatum to the Republic of Lithuania demanding the establish-
ment of a pro-Soviet government and the entry of an unlimited contingent
of Soviet troops. 15 June: The Lithuanian government accepts the Soviet
ultimatum and Soviet troops occupy Lithuania. President Smetona flees the
country. 17 June: A new Lithuanian People’s Government headed by leftist
journalist Justas Paleckis is formed. 26 June: The Lithuanian Communist
Party is legalized. 11–12 July: The first widespread arrests are conducted
by the NKVD. Hundreds of political and cultural leaders are incarcerated

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 CHRONOLOGY • xxix

or deported to the Soviet Union. 14–15 July: Hastily organized elections to

the People’s Diet are held. The Communist-led Lithuanian Labor Bloc an-
nounces winning 95 percent of a near-total turnout. 21–22 July: The People’s
Diet convenes in Kaunas and proclaims the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Re-
public (SSR). A resolution demands that Lithuania apply to join the USSR.
3 August: The Supreme Soviet of the USSR approves the application of the
Lithuanian SSR to join the Soviet Union, thus formally annexing Lithuania.
1 November: Anti-Soviet manifestations erupt during All Souls’ Day in
Kaunas. 3 November: The Lithuanian Activist Front is formed in Berlin.
1941 14–17 June: NKVD and Communist activists carry out deportations
of nearly 20,000 civilians and political prisoners. 22 June: The Soviet-
German war begins. 23 June: An anti-Soviet rebellion breaks out and a
provisional government announces the restoration of independent Lithuania.
25 July: German authorities announce the establishment of a civilian admin-
istration (German: Zivilverwaltung) in Lithuania. 5 August: The Lithuanian
Provisional Government resigns under German pressure. July–October:
Nazi Einsatzgruppen squads carry out mass executions of more than 100,000
civilians, primarily Jews. Survivors are driven into ghettos in Vilnius,
Kaunas, and Šiauliai.
1943 February: The German occupation authorities announce a drive to
form a Lithuanian SS Legion, but the mobilization fails. 23 September: The
Vilnius Ghetto is liquidated.
1944 9 January: Smetona dies in Cleveland, Ohio. February: The Ger-
mans agree to allow the formation of a Local Force (Lithuanian: Vietinė
Rinktinė ) under Lithuanian command. May: The Germans suppress and
disband the Local Force. 13 July: The Soviet Army enters Vilnius.
1944–1952 Period of active guerrilla war between the anti-Soviet resistance
and USSR security forces. Nearly 60,000 combatants and civilians are killed.
More than 100,000 persons are deported to the USSR.
1948 May: The Soviets deport more than 40,000 Lithuanians in Operation
Spring (Russian: Vesna) primarily to Siberia, the largest such mass expulsion
of the Stalin period.
1953 5 March: Joseph Stalin dies.
1956 25 February: Nikita Khrushchev denounces Stalin’s crimes at the
20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Mos-
cow. November: Scattered anti-Soviet protests are reported on the occasion
of the Hungarian Revolution.

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 xxx • CHRONOLOGY

1964 14 October: Khrushchev is removed from power. The Central Com-

mittee appoints Leonid Brezhnev first secretary of the CPSU.
1970 22 January: Antanas Sniečkus, the long-serving leader of the Lithu-
anian Communist Party (LCP), dies in Vilnius. 23 November: Seaman Simas
Kudirka’s attempt to defect to the U.S. Coast Guard vessel Vigilant near
Martha’s Vineyard creates an international incident.
1972 19 March: The samizdat publication Chronicle of the Catholic
Church in Lithuania begins to circulate. 14–19 May: The self-immolation
and funeral of protester Romas Kalanta triggers anti-Soviet disturbances in
Kaunas.
1976 25 November: The Lithuanian Helsinki Committee is formed.
1978 13 November: The Lithuanian Catholic Committee for the Defense
of Believers is established.
1985 11 March: Mikhail Gorbachev is appointed general secretary of the
CPSU.
1987 23 August: A demonstration commemorating the anniversary of
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact attracts hundreds of participants to St. Anne’s
Church in Vilnius.
1988 May–June: Popular demonstrations commemorate the Soviet depor-
tations and other crimes. 3 June: The Initiative Group of the Movement for
Restructuring in Lithuania is formed in Vilnius. 24 June: A mass demonstra-
tion demanding reform sends off Lithuanian delegates to the 19th Conference
of the CPSU. 9 July: Massive demonstration of nearly 100,000 people in
Vilnius demands environmental protection, sovereignty, and democracy for
Lithuania. 20 October: Algirdas Brazauskas is appointed first secretary of
the LCP. 22–23 October: The formal founding congress of the Lithuanian
Movement for Restructuring, or Sąjūdis, opens in Vilnius. The Cathedral of
Vilnius is returned to the Catholic Church.
1989 26 March: Elections to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies in
Lithuania bring a Sąjūdis majority. 23 August: A massive demonstration on
the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact involves over a million
participants in the Baltic republics. 20 December: A majority of Lithuanian
Communists vote to separate from the CPSU.
1990 11–13 January: Gorbachev visits Lithuania to campaign against
Lithuania’s secession from the Soviet Union, but a mass demonstration in
Vilnius demands independence. 24 February–4 March: Multiparty elections
to the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR result in a Sąjūdis majority. 11

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 CHRONOLOGY • xxxi

March: The Lithuanian Supreme Soviet in Vilnius votes 124–0 to restore

the country’s independence. Vytautas Landsbergis is elected head of state as
chairman of the Supreme Council. March–April: The Soviet government
imposes an economic boycott of Lithuania.
1991 13 January: Soviet troops kill 14 demonstrators and wound hundreds
in Vilnius. Pro-Soviet hardliners fail to topple the Landsbergis government.
4 February: Iceland becomes the first country to recognize independent
Lithuania. 30 July: Seven border guards are killed by Soviet secret service
forces at the Medininkai border post during President George Bush’s visit
to Moscow. 23–24 August: A hard-line coup fails both in Moscow and
Lithuania. August–September: The USSR and the major Western powers
recognize Lithuania. The Baltic States are admitted to the United Nations.
25 December: Gorbachev resigns as president, marking the formal demise
of the USSR.
1992 February: Lithuania takes part in the Olympic Games for the first
time since 1928, in Albertville, France. 13 May: French President François
Mitterrand becomes the first head of state of a major power to visit Lithu-
ania. August: The Lithuanian men’s basketball team wins the bronze medal
at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona. October–November: The Lithuanian
Democratic Labor Party wins a surprising victory in the first elections to the
parliament (Seimas).
1993 14 February: Algirdas Brazauskas wins the first popular election
for president of Lithuania. 25 June: The litas is reintroduced as Lithuania’s
currency. 1 September: The last Russian troops leave Lithuania. 4–8 Sep-
tember: Pope John Paul II visits Lithuania.
1994 27 January: Lithuania joins the Partnership for Peace Program of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 26 April: Lithuania and Poland
sign the Treaty of Friendship confirming current Polish-Lithuanian borders.
18 November: Lithuania and Russia sign agreements on trade and economic
cooperation.
1995 12 June: Lithuania signs an Association Agreement with the Euro-
pean Union. 20 December: The financial crisis grows after Lithuania’s two
largest banks are declared insolvent and top bank officials are arrested and
charged with fraud.
1996 January–February: The political crisis deepens after President
Brazauskas calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Adolfas Šleževičius.
8 February: The Seimas votes 94–26 to dismiss Šleževičius. Mindaugas
Stankevičius is appointed prime minister. August: The Lithuanian men’s

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 xxxii • CHRONOLOGY

basketball team wins the bronze medal at the Summer Olympic Games in At-
lanta. 20 October: Landsbergis’s Conservatives win elections to the Seimas.
Gediminas Vagnorius is again appointed prime minister.
1997 23–25 October: Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Brazauskas sign
treaties on Russian-Lithuanian borders and the Baltic Sea continental shelf.
1998 4 January: Valdas Adamkus is elected president.
1999 13 May: Vagnorius leaves the government in the face of scandals. 27
October: Rolandas Paksas resigns as prime minister to protest the sale of the
Mažeikiai refinery to the Williams Company. 3 November: Andrius Kubilius
heads a new Conservative government.
2000 8 October: Brazauskas’s Social Democrats win elections to the Sei-
mas. 26 October: Paksas is appointed to head a Social Democratic–Liberal
coalition.
2001 31 May: Lithuania becomes a member of the World Trade Organi-
zation. 3 July: Brazauskas is named prime minister following a prolonged
government crisis.
2002 22–23 November: George W. Bush becomes the first U.S. president
to visit Lithuania.
2003 5 January: Paksas defeats incumbent Adamkus in a runoff election
and gains the presidency. 11 May: Lithuanian voters approve a referendum
to join the European Union.
2004 29 March: Lithuania formally joins NATO. 6 April: The Seimas
votes to impeach and remove Paksas. Artūras Paulauskas becomes acting
head of state as interim president. 1 May: Lithuania is admitted into the Euro-
pean Union. 27 June: Adamkus defeats Kazimira Prunskienė in the presiden-
tial runoff election. 12 July: Adamkus is sworn in as president for the second
time. 10 October: The new Labor Party led by Viktor Uspaskich wins the
most parliamentary seats and joins a coalition with the Social Democrats and
Liberals. Brazauskas continues as prime minister. 11 November: Lithuania
is the first state to ratify the EU constitution.
2005 March: Adamkus announces that he will not attend the 60th anniver-
sary of Victory Day in Moscow. 21 April: NATO foreign ministers meet in
Vilnius, the first such meeting in a former Soviet republic.
2006 31 May: Brazauskas steps down after the Labor Party abandons the
coalition government. Uspaskich flees to Russia in the wake of financial mis-
conduct accusations. 4 July: Gediminas Kirkilas is appointed prime minister.
16 October: Queen Elizabeth II visits Lithuania.

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 CHRONOLOGY • xxxiii

2007 9 August: Lithuania’s small combat force returns from duty in Iraq.
20 December: Lithuania enters the Schengen visa-free zone.
2008 8 May: The Seimas ratifies the EU Lisbon Treaty. 17 June: The Sei-
mas bans the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols. October: Homeland
Union conservatives win both rounds of parliamentary elections and negoti-
ate a coalition with the new National Resurrection Party. 26 November:
Kubilius heads a center-right coalition government.
2009 January: Lithuania rings in the New Year as the European Capital of
Culture and begins celebration of the 1,000th anniversary of the first publica-
tion of the country’s name in a historical record. April: Government statistics
indicate that Lithuania’s gross domestic product declined by more than 12
percent in the first quarter. 17 May: Dalia Grybauskaitė wins an overwhelm-
ing victory in the first round of the presidential election with 68 percent of
the vote. 12 July: Grybauskaitė, the country’s first woman head of state, is
inaugurated as president.

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb xxxiv 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Introduction

The Lithuanian people have undergone historic changes quite different from
those of other European nations. In earlier centuries, geography provided
strategic advantage and opportunities for expansion, but in recent times the
country has more often experienced location as a geopolitical curse. During
the medieval and early modern periods, Lithuanians successfully utilized
their position at the crossroads of Eastern and Western cultures to create one
of Europe’s largest multinational empires. But the lack of natural borders and
the growing power of conquest-minded rivals exposed the land and people to
destructive foreign invasions. Economic decline, internal political conflicts,
and institutional disarray further weakened the state, leading to its demise in
1795.
Over the centuries, the Lithuanian aristocracy and urban elites largely
abandoned their native language. Some 19th-century philologists assumed
that the Lithuanian language would soon disappear and hurried to study and
record the common people’s uniquely ancient speech while it still lived.
Others feared that the people would eventually lose any sense of national or
cultural identity.
Lithuanian speakers proved more resilient than the predictions of the
doomsayers, however, and a popular national movement led to the restoration
of an independent state after World War I. But the small interwar republic
failed to institutionalize democracy and proved vulnerable in the face of
aggression by powerful neighbors. World War II and its bloody aftermath
brought foreign occupation as well as genocide, mass murder, and destruction
unparalleled in the country’s modern history.
The restoration of independence in 1990 has fundamentally altered Lithu-
ania’s geopolitical reality. Integration into the European Union (EU) and the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) promise a new level of security
for the Lithuanian state in the 21st century even as the social and economic
transformations present both promising opportunities and difficult challenges.

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 2 • INTRODUCTION

LAND AND PEOPLE

The Republic of Lithuania is located on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea,
between 53°54' and 56°27' north latitude and between 20°56' and 26°51' east
longitude. Historically, the country has been treated as part of Eastern Europe,
although in strictly geographic terms Lithuania actually occupies the center
of the European continent. The nation’s eastern upland region is equidistant
between Iceland and the Urals; it is also halfway between Norway and Greece.
The country’s neighbors are Latvia in the north, Poland in the south, Be-
larus (Byelorussia) in the east, and Kaliningrad, the exclave oblast of the Rus-
sian Federation, in the west. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are often referred
to as the Baltic States. The territory of Lithuania encompasses 65,200 square
kilometers or 26,173 square miles; by comparison, it is roughly the size of the
Republic of Ireland and slightly larger than West Virginia.
Lithuania is part of the immense European plain stretching from the Urals
to Western Europe. The country contains no significant mountains, although
elevations are somewhat higher in the east: the tallest hill is Medininkai, 288
meters (945 feet) above sea level, located near the Lithuanian-Belarusian
border.
In general, Lithuanians divide their land into four major regions, reflect-
ing not only somewhat different topographies but also distinct historical
and dialectical characteristics. The western region of Žemaitija (Samogitia),
literally meaning “The Lowland,” ranges from the country’s 123-kilometer
(75-mile) Baltic coastline to approximately the Nevėžis River. Aukštaitija, or
the highland region, includes the central and northeastern area of the republic.
Dzūkija, a region that encompasses part of eastern and southern Lithuania, is
known for its peculiar dialect. Finally, the territory to the south and west of
the Nemunas River is variously known as Sūduva, Suvalkija or Užnemunė
(literally, the “Land beyond the Nemunas”).
Lithuania’s climate is somewhat cooler than that of the corresponding lati-
tudes in Western Europe. The mean temperature is about 6°C (43°F). In gen-
eral, winters are colder inland, where January mean temperatures reach –6°C
(21°F), although harsher conditions are not infrequent. The warmest month
is July with a mean temperature of about 17–18°C (63–64°F). Summers in
Lithuania are relatively cool, with abundant rainfall, especially in the west.
The official census carried out in 2001 counted 3,484,000 inhabitants, 83
percent of whom were listed as ethnic Lithuanians. The other major nationali-
ties included Poles (6.7%), Russians (6.3%), and Belarusians (1.3%), while
the remainder consisted of Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, and other small groups.
In 2008, Lithuania’s population was estimated at 3,380,000, of which nearly
two-thirds is classified as urban.

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 INTRODUCTION • 3

The majority of ethnic Lithuanian believers are Roman Catholic, although

there are Lutheran Evangelical and Reformed (Calvinist) communities in
the north and west of the country. Among the minorities, virtually all Polish
believers are Catholic, while Russians are predominantly Eastern Orthodox.
There are also small groups practicing Judaism and Islam (mainly Tatars);
in recent years, there has been growing interest in Christian fundamentalism
and Eastern religions. Vilnius (2008 population estimate 544,000) has been
Lithuania’s historic capital and cultural center since the 14th century. Other
major urban centers and their population estimates for 2008 are: Kaunas,
355,000; Klaipėda, the major seaport, 238,000; Panevėžys, 129,000; and
Šiauliai, 128,000.
Lithuanian and Latvian are the only surviving members of the Baltic
subgroup of Indo-European languages. Lithuanian, which utilizes the Latin
alphabet, is the official language of the republic and is the medium of instruc-
tion in the majority of primary, secondary, and higher schools. There are also
numerous schools with instruction in the minority languages, particularly
Polish and Russian. Lithuanian is the native language of most ethnic Lithu-
anians and a part of the Lithuanian diaspora. It has also gained ground as a
second language among Lithuania’s minorities. Polish is widely spoken in
the southeastern districts of the country, and Russian is the native language
of most Russians, as well as some Belarusians and Ukrainians. A half century
of Soviet rule (1940–1941 and 1944–1990) has made the majority of older
Lithuanians conversant in Russian to some degree, but the importance of the
Russian language has declined rapidly since the restoration of Lithuania’s
independence in 1990, especially among the younger generation.

HISTORICAL SURVEY

Origins and Early History of the Lithuanian State

Lithuanians and Latvians are Balts, that is, peoples that speak Baltic lan-
guages. However, in addition to its ethnic and linguistic connotation, the
term Balts has recently acquired a political meaning. It is sometimes used to
denote the indigenous peoples of all three Baltic States, including Estonia,
even though Estonians speak a Finno-Ugric language unrelated to either
Lithuanian or Latvian.
The exact origin of the Lithuanian people has been debated over the years,
but it is clear that between 3000 and 2500 BCE agricultural communities
were well established in what is now Lithuania and Latvia. These central Bal-
tic tribes were the direct ancestors of present-day Lithuanians and Latvians.
They achieved their greatest expansion during the Bronze Age (before 1500

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 4 • INTRODUCTION

BCE), when they inhabited a vast area stretching from the Vistula to central
Russia. However, after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, the
Balts were caught between the westward movement of the Slavs and the Ger-
manic expansion in northern Europe. As a result, most of the Baltic-speaking
peoples disappeared through assimilation and conquest. The Latvian tribes
were subdued by German crusaders during the 13th century.
Only the Lithuanians managed to create an independent state, when they
united against the threat of the Teutonic Knights, a crusading order that had
conquered Prussia and sought to establish control throughout the Baltic. Dur-
ing the middle of the 13th century, Lithuania briefly became a Christian realm
under King Mindaugas, but after his assassination in 1263, most of the Lithu-
anian princes abandoned Christianity and returned to traditional religions.
After a brief interregnum following Mindaugas’s death, Lithuania emerged
as an important East European state. The founder of medieval Lithuanian
power was Grand Duke Gediminas (R. 1316–1341), who established Vilnius
as the capital of the Lithuanian state, annexed many Slavic lands to the east,
and initiated diplomatic contacts with West European powers, including the
papacy. Gediminas devoted most of his attention to solving the two problems
that were to bedevil the Grand Duchy for the next four centuries: defense
against the powerful Teutonic Knights in the west, and competition with
emerging Muscovy for control of the predominantly Orthodox Slavic lands
in the east.
Gediminas was followed by his son Algirdas (R. 1345–1377), who con-
quered additional eastern territories, including Kiev, and ruled in close co-
operation with his brother, Duke Kęstutis of Trakai. In 1386, Algirdas’s son
Jogaila (Polish: Jagiełło) accepted the Polish crown. The Grand Duchy of
Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland now entered into a dynastic alliance
that provided the military power to decisively defeat the Teutonic Knights
at Grünwald (Tannenberg) in 1410. In 1387, after Jogaila’s baptism, Lithu-
ania once again formally accepted Roman Catholicism, which became the
dominant religious and cultural force in the ethnically Lithuanian lands. As
Poland’s king under the name Władysław II, Jogaila initiated a Polish-Lithu-
anian dynasty that was to rule much of central Europe until 1572.
Lithuania reached the zenith of power and influence under Jogaila’s cousin,
Grand Duke Vytautas (R. 1392–1430), who ruled independently of Cracow.
After his death, Polish culture became increasingly dominant in Lithuania, es-
pecially among powerful noble families, such as the Radziwiłłs (Lithuanian:
Radvila or Radvilas). Gradually, Polish language and culture penetrated most
of the landowning and urban elites. By the early 19th century, the Lithuanian
language was, with few exceptions, preserved only among the peasantry and
the lesser gentry in western Lithuania. Until the 20th century, the country’s

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 INTRODUCTION • 5

nobility and urban dwellers viewed Lithuanian as a peasant dialect rather than
a national language.
Despite the Grand Duchy’s loss of its easternmost Russian possessions
and dependencies to the growing power of Muscovy, the period between the
early 1500s and the middle of the 17th century was an age of considerable
cultural and economic achievement. Catholic Lithuania maintained close ties
to central and western Europe and was, thus, profoundly influenced by the
Renaissance and the Reformation. The influence of the Renaissance was most
visible in the country’s architecture: many new churches in the Gothic and
baroque styles were constructed with the help of Italian artisans. The grand
duke’s court encouraged the dissemination of letters and the arts.
The Reformation had an even greater impact on Lithuania’s cultural life.
Lutheranism became the religion of the people in the predominantly Lithu-
anian regions of East Prussia, while Calvinism engulfed much of the Grand
Duchy during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The spread of Prot-
estantism encouraged the development of the vernacular. The first known
Lithuanian-language book, a catechism written by the Lutheran pastor
Martynas Mažvydas (1510–1563), was published in 1547. In turn, the suc-
cessful Counter-Reformation, led by the Jesuits and supported by the Crown,
not only restored the primacy of Catholicism but also was instrumental in
encouraging the spread of education. The University of Vilnius began as a
Jesuit academy in 1579 under a charter granted by King Stefan Batory (R.
1576–1586) and Pope Gregory XIII.
The 16th century was also a period of far-reaching legal and economic re-
forms. In 1529, the Grand Duchy issued the Lithuanian Statute, a comprehen-
sive legal code that underwent several revisions and remained in force until
1840. By the standards of the age, the Lithuanian state tolerated considerable
religious diversity among its Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and
Muslim subjects: the Third Lithuanian Statute of 1588 explicitly mandated
religious tolerance.
In 1547, the government initiated the great agrarian transformation known
as the Volok Reform, named after the unit of land that the Grand Duchy as-
signed to an average peasant household. This agrarian reform determined the
boundaries of the Crown domains and established villages on the Western
model, which stimulated agriculture by promoting the three-field system of
cultivation on the manorial farms. The new forms of land tenure also encour-
aged grain exports, which became the mainstay of the Lithuanian economy
and assisted the development of urban life. In general, the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania encouraged the immigration of skilled craftsmen and merchants,
particularly Germans and Jews, who became an important economic force in
Lithuania.

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 6 • INTRODUCTION

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1569–1795

The major external threat to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the grow-
ing power of the Muscovite state. Under the reign of Casimir (grand duke,
1440–1492; king of Poland, 1447–1492), Lithuania had experienced its first
substantial territorial losses to Muscovy. During the 16th and 17th centuries,
the Grand Duchy fought numerous wars against Muscovy, often concluded
by short-lived treaties mandating “eternal peace.” The military balance in
this conflict favored the Muscovites, who steadily rolled back the Grand
Duchy’s previous conquests. The growing Russian threat forced Lithuania
to strengthen ties with Poland, despite the desire of the Lithuanian magnates
to preserve the state’s independence. In 1569, the Lithuanian and Polish
diets (parliaments) negotiated the Union of Lublin under the aegis of King
Sigismund Augustus (R. 1548–1572), the last of the Jagiellonian monarchs.
This treaty, which established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, limited
Lithuania’s sovereignty and transferred Ukraine to the Kingdom of Poland.
Many Poles viewed the Union as the formation of a single nation; however,
until the partitions of the late 18th century, the Grand Duchy maintained its
own administrative, legal, military, and monetary systems.
The Lublin agreement failed to stem Lithuania’s political and military de-
cline. The Jagiellonian dynasty was followed by two years of rule by Henry
Valois, the brother of French king Charles IX, but he left for France in 1574.
Sensing the weakness of the royal power, the gentry demanded ever increas-
ing privileges at the expense of the monarchy, which had become elective
rather than hereditary. Valois was followed by the energetic and able Hungar-
ian duke Stefan Batory, who successfully contained the expansionist plans of
the Muscovite tsar Ivan the Terrible. After Batory, the nobility turned to Si-
gismund III Vasa, who ruled from 1587 to 1632 and was, for a time, also con-
currently King of Sweden. Sigismund was followed by his son Władysław IV
(R. 1632–1648) and then a nephew, John Casimir (R. 1648–68).
The Vasa kings presided over the Commonwealth during an extraordinarily
volatile epoch. When Russia underwent the infamous “Time of Troubles”
(1598–1613), Sigismund tried to seize the Muscovite throne, and Polish-Lith-
uanian forces briefly occupied Moscow itself. However, with the accession of
the Romanov dynasty in 1613, Russian power waxed again. In the mid-17th
century, a series of military disasters befell Poland-Lithuania. The Cossack
incursions, particularly those led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky (Chmielnicki),
destroyed much of Poland, but they also reached into Lithuanian-ruled Be-
larus. The Cossacks’ decision to swear allegiance to Tsar Alexis in 1654 led
the Commonwealth into a 13-year war with Muscovy. Lithuania’s military
fortunes reached a nadir in 1655 when Muscovite troops seized Vilnius and
destroyed most of the city, the first time the country’s capital had fallen to

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 INTRODUCTION • 7

a foreign foe. The Treaty of Andrusovo in 1667 ceded Smolensk, Kiev, and
left-bank Ukraine to Muscovy.
Sigismund Vasa’s attempts to maintain his Swedish throne in absentia
meant more travails for the already overburdened Commonwealth by drawing
Poland-Lithuania into a war with the king’s Lutheran enemies in Sweden. By
1629, the new Swedish ruler Gustavus Adolphus had won most of Livonia,
then a vassal state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Swedish
advance resumed again in 1655 under Charles X and proved so inexorable
that the leaders of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy, already devastated by the
Muscovite attack, drew up an act of dynastic union with Sweden at the town
of Kėdainiai. However, Charles X showed little interest in pursuing this al-
liance, and in any case, by the late 1650s, the Swedes were in retreat. The
treaty of Oliwa in 1660 ended Swedish claims in Poland-Lithuania, although
Sweden retained Livonia.
The military and diplomatic reverses of the Commonwealth during the
17th century were accompanied by the progressive weakening of Poland-
Lithuania’s political, economic, and social structures. The power of the
landed aristocracy grew at the expense of the elected kings. The reigns of
Michael Wiśniowiecki (R. 1669–1674) and John Sobieski (R. 1674–1696)
were marked by successful wars against the Ottoman Turks, but little was
done to stem domestic chaos. By the end of the 17th century, the royal elec-
tion had become the object of bribery, international intrigue, and foreign
coercion—demonstrated by the choice of the ambitious but inept Augustus II
of Saxony, whose rule from 1697 until 1733 was interrupted by the five-year
reign of the enlightened Stanisław Leszczyński (R. 1704–1709). Even more
disturbing for the political stability of the Commonwealth was the farcical
election of Augustus III (R. 1733–1763) who, despite yet another challenge
from Leszczyński, was elevated to the throne in a session of the Diet sur-
rounded by Russian troops.
At the beginning of the 18th century, internal disorder became endemic as
political alliances of nobles known as confederations battled for influence.
Economic decline was exacerbated by a series of plagues (1708–1711) and
the destruction inflicted by marauding Swedish and Russian armies during
the Great Northern War. In East Prussia, the plague killed at least half of the
predominantly Lithuanian-speaking population, leaving vast areas of vacant
farmland available for subsequent German colonization, permanently altering
the ethnic balance in the region.
Despite these disasters, there were signs of recovery during the second
half of the 18th century. In both Lithuania and Poland, agriculture and com-
merce revived as grain exports resumed. In addition, there were now serious
calls for the reform of state and society, stimulated by the influence of the

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 8 • INTRODUCTION

Enlightenment and the desire of the patriotic gentry to escape the foreign
domination that, since the early 18th century, had transformed the Common-
wealth into a virtual Russian protectorate. However, the empires bordering
Poland-Lithuania, especially Russia, vigorously opposed any attempt to end
the debilitating political anarchy within the state.
The reign of the last Polish-Lithuanian monarch, Stanisław August Ponia-
towski (R. 1764–1795), was marked by external aggression and civil war,
as Commonwealth reformers sought to overcome foreign and domestic
opposition to change. Poniatowski’s desire to establish an effective govern-
ment in Poland-Lithuania surprised the Russians, who expected this former
consort of Catherine the Great to act as a loyal viceroy of St. Petersburg. The
empress’s interference within the Commonwealth finally provoked an anti-
Russian uprising in 1768, known as the Confederation of Bar. The conflict
ended in the First Partition of 1772, as Russia, Prussia, and Austria prevailed
over Poland-Lithuania’s cowed government and seized substantial shares of
the Commonwealth’s territory. The Grand Duchy lost Courland, Latgale,
Polotsk, Vitebsk, and a large area of Minsk province, regions that had been
under Lithuanian rule for centuries.
This humiliation of 1772 induced the reformist Polish-Lithuanian gentry
to undertake a campaign to save what remained of their state. The Common-
wealth’s Diet of 1773–1775 established a permanent governing council for
Poland-Lithuania, which considerably restricted the autonomy of the Grand
Duchy. However, the reform of the central government was offset by the fact
that, during most of the late 18th century, Russia, Austria, and Prussia exer-
cised an informal veto over the government of Poland-Lithuania and even
manipulated the country’s new governing council for their own ends.
The turbulent last quarter-century of the Commonwealth’s history was
marked by attempts at reform against the opposition of Russia and the conser-
vative aristocracy. The reform movement reached its peak during the historic
session of the Four-Year Diet (1788–1792), which abolished the Russian-
controlled governing council, strengthened the central government, and on 3
May 1791 proclaimed a new constitution. In April 1792, Polish-Lithuanian
opponents of the constitution formed the Confederation of Targowica and,
supported by the Russian Army, attacked the Commonwealth’s forces led
by the radical reformer and American Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus
Kościuszko, who was initially supported by the king. In August 1792, Russia’s
military superiority persuaded Poniatowski to abandon the struggle, where-
upon Kościuszko went into exile and the Polish-Lithuanian Army dispersed.
Prussia and Russia seized the opportunity to carry out the Second Partition
of the Commonwealth in 1793; the Lithuanian Grand Duchy lost most of
Belarus, including Minsk. The more radical elements in the Commonwealth

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 INTRODUCTION • 9

thereupon launched a national uprising against foreign domination in March

1794, with Kościuszko once again at the helm of the anti-Russian forces.
Kościuszko’s rebels briefly seized Warsaw and Vilnius, but after initial suc-
cesses, the Polish-Lithuanian revolt was crushed by the combined might of
Prussia and Russia. The suppression of the 1794 uprising signaled the end of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Stanisław August Poniatowski, its last
king–grand duke, abdicated in November 1795.
At the same time, Russia, Prussia, and Austria agreed to the final dismem-
berment of Poland-Lithuania. The formal Treaty of Partition was signed in
January 1797 in St. Petersburg. The Hapsburgs seized much of south-central
Poland, including Cracow. Prussia gained central Poland and the regions ad-
jacent to East Prussia, including the ethnic Lithuanian areas south and west of
the Nemunas River. Most of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was incorporated
into the Russian Empire.

Lithuania under the Tsars

Initially, the dissolution of the Grand Duchy did not much alter Lithuania’s
cultural and social life. Under Tsar Paul I (R. 1796–1801) and the relatively
liberal Alexander I (R. 1801–1825), the Lithuanian nobility preserved its
power and influence. More significant changes occurred in southwestern
Lithuania, the region on the left bank of the Nemunas River, which included
about a fifth of the ethnic Lithuanian population and had passed under Prus-
sian rule (1795–1807) following the final partition of the Commonwealth.
This region was later included in Napoleon’s vassal state, the Duchy of
Warsaw (1807–1815), and then remained a part of Congress Poland until
1874. Here the introduction of the Napoleonic Code resulted in the abolition
of serfdom in 1807.
The Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812 briefly stirred hopes of lib-
eration from tsarist rule when some Lithuanian nobles launched a plan for
restoring the Grand Duchy. Although Napoleon’s defeat meant the return of
Russian rule, the relatively relaxed tsarist policy toward Lithuania during the
first quarter of the 19th century enabled a cultural renaissance.
In 1803, prodded by his friend Adam Czartoryski (1770–1861), Alexan-
der I had established the Vilnius Principal School as an imperial university,
and for the next three decades it became the seat of learning for the lands of
the old Commonwealth and a center of science and scholarship in eastern
Europe. While this unique period in Lithuania’s intellectual history was pri-
marily a contribution to the Polish national movement and its culture, it also
stimulated interest among some of the country’s scholars in the language and
culture of the Lithuanian-speaking peasantry.

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 10 • INTRODUCTION

Despite the reality of tsarist power, the Lithuanian gentry’s desire to

reestablish the Commonwealth persisted. The accession of the reactionary
Nicholas I (R. 1825–1855) to the Russian throne and attempts to curtail the
autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland triggered an armed uprising in Warsaw
in November 1830, which also spread to Lithuania. The insurgents pro-
claimed independence from Russia, promising to restore the federal union
of Poland and Lithuania, but they were decisively defeated in July 1831 and
anti-Russian guerrilla activity soon also came to an end.
After the war, Nicholas I instituted a policy of Russification aimed at trans-
forming Lithuania into a Russian province in fact as well as in name. The Uni-
versity of Vilnius was closed in 1832, and the Lithuanian Statute was abolished
in 1840. Tens of thousands of the petty gentry were deprived of their charters
of nobility, and many were deported to the Caucasus and the Russian interior.
For the first time in Lithuania’s history, the Catholic Church was subjected to
systematic persecution. As a result of Nicholas’s policy of repression, hundreds
of Lithuanians, primarily from among the nobility, fled to the West, includ-
ing such well-known cultural figures as Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) and
Joachim Lelewel (1786–1861). Tsar Nicholas’s doctrine of official nationality,
a reactionary blend of autocratic power, religious intolerance, and Russian na-
tionalism, became the guiding light of tsarist government policy.

The Origins of Modern Lithuanian

Nationalism and Social Change after 1861
The Russian government’s repressive policies coincided with the first
stirrings of the modern Lithuanian national movement. The brief intellec-
tual renaissance in the University of Vilnius had stimulated an interest in
Lithuanian culture and language among the petty gentry of Samogitia. The
foremost of the Samogitian literati were Dionizas Poška (1757–1830), who
dreamed of introducing the Lithuanian language into public life, and Simo-
nas Stanevičius (1799–1848), whose work displayed a national conscious-
ness separate from that of the Poles. In 1845, historian Simonas Daukantas
(1793–1864) published the first historical work in the Lithuanian language.
During the mid-19th century, Motiejus Valančius (1801–1875), the Bishop
of Samogitia between 1850 and 1875, laid the foundations of the modern
Lithuanian national movement. Valančius published numerous secular and
religious Lithuanian-language works for the peasantry. He also organized
an extensive primary school system in the villages and founded the popular
temperance societies, which were instrumental in encouraging the reading of
popular literature in the Lithuanian language.
The reign of Nicholas’s liberal successor, Tsar Alexander II (R. 1855–81),
was a period of ferment. The tsar’s emancipation of the serfs in 1861 came

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 INTRODUCTION • 11

at a time of renewed unrest, which developed into a full-fledged revolt when,

following the outbreak of the January uprising in Poland, on 1 February
1863 an underground Lithuanian Committee declared itself the country’s
provisional government and called upon the populace to rise up against the
Russians. Despite widespread support from virtually all strata of Lithuanian
society, the insurrection was suppressed with a great deal of bloodshed by the
Russian army; hundreds were executed and thousands were deported to Sibe-
ria during a reign of terror engineered by the governor-general of Vilnius, M.
N. Muravyev (1796–1866). The Russian government severely restricted the
Catholic Church and adopted an even harsher policy of cultural Russification.
The Polish language was banned from Lithuania’s secondary school system,
and the Catholic primary educational network was closed. At the same time,
Muravyev tried to curry favor with the Lithuanian-speaking peasantry by
improving the conditions of the emancipation, but this policy failed to create
goodwill toward the Russian authorities.
The 1860s proved a turning point in Lithuania’s modern history. The insur-
rection of 1863–1864 marked the last time that Poles and Lithuanians joined
together in an attempt to restore the old Commonwealth. Politically, the
most important development was the emergence of the Lithuanian-speaking
peasantry as a social and economic force. Although interest in Lithuanian
language and culture had been growing since the early 19th century, it was
the subsequent appearance of the Lithuanian-speaking intelligentsia of peas-
ant origin that initiated the modernization of Lithuanian society and culture.
The new educated elite, which gained prominence during the late 19th cen-
tury, reaffirmed a national and cultural identity distinct from that of the Poles
and Russians. The most prominent secular figures in the Lithuanian national
movement of the 19th century were Dr. Jonas Basanavičius (1851–1927),
widely considered the patriarch of the national cultural renaissance, and Vin-
cas Kudirka (1858–1899), a skilled satirist and editor who was instrumental
in politicizing Lithuanian resentment of Russian rule. Lithuania’s younger
Catholic clergy also came to adopt a new nationalist outlook. Although the
tsar banned Lithuanian books in the Latin alphabet in 1864, the prohibition
was circumvented by the publication of Lithuanian-language books in Prus-
sia (and later in the United States). The distribution of the illegal publications
through a clandestine international network involved many people in the
national movement. Unable to stem the tide of subversive books, the Russian
government lifted the ban in 1904. The movement for a free press in the na-
tive language provided Lithuanian nationalism with a cause, political cohe-
sion, and a sense of shared injustice that furthered political radicalization.
By the turn of the 20th century, as Lithuanian nationalism spread among
the intelligentsia, clergy, and urbanites, Lithuanian culture emerged from its
traditional village milieu, while the national movement became politically

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 12 • INTRODUCTION

diverse. Eventually, it harbored conservative, clerical, liberal, and social-

ist currents with differing political agendas. On 21–22 November 1905, a
Lithuanian gathering of about 2,000 delegates, known as the Great Lithu-
anian Assembly (Seimas) of Vilnius, convened in Lithuania’s historic capital.
This first modern Lithuanian political conference proclaimed as its goal the
establishment of an autonomous, democratic Lithuania with equal rights for
all nationalities. The Revolution of 1905 was suppressed in Lithuania and
in the other parts of the Russian Empire within two years, but the basis for
modern Lithuanian politics had been laid. Some Lithuanian politicians were
elected to the Duma, Russia’s new parliament permitted by the tsar’s October
Manifesto, where they lobbied for national autonomy and continually raised
the “Lithuanian question” in St. Petersburg.
By the eve of World War I, Lithuanian society had undergone consider-
able change. While Lithuania’s industrial development had been modest, the
cultural and economic progress of the peasantry compared favorably with
that in the Russian Empire as a whole. The growing political consciousness
and economic importance of the Lithuanian-speaking majority changed the
balance of power within Lithuanian society. The emergence of an ethnic
Lithuanian professional and commercial stratum, as well as an urban work-
ing class, however small, hastened the social modernization of Lithuanian
speakers, once largely trapped within the confines of the traditional village
and beholden to the Polonized manor. Most of the landed gentry, contemptu-
ous of the peasantry’s emerging national consciousness, continued to cling to
their aristocratic outlook.
Despite these significant social changes, Lithuania remained an economi-
cally underdeveloped region. The population of the ethnographic Lithuanian
lands (including the Lithuanian-speaking areas of East Prussia), which had
grown to nearly four million before World War I, was overwhelmingly ru-
ral. Lithuania’s towns and cities were largely populated by Jews, Poles, and
Germans, who made up a majority of those employed in the professions,
commerce, trade, and industry. In 1909, only 21.6 percent of the inhabitants
of Kaunas, Lithuania’s second largest city, were reported to be Lithuanian
speakers. In 1914, ethnic Lithuanians made up scarcely 2 percent of the
population in Vilnius, Lithuania’s largest city and most important cultural
and economic center.

World War I and the Emergence of Independent Lithuania

The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 did not immediately alter
the political goals of the Lithuanian intelligentsia, the majority of whom sup-
ported the idea of national autonomy within a democratized Russian federa-

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 INTRODUCTION • 13

tion. Influential Lithuanian leaders, such as Basanavičius and Martynas Yčas

(1885–1941), while dissatisfied with the government’s response to these
political demands, initially expressed loyalty to Tsar Nicholas. They hoped
that a victorious and grateful Russia would unite the ethnic Lithuanian lands
of East Prussia with those in Russian-ruled Lithuania. However, the early
Russian military successes were soon reversed, and in the spring of 1915,
the German army entered Lithuania; by year’s end, the Russians abandoned
Vilnius, ending more than a century of tsarist rule.
The Russian retreat of 1915 and the subsequent German occupation of Lith-
uania inflicted destruction on a scale that the country had not seen since the
wars and pestilence of the early 18th century. Nearly a half million inhabitants
either fled or were forcibly evacuated eastward. In November 1914, the Lithu-
anian Committee to Assist the Victims of the War was founded in Vilnius,
and after the Germans took the city in September 1915, a part of the group
was moved to Petrograd, where the committee became a kind of government
in exile for Lithuanians displaced by the war. In Lithuania itself, the German
military administration exploited the country for the war effort through agri-
cultural requisitions and forced labor, arousing popular opposition.
Initially confident of victory, the Kaiser’s government planned to annex
Lithuania and other adjacent territories. However, the entry of the United
States into the war and Germany’s deteriorating military and economic situ-
ation forced the kaiser to accommodate national aspirations in eastern and
central Europe. Berlin sought to appease popular discontent in Lithuania by
allowing the organization of a native advisory council. In September 1917, a
Lithuanian political conference met in Vilnius and selected a council, known
as the Taryba, which represented the major non-Bolshevik political parties.
On 11 December 1917, the Taryba proclaimed an independent Lithuanian
state on the basis of close economic and military ties with Germany.
However, by early 1918, the Taryba, hoping to preserve its credibility and
Lithuanian political unity, began to distance itself from Berlin. On 16 Febru-
ary 1918, the Taryba issued a declaration announcing the restoration of the
Lithuanian state based on a democratic political structure without mentioning
relations with Germany. The Kaiser issued a qualified recognition of Lithu-
ania on 23 March 1918. During the next few months, there was complex po-
litical maneuvering between the Lithuanian authorities and Germany, whose
forces still occupied Lithuania. The Lithuanian independence movement re-
ceived crucial financial support from Lithuanians in the United States, while
the Lithuanian intelligentsia in western Europe lobbied the Allies to support
their country’s aspirations for statehood.
On 11 November 1918, the day the Germans signed the armistice with
the Allies, the first Lithuanian cabinet, under President Antanas Smetona

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 14 • INTRODUCTION

(1874–1944) and Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras (1883–1942), took

office. Lithuania’s survival was in large part due to the able second prime
minister, Mykolas Sleževičius (1882–1939), who, together with his center-
left cabinets, hung on during the trying months of early 1919 as the new
Lithuanian state slowly consolidated its position. The successive Lithuanian
governments, protected by their own meager forces and a deteriorating Ger-
man military umbrella, were able to survive a succession of emergencies
during 1919–1920: a Bolshevik invasion and the subsequent creation of
the short-lived Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet Republic (Litbel) in the east;
continued obstruction by the German military establishment; a devastating
attack by well-equipped White Russian and German volunteers, known as
Bermondtists, in the west; a Polish invasion and attempted coup d’etat; and
recurrent financial crises. A combination of factors, including volunteer en-
thusiasm, German military assistance, and the Allied presence in the Baltic,
allowed the Lithuanian army to drive out the Bolsheviks from most of Lithu-
ania by late 1919 and to fend off the other threats to independence.
On 12 July 1920, Soviet Russia signed a peace treaty with the Republic
of Lithuania in Moscow, renouncing in perpetuity all Russian claims to the
country. The treaty granted Lithuania extensive territory, including the re-
gions of Grodno, Suwałki, and Augustów—lands that had once been part of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania but were now inhabited primarily by peasants
speaking Belarusian or Polish. Lithuania was never to acquire the boundaries
established by the treaty with the Bolsheviks, however, primarily because
of Polish power in the region. In 1919, the major Western powers had also
extended de facto recognition to Lithuania and the other Baltic governments,
and this was soon followed by de jure recognition. In 1921, Lithuania became
a member of the League of Nations. Committed to the territorial integrity of
Russia and initially skeptical of the viability of the new Lithuanian state, the
United States delayed recognition until 1922.

Struggles for Territory: Vilnius and Klaipėda, 1918–1924

Lithuania’s conflict with Poland over Vilnius defined much of the new
state’s foreign and domestic policy during the interwar period. To Lithu-
anians, Vilnius was the nation’s natural political center and historic capital.
This ethnically divided city was one of the most important European centers
of Jewish cultural life, and in the 19th century, it became a stronghold of Pol-
ish culture and education. In 1917–1918, Vilnius was the seat of the Lithu-
anian Taryba and other Lithuanian institutions. On the other hand, the city
remained the hub of Polish influence in the Catholic lands of eastern Lithu-
ania and western Belarus.

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 INTRODUCTION • 15

After the Germans withdrew from Vilnius in January 1919, Vilnius

changed hands a number of times among Lithuanians, Bolsheviks, and Poles.
As the Red Army retreated from the Polish counteroffensive in August 1920,
clashes occurred between Polish and Lithuanian forces as both sides vied for
control in the vacuum left by the Bolsheviks. On 7 October 1920, Polish and
Lithuanian delegations signed an agreement at Suwałki, which drew a demar-
cation line that left Vilnius under Lithuanian administration. However, within
hours of the signing, Gen. Lucjan Żeligowski (1865–1947), under secret
orders of the Polish government, led a force of alleged mutineers in an attack
on the Lithuanian army, seizing Vilnius and its environs. The Conference
of Ambassadors recognized the Lithuanian-Polish armistice line established
after the attack as the de jure frontier between the two states in March 1923.
Lithuania never accepted this decision and persisted in claiming Vilnius as its
capital, but the city was to remain part of Poland until 1939.
Another thorny territorial issue was the Baltic port of Klaipėda, which un-
der the name of Memel had been part of East Prussia since the 13th century.
By the early 1900s, East Prussia had been thoroughly Germanized, although
a substantial Lithuanian-speaking population survived near Klaipėda and
along the Prussian border with Russia. Article 99 of the Versailles Treaty
detached the East Prussian lands on the right bank of the Nemunas River
from Germany and placed them under an Allied mandate. In January 1923, a
detachment of insurgents, armed and encouraged by the Lithuanian govern-
ment, invaded Klaipėda and quickly overpowered the port’s small French
garrison. The Allies, preoccupied with the Ruhr crisis, accepted Lithuanian
control of the region. On 8 May 1924, Lithuania signed a convention with the
major Allied powers (Britain, France, Italy, and Japan) that transferred formal
sovereignty over Klaipėda Territory to Lithuania. The convention contained
provisions ensuring the territory’s autonomy and the rights of the German-
speaking inhabitants.
The issues of Vilnius and Klaipėda became sources of friction between
Lithuania and its two powerful neighbors Poland and Germany.

Domestic Politics, 1920–1940:

Parliamentary Democracy and Authoritarian Rule
The government announced elections to the Constituent Assembly in the
spring of 1920, which returned a clear majority for a Catholic coalition led
by the Christian Democratic Party. The Social Democrats and Populists pro-
vided the center-left opposition. The chairman of the assembly, Aleksandras
Stulginskis (1885–1969), was elected president of the republic. In October
1922, the Constituent Assembly ended its term after enacting the Land

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 16 • INTRODUCTION

Reform Act and approving a new constitution that provided for a parliament,
the Seimas, elected for a three-year term on the basis of proportional repre-
sentation; in turn, the Seimas chose the president.
The three dominant political movements during the next four years of de-
mocracy were the Catholic-dominated Christian Democratic Bloc, the Peas-
ant Populists, and the Social Democrats, who espoused socialism but were
also committed to Lithuania’s independence and political pluralism. The
antidemocratic parties of the right and left extremes were weak. The Com-
munists had a small though vocal following, primarily among urban workers
and the national minorities, especially Jews and Russians. On the right, the
Nationalist Union gathered together the more conservative elements disen-
chanted with the feuding between the Catholic and anticlerical factions, but it
did not win any seats to the Seimas until May 1926.
Lithuania’s parliamentary democracy, as in most of the other eastern Eu-
ropean states, was beset by serious difficulties. The tradition of democratic
political culture was weak, and economic troubles led to social unrest. Offi-
cial corruption became a major political issue. The election campaign during
the spring of 1926 proved especially bitter. The center and left parties fanned
anti-Church passions, while many Catholic Bloc politicians accused everyone
to their left of Bolshevism.
The elections brought to power a center-left coalition of Peasant Popu-
lists and Social Democrats led by two respected statesmen, Prime Minister
Sleževičius and President Kazys Grinius (1866–1950). The government
abolished martial law, reduced the military budget, and proposed to secu-
larize education. Virtually from its inception, the new government faced
virulent opposition from many quarters. The sense of instability and disorder
encouraged a right-wing reaction. On 17 December 1926, a group of rightist
army officers disbanded the Seimas and forced President Grinius to appoint
Nationalist politician Voldemaras to head a new government. After Grinius’s
resignation, a rump session of the Seimas dominated by Nationalists and
Christian Democrats elected Smetona president.
Smetona’s refusal to call for new elections as required by the constitution
led to the Christian Democrats’ withdrawal from the ruling coalition in March
1927. Smetona then dismissed the Seimas, and for the next 12 years the Na-
tionalists ruled alone. Political activity was severely circumscribed, and in
1935 political parties were banned altogether (the Nationalist Union claimed
it was not a political party). After the president dismissed Voldemaras from
the government in 1929, his followers attempted to return the former prime
minister to power. The most serious conspiracy was a military mutiny in 1934
involving the army’s chief of staff. However, except for a part of the younger
officer corps and nationalist students, Voldemaras’s faction had little sup-

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 INTRODUCTION • 17

port in the society at large. Embarrassed by agrarian unrest in southwestern

Lithuania during the economic crisis of 1935–1936, the Smetona government
sponsored an indirect vote by a restricted electorate that effectively excluded
the opposition. The Fourth Seimas approved the Constitution of 1938, which
further entrenched the Nationalist monopoly of power.
The Nationalist ideology was a mixture of agrarian populism, the person-
ality cult of Smetona as “Leader of the Nation,” a stress on national unity,
and some superficial borrowings from Italian fascism. However, Smetona
shied away from those values that he thought were inconsistent with Western
and Christian tradition. Most of the Nationalist leadership rejected racism
and viewed Nazism with fear and suspicion. In principle, the Lithuanian
Nationalists were favorably disposed toward religion; Smetona emphasized
the importance of the Catholic Church as a partner in preserving Lithuanian
national values and maintaining the moral health of the citizenry. While
the Nationalists censored the newspapers, there was no serious attempt to
challenge the country’s tradition of ethnic, cultural, and religious pluralism.
Under Smetona, Lithuania remained a relatively open society: there were few
restrictions on the importation of foreign books, periodicals, or ideas.
The international crises of the late 1930s weakened the Nationalist dic-
tatorship. An ultimatum from Poland in March 1938 caused widespread
domestic dissatisfaction. The loss of Klaipėda in March 1939 and the prod-
ding of the popular commander of the Lithuanian army, Gen. Stasys Raštikis
(1896–1985), forced Smetona to appoint a coalition cabinet of national unity
in March 1939, stirring hopes for a democratization of the political system,
but a new government under Prime Minister Antanas Merkys (1887–1955)
formed in November 1939 returned to a more authoritarian mold acceptable
to the Nationalists.

Society, Economy, and National Culture between the Wars

The population of Lithuania stood at about 2,250,000 during the early
1920s, of which ethnic Lithuanians comprised more than 80 percent. The
largest minorities were the Jews (7%), Germans (4%), Poles (3%), and Rus-
sians (2.7%). In the early 1920s, about three-fourths of the population was
engaged in agriculture. Lithuania underwent a steady, though modest, urban-
ization during the years of independence. By the late 1930s, about a fourth of
the country’s people were classified as urban.
The ethnic composition of Lithuania’s towns and cities underwent a major
transformation between the wars. Before World War I, not a single city in
Lithuania had a majority of Lithuanian speakers. During the first five years of
independence, with the exception of Vilnius and Klaipėda, all of Lithuania’s

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 18 • INTRODUCTION

major cities acquired ethnic Lithuanian majorities. The predominance of

Lithuanians in the cities reflected the change in the country’s power structure.
For the first time in centuries, Lithuanian speakers controlled the political
establishment. They also rapidly achieved prominence in the economy, the
professions, and cultural life. The Land Reform of 1922, the introduction
of Lithuanian as the official language, and the development of national
education revolutionized the role of ethnic Lithuanians in the society and
effectively modernized Lithuanian culture. This social revolution allowed
a previously disenfranchised majority to achieve political power as well as
economic and social advancement.
The economic reconstruction of Lithuania after World War I was compli-
cated by the need to wean industry away from Russian markets. Germany’s
trade embargo against Lithuania during the early 1930s and the fall of ag-
ricultural prices during the worldwide depression exacerbated the problem.
Despite these difficulties, Lithuania achieved considerable gains in farm
productivity. After the abolition of the old manorial system, medium-size and
small farms predominated; in 1930, they made up an estimated 78 percent of
all farms. During the 1930s, pork and dairy products, especially high-grade
butter, accounted for the majority of Lithuania’s exports.
Despite these gains in productivity, Lithuanian agriculture suffered struc-
tural weaknesses. Many peasants remained indebted, and farm failures were
frequent. In 1930, about 45 percent of the farms were less than 10 hectares
(25 acres) in size; the smallest of these belonged to destitute peasants whose
conditions of life were difficult. Thousands of the rural poor emigrated to
South America, particularly Brazil and Argentina, during the 1920s. The
mechanization of farming and electrification of the villages proceeded
slowly. The relationship of industrial and farm prices was extremely unfavor-
able to the peasantry, whose social and economic problems gave rise to rural
protest movements.
Lithuania’s most developed industries were textiles and food processing,
especially the meat and dairy sectors. The Maistas Company, the nation’s
largest Lithuanian-owned concern, played an important role in developing the
economy. Between 1930 and 1938, industrial production more than doubled.
In general, it can be said that Lithuania achieved a solid measure of economic
progress during the two decades of independence despite obstacles that included
a lack of investment capital, a weak industrial base, the depression of the 1930s,
and the need to reorient exports because of the 1932 German trade embargo.
Lithuania’s major foreign trade partners were Germany and Great Britain,
the latter acquiring an increasing share of Lithuanian exports during the mid-
dle and late 1930s. In 1938, Britain absorbed nearly 40 percent of Lithuanian

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 INTRODUCTION • 19

exports, while Germany’s share was 27 percent. Meat and butter constituted
over a third of total exports; livestock (pigs and horses), grains, flax, and lum-
ber made up most of the rest. Manufactured products, particularly machinery,
and raw materials (coal, oil, iron) were the most significant imports. After
some problems in the early 1920s, the currency and finances of the Republic
were stabilized. Lithuania’s foreign debt was small, and domestic obligations
totaled only 65,000,000 litai. The government’s 1938 budget of 366,000,000
litai was practically balanced. The defense budget took the largest share,
nearly a fourth of expenditures.
Lithuania’s social welfare structure between the wars was relatively weak,
despite efforts to expand and strengthen it during the late 1930s. Infant mor-
tality was reduced by more than a third between the mid-1920s and the later
1930s. While the number of doctors grew slowly, the number of hospital
beds increased fivefold between 1920 and 1939. There was no unemployment
insurance, although after 1927 the government periodically utilized public
works projects to reduce the jobless rate.
The greatest progress in independent Lithuania was made in the fields
of education and culture. The laws of the Republic of Lithuania mandated
religious and ethnic equality, as well as cultural autonomy. During indepen-
dence, the illiteracy rate was reduced from 44 percent to less than 15 percent.
While formal education in the native language had been extremely limited
before independence, after 1918 the Lithuanian government systematically
expanded education from the primary to the university level. Compulsory pri-
mary education was introduced in 1928, and an adult literacy campaign was
initiated. The number of primary schools quadrupled between the wars: by
1938, there were 2,599 primary schools with 300,000 pupils and nearly 100
secondary schools with more than 20,000 students. A number of technical
and specialized higher schools were established as well as a national univer-
sity in Kaunas. In addition to public education, Lithuania possessed numerous
private schools, most of which were operated by the Catholic Church and the
national minorities.
Cultural development expanded in new directions. Opera, theater, ballet,
and contemporary music were integrated into the national culture. Despite
official censorship, the number and variety of Lithuanian-language publica-
tions rose rapidly, including scholarly and literary journals that exposed the
growing number of educated readers to the ideas current in the West. Sports
became widely popular. During the mid-1930s, a basketball craze swept the
country after Lithuania, assisted by Lithuanian-American stars from the U.S.
Olympic team, twice won the European championships: in Riga in 1937 and
in Kaunas in 1939.

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 20 • INTRODUCTION

Crisis, War, and the End of Independence, 1938–1940

During the last two years of interwar independence, Lithuania’s larger
neighbors—Poland, Germany, and the Soviet Union—reduced Lithuania’s
diplomatic freedom of action through military and political pressure. The first
major crisis came on 17 March 1938 when, after a border incident, Poland
presented an ultimatum to the Lithuanian government demanding the com-
mencement of diplomatic relations under the threat of military intervention.
Lithuania accepted the ultimatum, and diplomatic ties were established be-
tween Kaunas and Warsaw. At the same time, the situation in Klaipėda Terri-
tory deteriorated. On 20 March 1939, Germany presented an ultimatum to the
Lithuanian government demanding the immediate transfer of Klaipėda Ter-
ritory to the Reich. Once again, faced with overwhelming force, Smetona’s
government retreated. The loss of Klaipėda provoked considerable domestic
dissatisfaction with the Nationalist government, which had repeatedly prom-
ised to defend the country’s territorial integrity.
The Soviet Union’s position as a power broker in the approaching conflict
between the Western powers and Germany proved fatal to the independence
of the Baltic States. When France and Britain proved reluctant to accommo-
date the Soviet demands for military access to Poland and a free hand in the
Baltic States, Joseph Stalin struck a deal with Adolf Hitler. The USSR and
Germany signed the Soviet-German Treaty of Non-Aggression, commonly
known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, on 23 August 1939. The treaty con-
tained a secret protocol that divided most of eastern Europe into spheres of
influence. Lithuania, including the disputed Vilnius region, and the western
half of Poland were assigned to Germany; the Soviet sphere included Finland,
Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia (Moldova).
After the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, the USSR at-
tacked eastern Poland on 17 September. While the Germans initially pressed
Lithuania to join in the attack and regain Vilnius, the Lithuanian government
adhered to a position of neutrality. On 28 September 1939, Joachim Rib-
bentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov signed the German-Soviet Borders and
Friendship Treaty, which contained additional secret protocols, one of which
transferred most of Lithuania into the Soviet sphere of influence, except for a
slice of the southwestern region of the country assigned to the Reich.
In late September, Stalin began to consolidate his gains by forcing the
Baltic States to accept pacts of mutual assistance with the USSR. On 10
October 1939, the Lithuanian government and the Kremlin signed the
Soviet-Lithuanian Treaty of Mutual Assistance and the Transfer of Vilnius.
The Soviet-Lithuanian mutual assistance pact provided for the stationing of
20,000 Soviet troops in Lithuania for 15 years, but guaranteed noninterfer-
ence in the Republic’s internal affairs. In Lithuania, the shock of accepting
foreign military bases was, to a large degree, attenuated by the population’s

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 INTRODUCTION • 21

joy at the prospect of recovering Vilnius, which, according to the treaty, was
to be ceded to Lithuania.
The war and the acquisition of Vilnius posed difficult problems for the
Lithuanian government. The internment of thousands of Polish troops who
had fled to Lithuania and the care of tens of thousands of Polish civilian refu-
gees strained a government budget amid shortages caused by interruptions in
international trade. Most of the Vilnius region was less developed than the
rest of Lithuania, and its administration was complicated by tensions with the
majority Polish-speaking population of the area. Yet despite the hardships
brought on by the war, the Soviet-Lithuanian relationship seemed tranquil
until the spring of 1940.
In May 1940, the Soviet government increasingly voiced complaints that
Lithuanian authorities were encouraging the desertion of Soviet soldiers in
Lithuania and conducting espionage against the Red Army. The Kremlin
charged that these activities proved Lithuania’s hostile attitude toward the
Soviet Union and its unwillingness to abide by the Lithuanian-Soviet mutual
assistance pact. At the same time, Moscow undertook a broad propaganda
campaign against the Baltic States, claiming that the three countries were
adopting a dangerously pro-British course and aspiring to create a Baltic alli-
ance directed against the Soviet Union.
On 11 June, Lithuanian foreign minister Juozas Urbšys (1896–1991)
brought to Moscow a personal letter from Smetona to President Mikhail Ka-
linin of the USSR, promising strict Lithuanian adherence to the agreements
undertaken the previous October. However, at midnight on 14 June, Molotov
delivered a Soviet ultimatum to Urbšys in the Kremlin, demanding the arrest
of Lithuania’s interior minister and security chief, the formation of a govern-
ment satisfactory to the USSR, and, most important, the entry of additional
Soviet forces. An answer was demanded as of 10 o’clock on the morning of
15 June, providing the Lithuanian government only a few hours to respond.
Despite Smetona’s support for armed resistance, the cabinet accepted the
Kremlin’s ultimatum. At about noon on 15 June, more than 200,000 Soviet
troops, supported by tanks, aircraft, and artillery, crossed the border into
Lithuania. On 17 June, similar ultimatums were presented to the Latvian and
Estonian governments; within days, over a half million Soviet troops were
firmly in control of the Baltic States.

The Soviet Occupation and Lithuania’s

Annexation by the USSR, 1940–1941
Following the Soviet occupation, Lithuania’s affairs were directed by
Vladimir Dekanozov (1898–1953), Moscow’s plenipotentiary who arrived
with the invading troops, and Nikolai Pozdniakov (1900–1948), the Soviet

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 22 • INTRODUCTION

ambassador to Lithuania. At their insistence, Acting President Merkys ap-

pointed a leftist journalist, Justas Paleckis (1899–1980), as the new prime
minister on 17 June. Upon Merkys’s resignation, Paleckis also became acting
president, a change of leadership that was of doubtful legality according to
the succession provisions of the Lithuanian Constitution. Paleckis’s cabinet
was declared the People’s Government and included some well-known Lithu-
anian democrats as well as Communist sympathizers. Within two weeks of
the Soviet occupation, the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) was legalized,
leftist political prisoners were released, and decrees separating Church and
State were promulgated.
In mid-July 1940, the USSR accelerated the process of Lithuania’s So-
vietization in a two-pronged strategy of neutralizing potential opposition
and then staging Lithuania’s annexation as an expression of popular will.
On 11–12 July, Communist-controlled security forces arrested hundreds of
prominent Lithuanians, many of whom were deported to the Soviet Union.
Virtually all non-Communist organizations were either banned or placed
under the supervision of Lithuania’s tiny Communist Party. The elections
to Lithuania’s People’s Diet on 14–15 July were rigged in favor of the
only permitted political group, the hastily formed, Communist-controlled
Lithuanian Union of Labor. The Communists proclaimed that 95.5 percent
of eligible voters had cast nearly 99.2 percent of their ballots for the Union
of Labor.
The People’s Diet that met in Kaunas on 21–24 July 1940 voted to pro-
claim a Soviet socialist form of government and chose a delegation to petition
for Lithuania’s membership in the USSR, a request granted on 3 August 1940
when the Supreme Soviet admitted the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic
(SSR) into the Soviet Union. Most Western governments refused to recognize
the Soviet Union’s forcible annexation of the Baltic States and continued to
accredit Baltic diplomatic missions.
During the first year of the Soviet occupation, the government sought to
eliminate or transform those Lithuanian institutions that made the country
distinct from the USSR, but the Sovietization policies in Lithuania aroused
opposition. When the Soviet regime announced a land reform that would
benefit landless peasants and the poorest smallholders, it temporarily gained
some support among the rural populace; however, this advantage was quickly
squandered by harsh taxation measures and policies that foreshadowed col-
lectivization. The expropriation of private enterprises and bank accounts, as
well as the replacement of the litas with the ruble at a confiscatory exchange
rate, invited the opposition of the propertied classes. The increasingly re-
pressive Communist policy toward the Church aroused resentment in one of
eastern Europe’s most Catholic countries.

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 INTRODUCTION • 23

By the spring of 1941, the anti-Soviet opposition in Lithuania had co-

alesced into an underground movement. In November 1940, a group of Lithu-
anian diplomats and activists, some of whom had escaped into Germany after
the Soviet takeover, met in Berlin and founded the Lithuanian Activist Front
(LAF), a coalition of the major Lithuanian non-Communist groups, dedicated
to the restoration of Lithuania’s independence. The LAF had developed a net-
work of anti-Soviet cells that would await the outbreak of a German-Soviet
war, which many Lithuanians believed inevitable. The ideology of the LAF
tended toward authoritarianism and intense nationalism.
Meanwhile, the political situation in Lithuania deteriorated even further.
Thousands of persons had been arrested or deported for political reasons.
Tensions between those accused of collaborating with the Soviets and op-
ponents of the regime grew as rumors of an approaching Russo-German
war spread among the populace. Anti-Semitism became more pronounced
as many ethnic Lithuanians blamed the Jews for supporting the country’s
occupation. The population was stunned when, in the predawn hours of 14
June 1941, Soviet security forces, assisted by local Communist activists, sud-
denly began large-scale deportations of so-called unreliable elements. Within
72 hours, the Communist forces netted more than 18,000 men, women, and
children, who were sent to the most inhospitable regions of the Soviet Union
in the far north and central Asia.

Lithuania under Nazi Occupation, 1941–1944

On 22 June 1941, the German army invaded the USSR. Except for the
Communists and their supporters, few Lithuanians offered any resistance
to the invaders. Thousands of Lithuanian Red Army troops deserted during
the rapid and chaotic Soviet retreat. On 23 June, an anti-Soviet uprising in-
spired by the LAF engulfed Kaunas, seized parts of Vilnius, and then spread
to the provinces. The rebels captured the main radio station and announced
the formation of a Lithuanian provisional government. As the Soviet forces
retreated, the Red Army, the NKVD, and Communist activists massacred
hundreds of people, including prisoners they did not choose to transport
eastward.
The rebels’ provisional government could do little to affect events in the
country, since its jurisdiction was severely limited by the Nazi occupation.
On 25 July, the Reich announced the establishment of a civilian administra-
tion (Zivilverwaltung), creating the General Commissariat (Generalkommis-
ariat or Generalbezirk) of Lithuania, which, together with Estonia, Latvia,
and Belarus, constituted the Nazi province of Ostland. On 5 August 1941, the
provisional government resigned in protest.

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 24 • INTRODUCTION

Some spheres of life, such as all matters dealing with ethnic Germans, Jews,
and the military, were placed exclusively under Nazi control. Other matters,
such as education, the local economy, communications, the ordinary police,
and the administration of law involving Lithuanians, were relegated to a body
of native counselors under German supervision. Gen. Petras Kubiliūnas, a
pro-German officer, was appointed to head this group as general counselor.
The greatest single atrocity of the Nazi occupation was the mass murder of
Lithuania’s Jews, of whom more than 90 percent perished in the Holocaust.
While Jews were killed throughout the years of the German occupation, the
majority were massacred during the summer and autumn of 1941. The kill-
ings were carried out by special Nazi action groups known as Einsatzgruppen,
assisted by auxiliaries recruited from the local population. The total number
of Jews killed in Lithuania is difficult to determine precisely, but the Lithu-
anian government’s official commission charged with evaluating the crimes
committed during the foreign occupations of the country announced in April
2005 that between 200,000 and 206,000 persons had been murdered in the
Holocaust, of whom approximately 190,000 were Lithuanian Jews. Perhaps
as many as 20,000 Jews escaped eastward during the first days of the war,
and another few thousand were rescued by local Gentiles.
While much of the population had initially greeted the German invasion as
liberation from Stalinist rule, the Nazi policy of economic expropriation and
cultural repression soon provoked resistance. The major political issues were
the Nazis’ refusal to grant Lithuania significant autonomy, the harsh behav-
ior of German officials, and the Reich’s increasing reliance on forced labor.
On the other hand, the majority of the Lithuanian population feared another
Soviet occupation. Most were distrustful of the anti-Nazi Polish and Soviet
partisans concentrated in eastern Lithuania, who opposed Lithuanian national
aspirations and themselves utilized terror against civilians.
Tensions in Lithuania came to a head in the spring of 1943 with the execu-
tions of peasants who failed to meet requisitions and the German demand for
manpower. In March 1943, the Lithuanian populace sabotaged the formation
of a Lithuanian SS (Schutzstaffel) Legion by a massive refusal to respond
to the mobilization decree. Nazi authorities blamed the intelligentsia for this
failure and began a series of arrests. During the spring of 1944, German offi-
cials granted permission for the formation of a Lithuanian military formation,
the so-called Local Force (Lithuanian: Vietinė Rinktinė), which would guard
the country against the approaching Soviet army. However, when Reich of-
ficials suspected that the Lithuanians intended to utilize these men solely for
their own national ends, they arrested the force’s senior officers and inducted
the volunteers into German units.

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 INTRODUCTION • 25

The German occupation devastated Lithuania. At least a quarter of a mil-

lion people, predominantly Jews, were massacred by the Nazis. More than
75,000 young Lithuanians were pressed into the Reich Labor Service, of
whom thousands were killed in Germany during Allied bombings or sim-
ply disappeared. Hundreds of villages were destroyed in the war. Vilnius,
Klaipėda, Šiauliai, and other Lithuanian cities were heavily damaged.

Postwar Stalinism and Mass Repression, 1945–1953

In June 1944, the Red Army smashed through the Belarusian front in the
largest land operation of the war. By mid-July, the Soviets had taken Vilnius,
and on 1 August, the Germans abandoned Kaunas. Upon their return, the So-
viets forcibly inducted about 100,000 young men into the Red Army. Some
100,000 Lithuanian civilians attempted to flee west, and more than 60,000
succeeded in making their way into Germany, where they were eventually
liberated by the Western Allies. After V-E Day, most of these refugees even-
tually found themselves in Displaced Person (DP) camps.
After the German surrender in May 1945, Lithuania underwent one of the
most violent periods in its history. In demographic terms, many more ethnic
Lithuanians were killed and displaced after the surrender of the Axis than
during the war itself. Heavy population losses resulted from mass deporta-
tions, an intense anti-Soviet guerrilla war, and collectivization. Between
1945 and 1953, Soviet authorities deported approximately 130,000 people to
the USSR, where many died of the harsh conditions. Lithuania’s anti-Soviet
guerrilla war, which reached its peak during the late 1940s, was especially
destructive. Nearly 60,000 persons perished in the armed struggle between
1945 and 1953, including Lithuanian civilians who died at the hands of the
various Soviet security forces suppressing the uprising, as well as thousands
of Communist activists and Soviet collaborators who were killed by the
insurgents. The main armed resistance ended by the early 1950s, although
isolated bands were reported in Lithuania’s forests for some years afterward.
The collectivization of Lithuania drove many people in the countryside close
to famine. By 1950, collectivized agriculture had largely displaced private
farms in Lithuania.
The period of postwar Stalinist rule was marked by intensified religious
and cultural repression. A third of the country’s Catholic priests were de-
ported or killed after the war. Hundreds of churches and monasteries were
closed. In 1946, the Communist Party, following the Soviet campaign against
“cosmopolitan” trends in literature, began a purge of Lithuanian writers and
artists who were perceived as nationally minded. The LCP itself began the

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 26 • INTRODUCTION

postwar period as a Russian-dominated political machine. In the early 1950s,

scarcely a fourth of the republic’s Communists were ethnic Lithuanians.

After Stalin: The Khrushchev and Brezhnev Years, 1953–1982

Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953 initiated important changes in the Soviet
Union. The late 1950s under Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) were marked
by the period of the so-called “thaw,” which softened some of Stalinism’s
most egregious policies. Gradually, conditions for the thousands of Lithu-
anian deportees improved, and many of them began returning to Lithuania
during the mid- and late 1950s. Another important change was the partial
relaxation of the restrictions on Lithuanian national culture. The intelligen-
tsia and even some Party members sought to reverse or at least soften the
Kremlin’s Russification program. Persecution of the Catholic Church less-
ened, although atheist indoctrination continued unabated. In the early 1960s,
Moscow responded with a new crackdown on national assertiveness in the
Baltic SSRs, and some prominent Lithuanian leaders were expelled from the
Party for so-called nationalist deviations. However, there was no return to
mass terror.
In October 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power by a clique of
Communist leaders who coalesced around Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982). In
Lithuania, the Party was still dominated by Antanas Sniečkus (1903–1974),
who led the LCP for nearly a half century. After his death, Sniečkus was re-
placed by the conservative Petras Griškevičius (1924–1987). The 1970s and
early 1980s saw renewed efforts at linguistic Russification. The major ratio-
nale behind this policy was outlined during the Tashkent Conference of 1975,
which stipulated increased efforts in promoting the study of Russian in the
Soviet Union’s non-Russian schools. In general, the official goal remained
the consolidation of the Soviet peoples into a single socialist national entity.
The later Brezhnev years in particular witnessed an intensified campaign in
favor of “internationalism,” widely understood as the euphemism for Rus-
sification.
The Lithuanian economy underwent severe dislocations during the
Brezhnev years. The number of large, polluting industrial enterprises con-
trolled by the central planning agencies in Moscow increased dramatically,
along with a corresponding rise in immigrant labor, primarily of Russian and
other East Slavic origins. The worsening ecological situation was a factor in
the declining standard of living during the 1970s and 1980s.
During the early 1970s, dissident activity against the Soviet regime in
Lithuania became more pronounced. In November 1970, a Lithuanian sailor,
Simas Kudirka (1930– ), attempted to defect but was forcibly returned to a

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 INTRODUCTION • 27

Soviet ship off the New England coast. Kudirka’s trial in Lithuania galva-
nized dissident circles. In early 1972, a petition against religious persecution
signed by 17,000 Lithuanian Catholics reached the United Nations; it elicited
no official response, but received press coverage in the United States. On 14
May 1972, a young student, Romas Kalanta (1953–1972), immolated himself
in a Kaunas park in protest against Soviet rule, provoking several days of
anti-Russian riots in the city that were reported in the Western press.
A less spectacular but more significant event during the same year was the
appearance of the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, a samizdat
publication that collected and disseminated information about the persecution
of Lithuania’s Catholics and the regime’s suppression of national rights. A
number of other underground periodicals also appeared. Two internationally
known human rights organizations were founded during the 1970s: the Lithu-
anian Helsinki Group and the Committee to Defend the Rights of Believers.
Both groups organized the collection of signatures, appealed publicly for the
freedom of imprisoned dissidents, publicized violations of human rights, and
sought to expose the government’s harsh policies directed at religious free-
dom and expressions of national culture.
The Soviet government met the new movements with harassment and se-
lective repression, imprisoning their more active leaders. While the number
of religious and national activists who were sentenced to imprisonment and
exile was not great, at most several hundred, the harassment of nationally
minded youth, practicing Catholics, and other nonconformists involved thou-
sands of persons. The regime sought to block virtually all avenues of what
it considered dangerous national expression, even disbanding popular ethno-
graphic and historical student expeditions.
Brezhnev, the longest serving Soviet leader since Stalin, died on 10 No-
vember 1982. The appointment of Yuri Andropov (1914–1984), and then in
February 1984 of the senile Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985), had little
immediate impact on Lithuania. However, the early 1980s were a period of
growing debate on ecological issues, which were to become a major factor in
Lithuanian politics.

Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Road to Independence, 1985–1990

The tenure of the last general secretary of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union (CPSU), Mikhail Gorbachev (1931– ), began with promises of
reform in the shape of his policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost
(openness). In Lithuania, however, the conservative Party leadership still
reiterated the condemnations of bourgeois nationalism under the lacklus-
ter party boss Ringaudas Songaila (1929– ), who replaced Griškevičius in

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 28 • INTRODUCTION

1987. But the LCP was unable to stem the increasingly powerful current of
national dissent.
One of the most important issues of the mid-1980s was the recovery of
the nation’s history, as writers and literary critics began an unprecedented
debate on Lithuania’s past, criticizing the constraints of official censorship on
research and writing. For their part, philologists protested against Russifica-
tion and urged the authorities to protect the Lithuanian language. The disaf-
fection of the intelligentsia spread to the population at large through a series
of protests, demonstrations, and political confrontations, which rearranged
Lithuania’s political landscape within two years.
On 23 August 1987, a large crowd gathered outside St. Anne’s Church in
Vilnius to commemorate the 48th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact. In response, the Party and the official media launched a vituperative
campaign against the organizers of the demonstration, but this action con-
trasted embarrassingly with Gorbachev’s call for openness and democratic
reform. Distressed by the rise in national feeling, Lithuania’s hard-line
Communists were determined to prevent demonstrations on 16 February
1988, the 70th anniversary of the proclamation of Lithuanian independence.
The government succeeded in preventing mass demonstrations, but the
regime’s actions exposed the Communists’ fears and provoked even more
criticism. The growing popular disaffection with the Lithuanian govern-
ment and Party in the republic was fueled by the example of the reformist
Estonian Popular Front, which had the support of much of the Estonian
Communist Party.
Exasperated by the LCP’s tepid response to Gorbachev’s call for openness
and restructuring, a group of concerned intelligentsia met on 3 June 1988
at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius to discuss reform. The
participants elected 35 members to lead the Initiative Group to Support Per-
estroika in Lithuania. This was the core of what later became known as the
Lithuanian Movement for Restructuring (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Persitvarkymo
Sąjūdis) or simply Sąjūdis. The Initiative Group succeeded in harnessing
growing popular discontent. Ever larger pro-reform demonstrations hoisting
the banned prewar tricolor and other national symbols spread during the sum-
mer of 1988.
The rallying cries of Lithuania’s reform movement presented demands
for sovereignty, the solution of environmental problems, the defense of
Lithuanian culture, and an end to officials’ privileges. On 9 July 1988, about
100,000 people gathered at an outdoor amphitheater in Vilnius to greet the
delegates returning from the 19th CPSU Conference in Moscow. During this
summer, a “March across Lithuania” by young people concerned about the
environment received an emotional welcome in many of Lithuania’s small

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 INTRODUCTION • 29

towns. At the same time, Sąjūdis activists began publishing unofficial peri-
odicals reluctantly tolerated by the authorities.
The growth of the Lithuanian national opposition also received consider-
able support from the Catholic Church. On 28 June 1988, the president of the
Lithuanian bishops’ conference, Vincentas Sladkevičius (1920–2000), was
named Lithuania’s first modern cardinal. He issued increasingly assertive
statements demanding religious and national rights for Lithuanians. On 23
August, nearly a quarter of a million people gathered to commemorate the
49th anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Condemna-
tion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 inevitably led to criticism of the Soviet
occupation of the Baltic States that resulted from the treaty. In the late sum-
mer and fall of 1988, new chapters of Sąjūdis began to appear even in the
smaller towns.
On 28 September, Soviet internal ministry troops and local militia attacked
a demonstration organized by the pro-independence Lithuanian Liberty
League. The violence provoked an outcry, and within days, Songaila was
ousted and the popular Algirdas Brazauskas (1932–2010) became the LCP’s
new (and last) first secretary. The installation of Brazauskas coincided with
the founding congress of Sąjūdis on 22–23 October, which provided a formal
structure for the new movement. Brazauskas publicly opposed the increas-
ingly vocal demands for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Lithuania, but
promised wide-ranging reforms and a new political era in the republic, albeit
within the Soviet system.
The Sąjūdis congress elected an executive council, chose Vytautas Lands-
bergis (1932– ) as its chairman, and adopted a program calling for the rule of
law, economic autonomy, self-determination, and the introduction of Lithu-
anian as the official language of the republic, as well as equal rights and cul-
tural autonomy for the national minorities. In November 1988, the Lithuanian
SSR Supreme Soviet issued a decree confirming Lithuanian as the official
language and declared 16 February, traditionally viewed as Independence
Day, a national holiday. At the same time, Sąjūdis called for the eventual
reestablishment of a neutral, democratic, and independent Lithuanian state.
The elections to the USSR’s Congress of People’s Deputies on 26 March
1989 proved an overwhelming victory for the pro-independence forces as
Sąjūdis-supported candidates won 36 of the 42 Lithuanian seats to the new
Soviet legislature. On the weekend of 12–14 May in Tallinn, the Estonian and
Latvian popular fronts and Sąjūdis established the Baltic Assembly, which
adopted resolutions calling for self-determination, the creation of a neutral
Baltic demilitarized region, and an examination of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact. On 18 May, the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet proposed changes in the
Constitution of the Lithuanian SSR that would give Lithuania the right to veto

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 30 • INTRODUCTION

Soviet laws and announced that future relations of Lithuania with the USSR
would have to be negotiated as international agreements.
The Baltic delegates to the Congress of People’s Deputies that convened
in Moscow in May 1989 successfully utilized the issue of the Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact to highlight the need to reevaluate the status of the Baltic
republics. Lithuania’s Party and government leadership announced that 14
June, the anniversary of the deportations of Lithuanians in 1941, would hence
be commemorated as a Day of Mourning and Hope to honor the victims of
Stalinism, which was equated with Nazi genocide and condemned in harsh
terms never before seen in the official media. In late June, the LCP’s Central
Committee dismissed a number of Russian and Lithuanian hard-liners and
replaced them with avowed reformers.
On 22 August 1989, a commission of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet an-
nounced that the 1940 decree of the Lithuanian People’s Diet requesting
that Lithuania join the USSR, as well as the decree of the USSR Supreme
Soviet of 3 August 1940 admitting Lithuania into the Soviet Union, should
be annulled as they had occurred under conditions of military occupation and
fraudulent elections. The next day, on the 50th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet
Pact, in the largest political demonstration in Soviet history, more than a mil-
lion people linked hands in a 600-kilometer (370-mile) human chain from
Tallinn to Vilnius that was called the “Baltic Way.” A few days later, the
Central Committee of the CPSU responded with a strong verbal attack on
the Baltic national movements and signaled that it was losing patience with
Baltic Communist leaders who were unable or unwilling to restrain so-called
nationalist excesses.
In September 1989, the LCP leadership informed its membership that the
Party needed to gain credibility by establishing a movement organization-
ally separate from the CPSU. On 17 December, Lithuanian Communists
opened their 20th Congress in Vilnius. Despite pressure from the Krem-
lin, the LCP proclaimed itself an independent Marxist party with a social
democratic orientation. A number of hard-line delegates broke away from
the reformist majority to establish a Lithuanian Communist Party faction
loyal to Moscow.
On 11–13 January 1990, Soviet president Gorbachev flew to Lithuania in
a highly publicized attempt to dampen the fervor for independence, but his
visit failed to convince the Lithuanian people that their future rested within a
reformed Soviet Union. This became evident when the first multiparty elec-
tions to the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet in February and March 1990 brought
in a Sąjūdis majority that had openly campaigned for the restoration of the
republic’s independence.

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 INTRODUCTION • 31

The Republic of Lithuania Transformed, 1990–2003

On 11 March 1990, the newly elected Lithuanian Supreme Soviet unani-
mously approved a declaration restoring the independence of the Republic of
Lithuania and abolishing the Lithuanian SSR. The parliament now became
known in English as the Supreme Council in order to distinguish it from
the legislature of the Soviet period. The new body elected Sąjūdis leader
Landsbergis as its chairman and, in effect, head of state and named economist
Kazimira Prunskienė (1943– ) as the new prime minister. Brazauskas agreed
to serve as Prunskienė’s deputy.
The Soviet government denounced the Supreme Council’s declaration of
independence as illegal, and the Soviet military responded with repressive
measures, such as rounding up Lithuanian deserters from the Soviet army and
occupying buildings belonging to the reformist LCP in the name of restoring
CPSU property. In addition, Gorbachev imposed an economic blockade on
Lithuania that lasted until the summer. In April 1990, the USSR Supreme
Soviet approved detailed legislation ostensibly enabling Union republics to
leave the federation according to Article 72 of the Soviet Constitution, but
the new rules actually made legal secession difficult, if not impossible. Gor-
bachev initially refused Lithuania’s requests for negotiations on implement-
ing independence, later suggesting that the USSR would demand exorbitant
reparation payments and even territorial concessions from an independent
Lithuania.
The qualified support that Prime Minister Prunskienė received during her
visit to the United States, Britain, France, and Germany in May 1990, as well
as some concessions by the Lithuanian Supreme Council, resulted in the lift-
ing of the Soviet economic boycott of Lithuania. However, Gorbachev’s turn
to a more conservative course in the fall of 1990 led to a series of repressive
measures against selected Lithuanian institutions by the special OMON, or
Black Beret, units of the Soviet Interior Ministry, particularly against the
new Lithuanian customs service. The Soviet government’s policies were sup-
ported by the LCP (CPSU) faction with allied groups such as the Yedinstvo
(Russian for “unity”) movement of postwar Russian-speaking immigrants
and part of the Polish minority. However, the actions of Soviet authorities and
their supporters simply rallied the majority of Lithuanians to the Landsbergis
government.
The Lithuanian crisis escalated after the resignation of Soviet foreign min-
ister Eduard Shevardnadze (1928– ) on 20 December 1990, as Soviet troops
began a series of actions aimed at reinforcing Soviet power in the republic.
The Soviet authorities also encouraged opposition to the Landsbergis govern-
ment by Yedinstvo, LCP (CPSU) supporters, and other hard-line elements,

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 32 • INTRODUCTION

which culminated in a series of antigovernment demonstrations in early

January 1991 that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Prunskienė and
the appointment, after a brief interlude, of Gediminas Vagnorius (1957– ) as
premier. However, the antigovernment protests soon dissipated in the face
of much larger pro-independence manifestations. In the predawn hours of 13
January 1991, Soviet troops stormed the Lithuanian TV tower and broadcast-
ing facilities in Vilnius, killing 14 civilians and wounding hundreds, while
a little-known Committee of National Salvation, headed by Communist
hard-line stalwarts Juozas Jermalavičius (1940– ) and Mykolas Burokevičius
(1927– ), attempted to claim power. Western governments, preoccupied with
the Gulf War, protested the Soviet crackdown, but offered little practical sup-
port to Lithuania.
The coup against the Lithuanian government failed to dislodge Landsber-
gis and inspired considerable support for Lithuania from Russian radicals,
such as Russian president Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007). In February 1991,
more than 90 percent of Lithuanians voted in support of establishing a
democratic, independent republic. Nevertheless, during 1990–1991 Lithuania
experienced a period of dual power: while the Republic of Lithuania under
Landsbergis continued to administer the country, the state received interna-
tional recognition only from Iceland. At the same time, the Soviet military
and KGB effectively controlled Lithuania’s borders. The OMON continued
its attacks against Lithuanian institutions; the most violent incident was the
murder of seven Lithuanian customs officers at the Medininkai border post
on 31 July 1991.
The failure of the Communist hard-line coup in Moscow of 18–22 August
1991 and the collapse of the CPSU led to the practical implementation of
Lithuania’s independence. The OMON was withdrawn from the Baltic, while
the KGB headquarters in Vilnius was seized by Lithuanian police. Western
governments recognized the independent governments of the Baltic States,
and finally, on 6 September 1991, the Federation Council of the USSR itself
accepted the independence of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The three coun-
tries were admitted to the United Nations in the following week.
The years 1991–1992 were marked by an increasingly bitter struggle be-
tween Landsbergis and the opposition—much of which was drawn from the
former LCP, rechristened as the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party (LDDP).
The Sąjūdis movement turned to the right, losing much of its appeal among
the intelligentsia. The governments of Prime Minister Vagnorius and his suc-
cessor Aleksandras Abišala (1955– ) carried out major fiscal reforms and a
policy of privatization, but failed to reverse a deep slide in industrial produc-
tion and living standards. In the elections of October 1992, the LDDP scored

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 INTRODUCTION • 33

a surprising victory, winning a majority (75 out of 141 seats) in the Seimas
(parliament).
In February 1993, Algirdas Brazauskas, the head of the LDDP, defeated
Stasys Lozoraitis (1924–1994), Lithuania’s ambassador to Washington, in
the country’s first popular elections for the presidency. Landsbergis became
the leader of the opposition: his supporters coalesced into the Fatherland
Union (Conservative Party) in May, which was also supported by the Chris-
tian Democrats, the Nationalists, and the Union of Political Prisoners and De-
portees. The caretaker government of Bronislovas Lubys (1938– ) appointed
in December 1992 was replaced in March 1993 by a cabinet headed by Prime
Minister Adolfas Šleževičius (1948– ).
In November and December 1995, the country was rocked by financial
scandals involving the failure of three major banks. This led to demands
for the resignation of Premier Šleževičius, who had withdrawn his private
bank accounts before the collapse. On 8 February 1996, the Seimas voted
to dismiss Šleževičius and replaced him with Mindaugas Stankevičius
(1935– ), who was to head a caretaker government while the country prepared
for parliamentary elections.
While the currency, the litas, remained stable for almost a decade after its
introduction in 1993, Lithuania only slowly recovered from the economic
downturn that had begun in the late 1980s. The standard of living plummeted:
at least half of the population fell below the government’s statistical poverty
line. However, there also emerged a nascent middle class, variously esti-
mated at between 15 and 25 percent of the population, whose situation either
remained stable or improved. A small, wealthy elite that gained enormously
during the privatization process emerged as well; much of this new class,
however, maintained close ties to organized crime syndicates. Corruption and
the failure of the judiciary and police to curb the activities of the underworld
became major political issues.
Economically, Lithuania experienced the usual problems of unemployment
tied to the inefficiency of the former large-scale Soviet industrial enterprises.
The country made a major effort to reorient economic activity toward the
West, with some success: over half of exports during the first decade of in-
dependence went to states outside the former Soviet Bloc. Lithuania sought
to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and natural gas by continuing to
operate the large Chernobyl-style reactor at Ignalina and began construction
of the Butingė oil terminal north of Klaipėda for the import of energy by sea.
However, the energy picture remained clouded by a major dispute with Latvia
over drilling on the Baltic Sea coast. Despite efforts, there was no significant
reduction in Lithuania’s dependence on Russian energy supplies.

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 34 • INTRODUCTION

In foreign policy, the Lithuanian government was able to point to some

notable successes. The negotiations concerning the withdrawal of Russian
troops had led to their departure by September 1993. Lithuania developed
closer ties to the other Baltic States and the Scandinavian countries, as well
as to the member states of the European Union. In 1994, Lithuania joined
the Partnership for Peace program of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), and the government continued to pursue full-fledged membership
in the alliance despite strong objections from Russia. At the same time,
along with the other Baltic States, Lithuania continued a policy aimed at
both political and economic integration with the rest of Europe by signing
an association agreement with the goal of eventually joining the European
Union. In 1995, as part of its efforts to participate in the solution of European
problems, Lithuania sent a small peacekeeping contingent to Bosnia. The
LDDP governments continued to press for integration with European and
transatlantic structures despite rising skepticism about the policy’s social and
economic costs.
The political situation changed dramatically when, in October and No-
vember 1996, Landsbergis’s Conservatives and their political allies won an
impressive victory in the elections to the Seimas, securing an absolute major-
ity in the legislature at the expense of the LDDP. The former Communists’
failure to deliver on their promises to raise the standard of living and the aura
of corruption surrounding the Šleževičius government were major factors in
the political turn to the right. Vagnorius was once again appointed prime min-
ister, and Landsbergis was elected chairman of the parliament. The Vagnorius
government presided over a period of increasingly rapid economic changes
and privatization.
On 4 January 1998, Lithuanian politics took another dramatic turn during
the second presidential election with the victory of Valdas Adamkus (1927– ),
a returned émigré with extensive experience as a high-ranking environmental
official in the United States, who narrowly defeated state procurator Artūras
Paulauskas (1953– ) despite the latter’s endorsement by the popular outgoing
President Brazauskas.
The new president’s relationship with Vagnorius deteriorated, largely be-
cause of the controversies surrounding the sale of the Mažeikiai oil refinery,
Lithuania’s premier industrial asset, to the American-based Williams Interna-
tional. A public clash with President Adamkus led to Vagnorius’s dismissal
in May 1999 and his replacement with the former mayor of Vilnius and
popular stunt pilot Rolandas Paksas (1956– ), who in turn resigned in protest
five months later when the cabinet voted to approve the oil refinery’s sale to
the U.S. firm. Andrius Kubilius (1956– ) then led a caretaker government in
anticipation of new elections.

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 INTRODUCTION • 35

The Republic of Lithuania within the Euro-Atlantic System

The upset victory of Paksas over Adamkus, the favored incumbent, in the
presidential runoff election of 5 January 2003 destabilized the political situa-
tion and eventually initiated the worst political crisis in the country since the
restoration of independence. Much of Paksas’s support came from rural and
older voters who had suffered under the economic transformation of the pre-
vious decade, along with disaffected elements within the Polish and Russian
minorities. It was well known that Paksas’s campaign had been extensively
funded by his close friend Yuri Borisov, a Russian-born dealer in the aviation
business. While the new president promised to continue a pro-Western orien-
tation, his shady political and personal associations gave rise to suspicions of
a pro-Russian bias and even questionable contacts with Russian intelligence
services and criminal elements.
In October and November 2003, Paksas came under fire after a leaked
classified State Security Department report linked Borisov and the presi-
dent’s national security advisor to Russian mobsters. By late November, large
demonstrations in Vilnius were demanding Paksas’s resignation. A parlia-
mentary commission investigated the charges and concluded that Paksas’s
associations with persons linked to Russian intelligence constituted a threat
to national security. The president defended himself vigorously and launched
a tour of the provinces to rally support, but his bizarre behavior and political
missteps caused increasing dismay. On 6 April 2004, the Seimas, by a nar-
row margin, voted to remove Paksas after the Lithuanian Constitutional Court
concluded that he had violated the oath of office by breaching state secrets
and improperly granting Borisov citizenship. Paksas thus became the first
elected head of state in European history to suffer impeachment. Paulauskas,
the chairman of the Seimas, assumed the duties of president.
The embarrassing political crisis of the spring of 2004 did not prevent the
country from successfully pursuing its foreign policy goals: Lithuania was
officially welcomed into NATO on 2 April and celebrated full membership
in the European Union on 1 May. In the constitutionally mandated presiden-
tial elections held in June 2004, Adamkus defeated the center-left candidate
Prunskienė and began his second term on 12 July. The elections to the Sei-
mas in October 2004, however, indicated that the appeal of leftist populism
was still very much a factor. The newly minted Labor Party, based on an
anti-establishment platform and led by the ethnic Russian businessman Vik-
tor Uspaskich (Lithuanian: Viktoras Uspaskichas) (1959– ), garnered over a
quarter of the votes, placing it first in the balloting. A coalition of Labor, the
Social Democrats, and smaller center-left factions maintained Brazauskas
in power, but Labor won five cabinet posts with Uspaskich in control of the
economics ministry.

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 36 • INTRODUCTION

The political scene remained unsettled, however. In June 2005, Uspaskich

resigned his cabinet post amid accusations of corruption and conflicts of in-
terest. The coalition headed by Brazauskas collapsed in May 2006, spelling
the end of the veteran leader’s political career and precipitating a weeks-long
crisis that ended with the appointment of Social Democrat Gediminas Kirki-
las (1951– ) on 4 July 2006. In the same month, Uspaskich quit his post as
party leader and fled to Russia to avoid prosecution for accounting fraud.
Kirkilas’s minority government was marked by attempts to solve Lithu-
ania’s energy problems, which were made difficult by the European Union’s
requirement to close the Ignalina nuclear power plant, the country’s main
source of electricity. Political maneuvering among various business interests
and continued dependence on Russian oil and natural gas complicated Lithu-
ania’s energy economy. In December 2007, Lithuania joined the passport-
free Schengen zone, but this did little to solve the country’s severe economic
downturn, which became increasingly acute during the last months of 2008.
In the wake of public disenchantment with the Kirkilas government, the
Conservatives emerged as the first party in the Seimas elections of October
2008 with a fifth of the vote and managed to form a center-right coalition
under Kubilius. The economy continued to worsen, shrinking by more than
12 percent in the first quarter of 2009 with a sharp spike in unemployment—
a striking contrast to 2007, when growth had been a deceptively robust 8.9
percent. In January 2009, a violent demonstration by thousands of protesters
in Vilnius against the government’s austerity measures was dispersed by riot
police.
In May 2009, Lithuanian voters gave a landslide victory to Dalia
Grybauskaitė (1956– ), Lithuania’s first woman head of state and only the
second candidate to win the presidency in the initial round of balloting.
Grybauskaitė replaced the aging Adamkus on 12 July in an atmosphere at
least temporarily buoyed by the concurrent popular celebrations of Lithu-
ania’s millennium, the thousand-year anniversary of the land’s appearance in
historical records. The former finance minister and European commissioner
promised to use her well-regarded expertise in financial matters to tackle the
economic crisis.

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 A
ABIŠALA, ALEKSANDRAS (1955– ). Lithuanian politician and former
prime minister, born on 28 December 1955 into a family of deportees in the
Komi region of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).
Trained as a chemical engineer, he became one of the leaders of the Kaunas
faction of the Sąjūdis movement in 1988. Abišala was elected deputy to the
Lithuanian Supreme Soviet in 1990 and was one of the signatories of the 11
March declaration of independence. Until 1992, he served as minister without
portfolio, then from 21 July through 2 December 1992 as prime minister. In
1993, Abišala established A. Abišala & Partners, one of Lithuania’s largest
consulting and lobbying firms.

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. Lithuania’s most prestigious and compre-

hensive institution of scholarly research, established on 16 January 1941 by
the Council of Commissars of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. The
academy is administered by a presidium chaired by the institution’s president
and is empowered to grant the doctoral degree.
The initiative for founding the academy and most of its scholarly personnel
came from the Institute of Lithuanian Studies, founded in Kaunas in 1939.
The first president of the academy, based in Vilnius, was the prominent
writer and literary scholar Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius. Initially six institutes
were established, encompassing history, Lithuanian literature, Lithuanian
language, ethnology, economics, and law. The academy acquired an exten-
sive library based on the renowned Vrublevskis (Wróblewski) collection. In
1945, the institution was reorganized and expanded to include the physical
sciences. By 1967, the academy had expanded to 20 institutes in three divi-
sions: mathematics, physics, and technology; biology and chemistry; and the
social sciences. During the 1950s and 1960s, some of the academy’s work
was transferred to government agencies and only ten institutes remained, al-
though it continued to coordinate the work of dozens of scientific institutions
within the republic.
During the 1970s, the academy employed about 3,000 people in a hier-
archical structure headed by academicians, the most prestigious scholarly

37

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 38 • ADAMKUS, VALDAS

and scientific rank in the Soviet Union, followed by corresponding academy

members, senior and junior associates (most with the equivalent of PhDs), and
junior researchers. In the Soviet system, the academies of science generally
emphasized advanced research, while the universities concentrated on teach-
ing, a system that essentially continued to function in independent Lithuania.
In 1988, the academy was the site of the organizational meeting of Sąjūdis.
A significant number of the leaders of the independence movement were
academy employees. In March 1990, the academy, consisting of 17 research
institutes, announced its independence from the state and political institu-
tions. In 2003, a new law reorganized the academy by creating five depart-
ments representing the humanities, the physical sciences, biological research,
agriculture and forestry, and engineering.
The Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, like other institutions of higher
learning, suffered from the severe economic situation of the 1990s and, in the
process, lost much of its former political and academic influence. After 1990,
a Council of Science and Scholarship (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Mokslo Taryba)
was established to coordinate research and education in institutions of higher
learning. The council is the primary state institution for developing research
and educational strategies.

ADAMKUS, VALDAS (1926– ). Two-term president of Lithuania, from 26

February 1998 to 26 February 2003 and 12 July 2004 to 12 July 2009. Adam-
kus was born on 3 November 1926 in Kaunas as Voldemaras Adamkavičius
and as a young man became involved in anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi under-
ground activities. He fled to the West during the second Soviet occupation of
1944 and, after a stay in the Eichstätt Displaced Person camp, immigrated to
the United States in 1949. After a stint in the U.S. military, he studied civil
engineering and graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1960.
While active in the Lithuanian-American community, especially in orga-
nized sports and as a leading member of the liberal Santara-Šviesa group,
he also entered local Chicago politics as a Republican after simplifying his
name to Valdas Adamkus. He joined the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and achieved prominence on the international stage by helping
to secure a number of environmental agreements. Fluent in five languages,
Adamkus participated in important conferences and meetings in Poland, the
Soviet Union, and Canada. He was invited to lecture at the University of Vil-
nius in 1974. In 1981, Adamkus was appointed administrator of the EPA for
the Midwest and Great Lakes region. He retired in 1997 after a distinguished
career in the senior civil service.
Adamkus’s frequent visits to Lithuania during his tenure at the EPA and
his expertise in environmental affairs made him the most prominent of the

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 AGRICULTURE • 39

Lithuanian-American émigrés who played an increasingly important role in

Lithuanian politics and public life after 1990. In 1997, Adamkus renounced
his U.S. citizenship and declared his candidacy for the Lithuanian presidency
despite doubts about his long stay abroad and eligibility to meet minimum
residency requirements. The courts supported Adamkus’s bid, and on 4 Janu-
ary 1998 he edged out Artūras Paulauskas in the runoff round to win the
presidency.
During his first term, Adamkus was consistently ranked as the most popu-
lar politician in the country. During Adamkus’s tenure, Lithuania enjoyed a
growing economy and achieved some success in moving toward membership
in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European
Union. However, a large part of the population and older voters remained
disenchanted with the destabilizing effects of the transition to a market
economy. Adamkus suffered a stunning defeat when, despite leading the field
of presidential candidates with 30 percent of the vote in the first round of bal-
loting, the former prime minister and mayor of Vilnius, Rolandas Paksas
won the runoff election decisively on 5 January 2003.
After Paksas’s impeachment in April 2004, Adamkus reentered the race
for the presidency and narrowly defeated Kazimira Prunskienė on 27 June
2004. Adamkus’s second term was devoted primarily to foreign relations,
where he attempted to lobby for closer relations with Poland and other
Eastern European states as a counterweight to an increasingly assertive Rus-
sian foreign policy. In 2004, he flew to Kiev during the so-called Orange
Revolution to mediate the election crisis in Ukraine. In the summer of 2008,
Adamkus traveled to Georgia to show solidarity with Mihail Sakashvili’s
government in the face of the Russian invasion. During the latter part of
Adamkus’s presidency, he became politically less active, and the country’s
grave economic crisis that intensified in 2008 and 2009 was inherited by his
successor, Dalia Grybauskaitė, who replaced him on 12 July 2009.

AGRICULTURE. Before 1900. Historically, agriculture has been the

mainstay of the Lithuanian economy, and its development has largely mir-
rored the agrarian history of Eastern Europe in general. The beginnings of
primitive agriculture in Lithuania can be traced to the Neolithic period (c.
3000–1000 BCE), while the systematic raising of livestock commenced dur-
ing the Bronze Age sometime before 500 BCE. Slash-and-burn cultivation,
characteristic of heavily forested regions, predominated during this early
period. Wooden plows and harrows, as well as iron hoes, made their appear-
ance during the early medieval period. By this time, the predominant form
of cultivation was the two-field system, in which one field was planted while
the other left fallow.

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 40 • AGRICULTURE

The more productive three-field system of crop rotation came to Lithuania

some centuries after it had appeared in the more densely settled regions of
Europe. In 1547, the government initiated a series of measures, collectively
known as the Volok Reform, named after the unit of land (Russian: volok;
Polish: włóka; Lithuanian: valakas) that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
assigned to a peasant household. This agrarian reform determined the bound-
aries of the Crown domains and private estates, established villages on the
Western model, and provided each peasant household with a volok of land.
Sigismund I’s reforms increased revenues for the Grand Duchy and system-
atized the obligations of the peasantry. The reforms of the 16th century, as
well as the gradual extension of the system of serfdom, enabled Lithuania to
become a major agrarian exporter to western Europe. However, the wars and
plagues of the 17th and early 18th centuries devastated the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. It was only during the second half of the 18th century that
Lithuania began to recover from the devastation of the previous wars and
again become an exporter, primarily of grains and flax.
During the late 18th century, new methods of cultivation and labor organi-
zation were introduced on some of the large estates, particularly the Crown
estates called economies. Gradually, there also emerged a class of relatively
prosperous peasantry, particularly in southwestern Lithuania. During the 19th
century, the social struggle in the countryside resulted in the emancipation
of the peasantry from serfdom and the gradual decline of the landowning
nobility. There were also important changes in agriculture itself, such as the
development of improved tools, the gradual introduction of modern crop
rotation, and the emphasis on new crops such as the potato and commercial
products, for example, flax, hemp, and sugar beets. At the same time, tradi-
tional agriculture, including the two-field system, was still practiced in some
areas, especially in the poorer eastern regions.
Since 1900. World War I and, especially, the expropriations of the Ger-
man occupation authorities, proved a disaster for Lithuania’s peasantry and
brought the country to the brink of famine. On the other hand, the establish-
ment of an independent state in 1918 transformed Lithuanian agriculture. The
Land Reform Bill of 1922 placed land holdings of larger than 80 hectares
(200 acres) into a Land Fund for distribution to the peasantry. In 1929, the
maximum allowance for landowners was increased to 150 hectares (370
acres). By 1930, Lithuania contained 287,380 farms, most of them small;
less than 3 percent of the farms were over 50 hectares (125 acres). During
the interwar period, Lithuania became an exporter of dairy, flax, and animal
products. Cooperatives and special farmers’ societies were widespread.
World War II revolutionized the countryside. The Communist regime
established in 1940 sought to foment class war in the countryside by reduc-

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 AGRICULTURE • 41

ing private holdings to 30 hectares (75 acres) and redistributing the excess
to landless peasants and smallholders. Preparations for collectivization on
the Stalinist model were interrupted by the German invasion of June 1941,
but were resumed after the Soviet reoccupation of Lithuania in 1944–1945.
During 1947, the Communist regime launched an attack on the middle class
and prosperous peasants by deporting thousands of villagers to Siberia and
the Far North. Collectivization was virtually completed by 1950, with most
peasants working in either collective farms (Russian: kolkhozy), or state
farms (Russian: sovkhozy). At its height, the Lithuanian collective agrar-
ian system included more than 1,000 collective farms and nearly 400 state
enterprises. The collectivization process transformed the rural landscape by
destroying traditional individual homesteads and replacing them with collec-
tive rural housing projects. As a general rule, the productivity of collectivized
agriculture in the socialized Lithuanian economy remained low, as indicated
by the fact that the tiny private “kitchen garden” plots kept by the collective
farmers since the 1960s consistently produced a disproportionate amount of
the republic’s dairy products, meat, and produce.
The disintegration of Soviet rule in Lithuania and the restoration of an inde-
pendent state in 1990 initiated a new era in agriculture when the Landsbergis
government decreed that the land should be parceled out to private owners.
It is estimated that in 1992 agriculture contributed a fourth of the country’s
gross domestic product and employed a fifth of the workforce. However,
mismanagement and confusion during the privatization process and the loss
of markets in the former Soviet Union, as well as the general economic crisis
that afflicted virtually all former Soviet republics, caused agricultural produc-
tion to plummet by 50 percent between 1989 and 1994. Many of the former
Soviet collective farms were broken up into small holdings of 10 hectares (25
acres) or less. In 1997, there were an estimated 196,000 family farms of an
average size of 12 hectares (30 acres), but only 1,660 agricultural companies
averaging 370 hectares (915 acres).
The economic growth of the economy during the late 1990s and the process
of Lithuania’s integration into the European Union raised the productivity of
the more successful farms as well as larger agrarian business conglomerates
that acquired access to EU structural funds. In 2003, on the eve of acces-
sion to the European Union, it was estimated that agricultural exports had
increased by more than 25 percent in comparison to the previous decade. In
2004, 227,000 persons, about 15.8 percent of the working population, were
employed in the agricultural sector, a slight decline from previous years.
On the whole, EU accession has been a net gain for Lithuanian agriculture
because of growing product market and increasing subsidies to farmers. Dur-
ing the five years following accession to the European Union, agricultural

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 42 • ALEXANDER

exports, particularly dairy products, tripled in volume, accounting for some

16 percent of exports in 2008. The import of cheaper products, for example,
vegetables and fruits from southern Europe, has benefited consumers, who
now have considerably more choice of and access to foodstuffs than during
the Soviet period. Agriculture was much less affected by the financial crisis
of 2008–2009 than the other branches of Lithuania’s economy.

ALEXANDER (1460–1506). Grand Duke of Lithuania, 1492–1506, and

King of Poland, 1501–1506. Alexander was the fourth son of King Casimir
IV and Elizabeth Hapsburg, the daughter of the Holy Roman emperor Albert.
Casimir appointed Alexander as his representative to Lithuania in 1490, but
gave him no formal title. In July 1492, the Lithuanian Diet elected Alexander
grand duke, but forced the new ruler to both grant the nobility additional
privileges and reaffirm the state’s political independence. Alexander’s reign
coincided with the expansion of Muscovite power under Tsar Ivan III. In
1494, Alexander negotiated the peace treaty between the Grand Duchy and
Muscovy in which he ceded some of Lithuania’s eastern territories. In 1495,
Alexander married Elena, Ivan’s daughter, but the marriage to an Orthodox
princess failed to bring peace with Muscovy. A new series of Russian-
Lithuanian wars during 1500–1503 resulted in more territorial losses for the
Grand Duchy.
In 1501, Alexander’s brother, King John Albert of Poland, died, and the
Grand Duke succeeded to the Polish throne. Poland and Lithuania found
themselves once again under a single monarch, a situation that was to prevail
until 1795. Alexander’s armies managed to defeat a Muscovite-supported
Tatar invasion of Lithuania in 1506. In March 1505, Alexander granted
Lithuanian Orthodox nobles equality with their Catholic counterparts. He
did much to develop and beautify Vilnius, where he spent most of his time
even after election as King of Poland. Alexander died in Vilnius on 19 August
1506 and was buried in the city’s cathedral.

ALGIRDAS (c. 1296–1377). Russian: Olgerd; Polish: Olgierd. Grand

Duke of Lithuania from 1345 to 1377, the third son of Gediminas. After
Gediminas’s death in 1341, his youngest son, Jaunutis, briefly occupied the
throne in Vilnius. However, Gediminas’s other sons were dissatisfied with
this arrangement and in 1345 removed Jaunutis, assigning him territory in
Muscovy. Algirdas was installed as grand duke and conferred considerable
authority on his brother Kęstutis, the Duke of Trakai, whom some sources
have described as Lithuania’s coruler during Algirdas’s reign. While Kęstutis
was preoccupied with defending western Lithuania against the incursions of
the Teutonic Knights, Algirdas developed territorial ambitions in the east.

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 AMBER • 43

Algirdas envisioned Lithuania as the unifier of the East Slavic realm that
had disintegrated after the collapse of Kievan Rus’, and as a consequence,
during his rule Lithuania’s rivalry with the emerging Muscovite state esca-
lated into a major confrontation that was to last several centuries. Algirdas
led several military expeditions against Moscow but failed to capture the city.
Nonetheless, he extended Lithuania’s domain considerably by establishing
firm control over Kiev, while annexing Podolia and other Russian princi-
palities, laying claim to territory as far as the Black Sea. Algirdas attempted
to acquire influence over the Russian Orthodox Church by persuading the
Patriarch of Constantinople to appoint a Lithuanian-sponsored metropolitan
for all Russia who would reside in Kiev rather than Moscow; however, his ef-
forts to establish Lithuanian control over the Russian Church were ultimately
unsuccessful.
While he never became a Christian, Algirdas showed favor to both Eastern
and Western Christians, allowing the construction of Catholic and Orthodox
churches in Vilnius. Algirdas’s two wives, Maria of Vitebsk and Juliana of
Tver, were Eastern Orthodox Russians. He left behind some 12 sons and
seven daughters. Two of his sons by his second wife Juliana, Jogaila and
Švitrigaila, became important historic personages and future rulers of the
Lithuanian Grand Duchy and adjacent lands.

ALYTUS. Town and district seat in southwestern Lithuania, located 52 ki-

lometers (32 miles) south of Kaunas; 2007 population: 68,835. Alytus, the
industrial and cultural center of the country’s Dzūkija region, is situated on
the Nemunas River, with the main part of the town located on the left bank.
During the late 14th century, Alytus developed as an important fortified
settlement, since it was located on the route frequently taken by the military
expeditions of the Teutonic Knights. Alytus was granted a town charter in
1581, and it soon became the administrative center of the region. During
the 17th and 18th centuries, Alytus encompassed a large Crown estate, the
Alytus economy (Lithuanian: ekonomija), which stretched west of the town
to the Prussian border. During the period of tsarist rule, the Nemunas River
divided Alytus between the province of Augustów (since 1867, Suvalkija)
on the west bank and Kaunas gubernia on the east. Between the wars, Alytus
was reunited and grew rapidly, but the town suffered heavy damage during
World War II. In the years of Soviet rule, the introduction of new food
processing, chemical, and construction industries transformed Alytus into
Lithuania’s fifth largest city.

AMBER. Lithuania’s most famous ornamental treasure and an important

object of trade in ancient times. Amber is fossilized resin from a variety of

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 44 • AMBRAZEVIČIUS-BRAZAITIS, JUOZAS

pines that grew in the Baltic region some 40–60 million years ago. During
historic times, amber was collected as fragments that had washed ashore on
the Baltic Sea coast, particularly during storms. The size of the yellow and
bronze-like pieces ranges from a few grams to several kilograms, although
the large ones are rare. Amber emits an electric charge when subjected to
friction and thus was known as elektron in Greek. Amber pieces contain-
ing inclusions, particularly ancient insects, are highly valued. Since earliest
times, amber was widely used by Baltic tribes as ornaments and for carving
figurines. Amber from the eastern Baltic is easily identified by chemical
analysis, and this has made it possible to trace prehistoric and ancient Euro-
pean trade routes. Baltic amber has been found in Asia Minor, Greece, and
Italy in archaeological sites dating back to the Bronze Age. Amber is still
one of Lithuania’s best known exports and is a popular item in the country’s
tourist trade.

AMBRAZEVIČIUS-BRAZAITIS, JUOZAS (1903–1974). Lithuanian

literary scholar, Catholic activist, and acting prime minister of the
Lithuanian Provisional Government during June–August 1941, born in
Marijampolė district on 9 December 1903. After studies at the Universities
of Kaunas and Bonn, he taught literature at the University of Kaunas from
1934 to 1943 and was a leader in Lithuanian Catholic intellectual circles.
Ambrazevičius gained prominence as the acting prime minister of the six-
week revolutionary Lithuanian provisional government proclaimed on 23
June 1941 in the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a posi-
tion he resigned on 5 August. During the German occupation, he edited the
underground periodical I˛ Laisvę (Towards Freedom) and, after fleeing to
Germany in 1944, became one of the leaders of the Supreme Committee
for the Liberation of Lithuania. He immigrated to the United States in
1948 and worked as an associate editor of the Catholic newspaper Dar-
bininkas (The Worker) under the name Juozas Brazaitis. During the 1960s
and early 1970s, Brazaitis came under attack in the Soviet press and from
American Nazi hunters as a pro-German collaborator. Brazaitis denied the
charges and published his own extensive account of the activities of the
1941 provisional government. He died in New York on 28 October 1974.
See also LITHUANIAN ACTIVIST FRONT.

AMERICAN BRIGADE. Sometimes known as the American Lithuanian

Brigade, a military unit consisting of volunteers recruited in the United
States who sought to fight for the fledgling Republic of Lithuania during the
country’s independence wars. It is estimated that nearly 10,000 men enlisted
for the brigade despite objections from the U.S. government, which refused to

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 ARCHAEOLOGY • 45

grant permission for the volunteers to travel directly to Lithuania. A group of

officers left for Lithuania by way of Canada and sailed to Riga in November
1919. Eventually about 500 Americans and Lithuanian-Americans served in
the country, but since the Lithuanians attempted to disperse these men among
other units, the brigade never became the envisioned autonomous combat
unit. The Americans’ only known casualty was Lt. Samuel J. Harris Jr.
(1896–1920), who was killed during the suppression of a Bolshevik-inspired
mutiny of Lithuanian soldiers in Kaunas on 24 February 1920.

ANGARIETIS, ZIGMAS (1882–1940). Prominent Lithuanian Communist

leader, born as Zigmas Aleksa on 25 June 1882 in Vilkaviškis district. Dur-
ing 1902–1904, Angarietis studied at the veterinary institute of the University
of Warsaw, but he was expelled for his involvement in radical activities. He
joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party in 1906 and became a mem-
ber of its Central Committee. During his imprisonment and exile to Siberia by
tsarist authorities in 1909–1917, Angarietis moved closer to the Bolsheviks
and finally joined their party in 1916. He worked in the bureau of the Lithu-
anian section of the Russian Bolshevik Party and was a member of the Litbel
government, as well as the Lithuanian-Belarusian Communist Party Central
Committee, in 1918–1919. After 1919, Angarietis served in various leader-
ship positions within the Lithuanian Communist Party and then in the Com-
munist International in Moscow. During his career, he published more than a
hundred Marxist-Leninist tracts on the situation in Lithuania. He was arrested
in March 1938 during Joseph Stalin’s purges and was executed in Moscow
on 22 May 1940. Angarietis was rehabilitated in 1956 during Khrushchev’s
de-Stalinization campaign.

ARCHAEOLOGY. The first serious student of archaeology in Lithuania

was Count Eustach Tyszkiewicz (Lithuanian: Tiškevičius; 1814–1873), who
published two substantial Polish-language surveys of Lithuanian archaeol-
ogy in 1842 and 1850. Since the mid-19th century, after the establishment
of an Archaeological Commission by the tsarist government, the number
of archaeological excavations, collections of artifacts, and museums grew
rapidly. Before World War I, the most prominent investigators, among oth-
ers, were Constantine Tyszkiewicz (1806–1868), Adam Kirkor (1818–1886),
Feodor Pokrovski (1855–1903), and Tadas Daugirdas (1852–1919). During
the interwar period, new work was initiated by Eduardas Volteris (Wolter;
1856–1941), Vladas Nagevičius (1881–1954), and especially Jonas Puzinas
(1905–1978), a professor at the University of Kaunas, who published numer-
ous studies and accounts of excavations dealing primarily with the Bronze
and early Iron Ages in Lithuania.

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 46 • ARCHITECTURE

During the Soviet period, archaeological research was conducted by the

Archaeology and Ethnography Division of the Institute of History within the
Academy of Sciences and by the Department of Archaeology and Ethnog-
raphy of the University of Vilnius, as well as regional museums and ethno-
graphic societies. Among the most prominent archaeologists of this period
were Adolfas Tautavičius (1925–2006), Regina Volkaitė-Kulikauskienė
(1916–2007), and Pranas Kulikauskas (1913–2004).
Lithuania’s best known archaeologist, however, is the internationally re-
nowned Prof. Marija Gimbutas (1921–1993), a longtime professor of archae-
ology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), whose works
dealt with Baltic and European prehistory. Her groundbreaking study The
Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, which described a
peaceful, matriarchal culture that was well established before the invasion of
warlike Indo-European peoples, provoked much discussion and controversy
within the archaeological profession. See also BALTS; PRE-CHRISTIAN
RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY; PRUSSIA; YOTVINGIANS.

ARCHITECTURE. Before 1918. Traditional Lithuanian architecture

commonly utilized timber in construction. Before the late medieval period,
stone and brick construction was found only in the larger towns requiring
extensive fortification. Until the 16th century, many Lithuanian castles
were constructed of stone, interspersed with brick and wood. For the
peasantry, the typical dwelling consisted of a log cabin, similar to rural
structures elsewhere in central Europe, with elaborately decorated gables,
window frames, and doors. Thatched roofing was a common sight in the
Lithuanian countryside until the mid-20th century. During the early me-
dieval period, Byzantine architecture exercised some limited influence in
eastern Lithuania: a few Orthodox churches were constructed in Vilnius
during the 14th century.
With Lithuania’s turn to the Latin West during the 14th and 15th centuries,
Gothic architecture became increasingly prominent and was reflected in the
construction of both castles and churches. By the early 16th century, the old
towns and market squares of most of Lithuania’s major cities, such as Vilnius
and Kaunas, were completed in their present form. Builders turned increas-
ingly to brick for construction. St. Anne’s Church, built c. 1495–1500, is a
masterpiece of late Gothic architecture in Vilnius. Baroque architecture was
introduced into Lithuania during the 17th century, partly under the stimulus
of the Counter-Reformation, and is reflected in a number of monasteries
and churches, such as St. Casimir’s in Vilnius (built 1604–1618) and the or-
nate Pažaislis convent (built 1667–1681) as well as the baroque mansions of
the wealthy Radziwiłł (Lithuanian: Radvilas) family, for example, in Biržai.

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 ARCHITECTURE • 47

Until the 18th century, Italian architects played an important role in the de-
velopment of Lithuanian architecture.
Despite the political turmoil of the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
neoclassical architecture flourished, much of it inspired by native masters.
The best known example is the Cathedral of Vilnius, rebuilt in the late 18th
century by Liudvikas Stuoka-Gucevičius (1753–1798) and located in what is
now the center of the city, Gediminas Square. Under tsarist rule in the 19th
century, a kind of imperial classicism became the major architectural style for
public buildings, while stone structures imitating Romantic and various other
modes became popular on the estates of the wealthy landed nobility.
Since 1918. During the period of interwar independence (1918–1940), a
new generation of architects, such as Vladas Dubeneckis (1897–1932) and
Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis (1893–1993), made their mark by con-
structing numerous government and public buildings, especially in Kaunas,
the country’s provisional capital. The new buildings, particularly those built
during the 1930s, utilized modern examples from western Europe and the
United States, eventually provoking a discussion about the adaptation of
Lithuanian traditional building designs to modern architecture. Some of these
traditional themes can be seen in the architecture and design of buildings con-
structed by Lithuanian émigrés in the West after World War II, such as the
Transfiguration parish church in Maspeth, New York, designed by architect
Jonas Mulokas (1907–1983).
The reconstruction of Lithuania after World War II was influenced by
Soviet architectural patterns, which meant that most public construction
during the late 1940s and early 1950s followed the Stalinist model. The col-
lectivization of the countryside permanently altered the Lithuanian landscape
as traditional peasant homesteads disappeared in most of the country. More
creative styles were introduced in the 1960s when modern themes were
combined with some Lithuanian decorative elements. The notable designs
of the post-Stalinist period include the Vilnius Sports Palace (1971) and the
capital’s Opera and Ballet Building (1974). Much of the architecture of the
Soviet period involved the construction of large housing projects. In 1974,
Lithuanian architects Vytautas Čekanauskas (1930– ) and others received the
Soviet Union’s Lenin Prize for the design of the Lazdynai housing project in
the suburbs of Vilnius, which was modeled on Finnish architectural models
and differed considerably from most Soviet residential construction.
Beginning with the early 1990s, Lithuania experienced a construction
boom that lasted until the financial crisis of 2008. The most striking change in
the nation’s architectural landscape was the construction of the Vilnius City
Center, which encompassed the capital’s first skyscrapers and modern steel-
glass buildings housing the Europa shopping center and other commercial

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 48 • ARMED FORCES

enterprises, and the new city hall, as well as modern apartments, located on
the right bank of the Neris River. The area includes the National Gallery of
Art, which opened in June 2009.

ARMED FORCES. Before 1918. Little is known about the organization

of military forces before the late medieval period, although it is known that
Lithuanian military expeditions raided Prussia, Poland, Livonia, and what
is now Belarus well before the political unification of the Lithuanian state in
the 13th and 14th centuries. During the early 15th century, Lithuanian mili-
tary units were organized around mounted knights, usually drawn from the
landowning class and supported by a retinue of lightly armed foot soldiers.
During the 16th century, Lithuania’s military was based on the system of
feudal service tenure. However, by the 18th century, the reluctance of the
nobility to serve had led to the increasing use of hired troops maintained
through tax levies.
The Lithuanian army was led by the grand hetman, appointed by the Grand
Duke, and operated independently of the Commonwealth’s Polish forces.
After 1795, Lithuania came under the tsarist recruit system, in which draftees
often served as long as 25 years; however, many Lithuanians also fought in
the rebel armies during the anti-Russian insurrections of 1830–1831 and
1863–1864. In general, most Lithuanians serving in the tsar’s forces did so as
enlisted men, since few Lithuanian Catholics were admitted to the Russian
army’s officer corps until the early 1900s. During World War I, the disinte-
gration of the Russian army led Lithuanians to form their own military units,
but these were disbanded after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
1918–1990. On 23 November 1918, the first government of independent
Lithuania announced the formation of a new army staffed largely by volun-
teers and officers returning from Russia. In January 1919, the government an-
nounced the first mobilization. During the struggle for independence between
1918 and 1920, when the new state confronted Bolshevik, Bermondtist, and
Polish forces, the Lithuanian army acquired not only an infantry but also cav-
alry, artillery, armored car, and tank units as well as a small air force. Later
a minuscule navy was also founded. Between the wars, Lithuania maintained
armed forces of between 22,000 and 28,000 men, primarily equipped with
French, Belgian, and Czech ordnance. Some of the military’s weaponry and
shells were manufactured in Lithuania. In 1938, the air force numbered some
100 aircraft, many of them manufactured in Lithuania. In addition to the
regular army, Lithuania possessed a volunteer reserve force, the Riflemen’s
Union (Lithuanian: Šaulių Sąjunga), which in 1940 numbered more than
60,000 men and women.

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 ARMED FORCES • 49

After the Soviet occupation in 1940, the Lithuanian army was integrated
into the armed forces of the Soviet Union as the Red Army’s 29th Territo-
rial Rifle Corps. Many Lithuanian officers were arrested, and some were
executed by the Soviets. During the German invasion of June 1941, the
majority of Lithuanian Red Army men deserted, but others were evacuated to
the Russian interior where some joined the Soviet 16th Lithuanian Division.
In German-occupied Lithuania, the Nazi authorities organized as many as 20
police battalions, the so-called Schutzmannschaft units, which saw action on
the Eastern Front, while others were utilized for local security and punitive
operations. There were, however, no Lithuanian Waffen-SS units. After the
return of the Soviets in 1944–1945, tens of thousands of Lithuanians were
forcibly conscripted by the Red Army; in response, many other young men
fled into the country’s forests and joined the anti-Soviet partisans. During the
rise of the anti-Soviet dissident movement in Lithuania and the mass national
protests of the late 1980s, the issue of the mistreatment and hazing of Lithu-
anian draftees in the Soviet army became a highly emotional rallying cry in
the campaign for independence.
Since 1990. After the Lithuanian declaration of independence, the National
Defense Department was established on 25 April 1990. The Lithuanian Min-
istry of Defense was created on 16 October 1991, and the government began
building a rudimentary defense capability. In the mid-1990s, the various
Lithuanian security forces consisted of about 13,000–15,000 men, including
border guard, air support, coastal defense, and rapid deployment commando
units. There is a volunteer national guard known as the SKAT (Lithuanian:
Savanorių Krašto Apsaugos Tarnyba). According to a treaty between Lithu-
ania and the Russian Federation, the former Soviet, now Russian, army com-
pleted its withdrawal from Lithuania by 1 September 1993.
The most important transformation in the country’s military structure since
the early 1990s came about as a result of the integration of the armed forces
into international security structures. In 1994, Lithuanian forces served in
their first foreign mission when a platoon was sent to Croatia as part of the
United Nations protection force. During the same year, Lithuania joined the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Partnership for Peace pro-
gram. About 800 Lithuanian troops were sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina in
1996 as part of the NATO-led Peace Implementation Force, and a smaller
force has served in the peacekeeping units in Kosovo. A special operations
squadron and a small number of specialists have served in Afghanistan and
Iraq. On 29 March 2004, Lithuania formally joined the NATO alliance, and
it has signed an agreement to join the European Union Battle Group begin-
ning in 2010.

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 50 • ART

Lithuania’s land forces consist of a motorized infantry brigade and national

defense volunteers together numbering nearly 10,000 men and women. There
is a small air force consisting of about 1,000 personnel and 20 primarily
transport and training aircraft, but no combat planes. The country’s airspace
is defended by other NATO countries, which operate fighters from the
Šiauliai air base. The navy consists of 700 officers and enlisted personnel
who conduct surveillance and rescue operations on the Baltic Sea coast. The
country’s special operations force includes a counterterrorist unit, a jaeger
battalion, and combat divers. See also AVIATION; RAŠTIKIS, STASYS;
RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS.

ART. From Earliest Times to 1795. Evidence collected from archaeologi-

cal excavations indicates that decorative art in Lithuania dates from at least
the Neolithic period, consisting mainly of engraved pottery uncovered at
gravesites. Metal ornaments date from the Bronze and Iron Ages. By about
500 CE, the Baltic tribes inhabiting Lithuania had achieved considerable
artistic sophistication employing bronze, silver, gold, and amber. Folk art
made of perishable materials such as wood and cloth has not survived from
these early periods, but some aspects of their style can be deduced from sur-
viving artifacts collected during the past two centuries.
The first evidence of what can be called the fine arts includes traces of fres-
coes in the castle of Grand Duke Vytautas dating from the early 15th century.
The earliest surviving Lithuanian paintings and sculptures date from the 16th
century, and while their authors are unknown, it is thought that, in addition to
native artists, Flemish and Italian masters were then active in Vilnius. Most
of the sculptures of the period are sepulchral monuments; the use of colored
and white marble not found in Lithuania indicates that some of these monu-
ments were foreign works. During the 17th century, Italian artists sponsored
by the Grand Duke’s court and the landed nobility, particularly by the Pac
and Sapieha families, became the dominant influence in Lithuanian sculpture
and painting. Some of the finest examples of Italian-influenced baroque art
are the frescoes of Michelarcangelo Palloni (1637–1711) in the monastery of
Pažaislis commissioned by Christopher Pac (1621–1684).
During the 17th and 18th centuries, wood sculpture and carving, often in
the baroque and rococo styles, spread throughout Lithuania. Art was taught
at the University of Vilnius from its inception as an academy in the late 16th
century until the closure of the university by the tsarist regime in 1832. The
most prominent native painter during the last years of the Grand Duchy
period was Pranciškus Smuglevičius (Polish: Smuglewicz; 1745–1798), the
founder of the art department at the Vilnius Academy. Although a neoclas-
sicist, Smuglevičius also left some realistic scenes of Lithuanian rural life.

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 ART • 51

Since 1795. During the 19th century, Lithuanian painters, including the
Vilnius-born Italian Elviro Andriolli (1836–1895), often took their themes
from Lithuanian legends and history, seeking to inspire patriotic feeling.
After the Revolution of 1905, Lithuania’s artists increasingly reflected the
cultural outlook of the Lithuanian national movement. Sculptor Petras Rimša
(1881–1961) and painter Antanas Zmuidzinavičius (1876–1976) based their
work on folk themes emanating from the Lithuanian village. The best known
Lithuanian artist of the turn of the century was Mikalojus Konstantinas
Čiurlionis, who achieved an international reputation as a member of the Rus-
sian Mir Isskustva (World of Art) avant-garde group in St. Petersburg during
the early 1900s.
Lithuanian art of the interwar independence period reflected both a turn
to the West and an emphasis on folk art. The Kaunas School of Fine Arts,
established in 1924, became the major center for the development of painting
and sculpture. Among the leading artists of this time were painters Adomas
Galdikas (1893–1969) and Adomas Varnas (1879–1979), sculptor Juozas
Zikaras (1881–1944) and engraver Vytautas K. Jonynas (1907–1997). The
Kaunas school and the influence of western Europe encouraged new trends
among the younger generation of artists, for example, expressionism, impres-
sionism, and primitivism. In general, it can be said that the interwar years
witnessed the evolution of a distinct Lithuanian style of art, reinforced by the
general Lithuanianization of the country’s cultural institutions.
World War II and the consequent Soviet occupation drastically altered the
development of Lithuanian art. In Lithuania itself, the Stalinist form of social-
ist realism dominated until the early 1950s. During the relaxation of Soviet
cultural policy that followed Stalin’s death, Juozas Mikėnas (1901–1964) be-
came one of the best known sculptors in the Soviet Union, while Gediminas
Jokūbonis (1927–2006) was acclaimed for his monument to the victims of a
1944 massacre carried out by the Nazis in the village of Pirčiupis. Painting
languished during the Soviet period, but engraving was highly developed.
During the war, some of the most prominent prewar artists fled to the West,
including Jonynas, Varnas, Galdikas, and painter Kazimieras Žoromskis
(1913–2004), who later returned to Lithuania. One of the most interesting of
the Lithuanian émigré artists was Prussian-born Pranas Domšaitis (German:
Franz Domschat; 1880–1965), an expressionist painter who settled in South
Africa in 1949 and was acclaimed for his landscapes of both the Lithuanian
countryside and the Karoo region of his adopted country.
Recent developments in Lithuanian art since the early 1990s have em-
phasized a more radical turn toward performance art utilizing video and
electronic technology. Most of the recent examples of the visual arts are now
exhibited in the country’s largest collection of modern representative art,

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 52 • ATEITIS

housed in the new National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, which was opened in
June 2009.
Folk Art. During the 18th and 19th centuries, scholars became more inter-
ested in the material and spiritual culture of the peasantry. Noting the orna-
mentation characteristic of doors, windows, and eaves in village buildings,
chroniclers of peasant culture paid particular attention to the thousands of
richly adorned wayside crosses and miniature chapels that dotted the coun-
tryside, many of which are still evident today. Wood carving was the major
expression of folk art, mainly religious in character. The best known of this
art form is the uniquely Lithuanian depiction of a pensive and worried Christ
known as the rūpintojėlis. Peasant wood carvers who mastered the art of this
type of sculpture gained great respect among the people and were known as
“makers of gods” (Lithuanian: dievdirbiai). The more primitive village style
of sculpture is still practiced by contemporary artists and is a popular article
in the tourist trade.
Another major area of folk art involved the intricate decorations associated
with woven fabrics and knitwear. There is evidence that woven sashes were
produced in prehistoric times. Until the late 19th century, village women gen-
erally used their own looms to make a household’s clothing and other furnish-
ings such as rugs and bedspreads. Traditionally flax, hemp, and wool were
the most popular materials. Women’s national costumes in their regional
variations, usually worn during festive occasions, became increasingly popu-
lar after the mid-19th century. While traditional weaving has disappeared as
a daily activity, the use of colorful and ornamented sashes as gifts for special
occasions is still widely practiced.

ATEITIS. An influential Roman Catholic organization, primarily of Lithu-

anian students and intelligentsia, founded in 1908, as well as the name of the
organization’s journal. The first issue of Ateitis (The Future) was published in
1911 and was aimed at contesting socialist influence among Catholic second-
ary school and university students. In 1927, this Catholic movement, known
as the ateitininkai, adopted an organizational structure formally known as the
Ateitis Federation, divided into three separate branches representing second-
ary school pupils, university students, and alumni. The Ateitis Federation em-
phasized religious and national values that appealed to Lithuania’s Catholic
intellectual elite. Although the secondary school organization of Ateitis was
proscribed by Lithuania’s Nationalist Union government in 1930, it never
ceased functioning and numbered about 10,000 members in 1940. Ateitis
was banned by the Soviet authorities after 1940, and most of its leaders either
fled to the West or were repressed by the Communists. The Ateitis Federation
was reconstituted among Lithuanian refugees after World War II. In 1967,

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 AUGUSTUS III • 53

there were about 3,000 ateitininkai, mainly in the United States and Canada.
With the restoration of religious freedom in the late 1980s, Ateitis once again
become active in Lithuania.

AUGUSTUS II THE STRONG (1670–1733). King of Poland and Grand

Duke of Lithuania from 1697 to 1706 and from 1709 to 1733; also Elector of
Saxony as Frederick Augustus I from 1694 to 1733. Born on 12 May 1670
in Dresden, Augustus, an heir of the Saxon House of Wettin, succeeded his
brother as Elector of Saxony in 1694 and became known as a generous patron
of the arts. After the death of King John Sobieski (R. 1674–1696), he was
able to win election to the Polish-Lithuanian throne as Augustus II through
bribes and the assistance of Russia and Austria in June 1697. With help from
Lithuanian magnates who opposed the powerful Sapieha family, Augustus
persuaded Lithuanian leaders to support his ambition of instituting an ab-
solute monarchy in the Grand Duchy, but this proposal met with vigorous
opposition in Poland. Augustus’s attempts to increase the monarchy’s power
with the help of the Saxon army were derailed by his defeats at the hands of
Sweden in the Great Northern War.
Augustus was deposed in July 1704, and in 1706 was forced by the Swedes
to formally abdicate, but his fortunes revived after the decisive Russian
victory over Charles XII at Poltava in 1709. Having regained the throne,
Augustus again attempted to increase royal power, but was stymied by the
Russian-supported Confederation of Tarnogród. The so-called Silent Diet of
the Commonwealth in 1717 forced the withdrawal of Saxon troops from
Poland-Lithuania, thus undercutting Augustus’s influence and initiating a
period of Russian interference.
For Lithuania, the reign of Augustus II was one of the most disastrous pe-
riods in the country’s history, featuring the Great Northern War, the plague
of 1708–1711, and Russian invasions. Although ambitious, intelligent, and
politically astute, as well as an able military commander, Augustus was also
known for his dissolute ways. He received the epithet “the Strong” on account
of his size and physical strength, reportedly fathering some 300 children.
Augustus died in Warsaw on 1 February 1733.

AUGUSTUS III (1696–1763). King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithu-

ania; also Elector of Saxony as Frederick Augustus II from 1733 to 1763.
Born in Dresden on 17 September 1696, the son of Augustus II the Strong.
His election to the Polish-Lithuanian throne in 1733 was largely engineered
by the Saxon minister Count Heinrich von Bruhl with the support of Austria
and Russia against the strong opposition of the Polish nobility, who actually
chose Stanisław Leszczyński as King Stanisław I on 12 September 1733.

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 54 • AUKŠTAITIJA

Russian troops then forced the election of Augustus III in a second vote of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s diet on 5 October 1733, but the dispute
between Augustus’s and Leszczyński’s supporters dragged on until 1736.
During Augustus’s 30-year reign, the Commonwealth fell ever more under
foreign control and became virtually defenseless against its neighbors: dur-
ing the Seven Years’ War, Prussian, Austrian, and Russian armies traversed
Poland-Lithuania freely. Internal politics were dominated by the struggle be-
tween the Czartoryski family, which leaned toward Russia, and the Potocki
party, which looked to France. While members of the nobility increasingly
called for social and political reform, royal government remained weak, and
the gentry’s diets often dissolved in chaos. A generous patron of the arts,
Augustus III nevertheless lacked his father’s political skills and ambition,
spending most of his time in Saxony. He died in Dresden on 5 October 1763.

AUKŠTAITIJA. Term denoting “Highland Region,” the name for the

hilly central and northeastern region of Lithuania. The lands of Aukštaitija
are generally considered to include the territory east of the Nevėžis and
Nemunas Rivers; the inhabitants are called aukštaičiai—aukštaitis in the
singular (although the plural term for the people can also signify the land
of Aukštaitija). The eastern highlands are in contrast to western Lithuania,
known as Žemaitija or the Lowland region, often referred to in English-lan-
guage texts as Samogitia. Various versions of the term Aukštaitija have been
used in chronicles and other sources since the 13th century; unlike Samogitia,
however, Aukštaitija never formed a single distinct political or ecclesiastical
province. The aukštaičiai comprise one of the four major Lithuanian ethno-
graphic and dialectical subdivisions, known for their distinct folk architec-
ture. The region is also known for the cultivation of flax and the prominence
of weaving in the local peasant economy.

AUŠRA. Old Lithuanian: Auszra. Lithuanian-language monthly periodi-

cal published in East Prussia between 1883 and 1886. Auszra (The Dawn)
was the first secular Lithuanian periodical, which also gave its name to an
entire generation of nationally minded Lithuanian intelligentsia. Auszra, later
spelled Aušra, proclaimed an agenda of romantic nationalism whose avowed
purposes were to save the Lithuanian language from extinction and to de-
velop a sense of national pride derived from Lithuania’s history and culture.
Aušra’s founder and guiding spirit was Jonas Basanavičius, widely regarded
as the patriarch of the modern Lithuanian national movement.
The first issue of Aušra, dated 20 March 1883, was published in Ragnit
(Lithuanian: Ragainė), East Prussia, in April 1883. Later in the year, the
journal was issued from Tilsit, the major town on the Prussian border with

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 AVIATION • 55

Russia. Because of the tsarist press ban on Lithuanian publications, Aušra

was mailed to subscribers in unmarked envelopes, while some issues were
smuggled into Russian-ruled Lithuania from East Prussia along with other
illegal publications. Two of the periodical’s editors, Jonas Šliūpas and Mar-
tynas Jankus (1858–1946), were prominent leaders of the Lithuanian national
movement. Forty issues of Aušra appeared between April 1883 and the sum-
mer of 1886.
Despite the periodical’s limited circulation of only about 1,000 copies, it
had an important impact on the development of the modern Lithuanian na-
tion. While much of Lithuania’s Catholic establishment objected to the secu-
lar and liberal tone of the journal, it proved popular among the nationalistic
younger clergy and the growing number of Lithuanian-speaking intelligentsia
with roots in the countryside. The leaders of this intelligentsia, who generally
supported the goals of the monthly, became known as members of the “Aušra
movement,” or aušrininkai, widely regarded as the immediate precursor to
modern Lithuanian political nationalism, which eventually articulated the
goal of a democratic and independent Lithuanian state. See also NEWSPA-
PERS AND PERIODICALS.

AVIATION. The development of military and civil aviation received an

impetus during Lithuania’s struggle for independence following World War
I. The Lithuanian air force began as an engineering company of the army
in 1919; its first equipment was a British Sopwith Camel captured from the
Bolshevik forces. The air force participated in the battles with the Soviets
and Poland in 1919–1920. By 1940, Lithuania’s air force numbered more
than 100 reconnaissance, fighter, and bomber aircraft. The major air base was
located in Aleksotas, a suburb of Kaunas.
Lithuanian designer Jurgis Dobkevičius (1900–1926) built three training
types (the DOBI series). The best known Lithuanian aeronautical engineer
was Gen. Antanas Gustaitis (1898–1941), who designed the ANBO series of
trainers, reconnaissance airplanes, and light bombers. Civil aviation received
a major boost with the creation of Lithuania’s Aero Club in 1927. During
the 1930s, gliding became a popular sport, and a school for glider pilots was
established in Nida on the Baltic Sea coast.
On 15 June 1933, two Lithuanian-American pilots, Steponas Darius
(1896–1933) and Stasys Girėnas (1893–1933), took off from New York
for Kaunas, a journey of more than 7,000 kilometers (4,200 miles), in the
Lituanica, a modified single-engine Bellanca CH-300, attempting to break
the record for nonstop flight. Darius and Girėnas were the first to officially
carry air mail across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, after a 37-hour flight—the
second longest then on record—both men perished when their plane crashed

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 56 • AVIATION

in bad weather near Soldin, Germany (now Pszcelnik in western Poland), on

17 June. There seems to be no truth to the widespread rumor at the time that
the airplane had been shot down by the Germans. The Darius-Girėnas episode
became a national epic and greatly stimulated interest in aviation.
Lithuania’s first commercial airline was organized in 1937, operating
flights from Kaunas to the Baltic coast. In 1940, Lithuania’s civil and military
aviation came under Soviet control. After World War II, Vilnius became the
hub of the Lithuanian section of the Soviet airline Aeroflot, with numerous
connections to major Soviet cities.
In September 1991, Lithuanian Airlines (LAL) was reestablished and
began operating independently. Over the next decade, LAL acquired a fleet
of Boeing 737 and Saab turboprop passenger planes for service to the major
capitals of Scandinavia and central and western Europe. The airline operated
at a loss and was privatized in 2005 as the FlyLAL Company, but financial
difficulties forced it to cease scheduled operations in January 2009. FlyLAL
was then reorganized as a charter airline. Most of the former airline’s routes
were taken over by Air Baltic, a Latvian-owned company. A new passenger
terminal for Vilnius International Airport was completed in 1994 and then
further expanded and modernized in 2007 to meet Schengen standards.

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 B
BAČKIS, AUDRYS JUOZAS (1937– ). Roman Catholic cardinal and
archbishop of Vilnius. Bačkis was born in Kaunas on 1 February 1937 into
the family of career diplomat Stasys Bačkis (1906–1999). First educated in
Paris, he was ordained in 1961 after completing his studies at the Pontifical
Gregorian University in Rome. Bačkis then studied at the Vatican’s Pontifical
Academy of Diplomacy and in 1964 began a career in the foreign service,
with postings in the Philippines, Costa Rica, Turkey, and Nigeria. In 1988,
he was elevated to the rank of archbishop and sent to the Netherlands as
papal nuncio. In December 1991, Pope John Paul II appointed Bačkis to be
Archbishop of Vilnius and then elevated him to the College of Cardinals in
February 2001. Bačkis served as the president of the Lithuanian bishops’
conference from 1993 to 1999 and again since 2002.

BALTIC ASSEMBLY. An international organization founded on 8 Novem-

ber 1991 in Tallinn to promote cooperation between the parliaments of Lith-
uania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Assembly consists of delegations of 12–20
parliamentarians from each of the member states. Decisions are approved at
the organization’s annual sessions, of which 27 were held between 1991 and
2009. Between sessions, the work of the organization is conducted by a six-
member presidium, which is chaired by a rotating presidency. The purpose
of the Assembly as an advisory body is to mediate disputes among the three
Baltic States, find solutions to problems of common interest, and increase
the countries’ leverage in foreign relations by joint action. During the early
1990s, the Assembly worked to increase public pressure for the withdrawal of
Russian forces from the Baltic States and to coordinate legislation that would
facilitate efforts to meet conditions for joining the European Union. The
Assembly was instrumental in the formation of the Baltic Council of Minis-
ters and has increased cooperation with similar interstate bodies, such as the
Nordic Council and the Benelux Interparliamentary Consultative Council.

BALTIC ENTENTE. An alliance established by Lithuania, Latvia, and

Estonia in 1934 to promote political cooperation and to coordinate the

57

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 58 • BALTIC SEA

foreign relations of the Baltic States. There had been attempts to form a
larger Baltic bloc of states that would include Finland, the Scandinavian
states, and Poland since the end of World War I. In 1920, conferences in
Helsinki and in Bulduri, Latvia, failed to form such a larger alliance because
of the Polish-Lithuanian conflict over Vilnius, as well as Finland’s reluctance
to be involved in its southern neighbors’ potential problems with Germany
and Russia.
In 1934, the Lithuanian government proposed a smaller entente with Lat-
via and Estonia. The text of the treaty was negotiated during the summer of
1934 in Kaunas and Riga. The final document, the Treaty of Friendship and
Cooperation, was signed on 12 September 1934 at Geneva and was ratified
on 13 November of that year in Riga. The Baltic Entente provided a forum
for political cooperation through the foreign ministers’ conferences, nine of
which were held between 1934 and 1940. The alliance also created a num-
ber of commissions to expand cooperation in legal, cultural, and economic
matters. During the late 1930s, there were attempts to expand cooperation in
defense matters as well, but they were cut short by the Soviet occupation of
the Baltic States in June 1940, which put an end to the Baltic Entente.
The spirit of the Baltic Entente was restored in 1989 with the creation of
the Baltic Council to coordinate the activities of Sąjūdis and the Latvian
and Estonian Popular Fronts. Since 1990, the Baltic States have sought to
enhance their cooperation in the military, economic, and cultural fields. See
also BALTIC ASSEMBLY.

BALTIC SEA. One of the largest brackish bodies of water in the world,
encompassing some 377,000 square kilometers (145,000 square miles). The
Baltic Sea is bordered by Sweden and Denmark in the west; Germany,
Poland, and the Kaliningrad oblast of the Russian Federation in the south;
and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in the east and northeast. The
geopolitics, economy, culture, and security of Lithuania have been closely
linked to the Baltic Sea throughout history. During the medieval period it
provided an avenue for invasion by the Vikings and Teutonic Knights and
a major focus of Russian and Muscovite expansion as the tsars sought an
ice-free opening to the West. In general, the eastern Baltic littoral has been
the theater of intense geopolitical and strategic competition among Sweden,
Russia, Germany, and other powers.
For most of its history, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania struggled for ac-
cess to the sea. Since only a sliver of the Baltic coast with the tiny fishing
village of Šventoji and the resort of Palanga belonged to Lithuania, much of
the country’s trade passed through Königsberg (Prussia) and Riga (Cour-
land). The Republic of Lithuania gained wider access to the Baltic Sea with

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 BALTRUŠAITIS, JURGIS • 59

the acquisition of Klaipėda (German: Memel) Territory in 1923, which gave

the country a 123-kilometer (76-mile) coastline and a major port. The Baltic
coastal region forms the mainstay of Lithuania’s maritime economy based on
fishing and international transit.
After World War I, the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia
unsuccessfully pursued their security through the Baltic Entente. During the
Cold War, the Soviet Union maintained an enormous military presence in the
eastern Baltic, primarily in Riga and Kaliningrad.
During the 1990s, the newly independent Baltic States attempted to forge
closer cooperation in their attempt to enhance their security through frequent
mutual consultations and bodies such as the Baltic Assembly (1991), the
Baltic Council (1990), and the Baltic Council of Ministers (1994). The Con-
vention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area,
signed by all the states bordering the Baltic in 1992, came into force in January
2000. The 12-member Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), established in
1992, has a permanent secretariat in Stockholm and is charged with oversee-
ing intergovernmental cooperation on the economy and environment, in ad-
dition to other issues. However, disagreements between Latvia and Lithuania
on maritime boundaries as well as the controversial German-Russian Nord
Stream natural gas pipeline project under the Baltic Sea continue to be divisive
factors hampering cooperation among the countries of the region.

BALTRUŠAITIS, JURGIS (1873–1944). Lithuanian poet and diplomat,

born on 2 May 1873 in Jurbarkas district. A graduate of the University of
Moscow, Baltrušaitis began to contribute to Russian literary magazines
during the 1890s. He was one of the founders of the Russian avant-garde
Skorpion publishing house, established in 1899. Baltrušaitis’s first collection
of Russian poetry, Zemnye Stupeni (Earthly Steps), was published in 1911
and earned him recognition as a force in the Russian Symbolist movement.
Baltrušaitis also became known as a Russian translator of French and German
literature. In 1914, he and his wife befriended the young Boris Pasternak, the
future author of Doctor Zhivago, who tutored Baltrušaitis’s son.
In 1919, Baltrušaitis was elected chairman of the Soviet Union of Writers.
He entered public service in 1920 as Lithuania’s minister plenipotentiary
to Moscow. In 1934, he made unsuccessful efforts to save the Russian poet
Osip Mandelstam from Stalinist repression. Baltrušaitis remained Lithuania’s
envoy to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) until 1939, when
he was transferred to the Lithuanian Legation in Paris. He died there on 3
January 1944.
While Baltrušaitis wrote primarily in Russian, he also contributed several
collections of Lithuanian poetry later in life, mostly written from 1939 to

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 60 • BALTS

1943. His thorough immersion in both the Russian and Lithuanian cultural
worlds has made him a unique fixture in the history of Lithuanian literature.

BALTS. The name Balt has acquired two distinct meanings: as a political and
geographic term of recent popular usage denoting the native inhabitants of
the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia; and as an ethnolinguistic
term signifying speakers of the Baltic group of the Indo-European family
of languages. In utilizing the first term, it should be noted that Estonians
speak a Finno-Ugric language close to Finnish but unrelated to Lithuanian
and Latvian, which are the only living Baltic languages. Strictly speaking, in
historic and linguistic literature, only the second usage is acceptable. “Baltic
peoples” is the better designation for the natives of the three Baltic States if
one disregards linguistic criteria.
Most archaeologists and linguists who have studied material culture and
the distribution of Baltic place-names conclude that the ancestors of the Indo-
European Balts lived in the central regions of what is now European Russia
and along the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea about 3000 BCE. In the west,
some of the Baltic tribes reached the Vistula River. In addition to archaeol-
ogy, additional evidence for this comes from the study of Finno-Ugric and
Slavic loanwords in the Baltic languages.
The differentiation of the Baltic speakers into distinct tribes and dialects
is dated from about 1000 BCE. Generally, scholars divide the Balts into
the Western Baltic group, which included the Old Prussians and Yotvin-
gians, and the Eastern Balts, who included the Couronians, Semigallians,
and other ancestors of today’s Latvians and Lithuanians. The Western Balts
were essentially exterminated or assimilated by the Teutonic Knights. The
easternmost Balts, including the Galindians who are mentioned in historical
sources, were overrun and assimilated by the Eastern Slavic peoples by the
early medieval period. The remaining Baltic tribes eventually coalesced into
the modern Lithuanian and Latvian nations.

BANKING AND INVESTMENT. Before 1914, Lithuania’s financial sys-

tem was an integral part of the Russian imperial economy. Between 1914
and 1920, the disruptions of World War I, the German occupation, and the
independence wars led to runaway inflation. On 11 August 1922, the Bank of
Lithuania (Lietuvos Bankas) was created as a private enterprise under gov-
ernment supervision whose director was appointed by the president of the
republic. On 1 October 1922, the first notes of the new Lithuanian currency,
the litas, were issued. The law prescribed that one-third of the currency had
to be backed by gold reserves. Until the outbreak of World War II, the cur-
rency remained relatively stable with low levels of inflation. At the end of
1939, the total foreign debt was estimated at over 68 million litai ($11 mil-

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 BAR, CONFEDERATION OF • 61

lion), of which more than half was owed to the United States, while domestic
government obligations totaled over 65 million litai.
Foreign investment in manufacturing was not significant during the in-
terwar period with some exceptions—for example, the granting of a match
production monopoly to a Swedish company in 1930. The government itself
provided major investment capital and was the major shareholder and con-
troller of two of the country’s largest industrial enterprises: the meat-pro-
cessing and food-canning concern Lietuvos Maistas, and the sugar company
Lietuvos Cukrus.
After the Soviet occupation of 1940, the Communist government national-
ized all banks and industrial enterprises, also attempting to gain control of
Lithuania’s gold reserves of about ten tons held in U.S. and other Western
banks; in 1967, Great Britain sold Lithuania’s gold to the Soviet Union. In
April 1941, the litas was replaced by the Soviet ruble at rates that essentially
impoverished holders of the prewar currency. Between 1944 and 1990, Lithu-
ania was integrated into the Soviet Union’s centralized command economy
with emphasis on heavy industry.
On 1 March 1990, the Bank of Lithuania was reestablished. For the first
several years, the Soviet/Russian ruble circulated along with a temporary
currency, the talonas, or coupon. After British and French banks agreed to
reimburse much of Lithuania’s prewar gold reserves, the new litas became
the only legal tender in August 1993. From 1994 to 2002, the currency was
pegged to the U.S. dollar at the rate of four litai to one dollar, but since 2002,
it has been attached to the euro. Among the banks that have operated in Lithu-
ania since 1990 are Snoras, a Russian-owned joint stock company; the Lat-
vian Parex group; the Swedish Swedbank; the German DnB Nord; and others.
Since the severe economic downturn began in 2008, the government has
resisted devaluation of the currency. Because of the Lithuanian government’s
failure to reduce budget deficits and contain inflation, the introduction of the
euro has been postponed until sometime after 2011.

BAR, CONFEDERATION OF. One of the most important of the confeder-

ations formed by the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was
proclaimed at the town of Bar in the Podolia region of Ukraine on 29 Febru-
ary 1768. The purpose of the Bar assembly was to organize resistance against
Russian interference in the internal affairs of Poland-Lithuania, which had
become increasingly irksome to the patriotic gentry after the so-called Silent
Diet of 1717. The gentry resented the way in which King Stanisław August
Poniatowski (R. 1764–1795), the former lover of Catherine the Great, sub-
mitted to the dictates of the Russian ambassador in Warsaw, Nikolai Repnin.
The Confederation of Bar was proclaimed under the slogan “For Coun-
try, Faith, and Freedom” and was essentially a movement to preserve the

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 62 • BARANAUSKAS, ANTANAS

independence of the Commonwealth. It was led by the Polish hetman Mi-

chael Krasiński (1712–1784) and the Pulaski family.
The king, supported by Russian troops, non-Catholic dissidents, and
the conservative nobility of the Confederation of Radom dispersed the Bar
Confederates in the summer of 1768, and the remnants of the rebel army
retreated to Moldova, then under Ottoman control. Despite initial setbacks,
the Bar movement spread throughout the Commonwealth, including Lithu-
ania, where it was spearheaded by the Radziwiłł, Pac, Ogiński, and Sapieha
magnate families.
The Confederation of Bar led to international conflicts by precipitating a
war between Russia and Turkey; it also received limited support from Austria
and France. However, the Confederates’ announcement of King Poniatows-
ki’s deposition, at a time when he was considering joining the movement,
hurt the rebel cause. The Russian general Suvorov defeated the Confederate
army in Poland in the spring of 1771.
The collapse of the Confederation of Bar is historically important because
it precipitated the first of the partitions of Poland-Lithuania by Russia,
Prussia, and Austria, which were determined not to allow the revival of a
genuinely independent Commonwealth.

BARANAUSKAS, ANTANAS (1831–1902). Catholic bishop and poet;

one of the leading literary figures of the Lithuanian national renaissance of
the 19th century. Baranauskas was born on 5 January 1831 in Anykščiai.
He entered the Theological Seminary at Varniai in 1856 and continued his
religious studies at the Theological Academy in St. Petersburg, graduating in
1862. During the next two years, he studied in Munich, Innsbruck, and Rome.
After a brief teaching stint at the St. Petersburg Academy, Baranauskas was
assigned to the Theological Seminary in Kaunas, where he taught until 1884.
That year, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Samogitia, and in 1897, he
became Bishop of Sejny (Lithuanian: Seinai).
Baranauskas was an extraordinarily gifted but somewhat eccentric per-
sonality, an accomplished philologist and grammarian of the Lithuanian lan-
guage who also published works in mathematics and philosophy. However,
Baranauskas is best known for his poetry, especially for the poem “Anykščių
Šilelis” (The Grove of Anyksciai), considered by some the best example of
Lithuanian lyrical poetry of the period, as well as the patriotic collection
Kelionė Petaburkan (Journey to St. Petersburg).
Initially an enthusiastic supporter of Lithuanian national culture and much
admired as a writer, Baranauskas became a political anachronism in his later
years when he denounced the national movement for its anti-Polish separat-

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 BASANAVIČIUS, JONAS • 63

ism and endorsed a Polish-Lithuanian union. He died in Sejny on 26 Novem-

ber 1902. See also LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

BASANAVIČIUS, JONAS (1851–1927). A leading figure of the Lithuanian

national movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries and founder of Aušra.
Jonas Basanavičius was born on 23 November 1851 in Ožkabaliai, Lithuania,
the son of well-to-do peasants. Basanavičius graduated the Marijampolė second-
ary school in 1873 and then matriculated at the University of Moscow, receiving
his medical degree in 1879. He was active in the circles of nationally minded
Lithuanian students in Moscow and, although he chose a medical career for
practical reasons, devoted most of his life to the study of Lithuanian history.
In 1880, Basanavičius accepted a position as a physician in newly indepen-
dent Bulgaria, where he spent most of the next 25 years. In 1884, he married
Elenora Mohl, a Bohemian German whom he met in Prague while furthering
his medical studies, and in the same year returned to Bulgaria with his new
bride. Basanavičius actively participated in Bulgarian public life and politics
as a member of the Bulgarian Democratic Party; he was also briefly Prince
Ferdinand’s palace physician. In 1891, Basanavičius was granted Bulgarian
citizenship.
Remarkably, while in Bulgaria, Basanavičius provided the major impe-
tus for the publication of Aušra, which signaled the emergence of modern
secular Lithuanian nationalism. At the same time, he wrote a number of
scholarly works in which he traced the origins of the Lithuanian people to the
Trojans and the region of Thrace. While many of Basanavičius’s linguistic
and historical assertions are now considered romanticized pseudoscience,
his work played an important part in stimulating interest and pride in Lithu-
anian national culture. It was during his period of residence in Bulgaria that
Basanavičius came to be seen as the patriarch or dean of the Lithuanian na-
tional movement.
Basanavičius returned to Lithuania in 1905, finding the Lithuanian national
movement he had inspired both politicized and much strengthened. He was
elected chairman of the Great Assembly of Vilnius on 21 November 1905,
the first modern Lithuanian political convention. However, Basanavičius’s
conservative concept of stressing national cultural values was soon super-
seded by a political agenda directed against tsarist oppression and favor-
ing an autonomous Lithuania. During the decade preceding World War I,
Basanavičius immersed himself in scholarly and cultural activities; his most
important achievement was the founding of the Lithuanian Scholarly Soci-
ety (Lithuanian: Lietuvių Mokslo Draugija), which considerably enhanced
scholarly work in the Lithuanian language and was an important center of
Lithuanian cultural life in Vilnius.

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 64 • BASKETBALL

On 16 February 1918, Basanavičius became the most famous signatory of

Lithuania’s declaration of independence, but afterward he did not play a sig-
nificant political role in the creation of the new state. After the Polish seizure
of Vilnius in 1920, Basanavičius refused to evacuate to Kaunas and became
the most prominent Lithuanian figure in the city. He continued his work with
the Scholarly Society and took on the role of defending Lithuanian interests
under Polish rule. Basanavičius died in Vilnius on 16 February 1927.

BASKETBALL. Considered by most Lithuanians as their national sport

since the late 1930s. Modern sports became more popular after the establish-
ment of an independent state, but basketball did not achieve prominence until
the 1937 European championships in Riga, when the Lithuanian national
team was reinforced by several Lithuanian-American players, including the
captain of the 1936 U.S. Olympic team, Frank Lubin (aka Pranas Lubinas).
Lithuania won the 1937 contest by achieving a stunning upset over such fa-
vorites as Italy and Latvia. As a result of the national enthusiasm engendered
by this victory, basketball fever gripped Lithuania; in 1939, the Lithuanian
team again won the European championships, which were held in Kaunas.
After World War II, Lithuanians and other Balts played a key role in
popularizing basketball in the Soviet Union. Lithuanians figured prominently
in the 1956 Soviet men’s Olympic team in Melbourne and were a decisive
factor in the 1988 Soviet victory over the United States that earned the USSR
the gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Seoul. In the mid-1980s, Žalgiris
of Kaunas won several Soviet men’s basketball championships and was rec-
ognized as one of the best teams in Europe.
In 1992, the Lithuanian Olympic team earned the bronze medal in men’s
basketball at the Barcelona Olympics, and in 1995, it took the silver medal
in the European championships held in Athens. The Lithuanian basketball
team once again won the bronze medal at the centennial Summer Olympics
in Atlanta in 1996, then again at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, but finished
fourth in 2004 and 2008. In 2003, Lithuania won the Eurobasket tournament
for the first time since 1939 and the bronze in the European championships
in 2007. Since independence, a number of Lithuanian basketball players
have achieved prominence as professionals, most notably Arvydas Sabonis
and Šarūnas Marčiulionis, who joined the National Basketball Association
(NBA).

BATORY (BATHORY), STEFAN (1522–1586). King of Poland and

Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1576 to 1586; born on 28 September 1533 in
Somlyo, Hungary. In 1571, Batory was elected prince of Transylvania, and in
March 1576, he was crowned king of Poland on the condition that he marry

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 BELARUS • 65

Anna, the daughter of Sigismund I. In June 1576, he was also named Grand
Duke of Lithuania after promising to respect the Grand Duchy’s political
autonomy. By all accounts, Batory was an intelligent, able, and energetic
monarch, as well as a renowned military leader. After concluding a treaty
in 1577 with the Ottoman sultan Murad III, who promised to restrain the
Crimean Tatars from attacking the Commonwealth, he launched a success-
ful campaign to reverse the Muscovite conquest of Livonia, concluding a
peace with Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) in 1582.
Batory then became the ruler of most of Livonia and, during his reign,
strengthened Catholicism in the region. In 1579, he granted the charter of
higher learning to the Jesuit college in Lithuania, thus founding the Univer-
sity of Vilnius. Batory reformed the Lithuanian judiciary by establishing a
supreme tribunal and inspiring the third revision of the Lithuanian Statute.
He is known to have planned an ambitious military campaign, utilizing
Polish-Lithuanian forces to liberate Hungary from Ottoman rule and to regain
Lithuanian lands lost to Muscovy. However, Batory died on 12 December
1586 in Grodno before any of his plans could be realized.

BELARUS. Also Belorussia, Byelorussia, and in older usage, White Rus-

sia. Since 1991, Lithuania’s eastern neighbor and a member of the Com-
monwealth of Independent States. Area: 207,600 square kilometers (80,150
square miles); population: est. 9,700,000 in 2008; capital: Minsk (population
1,830,000). Since 1991, the country’s formal designation is the Republic of
Belarus, literally meaning “White Rus’.”
Before 1900. East Slavic tribes, the best known of whom were the Krivichi,
migrated to what is now Belarus beginning about the 5th century CE, replac-
ing the eastern Baltic tribes then living in the region. The original Lithuanian
cognate for the Belarusians is gudai, a term that may be derived from the
word for “Goths,” who swept through the area during the late Roman Empire.
Before Lithuanian rule in the 13th century, much of Belarus was subject to
the principality of Polotsk, which was a part of Kievan Rus’. All of Belarus
came under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the reigns of Gedimi-
nas and Algirdas, between 1316 and 1377, and remained under Lithuanian
control until the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in
1772–1795, when the region came under Russian rule. The centuries-old po-
litical separation of Belarus from Muscovy and Russia was the predominant
factor in giving rise to a separate Belarusian national identity. The form of
Old Church Slavic utilized in Belarus and western Russia became the official
language of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy until 1697.
The first books ever published in Lithuania (in Vilnius) were Francis
Skorina’s Apostol (The Apostle) and Malaya Podrozhnaya Knizhitsa (The

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 66 • BELARUS

Little Travel Book), printed in the Belarusian version of Old Church Slavic
in 1525. The first Slavic loanwords came into the Lithuanian language from
the Belarusians, while the latter adopted numerous Lithuanian terms. Much
of the population of eastern Lithuania was assimilated to Belarusian speech
during the second half of the 19th century. Folklore, folk art, and the cus-
toms of western Belarusians in particular are historically close to those of the
Lithuanians.
Since 1900. The long cultural and political affiliation of Belarus and Lithu-
ania has led Belarusian nationalists to regard their country as a successor
state to the Lithuanian Grand Duchy. However, in contrast to Lithuania and
Ukraine, the Belarusian intelligentsia was weak and unable to launch a strong
national movement, although there was an attempt to create an independent
state in 1918–1919. Like Lithuania, western Belarus was heavily influenced
by the Polonization of its upper classes, a process reinforced in 1920–1939
when much of the area was part of Poland (the eastern region was incorpo-
rated into the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic). Western Belarus has
remained the easternmost outpost of Roman Catholicism in Europe to this
day. Belarus in its current borders resulted from the destruction of Poland
in September 1939 and the border adjustments of Lithuania with the Soviet
Union during 1939–1941.
During Soviet rule, most of Belarus, especially the cities and its educa-
tional system, were thoroughly Russified. Although Belarus achieved formal
independence with the dismantling of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
in December 1991, its armed forces and foreign policy are closely tied to
those of Russia. In 1995, a Lithuanian-Belarusian treaty established normal
relations and finalized border issues. While both countries have formally ac-
cepted their current borders, some Belarusian nationalists still claim Vilnius
on historic grounds, while Lithuanians have complained about the lack of
cultural autonomy for the Lithuanian minority in western Belarus in the so-
called historic “islands” of Lithuanian-speaking settlement.
In 1996–1999, a series of agreements established a confederation, the
Union of Russia and Belarus, which was intended to create a monetary union,
a single citizenship, and common foreign policy, but as of 2009 the arrange-
ment was not finalized due to trade disputes. Lithuanian-Belarusian relations
have been strained by the emergence of President Alexander Lukashenko
(1954– ) as the authoritarian ruler of Belarus, whose suppression of dissent
has caused some Belarusian opposition activists to flee to Lithuania. On the
other hand, Lithuanian diplomats have served as intermediaries and contacts
between Belarus and the European Union states that have condemned Be-
larus for rigged elections and human rights violations. See also FOREIGN
RELATIONS.

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 BRAZAUSKAS, ALGIRDAS MYKOLAS • 67

BERMONDTISTS. Lithuanian: Bermontininkai; also Bermondt’s Army.

A combined German-Russian force, formally designated the Western Vol-
unteer Army, which invaded the Baltic region in 1919. It is better known
under the name of its commander, the Georgian-born adventurer and White
Russian colonel, Pavel Bermondt-Avalov (1877–1974). Under the terms of
the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended World War I, Germany was
required to maintain, as long as the Allies considered necessary, a force in
the eastern Baltic sufficient to repel the expected Bolshevik advance. The
German commander in the east, Gen. Rüdiger von der Goltz (1865–1946),
sought to retain Germany’s influence in the Baltic even after the Allies or-
dered the withdrawal of the German army in the summer of 1919. Before
his recall to Germany in October 1919, Goltz allowed German “volunteers”
to transfer to the command of Bermondt-Avalov, now promoted to general,
who also brought in Russian fighters, mostly prisoners of war released by
the Germans. The newly created force, which is estimated to have numbered
more than 20,000 men, was actually designed to evade the requirement for
German withdrawal, although some Allied officers hoped it would constitute
an effective anti-Bolshevik force.
The Bermondtists invaded Lithuania in July 1919 and, taking advantage
of Lithuania’s preoccupation with resisting the Red Army, occupied most
of northwestern Lithuania, looting much of the countryside. The Lithuanian
army defeated the Bermondtists in a fierce battle at the town of Radviliškis on
21–23 November 1919, capturing an enormous cache of military hardware,
including aircraft, which proved instrumental in the Lithuanians’ success in
future military operations. The Bermondtists reluctantly evacuated Lithuania
under the supervision of the Allied Military Mission in December 1919. At
the same time, they were forced out of Latvia by Estonian and Latvian troops
supported by the British navy.
The collapse of Bermondt-Avalov’s adventure put an end to the hopes of
the German High Command of gaining Germany a military foothold in the
Baltic region and maintaining the position of the Baltic German nobility in
Latvia and Estonia.

BRAZAUSKAS, ALGIRDAS MYKOLAS (1931–2010). Former first

secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party (1988–1990), leader of major
Lithuanian leftist parties, and president and prime minister of Lithuania
during the 1990s and early 2000s. Brazauskas was born in Rokiškis, Lithu-
ania, on 22 September 1931. After graduation from the Kaunas Polytechnic
Institute in 1956, Brazauskas worked as an engineer and in 1959 joined the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). He soon became one of the ris-
ing young stars within the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) bureaucracy,

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 68 • BRAZAUSKAS, ALGIRDAS MYKOLAS

earning his reputation as a manager in the state construction industry. In

1965, Brazauskas was appointed minister of construction of the Lithuanian
Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), one of the youngest members in the repub-
lic’s government. In 1966, he became the deputy chairman of the Lithuanian
SSR’s State Planning Commission. Brazauskas received the candidate degree
in economics in 1974.
In 1977, Brazauskas was appointed secretary of the LCP Central Com-
mittee, which placed him near the top of Lithuania’s Party leadership. He
achieved political prominence during the summer of 1988 when he distanced
himself from Soviet Lithuania’s aging leadership and showed willingness
to cooperate with the rapidly emerging Sąjūdis reform movement. On 21
October 1988, Brazauskas was elected to head the LCP as first secretary and
attempted to steer a middle course between the program of Sąjūdis and pres-
sure from Moscow to halt the growing demand for Lithuanian independence.
In response, Brazauskas led the LCP to declare itself independent from the
CPSU during its 20th Party Congress in December 1989. Soviet authorities
in turn accused the Lithuanian party of fomenting separatism.
Although Brazauskas was elected a deputy to the Lithuanian Supreme
Soviet in the February 1990 elections, the Sąjūdis movement won a majority
and chose Vytautas Landsbergis to lead the legislature (thereafter called
the Supreme Council). On 11 March 1990, Brazauskas, along with the other
deputies, signed Lithuania’s declaration formally restoring the country’s
independence. At the same time, he was appointed deputy prime minister in
Kazimira Prunskienė’s cabinet.
In 1990, Brazauskas took over the leadership of the newly formed Lithu-
anian Democratic Labor Party (LDDP), the successor to the reformist
LCP, and during the following two years he led the political opposition to the
rightist political groups supporting Landsbergis. The October 1992 elections
to Lithuania’s new parliament, the Seimas, gave a majority to Brazauskas’s
party, in effect returning him to power as speaker of the parliament. In Lithu-
ania’s first popular presidential elections of 14 February 1993, Brazauskas
defeated rival Stasys Lozoraitis, claiming 60 percent of the vote.
Under President Brazauskas, the Lithuanian economy stabilized and the
country made considerable progress on reorienting its foreign relations to-
ward European and transatlantic structures. He declined to run for a second
term and instead supported Artūras Paulauskas, who lost to Valdas Adam-
kus in 1998. Brazauskas was the leading force within the Lithuanian Social
Democratic Party, which replaced the LDDP in 2001. He returned to the
government as prime minister on 3 July 2001 and served until 31 May 2006
when his ruling coalition disintegrated. Brazauskas then retired from active
politics. He died in Vilnius on 26 June 2010.

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 BUND • 69

BREST, UNION OF (1596). The union of the Eastern Orthodox and Ro-
man Catholic Churches within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
proclaimed by a Church synod at the town of Brest. Brest (also known as
Brest-Litovsk—literally, Lithuanian Brest), was an important cultural and
trading center of the Commonwealth, located near the Polish-Lithuanian
border. The establishment of the Moscow Patriarchate by Tsar Fedor in 1589
led to fears of Russian domination among many of the Orthodox bishops of
Poland-Lithuania, and as a result, Metropolitan Michal Rahoza of Kiev peti-
tioned Pope Clement VIII for union with Rome.
In October 1596, the Orthodox bishops of the Commonwealth met at the
Synod of Brest, where a bitter schism developed between the advocates and
opponents of the Catholic option. The Uniates who accepted Catholicism
were allowed to retain their Slavic Eastern Rite and a married clergy, but
were compelled to adopt the Roman Catholic doctrine of the eucharist and to
promise obedience to the Holy See. However, the Uniates were viewed by the
Orthodox Church as schismatics and traitors. The struggle between the two
churches has lasted into the 21st century.
In the 19th century, the predominantly Uniate lands of eastern Galicia
became the nucleus of the modern Ukrainian national movement. Histori-
cally, the Uniates have often been referred to as “Greek Catholics,” as well as
“Eastern Rite Catholics” thus distinguishing them from Latin Rite or Roman
Catholics. See also DISSIDENTS.

BUND. Name commonly used for the General Jewish Workers’ Union in
Lithuania, Poland, and Russia (Yiddish: Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund
in Lite, Polin, un Rusland). The Bund was established in September 1897 by
Jewish Social Democrats to represent the interests of the Jewish workers in
the cities and towns of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and
the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. In 1898, the Bund, which was
centered in Vilnius, joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party
(RSDWP) as an autonomous organization. During the early 1900s, it was the
strongest and most numerous revolutionary socialist organization in Lithu-
ania. The Bund published the Yiddish-language underground newspaper Ar-
beter Shtime (Voice of the Workers) from 1896 to 1905. At the Second Con-
gress of the RSDWP in Brussels and London, Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)
engineered the expulsion of the Bund from the Party, accusing it of narrow
nationalism and rejecting the Bund’s claim to be the sole representative of
Jewish workers in Russia. After the Revolution of 1917, a part of the Bund
joined the Bolsheviks, while the moderate faction continued its activities
outside the Soviet Union.

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 C
CASIMIR IV (1427–1492). King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania,
born in Cracow on 29 November 1427, the youngest son of King Władysław
II Jogaila and his fourth wife, Sophia. After the assassination of Grand Duke
Sigismund Kęstutaitis in 1440, the Lithuanian magnate families chose the
13-year-old Casimir over Sigismund’s son, Michael, who was supported by
the nobility of Samogitia. Despite Polish objections, Casimir was formally
proclaimed grand duke in Vilnius in 1440 and subdued the rebellious Samo-
gitians, while his brother Władysław III ruled in Poland. Władysław was
killed in a campaign against the Turks near Varna, Bulgaria, in 1444. After
protracted disputes with the Poles, who threatened to elect a non-Jagiellonian
ruler, the Lithuanian nobility agreed to Casimir’s election to the Polish throne
in 1447, but only after extracting a guarantee of Lithuania’s political auton-
omy and territorial integrity. In domestic affairs, Casimir’s reign was marked
by bitter disputes between Poland and Lithuania over the control of Podolia
and Volynia in Ukraine as well as over the nature of the Polish-Lithuanian
dynastic alliance.
Because of Casimir’s long stay in Cracow and his neglect of Lithuanian af-
fairs, there were several conspiracies that aimed to put another grand duke on
the Lithuanian throne and even a foiled plot to assassinate Casimir in 1481.
Casimir’s support for legal reform and education considerably advanced
Lithuania’s cultural Westernization. It is thought that Casimir was likely the
last ruler of the Grand Duchy to have had a command of the Lithuanian
language.
In foreign relations, Casimir was faced with the growing power of Mus-
covy. Vasilii II (R. 1425–1462) checked Lithuanian expansion in the east,
while under the rule of Ivan III (R. 1462–1505), Muscovy began to detach
the Grand Duchy’s easternmost territories from Lithuania and its Russian al-
lies, such as Novgorod (1471). Through his marriage to Elizabeth Hapsburg
of Austria, which produced six sons and five daughters, Casimir considerably
expanded the power of the Jagiellonian dynasty: his oldest son, Władysław,
was elected both King of Bohemia (1471–1516) and Hungary (1490–1516).
Casimir died in Grodno on 7 June 1492. See also CASIMIR, ST.

71

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 72 • CASIMIR, ST.

CASIMIR, ST. (1458–1484). The patron saint of Lithuania. The third child
of Casimir IV, born in Cracow on 3 October 1458, the young Casimir was
educated at the royal court by the Polish chronicler Jan Długosz (1415–1480)
and the Italian humanist Callimachus Buonacorsi (1437–1496). In 1471,
bolstered by the claims of his mother, Elizabeth of Hapsburg, he was sent to
Hungary in an unsuccessful bid to seize the throne from King Matthias Corvi-
nus. From 1481 to 1483, Casimir administered Poland when his father began
making frequent trips to Lithuania. In 1483, he arrived in Lithuania, residing
mainly in Vilnius and Trakai as his father’s viceroy in Lithuania, taking
charge of the Grand Duchy’s chancery. Casimir died in Grodno, probably
of tuberculosis, on 4 March 1484, the date celebrated as his feast day. He was
buried in the Cathedral of Vilnius.
Having gained a saintly reputation for his religious devotion and ascetic
lifestyle, Casimir was canonized by Pope Leo X in 1521. The cult of St.
Casimir received considerable impetus from reports of his miraculous inter-
ventions in Lithuania’s wars against the Muscovites in the 16th century. In
1953, Soviet authorities moved his coffin from the Cathedral of Vilnius to
the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, but Casimir’s remains were returned to the
cathedral in 1988. Numerous Lithuanian churches and religious institutions
have been named in his honor. Casimir—in Lithuanian, Kazimieras or Kazys
(masculine), Kazimiera, Kazimira, or Kazė (feminine)—is one of the most
popular given names in Lithuania.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. Catholicism is the religious affiliation of the vast

majority of Lithuanian-speaking people, both in Lithuania and outside the
country. The Roman Catholic Church also exercised enormous cultural, eco-
nomic, social, and political influence in the history of the Lithuanian nation.
In the 10th century, Christian missionaries came to Prussia; by the early 13th
century, Danish and German missionaries were active in what is now Estonia
and Latvia. The conquest of the Prussian tribes by the Teutonic Knights
confronted the Lithuanians, who until then practiced their own traditional
religion, with the need to respond to the Christian challenge.
Medieval and Early Modern Period. It is thought that the first Christian
churches appeared in Lithuania in the early 13th century. Prince Mindaugas
managed to unite the feuding Lithuanian tribes and in 1251 was baptized and
crowned King of Lithuania. However, Mindaugas’s baptism failed to deter at-
tacks by the Teutonic crusaders, and there is speculation that Mindaugas may
have become an apostate before his assassination in 1263. Between 1263 and
1387, Lithuania’s rulers were once again pagans.
Grand Duke Gediminas (R. 1316–1341) employed Franciscans in his
chancery and allowed the construction of Christian churches. His diplomatic

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 CATHOLIC CHURCH • 73

correspondence indicated a willingness to accept Christianity, but attempts

to reconvert the realm came to naught. Gediminas’s son Algirdas (R. 1345–
1377) took a Russian Orthodox wife; Kęstutis was the Grand Duchy’s last
non-Christian ruler. In 1386, Algirdas’s son Jogaila (Jagiełło) accepted the
Polish crown, creating dynastic ties between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
and the Kingdom of Poland.
In 1387, after Jogaila became King of Poland as Władysław IV, Lithuania,
now ruled by his cousin Vytautas (R. 1392–1430), once again formally ac-
cepted Roman Catholicism, which eventually became the dominant religious
and cultural force in the ethnographic Lithuanian lands. Despite attempts at
union with Rome, Lithuania’s East Slavic lands, which encompassed Ukraine
and much of central Russia, remained Eastern Orthodox.
The penetration of Catholicism into the general Lithuanian populace
proceeded slowly. Christianization was hampered by the lack of clergy
fluent in Lithuanian; the first Capitula was made up of Poles, Germans,
and Czechs. The eventual Christianization of the country accelerated the
processes of Polonization and Westernization, particularly in the area of
education.
The Reformation was a significant event in Lithuanian history, but its
influence was relatively short lived. While Calvinism engulfed much of
the Grand Duchy during the second half of the 16th century, its success
was only temporary. In 1564, King Sigismund II Augustus endorsed the
Tridentine Reforms. The educational and religious activities of the Jesuits,
who established an order in Lithuania in 1608, helped ensure the success of
the Counter-Reformation in the Grand Duchy. During the 18th century, the
Church not only undertook religious indoctrination among the lower classes
but also encouraged reform of elementary education under the leadership of
Ignacy Massalski (1729–1794), the Bishop of Vilnius.
The Tsarist Period and Interwar Independence. The partitions of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1772 and 1795 did not seriously
affect religious life until the anti-Russian uprising of 1830–1831. After the
rebellion, Tsar Nicholas I (R. 1825–1855) adopted an increasingly oppressive
policy: the Catholic Church was attacked as a bastion of Polish, and hence
anti-Russian, agitation. Despite government obstructionism, the Church, un-
der the leadership of the Bishop of Samogitia, Motiejus Valančius, took a
more active part in the education and social life of the peasantry, especially
through the parish schools and temperance brotherhoods. Between 1864
and 1904, printing Lithuanian books in Latin letters was banned as part of
the Russification campaign. In response, the Catholic clergy initiated the
knygnešiai or book-smuggling movement. At times, Russian religious perse-
cution turned violent: in 1893 at the town of Kražiai, popular resistance to

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 74 • CATHOLIC CHURCH

the closure of the local monastery and church resulted in a punitive Cossack
rampage that killed nine people and injured many others.
The emergence of the Lithuanian nationalism movement in the 19th cen-
tury inspired a struggle between the Polonized hierarchy and the Lithuanian-
oriented younger clergy. The latter gradually gained the upper hand, a process
completed with the coming of independence and majority rule to Lithuania
in 1918. During the interwar period, Catholics made up about 80 percent of
the population, primarily ethnic Lithuanians and Poles. After 1926, the au-
thoritarian Nationalist regime suppressed some Catholic youth organizations
as potentially subversive, but in general the State continued to accord the
Church a privileged position. Before 1940, Lithuania had no civil registry;
all births and marriages were recorded by the clergy of the various religious
communities. Lithuania’s relations with the Holy See were exacerbated
by the Polish-Lithuanian dispute over Vilnius, Lithuania’s historic capital,
which was under Polish control between 1920 and 1939 and which the Vati-
can had recognized as part of the Polish ecclesiastical province. Normal rela-
tions with the Holy See were established only in 1925.
In 1926, Lithuania was named an ecclesiastical province and a Vatican-
Lithuanian concordat was signed in 1927. The concordat abolished the historic
diocese of Samogitia (Žemaitija), and the Archdiocese of Kaunas became the
metropolitan see, with Juozas Skvireckas as its first head. The rest of the
country was divided into the dioceses of Telšiai, Panevėžys, Kaišiadorys, and
Vilkaviškis and the prelature of Klaipėda, the seaport Lithuania acquired from
Germany in 1923. Three seminaries, the Catholic faculty of theology and phi-
losophy of the University of Kaunas, and the Catholic Academy of Sciences
were established. Catholic cultural, intellectual, and charitable organizations
enrolled hundreds of thousands of members. There were in 1940 more than
1,400 secular and monastic Catholic clergy, about 400 seminarians, and more
than 700 churches. Between 1914 and 1940, the number of priests grew by
about 40 percent and the number of seminarians fourfold.
In addition to religious institutions and religious communities, the Lithu-
anian Church maintained numerous lay organizations, which enabled Ca-
tholicism to exert a powerful influence in virtually every aspect of Lithuanian
life, including the Ateitis Catholic Federation representing the intelligentsia
and the students; for rural youth, the Pavasaris (Lithuanian for “Spring”) as-
sociation; the Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations; and the national
Catholic children’s organization, the Angelaičiai (Angels). Although difficult
to quantify, the impact of Catholicism on Lithuania’s cultural life was prob-
ably even more important than its organizational power. Lithuania’s foremost
Catholic daily, XX amžius (The 20th Century), which was published between
1936 and 1940, had a large following outside traditionally Catholic circles.

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 CATHOLIC CHURCH • 75

The monthly journal Židinys (The Hearth), the illustrated cultural weekly
Naujoji Romuva (The New Romuva), and the Faculty of Theology and Philos-
ophy periodical Athenaeum were the most prestigious academic periodicals.
Foreign Rule and Dissent, 1940–1988. In 1940, Lithuania became the only
predominantly Roman Catholic country to come under Soviet rule. The new
Communist regime abolished religious instruction in public schools, ended
government support for religious institutions, instituted civil marriage, legal-
ized divorce, and abolished religious holidays. The government nationalized
the Catholic press, outlawed Catholic societies, closed virtually all Catholic
institutions, and took over the theological seminary in Kaunas. Communist
repression of religion intensified during 1940–1941 when the Soviet secret
police began to recruit priests as informers.
During the German occupation, Nazi authorities showed relatively little
interest in purely religious matters. Some seminaries were reopened, and
religion was allowed back into the schools. In March 1942, the Germans
deported Archbishop Romuald Jałbrzykowski (1876–1955) of Vilnius and
a number of Polish religious, thus marking the end of Polish control of this
historic diocese.
The Lithuanian Catholic Church, like most of the population, viewed the
return of the Soviet armies in 1944 with alarm. Lithuania’s Metropolitan
Skvireckas and hundreds of religious fled or were evacuated westward. Mass
deportations between 1945 and 1953 sent thousands of Lithuanian citizens to
Siberia and other remote regions of the Soviet Union. Collectivization and
a particularly bitter anti-Soviet guerrilla war raged in Lithuania during the
later 1940s and early 1950s. Under the Soviets, prohibitive taxes were levied
against the Church, and in 1948 religious instruction outside the home was
banned. At the same time, all Church properties were nationalized, and some
of the buildings were then leased to the religious communities. A new sys-
tem of supposedly self-governing religious communities responsible to the
government was introduced in an attempt to subvert the traditional Catholic
parish system and undermine the clergy’s leadership of the faithful.
In February 1946, the Soviet government arrested and executed Bishop
Vincentas Borisevičius (1887–1946) of Telšiai and deported his auxiliary,
exiled Archbishop Mečislovas Reinys (1884–1953), and then imprisoned
the most outspoken opponent of the regime, Bishop Teofilis Matulionis
(1873–1962) of Kaišiadorys. By the middle of 1947, Lithuania’s only active
bishop was Kazimieras Paltarokas (1875–1958). About a third of Lithuania’s
Catholic clergy were killed, imprisoned, or deported during the late 1940s.
This period also witnessed an intensification of Soviet atheistic propaganda.
However, the regime’s attempts to cut the Lithuanian Church’s links with the
Vatican were unsuccessful.

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 76 • CATHOLIC CHURCH

The policies of Joseph Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, in the

1950s signaled an abandonment of mass terror and a temporary relaxation
of controls. A number of deported priests and two bishops, Matulionis and
Ramanauskas, returned from exile. In 1955, two new bishops, Petras Maželis
(1894–1966) and Julijonas Steponavičius (1911–1992), were consecrated and
assigned to Telšiai and Vilnius, respectively. For the first time since the war,
limited official contact with the Holy See was permitted, and some Lithu-
anian clergy were allowed to attend the Second Vatican Council. Khrush-
chev’s “thaw,” as it was known, was short lived, and repressive policies re-
sumed by the late 1950s without, however, reverting to the mass terror of the
Stalin years. Bishops Matulionis, Vincentas Sladkevičius, and Steponavičius
were exiled from their dioceses, and a number of priests were arrested. Even
as the Soviet government attempted to normalize relations with the Vatican
and while the Holy See sought an “opening to the east,” the Lithuanian Soviet
regime launched an anti-Catholic campaign which reached its height in the
1960s and 1970s.
In response to Soviet repression, a Catholic dissident movement gained
strength in the 1970s. Its main vehicle was the Lietuvos kataliku˛ bažnyčios
kronika (Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania), which began to
circulate in 1972 and was one of the most important samizdat publications in
the Soviet Union. Along with the Catholic Committee for the Defense of the
Rights of Believers, organized in 1978, it detailed abuses of religious free-
dom, as well as the violation of human and national rights in Lithuania. De-
spite arrests and harassment of Catholic activists by the KGB, Soviet authori-
ties were unable to eliminate the dissident movement. Catholic resistance to
Soviet religious policy also opened up a split within the Lithuanian Church
between, on the one hand, elements in the hierarchy and clergy favoring ac-
commodation with the Soviet regime and, on the other, the Catholic dissident
groups, which were closely allied to the growing Lithuanian movement to
restore national sovereignty.
Since 1988. The reforms and upheavals of the Mikhail Gorbachev years
(1985–1991) in the Soviet Union transformed the public role of religion in
Lithuania. Imprisoned Catholic activists and exiled prelates were released
and allowed to resume their work. In June 1988, Bishop Sladkevičius was
named Lithuania’s first modern cardinal and actively supported the move-
ment for greater religious and national rights. In October 1988, the Cathedral
of Vilnius, which had been turned into an art gallery by the Soviets, was
returned to the Church. By 1989, most legal restrictions on the Church were
removed.
After independence was proclaimed in March 1990, the Lithuanian gov-
ernment accelerated the process of restoring Church property seized under

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 CENTRAL LITHUANIA, REPUBLIC OF • 77

the Soviets. The theological seminary in Kaunas has been expanded, and a
new one has opened in Telšiai. The Holy See opened its embassy (apostolic
nunciature) in Vilnius in 1991. Optional Catholic and other religious instruc-
tion have been permitted in public schools, and a number of private Catholic
primary and secondary schools opened during the early 1990s.
In 1992, the Vatican appointed a career Vatican diplomat, Audrys Bačkis,
as Archbishop of Vilnius; he also was elected president of the Lithuanian
bishops’ conference and elevated to the College of Cardinals in 2001. With
the restoration of Lithuania’s independence and the reestablishment of dip-
lomatic relations, the Vatican also recognized the archdiocese of Vilnius as
part of the Lithuanian ecclesiastical province. In September 1993, John Paul
II became the first pope to visit Lithuania.
Since the early 1990s, the Catholic press has published several popular
periodicals: the largest in circulation is Katalikų pasaulis (Catholic World),
followed by an academic monthly, Naujasis židinys-aidai (The New Hearth-
Echoes), and the newspaper XXI amžius (The Twenty-First Century). These
periodicals, as well as the restoration of Catholic organizations and schools
such as the Ateitis Federation and the elite Aušra secondary school, have
restored many of the interwar traditions that had been uprooted during the
Soviet period.
In 2009, Lithuania’s Catholic Church was divided into two archdioceses
(Vilnius and Kaunas) and five dioceses (Kaišiadorys, Panevėžys, Šiauliai,
Telšiai, and Vilkaviškis). In 2005, the government statistics bureau counted
79 percent of the nearly 3.5 million inhabitants as Roman Catholics, almost
identical to the percentage during the interwar period. There were nearly 670
diocesan priests and over a hundred monastic clergy. On the other hand, the
advent of religious freedom after the 1990 has also been followed, as else-
where in northern Europe, by declining church attendance. It is estimated
that less than 20 percent of Catholic believers attend weekly Mass, although
surveys indicate that a majority still participate in some of the more important
holidays and include the Church in important family rituals, such as baptisms,
weddings, and funerals. See also PRE-CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND MY-
THOLOGY; ŠALKAUSKIS, STASYS.

CENTRAL LITHUANIA, REPUBLIC OF (1920–1922). A state created

after the seizure of Vilnius and its environs by the troops of Gen. Lucjan
Żeligowski with the silent assent of the Polish government in October 1920.
Mindful of the initial international disapproval of Żeligowski’s move, the
Polish government eschewed immediate annexation of the region. In ad-
dition, since Żeligowski claimed that he had occupied Vilnius in order to
allow the local inhabitants to freely choose their own political future, any

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 78 • ČERNIUS, JONAS

precipitous incorporation of the territory would have proved embarrassing.

As political cover for his operation, Żeligowski proclaimed the establishment
of the putatively independent Republic of Central Lithuania (Polish: Repub-
lika Litwy Środkowej) on 12 October 1920, naming himself as the head of
its government and army. Central Lithuania, which encompassed over 13,000
square kilometers (5,000 square miles) with about 600,000 primarily Polish,
Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Jewish inhabitants, received immediate diplo-
matic recognition from Warsaw.
The elections to the Central Lithuanian diet on 8–9 January 1922 were
boycotted by much of the non-Polish population, while electoral registration
rules favored Polish-speaking voters. On 20 February, the newly elected diet
voted to request that Central Lithuania be made an integral part of Poland,
and on 22 March the Polish parliament (Sejm) approved the incorporation of
Central Lithuania into the Polish republic. The territory was then joined to the
newly created Wilno province, or Województwo. Despite Lithuanian protests,
the Conference of Ambassadors formally recognized the existing boundary of
Poland and Lithuania as the international border between the two countries on
15 March 1923, thus, in effect, sanctioning Polish sovereignty over Vilnius.
See also FOREIGN RELATIONS; VILNIUS QUESTION.

ČERNIUS, JONAS (1898–1977). Lithuanian general and statesman; born

on 6 January 1898 in Panevėžys district. Among the first graduates of the
Lithuanian military academy in 1919, Černius studied military engineering
in Belgium and France in the late 1920s and early 1930s. From 1935 to 1939,
he was chief of staff of the Lithuanian army, reaching the rank of brigadier
general. During the political crisis following the loss of Klaipėda to Nazi
Germany in March 1939, the embattled regime of Antanas Smetona sought
to placate public opinion by asking General Černius, a respected career mili-
tary officer, to head a coalition cabinet called the “Government of Unified
Work.” However, Černius’s attempts to liberalize the political atmosphere,
ease censorship, and encourage broader participation in politics ran afoul of
Nationalist Union, which feared losing its grip on power. Černius resigned
his premiership on 22 November 1939 and was assigned to command the
Lithuanian army’s First Infantry Division. He died in Claremont, California,
on 3 July 1977.

CHODKIEWICZ. Lithuanian: Chodkevičius, also Katkevičius. A Samo-

gitian noble family that dominated Lithuanian politics during much of the
16th and early 17th centuries and produced a number of famous military
leaders. Jerome Chodkiewicz (c. 1500–1561), the Elder of Samogitia and
a count of the Holy Roman Empire, led the Lithuanian forces against Ivan

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 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY, LITHUANIAN • 79

IV (“the Terrible”) in Livonia in 1560. His brother, Gregory Chodkiewicz

(1505–1572), served as Palatine of Vitebsk and Kiev between 1554 and 1558,
distinguishing himself as the grand hetman of Lithuania in campaigns against
the Tatars, Swedes, and Muscovites, defeating the latter at the Battle of Ula
in 1564. John Jerome Chodkiewicz (c. 1525–1579), the son of Jerome, served
as administrator of Livonia from 1566 to 1578 and led the Lithuanian delega-
tion to the talks that resulted in the Union of Lublin.
The most illustrious of the Chodkiewicz clan was his brother, John Karol
Chodkiewicz (1560–1621), who held various high administrative posts
in the Grand Duchy, but was best known as a skilled military leader. He
gained his reputation first by defeating numerically superior Swedish armies
in Livonia in 1604–1605. Chodkiewicz was given command of the Polish-
Lithuanian forces in 1611–1613 during Russia’s Time of Troubles, but was
unable to maintain the Commonwealth’s garrison in Moscow. Chodkiewicz
died while leading a final campaign against Sultan Osman II in Moldova in
September 1621 when the Polish-Lithuanian forces managed to repel a large
Ottoman army on the right bank of the Dniester River.

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY, LITHUANIAN. Lithuanian:

Lietuvos krikščionių demokratų partija. The Lithuanian Christian Democratic
Party emerged from the Catholic wing of the Lithuanian national movement
in the 19th century (see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN) and gained impor-
tant support from the younger clergy who had rejected the leadership of the
Catholic Church’s Polonized hierarchy. The biweekly newspaper Apžvalga
(The Review), published from 1894 to 1896, and the monthly Tėvynes sargas
(The Guardian of the Fatherland), from 1896 to 1904, formulated a national
political program that became the basis of Lithuanian Christian Democracy.
In 1907, the Catholic political movement was named the Lithuanian Christian
Democratic Union. It was heavily influenced by the encyclicals of Pope Leo
XIII, especially Rerum novarum (Of New Things). Prominent clergy were
the first leaders of the Lithuanian Christian Democrats—for example, the
statesman Monsignor Mykolas Krupavičius and Bishop Pranciškus Būčys
(1872–1951).
In 1920, the Christian Democratic Party and the Peasant Union formed
a Catholic Bloc that won 59 out of 112 seats to the Constituent Assembly
and then won a majority in the First (1922–1923) and Second (1923–1926)
Seimas. However, the Christian Democrats became a minority during the
bitterly contested elections to the Third Seimas in May 1926. Most Christian
Democrat leaders supported the right-wing coup of 17 December 1926, but
they fell out with the Nationalist Union in April 1927 and withdrew from

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 80 • CHRONICLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN LITHUANIA

government. Like the other political parties, the Christian Democrats were
restricted by the Nationalist regime.
The party returned to the government in March 1939 when two Christian
Democratic ministers were included in the coalition cabinet of Gen. Jonas
Černius. The leadership and the rank and file of the Christian Democratic
movement were decimated by Soviet arrests and deportations after 1940 but
the party continued its activities in emigration after World War II, particu-
larly within the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania; it also
maintained contacts with the international Christian Democratic movement.
The Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party was reestablished in Lithuania
in January 1990. During the October 1992 elections to the Seimas, the Chris-
tian Democrats won 12 seats in the 141-member parliament, increasing to 16
seats in the October 1996 election. The party suffered a split during the 1990s
when a dissident faction established the separate Christian Democratic Union
while another group set up the more liberal Modern Christian Democrats. In
May 2001, the Union and the Christian Democratic Party united under the
name Lithuanian Christian Democrats. However, the internal wrangling and
the party’s conservative stance led to a collapse of public support. During the
October 2004 parliamentary elections, the Christian Democrats received only
1.4 percent of the vote, thus failing to cross the 5 percent threshold for rep-
resentation in the Seimas. In April 2008, the Lithuanian Christian Democrats
joined the conservative Union of the Fatherland.

CHRONICLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN LITHUANIA. Lithu-

anian: Lietuvos katalikų bažnyčios kronika. A dissident underground periodi-
cal published from 1972 until 1989 that recorded human rights abuses of the
Soviet government. The first issue was dated 19 March 1972, and over time
the Chronicle became known as the most influential and reliable samizdat
journal in Lithuania. In all, 81 issues appeared over a 17-year period until
it was discontinued in 1989 when the easing of censorship under Mikhail
Gorbachev’s glasnost policy allowed religious and nationalist publications
to circulate in public. A number of the Chronicle’s editors and writers were
arrested by the KGB and imprisoned by Soviet courts during the 1970s and
1980s, including the first editor, Sigitas Tamkevičius (1938– ), the Arch-
bishop of Kaunas since 1996. While relatively few Lithuanians had access
to the underground Chronicle in printed form, the journal’s issues were rou-
tinely smuggled to the West, where news of the Soviet government’s repres-
sion of religious and national rights was disseminated to news organizations
and broadcast into the Soviet Union by Vatican radio, the Voice of America,
and Radio Liberty. See also CATHOLIC CHURCH.

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 COMMONWEALTH, POLISH-LITHUANIAN • 81

ČIURLIONIS, MIKALOJUS KONSTANTINAS (1875–1911). Lithua-

nian painter and composer; born on 10 September 1875 in Varėna. Čiurlionis
began his training as a musician in Plungė, Samogitia, at the private school
of Prince Michael Ogiński (1848–1909), who supported the young man’s
studies at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1893 to 1899 and at the Leipzig
Conservatory in 1901–1902.
During his musical studies, Čiurlionis grew increasingly fascinated by cos-
mology, as well as the history of culture and poetry. He attempted to convey
his appreciation of the harmony of the universe in his cantatas, sonatas, and
short pieces for the piano. Čiurlionis’s symphonic poem In the Forest became
his best known and most frequently performed orchestral composition in
Lithuania, while The Sea is his most popular composition for the piano.
Čiurlionis began painting after he had already become a skilled composer,
providing his works with musical themes and titles; for example, one popular
cycle of paintings was entitled The Sonata of the Sea. He attended the War-
saw Academy of Art from 1904 to 1906 and is considered to have created
his finest paintings in Vilnius and St. Petersburg between 1907 and 1909.
He held public exhibitions in Vilnius in 1906 and 1907. Čiurlionis joined the
avant-garde Russian Mir Isskustva (World of Art) movement during the so-
called Silver Age of Russian culture on the eve of World War I.
In addition to his own artistry, Čiurlionis organized Lithuanian choral
groups to encourage performance of folk music and did much to foster an
appreciation for Lithuanian culture and folk art. In 1909, he married Sofija
Kymantaitė (1885–1958), a writer and public figure in her own right. Despite
his talent, Čiurlionis was in financial straits much of the time. Toward the
end of his life, he suffered from mental illness and his work grew increas-
ingly more mystical. He died in a hospital near Warsaw on 10 April 1911.
Čiurlionis received greater recognition both in Lithuania and internationally
only after his death; today he is regarded by most Lithuanians as the country’s
most gifted painter. Most of his art and musical scores are exhibited in the
new National Art Gallery in Vilnius, which opened in 2009.

COMMONWEALTH, POLISH-LITHUANIAN. The term widely used

for the Polish-Lithuanian state from the 16th to 18th centuries. After the Act
of Krėva (or Kriavas; Polish: Krewo) in 1386, the Kingdom of Poland and
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania functioned as two separate states under the
same Jagiellonian ruling house: after 1501, the king of Poland was invariably
crowned as grand duke. The two states entered into a more close-knit confed-
eration at the Union of Lublin in 1569, which stipulated a common diet and
a coordinated foreign policy, while allowing each state to maintain a separate
judicial system and military establishment.

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 82 • COMMUNIST PARTY, LITHUANIAN

The term commonwealth is an English translation of the Polish term

rzeczpospolita (derived from the Latin res publica), which is often used in
Lithuanian as well (žečpospolita). Because of the Latin root of this term and
the state’s elective monarchy, some English-language works employ the con-
cept of the “gentry republic” to describe the Polish-Lithuanian state between
1569 and 1795. The revolutionary Constitution of 3 May 1791 abolished the
confederate structure of the kingdom and grand duchy in favor of a unitary
state, but this plan was never realized because the Third Partition of Poland-
Lithuania in 1795 ended the Commonwealth. Attempts to revive the idea of
a multinational Commonwealth after World War I, notably by the Polish
leader Józef Piłsudski, were rejected by Lithuanian and Ukrainian leaders
who were determined to establish their own national states.

COMMUNIST PARTY, LITHUANIAN. Lithuanian: Lietuvos komunistų

partija. Origins through 1940. The ideas of revolutionary socialism came into
Lithuania through Marxist study circles founded during the last quarter of the
19th century. Initially, most of the Marxists were members of the Lithuanian
Social Democratic Party (LSDP), the Jewish Bund, and other revolutionary
socialist groups. In 1917, the leftist social democrats who supported Bolshe-
vism, led by Vincas Kapsukas, Zigmas Angarietis, and Pranas Eidukevičius
(1869–1926), organized a Lithuanian section of the Leninist wing of the Rus-
sian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, which in 1918 formally became the
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The occupation of eastern Lithuania
by the Red Army encouraged the formation of local Bolshevik groups. These
were later consolidated as the Lithuanian and Belarusian Communist Party,
which succeeded briefly in establishing a Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet Re-
public in Vilnius—the so-called Litbel—in late 1918 and early 1919.
The Soviet Union’s recognition of Lithuania’s independence in 1920 led to
the creation of a separate Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP), which was a
member of the Communist International from 1921 to 1940. In Lithuania, the
LCP operated with only minor restrictions until the military coup of Decem-
ber 1926 when, after the execution of four Communist leaders for treason,
the Party was driven underground. Since the LCP was banned in Lithuania,
most of the Old Bolshevik leadership of the Party lived in the Soviet Union
and attempted to coordinate clandestine activities in their homeland. The
LCP’s Politburo worked in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR),
while an underground Organizational Bureau directed Party activities within
Lithuania. During the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, a number of prominent
Lithuanian Communists residing in the USSR, including Angarietis, were
executed.

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 COMMUNIST PARTY, LITHUANIAN • 83

Between 1926 and 1940, LCP membership fluctuated between a few hun-
dred to several thousand and had little popular appeal. In addition, the LCP
enjoyed the support of MOPR (Russian acronym for the Mezhdunarodnaya
Organizatsiya Pomoshchi Revoliutsiyonierom, International Organization to
Assist Revolutionaries), which raised money for imprisoned Communists and
their families. Many Lithuanians came to view the Party as an alien political
force: between a third and a half of the membership were non-Lithuanians
(primarily Jews and Russians), while the Communists’ open admiration for
the USSR gained them a reputation as foreign agents.
Under Stalin and His Successors, 1940–1985. The occupation of Lithuania
by the Soviet Union on 15 June 1940 brought the LCP to power through the
establishment of the People’s Government and the incorporation of Lithu-
ania into the USSR in August 1940, after which the LCP became a constituent
part of what was then the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). At the
same time, Antanas Sniečkus was appointed first secretary and remained in
that post for the next three decades. In February 1941, when the LCP’s Fifth
Party Congress outlined Lithuania’s Sovietization program, the membership
of the LCP stood at less than 2,000; during the spring of 1941 the Party in-
creasingly came under the direct control of the NKVD, the Soviet secret po-
lice. During the German occupation of 1941–1944, the LCP suffered severe
losses both as a result of executions and in guerrilla warfare against the Nazis.
From 1944 to 1953, the Party was heavily involved as an ally of the So-
viets in the pacification of postwar Lithuania; as a result, thousands of Party
activists were killed by anti-Soviet partisans. During this period, the LCP
was thoroughly Russified and dominated by outsiders: in 1953, only about
a fourth of its membership was ethnic Lithuanian. This situation changed
after Stalin’s death. As a part of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), the LCP’s membership on the eve of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms
was about 80 percent ethnic Lithuanian. However, it was common practice to
appoint an ethnic Russian in a supervisory capacity as second secretary of the
LCP. During the late 1950s, a number of prominent Party members, includ-
ing the rector of Vilnius University, were purged for so-called “nationalist
deviations,” that is, attempts to bring a measure of cultural autonomy to the
Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). After the death of Sniečkus in
1974, the Party secretaries were Petras Griškevičius, Ringaudas Songaila,
and Algirdas Brazauskas.
Since 1985. The LCP came under severe pressure as a result of the fer-
ment that seized Lithuania in reaction to the reform and restructuring policies
(glasnost and perestroika) of Gorbachev, who was elected to lead the CPSU
in March 1985. Initially, the Party leadership resisted the changes that were
already sweeping the other Baltic republics, but in October 1988 the new (and

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 84 • CONFEDERATIONS

last) party leader, Brazauskas, proved more amenable to change. On 8 Decem-

ber 1989, the LCP officially renounced its “leading role” that had been en-
shrined in the constitution of the Lithuanian SSR. As sentiment for Lithuanian
independence swelled, the LCP responded, despite intense pressure from
Moscow, by formally withdrawing from the CPSU at its 20th Congress in
Vilnius on 20 December 1989 and proclaiming a social democratic platform.
A pro-Soviet minority faction, led by Juozas Jermalavičius (1940– ) and
Mykolas Burokevičius (1927– ), opposed the separation and formed a break-
away party committed to Moscow, the so-called Lithuanian Communist Party
(CPSU), but it was banned after the failed anti-Gorbachev coup of August
1991 and its leaders were arrested.
Despite its attempts to accommodate the new political realities, the LCP
lost the February 1990 elections to the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet and be-
came the minority opposition in the legislature. In December 1990, the LCP
declared itself a workers’ party of a social democratic type, renamed the
Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party (Lithuanian: Lietuvos demokratinė
darbo partija, LDDP). Opponents of the LDDP have charged that this party
was simply a political vehicle for the former LCP’s elite, the so-called no-
menklatura, to retain its power. Nevertheless, the LDDP won a majority in
the Seimas in October 1992. It lost to the conservative coalition in 1996. In
January 2001, the LDDP joined with the Social Democratic Party, and under
Brazauskas the newly strengthened LSDP became the major political force
on the left. In 2007, after the appointment of Gediminas Kirkilas as prime
minister, Brazauskas resigned the chairmanship of the LSDP. See also PO-
LITICAL PARTIES.

CONFEDERATIONS. A term denoting temporary political and military al-

liances of the szlachta, or gentry, during the period of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, especially after the end of the Jagiellonian dynasty in 1572.
Generally, any member of the gentry could initiate a confederation by pro-
claiming a political cause and then presenting formal articles of confederation
to which the gathered assembly would give its support. Special diets of the
Commonwealth were known as “confederated diets,” during which decisions
were made by majority vote, which could not be obstructed by a single vote,
the infamous liberum veto. Some confederations were formed to protect local
interests, while others aimed to solve problems of the entire Commonwealth.
At first, the confederations were an important means by which the gentry
could protect their interests against royal power. During the 18th century,
several confederations, especially those of Radom, Bar, and Targowica, at-
tempted to tackle the perennial crises caused by social and political anarchy
as well as foreign intervention.

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 CONSTITUTIONS • 85

CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. Lithuanian: Steigiamasis Seimas. Lithu-

anian representative body, elected on 14–15 April 1920, which laid the
constitutional foundations for the Republic of Lithuania proclaimed in
1918. The first democratic elections in Lithuanian history chose 112 repre-
sentatives: 59 Christian Democrats, 28 members claiming allegiance to the
Socialist Populists and the Peasant Union, 12 Social Democrats, 11 members
of national minorities (seven Jews, three Poles, and one German), and two
nonpartisan deputies. The Constituent Assembly, which convened in Kaunas
on 15 May 1920, elected Aleksandras Stulginskis (1885–1969) head of state
or president in his capacity as the chairman of the Assembly and approved a
Christian Democrat–Populist coalition government headed by Kazys Grin-
ius (1866–1950). The Constituent Assembly was a youthful body: 29 mem-
bers were under 30, and only eight were more than 50 years old.
The most important achievement of the Assembly was the approval of the
Republic of Lithuania’s first constitution on 1 August 1922. In addition, the
Assembly enacted a sweeping land reform act in April 1922 that essentially
ended the old manorial system in agriculture. It also ratified a number of im-
portant treaties, notably the 12 July 1920 Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty.
The Constituent Assembly ended its work in the fall of 1922. On 10–11 Octo-
ber, elections were held to the first regular Seimas (parliament) as mandated
by the new constitution. See also DIET; TARYBA.

CONSTITUTIONS. The ideal of constitutional government first came to

Lithuania under the influence of the French Revolution in the late 18th cen-
tury. The various constitutional arrangements in modern Lithuanian history
are discussed below.
The Constitution of 3 May 1791. This document was much influenced by
the writings of the Polish Enlightenment thinkers Hugo Kołłątaj (1750–1812)
and Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826) and by the admiration of reform-minded
gentry for the French and American revolutions. Taking advantage of Rus-
sia’s war with the Ottomans, radical deputies of the Four-Year Diet approved
the “Law of Government” (Polish: Ustawa Rządowa), which separated the
executive, legislative, and judicial functions in the Polish-Lithuanian Com-
monwealth. Executive authority was vested in a hereditary king, the primate
of the Catholic Church, and a Council of Ministers. Decisions of the Diet
were by majority vote, thus eliminating the liberum veto.
Confederations of the gentry were banned, and the right to vote was tied to
property qualifications. However, serfdom was still legal, although the peas-
ants were to be protected. Most important for Lithuania, the “Commonwealth
of Two Nations” was formally abandoned and a unitary state proclaimed,
eliminating the Grand Duchy’s separate judiciary, treasury, and army. At the

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 86 • CONSTITUTIONS

insistence of Lithuanian representatives, in October 1791 the Diet passed an

act of “Mutual Assurance of the Two Nations,” which restored some measure
of political autonomy to Lithuania. In the end, Poland-Lithuania never fully
implemented the May 3rd Constitution because of Russian intervention (see
TARGOWICA, CONFEDERATION OF).
The Constitutions of the Republic of Lithuania, 1918–1940. After the
proclamation of Lithuanian independence in February 1918, the country was
governed by the Temporary Constitution of 2 November 1918, which placed
power in the hands of a three-person Presidium, the State Council, and the
cabinet. This temporary basic law was amended in April 1919 by creating
the office of president and introducing the State Control Agency. Another
temporary constitution was approved on 10 June 1920 after elections to the
Constituent Assembly. The Assembly placed most of the power in the hands
of the legislature, with a weak executive president elected by parliament, the
Seimas.
On 1 August 1922, the Constituent Assembly adopted a permanent con-
stitution. The president of the republic was elected for a three-year term by
the Seimas, but the power of the presidency was limited. Actual executive
power was vested in the government (the premier and cabinet), but the great-
est authority was reserved for the unicameral Seimas, elected by universal
and direct suffrage.
After the Nationalist Union’s seizure of power in December 1926, the
Seimas adopted a considerably less democratic constitution on 15 May 1928
that greatly strengthened the executive power of the president, who was now
to be chosen indirectly by an electoral college for a seven-year term and could
not be removed from office by the legislature. The basic law of 1928 severely
limited the prerogatives of the parliament.
On 12 May 1938, the Seimas and president ratified a new constitution,
which better reflected the authoritarian principles of the Nationalist regime
and, in practice, further entrenched the dictatorship of Antanas Smetona.
The Constitution of 1938 enumerated a series of obligations of the citizens
to the state and gave the president power to rule by decree. All three con-
stitutions of independent Lithuania (1922, 1928, and 1938) provided for an
independent judiciary, protected all religions under the law, and mandated
the equality of all nationalities.
Constitutions of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), 1940–
1990. On 3 August 1940, Lithuania was proclaimed a Union Republic of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) by the Supreme Soviet in
Moscow. On 25 August, the People’s Diet announced the Constitution (Ba-
sic Law) of the Lithuanian SSR, thus completing the judicial Sovietization
of the country. The legislature (Seimas) now became the Supreme Soviet of

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 COUNTER-REFORMATION • 87

the Lithuanian SSR (Lithuanian: Lietuvos TSR Aukščiausioji Taryba), which

elected a governing presidium.
On 26 December 1951, the Lithuanian SSR Supreme Soviet amended the
1940 basic law to realign it more closely with that of the other Soviet repub-
lics. Following the lead of the All-Union Soviet government, the Lithuanian
SSR adopted a new constitution on 20 April 1978 that reflected the realities
of a society under “mature socialism”; mandated a closer legal integration of
the republic into the All-Union economic, social, and political structures; and
formally proclaimed the Communist Party as the “leading force” in society,
a provision that was abrogated in December 1989. While the constitutions
of the USSR and the Lithuanian SSR provided for legal secession from the
Soviet Union, this article was viewed as a dead letter.
Constitutions since 1990. In February 1990, Sajūdis defeated the Lithu-
anian Communist Party in the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Lithu-
anian SSR. On 11 March 1990, the legislature—now better known in English
as the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos
Respublikos Aukščiausioji Taryba)—declared null and void the Lithuanian
SSR Constitution of 1978 and abrogated the USSR Constitution of 1977 in
Lithuania. In an unusual constitutional move, the Supreme Council voted to
restore, and then immediately suspend, the Constitution of 1938, thus empha-
sizing the continuity of the pre-1940 Republic of Lithuania with the indepen-
dent state proclaimed in 1990. In place of the authoritarian 1938 constitution,
the Supreme Council enacted the Provisional Basic Law of the Republic of
Lithuania, which served as the country’s temporary constitution. Supreme
authority was vested in the Supreme Council, and its chairman served as de
facto head of state; executive power was granted to the Council of Ministers.
On 25 October 1992, the Supreme Council replaced the Provisional Basic
Law with a permanent constitution, providing for a popularly elected presi-
dent (five-year term and two-term limit) and a unicameral legislature, the
Seimas (four-year terms), consisting of 141 deputies. The head of govern-
ment, the prime minister, can be removed by the president only with the
concurrence of the Seimas. The Constitutional Court, which began work in
1993, decides on the constitutionality of laws passed by the Seimas as well as
decrees enacted by the president and government. The Court consists of nine
justices elected for a single nine-year term.

COUNTER-REFORMATION. After the Protestant Reformation swept

much of Lithuania, the Catholic forces in the Grand Duchy attempted to roll
back the Lutheran and Calvinist gains. As elsewhere in Europe, the Catho-
lic revival in Lithuania was inspired by the Council of Trent (1545–1563).
The Tridentine Reforms reaffirmed Church teachings regarding Scripture,

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 88 • COURLAND

rationalized Catholic dogma, and improved the training of the clergy. Even
as Lithuanian Protestantism was at its height between the mid-16th and
mid-17th centuries, the Catholic hierarchy resisted. Paul Holszański, the
Bishop of Vilnius from 1536 to 1555, warned King Sigismund II Augustus
against accommodating Protestants and urged him to use force against the
enemies of the Catholic Church. For their part King Sigismund I the Elder
and Queen Bona Sforza opposed the Reformation with bans and decrees.
In 1564, Sigismund Augustus endorsed the Tridentine Reforms, while at the
same time disunity within the Protestant ranks began to weaken the forces of
the Reformation. Influential nobles, such as the sons of Nicholas Radziwiłł
“the Black” (1515–1565) converted to Catholicism and John Chodkiewicz
also broke ranks with the Protestants.
The arrival of the Jesuits in 1569 furthered Catholic revival. The first
diocesan seminary was established in Vilnius in 1582; in Samogitia, Bishop
Merkelis Giedraitis (c. 1536–1609), an educated and vigorous prelate who
took office in 1574, established new parishes, supervised the publication
of religious literature in Lithuanian, and initiated court cases to recover
ecclesiastical property seized by the Calvinists. The reign of Stefan Batory
(R. 1572–1586) saw the monarchy turn decisively toward Catholicism, and
anti-Protestant feeling increased markedly under his successor, Sigismund
III Vasa (R. 1587–1632), who eliminated Protestants from government posi-
tions. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the rights of non-Cath-
olics within the Commonwealth, the so-called dissidents, were curtailed,
although religious strife in Lithuania never escalated to the level of sectarian
warfare prevalent in western and central Europe.
For most Lithuanian Catholics, the victory of the Church in Lithuania is
symbolized by the cult of Our Lady of Šiluva, the country’s most popular
shrine. Samogitian Calvinists were reportedly routed here after a miraculous
appearance of the Blessed Virgin in 1608. The Grand Duchy’s Counter-
Reformation was highly successful: the only significant Lithuanian Protestant
communities that remained were the Lutherans in East Prussia and western
Lithuania, and small Reformed congregations around the Radziwiłł strong-
hold of Biržai.

COURLAND. German: Kurland; Lithuanian: Kuršių žemė. Duchy and vas-

sal state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that bordered the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania in the north from the 16th to 18th centuries. The term
“Courland” derives from the native Baltic tribe, the Couronians (Lithuanian:
kuršiai), known to have lived in the region until late medieval times. Courland
encompasses the territory of present-day western Latvia, including the coast
north of Klaipėda and Palanga. In 1562, the last Master of the Livonian

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 CROWN ESTATE • 89

Order, Gotthard Kettler (1517–1587), became the vassal of King Sigismund

II Augustus (R. 1548–1572) as Duke of Courland and established a secular
dynasty. The duchy was dominated by the Lutheran Baltic German nobility
who ruled over the predominantly Latvian-speaking serfs.
Courland was an important battlefield in Lithuania’s wars with Sweden
in the early 17th century. Courland’s most renowned ruler was Duke Jacob
Kettler (R. 1642–1682) who fostered ambitious naval, mercantilist, and co-
lonial schemes, briefly acquiring for Courland small colonies in Africa (The
Gambia) and the Caribbean (Tobago, which was founded as Neu Kurland),
but his work was destroyed by the Swedish invasion of 1658.
Although formally a vassal state of Poland-Lithuania, Courland fell in-
creasingly under Russian influence during the 18th century. In March 1795,
on the eve of the last partition, the last duke of Courland, Peter von Biron (R.
1769–1795), ceded the duchy to Russia. Courland was then administered as
a province (gubernia) of the Russian Empire. In March 1918, the local Baltic
German nobility attempted a restoration of the Duchy of Courland as part of
a greater United Baltic Duchy, but despite support from the German military
and sympathy from Berlin, the project foundered.
With the advent of Latvia’s independence in 1918 and the withdrawal of
German forces from the Baltic in 1919, the local German nobility lost their
former preeminent political status, and the region was integrated into the
modern Latvian state.

CROWN ESTATE (ECONOMY). Lithuanian: ekonomija; Polish: eko-

nomja. An important feature of the agrarian structure of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania, the so-called economies provided most of the income for the
royal house in early modern times. The Volok Reform of the 16th century
separated state and private lands, replacing a complex patchwork of ducal
and private estates that had predominated in the late medieval period. In
1589, the royal estates were consolidated into six large royal economies
within the Grand Duchy: Šiauliai and Alytus in present-day Lithuania, and
Grodno, Brest-Litovsk, Kobrin, and Mogilev in what is now Belarus. Until
the mid-18th century, the economies were subdivided into rural districts,
each containing a number of estates, villages, towns, and even manufactur-
ing enterprises. After that, a larger administrative subunit called the gubernia
was introduced. At the end of the 18th century, the Šiauliai economy, the
largest royal expanse of land in Lithuania, contained three gubernias, 26 ru-
ral districts, 50 estates, five towns, and 321 villages; it is estimated that the
Mogilev economy had a population of nearly 120,000. The economies were
administered by royal stewards or were rented to private landowners, usually
the wealthiest magnates See also AGRICULTURE; SERFDOM.

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 90 • CURRENCY

CURRENCY. See BANKING AND INVESTMENT; LITAS.

CZARTORYSKI. Noble family prominent in the political life of the Polish-

Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century, originating from Volynia in
western Ukraine. Alexander Czartoryski (Chartorysk) was Prince of Pskov
(R. 1443–1447) and Novgorod (R. 1447–1455). Originally Eastern Ortho-
dox, the Czartoryskis converted to Catholicism in the 16th century. Florian
Czartoryski (1620–1674) became Archbishop of Gniezno and primate of
Poland. The Czartoryski family achieved their greatest influence in Poland
and Lithuania at the end of the 18th century, actively supporting reforms to
strengthen the Commonwealth. Michael Czartoryski (1696–1775) was chan-
cellor of the Grand Duchy from 1752 to 1775.
Adam Czartoryski (1770–1861) achieved fame as a Russian statesman
befriended by Tsar Alexander I (R. 1801–1825) and as a patron of higher
education in Lithuania. From 1798 to 1801, he served as the Russian ambas-
sador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and as foreign minister of Russia
from 1803 to 1806. He took part in the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna
and was instrumental in drawing up the plans for an autonomous kingdom of
Poland under the Russian crown. From 1803 to 1824, Czartoryski was curator
of the Vilnius educational district, and under his tutelage the University of
Vilnius became the most important center of Polish culture in the lands of the
old Commonwealth. Czartoryski was head of the revolutionary provisional
government of Poland during the insurrection of 1830–1831, after which
he emigrated to France. He lived in Paris from 1832 to 1861, mainly at the
Hotel Lambert, which became the focus of Polish-Lithuanian émigré political
activity. Czartoryski’s memoirs and correspondence with Alexander I were
published in French and English in 1887–1888.

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 D
DAINOS. See MUSIC.

DAUKANTAS, SIMONAS (1793–1864). Lithuanian historian and writer;

born in Samogitia on 28 October 1793. He studied law, history, and lan-
guages at the University of Vilnius from 1818 to 1825. Between 1825 and
1835, Daukantas worked as a government translator in Riga and then moved
to St. Petersburg, where he conducted most of his scholarly research in the
archives of the Russian Senate. He returned to Lithuania in 1850 and devel-
oped a close friendship with the Bishop of Samogitia, Motiejus Valančius.
Daukantas was the first author to publish scholarly history in the Lithua-
nian language, albeit in a colorful Samogitian dialect. In 1822, he wrote Dar-
bai senovės lietuvių ir žemaičių (The Deeds of the Ancient Lithuanians and
Samogitians), which was, like much of his work, published posthumously
(1929). However, Daukantas’s best-known work, Būdas senovės lietuvių
kalnėnų ir žemaičių (The Character of the Ancient Lithuanians: Highlanders
and Samogitians) was published in St. Petersburg in 1845 and had a consider-
able impact on the emerging Lithuanian-speaking intelligentsia as well as the
growing number of literate peasantry. Because of his romanticized and ideal-
ized version of Lithuania’s past, Daukantas is more important for his literary
contributions in the Lithuanian language than as a historian.
In addition to his historical interests, he also compiled and published folk
songs and popular stories. Daukantas is also important as the first major
figure of the modern Lithuanian national movement to publicly excoriate the
Polonization of Lithuania’s cultural life and to portray Poland as a historic
enemy of Lithuania. Daukantas died in the town of Papilė on 24 November
1864.

DAUKŠA, MIKALOJUS (?–1613). Catholic priest and early figure in

Lithuanian literature. Little is known of Daukša’s early life, except that he
was probably born near Kėdainiai sometime after the late 1520s. It is clear,
however, that Daukša was educated in the spirit of Renaissance humanism
and had a distinguished career in ecclesiastical administration: he worked

91

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 92 • DEGUTIENĖ, IRENA

in the diocesan office of Samogitia from 1585 to 1592 and in 1609 was
appointed administrator of the diocese. Daukša wrote several Lithuanian
religious works and is the first prominent published writer in the language
from the Grand Duchy itself (previous Lithuanian-language works had been
published in East Prussia). In 1595, he issued a Lithuanian translation of
Spanish author J. Ledesma’s catechism, but Daukša is best known for his
Postilla Catholicka, a translation of the sermons of Jacob Wujek (1541–
1597) published in Vilnius in 1599. The preface to the Postilla contains a
ringing appeal for the wider use of Lithuanian in public life and among the
upper classes, contradicting the notion of some scholars that there was no
resistance to cultural and linguistic Polonization in Lithuania until modern
times, or that it was confined to the lower classes. Daukša’s texts, which
eschewed Slavic loanwords and preserved many archaic grammatical and
morphological features, are also useful in the study of the history of the Lithu-
anian language. He died in Varniai on 13 February 1613.

DEGUTIENĖ, IRENA (1949– ). Lithuanian politician, cabinet minister, and

head of government, born on 1 June 1949 in Šiauliai. Trained as a doctor,
Degutienė became a leader within the Union of the Fatherland (Conserva-
tive) party and has been a deputy in the Seimas since 1996. From 1996 to
2000, she served as minister of labor and social security. Degutienė served
twice as acting prime minister, in May–June and October–November 1999
and has been consistently ranked as one of the country’s most popular politi-
cians. On 17 September 2009, she was elected speaker of the Seimas, the first
woman to serve in that capacity.

DEKANOZOV, VLADIMIR (1898–1953). Soviet senior state security of-

ficial and diplomat; born as Vladimir Dekanozishvili in Baku in June 1898.
Dekanozov joined the Bolsheviks in 1920 and then worked for the Cheka
in the Caucasus, where he met the future head of the Soviet secret police,
Lavrenty Beria (1899–1953). Dekanozov rose quickly within the Party ap-
paratus and in May 1939 was appointed chief of the Soviet Union’s com-
missariat of foreign affairs. In June 1940, he was sent to Lithuania, along
with Nikolai Pozdniakov (1900–1948), to supervise the transfer of power to
the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) and arrange the initial phase of the
country’s Sovietization. Dekanozov returned to Moscow in July 1940 after
the People’s Diet requested that Lithuania be admitted to the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics. In November 1940, Dekanozov was appointed Soviet
ambassador to Berlin. After Joseph Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev and
other Soviet leaders feared the power of the secret police and arrested Beria
and his close associate Dekanozov. Both men were executed on trumped-up
charges of spying and treason on 23 December 1953.

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 DIET • 93

DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY, LITHUANIAN. Lithuanian: Lietuvos

demokratinė darbo partija (LDDP). Political party founded in December
1990 primarily by the membership of the reformed Lithuanian Communist
Party (LCP). It proclaimed a platform based on Western social democratic
principles and formally rejected Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The LDDP had an
estimated membership of 30,000 in the mid-1990s and was then considered
the largest and best organized political party in the country. Its leader from
1990 to 1993 was Algirdas Brazauskas, the former head of the LCP, who
resigned the post of party leader when he assumed the presidency in Febru-
ary 1993. Adolfas Šleževičius, Lithuania’s prime minister from March 1993
to February 1996, was then chosen to head the LDDP. In January 2001 the
LDDP voted to join the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, thus creating
the largest left-wing political coalition in the country.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY, LITHUANIAN. Lithuanian: Lietuvių demokratų

partija; after 1905, Lietuvos demokratų partija (LDP). Lithuanian liberal po-
litical party established in 1902. The LDP grew out of Vincas Kudirka’s
monthly Varpas (The Bell), which was the sounding board of political action
and anti-tsarist agitation for the Lithuanian secular nationalist intelligentsia
at the turn of the century. The initial party program demanded a democratic,
autonomous Lithuania with equality of rights for all nationalities and an
emphasis on the economic plight of the Lithuanian peasant majority. Among
the early leaders of the LDP were a number of future Lithuanian statesmen,
such as Jurgis Šaulys, Ernestas Galvanauskas, Kazys Grinius, and others.
In 1905, the LDP began to split between more radical members, concerned
with social problems, and conservative nationalists like Antanas Smetona.
In 1920, the LDP amalgamated with the centrist Peasant Union, ultimately
forming the Peasant Populist Union. In December 1989, the LDP was once
again registered as a political party but has not played a significant role in
Lithuanian politics.

DEPORTATIONS. See POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY.

DIET. Lithuanian: Seimas. Generally, the term diet signifies the representa-
tive assemblies of the nobility and gentry during the medieval and early mod-
ern periods. During the reign of Grand Duke Vytautas (R. 1392–1430), it was
the practice to call together assemblies of notables to conclude peace treaties
and decide important matters of state—without, however, establishing any
formal advisory council. After the election of Jogaila as King Władysław II
of Poland, the Lithuanian and Polish nobility assembled at Horodło in 1413
and agreed to call joint diets; however, it did not become common practice
to convoke such gatherings until the 16th century. In 1492, Grand Duke

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 94 • DISPLACED PERSONS

Alexander granted Lithuania’s Council of Lords formal consultative pow-

ers, especially in foreign relations. The Council was composed of princes,
magnates, palatines, ministers of state, bishops, high-ranking military com-
manders, and other dignitaries. The Council constituted the higher chamber,
a House of Lords, while the representatives of the lower gentry, who in 1447
had been given the right to assess taxes, made up a kind of lower house. The
periodic Lithuanian diets did not pass laws; however, by giving or withhold-
ing their assent to war and taxes, they gradually acquired real power.
The administrative reforms of the 1560s and the Union of Lublin in 1569
drastically altered the nature of the Grand Duchy’s politics as Lithuania’s
diets were made to conform to the Polish pattern. The Grand Duchy’s Council
of Lords was merged with the Commonwealth’s newly created Senate and
a joint Polish-Lithuanian diet was formed. The Diet of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth consisted of the king–grand duke, the Senate appointed by
the ruler, and the gentry’s representatives gathered in the Chamber of Depu-
ties. Ordinary diets were convoked every two years in either Warsaw (Po-
land) or Grodno (Lithuania). The king presided over the Senate, while the
marshal of the Diet chaired sessions of the Chamber of Deputies. Generally,
the gentry of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy met separately to decide matters
not pertaining to Poland or to prepare their political position vis-à-vis the
Poles before the convening of the joint diet, but after the early 17th century,
separate Lithuanian assemblies became rare.
One of the most unusual features of the Polish-Lithuanian Diet was the
liberum veto. Since the decisions of the Diet had to be unanimous, any deputy
could halt legislation by simply announcing his opposition, a practice that
led to much confusion and chaos. The administrative reforms of the 1560s
also established the institution of the so-called dietines, literally “minidiets”
(Lithuanian: seimeliai), local assemblies of the gentry, which elected repre-
sentatives to the Commonwealth’s Diet and dealt with local matters. With the
weakening of the central power in the late 17th and 18th centuries, these local
seimeliai assumed increasing legislative and executive authority so that little
could be accomplished without their approval. The local gentry diets survived
into the tsarist period but were abolished after the anti-Russian insurrection
of 1863–1864. See also CONFEDERATIONS; CONSTITUTIONS; PAR-
LIAMENT; SEIMAS.

DISPLACED PERSONS (DPs). Term given to refugees, primarily from

Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, after World War II. There may
have been as many as ten million such persons in Germany and Austria in
1945, including about a quarter million refugees from the Baltic States. The
majority of the displaced Lithuanians had been either forced laborers under

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 DISSIDENTS • 95

the Nazi labor service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD), or were among the
approximately 100,000 persons who fled westward from the advancing Red
Army in the summer and fall of 1944, hoping for protection from the western
Allies. Baltic DPs, including Lithuanians, were not classified as Soviet citi-
zens by the Western powers and, thus, could not be forcibly repatriated, even
though Soviet representatives were allowed to attempt to persuade refugees
to return home.
Most Baltic refugees were housed in DP camps in the British and Ameri-
can zones under the jurisdiction of Allied military authorities and the United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). After 1947,
they were under the authority of the United Nations International Refugee
Organization (IRO). The largest Lithuanian DP camps were in Hanau, Ham-
burg, Lübeck, and Seedorf; in all, there were more than 60,000 Lithuanians
in such settlements in 1946–1947. During the 1940s, Lithuanian DPs estab-
lished hundreds of schools, cultural organizations, and religious societies,
published dozens of periodicals, and, together with the other Baltic communi-
ties, operated the Baltic University at Hamburg-Pinneberg.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the DP camps were disbanded
and most of the refugees left Europe. Some 30,000 Lithuanians came to
the United States under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948; most of the
others who left Germany found a home in Canada (about 20,000) and
Australia (about 10,000). See also EMIGRATION; POPULATION AND
DEMOGRAPHY.

DISSIDENTS. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a legal term used to

denote non-Catholic subjects. When Catholicism became the state religion
of Lithuania after 1387, the government was forced to deal with the issue of
the predominantly Orthodox East Slavic populations of the Grand Duchy.
Formally, only Catholics were allowed to be officials in the central govern-
ment, although this stricture was often ignored in practice. In 1563 and again
in 1568, Sigismund II Augustus declared the equality of Catholic, Orthodox,
and Protestant nobles. The religious tolerance that had characterized the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania began to fade in the late 16th century after the successful
Counter-Reformation. Protestants became known as dissidents, or dissenters
(Latin: dissidentes de religione), even though the Lithuanian Statute of 1588
prohibited religious persecution. Orthodox believers who rejected the Union
of Brest were also called dissidents or disunionists (schismatics).
The rights of these non-Catholic dissidents were increasingly curtailed
after the early 17th century. In 1673, non-Catholics were banned from enter-
ing the nobility. Religious discrimination was formalized by the Common-
wealth’s Diet of 1733, which mandated freedom of worship but withdrew

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 96 • DISSIDENTS

most political rights from non-Catholics. The domestic conflict between

Catholics and non-Catholic “dissidents” provided Orthodox Russia and
Lutheran Prussia opportunities to interfere in the Commonwealth’s internal
affairs and was a major source of domestic conflict in the later history of the
Polish-Lithuanian state.

DISSIDENTS (ANTI-SOVIET). See RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS.

DONELAITIS, KRISTIJONAS (1714–1780). German: Christian Donali-

tius. Lutheran pastor and classical Lithuanian poet; born on 1 January 1714 in
the district of Gumbinnen (Russian: Gusev), East Prussia. Donelaitis studied
theology and Lithuanian culture at the University of Königsberg (Kalinin-
grad) from 1736 to 1740, then served as pastor in the village of Tolminkiemis
(Russian: Chystye Prudy) in his native district, where he became known as a
defender of the rights of his parish’s Lithuanian serfs. Donelaitis is consid-
ered Lithuania’s most important literary figure before the emergence of the
modern Lithuanian nationalist movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHU-
ANIAN) in the 19th century. His first Lithuanian-language work consisted
of a version of Aesop’s fables, but he is best known for the epic poem Metai
(The Seasons), a remarkable description of the life, work, and customs of East
Prussia’s Lithuanian peasants known as the būrai (from the German Bauer,
or farmer). The first edition of Metai was edited and published with a Ger-
man translation by the Lithuanian scholar Liudvikas Reza (German: Ludwig
Rhesa; 1776–1840) in Königsberg in 1818. Metai is recognized as a unique
masterpiece of Lithuanian literature. Donelaitis died in Tolminkiemis on 18
February 1780.

DZIERŻYŃSKI, FELIKS (1877–1926). Belarusian-born Bolshevik who

achieved fame as the head of the notorious Cheka, the precursor of the So-
viet KGB; born to a Polish family on 11 September 1877 in Minsk district.
He joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party in 1896 and worked
in the revolutionary underground in Kaunas, where he published the radi-
cal Polish newspaper Kowieński Robotnik (The Kaunas Worker) in 1897.
In 1902–1903, Dzierżyński briefly worked in the Social Democratic Party
of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, before joining the Bolsheviks.
After serving as an underground organizer in Warsaw and St. Petersburg
and stints in tsarist prisons, he came into the Bolshevik Party’s Central
Committee and was one of the organizers of the October Revolution in 1917.
During the Russian Civil War of 1918–1921, Dzierżyński carried out tens of
thousands of executions during the Red Terror as the first head of the Soviet
secret police. He died in Moscow on 20 July 1926.

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 DZŪKIJA • 97

DZŪKIJA. One of the four major ethnographic and dialectic regions of

Lithuania, located in the east and south of the country. In medieval times,
the land of the region’s people, the dzūkai, was called Dainava, literally,
“The Land of Songs.” The present name of the people and the region comes
from the tendency of the inhabitants to palatalize the consonant d to form
a dz sound. The boundary of this dialect stretches from the Latvian border
in the northeast in a broad belt to the west, beyond the town of Alytus. The
core of Dzūkija includes the Merkinė and Ūla Rivers, and its center is near
the railroad junction of Varėna, southwest of Vilnius. The region of Dzūkija
has been economically less developed than the rest of Lithuania; partly for
this reason, village life and traditional customs have persisted longer here
than in the more urbanized regions. See also AUKŠTAITIJA; SAMOGITIA;
SUVALKIJA.

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 98 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 E
ECONOMY. Before 1940. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Lithu-
anian economy was based primarily on a manorial system of agriculture,
much of which rested on serf labor. (During the 16th through 18th centuries,
large royal landholdings were known as economies; see CROWN ESTATE.)
The wealth of the powerful landowning families derived mainly from agricul-
tural exports, primarily grains and flax. For most of the period of the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795), the Grand Duchy maintained a
separate treasury. Lithuania’s annexation by the Russian Empire in 1795 did
not substantially alter the country’s economic structure until the middle of
the 19th century when the abolition of serfdom, industrial investment, and
railroad construction began to undermine the old manorial system and opened
new markets.
After World War I, the Republic of Lithuania introduced a stable cur-
rency, the litas, and encouraged the development of industry, especially the
processing of foodstuffs, but agriculture still provided the mainstay of the
economy. The acquisition of the seaport of Klaipėda between 1923 and 1939
greatly facilitated trade, especially with Great Britain.
The Soviet Period. The Sovietization of the country between 1940 and
1990 transformed the economy in fundamental ways: the collectivization
of agriculture was accompanied by considerable industrial development,
although the latter process was not as intense as in Latvia and Estonia. In-
dustrialization also brought in hundreds of thousands of primarily Russian
and other East Slavic immigrant labor. Most of the new investments in heavy
industry—for example, the giant oil refinery in Mažeikiai and the Chernobyl-
style nuclear power plant in Ignalina—were designed to integrate Lithuania
into the centrally planned Soviet economy without much regard for local
resources or for the serious environmental degradation caused by pollution.
Since 1990. The aging Soviet-era industrial infrastructure and collective
agriculture, as well as the country’s dependence on Russian oil and natural
gas, presented daunting challenges to the newly independent state after 1990.
In 1993, the litas was reintroduced, and by the mid-1990s nearly half of the
country’s trade was with the West. Germany, the United States, and Britain

99

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 100 • EDUCATION

accounted for more than half of the $359 million of foreign investment. How-
ever, the markets of the Commonwealth of Independent States continued to
play an important part in the economy. Inflation declined from nearly 1,000
percent in 1992 to less than 35 percent by 1996. In August 1998, the collapse
of the Russian financial system briefly led to decline in the gross domestic
product (GDP), but the economy rebounded by the early 2000s. In 2005, the
GDP grew at 7.5 percent with an inflation rate of 3 percent, and the growth
rate accelerated to nearly 9 percent by late 2007. During the same year, per
capita GDP was estimated at about $8,500.
The economic crisis of 2008 caused growth to slow to 3 percent and then to
shrink by nearly 13 percent in the first quarter of 2009. According to official
government statistics, GDP during the third quarter of 2009 had fallen 14.3
percent in comparison to the same quarter in 2008. In October 2009, the gov-
ernment reported the unemployment rate as 13.6 percent. The reductions in
salaries and job losses led to several violent antigovernment demonstrations
in early 2009. After Lithuania’s entry into the European Union in 2004,
the government intended to introduce the euro within five years, but budget
deficits and the inability to meet inflation benchmarks have postponed these
plans. See also BANKING AND INVESTMENT; POPULATION AND
DEMOGRAPHY.

EDUCATION. Medieval and Early Modern Periods. There is little infor-

mation on education in medieval Lithuania, although it is known that Grand
Duke Gediminas (R. 1316–1341) employed Franciscan scribes for corre-
spondence with the Latin West, and it is certain that 14th-century Lithuanian
rulers employed scholars familiar with the form of Old Church Slavic that
was utilized in Lithuania’s western Russian lands. Some Lithuanian nobles
attended the University of Prague, but when Jogaila became King of Poland
in 1387, he revived and expanded the University of Cracow, which then at-
tracted an increasing number of students from the Grand Duchy.
In Lithuania itself, the first Latin school was attached to the Vilnius cathe-
dral in 1397. While some documents indicate that the Grand Duke authorized
the establishment of schools in new parishes in the early 15th century, a wider
network of primary and cathedral schools emerged only in the 1600s. In
1539, Abraomas Kulvietis, who had been educated abroad, founded a school
of classics in Vilnius, but it was closed in 1542 because of its Calvinist ten-
dencies. Until the late 16th century, hundreds of Lithuanians who possessed
the means studied in universities abroad. Aside from the University of Cra-
cow, the German schools, such as Frankfurt, Basel, Freiburg, Wittenberg,
Heidelberg, and Königsberg proved the most popular.

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 EDUCATION • 101

In 1570, a Jesuit college was formally established in Vilnius. In 1579,

King Stefan Batory and Pope Gregory XIII granted the college a university
charter and privileges. The Jesuit academy founded in that year is considered
the beginning of the University of Vilnius, which by the mid-17th century
achieved a solid reputation for studies in theology, philology, and history
as well as for its numerous scholarly publications. However, the Muscovite
sack of Vilnius in 1655 and the subsequent wars and famines led to the uni-
versity’s decline. The Jesuits established a number of smaller colleges in the
rest of the Grand Duchy, in Kaunas, Kražiai, Grodno, and Brest-Litovsk.
The Reformation and Counter-Reformation greatly expanded educa-
tion in the Lithuanian-speaking lands. In 1547, Lutheran pastor Martynas
Mažvydas published the first known Lithuanian-language book, a cat-
echism, in East Prussia. An important force for popular education in the
Catholic, Lithuanian-speaking lands of the Grand Duchy were the Piarist (or
Pietist) monks, who established a network of three-year schools intended to
foster learning among the lower gentry and peasantry. The Pietists’ increas-
ing use of Polish rather than Latin considerably hastened Lithuania’s cultural
Polonization despite some interest in expanding the use of the Lithuanian
language by such men as Mikalojus Daukša.
Until the mid-19th century, education among the peasantry was confined
to the publication of poorly written Lithuanian devotional literature and the
opening of a few primary schools attached to the parishes. The banning of
the Jesuit Order in 1773 led to a major educational reform in Lithuania: the
establishment of the National Educational Commission, the first state min-
istry of education in Europe, established by the Polish-Lithuanian Diet and
headed by Bishop Ignacy Massalski of Vilnius. The commission divided the
entire Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth into school districts and introduced
a modernized secular curriculum that emphasized civics and encouraged the
study of Polish.
Russian Imperial Period. Under tsarist rule (1795–1915), public primary
schooling reverted mainly to the parishes, while overall supervision of Lithu-
ania’s education was exercised by the newly created Vilnius Educational
District, one of six in the Russian Empire. Vilnius University became a major
educational center in the lands of the former Commonwealth, but as a result
of the repressions following the insurrection of 1830–1831, the university
and a majority of the lower schools were closed. During the 1840s and 1850s,
the Bishop of Samogitia, Motiejus Valančius, founded an extensive pri-
mary education system for the peasantry in western Lithuania, the first such
system with Lithuanian as the language of instruction. Valančius’s school
system contributed to a significant increase in peasant literacy during the 19th

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 102 • EDUCATION

century. The suppression of the insurrection of 1863–1864 led to the closing

of hundreds of parish schools in Kaunas and Vilnius gubernias. The press
ban on Lithuanian publications in the Latin alphabet and the establishment
of Russian-language government primary schools (narodnye shkoly) were
part of the general policy of Russification encouraged by Ivan Kornilov
(1811–1901), the curator of Lithuanian education between 1864 and 1868.
By 1900, there were 264 government primary schools with more than
18,000 pupils, primarily peasant children. At the same time, several important
factors mitigated the tsarist Russification campaign. In the Suvalkija region
of southwestern Lithuania, the government permitted limited Lithuanian-
language instruction and the training of Lithuanian teachers in order to
offset Polish influence. In the Sejny Catholic seminary, Lithuanian-language
instruction was also instituted after 1870. For their postsecondary education,
most Lithuanian students attended the Universities of Moscow and Warsaw,
where they formed groups interested in Lithuanian studies. In addition, secret
or family schools flourished among the peasantry in which literate villagers
called “directors” (Lithuanian: daraktoriai) taught reading and writing skills
to the children.
Finally, beginning in the 1870s, numerous illegal publications in the Latin
alphabet were brought into Lithuania by the book-smuggling movement,
further encouraging literacy in the native language. One of the major Lithu-
anian demands during the Revolution of 1905 was an end to Russification of
the educational system. Between 1906 and 1914, Russian authorities permit-
ted limited Lithuanian-language instruction. During the retreat of 1915, the
Russians evacuated many schools to the Russian interior, where a number
of Lithuanian secondary institutions were reestablished. During Germany’s
occupation in 1915–1918, native-language instruction was introduced in all
primary schools and the study of German was encouraged.
The Interwar Years. The advent of independence transformed the Lithua-
nian educational system as Lithuanian-language instruction, except in minor-
ity schools, became the norm. Compulsory primary education was introduced
in 1930. The Ministry of Education estimated that during the 1929–1930
academic year there were 2,386 primary schools, of which 90 percent were
Lithuanian-language institutions enrolling 155,288 pupils. By 1940, there
were an estimated 341,000 primary school pupils. During the 1937–1938
academic calendar, the government listed 31 state and 29 private gymnasium-
level secondary institutions; of the latter, 14 were Jewish schools. In 1939,
there were more than 26,000 secondary school students in Lithuania.
In 1922, the government established the University of Lithuania in Kaunas,
which was renamed the University of Vytautas the Great in 1930. By 1939,
the university enrolled about 3,000 students in the faculties of theology and

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 EDUCATION • 103

philosophy, humanities, law, mathematics and natural science, and technol-

ogy. During Polish rule in Vilnius (1920–1939), the University of Vilnius
was known as the Stefan Batory University. After Lithuania’s takeover of
the Vilnius region in 1939, it became the second Lithuanian university. The
universities—along with the Agricultural Academy in Dotnuva, the Insti-
tute of Art and the conservatory, the military academies, and the teachers’
colleges—made up the higher education system of independent Lithuania.
Soviet Rule. The Communist takeover of 1940 initiated the Sovietization
of Lithuanian schools. Religious instruction was abolished and replaced with
courses in Marxism-Leninism; the Russification of the curriculum was rein-
troduced and the Jewish schools were closed. An Academy of Sciences on
the Soviet model was established as the primary research institution. Some of
the Soviet restrictions were lifted during the Nazi occupation of 1941–1944;
however, most higher education institutions were closed in 1943, and the
secondary schools suffered from the Reich’s forced labor requisitions of
young people.
During the second Soviet period (1944–1990), the Lithuanian educational
system was thoroughly Sovietized. The Soviet government estimated that
during the 1964–1965 academic year, there were nearly 4,100 schools of
various types enrolling over a quarter-million pupils and employing some
30,000 teachers. The major institution of higher education was the Vincas
Kapsukas University of Vilnius; others included the Kaunas Polytechnic
Institute, the Vilnius and Šiauliai Pedagogical Institutes, and the Agricultural
Academy, as well as the art and music schools. Following the 1975 Tashkent
conference of teachers of Russian, linguistic Russification was intensified,
and the Soviet government stipulated that all theses for advanced degrees be
written in Russian.
Since 1990. The second period of independence has been marked by at-
tempts to reform the Sovietized school system under difficult conditions.
The educational system struggled with institutional and financial crises:
rapid inflation undermined student scholarships and teachers’ salaries, while
Soviet-era bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education and local school districts
initially tended to resist educational reform, especially decentralization.
Nevertheless, changes were introduced, bringing the country’s educational
system more in line with Western models. In addition to the University of
Vilnius, other universities were founded and expanded in the capital, includ-
ing the Vilnius Pedagogical University and the Mykolas Romeris University
founded in 2004. Major institutions of higher education in other cities include
the Vytautas Magnus University of Kaunas, reestablished with the assistance
of the Lithuanian diaspora in 1989 to provide a Western-style curriculum; the
Kaunas Technical University; the University of Klaipėda, and the University

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 104 • ELIJAH BEN SOLOMON ZALMAN

of Šiauliai. The Law on Higher Education of March 2000 divided postsec-

ondary institutions into universities and colleges. In 2008, 22 schools of
higher education were accredited by the government, including seven private
institutions.
Since 1990, voluntary religious instruction has been reintroduced in the
primary and secondary schools, and private schools, primarily Catholic insti-
tutions, have been founded. There have been ongoing attempts to reduce the
number of small rural schools through consolidation and free public trans-
port. Since 2000, the law stipulates that education is free and compulsory
from the ages of six to 16. The prewar gymnasium-type of elite secondary
preparatory schools was reintroduced after 1990. The government’s statistics
department reported a total enrollment in all educational institutions and pro-
grams of 808,552 persons for 2008–2009, 7 percent less than in 1999–2000,
reflecting the general decline of population. In 2009, there were 2,939 doc-
toral students.

ELIJAH BEN SOLOMON ZALMAN (1720–1797). Better-known as the

Vilna Gaon and considered one of the greatest Jewish intellectuals of mod-
ern times; born in Vilnius on 23 April 1720. As a child, he reportedly gave a
homily in a Vilnius synagogue at the age of six. Elijah studied at Kėdainiai,
one of the centers of learning for Lithuanian Jewry, where he married and
acquired a considerable knowledge of the Torah and Scripture through self-
study. After travels to Poland and Germany, Elijah settled in Vilnius, where
he gained fame for his asceticism and commitment to learning. He encour-
aged study of the natural sciences and was a bitter opponent of the mystical
Hasidic movement then sweeping the Jewish communities of the Grand
Duchy, making his scholarly group in Vilnius the center of opposition to
Hasidism. During his lifetime, the Gaon wrote more than 70 works and com-
mentaries, the majority of which were published. More than any other figure,
Elijah Ben Solomon influenced the development of 19th-century Lithuanian
Jewish culture and laid the basis for the reputation of Vilnius as the “Jerusa-
lem of Eastern Europe.” He died in Vilnius on 9 October 1797.

EMIGRATION. In proportional terms, the Lithuanian nation has one of the

largest diasporas in the world.
Before the Early 20th Century. Following the insurrection of 1830–1831,
hundreds of Lithuanian rebels, especially gentry, fled to western Europe,
mostly France, where they agitated for the restoration of the Polish-Lith-
uanian state. More followed the insurrection of 1863–1864, and some of
these refugees are known to have reached the United States. Although a few
Lithuanians came to the New World as early as the 17th century, large-scale

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 EMIGRATION • 105

emigration to America began only after the U.S. Civil War and reached a
peak in the two decades before World War I. While evasion of the tsarist
military draft and political persecution were factors, economic considerations
were most important in forcing many landless peasants and smallholders to
seek employment. It is estimated that between 1869 and 1898 nearly 100,000
ethnic Lithuanians and Jews left Lithuania for the United States. During
1899–1914, when Lithuanians were counted separately as a national group,
some quarter of a million immigrants came into the United States.
At first, most Lithuanian newcomers settled primarily in Pennsylvania’s
coal belt and then in urban centers like Chicago, where there was work in
the stockyards. The plight of the latter emigrants was depicted in Upton Sin-
clair’s classic novel The Jungle (1904). The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924
effectively ended large-scale immigration from Lithuania until after World
War II. Officially, the 1930 U.S. Census counted 439,255 Lithuanian-Amer-
icans, of whom 45 percent were foreign born.
Around the turn of the 20th century, about 15,000 Lithuanians arrived in
Great Britain; another few thousand left for Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and
South Africa. The latter country also became the destination for thousands of
Lithuanian Jews. It is estimated that by the mid-20th century approximately
50,000 persons of Lithuanian Jewish origin were living in South Africa,
some of whom, like the Progressive anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman
(1917–2009), long-time Communist Party leader Joe Slovo (1926–1995), and
actor Laurence Harvey (1928–1973), became prominent. Another historically
important exodus of Lithuanians went to the industrial centers of the Russian
Empire during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On the eve of World
War I, there were about 40,000 Lithuanians in St. Petersburg, 35,000 in Riga,
and 7,000 in Odessa.
Independence, War, and Soviet Rule. During the period of interwar in-
dependence, economic conditions led to the emigration of nearly 30,000
Lithuanians to Brazil, another 17,000 to Argentina, 5,000 to Uruguay, and
about 7,000 to Canada. Another great exodus from Lithuania came at the
end of World War II. In 1944, at least 100,000 persons fled in the wake of
the Soviet advance, and it is estimated that about three-fourths successfully
reached the West.
The vast majority of the postwar displaced persons (DPs) emigrated to the
United States, Canada, and Australia. The postwar emigration included nu-
merous political refugees, many of whom were members of the intelligentsia,
the professions, and the clergy. Most of the DPs settled in the urban centers of
the United States and Canada, which already had well-established Lithuanian
communities: mainly Chicago, but also New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Bal-
timore, Cleveland, Toronto, and Montreal. According to the U.S. Census of

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 106 • ENVIRONMENT

1990, 526,089 persons reported their ancestry as Lithuanian, of whom 34,523

were listed as foreign born. Canada had an estimated 35,000 Lithuanians at
the beginning of the 1990s. After Chicago, the largest single settlement of
Lithuanians was in São Paulo, Brazil, but Latin America’s Lithuanian im-
migrants assimilated rapidly and established relatively few churches, schools,
and other cultural institutions compared with their counterparts in North
America. During the Soviet period after World War II (1945–1990), very few
people were allowed to emigrate from Lithuania.
Since 1990. A massive third wave of emigration began with the collapse
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the easing of restrictions on
foreign travel after 1989–1990. Unlike the second wave of political refugees
who made up the population of postwar exiles, most of the “third wavers,”
as they are commonly referred to by Lithuanians in the United States, were
motivated by economic distress at home and employment opportunities in
the West. British officials reported that, between May and December 2004
alone, 20,095 Lithuanian citizens requested work permits in Great Britain. It
is impossible to determine precisely the number of post-1990 emigrants, but
the government’s statisticians estimate that some 320,000 Lithuanians left
the country between 1990 and 2005; this number is considered by specialists
as too conservative since it does not include people who failed to announce
their intent to stay abroad.
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry cautiously estimated that, of the roughly
a quarter of a million post-Soviet emigrants, about 50,000 were living in
the United States, another 50,000 in Great Britain, and some 30,000 each
in Ireland and Spain, with the remainder in Germany, Norway, and other
European states. However, extrapolating from more statistically sophisticated
methods that include estimates of the number of so-called undeclared emi-
grants, it is reasonable to assume that more than 400,000 Lithuanian citizens
had left the country since 1990—although the global economic downturn of
2008 has caused thousands to return to the homeland.
Surveys reveal that more than 70 percent of emigrants indicated unemploy-
ment and insufficient income as motivating factors. Along with a falling birth
rate, the last two decades of emigration have led to a considerable decline in
the country’s population. Of further concern is the fact that the majority of
people leaving are relatively young and many are highly educated.

ENVIRONMENT. The environmental consequences of Lithuania’s indus-

trial development have emerged as a significant issue after World War II.
The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic was the first Soviet republic to
introduce environmental regulations, although these attempts were often frus-
trated by the Soviet Union’s general policy of promoting heavy industry with

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 EUROPEAN UNION • 107

little regard to ecological impact. The Lithuanian Environment Protection

Association (Lietuvos gamtos apsaugos draugija) was established in 1960 to
address concerns about the damage inflicted by the Soviet government’s col-
lectivization and industrialization.
During the mid- and late 1980s, writers and scientists publicly protested
plans for offshore oil exploration and drilling in an oil field known as D-6
near the environmentally sensitive sections of Lithuania’s Baltic Sea coast,
especially the region near the Courish Spit and lagoon (Kuršių marios). An
important impetus for the growth of the Sąjūdis independence movement in
the summer of 1988 was the countrywide bicycle tour of activist youth from
the environmental club Žemyna (Goddess of the Earth), intended to raise
public awareness of the dangers of environmental degradation and to argue
that only a sovereign Lithuania could end the ecologically catastrophic So-
viet economic policies. The Lithuanian Green Movement (Lietuvos Žaliųjų
Judėjimas) was established in the same year, and together with its affiliates
has been the major nongovernmental organization advocating environmental
protection and conservation.
Following Lithuania’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union,
the Department of Environmental Protection was established in 1990, reorga-
nized as the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 1994, then renamed the
Ministry of the Environment (Aplinkos Ministerija) in 1998. The ministry has
broad responsibilities to oversee urban construction, farming, fisheries, and
forestry; to monitor air and water pollution as well as climate change; and to
carry out other functions relating to preserving the country’s natural and cul-
tural environment. In 2009, the ministry reported major improvements in air
quality, but only limited progress in water pollution management and deterio-
ration of the situation of the Baltic shoreline. The Baltic Sea has continued to
suffer from offshore drilling and the petroleum industry: in November 2001,
a major oil spill occurred at the Būtingė oil terminal near the Latvian border.
The government has recently attempted to limit deforestation and protect the
viability of wildlife, including wolves and small herds of rare forest bison and
elk. The Ministry of the Environment’s State Service for Protected Territories
controls nature preserves, cultural zones, and national and regional parks,
estimated to take up about 7,500 square kilometers (2,900 square miles) or
about 11 percent of the nation’s land.

EUROPEAN UNION (EU). A political and economic union of 27 member

states, including Lithuania. The origins of the European Union lay in the
creation of the European Economic Community, popularly known as the
Common Market, by the Treaty of Rome in 1957; this organization initially
included France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and

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 108 • EUROPEAN UNION

Luxembourg. This customs union was expanded during the 1960s and be-
came known as the European Community (EC). The EU was formally estab-
lished by the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, and in the same year, the European
Council, the highest political body of the EU, adopted specific criteria for
admission of new member states. The basic conditions required candidate
countries to observe human rights, maintain democratic governance, and
meet certain economic benchmarks within a free market system.
After the declaration of Lithuania’s independence on 11 March 1990,
integration into European and transatlantic economic and security structures
became the announced goal of the country’s major political groups. On 27
August 1991, the European Community recognized Lithuania’s indepen-
dence. In 1993, Lithuania and the EC implemented a trade and cooperation
agreement, and that same year Lithuania joined the PHARE program of as-
sistance to Central European states aspiring to join the EU. In 1995, Lithuania
formally applied for membership in the EU and signed a number of additional
free trade agreements with the Union. On 15 February 2000, the Lithuanian
government formally initiated accession negotiations, which were concluded
in December 2002 in Copenhagen. Lithuania and nine other states signed a
treaty of accession in Athens on 16 April 2003, and in May 2003 Lithuanian
voters overwhelmingly approved EU membership in a referendum. The
political crisis of 2003–2004 that resulted in the impeachment of President
Rolandas Paksas did not disrupt the process of accession, and on 1 May
2004 Lithuania formally joined the EU as a member state. In the same year,
the first elections to the European Parliament were held in Lithuania and the
Seimas ratified the European Constitution.
In December 2007, Lithuania joined the Schengen area of open borders,
and in May 2008 the parliament approved the Lisbon Treaty. Twelve Lithu-
anian deputies were elected to the European Parliament in June 2009. Lithu-
ania has actively participated in the various administrative bodies of the EU.
Dalia Grybauskaitė gained prominence on the international stage serving as
European commissioner for financial programming and the budget from 2004
to 2009. Grybauskaitė’s widely acknowledged economic expertise helped her
to a decisive win in Lithuania’s presidential election of May 2009.

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 F
FEBRUARY 16 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. See ARMED
FORCES; FLAG; GERMANY; NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN; SME-
TONA, ANTANAS; TARYBA; WORLD WAR I.

FLAG. The earliest known official Lithuanian state seal or emblem is the
Vytis, known to have been in use since the late 14th century, depicting a
mounted knight as seen from the left side, the horseman galloping as if in pur-
suit. The name of the seal is derived from the Lithuanian verb vyti, “to chase.”
The Vytis often appeared alongside another grand ducal symbol, the “pillars
of Gediminas,” a stylized simple depiction of a castle. The first known use
of the pillars was by Grand Duke Vytautas in 1397. According to the Polish
chronicler Jan Długosz (1415–1480), the Lithuanians utilized an official red
flag with the white Vytis at the center. During the period of the Polish-Lith-
uanian Commonwealth (1569–1795), the Vytis was displayed alongside the
Polish white eagle. In the 19th century, the Vytis became a symbol of national
revival among the Lithuanian intelligentsia. It was adopted as the state seal of
Lithuania after World War I.
In April 1918, a tricolor consisting of three equal horizontal stripes of yel-
low, green, and red was adopted as the national flag. During the Soviet period
(1940–1941 and 1944–1990), the tricolor was banned and the display of the
Vytis was discouraged. The flag of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic
(SSR) from 1940 to 1953 consisted of a red field with a hammer and sickle
and the notation “Lietuvos TSR” (Lithuanian SSR) in the upper left corner.
The notation was eliminated in 1953 and two narrower stripes were added
to the red field. On November 1988, as the reform and independence move-
ments strengthened, the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR reinstated the
prewar tricolor as the state flag. Since 1990, it has been the official national
and state flag of the Republic of Lithuania.
The Vytis was proclaimed the historic flag of the Lithuanian state in 2004.
As the state seal, the white knight adorns all Lithuanian embassies and is also
utilized in the presidential colors. As a successor state of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania, the Republic of Belarus also adopted the Vytis as the state

109

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 110 • FOLK ART

seal in 1991, but in 1995 Alexander Lukashenko’s government changed to an

emblem reminiscent of that of the Soviet period.

FOLK ART. See ART.

FOLKLORE. See LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN; MUSIC.

FOREIGN RELATIONS. Historically, Lithuania’s location at the cross-

roads of East and West has decisively influenced the country’s geopolitical
development. Ever since the political consolidation of the Lithuanian lands
in the late 13th century, Lithuania has confronted challenges from its west-
ern and eastern neighbors. During the middle and late medieval periods,
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania faced persistent attacks from the Teutonic
Knights in the west, while at the same time seeking to entrench its position
in the Slavic Eastern Orthodox lands in the east, where, beginning in the late
14th century, the Lithuanian state faced competition from the growing power
of Muscovy and the Tatars.
The dynastic alliance with Poland after the Act of Krėva in 1385 and
the accession of Jogaila to the Polish throne brought Roman Catholicism
to the ethnic Lithuanian lands and led to the decisive defeat of the Teutonic
Knights. However, as a Catholic power, Lithuania faced problems in trying
to hold onto its predominantly Eastern Orthodox territories against Muscovy.
As part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Grand Duchy suf-
fered military defeats during the Great Northern War of 1700–1721. While
Sweden was no longer a major factor in the Commonwealth’s diplomacy,
Poland-Lithuania became an object of intrigue at the hands of the powerful
centralized monarchies of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, leading to the parti-
tions of 1772–1795. Although Poles and Lithuanians lived under foreign rule
until after World War I, the crises of the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the
Revolution of 1848 and the insurrections of 1830–1831 and 1863–1864,
aroused international attention on the “Polish Question” and protest against
tsarist policies among liberal public opinion, especially in France and Great
Britain.
The emergence of independent Lithuania in 1918 created a number of daunt-
ing diplomatic problems for the new state. The republic’s interwar diplomacy
focused on irredentist issues: the intractable Vilnius Question, which led to a
state of war with Poland from 1920 to 1938, and the issue of Klaipėda, which
produced strained relations with Germany, especially after the Nazis came
to power in 1933. The paradox of Lithuania’s diplomacy was that in order to
maintain control of Klaipėda, the country needed to support the international
status quo, while the recovery of Vilnius from Poland assumed a drastic revi-

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 FRANCISCANS • 111

sion of the interwar European order. Even though staunchly anti-Communist,

the regime of Antanas Smetona maintained friendly relations with the Soviet
Union as a counterweight to Poland and Germany. The international crises
of 1938–1940 led to a series of ultimatums from Poland, Germany, and the
Soviet Union that finally led to the occupation and annexation of Lithuania
and the other two Baltic States by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
during the summer of 1940.
While the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (1940–1990) existed as a
constituent part of the Soviet Union de facto, the major Western powers and
many other states never recognized Moscow’s incorporation of the Baltic
States. Lithuanian diplomatic representatives continued to be accredited in
the important missions in Washington, London, and the Vatican. By delegiti-
mizing Soviet rule, the nonrecognition policy provided a significant moral
and political boost to the Baltic independence movements of the late 1980s.
After the failed coup against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in August
1991, most governments quickly recognized Lithuania’s independence.
Thereafter, the Republic of Lithuania rapidly expanded its diplomatic
representation: by 2009, in addition to diplomatic missions at international
venues in Brussels, Strasbourg, and the United Nations, the government
maintained 30 embassies in Europe and eight diplomatic missions in North
America, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Thirty-four embassies were lo-
cated in Vilnius in 2009. Since the early 1990s, the main task of Lithuanian
diplomacy has been to achieve integration into European and transatlantic
structures, especially the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), while at the same time seeking to minimize
any revanchist threats from Russia. While relations with Russia and Belarus
have been strained, Lithuania joined both EU and NATO in 2004 and entered
the Schengen visa-free zone in 2008. See also LATVIA; NAZI-SOVIET
PACT; TRADE; UNITED STATES.

FOUR-YEAR DIET (1788–1792). See CONSTITUTIONS; DIET;

KOŚCIUSZKO, TADEUSZ; PARTITIONS; TARGOWICA, CONFED-
ERATION OF.

FRANCISCANS. Catholic religious order that first arrived in Lithuania

during the medieval period and played an important role in the country’s
educational and cultural development. The Franciscan Order established
communities in Prussia and Livonia during the first half of the 13th century.
Chronicles indicate that during the reign of Lithuania’s first king, Mindau-
gas (R. 1251–1263), Franciscans were active as advisors to the court; they
were thus the first Catholic monastic order to gain a foothold in Lithuania.

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 112 • FRANCISCANS

The Franciscans served as intermediaries with the Teutonic Knights and the
Archbishop of Riga during the reign of Grand Duke Vytenis (R. 1295–1316)
and proved invaluable as clerks in the Grand Duke’s chancery during the dip-
lomatic contacts initiated by Gediminas (R. 1316–41) with the papacy and
the Christian West, especially in composing the ruler’s Latin correspondence
in 1322–1323. Most of these earlier Franciscans came from central Europe;
two Bohemian monks are reported to have been killed in Vilnius in the early
14th century. The Franciscan community in Lithuania expanded rapidly after
Lithuania’s formal conversion to Christianity in 1387 and provided the first
two bishops of Vilnius, Andrew (1388–1398) and Jacob (1398–1407).
Two branches of the Franciscan Order emerged during the period of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the Friars Minor Conventual and the
Friars Minor Observants. The latter group established an independent Lithu-
anian province in 1731. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Franciscans
were heavily involved in education. The Franciscan botanist Jurgis Ambra-
ziejus Pabrėža (1771–1849) was among the best known Lithuanian scholars;
he left behind descriptions of peasant life in Samogitia.
The Franciscan monasteries were closed during the Russification policies
and violent suppressions of the insurrections of 1830–1831 and 1863–1864,
but the community revived in the early 20th century. In 1931, the Province of
St. Casimir was reestablished, and by 1940 it numbered over 100 religious,
while the lay auxiliary, the Third Order of St. Francis, counted almost 50,000
members. The Franciscan Order was banned by the Communist government
after the Soviet occupation of the country in 1940, but the order has become
active once again since the restoration of Lithuanian independence in 1990.
Dozens of Lithuanian Franciscans fled to the West during World War II.
The order established a house and cultural center in New York, published
the newspaper Darbininkas (The Worker), and established a monastery and
guesthouse in Kennebunkport, Maine. These institutions served as important
cultural centers for the Lithuanian diaspora in the eastern United States.

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 G
GALVANAUSKAS, ERNESTAS (1882–1967). Lithuanian statesman; born
in Panevėžys district on 20 November 1882. After studying engineering in
St. Petersburg, Galvanauskas became prominent in the Lithuanian national
movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN) after the Great Assembly
of Vilnius in 1905 and was one of the organizers of the Peasant Populist
Union. After a brief stint in Russian prisons for his anti-tsarist political ac-
tivities, Galvanauskas studied at the University of Liège, Belgium, and after
graduation in 1912, he worked for several years in Serbia. In 1919, he assisted
the Lithuanian delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, after which he
returned to Lithuania and served in a number of government posts, notably
as prime minister from 1919 to 1920 and foreign minister from 1922 to
1924. A skilled diplomat, Galvanauskas was instrumental in negotiating the
Klaipėda Convention, which transferred that port and surrounding territory
to Lithuania in 1924. From 1924 to 1927, Galvanauskas was the Lithuanian
minister to London. He then moved to Klaipėda, where he worked as a fi-
nancial expert until 1939. He was also briefly finance minister in the Soviet-
controlled People’s Government in June–July 1940. In 1947, Galvanauskas
moved to Madagascar, where he worked as director of a secondary school
until 1963. He died in France on 24 July 1967.

GEDIMINAS (c. 1275–c. 1341). Russian: Gedimin; Polish: Giedymin.

Grand Duke of Lithuania and the founder of a dynasty that ruled Lithuania
and Poland until 1572. Gediminas was born about 1275; some scholars think
that his family originated from the region around Veliuona. He succeeded his
brother Vytenis in 1316 and during the next two decades greatly expanded
Lithuanian power and his own personal political influence. Gediminas’s
policy was focused on protecting Lithuania from the Teutonic Knights in
the west and expanding the territory of the Lithuanian state in the east. In his
struggle with the Knights, Gediminas relied on both military and diplomatic
means. In 1319 and again in 1329, he invaded the Teutonic Order’s lands, but
most of the fighting took place along the Nemunas River. The attacks of the
crusaders were particularly intense in 1336–1338.

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 114 • GEDVILAS, MEČISLOVAS

Meanwhile, Gediminas undertook diplomatic initiatives intended to

strengthen Lithuania’s position in Europe. With the support of the Archbishop
of Riga, then involved in a conflict with the Livonian Order, Gediminas sent
a number of letters to Pope John XXII and western European rulers accusing
the Teutonic Order and its allies of hindering Lithuania’s Christianization by
their violent crusades. Although their authenticity was once questioned by
historians, Gediminas’s letters are now considered one of the most important
and reliable sources for the early 14th-century history of Lithuania. Gedimi-
nas was never able to resolve the conflict with the order, which intensified
in the latter years of his reign. However, he did invite Christians to settle in
Lithuania and insisted in one of his letters that both pagans and Christians
“all have one God.”
In the east, Gediminas pursued a successful policy of mostly peaceful ex-
pansion into the Russian lands. He established close ties to Pskov, Novgorod,
and Tver. Through a series of diplomatic marriages of his numerous children,
including seven sons, Gediminas managed to acquire for Lithuania the lands
of Vitebsk, Novogrodek, and Pinsk and other western Russian principali-
ties. His relations with Poland were enhanced by the marriage in 1325 of his
daughter Aldona (christened as Anne) to the future King Casimir of Poland,
apparently an attempt to engage the Poles as allies against the Teutonic
Knights. The circumstances surrounding Gediminas’s death are obscure, but
it is likely that he died during the winter of 1341.
Historians consider Gediminas one of Lithuania’s most important histori-
cal figures. While Mindaugas had briefly introduced Christianity and unified
the Lithuanian tribes in the mid-13th century, Gediminas was the true founder
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as the polity that played an important role
in eastern Europe during the late medieval and early modern periods. Gedimi-
nas’s plans regarding Lithuania’s Christianization are unclear, but his tolerant
attitude toward Catholicism, his employment of monks in the chancery, and
Lithuania’s conquest of Orthodox Slavic lands brought increasing Christian
influence into the Grand Duchy. He founded Vilnius as the capital of Lithua-
nia, and today the central square of the city bears his name. Gediminas greatly
expanded Lithuania’s political and commercial ties to the West, stimulated
urban life and trade, and attempted to systematize the country’s administra-
tion and army. His policy of holding the line against the Teutonic Order in the
west while seeking opportunities for expansion in the east was continued by
his successors. See also ALGIRDAS; IRON WOLF; KĘSTUTIS.

GEDVILAS, MEČISLOVAS (1901–1981). Prominent Lithuanian Com-

munist leader born in the village of Bubiai on 19 November 1901. During
the 1920s, Gedvilas worked as a teacher and later as a director of a health

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 GERMANY • 115

insurance fund. He was arrested in 1927 for his part in an antigovernment

conspiracy that broke out in Tauragė district. He joined the underground
Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) in 1934, but was little known within
the movement.
After the Soviet invasion of June 1940, Gedvilas was unexpectedly ap-
pointed minister of the interior under the People’s Government. He carried
out the orders of the LCP to arrest former high-ranking officials of the pre-
Communist government. When Lithuania was incorporated into the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics in August 1940, Gedvilas was appointed chairman
of the Council of People’s Commissars (later known as the Council of Min-
isters) and was thus formally Lithuania’s head of government. Gedvilas was
also a member of the LCP Central Committee (1940–1976) and its Politburo
(1940–1956), as well as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1952–1956).
In January 1956, Gedvilas was dismissed for alleged “deviations” from the
Party line, but was later partially rehabilitated and given the post of minister
of education. He gained a reputation as one of the more nationally minded
Lithuanian Communists, who favored the promotion of native cadres and re-
sisted excessive Russification of the educational system. He died in Vilnius
on 5 February 1981.

GERMANIZATION. The policy of encouraging the assimilation of Lithu-

anian speakers to German language has had a different impact than attempts
to foster Polish (see POLONIZATION) and Russian (see RUSSIFICATION)
culture. Unlike the latter assimilation movements, Germanization had a less
significant impact on the Lithuanian national movement (see NATIONAL-
ISM, LITHUANIAN) since it was limited to the Lithuanian-speaking Lu-
theran population of East Prussia and had little impact on the predominantly
Catholic Lithuanians of the Russian Empire. During the German occupation
of 1941–1944, the Nazis encouraged German culture and settled thousands of
Germans, mainly in western Lithuania. The defeat of Nazi Germany prevented
the Third Reich from implementing plans to eventually Germanize most of the
people of the eastern Baltic.

GERMANY. From the Medieval Period to World War I. German settlers

first arrived in the eastern Baltic during the early 13th century in what is now
Latvia and Estonia. Lithuanians encountered Germans as neighbors when the
Teutonic Knights subdued the Baltic Prussian tribes and brought Germans
to the region. Until the unification of Germany in 1871, Lithuanian-German
cultural relations and contacts evolved within the Kingdom of Prussia, where
there was a considerable Lithuanian-speaking Evangelical Lutheran popula-
tion in the eastern parts of the state.

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 116 • GERMANY

During the period of tsarist rule, the small German minority in Lithuania
was limited to areas in western Lithuania along the traditional Prussian-
Russian border and in towns where small communities of German merchants
and industrialists thrived, but it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of
German speakers in Russian Lithuania before World War I. Lithuanian rela-
tions with Germany assumed critical importance during the German military
occupation of 1915–1918. The German military administration in Lithuania,
part of what was known as the Ober Ost, ruthlessly exploited the populace for
the benefit of the Kaiser’s war machine. The collapse of the tsarist empire,
growing calls for self-determination, and Germany’s debilitating war in the
west forced Berlin to consider the creation of a Lithuanian state dependent
on Germany. After the newly created Taryba declared Lithuania’s inde-
pendence on 16 February 1918, Berlin recognized the Lithuanian state on
23 March but insisted that it remain in formal union with Germany. These
conditions became moot with the collapse of the German monarchy and the
defeat of its army in the fall of 1918.
Since 1918. In order to maintain a barrier against the Bolshevik threat, Ar-
ticle 12 of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 required that German troops
remain in former Russian territories until permitted to leave by the Allies.
Germany provided some financial and military assistance to the fledgling
Lithuanian army’s war against Soviet Russia during 1918–1919; on the
other hand, Lithuania was faced with the threat of German-organized forces,
such as the Bermondtists, which tried to maintain a foothold in the Baltic.
After the withdrawal of German forces by the end of 1919, the main issue in
Lithuanian-German relations concerned Klaipėda. Germany preferred that
Klaipėda Territory be made into a free territory (German: Freistaat), but
Lithuanian forces seized the city in January 1923 and negotiated the Klaipėda
Convention with the Conference of Ambassadors. However, the convention’s
liberal autonomy provisions allowed Germany to influence the region’s local
politics in favor of the German-speaking population.
Klaipėda became a critical problem for the Lithuanian state after Adolf
Hitler came to power in January 1933 and began to encourage the activi-
ties of Nazi front organizations in the autonomous territory. The Lithuanian
government’s suppression of the region’s Nazis and their trial in Kaunas
in 1934–1935 initiated a period of tense relations with Berlin and a marked
decline in German-Lithuanian trade. Despite the introduction of martial law,
Klaipėda’s German Nazi movement continued to grow in strength, while the
Western powers proved reluctant to support the Lithuanian government’s
position. On 23 March 1939, German troops entered Klaipėda after issuing
an ultimatum to the Lithuanian government. Lithuania’s loss of the port re-
moved the source of German-Lithuanian tensions, and trade between the two

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 GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL • 117

countries grew considerably, especially after the outbreak of war in Septem-

ber 1939 made shipping to Great Britain difficult.
In March 1941, Germany’s agreement with the Soviet Union allowed more
than 50,000 persons claiming German nationality to repatriate from the Lith-
uanian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Reich, although it is known that some
of them were ethnic Lithuanians with dubious documentation of German
origin. During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania (1941–1944), thousands of
German farmers were settled in the country, but few remained permanently.
After 1945, hundreds of so-called wolf children (German: Wolfskinder), Ger-
man orphans escaping famine in East Prussia, slipped into Lithuania, where
many were adopted by Lithuanian families. Since World War II, the number
of ethnic Germans in Lithuania has been small: 3,243 persons were listed in
the census of 2001.
The “Eastern Policy” (Ostpolitik) of the German Federal Republic empha-
sized improving relations with the Eastern Bloc; thus, German authorities
took pains not to antagonize the Soviet Union over the Baltic independence
issue. Until the August 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, Chancellor
Helmut Kohl displayed a cautious stance toward Lithuanian independence,
emphasizing compromise with Moscow while formally supporting the right
of self-determination.
On 28 August 1991, the German Foreign Office declared its renewal of
diplomatic relations with the Baltic States. Since then, Germany has become
an important economic partner of Lithuania: a decade later, Germany had
become Lithuania’s second most important export market and the third larg-
est source of foreign investment. Lithuania’s integration into the European
Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has normalized and
strengthened German-Lithuanian relations. On the other hand, there is lin-
gering concern about the impact of closer German-Russian cooperation, for
example, the proposed joint Nord Stream project, which would connect Rus-
sian natural gas directly to Germany via an underground Baltic Sea pipeline.
The national security, environmental, and economic impact of Nord Stream
has caused concern in the Baltic States, Sweden, Poland, and other eastern
European countries. See BANKING AND INVESTMENT; FOREIGN RE-
LATIONS; GERMANIZATION.

GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL (1931– ). General secretary of the Communist

Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991 and president of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1989 to 1991; born in
Privolnoye, Russia, on 2 March 1931. In the mid-1980s, the conservative
leaders of the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) initially remained cool to
Gorbachev’s call for reform under the programs of glasnost (openness) and

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 118 • GOŠTAUTAS

perestroika (restructuring). Much of the Lithuanian public, however, initially

reacted positively to his reform proposals. Nonetheless, Gorbachev’s rela-
tions with Lithuanians became increasing tense during 1988–1989 when it
became apparent that the emergence of the Sąjūdis movement and changes
within the LCP were generating increased public discussion of the idea of
Lithuania’s independence. In December 1989, Gorbachev tried unsuccess-
fully to persuade the LCP to stay within the CPSU. Gorbachev’s conflict with
Lithuanians was also fueled by the Soviet leader’s personal animosity toward
Sąjūdis leader Vytautas Landsbergis.
On 11–13 January 1990, Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit
Lithuania while in office. His well-publicized tour and passionate pleas for
Lithuanians to abandon their quest for independence made front-page news
around the world, but proved a failure. After denouncing Lithuania’s 11
March 1990 declaration of independence as unconstitutional, Gorbachev
imposed an economic boycott of Lithuania in April. During his visit to the
United States and Canada in May, he threatened the republic with the loss of
Vilnius and Klaipėda, as well as huge financial burdens, if Lithuanian lead-
ers insisted on independence.
A final bitter rupture between the Soviet president and most Lithuanians
came during the violent attacks on the Landsbergis government that began in
December 1990 and culminated in the massacre of 14 civilians at the Vilnius
television tower on 13 January 1991. Gorbachev denied responsibility for the
killings, but did not condemn the violence and, contrary to his rival Boris
Yeltsin, who publicly supported the pro-independence forces, issued inflam-
matory statements against the Baltic governments. Since that time, despite
their initially positive reaction to the reforms of the mid-1980s, many Lithu-
anians have nursed bitter feelings against Gorbachev; thus, the image of the
Soviet leader in Lithuania is quite different from his reputation in the West
as a liberal reformer.
Gorbachev formally resigned as president of the USSR on 25 December
1991. In 1992, he founded the Gorbachev Foundation, a think tank dedicated
to research on reform policies. Despite an unsuccessful run for the Russian
presidency in 1996, Gorbachev continued to maintain a public political profile
and has been critical of his successors, Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin (1951– ).

GOŠTAUTAS. Polish: Gasztold. Lithuanian noble family that achieved

prominence in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Goštautas clan owned lands
east and southeast of Vilnius, but according to some sources, were Samogi-
tian in origin. John Goštautas (c. 1383–1458) is considered the founder of the
family’s power. He was chancellor of Lithuania from 1443 to 1458 and was
an important power broker in the struggle for the grand ducal throne between

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 GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA • 119

Sigismund Kęstutaitis and Švitrigaila during the 1430s. In the 16th century,
the most illustrious member of the Goštautas clan was Albert Goštautas (c.
1480–1539), who was chancellor of Lithuania from 1522 to 1539 and also
achieved fame as a military commander against the Tatars and Muscovites.

GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA. The formal title of the Lithuanian

state for most of the period between the early 13th century and 1795; some-
times termed the Grand Principality. The Lithuanian word for duke or prince,
kunigaikštis, is derived from kunigas, probably of Germanic origin. Until
the late 14th century, Lithuanian rulers claimed a number of different titles,
including the Slavic velikii kniaz (grand prince) and the Latin rex. However,
since only Mindaugas (R. 1251–1263) had been baptized, anointed, and then
given a crown through the mediation of the Church, the title of king, as com-
monly understood during the High Middle Ages, is not generally applicable
to the Lithuanian rulers. During the 14th century, the Latin term magnus dux
(grand duke) came into official use and remained until 1795.
The territory and administrative status of the Grand Duchy changed mark-
edly during the more than six centuries of its existence. Gediminas (R.
1316–1341) and especially his son Algirdas (R. 1345–1377) and grandson
Vytautas (R. 1392–1430) expanded the Grand Duchy to its greatest extent.
The Lithuanian state stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, includ-
ing most of Ukraine and, for a time, Moldavia (Moldova). In the east, the
Lithuanian lands bordered Moscow. During the 16th century, as a result of
Muscovite pressure and the Union of Lublin, the lands of the Grand Duchy
shrank to include essentially the territories of ethnographic Lithuania and
Belarus, leading some Belarusians to claim the Republic of Belarus as a suc-
cessor state of the Grand Duchy.
Between 1386 and 1569, the Grand Duchy was in dynastic alliance with
Poland through the Jagiellonians (the House of Gediminas); the Lithuanian no-
bility elected the grand duke with the consent of the king of Poland. After 1501,
the Kingdom and Grand Duchy were invariably ruled by the same monarch.
The Union of Lublin changed the dynastic alliance of the two states into
a more closely knit commonwealth (Polish: rzeczpospolita) with an elected
monarchy, but the Grand Duchy still maintained its own army, postal service,
and currency. The partitions of 1772–1795 led to the final demise of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Under the revolutionary Constitution of 1791 ad-
opted by the Polish-Lithuanian Diet, the “Commonwealth of Two Nations,”
as it was known, was to be transformed into a unitary state, eliminating the
Grand Duchy as an autonomous unit. However, this constitution had little his-
torical significance for Lithuania since the final Partition of 1795 abolished
the Grand Duchy and placed most of its lands under tsarist rule.

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 120 • GREAT ASSEMBLY OF VILNIUS

GREAT ASSEMBLY (DIET) OF VILNIUS. Lithuanian: Didysis Vilniaus

Seimas. The first modern Lithuanian political convention, held on 21–22
November 1905. The Revolution of 1905 in Lithuania was accompanied by
widespread agrarian unrest and national protest against tsarist Russification
policies. In October 1905, a Lithuanian committee was established to orga-
nize a national conference under the auspices of the first Lithuanian daily
newspaper, Vilniaus inios (Vilnius News). The response exceeded expecta-
tions as more than 2,000 delegates arrived in Vilnius not only from Lithuania
but also from Lithuanian communities in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia,
and East Prussia. The delegates were peasants, clergy, a few urban workers,
and intelligentsia; about half were elected or responsible to some constitu-
ency, while others simply came on their own.
The conference was formally chaired by Jonas Basanavičius, the ac-
knowledged patriarch of the national movement (see NATIONALISM,
LITHUANIAN), who hoped for a cultural affairs agenda and planned only
a politically cautious memorandum to Sergei Witte, the Russian prime
minister. However, a presidium representing the major political factions, the
Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, and peasant representatives, actu-
ally directed the proceedings and politicized the meeting. While there were
disagreements between leftist and rightist agendas, the conference eventually
agreed on a radical final resolution, published in Vilniaus žinios, that was the
most coherent expression of the political will of the Lithuanian people up to
that time. The document called for national autonomy, a democratic political
structure based on universal suffrage, and the equality of all nationalities in
Lithuania. In later years, in recognition of its historic importance, Lithuanians
came to call this political convention the “Great Diet” of Vilnius.

GREAT NORTHERN WAR (1700–1721). One of the most destructive

conflicts in Lithuania’s history, involving Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, Russia, and, at times, Denmark, Saxony, and Prussia. The
war began when Augustus II of Poland-Lithuania—in alliance with Den-
mark and Russia, which sought to end Swedish hegemony in northern Eu-
rope—invaded Livonia in order to drive out the Swedes. However, Augustus
failed in his campaign, while his Russian allies suffered a disastrous defeat at
Narva. A military alliance between Tsar Peter I and Augustus was negotiated
at Biržai in Lithuania, but the Swedes defeated both the Commonwealth and
Russian forces. The armies of Sweden’s King Charles XII invaded Lithuania
and occupied Vilnius in 1702. Lithuania suffered immensely as Swedish
forces and the Commonwealth’s Russian allies swept through the country,
ravaging the countryside. After the decisive defeat of Charles XII by Peter
the Great at Poltava in 1709, the Russian army in effect occupied most of the

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 GRINIUS, KAZYS • 121

Grand Duchy for several years. The Treaty of Nystadt in 1721, by which the
Swedes ceded Estonia and northern Latvia to Russia, ended the war.
The Great Northern War had disastrous demographic and political conse-
quences both for the Lithuanian people and the Commonwealth as a whole.
The plague of 1708–1711, which accompanied the war, killed as much as a
third of the entire Lithuanian population, although in the west—Samogitia
and East Prussia—the death rate was even higher. In political terms, the de-
cline of Swedish influence in the Baltic and the assertion of Russia’s power
increasingly transformed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth into a Rus-
sian protectorate.

GRINIUS, KAZYS (1866–1950). President of the Republic of Lithuania

from 7 June to 17 December 1926 and a prominent leader of the Lithu-
anian national movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN); born in
Marijampolė district on 17 December 1866. After completing secondary
school in the town of Marijampolė, he went on to study medicine at the Uni-
versity of Moscow, where he graduated in 1893. Grinius was the president of
the Lithuanian Student Association in Moscow, and upon his return to Lithu-
ania in 1894, he became engaged in anti-tsarist activities. He was one of the
leaders of the national movement that coalesced around the monthly Varpas
(The Bell), and he edited the journal after the death of its founder, Vincas
Kudirka. Grinius was instrumental in founding the Lithuanian Democratic
Party, which later formed the basis of the Peasant Populist Union. Because
of his political activities, Grinius was arrested by the tsarist police in 1906 for
the first of several times. In 1915, he was evacuated to Russia. At the end of
World War I, he made his way to France where he headed efforts to repatri-
ate Lithuanians from western Europe.
In 1920, Grinius was elected to Lithuania’s Constituent Assembly and
served as prime minister from 1920 to 1922. When a coalition of Peas-
ant Populists and Social Democrats won the 1926 parliamentary elections,
Grinius was chosen president, naming Mykolas Sleževičius prime minister.
His left-of-center administration provoked considerable opposition from the
Christian Democrats and rightist elements, who accused the government of,
among other things, tolerating Communist activity, hostility to the Catholic
Church, and an overly permissive attitude toward national minorities. On the
night of 16–17 December 1926, a group of army officers, supported by stu-
dents and some Christian Democrats, overthrew the government and forced
Grinius’s resignation on 19 December, after which they established a regime
headed by the leader of the Nationalist Union, Antanas Smetona.
After the coup, Grinius worked in the city government of Kaunas as the
director of health services and published numerous articles on public health
issues. In 1942, he was detained and held under house arrest by German

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 122 • GRIŠKEVIČIUS, PETRAS

police for protesting Nazi occupation policies. In 1947, he immigrated to the

United States. Grinius died in Chicago on 4 June 1950.

GRIŠKEVIČIUS, PETRAS (1924–1987). First secretary of the Lithuanian

Communist Party (LCP), from 1974 to 1987; born on 19 July 1924 in
Rokiškis district. In 1940, Griškevičius joined the Komjaunimas, the Lithu-
anian Communist youth organization, and during World War II, he fought
with the Soviet partisans. Griškevičius began work in the propaganda section
of the LCP Central Committee in 1948 and became prominent in the Vilnius
city Party machine in the 1950s. In 1964, he was promoted to head the LCP
Central Committee’s organizational section, becoming became Party boss
of Vilnius in 1971. When long-time Party chief Antanas Sniečkus died in
1974, Griškevičius was chosen first secretary. During his years as party boss,
Griškevičius gained a reputation as a Kremlin loyalist, a stolid supporter of
Leonid Brezhnev’s conservative policies, including Russification, and a
staunch enemy of the religious and nationalist dissident movement that had
arisen in Lithuania during the 1970s and 1980s. Griškevičius died in Vilnius
on 14 November 1987. His death coincided with the intensification of the
independence and reform movements in Lithuania.

GRODNO. Lithuanian: Gardinas; Belarusian: Hrodna. Historically impor-

tant economic, cultural, and administrative center of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania; 2008 population: 349,700. Grodno, part of the Republic of Be-
larus since 1991, is located on the Nemunas River southeast of Vilnius. The
original inhabitants of the region were the Yotvingians. Grodno is mentioned
for the first time in 1198 in the Volhynian Chronicle; it came under Lithu-
anian rule in the mid-13th century and remained part of the Grand Duchy un-
til 1795. The city was a favorite of many Lithuanian rulers, such as Vytautas
(R. 1392–1430) and King Stefan Batory, who died here in 1586. Under the
provisions of the Union of Lublin, every third diet of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth was mandated to meet in Grodno. After the region came
into the Russian Empire, Grodno became the capital of one of the two prov-
inces or gubernias into which Lithuania was divided, the other being Vilnius.
Most of the population of the area was Slavicized by the early 20th century,
with only small and isolated Lithuanian-speaking communities surviving in
the region. The Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty of 12 July 1920 granted
Grodno to Lithuania, but the city became part of Poland from 1920 until
1939, after which it was incorporated into the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist
Republic.
Grodno is the birthplace of the well-known Polish writer Eliza Orzeszkowa
(1841–1910), whose writings describe the lives of the Polish, Belarusian,

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 GRYBAUSKAITĖ, DALIA • 123

Lithuanian, and Jewish people of the region, and who became a literary
model for Lithuanian women writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

GRUNWALD, BATTLE OF. German: Tannenberg or Grünwald; Lithu-

anian: Žalgiris. One of the decisive battles of medieval Europe, fought on
15 July 1410 between an allied Polish-Lithuanian force and the Teutonic
Knights, in Prussia near the villages of Tannenberg and Grunwald. The lat-
ter name, meaning “Green Woods,” has been incorporated into Polish and
Lithuanian historiography. In the fall of 1409, King Władysław II Jogaila of
Poland and his cousin, Grand Duke Vytautas, met to plan a war against the
Teutonic Knights. The two rulers organized a combined Polish-Lithuanian
force, which eventually included Russians, Tatars, and Czech volunteers,
and invaded Prussia in the summer of 1410. On 15 July, this force, variously
estimated by historians between 30,000 and 100,000 troops, confronted a
somewhat smaller but better-equipped army of Teutonic Knights and their
western European volunteers. After a vicious battle of some ten hours, the
Knights’ army was destroyed and much of its leadership killed, including the
order’s grand master, Ulrich von Junginen.
Most scholars consider the Battle of Grunwald one of the turning points
of central European history. The battle signified the downfall of the military
power of the German Teutonic Knights and secured the Polish and Lithu-
anian states for several centuries against threats from the west. The site is now
in Poland, where a monument has been constructed to celebrate the event.

GRYBAUSKAITĖ, DALIA (1956– ). Politician, stateswoman, and presi-

dent of Lithuania, born in Vilnius on 1 March 1956. In 1976, Grybauskaitė
enrolled in Zhdanov University (later St. Petersburg State University), where
she studied political economy while at the same time working at a hide and
fur factory. After completing her degree, Grybauskaitė returned to Vilnius,
where she taught at the Vilnius Party Higher School. In 1988, she defended
her doctoral thesis in Moscow. In 1990–1991, Grybauskaitė studied at the
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and then returned to
Lithuania, where she worked in the Foreign Ministry primarily on economic
matters pertaining to the European Union (EU). In 1996, she was appointed
plenipotentiary minister in the Lithuanian embassy in Washington. From
1999 to 2004, Grybauskaitė served in succession as deputy minister of fi-
nance, vice minister of foreign affairs, and minister of finance.
From May to November 2004, Grybauskaitė worked in Brussels as the
European commissioner for education and culture, and then as the EU’s
commissioner for financial programming and the budget until July 2009.
As Valdas Adamkus’s term came to an end, Grybauskaitė’s popularity and

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 124 • GRYBAUSKAITĖ, DALIA

reputation for competence in tackling tough economic issues made her a

natural front-runner in the field of presidential candidates. She formally an-
nounced her candidacy on 26 February 2009 and faced little serious opposi-
tion during the campaign. Grybauskaitė garnered 68 percent of the vote and
won by the widest margin yet recorded in the country’s presidential elections.
She was inaugurated on 12 July 2009 as Lithuania’s first woman head of
state.

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 H
HELSINKI GROUP, LITHUANIAN. Officially the Lithuanian Public
Group for Furthering the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the
USSR. Lithuanian human rights group that worked to protest human rights
abuses in Soviet Lithuania during the 1970s and early 1980s. The Lithu-
anian Helsinki Group was founded on 25 November 1976 by Viktoras Pet-
kus; Jesuit priest Karolis Garuckas; poet Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė; Eitar
Finkelstein, a Jewish “refusenik”; and poet Tomas Venclova, the son of a
prominent Soviet Lithuanian writer. The group, following the example of
the Moscow Helsinki Group founded in May 1975, based its legal challenge
to the Soviet regime on Article VII of the Final Act of the Conference of
Security and Cooperation in Europe ratified in 1975—popularly known as
the Helsinki Accords—which stipulated that the signatories were required
to respect freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. The group publicly
protested national and religious persecution in Lithuania.
The arrest of Petkus and the persecution of the other members hampered
the activities of the dissidents and the group ceased to be active by the early
1980s. However, the Lithuanian Helsinki Group served as an example to the
broader anti-Soviet dissident movement, and many of its activities were taken
up by the Catholic Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Believers. See
also CHRONICLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN LITHUANIA; RESIS-
TANCE MOVEMENTS.

HENRY III OF VALOIS (1551–1589). Brief ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth. The son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici, and brother
of French king Charles IX, Henry was the first ruler to follow the extinction
of the Jagiellonian line of kings that ended with the death of Sigismund II
Augustus (R. 1548–72). He was elected to the Polish throne in May 1572
and was crowned in Warsaw on 21 February 1574. Henry’s election caused
consternation among the Commonwealth’s Protestants because of Henry’s
mother’s role in the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of the Hugue-
nots in 1572. Having learned of Charles IX’s death in France, Henry secretly
left Cracow for Paris in June 1574. Attempts by Polish-Lithuanian nobles to

125

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 126 • HERMANN VON SALZA

persuade him to return were unsuccessful. Henry was murdered in Paris dur-
ing a struggle for the French throne on 2 August 1589.

HERMANN VON SALZA (c. 1179–1239). The fourth grand master of

the Teutonic Order, who played a decisive role in establishing the Teutonic
Knights as a major force in the Baltic Sea region. Hermann was born in
Thuringia and little is known of his early life. He was elected grand master in
1209 and soon thereafter took his Knights to Transylvania to fight the pagan
Cumans at the request of King Andrew II of Hungary. In 1226, Konrad of
Mazovia requested that the Teutonic Knights assist him in defending against
the Prussians. The arrival of the Knights in Prussia effectively initiated the
Baltic crusade, which provoked numerous wars with Lithuania and was to
last into the early 15th century. In 1237, Hermann persuaded the pope to al-
low the incorporation of the Knights of the Sword, the Livonian Order, into
his order, which considerably increased the military power of the German
crusaders in the Baltic. He died in Salerno on 20 March 1239. Because of his
role as mediator between Frederick II and the papacy, Hermann was influen-
tial in medieval European politics. Nationalist German historians have hailed
Hermann von Salza for his pioneering role in bringing German culture and
civilization to the Baltic region.

HOLOCAUST (1941–1944). During the German occupation of Lithuania

in World War II, more than 90 percent of the country’s Jewish community
was annihilated. The total number of Jews killed, including those brought in
from other European countries, as well as Lithuanian Jews killed outside the
country, is estimated to be between 200,000 and 250,000. In 2005, the Lithua-
nian government’s historical commission researching Nazi crimes concluded
that between 190,000 and 206,000 of the Jewish victims of the genocide
were Lithuanian citizens. As many as 15,000 Jews survived the Holocaust by
escaping eastward in June 1941, and another few thousand were rescued by
Lithuanian Gentiles. The Holocaust was the single largest massacre of civil-
ians in the modern history of Lithuania.
Mass Shootings in 1941. The Nazi plan of destruction was initiated during
the very first days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The killings
were supervised by four battalion-size special Nazi action groups of the
German Security Police, known in German as the Einsatzgruppen, which
followed the army and whose task was to pacify the occupied areas and elimi-
nate elements perceived as hostile to the Reich. Einsatzgruppe A, led by SS
Gen. Walter Stalecker, followed Army Group North into the Baltic. In most
of Lithuania, the responsibility for anti-Jewish and anti-Communist actions

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 HOLOCAUST • 127

were in the hands of a company of Stalecker’s unit, Einsatzkommando 3 (EK

3), under SS Col. Karl Jaeger.
During the first days following the German invasion, EK 3 organized a
number of murderous actions against Jews. In the latter part of June 1941,
several thousand Jews were murdered in pogroms and executions inspired
by EK 3, primarily in Kaunas, other large cities, and border areas. Many
of the killers were recruited from the local populace, local police units,
and Lithuanian Red Army deserters and prisoners of war. Some of the
Lithuanian police battalions organized by the Nazis (known in German as
the Schutzmannschaften) participated in the massacres, although the German
Security Police exercised command and control of executions.
During the first weeks of the German occupation, thousands of Jewish
men whom the Nazis considered of military age were murdered, primarily
in forts outside Kaunas. Sometime in late July or early August, the Nazis
decided to extend the murders to older men, women, and children, especially
in the countryside. Between mid-August and late October, most of Lithu-
ania’s centuries-old provincial and small-town Jewish communities, about
two-thirds of the country’s Jews, were effectively exterminated in nearly 200
shooting operations by roving mobile units commanded by the Germans with
the participation of local auxiliaries and police. On 1 December 1941, Colo-
nel Jaeger reported to Berlin that more than 137,000 people, mostly Jews, had
been shot under his supervision. It has been estimated that about 118,000 of
the persons listed were Jewish inhabitants within what are now the borders of
the Republic of Lithuania.
Ghettoization and Continued Genocide Operations. With the onset of
winter weather, the Nazis largely discontinued the mass shooting operations
carried out by the mobile units. Most of the approximately 35,000 surviving
Jews who were not in hiding were herded into the ghettos of Vilnius, Kaunas,
and Šiauliai, where many of them were gradually worked to death during
the remainder of the Nazi occupation. The population of the ghettos was pe-
riodically reduced through selections and shootings. The Vilnius ghetto was
liquidated in September 1943, and a number of inmates were sent to Estonia.
During the German retreat of July 1944, the Kaunas and Šiauliai ghettos were
also liquidated, and most of the Jews were sent to Dachau, Stutthof, and other
concentration camps.
The two most notorious sites where killings continued after December
1941 were the Paneriai (Polish: Ponary) woods near Vilnius and the Ninth
Fort outside Kaunas. At Paneriai, nearly 100,000 people, mostly Jews, were
shot and buried in mass graves between 1941 and 1944. Much of the killing
there was carried out by the so-called Special Platoon (Lithuanian: Ypatingas

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 128 • HORODŁO, ACTS OF

Būrys), a unit of between 50 and 100 men under the supervision of the Ger-
man Security Police. An estimated 30,000 people, mostly Jews, were mur-
dered during the occupation at the Ninth Fort.
Postwar Legacies and Remembrance. During the period of Soviet rule, the
Jewish specificity of the Holocaust was rarely acknowledged, and most kill-
ing sites were commemorated as places where peaceful “Soviet people” had
been murdered. Since the restoration of independence in 1990, the Lithuanian
government has acknowledged the Holocaust as the genocide of the Jews.
Many of the monuments in the provinces have been protected, marked, and
relabeled to reflect the Jewish character of the mass murders of the summer
and fall of 1941. The anniversary of the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto, 23
September, has been declared the Day of the Genocide of Lithuania’s Jews,
with a solemn commemoration at Paneriai. The Ninth Fort houses a museum
and is the site of a large monument to the victims. Government agencies
have undertaken Holocaust education in the schools and wider community.
The number of Lithuanian scholars engaged in research on the Holocaust and
Lithuanian-language historical literature dealing with the Holocaust has
grown significantly since the early 1990s.
During a state visit to Israel in March 1995, President Algirdas Brazaus-
kas formally expressed regret over the participation of some Lithuanians in
the Holocaust. On the other hand, the Holocaust continues to present difficul-
ties in the political life of the country. While the charges in the Western press
that the government was massively pardoning former Nazi collaborators were
later shown to be overblown, the government has come under criticism for
failing to try to punish perpetrators of the genocide living in Lithuania and the
diaspora. In 1998, Lithuania’s president announced the formation of the In-
ternational Commission to Evaluate the Crimes of the Soviet and Nazi Occu-
pation Regimes. The commission’s group charged with examining the history
of the Nazi occupation has sponsored conferences and published a number of
studies detailing the history of anti-Semitism, as well as the persecution and
murder of the Jews. Nevertheless, the decision by Lithuanian prosecutors in
2007 to investigate crimes allegedly committed by Jewish partisans during
the war caused consternation both internationally and within the country. The
prosecutors soon abandoned the case, but the incident renewed the controver-
sies over the legacy and remembrance of the Holocaust in Lithuania. See also
KANIŪKAI MASSACRE; POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY.

HORODŁO, ACTS OF. Agreements concluded by the nobility of Poland

and Lithuania in October 1413 at the town of Horodło on the Bug River near
the Lithuanian-Polish border. The Acts of Horodło were intended to solidify
the 1386 dynastic alliance of Poland and Lithuania in order to provide a

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 HYMANS PROJECT • 129

stronger front against the Teutonic Knights. The first act of Horodło drawn
up by King Jogaila (Władysław II) of Poland and his cousin Vytautas pro-
vided that, following the death of the latter, Lithuania would choose its own
ruler subject to Polish acquiescence. Conversely, a new Polish king could not
be selected without Lithuanian approval. Two other documents, one ratified
by the Lithuanian nobility and the other by the Polish nobility, provided for
similar administrative patterns in both countries and granted 47 Lithuanian
families Polish coats of arms. The Acts of Horodło had little immediate prac-
tical effect on Lithuania, since the Grand Duchy’s rulers and nobility tended
to run the country’s affairs with scant regard for Polish interests through
much of the 15th and 16th centuries. However, historians consider that, in the
longer term, the Horodło agreements initiated a process of gradual Poloniza-
tion of Lithuania’s governing elite as well as the country’s social, cultural,
and political institutions. See also KRĖVA, ACT OF.

HYMANS PROJECT. In 1921, Belgian diplomat Paul Hymans (1865–

1941) crafted proposals, known in Lithuanian historiography as the Hymans
Project, to solve the Polish-Lithuanian crisis over Vilnius. Hymans’s first
proposal envisioned a Lithuanian federation made up of two Swiss-like can-
tons, Vilnius and Kaunas. The federated Lithuanian state would closely coor-
dinate economic policy, military matters, and foreign relations with Poland,
similar in some ways to the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Both Polish
and Lithuanian representatives rejected this first proposal. On 3 September
1921, Hymans submitted a second draft eliminating the idea of a Lithuanian
federation and proposing that Vilnius be made an autonomous canton within
Lithuania. Unwilling to give up Vilnius, Poland rejected this second proposal.
For their part, Lithuanians came to believe that the Hymans Project would
simply turn their country into a Polish protectorate. The failure of Hymans’s
mediation marked the last major international initiative to resolve the Vilnius
Question.

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 I
IGNALINA. Region in northeastern Lithuania best known for the nuclear
power plant of the same name located in the town of Visaginas (2008 popula-
tion: 28,500). Construction on the power plant began in the mid-1970s, and
the first unit of this Chernobyl-style reactor came on line in 1983. At the
time, this was the most powerful nuclear plant in the world, producing some
1,500 megawatts of electricity. In order to accommodate the huge immigrant
workforce needed for the plant, local villages were razed and the town of
Sniečkus was constructed. Because of the influx of workers, more than 80
percent of the town, renamed Visaginas in 1992, consists of ethnic minorities,
the majority Russians. The Ignalina nuclear plant produced nearly 80 percent
of the country’s electric power.
Plans for additional reactors were shelved after the Chernobyl accident of
April 1986 and rising public concerns about the plant’s environmental im-
pact. As a condition for European Union membership, Lithuania agreed to
close the Ignalina plant by the end of 2009.

INDUSTRY. Before the Mid-19th Century. For most of the country’s history,
agriculture, which employed nearly 90 percent of Lithuania’s population
until the 20th century, had been the mainstay of the Lithuanian economy.
During the medieval period, most manufactured goods, especially weaponry
and luxury items, were imported from western Europe, primarily by Ger-
man merchants of the Hanseatic League, which included many Baltic towns,
as well as Novgorod, places with which Lithuanians had long-standing ties.
Some of the earliest manufacturing consisted of weapons production and
other crafts such as leather-processing, performed in large part by foreign
craftsmen and blacksmiths invited to Lithuania by the grand dukes. Gedimi-
nas invited foreign artisans to settle in Lithuania during the early 14th cen-
tury. Grand Duke Vytautas invited construction specialists from Prussia in
the early 15th century, and it is known that a number of German specialists
worked in Kaunas, producing wax and textiles as well as constructing mills.
By the 16th century, an arsenal in Vilnius produced artillery pieces and bells.

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 132 • INDUSTRY

The destructive mid-17th-century wars with Muscovy and the plague that
accompanied the Great Northern War during 1708–1711 devastated Lithu-
ania’s fledgling manufacturing centers. During the mid-18th century, the
Grand Duchy’s crown treasurer Antoni Tyzenhauz attempted to revive
industry by establishing manufacturing concerns on the Crown estates uti-
lizing compulsory peasant labor, but this policy provoked social protest and
eventually proved counterproductive.
Lithuania’s industrial development in the modern sense began after the
imposition of tsarist rule in 1795, but it proceeded exceedingly slowly and
proved unable to absorb the growing class of underemployed and land-
less villagers. There was only one large factory (employing 60 workers) in
Lithuania before the late 1850s. Only a half dozen of the traditional manorial
manufactories were of comparable size, and a third of the workforce in these
enterprises consisted of serfs. The most important “industrial” pursuit was
distilling liquor, mostly in tiny manorial manufactories: there were nearly
1,800 distilleries and 300 breweries in 1858. Most of the rest of Lithuanian
industry of the early 19th century consisted of tiny manufactories employ-
ing skilled craftsmen and peasant labor producing glass, paper, and textiles.
Steam power was little known in Lithuania before the 1850s.
Mid-19th Century to 1940. Lithuania’s first railroad became operational in
April 1861, only a month after Tsar Alexander II issued the historic Emanci-
pation Manifesto, which symbolized a new era of modernization. However,
real industrial expansion began only during the last quarter of the century; in
Lithuania, the proportion of industrial workers to the general populace at the
turn of the century was at least three times lower than for the tsarist empire
as a whole, although the standard of living of the peasantry was higher than
in Russia. By 1879, the output value of larger enterprises had increased
tenfold since 1860, and it then tripled between 1880 and 1900—but much of
the production remained in the traditional areas of distilling, food processing,
and leather. At the same time, financed largely by German capital and stimu-
lated by railroad construction, the metalworks industry grew appreciably, for
example, at the Westphalia and Tillman Brothers firm in Kaunas. Industrial
development expanded unevenly: some parts of the country, such as south-
western Lithuania, experienced almost no industrialization. In the Klaipėda
region, which was part of Prussia, wood processing emerged as an important
industry. Until World War I, the majority of the industrial workforce in
Lithuania was Jewish and Polish.
After the restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1918, industrial
growth was initially hampered by the separation from the Russian transpor-
tation and marketing infrastructure, despite the addition of the industries of
the formerly German Klaipėda territory, which produced cellulose and paper

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 INDUSTRY • 133

products. However, between 1929 and 1939, Lithuania’s industrial produc-

tion expanded by some 350 percent, led by the rapid development of food
processing, which accounted for over 40 percent of the value of industrial
output by 1937, much of it from the large Maistas concern in Kaunas. Wood
processing was centered in Klaipėda; in addition, the older industries, such
as textiles and leather, also expanded production. There were nearly 100,000
industrial workers employed in Lithuania by 1940. About a third of industry
was financed by foreign investment, primarily British and German. Some
400 power stations supplied electricity, nearly half of it produced from coal.
The seizure of Klaipėda by Nazi Germany in March 1939 and the outbreak
of World War II, which greatly reduced exports, dealt a setback to the fledg-
ling Lithuanian industry.
The Soviet Occupation and After. Virtually all of the country’s industrial
establishments were nationalized following the Soviet occupation of Lithu-
ania in June 1940 and the subsequent entrenchment of Communist rule. The
Nazi occupation of 1941–1944, wartime destruction, and postwar violence
occasioned a sharp decline in production; it was not until 1950 that industrial
output reached prewar levels. A rapid period of industrialization then fol-
lowed, and by 1970 nearly half of Lithuania’s population was employed in
industry. An influx of more than 300,000 primarily Russian and other Slavic
arrivals from the Soviet Union after 1945 helped fill the republic’s labor
force, which had been depleted by deportations and other population losses.
Special emphasis was placed on the development of heavy industry, such
as chemicals (in Kėdainiai) and metallurgy, while energy was enhanced by
huge new power plants: a fuel-based new complex in Elektrėnai just outside
Vilnius and the enormous Ignalina nuclear power plant of the Chernobyl type
in the northeastern corner of the country. While the new industry produced
some relatively high-quality consumer goods, especially televisions and other
appliances, the Soviet industrialization program came at a great cost. In addi-
tion to the demographic changes and the subjugation of Lithuanian industry
to the demands of the Soviet economy rather than to local needs, environ-
mental damage became a serious issue by the 1980s. The construction of the
wasteful and inefficient Soviet industrial infrastructure meant that much of
Lithuania’s economic capacity consisted of what some Western businessmen
termed “industrial museums.” During the late 1980s, industrial production
declined sharply, with a consequent rise in unemployment.
The general collapse of the Soviet economy meant that, after the restora-
tion of independence in 1990, Lithuania was faced with the challenge of
upgrading its industry to compete in new markets. In general, during the
first decade of independence, industry declined in relation to other sectors of
the economy. In 1999, industrial production fell by 14 percent. During the

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 134 • INSURRECTION OF 1830–1831

period from 1990 to 2000, the workforce engaged in the electronics industry
declined from 25,000 to about 10,000. The chemical, textiles, and wood-pro-
cessing sectors did considerably better, and there have been new investments
in biotechnology and pharmaceutics. The rapid growth of the economy after
the decline of the late 1990s considerably boosted the industrial sector, which
employed about 30 percent of the workforce and recorded an industrial pro-
duction growth rate of 7.3 percent in 2005. The severe economic downturn
that began in late 2008 led to a steep decline in industrial output: an annual
decline of 18.5 percent was recorded in May 2009. See also TRADE.

INSURRECTION OF 1830–1831. An uprising against tsarist rule in Poland

and Lithuania that sought to restore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The tolerant reign of Tsar Alexander I (R. 1801–1825) allowed the prolif-
eration of secret patriotic societies influenced by liberal and romantic ideas,
particularly among university students and army officers, many of whom
were dissatisfied that the Lithuanian lands did not enjoy the same autonomy
provisions granted to the Kingdom of Poland by the Congress of Vienna.
The July Revolution of 1830 in France and the military preparations of the
reactionary Tsar Nicholas I (R. 1825–1855) in response to European revolu-
tions provoked an anti-Russian coup among liberal army officers in Warsaw
on 29 November 1830.
The Polish revolt stimulated unrest in Lithuania, and during the spring of
1831, a number of Lithuanian gentry, such as Anupras Jacevičius (Polish:
Anupry Jacowicz; 1797–1836) from Telšiai and the charismatic commander
Emilia Plater (1806–1831), organized forces to fight the Russians. Between
March and June, the Lithuanian rebels captured a number of towns, including
Šiauliai, Panevėžys, Ukmergė, and Kėdainiai. In April, the insurgent forces
managed to surround Vilnius itself, but were unable to seriously threaten the
city; however, in much of the countryside, the rebels succeeded in temporar-
ily establishing their own local authority. In June, Polish rebels under the
command of Gen. Dezydery Chłapowski (1788–1879) and a joint Polish-
Lithuanian force under Antoni Gielgud (1792–1831) reinforced the Lithu-
anian insurgents, who then seized Kaunas and stormed Vilnius. The rebels
were defeated by a superior Russian force on 19 June, and the insurgent army
was pushed westward into East Prussia in the following month, while the
Russians rapidly pacified the rest of the country. Guerrilla bands were active
in Lithuania until the fall of 1831, but the rebellion came to an end with the
surrender of the Polish rebels in November. It is estimated that at their peak
the Lithuanian rebel forces numbered as many as 30,000 fighters. Aside from
the military superiority of the Russians, weakness of leadership, disunity, and

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 INSURRECTION OF 1863–1864 • 135

the failure to garner sufficient support from the peasantry were contributing
factors to the rebels’ failures.

INSURRECTION OF 1863–1864. The second of the large-scale armed

uprisings against Russian rule during the 19th century. Russia’s defeat in
the Crimean War and the plans of Tsar Alexander II (R. 1855–1881) to abol-
ish serfdom encouraged much of the gentry and intelligentsia to hope for
reforms, such as increased administrative autonomy and restoration of the
University of Vilnius, as well as an end to the Russification and anti-Cath-
olic policies pursued by Nicholas I (R. 1825–1855). There was an increase
in agrarian unrest and a period of patriotic marches called “manifestations,”
which intensified after Russian troops killed five Polish demonstrators in
Warsaw in February 1861. On 18 August 1861, between 60 and 80 demon-
strators were killed by Cossacks in Vilnius, and martial law was declared in
the Vilnius, Kaunas, and Grodno gubernias by Governor-General Vladimir
Nazimov. By 1862, a secret Lithuanian Provincial Committee was organized
by Konstanty Kalinowski, dominated by a radical faction known as the
“Reds”; the more socially conservative Lithuanian gentry within the anti-
Russian movement came to be known as “Whites.”
On 22 January 1863, the clandestine Polish National Central Committee
in Warsaw proclaimed an insurrection against the Russians, and a week later
it issued a manifesto to the Lithuanians urging them to join in a fraternal
struggle for liberation. On 1 February 1863, the Lithuanian Committee pro-
claimed a revolutionary Provisional Government for Lithuania and Belarus,
promising land to those who joined the uprising and pledging equal civil
rights for all citizens. At the end of February, the conservative White faction
led by Jakob Gieysztor (Lithuanian: Jokūbas Goštautas; 1827–1897) gained
more influence in the revolutionary government.
By the spring of 1863, the rebellion had engulfed most of Lithuania. It is
estimated that the rebel forces numbered some 15,000 men, facing a Rus-
sian army of nearly 100,000. The rebels were under the overall command
of Zygmunt Sierakowski, whose own detachment grew to a force of more
than 2,000 men; however, his forces were defeated at Biržai on 27 April.
Sierakowski was captured and hanged on 15 June. Among the most effective
rebel units were the Lithuanian peasant forces in Samogitia commanded by
the radical priest Antanas Mackevičius. Although much of the peasantry
supported the insurrection, the Lithuanian rebels were unable to concentrate
their forces or gain significant support from outside, despite considerable
sympathy for the Polish and Lithuanian struggle in western Europe. By the
end of 1863, the insurgents had been decisively defeated and had lost their

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 136 • IRON WOLF

leaders: Mackevičius and Kalinowski were executed on 28 December 1863

and 10 March 1864, respectively. The last clashes of the insurrection were
reported in October 1864 in western Lithuania. The rebellion was followed
by a wave of repression masterminded by Governor-General Mikhail N.
Muravyev, who arrived in Vilnius in May 1863 and directed hundreds of
executions, as well as the deportation of thousands of rebels and their sym-
pathizers to Siberia.
The insurrection of 1863–1864 differed substantially from the insurrec-
tion of 1830–1831. Most noticeable was the participation of the Lithuanian
and Belarusian peasantry, whose leaders emphasized the villagers’ national
aspirations along with those of the Poles. The events of 1863 signaled the
emergence of the Lithuanian-speaking peasantry as a political force and
marked the last time that Poles and Lithuanians fought together for a res-
toration of the old binational Commonwealth. See also NATIONALISM,
LITHUANIAN; PRESS BAN; VALANČIUS, MOTIEJUS.

IRON WOLF. Lithuanian: Geležinis Vilkas. A medieval Lithuanian his-

toric symbol and story, which inspired the name of a radical paramilitary
organization established in the 1920s. In Lithuanian legend, a howling iron
wolf appeared in Grand Duke Gediminas’s dream while he slept in one of
the valleys in what is now Vilnius. His high priest Lizdeika interpreted the
apparition as a sign to build an impregnable castle and a city on the site that
would become world famous. The legend explaining the founding of Vilnius,
which bears some resemblance to the story of Romulus and Remus, probably
originated in the early 16th century when theories of Roman origins of the
Lithuanian people became fashionable among the nobility.
The Iron Wolf nationalist group originated in the mid-1920s, primarily
among young right-wing army officers and students dissatisfied with the
left-of-center government of President Kazys Grinius and Prime Minister
Mykolas Sleževičius. After the Nationalist Union took power in December
1926, most of the members of the Iron Wolf became ardent supporters of Au-
gustinas Voldemaras and grew increasingly critical of President Antanas
Smetona’s relatively moderate policies. The Iron Wolf enjoyed a brief period
of legality as a sporting association, which served as a front for vigilant radi-
cal nationalists engaged in clandestine opposition to Smetona and elements
in Lithuania viewed as insufficiently nationalist. The members’ penchant for
violent intimidation of opponents, and their secret initiation ceremony, which
included swearing an oath on a dagger, gave the organization a sinister image.
The ideology of the Iron Wolf had similarities to Italian fascism. Soon after
the German invasion of Lithuania in 1941, former Iron Wolfers hoped to

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 IRON WOLF • 137

control the country through the openly fascist Lithuanian Nationalist Party
(Lithuanian: Lietuvių Nacionalistų Partija, LNP), but this group proved un-
popular and the movement was banned by the Nazis because the LNP insisted
on the establishment of an independent Lithuanian state. See also LITHU-
ANIAN ACTIVIST FRONT.

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 138 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 J
JAGIEŁŁO. See JOGAILA.

JESUITS. Catholic religious order—officially the Society of Jesus, founded

in 1534—that played an important role in Lithuania’s cultural history. In
1569, four Jesuits arrived in the country to found the college that later grew
into the University of Vilnius. Eventually the order established a number of
new schools throughout the Grand Duchy. In their efforts to halt the spread
of Protestantism, the Jesuits sponsored the publication of the gospels, hym-
nals, and other religious literature in Lithuanian. In 1608, a Lithuanian Jesuit
province was established, which included Livonia and Prussia. The Lithu-
anian province had more than 1,000 members when the order was suppressed
in 1773 by the Vatican.
The Jesuits returned to Lithuania in 1923, opening a prestigious secondary
school in Kaunas and in 1936 establishing a Jesuit vice province in Lithu-
ania. Before the Soviet occupation, there were over 100 Jesuits in Lithuania.
Many fled to the West in 1944, while the Soviet regime persecuted those
remaining in Lithuania. In the West, the Lithuanian Jesuits have ministered to
the Lithuanian diaspora, establishing religious centers in Chicago, Uruguay,
and Brazil.
Since 1990, the Jesuits have once again become active in Lithuania and
have opened gymnasium-level secondary schools in Vilnius and Kaunas. In
2009, the Archbishop of Kaunas and the Bishop of Telšiai were members
of the Jesuit Order. See also COUNTER-REFORMATION; EDUCATION;
REFORMATION.

JEWS. From the Medieval Period until 1918. While it is known that some
Jews lived in Lithuania as early as the 13th century, large-scale Jewish settle-
ment dates from the reign of Grand Duke Vytautas (R. 1392–1430). The ma-
jority of the early Yiddish-speaking Jewish settlers hailed from Poland and
Germany. The first known charters of settlement, or privileges, were issued
by Vytautas to the Jews of Trakai, Grodno, Brest, and Lutsk in 1388–1389.
The charters were modeled after similar documents in central and eastern

139

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 140 • JEWS

Europe mandating Jewish religious and cultural autonomy. There was a brief
period of expulsion between 1495 and 1503, as well as tensions between
the nobility and Jewish communities, but on the whole, the Grand Duchy’s
government did not systematically persecute the Jews. It is estimated that in
the mid-16th century, there were some 120,000 Jews in the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania. Many were killed or fled the country as a result of the rebellion of
the Cossack leader Bohdan Chmielnicki (Khmelnytski) and the Muscovite
invasion of the mid-17th century.
By the end of the 18th century, the number of Jews in the Grand Duchy,
widely known as Litvaks, or people of Lithuania, can be estimated at about
250,000. However, most Litvaks lived in what is today Belarus, outside the
ethnic Lithuanian lands, that is, the territory that approximates the current
borders of the Republic of Lithuania. Vilnius became one of the most impor-
tant centers of Talmudic scholarship and Jewish learning in general, mainly
because of the famous Gaon of Vilna, Elijah Ben Solomon (1720–1797).
This gained Vilnius a reputation as the “Jerusalem of Europe.”
The imperial Russian government, which acquired most of Lithuania in
1795, intended to drive the Jews from the countryside into the cities, in ac-
cordance with the practice in the tsarist empire’s Pale of Settlement, but the
Napoleonic invasion interrupted this movement. Most of Lithuania’s Jews
eventually did settle in towns or engaged in small trade or crafts in the vil-
lages. On the eve of World War I, there were only a few hundred Jewish
farmers.
In 1900, Vilnius had a population of nearly 150,000 inhabitants, of whom
a plurality of 40 percent were Jews. Most were conservative Orthodox Jews;
Hasidism was another powerful strain among Lithuanian Jewry. At the turn
of the 20th century, the traditional Litvak community of the Russian Em-
pire numbered nearly 1.5 million. Within this group, strong secular trends
emerged, such as the Socialist Bund and the Zionist Movement.
Jews in the Interwar Republic. The emergence of independent Lithuania
transformed the country’s interethnic relationships. For the first time since
the late medieval period, the Lithuanian-speaking majority ruled the country.
The support of much of the country’s Jewish leadership for an independent
Lithuanian state with its capital in Vilnius ensured a promising start for the
Jewish community’s position in the new state. The government census of
1923 recorded more than 154,000 Jews in the Republic, 7.2 percent of the
population, the largest national minority in Lithuania. During the early 1920s,
Lithuania’s official policy toward the Jewish minority emphasized autonomy.
A Minister of Jewish Affairs was part of the Lithuanian Cabinet until 1924,
after which Jewish political autonomy was curtailed.

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 JEWS • 141

However, even after the abolition of the Jewish Ministry and the Nation-
alist Union’s seizure of power following the coup of December 1926, the
Jews maintained communal autonomy in religious and educational affairs.
In 1936, there were 108 elementary schools and 20 secondary institutions
with Hebrew or Yiddish as the languages of instruction. Before 1940, the
government subsidized Jewish education and contributed to rabbinical sala-
ries. However, economic problems led to the emigration of nearly 14,000
Lithuanian Jews between 1928 and 1939, of whom the majority went to South
Africa (35%) or Palestine (25%).
Between the wars, Jews lost some of their former preeminence in com-
merce and industry. Ethnic Lithuanians increased their share of the country’s
commercial and retail establishments from 13 percent in 1923 to 43 percent
by 1936. By this time, Lithuanians had also come to own about 60 percent
of the industrial and handicraft businesses, compared to a Jewish figure of
32 percent, although the latter enterprises tended to be somewhat larger. The
Lithuanian cooperative movement acquired an increasing share of the agri-
cultural markets previously dominated by Jewish merchants.
The growing participation of Lithuanians in business did not eliminate the
important role that the Jews played in the country’s economic life: it is esti-
mated that in 1936 Jews still operated over 54 percent of small retail estab-
lishments, despite considerable inroads by Lithuanian shopkeepers. Shortly
before World War II, Jews still operated about 20 percent of Lithuania’s
export trade and 40 percent of the import business. Members of the Jew-
ish community remained well represented in the professions: in 1937, 42.7
percent of the country’s doctors were Jews. During the mid-1930s, about 15
percent of the more than 3,000 university students in Lithuania were Jew-
ish, constituting about twice the proportion of Jews in the total population,
although this represented a significant decline in the percentage of Jewish
students compared to the late 1920s.
The Jews of the interwar Republic of Lithuania were predominantly Ortho-
dox and Zionist with a high degree of proficiency in Hebrew. Jewish cultural
life was remarkably diverse, with five daily newspapers and numerous the-
ater and sports associations. While there was an increase in anti-Semitic inci-
dents during the 1930s, largely as a result of economic competition and anti-
Jewish propaganda, violent pogroms were rare, and there is no record of any
fatalities in such outbreaks before 1939. At the same time, a growing number
of Jews began to shift from Russian to Lithuanian as their second language.
In the Vilnius region ruled by Poland between 1920 and 1939, the Jews suf-
fered official discrimination but still managed to maintain a vigorous cultural
life, including the world-famous YIVO research institute. The outbreak of

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 142 • JEWS

World War II, which resulted in an influx of Jews from Nazi-occupied Poland
and Lithuania’s recovery of the Vilnius region, increased the number of Jews
in the country from about 160,000 to over a quarter of a million.
Lithuanian Jews since 1940. The Soviet occupation of June 1940 resulted
in strained relations between Lithuanians and Jews as traditional anti-
Semitism grew, partly because the unpopular Soviet-installed Lithuanian
Communist Party leadership, particularly in midlevel Party posts and in
the Communist Youth League, contained a disproportionately large number
of Jews and Russians, who thus became perceived as supporters of foreign
occupation in the eyes of much of the populace. The German attack on the
Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 initiated the Holocaust, the largest massacre of
civilians in Lithuania’s modern history. More than 90 percent of Lithuania’s
Jews perished, resulting in the effective destruction of the country’s historic
Jewish community. Many Jews fought in anti-Nazi partisan units and in the
16th Lithuanian Riflemen’s Division of the Soviet army.
Following the reoccupation of Lithuania by Soviet forces in the summer of
1944, thousands of Jews returned to the country, but the total number of Jews
in the republic continued to decline. In 1970, there were less than 25,000 Jews
in Lithuania, of whom about three-fourths lived in Vilnius; it is estimated
that less than half of this number were Lithuanian Jews. Vilnius became an
important way station during the massive emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel
and the West: an estimated 15,000–17,000 Jews left Lithuania between 1959
and 1990.
Several prominent Jews, including Emanuelis Zingeris (1957– ), who
served as the chairman of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, and
writer Gabrielius Kanovičius (1929– ), took part in the Sąjūdis independence
movement. In 1988, the Cultural Association of Lithuanian Jews was estab-
lished, and in 1989 it began publishing the newspaper Lithuania’s Jerusalem
in Yiddish, Lithuanian, and Russian. An exhibit featuring the Holocaust was
opened in 1991, the first in the former Soviet Union. In 1997, the Vilna Gaon
State Jewish Museum was dedicated and has become a major Jewish cultural
center. The Vilnius Yiddish Institute, established in 2001, sponsors an inter-
national program of research and language study.
Since 1990, the government and private institutions have cooperated in
programs aimed at preserving the country’s Jewish religious and cultural
heritage. Jewish cultural and social life has been made more difficult by con-
tinuing expressions of anti-Semitism, emigration, and recent internal strife
between an American-based Chabad-Lubavitch sect that had established a
presence in Vilnius and the country’s long-standing secular Lithuanian Jew-
ish leadership. In 2009, the Jewish population in Lithuania was estimated at
about 4,000. A few Jews remain prominent in Lithuanian political and cul-

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 JOGAILA • 143

tural life, notably the writers Markas Zingeris (1947– ) and Icchokas Meras
(1934– ); in May 2008, the prominent essayist and philosopher Leonidas
Donskis (1962– ) was elected to the European parliament.

JOGAILA (c. 1350–1434). Polish: Jagiełło. Grand Duke of Lithuania from

1377 to 1381 and 1382 to 1387, and King of Poland as Władysław II from
1386 to 1434. Jogaila was born about 1350, the oldest son of Grand Duke
Algirdas and his second wife, Juliana of Vitebsk. In 1377, Jogaila ascended
the grand ducal throne in Vilnius, but his rule was marked by civil war and
internecine intrigues. He first had to suppress a challenge to his authority
by his half-brother, Andrew of Polotsk, and then became embroiled in a
conflict with his uncle Kęstutis, who alleged that Jogaila’s dealings with the
Teutonic Knights and his interest in accepting Christianity were undermin-
ing Lithuania’s struggle with the Teutonic Order. Kęstutis seized Vilnius in
August 1381 and proclaimed himself ruler, while Jogaila was confined to the
lands of Krėva (Krewo) and Vitebsk. However, Jogaila’s brothers and sup-
porters managed to regain Vilnius, and a full-scale war was averted with the
death of Kęstutis under suspicious circumstances in August 1382. Kęstutis’s
son Vytautas escaped to the Teutonic Order and then waged a war against
his cousin between 1382 and 1384; a subsequent truce granted Vytautas lands
in Grodno and Podlasie.
During the early 1380s, Jogaila sought to gain support against the Teutonic
Order through an alliance with a major Christian power. He briefly consid-
ered marriage to Sophia, the daughter of the famed Muscovite ruler Dmitrii
Donskoi, but eventually turned to the Poles. In 1385, a large Polish delega-
tion arrived in Krėva to finalize ongoing negotiations concerning a Polish-
Lithuanian dynastic union. In August 1385, the Act of Krėva mandated
Jogaila’s accession to the Polish throne through marriage to Jadwiga, the
young queen of Poland, and the union of the Polish Kingdom with Lithuania.
The following spring, Jogaila traveled to Cracow, where he was baptized as
Władysław, married Jadwiga, and was crowned king. In 1387, Jogaila re-
turned to Lithuania with a large retinue of Polish nobility and clergy to begin
the mass baptism of the Lithuanian people; this date is generally celebrated
as the country’s conversion to Christianity.
Jogaila hoped to rule Lithuania directly from Cracow, but this provoked
another struggle between 1389 and 1392 with the ambitious Vytautas, who
again enlisted the help of the Teutonic Order against his cousin. This period
of Lithuania’s internal strife finally ended in 1392 when Jogaila granted Vy-
tautas all of Lithuania and then in 1401 recognized him as grand duke for life.
The reconciliation of Jogaila and Vytautas laid the basis for their successful
campaign against the Teutonic Order, which culminated in the Knights’

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 144 • JOHN CASIMIR VASA

decisive defeat at Grunwald in 1410. New problems between Jogaila and

Vytautas were created by the latter’s plans to crown himself king of Lithu-
ania, thus disrupting the Polish-Lithuanian dynastic alliance. Vytautas’s
death in 1430 allowed Jogaila to formally remain supreme ruler of Lithuania,
although the Grand Duchy operated independently in practice.
Jogaila’s rule as Władysław II of Poland was marked by the granting of
extensive new privileges to the Polish nobility and the strong influence of
Zbigniew Oleśnicki, the bishop of Cracow. Between 1397 and 1400, Jogaila
was instrumental in revitalizing the University of Cracow, which now bears
his name. After the death of Queen Jadwiga in 1399, he married three more
times, finally fathering three sons by his last wife, Sophia, a relative of Vy-
tautas. He died in Cracow on 31 May 1434.
Jogaila’s descendants continued the Jagiellonian dynasty or branch of the
House of Gediminas, which played an important role in the history of east-
central Europe between 1386 and 1572. More than most medieval Lithuanian
rulers, Jogaila proved a controversial figure, criticized by nationalist Lithu-
anian historians for his initiation of the union with Poland. On the other hand,
he was portrayed as a primitive pagan by medieval and early modern Polish
chroniclers. However, later Polish historians have viewed Jogaila favorably.
See also CATHOLIC CHURCH; SKIRGAILA.

JOHN CASIMIR VASA (1609–1672). King of Poland and Grand Duke

of Lithuania, son of King Sigismund III Vasa; born on 22 March 1609.
During the 1640s, John Casimir lived in Italy, where he was made a cardi-
nal. He returned to Poland in 1648 to succeed his brother Władysław IV
Vasa, eventually marrying his brother’s widow. John Casimir’s reign was
marked by disastrous wars, first with the Cossack rebel Bohdan Khmelnytski
(Chmielnicki), and then against the combined Cossack and Muscovite forces.
The Swedes invaded the Grand Duchy, but were forced to retreat. The Peace
of Andrusovo in 1667 ended the war with Muscovy, but the king faced stiff
internal opposition and even armed uprisings. After his wife, Queen Louise
Marie, died in 1667, the dispirited John Casimir abdicated and left for France,
where he died on 16 December 1672. John Casimir was the last of the Vasa
rulers of Poland-Lithuania. See also KĖDAINIAI, TREATY OF.

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 K
KAIRYS, STEPONAS (1878–1964). Prominent Lithuanian Social Demo-
cratic leader; born in Ukmergė district on 20 December 1878. Kairys received
his higher education at the Institute of Technology in St. Petersburg and
between 1908 and 1911 worked as an engineer in central Russia. In 1901, he
became a member of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Social Demo-
cratic Party and supported the creation of an independent, non-Bolshevik
Lithuanian socialist movement. In 1917, Kairys was elected to the Lithuanian
Council or Taryba, which was drawing up plans for the creation of a Lithu-
anian state. Along with other leftists, he opposed attempts to formally tie a
Lithuanian state to Germany. On 16 February 1918, Kairys became one of
the signatories of Lithuania’s declaration of independence. In 1919–1920, he
served as minister of industry and trade, and in 1920 he was elected to Lith-
uania’s Constituent Assembly. Kairys was appointed deputy speaker of the
Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, in 1926. After the Nationalist Union coup
of December 1926, Kairys opposed the new regime as a democratic socialist.
He was later active in anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi underground organizations.
In 1944, he joined the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithu-
ania and, while living in the United States after 1952, was the acknowledged
leader of Lithuanian Social Democrat émigrés in the West. He died in New
York on 16 December 1964.

KALANTA, ROMAS (1953–1972). Student and anti-Soviet dissident; born

in Alytus on 22 February 1953. Despite his father’s membership in the Lithu-
anian Communist Party, Kalanta grew disenchanted with the Communist
regime. On 14 May 1972, Kalanta immolated himself in a park across from
the main theater in Kaunas in protest against the Soviet regime. His funeral
on 18 May 1972 became the occasion for two days of violent anti-Soviet
and anti-Russian demonstrations involving several thousand mainly young
people shouting slogans supporting Lithuanian independence. Many persons
were injured, and hundreds were arrested. Soviet authorities attempted to
portray Kalanta as mentally ill and a drug addict, charges later revealed to be
groundless. Kalanta’s suicide encouraged several other self-immolations and,

145

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 146 • KALININGRAD DISTRICT

for many Lithuanians, his act became a symbol of national resistance to the
Soviet occupation.

KALININGRAD DISTRICT (OBLAST). See PRUSSIA.

KALINOWSKI, KONSTANTY (1838–1864). Belarusian: Kastuś Kalin-

ou–ski; Lithuanian: Konstantinas Kalinauskas. Radical leader of the anti-
Russian insurrection of 1863–1864 in Lithuania and Belarus; born in
Grodno on 21 January 1838. Kalinowski graduated from the Vilnius sec-
ondary school and briefly attended Moscow University. He then finished
the University of St. Petersburg with a law degree in 1860, after which he
was employed as a clerk working in peasant administration in his native
Grodno gubernia. Here he began organizing like-minded revolutionaries for
a struggle against the tsarist regime. In 1862, Kalinowski began the publica-
tion of the clandestine newspaper Mużyckaja Prauda (The Peasant’s Truth),
the first Belarusian-language publication aimed at the peasantry, in which he
urged villagers to rise up against what he termed “Muscovite oppression.”
Kalinowski was one of the radical “Red” leaders of the Lithuanian Commit-
tee who led and organized the insurrection of 1863; after its defeat, he was
arrested and executed on 10 March 1864.
Although Kalinowski the publicist denounced Russian rule and pro-
claimed the liberation of Lithuania, his attachment to the cause of the Belaru-
sian peasantry’s national and social liberation makes him an important figure
in the Belarusian, rather than the Lithuanian, national movement in the 19th
century. Nevertheless, in English-language historiography, he most often ap-
pears under his Polonized surname, Kalinowski. See also MACKEVIČTUS,
ANTANAS.

KANIŪKAI (KONIUCHY) MASSACRE. A village (2001 population:

167) in Šalčininkai district located in eastern Lithuania near the Belarus
border, the site of a controversial incident during World War II when it was
better known by its Polish name, Koniuchy. On 29 January 1944, a detach-
ment of Soviet partisans, including Jewish fighters who had escaped from the
Vilnius ghetto, attacked the village, killing between 30 and 40 civilians and
wounding dozens more, as well as looting and burning many houses. Soviet
and Jewish sources claim the Koniuchy villagers, mostly ethnic Poles and
Belarusians, constituted a pro-Nazi threat to the partisans. The local people
have denied collaboration with the Germans and claimed that the community
had only a few men armed with rifles to protect themselves against maraud-
ing bandits.

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 KAPSUKAS, VINCAS • 147

The Koniuchy incident gained international notoriety when Lithuanian

procurators opened an investigation into the massacre in 2004, during which
they sought to question elderly Jewish veterans of the partisan movement,
including Yitzhak Arad, former head of Yad Vashem and a member of the
Lithuanian government’s commission investigating the Soviet and Nazi oc-
cupations. Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance also initiated an
investigation into the massacre. In the West and among Jewish groups, the
Koniuchy affair was seen as an attack on the heroic Soviet antifascist re-
sistance. In Lithuania and Poland, many viewed the event as proof that the
Soviet partisans also engaged in atrocities and that people in the West over-
simplified the history of the 1940s in eastern Europe as a war between good
and evil. In recent years, scholars have devoted increasing attention to the
disparate and often conflicting collective memories of World War II among
the different nations of the region. See also HOLOCAUST.

KAPSUKAS, VINCAS (1880–1935). Also Mickevičius-Kapsukas. One of

the founders and prominent leaders of the Lithuanian Communist Party
(LCP). Kapsukas was born Vincas Mickevičius in Vilkaviškis district on 7
April 1880 into a well-to-do peasant family. He enrolled in the Marijampolė
secondary school in 1890 and in 1897 matriculated at the Seinai Theologi-
cal Seminary, but was expelled in 1898 for anti-tsarist activities. Between
1902 and 1904, Kapsukas attended classes at the University of Bern in
Switzerland. Before that, he was a follower of the Lithuanian liberal national
movement associated with the newspaper Varpas (The Bell), but in 1903
Kapsukas joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party and became one
of its more radical activists, sympathetic to Lenin’s wing of the Russian
Social Democrats.
In 1907, Kapsukas was arrested, but he escaped from Siberian exile
in 1913, after which he briefly worked for the pro-Bolshevik Lithuanian
newspaper Vilnis (The Wave). Between 1914 and 1917, Kapsukas organized
radical Lithuanian socialists in Galicia, Scotland, and the United States. He
returned to Russia after the February 1917 Revolution and in April formally
enlisted in the Bolshevik Party. Kapsukas was one of the editors of Tiesa (The
Truth), the Lithuanian Bolshevik newspaper. After the Bolshevik Revolution,
Kapsukas worked in the Soviet Russian government as head of Lithuanian
affairs within the Commissariat of Nationalities.
Kapsukas arrived secretly in Vilnius in November 1918 and took over the
fledgling LCP Central Committee. Between 8 December 1918 and 27 Febru-
ary 1919, he was the chairman of the Lithuanian Provisional Government of
Workers and Peasants, and from 27 February to 14 July 1919, while eastern

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 148 • KARAIM

Lithuania was occupied by the Red Army, headed the Soviet Socialist Repub-
lic of Lithuania and Belarus, the so-called Litbel Republic. At the same time
in 1919–1920, Kapsukas was a candidate member of the Russian Communist
(Bolshevik) Party’s Central Committee. After the collapse of Soviet rule in
eastern Lithuania, Kapsukas briefly engaged in underground Party work, but
from the end of 1921, he lived in Moscow where, along with Zigmas Anga-
rietis, he organized the Communist activists who had fled Lithuania. From
1928 until his death in 1935, Kapsukas worked as the head of the secretariat
for Poland and the Baltic States of the Communist International (Comintern).
Kapsukas was on the editorial staffs of virtually all Lithuanian Communist
underground publications and was the most prolific author of Marxist litera-
ture in the Lithuanian language. He is credited with over 40 brochures and
books and more than 2,000 articles, primarily on Marxist-Leninist ideology,
the class analysis of Lithuanian society, and proletarian literature. Kapsukas
died in Moscow on 17 February 1935.
After 1940 a personality cult developed around Kapsukas: in addition to
numerous monuments celebrating his person, the city of Marijampolė was
named in his honor between 1955 and 1990 and, until the collapse of Soviet
rule, the University of Vilnius also bore his name.

KARAIM. Turkic people who settled in Lithuania in the 14th century, pos-
sibly descendants of the Khazars who ruled a khanate centered in the lower
Volga region until the 10th century. The Karaim language is a branch of
the western Kipchak group of the Turkic family of languages. Hundreds of
Karaim were brought to Lithuania from their homeland near the Black Sea
by Grand Duke Vytautas in 1397–1398 and served as the ruler’s bodyguard.
During the 17th century, there were as many as 5,000 Karaim in Lithuania,
but gradually their numbers were reduced through assimilation. The major
cultural center of the remaining Lithuanian Karaim is in Trakai; there are
also communities in Poland, Ukraine, and Crimea.
The Karaim espouse Karaite Judaism, based on a faithful reading of the
Old Testament that rejects the Talmud and is thus distinct from rabbinical
Judaism. The Karaim houses of worship are called kinesa; one of these was
restored in Vilnius during the 1990s and another still functions in Trakai.
Until the 19th century, the Karaim utilized the Hebrew alphabet, after which
the Latin script came into use.
During the German occupation, the community was protected from de-
struction by Lithuanian scholars who convinced the Nazis that, regardless
of their Judaic religious heritage, the Karaim were not in fact Jews. Despite
attempts of the Lithuanian Karaim to discourage marriage to outsiders and
to preserve the language, prospects for the continued existence of this group,

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 KAUNAS • 149

estimated at less than 300 at the turn of the 21st century, are considered
uncertain.

KAUNAS. Lithuania’s second largest city and its provisional capital between
1920 and 1939; population in 2008: 355,500. Located at the confluence of
the Nemunas and Neris Rivers, Kaunas is the gateway to central Lithuania
and points east. It is one of the oldest fortified settlements and became an im-
portant defense installation against the incursions of the Teutonic Knights.
Kaunas is first mentioned in the chronicles in 1361. In 1408, the city was
placed under the Magdeburg laws and grew in importance as a commercial
center in the Hanseatic system, since the Nemunas River was navigable to
Kaunas from the port of Klaipėda (Memel) on the Baltic Sea. During the
17th and 18th centuries, Kaunas contained paper manufactories, mints, and
other industrial enterprises. In 1812, Napoleon’s forces passed through the
city during the invasion and retreat from Russia, causing much destruction.
The population of Kaunas remained quite small (about 5,000 in 1825) until
the mid-19th century.
In 1843, the town became the capital of Kaunas (Russian: Kovno) guber-
nia, and in 1864 it became the seat of the diocese of Samogitia (Žemaitija).
According to the Russian imperial census of 1897, together with the suburbs
of Šančiai, Aleksotas, and Vilijampolė, Kaunas contained 86,500 inhabitants,
the majority of them Jews, Poles, and Germans. Lumber products, metal
factories, and railroad connections stimulated industrial development. At the
turn of the 20th century, the city attracted increasing numbers of Lithuanian
villagers, who constituted almost a fourth of the townspeople by 1914. Dur-
ing the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the tsar’s government developed
Kaunas as one of its major western outposts, constructing an elaborate sys-
tem of defensive fortifications around the city and building a large Orthodox
church in the city’s center as a symbol of Russian cultural dominance.
During the years of interwar independence (1918–1940), Kaunas was
transformed. After the loss of Vilnius to Poland in 1920, Kaunas became
the provisional capital of Lithuania and the center of Lithuanian cultural life.
The city’s main avenue was named Laisvės Aleja (Freedom Boulevard). Nu-
merous government buildings and schools were built during the 1920s and
1930s, including the University of Kaunas. By 1923, ethnic Lithuanians made
up slightly more than half of the inhabitants; by 1940, the city numbered
154,000, of whom about three-fourths were Lithuanians, while the Jews made
up the largest minority (about 20%). Although Vilnius was recovered by
Lithuania in October 1939, Kaunas remained the administrative center of the
country until after World War II, when most government institutions were
transferred to Vilnius.

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 150 • KĖDAINIAI

During the Nazi occupation of 1941–1944, the Jews of Kaunas were con-
fined to a ghetto in Vilijampolė (Yiddish: Slobodka); subsequently, most of
them were massacred at the city’s Ninth Fort. After the Holocaust, only a
small community of Jews remained in the city.
Under Soviet rule, Kaunas grew rapidly as industries, especially metals,
textiles, and electronics, expanded and a polytechnic institute was estab-
lished; by 1970, the city had grown to 306,200 inhabitants, and by 1990 about
a fourth of the country’s industrial output originated in Kaunas. Since the
population of the city was 90 percent Lithuanian, Kaunas also became the site
of periodic nationalist unrest against Soviet rule: the most violent incident
was the anti-Russian outbreak of May 1972 following the self-immolation of
the student Romas Kalanta. The Sąjūdis section in Kaunas developed a rep-
utation as a strong pro-independence faction of the movement in 1989–1990.

KĖDAINIAI. A historic Lithuanian town located 45 kilometers (27 miles)

north of Kaunas in the geographic center of Lithuania, on the Nevėžis River;
2008 population: 30,214. The town is first mentioned in chronicles in 1372.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Kėdainiai began emerging as an important
trading center, and in 1590 the town was placed under the Magdeburg laws.
In 1614, the Kėdainiai region came under the rule of the Radziwiłł (Lithu-
anian: Radvila) family and flourished as an administrative and cultural cen-
ter. During the Reformation, the town was dominated by Calvinists, who
established a well-regarded school. Under the leadership of the Radziwiłłs,
a paper manufactory and Lithuania’s first pharmacy were founded, and Ke-
dainiai attracted German, Dutch, and Scottish merchants, some of whose
homes have since been restored. Kėdainiai declined after the wars of the mid-
17th century; however, it grew rapidly during the independence period after
World War I. In the 1960s, a large chemical plant was constructed and the
population increased to 24,500 by 1974. Kėdainiai is known for its unique
architectural monuments, particularly the 17th-century Reformed Church,
which contains the tomb of John Radziwiłł (1612–1655), and the Catholic
Church of St. Joseph built in 1766. See also KĖDAINIAI, TREATY OF.

KĖDAINIAI, TREATY OF (1655). An agreement signed by Lithuanian

leaders and Sweden, often referred to as the Union of Kėdainiai. The de-
feats suffered by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the wars
with Muscovy in 1654–1667 persuaded many Lithuanian leaders, particu-
larly the Grand Duchy’s hetman John Radziwiłł (1612–1655), that only a
radical political reorientation could ensure the security of Lithuania against
the Muscovite onslaught. During the summer of 1655, Radziwiłł carried on
difficult negotiations with Gabriel De la Gardie, Sweden’s treasurer and the

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 KE˛STUTIS • 151

administrator of Livonia, about a possible dynastic union of the Lithuanian

Grand Duchy with Sweden. On 20 October 1655, Radziwiłł, the bishops of
Vilnius and Samogitia, and 1,134 Lithuanian gentry signed the Treaty of
Kėdainiai, naming Sweden’s King Charles X the Grand Duke of Lithuania,
thus formally breaking off the country’s union with Poland. However, the
Union of Kėdainiai remained a dead letter, since, to the disappointment of the
Lithuanian signatories, it became apparent that the Swedes were exploiting
the agreement simply to strengthen their military position in the Baltic, and
because the behavior of the Swedish troops in Lithuania provoked a popular
rebellion. In Lithuanian historiography, the Kėdainiai incident is seen as an
attempt by the Lithuanian nobility to reassert the Grand Duchy’s indepen-
dence from Poland, while Polish historians have viewed the agreement as a
betrayal of the Commonwealth.

KERNAVĖ. A historic settlement in eastern Lithuania and an important ar-

chaeological site for the study of the history of Lithuania’s medieval period,
located on the Neris River 35 kilometers (21 miles) northwest of Vilnius.
Excavations in Kernavė indicate that defensive installations here date from
the fourth to seventh centuries. A large fortified town was well established
by the 13th century, and as the Lithuanian tribes began to unify in the face of
the Northern Crusades, Kernavė became the de facto political and military
center of the fledgling Lithuanian state. During the late 1270s, it served as the
capital of Grand Duke Traidenis (R. c. 1269–1282) and was often besieged
by the Teutonic Knights. After the expansion of Trakai and the founding
of Vilnius, Kernavė lost much of its political significance by the mid-14th
century. During the second civil war between Jogaila and Vytautas in
1389–1392, the town was largely destroyed.
In 2003, the government created the Kernavė State Cultural Reserve to
protect both the archaeological treasures and the scenic environment of the
region. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza-
tion (UNESCO) placed Kernavė on the list of World Heritage sites in 2004.
Kernavė has become an increasingly popular tourist destination and hosts an
international annual festival of living archaeology with reenactments of life
during the Paleolithic and medieval periods.

KĘSTUTIS (c. 1300–1382). Polish: Kiejstut; Russian: Kestovt. Duke of

Trakai, c. 1338–1382, and Grand Duke of Lithuania, 1381–1382. Kęstutis
was the fourth or, according to some sources, fifth son of Gediminas. While
little is known of his early life, it is well established that by the time of his
father’s death in 1341, Kęstutis was the ruler of Samogitia, Trakai, and
Grodno. In 1345, he joined his brothers in a coup that removed Gediminas’s

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 152 • KIRKILAS, GEDIMINAS

ineffectual youngest son Jaunutis from the throne in Vilnius and transferred
power to Algirdas (R. 1345–1377). Kęstutis was given the task of defending
Lithuania’s western border against Polish and, especially, Teutonic Knight
attacks. During the nearly four decades of his rule, he cooperated closely with
his brother, Grand Duke Algirdas, and some historians consider this period as
practically one of joint rule.
Between 1345 and 1380, the chronicles recount almost 100 incursions by
the Prussian and Livonian branches of the Teutonic Order into western Lith-
uania, and 40 campaigns by Kęstutis and the Lithuanians against the Knights.
In 1361, Kęstutis was reportedly captured by the crusaders, but he escaped
the following year. Kęstutis was also involved in several campaigns against
the Poles who competed with the Grand Duchy for the lands of Volhynia
and Galicia; in 1362, he also assisted Algirdas in the latter’s victorious battle
against the Tatars at the Blue Waters (Russian: Sinye Vody) in present-day
Ukraine. In addition to his military campaigns, Kęstutis attempted to deflect
the Teutonic Order’s attacks by negotiating the Christianization of Lithuania.
In 1358, Algirdas and Kęstutis offered to accept baptism on the condition that
the lands seized by the order since the 13th century be returned to the Lithu-
anians and that the Knights be transferred to the east to defend Christendom
against the Tatars, but these negotiations failed.
With the death of Algirdas in 1377, Kęstutis became involved in a struggle
for power with his nephew Jogaila. In November 1381, he seized Vilnius
and proclaimed himself grand duke, accusing Jogaila of secret dealings with
the Teutonic Knights. Jogaila continued the struggle against Kęstutis and his
son Vytautas, but a full-scale war was averted in July 1382 when a truce
was proclaimed as a prelude to negotiations. About mid-July, Kęstutis died
under mysterious circumstances. Some chroniclers claim he was murdered
by Jogaila, who violated a solemn pledge of safe conduct, while others sug-
gest suicide. Kęstutis’s death triggered a decade-long civil conflict between
Jogaila and Vytautas. Kęstutis’s passing marked the end of an era: he was
Lithuania’s last non-Christian ruler and the last to be ritually cremated ac-
cording to ancient custom.

KIRKILAS, GEDIMINAS (1951– ). Leftist politician and prime minister;

born in Vilnius on 30 August 1951. From 1978 until 1982, Kirkilas studied
political science at the Vilnius Higher Party School. In 1988, he joined the
leadership of the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) as an assistant for
press matters under First Secretary Algirdas Brazauskas. Kirkilas supported
the secession of the Lithuanian Party from the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (CPSU) in 1989 and until the fall of 1990 served as the secretary of the
Central Committee of the LCP. He then rose in the leadership of the Lithu-

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 KLAIPĖDA • 153

anian Democratic Labor Party, the successor of the LCP, and after 2001
within the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP). Kirkilas has been
a member of the Seimas since 1992. In 2004, he was appointed minister of
defense, and on 6 July 2006, he was named prime minister. Kirkilas replaced
Brazauskas as chairman of the LSDP in 2007. He left office in November
2008 after right-of-center parties defeated his leftist coalition in the parlia-
mentary elections.

KLAIPĖDA. German: Memel. Lithuania’s Baltic Sea port and third largest
city, located at the delta formed by the mouth of the Nemunas River; 2007
population: 185,936.
Early History and Prussian Rule. In 1252, a fortress was constructed on
the Nemunas River by the Teutonic Knights to defend the coast connect-
ing the Prussian and Livonian branches of the order. The settlement was
called Memel, the name the Germans also gave to the river. Between 1323
and 1409, the castle and town were destroyed several times as a result of
the Teutonic-Lithuanian wars. The Treaty of Melno Lake in 1422 assigned
Klaipėda and a strip of land stretching to the east and south of the town on
the right bank of the Nemunas River to the Teutonic Order. This border, the
easternmost reach of the Prussian and German states, was to remain essen-
tially unchanged until the 20th century. In 1466, Klaipėda became part of the
Duchy of Prussia, a vassal state of the Polish crown; after 1660, the town was
administered as part of Brandenburg Prussia.
Klaipėda had about 3,500 inhabitants in the early 18th century, some 6,000
by the time of the Napoleonic wars, and over 30,000 by 1910. The city de-
veloped leather and wood processing industries, the latter utilizing lumber
floated to the port via the Nemunas River from the interior. In the late 1700s,
the growing importance of Klaipėda for Baltic trade led to the establishment
of British, French, Danish, and Swedish consulates in the town. The period of
Prussian and German rule from 1660 to 1918 resulted in the Germanization
of much of the predominately Lutheran population of the Klaipėda region.
The city became predominately German-speaking, while the countryside was
mostly Lithuanian.
After World War I. Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles ending World
War I (1919) recognized Klaipėda Territory—consisting of some 2,848
square kilometers (1,100 square miles) and 140,000 inhabitants on the right
bank of the Nemunas—as part of Lithuania, but the territory was then placed
under French administration on behalf of the Allied Powers pending the
clarification of the situation in the region. On 10 January 1923, local rebels,
reinforced by Lithuanian troops and encouraged by the Lithuanian govern-
ment, staged an armed uprising, overwhelmed the French garrison, and

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 154 • KLIMAS, PETRAS

demanded annexation by Lithuania. On 8 May 1924, the major Allied Pow-

ers (Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan) signed the Klaipėda Convention
with Lithuania. This treaty transferred sovereignty over Klaipėda Territory to
Lithuania, but included international guarantees concerning local autonomy
and bilingualism to protect the rights of the German-speaking populace. The
territory’s executive authority was vested in a governor appointed by the
president of Lithuania and assisted by a five-person Directory; legislative
power was exercised by an elected diet.
The 1925 census of Klaipėda counted 141,645 inhabitants: 41.9 percent
Germans, 26.6 percent Lithuanians, 24.2 percent so-called Memellaenders
(Klaipėda residents who were predominately Lithuanian speakers), and 7.3
percent others. It is estimated that by the early 1930s Lithuanian-speaking
residents made up nearly 60 percent of the population, including post-1923
immigrants from the rest of Lithuania. However, centuries-long German
cultural influence and the autonomy conferred by the Klaipėda Convention
enabled pro-German elements to dominate local politics.
The Lithuanian government considerably expanded Klaipėda’s port fa-
cilities and industry during the period of independence, but failed to stem
the growing power of local German elements who demanded union, or An-
schluss, with Germany; such agitation became particularly strong after the
Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1934, the Lithuanian authorities banned the
local pro-Nazi groups and declared martial law, leading to a crisis in German-
Lithuanian relations. On 23 March 1939, Germany seized Klaipėda Territory
after an ultimatum to the Lithuanian government.
Klaipėda was captured by Soviet forces in January 1945 after heavy fight-
ing that destroyed much of the city. Most of the German residents fled during
the war. By 1970, the population of the city alone was 140,000, primarily
Lithuanians (60%) and Russians (30%). During the same period, Klaipėda
was developed as a military base and port; it also became the base of a large
Soviet Lithuanian fishing fleet. In 1989, the issue of Klaipėda Territory was
raised by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who asserted that Lithuania had
no legal claim to the area. However, during the early 1990s, the Russians
abandoned their naval and military installations. In 1991, the Klaipėda State
Seaport Authority was established to oversee the expansion and development
of the port. The shipping tonnage passing through the port doubled from 15.7
million tons in 1991 to 30 million tons with 8,348 ship calls in 2008. The
northernmost ice-free port in the Baltic Sea, Klaipėda has also been instru-
mental in facilitating goods in transit between Russia and the West. See also
GALVANAUSKAS, ERNESTAS.

KLIMAS, PETRAS (1891–1969). Lithuanian statesman and historian; born

in Marijampolė district on 23 February 1891. After receiving a law degree

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 KOŚCIUSZKO, TADEUSZ • 155

from the University of Moscow in 1914, Klimas became a prominent political

leader of the Lithuanian independence movement. As a member of the Ta-
ryba, he signed Lithuania’s declaration of independence in 1918 and began
a career in the Republic’s foreign ministry. From 1925 until August 1940,
Klimas was Lithuania’s envoy in Paris. In 1943, he was arrested by the Nazis
in France, but he was later transferred to a prison in Kaunas and released
there in the spring of 1944. Klimas was deported to Siberia in 1944, where
he served a ten-year sentence. He died in Kaunas on 16 January 1969. In
addition to his diplomatic career, Klimas was highly regarded for his erudite
studies of Lithuanian history, both medieval and modern. Klimas’s memoirs
are an important source for the study of the Lithuanian national movement
(see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN) during the first decades of the 20th
century.

KÖNIGSBERG. See PRUSSIA.

KONIUCHY. See KANIŪKAI (KONIUCHY) MASSACRE.

KOŚCIUSZKO, TADEUSZ (1746–1817). Lithuanian: Tadas Koščiuška.

Polish-Lithuanian and American revolutionary leader; born in the district of
Brest in present-day Belarus on 12 February 1746 into a Lithuanian family
of petty gentry. Kościuszko enrolled at the Warsaw Military Academy dur-
ing the 1760s and then studied in France, Italy, and Germany. In 1776, he
went to America and enlisted as an engineer in the service of the Continental
Congress. Kościuszko served under Gen. George Washington at the Battle
of Saratoga and during the Yorktown campaign, after which the Continental
Congress promoted him to brigadier general. He returned home in 1784 and,
in the spirit of Enlightenment liberalism, freed some of his serfs. Kościuszko
became a prominent advocate of reform during the Commonwealth’s Four-
Year Diet (1788–1792) and in 1789 was appointed a general in the Polish
army. During the Prussian and Russian invasion of the Commonwealth in
1792, Kościuszko commanded forces under Józef Poniatowski, brother of
King Stanisław August Poniatowski. After their defeat, he fled to France,
where he sought to enlist the support of the French revolutionary government
for the Polish-Lithuanian cause.
Kościuszko became the acknowledged leader of the revolution that was
proclaimed on 24 March 1794 in order to save the Polish-Lithuanian Com-
monwealth’s independence and establish a liberal government. He was
wounded and taken prisoner in October 1794; soon after, Warsaw surren-
dered to the Russians. Kościuszko was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul for-
tress in St. Petersburg, but was released by Tsar Paul I in 1796. He traveled
to the United States in 1797, then returned to Europe in 1798 where he con-
tinued his revolutionary efforts. Kościuszko helped organize Polish legions

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 156 • KRAŽIAI MASSACRE

in Europe; however, he declined to cooperate with Napoleon. He continued

to publicly advocate the abolition of serfdom and the creation of a liberal
Polish-Lithuanian state until his death in Switzerland on 15 October 1817. He
is buried in the Wawel Castle in Cracow. Although Kościuszko often referred
to himself as a Lithuanian, his cultural and political attitudes were typical of
the Polonized gentry and, thus, he has usually been associated with Polish,
rather than Lithuanian, history. See also PARTITIONS.

KRAŽIAI MASSACRE (1893). Lithuanian: Kražių skerdynės. Attack on

Catholic demonstrators by Russian troops in the historic town of Kražiai in
November 1893, which helped galvanize the Lithuanian national movement
(see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN). The town of Kražiai was an impor-
tant Catholic cultural center after the conversion of Samogitia in the 14th
century. In 1891, tsarist authorities ordered the closing of the local Benedic-
tine convent as well as the parish church. In protest, local Catholics occupied
the endangered buildings, while awaiting a response to a petition sent to the
tsar. On 10 November 1893, Gen. Nikolai Klingenberg, governor of Kaunas,
arrived with a detachment of 60 police to carry out eviction orders, but his
force was outnumbered and overwhelmed by local protesters. On the follow-
ing day, Cossack reinforcements stormed the church, dispersed the faithful,
carried out extensive public floggings, and then attacked neighboring vil-
lages. The Lithuanian press and other sources documented at least nine dead
as well as scores of rapes and other injuries. Local peasants claimed a higher
toll since some victims died from the floggings.
During the ensuing trial of 71 mostly peasant Catholics (55 men and 16
women), the defense team of liberal Russian lawyers embarrassed the tsarist
government by making clear that the authorities were responsible for the kill-
ings. The defense won acquittals for 34 of the defendants; eventually most of
the remainder won an amnesty from Tsar Nicholas II, who came to the throne
in 1894. The Kražiai incident further alienated the predominantly Catholic
Lithuanian population from Russian rule and provided a rallying cry for anti-
tsarist agitation. See also RUSSIFICATION.

KRĖVA (KRIAVAS), ACT OF (1385). Polish-Lithuanian treaty that laid

the basis for the eventual dynastic union of the Kingdom of Poland and the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Krėva (Polish: Krewo; Belarusian: Kreva) is
now located in Belarus near the town of Ashmyany. Historians agree that
sometime in 1383–1384 serious negotiations were under way between Grand
Duke Jogaila and the Polish nobility about the possibility of offering Lithu-
ania’s ruler the Polish crown. Many Polish nobles were determined to prevent
the marriage of the young Angevin princess and future queen of Poland,

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 KRĖVĖ-MICKEVIČIUS, VINCAS • 157

Jadwiga of Hungary, to William of Hapsburg, Prince of Austria. A Lithu-

anian alliance offered Poles the advantage of assistance against the Teutonic
Knights and the prospect of acquiring lands in the east. From Jogaila’s point
of view, a Polish dynastic alliance and the acceptance of Roman Catholicism
could provide Lithuania vital help against the Teutonic Order.
In January 1385, a Lithuanian delegation headed by Jogaila’s brother Skir-
gaila traveled to Cracow, while other Lithuanian envoys journeyed to Buda
to negotiate with Jadwiga’s mother, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary. In Cracow,
the main conditions for the marriage of Jogaila and Jadwiga were set out,
including the Lithuanian acceptance of Latin-rite Christianity, the return of
Polish prisoners of war, compensation for the jilted William of Hapsburg, the
attachment of Lithuania to Poland, and the assistance of the Lithuanians in
recovering lands lost by Poland.
These conditions were confirmed on 14 August 1385 at the Krėva castle
by Jogaila, his brothers Skirgaila, Kaributas, and Lengvenis, and his cousin
Vytautas. While historians consider the Act of Krėva to have begun the pro-
cess of creating the Polish-Lithuanian union that survived until the end of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795 and laid the basis for Lithuania’s
turn to Roman Catholicism, there is no unanimity as to its legal and political
significance at the time. Some Polish historians, such as Oscar Halecki, have
maintained that the Krėva treaty meant Lithuania’s incorporation into Poland,
but the more acceptable view now is that the Lithuanian Grand Duchy con-
tinued as a practically autonomous, if not independent, state until the Union
of Lublin in 1569.

KRĖVĖ-MICKEVIČIUS, VINCAS (1882–1954). Lithuanian writer and

public figure; acting prime minister and foreign minister of Lithuania
from 17 June until 12 July 1940. Vincas Mickevičius, better known by his
pen name Vincas Krėvė, was born on 7 October 1882 near Merkinė in the
Dzūkija region of southeastern Lithuania. In 1904, Krėvė graduated from
the gymnasium in Kazan, Russia, and then briefly studied at the University
of Kiev. In 1908, he obtained a doctorate in Indo-European philology from
the University of Lviv; he also carried out research in Oriental studies. He
began teaching in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1909, and in 1919–1920 served there
as Lithuanian consul. During the 1920s and 1930s, Krėvė taught Slavic litera-
ture at the University of Kaunas, where he also served as dean of the Faculty
of Humanities.
Krėvė’s best known works include Dainavos šalies senų žmonių padavi-
mai (Legends of the Old People in the Land of Dainava, 1912); the dramas
Šarūnas (1912) and Skirgaila (1925), recounting the dramatic lives of legend-
ary Lithuanian medieval princes; and the collection of short stories of village

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 158 • KRUPAVIČIUS, MYKOLAS

life Šiaudinėj pastogėj (Under the Thatched Roof, 1922–1923). These and
numerous other publications totaled ten volumes of literary work.
In June 1940, Krėvė was persuaded to join the Soviet-imposed People’s
Government as acting prime minister and foreign minister. Krėvė’s memoir
of his dramatic conversation with Soviet foreign commissar Vyacheslav
Molotov in Moscow on 1 July 1940 is one of the most vivid accounts of the
Soviet occupation and the Kremlin’s annexationist policy toward Lithuania,
although some historians think that he may have embellished the account.
In January 1941, Krėvė was appointed president of the newly formed Lithu-
anian Academy of Sciences. In 1947, Krėvė emigrated to the United States,
where he obtained a position as professor of Slavic languages and literature
at the University of Pennsylvania. He died in Philadelphia on 7 July 1954.
Krėvė-Mickevičius is considered one of the masters of the Lithuanian lan-
guage, and most literary scholars consider his lyrical style, a kind of prose
poetry, unique and unrivaled in Lithuanian literature. Krėvė’s knowledge of
Eastern cultures and Lithuanian folklore enriched his style and subject matter,
at times lending an exotic and mystical air to his work.

KRUPAVIČIUS, MYKOLAS (1885–1970). Churchman, statesman, and

long-time leader of the Lithuanian Christian Democratic movement; born
on 1 October 1885 near Marijampolė. Krupavičius graduated from the Veive-
riai Teachers’ Institute in 1905 and then attended the Seinai Theological
Seminary from 1908 to 1913 and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy
until 1917. He was influenced by the social teachings of Pope Leo XIII and
wrote extensively on the social mission of Catholicism. He returned to Lithu-
ania in 1918 and joined the Ministry of Agriculture, first as head of the land
reform program and then as minister of agriculture (1923–1926). Krupavičius
is best known in Lithuanian history as the architect of the country’s Land Re-
form Act of 1922, which broke up the landed estates of the Polonized gentry
and distributed over 400,000 hectares (1 million acres) to landless peasants
and smallholders.
After the Nationalist Union coup of 1926, Krupavičius studied in France,
and upon his return to Lithuania in 1929, he engaged in pastoral work and
teaching. In 1942, Krupavičius was arrested and deported to Germany for
protesting Nazi policies. After the war, he headed the Supreme Commit-
tee for the Liberation of Lithuania between 1945 and 1957. In 1957,
Krupavičius emigrated to the United States, where he played a prominent
role in the cultural and political activities of the émigré community. He died
in Chicago on 4 December 1970.

KUBILIŪNAS, PETRAS (1894–1946). Military leader and first general

counselor during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, 1941–1944; born on

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 KUDIRKA, SIMAS • 159

16 May 1894 in Rokiškis district. Kubiliūnas graduated from the Vilnius

military school in 1914 and served in the Russian army with distinction
during World War I. He returned to Lithuania in 1919 and quickly rose to
become the Lithuanian army’s chief of staff in February 1929. In May 1934,
he was arrested for supporting a right-wing military coup intended to bring
Augustinas Voldemaras to power and was imprisoned for two years. In
1940–1941, Kubiliūnas was arrested by Soviet authorities, but was liberated
at the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet war in June 1941. In August, he agreed
to head the Nazi-sponsored general council of native advisors to the Ger-
man Generalkommissar Adrian von Renteln (1897–1946) with the title of
first counselor, thus becoming the highest ranking Lithuanian official during
the German occupation. Kubiliūnas was frequently excoriated by anti-Nazi
Lithuanians for his compliant attitude toward the German authorities as well
as for his calls to fulfill German demands to supply youths for the Reich
Labor Service and German auxiliary military units. In 1944, he retreated to
Germany. In December 1945, Kubiliūnas was kidnapped by Soviet opera-
tives in the British occupation zone and brought back to Lithuania. He was
executed in Moscow on 22 August 1946.

KUBILIUS, ANDRIUS (1956– ). Politician and prime minister; born on

8 December 1956 in Vilnius. Kubilius graduated from the physics faculty
of Vilnius University in 1979 and completed his postgraduate studies there
in 1984. He joined the Sąjūdis movement in 1988 and was elected to the
Seimas in 1992. The following year, he joined the Union of the Fatherland
(Conservatives) and rose rapidly within the party’s ranks. Kubilius headed a
caretaker cabinet from November 1999 until November 2000 and as prime
minister gained a reputation as a pragmatic politician. In 2003, he replaced
Vytautas Landsbergis as chairman of the Conservatives, assuming the lead-
ership of the country’s center-right political forces. Kubilius was the leader of
the opposition during the mid-2000s. After the victory of the Conservatives
and their allies in the October 2008 parliamentary elections, Kubilius was
chosen to head the government once again, assuming office on 9 December
2008.

KUDIRKA, SIMAS (1930– ). Lithuanian seaman who gained international

fame; born on 9 April 1930 in Griškabūdis, southwestern Lithuania. After
graduating from the maritime school in Klaipėda in 1952, Kudirka joined the
Soviet Lithuanian fishing fleet as a radio operator. On 23 November 1970,
during discussions over fishing rights between Soviet and American officials
at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, he escaped his vessel, the Sovetskaya
Litva, by leaping onto the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Vigilant, which had docked
next to the Soviet ship. Because of miscommunications between the Coast

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 160 • KUDIRKA, VINCAS

Guard and the State Department and confusion concerning Kudirka’s request
for political asylum, American officers allowed Soviet sailors to board the
Vigilant, beat Kudirka, and drag him back to the Litva. In May 1971, he was
sentenced to a ten-year term for treason and sent to a prison in central Russia.
The Kudirka case became a major embarrassment for American authorities
and led to the forced retirement of two high-ranking Coast Guard officers in-
volved in the incident. The Lithuanian-American diaspora made him a cause
célèbre and organized numerous protests on his behalf. When it was learned
that Kudirka’s mother had been born in Brooklyn, thus giving him rights to
U.S. citizenship, the campaign for his release gained momentum. He was
released from prison and allowed to come to the United States in Novem-
ber 1974 with his family. In 1978, the TV film recounting the incident, The
Defection of Simas Kudirka, starring Alan Arkin, was viewed by millions of
Americans. In the same year, Kudirka, along with Larry Eichel, published his
memoir, For Those Still at Sea. In 2000, he returned to Lithuania. See also
RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS.

KUDIRKA, VINCAS (1858–1899). Lithuanian publicist, editor, and leader

of the 19th-century national movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHUA-
NIAN); born on 31 December 1858 in Vilkaviškis district. Kudirka attended
the Marijampolė secondary school from 1871 to 1877, then, under parental
pressure, enrolled in the Seinai Theological Seminary, only to be dismissed
for lack of a vocation. In 1879, he returned to Marijampolė and, after graduat-
ing with distinction, was admitted to the University of Warsaw in 1881 where
he studied medicine. Kudirka had been sympathetic to a Polish cultural orien-
tation until 1883 when he became a reader of the nationalist monthly Aušra,
which transformed him into an ardent Lithuanian patriot. The account of his
dramatic conversion to the nationalist cause became one of the best known
stories in the history of the 19th-century national movement.
Kudirka was briefly associated with Marxist circles in Warsaw, for which
he was temporarily suspended from his studies, but he managed to receive
his medical degree in 1889. That same year, Kudirka established the monthly
Varpas (The Bell) for the Lithuanian intelligentsia, and in January 1890 he
founded Ūkininkas (The Farmer), a periodical aimed at the peasantry. In
1890, Kudirka moved to the town of Šakiai in southwestern Lithuania, where
he opened a medical practice, but much of his time was devoted to his editor-
ship of Varpas, political writings, and literary creation, which included fic-
tion, poetry, and satirical works. In 1895, he moved to Naumiestis (Russian:
Vladislavov) where, under the watchful eye of the tsarist police, he lived until
his death from tuberculosis on 6 November 1899. In 1934, the Lithuanian

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 KULVIETIS, ABRAOMAS • 161

government changed the name of Naumiestis to Kudirkos Naumiestis. A

monument to Kudirka dominates the town square.
Along with Motiejus Valančius and Jonas Basanavičius, Kudirka stands
as one of the most important figures in the Lithuanian national movement of
the 19th century. He imbued the Lithuanian movement, hitherto dominated
by the Catholic Church and driven by cultural concerns, with a political
content whose theme was national injustice. Kudirka was the author of some
of the best Lithuanian satirical writing, in which he excoriated tsarist official-
dom, especially in his Viršininkai (The Bosses) and Lietuvos tilto atsiminimai
(Memoirs of a Lithuanian Bridge). In 1898, Kudirka published the words
and music to “Tautiška Giesmė” (The National Song), which was to become
the Lithuanian national anthem. His writings took up economic, social, and
national issues, criticizing the wave of Lithuanian emigration to the United
States and urging Lithuanians to resist the tsarist regime and to assert them-
selves outside their traditional village milieu, for example, by entering com-
merce and the professions.
Kudirka’s secular attitude and liberalism provoked the enmity of much
of the Catholic clergy, while his attacks on the economic role of the Jews
revealed strains of anti-Semitism. Kudirka’s politicization of the Lithuanian
nationalist movement was instrumental in leading to the formation of the
major Lithuanian political currents, which resulted in the development of
political parties. The more moderate wing of the activists grouped around
Varpas eventually grew into the Lithuanian Democratic Party, while the
more left-leaning faction formed the basis of the Lithuanian Peasant Popu-
list Union. Kudirka’s influence on Lithuania’s political development has led
many scholars to consider him the father of modern Lithuania nationalism.
See also LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

KULVIETIS, ABRAOMAS (c. 1510–1545). Educator and leader of the

early Lithuanian Reformation; born in Jonava district around 1510. In 1529,
Kulvietis received a bachelor’s degree from Cracow Academy, and in 1530
he began studies in western Europe. Some historians have claimed that he
studied under Erasmus, although this now seems doubtful. About 1535, Kul-
vietis returned to Lithuania, and in 1536 he arrived in Prussia, where Prince
Albert of Brandenburg, one of the first rulers in the Baltic region to adopt
Lutheranism, became his protector and sponsored Kulvietis’s studies at the
Universities of Leipzig, Wittenberg, and Siena.
With the help of Bona Sforza, the influential Italian wife of Sigismund
I the Elder, Kulvietis established a school of classical languages in Vilnius
in 1539, but his propagation of Protestant doctrines soon led to his expulsion

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 162 • KULVIETIS, ABRAOMAS

from Lithuania. He went again to Prussia, where records indicate that he

taught Greek and Hebrew at the newly opened University of Königsberg in
1544. The next year, Kulvietis returned again to Lithuania when conditions
for Protestants had improved, but he died of tuberculosis on 6 June 1545.
Perhaps the most erudite Lithuanian of his generation, Kulvietis was an
early translator of religious literature, including the Psalms of David, into
the Lithuanian language. However, only a few of his texts were published
posthumously.

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 L
LABOR PARTY. Lithuanian: Darbo partija. A political party founded
in 2003 by Russian-born businessman Viktor Uspaskich. While the party
proclaimed itself a centrist movement, its appeal has been directed primarily
at voters disenchanted with the economy as well as the Russian and Polish
ethnic minorities. In 2004, Labor won five seats in the European parliament
and 39 of 141 seats in the Seimas, becoming the largest political party in
Lithuania. Uspaskich was named minister of the economy. However, persis-
tent charges of conflicts of interest bedeviled the party’s leader, and he fled
to Russia in 2006 when state procurators charged him with financial irregu-
larities. As a result, Labor lost support and won only ten seats in the 2008
parliamentary elections in coalition with the so-called Youth Party.

LANDSBERGIS, VYTAUTAS (1932– ). Leader of the Lithuanian indepen-

dence movement Sąjūdis and Lithuania’s head of state from 1990 to 1993;
born on 18 October 1932 in Kaunas. Landsbergis graduated from the Lithu-
anian State Conservatory in 1955 and received his doctorate in musicology in
1969. During the 1960s and 1970s, he taught at the Lithuanian Conservatory
and the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute. Landsbergis is known as a specialist
in the music of composer and artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis and
has published a number of studies on the subject.
In 1988, Landsbergis was elected the chairman of the Lithuanian Reform
Movement, Sąjūdis, which under his leadership adopted a political program
aimed at the restoration of Lithuania’s independence. In March 1989, Lands-
bergis was elected to the Soviet Union’s Congress of People’s Deputies. In
May, he led a walkout of Lithuanian representatives from the Congress in
protest over Mikhail Gorbachev’s resistance to Lithuanian autonomy; as
a result, he began to receive increasing attention in the West as the de facto
leader of the Lithuanian independence movement.
After the February 1990 elections to the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet were
won by Sąjūdis, Landsbergis was elected chairman of the Lithuanian Su-
preme Soviet, now called the Supreme Council, on 11 March, the day the
legislature declared Lithuania’s independence from the Soviet Union. As

163

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 164 • LANGUAGE, LITHUANIAN

chairman of the parliament, Landsbergis became Lithuania’s head of state

and was usually referred to as the country’s president. Between March 1990
and August 1991, Landsbergis directed most of his efforts at preserving
Lithuania’s fragile independence, culminating in his steadfast defiance of
Moscow during the 13 January 1991 Soviet military attacks aimed at top-
pling his government. Internally, Landsbergis was increasingly drawn into
conflict with the Supreme Council, which he claimed was a pro-Communist
force obstructing his policies. His supporters eventually formed the Union
of the Fatherland (Lithuanian: Tėvynės Sąjunga) party to oppose Algirdas
Brazauskas’s Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party (LDDP).
In October 1992, the LDDP won the first elections to the Seimas, Lithu-
ania’s new parliament. After Brazauskas’s victory over Stasys Lozoraitis
in the presidential elections of February 1993, Landsbergis became the
acknowledged leader of the opposition to the ruling LDDP. When the Con-
servatives and their allies gained a majority in the October–November 1996
elections to the Seimas, Landsbergis was again elected chairman of the legis-
lature and served in this capacity until 2000, thus regaining much of his politi-
cal influence and stature. In 2004, he was elected to the European Parliament,
where he distinguished himself as a strong critic of Russian policy in eastern
Europe. In 2005, Landsbergis became the center of a European-wide contro-
versy when he proposed that, if the European Union banned public display
of Nazi symbols, Communist ones should also be prohibited.

LANGUAGE, LITHUANIAN. The official language of the Republic of

Lithuania is classified as a member of the Baltic branch of the Indo-European
(IE) language family, which includes most European languages. Linguists
consider Lithuanian one of the most conservative living languages of the
IE family; thus, it has been of great interest to scholars of comparative phi-
lology. In some language classification schemes, the Baltic languages are
included within a more general Balto-Slavic subdivision of IE. Lithuanian
and Latvian are the only living Baltic languages, but in the past the Baltic
branch also included, among others, the extinct Old Prussian, Couronian,
Zemgalian, Selonian, and Yotvingian languages. More than 3.3 million
people speak Lithuanian in the Republic of Lithuania as either a native or
second language; Russian and Polish are the most important minority lan-
guages. While the Lithuanian diaspora numbers more than a million people
of Lithuanian extraction, the majority of them in the United States, it can be
estimated that only about a third of this population has any command of the
Lithuanian language.
The Lithuanian language has always used the Latin alphabet (see appendix
1), except during the period of the official Russian press ban of 1864–1904,

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 LANGUAGE, LITHUANIAN • 165

which, however, had little success. There are two basic dialects: the Samo-
gitian, or Žemaičiai (Lowlander) dialect, and the version spoken in the
Aukštaitija region, or the aukštaičiai (Highlander); the latter includes the
subdialects of Dzūkija and Suvalkija.
The Development of Modern Lithuanian. The first book in Lithuanian was
the catechism of Martynas Mažvydas published in Königsberg in 1547,
although a written text of a prayer found in a Latin book published in 1503
was discovered at the University of Vilnius and is now considered the oldest
known text in the language. A number of catechisms, dictionaries, religious
texts, and poems were published in the 16th and 17th centuries, the majority
in East Prussia. During the 18th century, the literary level of the Lithuanian
language deteriorated when didactic catechisms and prayer books aimed at
the peasantry utilized Slavic loanwords; little attention was paid to standard-
ized grammar and usage.
The nationalist revival of the early 19th century increasingly stressed
the importance of the Lithuanian language, and the quality of publications
improved under such writers as Simonas Daukantas, Bishop Motiejus
Valančius, Mikalojus Akelaitis (1829–1887), and Antanas Tatarė (1805–
1889). At the same time, foreign scholars began to pay increasing attention
to Lithuanian as a path to understanding the history of the IE family. One of
the most important studies of the Lithuanian language in the 19th century was
the prominent philologist August Schleicher’s Litauische Grammatik (1856).
Modern Standard Lithuanian emerged during the late 19th and early
20th centuries largely through the efforts of such scholars as the compara-
tive philologist Kazimieras Būga (1879–1924) and especially the practical
linguist Jonas Jablonskis (1860–1930), known as “Rygiškių Jonas” (John
from Rygiškiai). Most Lithuanians credit Jablonskis with creating a standard
language based in large part on the kapsai idiom of the aukštaičiai (spoken
in Suvalkija). This is the language now used in government and education
and is dominant in urban areas. The dialects still survive in the countryside.
Political and Social Factors. During the 19th century, scholars and ethnog-
raphers feared that Lithuanian would become extinct because of its low social
prestige as a peasant idiom. The linguistic division of Lithuanian society into
a Polish-speaking upper class and a Lithuanian-speaking peasantry was a
long and complex process. The last grand duke known to have spoken Lithu-
anian was King Jogaila’s son, Casimir IV (R. 1440–1492). Spoken Polish
came into wider use in the grand duke’s court by the middle of the 16th cen-
tury. The upper nobility and magnates began accepting Polish language and
customs soon after, while the lesser gentry, as well as Gentile townspeople,
continued to speak Lithuanian well into the 18th century. By the 19th century,
except in Samogitia, they began to accept Polish, which became the language

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 166 • LANGUAGE, LITHUANIAN

of public life and social prestige in Lithuania, thus accelerating the process
of Polonization. Lithuanian became the means of communicating with and
among peasants, viewed by many as the idiom of a social class rather than a
national language.
In addition to the adoption of Polish by the political and cultural elites, the
process of marginalizing Lithuanian was hastened by the historic exclusion
of the language from affairs of the Church and State. The official language
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s chancery was an old Belarusian/
western Russian form of Old Church Slavic. From the late 14th century,
diplomatic correspondence was increasingly conducted in Latin. Polish and
Latin became the official languages of the Grand Duchy in 1697. Although
spoken Lithuanian was still widely used in court cases in the 17th century,
judgments were handed down in Polish, Latin, or the Belarusian form of Old
Church Slavic. Only a few people, for example, Mikalojus Daukša, called
for the wider use of Lithuanian. The situation was different in Lithuanian
East Prussia, where, until the late 19th century, royal edicts were published
in Gothic-scripted Lithuanian, which was recognized as an official language
in local schools, churches, and local government offices. Lithuanian was also
studied extensively at the University of Königsberg.
During the 19th century, Lithuanian came into wider use as the Catholic
Church, the government, and various political forces sought to influence
or mobilize the peasantry. Despite tsarist efforts at Russification, literacy
in standard Lithuanian increased before World War I. The postwar inde-
pendent Republic of Lithuania was the first state to adopt Lithuanian as an
official language, and it rapidly came to dominate governmental, educational,
and commercial institutions. During the years of Soviet rule (1940–1941,
1944–1990), Russian was introduced as a compulsory second language in
Lithuanian schools and became dominant in industry and government:
bilingualism was declared the official policy. Until 1989, meetings of the
Lithuanian Communist Party Central Committee and those of most central
government offices were conducted in Russian, even though the majority of
officials were native Lithuanians. In the Soviet census of 1979, while 97.7
percent of ethnic Lithuanians indicated Lithuanian as their first, or native,
language, almost 38 percent indicated fluency in Russian.
After the restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990, official bilin-
gualism was abandoned: Lithuanian was declared the official language of
the central government, and the compulsory teaching of Russian as a second
language was abandoned. Minority-language schools, primarily Polish and
Russian, are nonetheless permitted. These languages are given official sta-
tus alongside Lithuanian in locales with a significant minority population.
Increasingly, young educated Lithuanian-born Russians and Poles have ac-

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 LATVIA • 167

quired fluency in Lithuanian, essential to participating in the country’s life.

During 1990–1993, Russian-language commercial and official signs, includ-
ing road and street signs, were removed as being unnecessary and reminiscent
of foreign occupation. See also BALTS; LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

LATVIA. Baltic nation bordering Lithuania on the north. Area: 63,700

square kilometers (24,600 square miles); 2008 population: 2,740,000; capi-
tal: Riga (population in 2008: 917,000). The Republic of Latvia declared its
independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Before the 19th Century. Latvian and Lithuanian are the only two surviving
languages of the Baltic branch of the Indo-European linguistic family. It is
generally thought that the western region of present-day Latvia was inhabited
by the Couronians, their land known as Courland, or Kurzeme in Latvian.
To the east, the major Baltic tribes were the Semigallians, Letgallians, and
Selians. In the late 12th century, German traders and missionaries began ar-
riving at the Gulf of Riga. Unlike the Lithuanians, the various Latvian tribes
failed to unite against the threat of Germanic colonization and were subdued
by the so-called Knights of the Sword. Most of the region became known as
Livonia and was ruled by the Teutonic Knights until the 16th century.
The arrival of Lutheranism and the division of the Latvian lands into the
Duchy of Courland and Livonia created the basic contours of Latvian society
until the 19th century. The secularization of the Teutonic Order in the 1500s
led to the creation of a powerful landowning minority and urban elite of Bal-
tic Germans who dominated the Latvian-speaking majority, most of whom
became hereditary serfs over the next two centuries. At the same time, the
Reformation produced the first Latvian-language books beginning in the
1580s. The Duke of Courland became a nominal vassal of Poland-Lithuania,
and the Radziwiłłs in particular made efforts to attach Courland and Livonia
to Lithuania. During the 17th century, Courland, Livonia, and the city of Riga
became objects of struggle between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
and Sweden, which occupied Riga and Livland in the early 1600s. As a result
of the Treaty of Nystadt (1721), which ended the Great Northern War, Liv-
land became part of the Russian Empire. In 1772, the eastern part of Latvia,
Latgale, was annexed by Russia as a result of the First Partition of Poland-
Lithuania, and it was eventually attached to the gubernia of Vitebsk. The
remainder of the Latvian lands was incorporated into the Russian Empire in
1795. The Latvian and Estonian territories of the Russian Empire (Courland,
Livland, and Estland) are usually referred to as the “Baltic provinces” of the
Russian Empire.
The National Movement and After. An increasingly assertive Latvian na-
tional movement emerged during the 19th century, partly stimulated by the

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 168 • LATVIA

emancipation of the serfs of the Baltic provinces during 1817–1819. The

educational work of Lutheran pastors, many of whom were Germans, resulted
in the Latvian peasantry achieving one of the highest rural literacy rates in
Europe (over 90%) by the end of the 19th century. The increasing urbaniza-
tion of the Latvian people, the growth of industry, and the development of
the Latvian language under the leadership of persons such as Krišjānis Barons
(1835–1923), the editor of the newspaper Pēterburgas Avīzes (Petersburg
News), and Atis Kronvalds (1837–1875) gradually undermined the social
power and cultural monopoly of the Baltic Germans in Latvia.
As in Lithuania, World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the assistance
of the British navy in 1918–1919 provided Latvia with the opportunity to
declare independence in 1918, and by 1920 it had successfully established
a viable, democratic state based on majority rule. Land reform and emigra-
tion further reduced the power of the Baltic German landowners between the
wars. In foreign policy, Latvia strove to avoid involvement in Lithuania’s ter-
ritorial quarrels with Poland and Germany. In 1934, Latvia joined Lithuania
and Estonia in forming the Baltic Entente, but this proved of limited use in
enhancing the security of the Baltic States.
On 17 June 1940, the Soviet army occupied Latvia, and on 5 August, the
country was incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As
a result of Soviet rule and rapid industrialization, hundreds of thousands of
immigrants, primarily Russians, were brought to Latvia as industrial labor,
drastically changing the demographic structure of the Latvian Soviet Social-
ist Republic. The Latvian proportion of the population fell to just over 50
percent by the early 1990s, and about 30 percent in Riga, the largest city in
the eastern Baltic. Soviet repression, as well as concern over the survival of
the Latvian people and their environment, led to a resurgence of the Latvian
independence movement during the late 1980s. The establishment of the
pro-independence Latvian Popular Front proved an inspiration for reform
in Lithuania. Since 1990, the Latvian and Lithuanian governments have fol-
lowed a similar foreign policy. Despite disagreements over oil drilling rights
on the Baltic Sea shelf, as well as trade issues, Latvia and Lithuania have
worked closely to achieve integration into the European Union and the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Lithuanians have long played a role in the history of Latvia. The burgeon-
ing metropolis of Riga attracted tens of thousands of Lithuanian workers
before World War I; in addition, many Lithuanian students studied at the
secondary schools of Jelgava (German: Mitau) and Liepāja at the turn of the
20th century. Between the wars, the Lithuanian minority operated a second-
ary school in Riga as well as primary schools in the ethnic Lithuanian districts
close to the Lithuanian border. See also BALTIC ASSEMBLY; BALTS.

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 LITBEL • 169

LAW. See CONSTITUTIONS; LITHUANIAN STATUTE.

LITAS. Plural: litai. Lithuanian unit of currency first introduced in 1922 and
then again in 1993. Lithuania utilized its own currency from medieval times
until 1795, when it was annexed to the Russian Empire. After Lithuania’s
occupation by Germany in 1915, the ostruble was introduced, and then in
1918 the ostmark (Lithuanian: auksinas) became the medium of exchange.
In October 1922, the Lithuanian government introduced the litas at an ex-
change rate of ten litai to one U.S. dollar. During the interwar period, it was
required that one-third of the national currency be covered by gold deposits.
The litas was replaced by the Soviet ruble at what amounted to confiscatory
rates in April 1941. In June 1993, the litas once again became Lithuania’s
currency and remained pegged at a rate of four litai to one U.S. dollar until
the early 2000s. In 2002, the litas was attached to the euro, initially at 3.45
litai to one euro.

LITBEL (LITHUANIAN-BELARUSIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST RE-

PUBLIC). In 1919, the Bolsheviks established a short-lived Soviet Republic
in Lithuania and Belarus, popularly known as the Litbel Republic. In Decem-
ber 1918, Bolshevik leader Vincas Kapsukas visited Lithuania to organize
a Soviet government in expectation of the arrival of the Red Army, which
was approaching eastern Lithuania in the wake of the German retreat. On 8
December, the Lithuanian Communist Party created the Provisional Lithu-
anian Government of Workers and Poor Peasants headed by Kapsukas, and
on 16 December this government published a manifesto proclaiming the es-
tablishment of a Soviet republic in Lithuania. Vladimir Lenin recognized the
fledgling Soviet Lithuanian state on 22 December, and the Red Army entered
Vilnius on 5 January 1919. On 7 January, Kapsukas arrived in Vilnius from
Daugavpils to organize the new state’s Communist administration. Since the
Lithuanian Bolsheviks proved too weak to stand on their own, on 27 Febru-
ary, a consolidated Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet Republic, known as the
Litbel, was proclaimed in Vilnius.
The Litbel government survived only briefly. The prominence of non-
Lithuanians in the Soviet regime and the Communists’ refusal to parcel out
the landed estates to villagers antagonized the Lithuanian peasantry. The
defeats of the Red Army at the hands of German, Lithuanian, and Polish
forces finally doomed the Litbel: on 21 April 1919, Polish forces entered
Vilnius and the Soviet government fled to Minsk. In July, the Litbel regime
liquidated its defense council and the government ceased functioning. On
11 September 1919, Soviet Russia proposed armistice negotiations to the
Lithuanian government in Kaunas, thus granting de facto recognition to the

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 170 • LITERATURE

Republic of Lithuania and confirming the end of the Lithuanian-Belarusian

Soviet Republic.
In later years, the brief Litbel episode provided the Bolsheviks with a
historical reference point that served as a legitimizing rationale for the Com-
munist movement and especially for the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in
1940. The Red Army’s invasion was then portrayed by Party ideologues
as the “restoration” of the Soviet rule interrupted in 1919 rather than a for-
eign occupation. Furthermore, after World War II, Communist historians
maintained that Kapsukas’s manifesto of 16 December 1918 constituted the
authentic reestablishment of the Lithuanian state, rather than the declaration
of independence proclaimed on 16 February 1918—an interpretation that has
long been rejected by most historians.

LITERATURE. Earliest Writings. The Lithuanian people, as well as the

other Balts, possessed a rich oral folk tradition, best expressed through the
ubiquitous songs (dainos) that accompanied virtually all aspects of life: work,
play, love, marriage, death. At least several hundred thousand of these lyrical
folk compositions have been recorded by Lithuanian and foreign researchers
during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the oldest Baltic written texts are
scattered Old Prussian-language terms and phrases from the 14th and 15th
centuries, written down by German scribes accompanying the Teutonic
Knights. Medieval Lithuanian chronicles appeared in a Belarusian form of
Old Church Slavic, which was the first official language of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania.
Latin assumed increasing importance during the 15th and 16th centuries
under the influence of Renaissance humanism. One of the first significant
Latin works was the historical survey by Michael the Lithuanian (Latin:
Michalonus Lituanus) entitled De moribus Tartarorum, Lituanorum, et Mos-
chorum (On the Customs of the Tatars, Lithuanians, and Muscovites). During
the 16th century, a number of Latin poets, such as the Spaniard Peter Roisius
(1500–1571) and Nicholas Husovianus (c. 1475–1540), brought the Renais-
sance style to Lithuania.
The first Lithuanian-language publications appeared during the Reforma-
tion. In 1547, Lutheran pastor Martynas Mažvydas published his 79-page
Catechismusa prasty shadey (The Catechism in Plain Words) in Königsberg,
East Prussia, the first known book in the Lithuanian language. Until the 17th
century, most Lithuanian-language publications were issued in East Prussia,
utilizing the Gothic-style Latin alphabet. Among the most talented of the
Reformation period’s Lithuanian literati were Jonas Bretkūnas (1536–1602),
whose Postilė (Postylla) was published in 1591; Simonas Vaišnoras (c.
1545–1600); and the grammarian Danielius Kleinas (1609–1666), a pastor

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 LITERATURE • 171

from Tilsit whose Grammatica Lituanica set the standard for the systemati-
zation of the Lithuanian language. Secular Lithuanian-language literature of
the 17th century was limited to dedications, epithets, and praise of illustrious
personages: the most notable example of this genre was the Postylla of Mi-
kalojus Daukša (d. 1613), one of the early proponents of wider public use of
the Lithuanian language.
The rather slow development of Lithuanian literature was in large part
caused by the progressive relegation of the language to an idiom of the lower
social strata. Polish and Latin came to predominate among the nobility and
upper-class townspeople as well as in the governmental and educational
institutions of the Grand Duchy. As a result, the most important achieve-
ment of Lithuanian literature in the 18th century came from East Prussia,
where Lithuanian was recognized as an official language on the local level
until the middle of the 19th century: the epic poem Metai (The Seasons) by
the Lutheran pastor Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714–1780). Another important
literary figure of the period was the translator and folklorist Liudvikas Rėza
(1776–1840), who published Donelaitis’s epic and the first collection of
Lithuanian dainos. By contrast, the most popular publication in the Roman
Catholic Grand Duchy was the prominent devotional tract Broma atwerta
ing wiecznasti (The Gates Opened to Eternity), whose heavily Slavicized
vocabulary and pseudoreligious content underscored the decline of literary
Lithuanian.
Developments before the Late 19th Century. The revival of Lithuanian
literature began in the first half of the 19th century under the influence of
the “Lithuanian movement” (Lituanistinis sąjūdis) among the Samogitian
gentry, led by poets Antanas Klementas (1756–1823), Dionizas Poška
(1757–1830), Simonas Stanevičius (1799–1848), and Silvestras Valiūnas
(1789–1831). One of the best known poets among the Lithuanian peasantry
was the Catholic priest Antanas Strazdas (1760–1833), whose verses became
popular religious hymns.
At the same time, the Lithuanian language slowly gained social importance
and intellectual respectability. Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864) and Mo-
tiejus Valančius (1801–1875), the Bishop of Samogitia, were the first to uti-
lize Lithuanian in scholarly works. The expansion of the Lithuanian-language
primary school system fostered by Valančius and the remarkable spread of
the temperance brotherhoods during the 1850s and 1860s stimulated both
an increase in peasant literacy and an outpouring of popular and devotional
literature. Laurynas Ivinskis (1811–1881) published a series of Lithuanian
almanacs (Kalendoriai) for the peasantry which, in addition to practical
information and religious material, included poetry and history. Mikalojus
Akelaitis (1829–1887) played an important role in propagating the use of the

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 172 • LITERATURE

Lithuanian language in the educational system and society and promoting the
spread of popular literature. Antanas Tatarė (1805–1889), the most prominent
19th-century author from Suvalkija, published a number of short stories and
didactic tales during the 1850s.
Undoubtedly the greatest influence on Lithuanian literature before the
emergence of the modern national movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHU-
ANIAN) in the last quarter of the 19th century was Valančius, whose Palan-
gos Juzė (Juzė from Palanga), detailing the travels of a folksy itinerant tailor,
was probably the most widely read work of secular prose in 19th-century
Lithuania. Valančius’s brilliant mastery of style and folk tradition also re-
vealed the limited scope of Lithuanian literature before the emergence of
modern Lithuanian nationalism: its appeal was restricted to the confined en-
vironment of the village and did not reflect the transformation of Lithuanian
society, particularly the aspirations of the emerging Lithuanian-speaking
intelligentsia of the late 19th century. The work of Antanas Baranauskas
(1831–1902), the Bishop of Sejny, perhaps Lithuania’s finest lyricist of the
19th century, was more secular and modern; however, his adherence to tra-
ditional political and social norms mark him as an author of an earlier era.
From the Late 19th Century to 1918. Between the late 1800s and the end
of World War I, Lithuanian literature escaped its village environment and
emerged as the medium of educated Lithuanian-speaking society. Jonas
Mačiulis (1862–1932), better known under the name Maironis, emerged as
the unchallenged Lithuanian poet of the modern nationalism movement; his
prose counterpart was Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas (1869–1933). With the
emergence of Lithuanian secular periodicals, such as Jonas Basanavičius’s
Aušra, and a politicized native intelligentsia, as well as the development
of a standardized literary language, social themes and a critical approach
became more pronounced. Vincas Kudirka (1858–1899), the founder and
editor of Varpas, wrote the first Lithuanian satirical polemics. An important
pioneer in modern prose was Vincas Pietaris (1850–1902), who penned
the first Lithuanian historical novel, Algimantas, in honor of a prince who
struggled to unify Lithuanian tribes. Social problems dominated the writing
of Julija Žymantienė, or Žemaitė (1845–1921), who was also the first to
stress feminist themes. Jonas Biliūnas (1879–1907) authored some shorter
works: a memorable portrait of the insurrection of 1863–1864 in Liūdna
pasaka (A Sad Tale), and a vision of socialism in Laimės žyburys (The
Torch of Happiness).
Psychological realism was the defining element in the works of the popu-
lar Antanas Žukauskas-Vienuolis (1882–1957), who dominated the literary
scene before World War I. The first modern Lithuanian dramatist, Alek-
sandras Fromas-Gužutis (1822–1900), wrote historical dramas; the most

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 LITERATURE • 173

frequently performed play in Lithuania during the decade before World War
I was Juozas and Jonas Vilkutaitis’s Amerika pirtyje (America in the Sauna),
first performed in 1899. Vydūnas, or Vilhelmas Storosta (1868–1953), wrote
dramas of an entirely different genre, emphasizing national historical and
mythological themes imbued with Eastern philosophy.
Literature and Women. One of the significant developments in Lithuanian
literature at the turn of the century was the emergence of a number of im-
portant women authors. During this time, educated Lithuanian women often
came to the national movement from the culturally Polonized petty gentry.
Polish literature, especially the works of Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1910),
who emphasized service to the poor and wrote colorful descriptions of vil-
lage and small town life in Belarus and eastern Poland, impressed women
aspiring to serve society. Their privileged social origins forced these women
to confront the relations between the Polonized manor and Lithuanian villag-
ers. In addition to the works of Žemaitė, social themes predominated in the
work of Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė (1861–1943). As a deputy on the Peasant
Populist Union list and chair of the first session of the Constituent As-
sembly, she became the most prominent female public figure in independent
Lithuania.
The best known woman writer of a Catholic orientation was Marija
Pečkauskaitė (1878–1930), better known as Šatrijos Ragana (The Witch of
Šatrija), whose autobiographical novel Sename dvare (At the Old Estate) was
acknowledged as a classic depiction of the fin-de-siècle disintegration of
Lithuania’s manorial society and its ambiguous relations with the peasantry.
An interesting cross-cultural literary phenomenon was the work of the sisters
Sofija Pšibiliauskienė (1876–1926) and Marija Lastauskienė (1872–1957),
who befriended Orzeszkowa and wrote under the collective pseudonym
Lazdynų Peleda (“The Owl of the Hazels”). Pšibiliauskienė translated her
sister’s Polish works into Lithuanian.
The Interwar Period. Political independence between the wars greatly
enhanced mass literacy in the national language and thus contributed to the
further development and diversification of Lithuanian literature. Several au-
thors who had begun writing at the beginning of the 20th century achieved
their creative pinnacle during the interwar years, including Vincas Krėvė-
Mickevičius (1882–1954), considered by many Lithuanians as the country’s
finest writer; poet Liudas Gira (1884–1946); and novelist Vincas Mykolaitis-
Putinas (1893–1967), whose controversial autobiographical novel Altorių
šešėly (In the Shadow of the Altars) stunned 1930s Lithuanian society by
depicting the author’s abandonment of celibate priesthood. Diplomat Ignas
Šeinius (1889–1959), author of what some consider the first modern Lithu-
anian novel, Kuprelis (The Hunchback), also published in 1934 the highly

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 174 • LITERATURE

regarded Siegfried Immerselbe atsinaujina (The Rejuvenation of Siegfried

Immerselbe), which satirized Nazi racial theories. Prominent symbolist po-
ets included Jurgis Baltrušaitis (1873–1944), Faustas Kirsa (1891–1964),
Mykolaitis-Putinas, and Balys Sruoga (1896–1947), who also left a devastat-
ing account of his experience in the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp entitled
Dievų miškas (The Forest of the Gods).
One of the most prominent women writers of the interwar period was Ieva
Simonaitytė (1897–1978), whose works, including her prize-winning 1935
novel Aukštųjų Šimonių likimas (The Fate of the Šimonis Family), depicted
the specific milieu of the Lithuanians of her native Klaipėda region, strug-
gling to survive Germanizing influences. Salomėja Neris (1904–1945),
despite her eventual drift into the Communist camp, remains one of the coun-
try’s most widely read poets of the interwar generation.
The interwar period also saw the emergence of avant-garde literature un-
der the iconoclastic Four Winds (Keturi vėjai) Movement, initiated in 1922
by a group of young writers. Kazys Binkis (1893–1942) criticized contem-
porary Lithuanian literature as sentimental, naive, and rustic. Kazys Boruta
(1905–1965) embodied the angry young man of Lithuanian literature, serving
time in a Nationalist Union prison. Jurgis Savickis (1890–1952) provided
Lithuanian readers with a cosmopolitan individualism, honed by his diplo-
matic experience in European capitals. During the 1930s, a leftist avant-garde
movement, the Third Front (Trečias frontas), included poets Antanas Ven-
clova (1906–1971) and the dynamic Neris.
Literature since 1940. The Sovietization of cultural life after Lithuania’s
occupation and forcible incorporation into the Union of Soviet Socialist Re-
publics in 1940 transformed the literary scene. The Party took control of the
Lithuanian Writers’ Association as the only legitimate literary organization
in Lithuania and utilized it to enforce the Stalinist line. Petras Cvirka (1909–
1947) became a prominent exponent of the obligatory current of Stalinist so-
cialist realism, while the literary critic Kostas Korsakas (1909–1986) sought
to explain the history of Lithuanian literature in Marxist terms. Some former
leftist members of the Third Front, such as Venclova, Neris, and Cvirka, were
prominent during the early Soviet period.
The postwar Communist campaign against “cosmopolitan” influences led
to repression in Lithuania as well. A number of writers, such as Kazys Boruta
(1905–1965), Sruoga, and Mykolaitis-Putinas, were forced to “correct” their
deviant ideas. Others were imprisoned, while the dissident leftist poet Kazys
Jakubėnas (1908–1950) was murdered by security agents.
The “thaw” of the post-Stalin period allowed some room for creative inno-
vation, albeit under the watchful eye of the Party. During the period between
the late 1950s and the mid-1980s, when the Soviet censorship apparatus

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 LITERATURE • 175

weakened considerably, Eduardas Mieželaitis (1919–1997), the winner of the

Lenin Prize, gained fame for his collection of verse Žmogus (Man). Juozas
Baltušis’s (1909–1991) autobiographical novel Parduotos vasaros (Summers
That Were Sold) emphasized agrarian social issues from a peasant boy’s
perspective of class struggle. The post-Stalin era also opened possibilities
for literature with national themes, as in the works of the popular Justinas
Marcinkevičius (1930– ), who penned a number of historical dramas depict-
ing Lithuania’s heroic past. Other prominent prose writers, such as Juozas
Avyžius (1922–1999) and Romualdas Lankauskas (1932– ), tackled contem-
porary themes, including man’s alienation in industrial society.
The irreverent younger writers of the 1980s who were critical of the regime
and the “Soviet man” it had spawned included Saulius Tomas Kondrotas
(1953– ) and Ričardas Gavelis (1950–2002). Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961–2007),
a popular iconoclastic novelist, was influenced by the Western counterculture
movement. Many young writers, like poet Sigitas Geda (1943–2008), took an
active role in the 1980s reform and independence movements. The collapse
of the Soviet system had a serious impact on the work of Lithuanian writers:
the drastic reduction in state support for the arts left many in an uncertain
financial position. Ironically, the welcome end of censorship also reduced
public interest in literature; it now lost its role as a means of conveying subtle
political criticism that it had had during the Soviet era.
Literature in the Diaspora. Much of the Lithuanian intelligentsia, includ-
ing many writers, fled to the West in 1944, where they were free of state cen-
sorship. Most émigré authors continued the trends they had initiated in Lithu-
ania before 1940. Some older writers sought to recreate the lost homeland in
their work, while others were more concerned with the alienating experience
of war and exile. Bernardas Brazdžionis (1907–2002) gained acceptance as a
national bard of resistance to the Soviet occupation both abroad and in Lithu-
ania. Other prominent poets included lyricist Jonas Aleksandravičius-Aistis
(1904–1973) and such younger avant-garde poets as Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas
(1919– ) and Henrikas Radauskas (1910–1970). Jonas Mekas (1922– ) also
entered the American cultural scene as one of the founders, along with his
brother Adolfas, of “underground cinema” in the United States.
Of the prose writers, the most prolific were Jurgis Gliauda (1906–1996) and
Birutė Pūkelevičiūtė (1923–2007). The innovative writer Marius Katiliškis
(1910–1980) produced numerous short stories and four novels; his autobio-
graphical work Išėjusiems negrįžti (No Return for the Departed) presented
one of the most vivid accounts of the desperate experience of Lithuanian
youth in 1944–1945. Playwrights Antanas Škėma (1911–1961) and Algir-
das Landsbergis (1924–2004) experimented with what were, for Lithuanian
theater, new forms, although Kostas Ostrauskas (1926– ) is perhaps the most

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 176 • LITHUANIA MINOR

daring dramatist, producing absurd drama and then turning toward postmod-
ernist themes.
While most émigré Lithuanian literature was produced in the United
States, novelists Kazys Barėnas (1907–2006) and Eduardas Cinzas (1924–
1996) settled in western Europe. One of the most unique Lithuanian writers
of the postwar period is Icchokas Meras (1934– ), who emigrated to Israel
in 1972. Meras has utilized graphic accounts of his childhood in Lithuania
during the Holocaust to examine the broader themes of human degradation
and salvation. See also MIŁOSZ, CZESŁAW.

LITHUANIA MINOR. See PRUSSIA.

LITHUANIAN ACTIVIST FRONT (LAF). Lithuanian: Lietuvų aktyvistų

frontas. Anti-Soviet resistance organization founded in 1940. Traces of the
ideological origins of the Lithuanian Activist Front date to 1938 when a
small semi-clandestine coalition of groups, known as the Lithuanian Activ-
ist Movement (Lietuvių aktyvistų sąjūdis) and opposed to the Nationalist
regime of Antanas Smetona, was formed in Klaipėda. The group advocated
a populist, militantly nationalistic political line based on “authoritarian de-
mocracy” and a foreign policy friendly to Germany.
After the Soviet occupation in June 1940, a number of prominent Lithu-
anians and former officials escaped into Germany. On 3 November, Lithu-
anian leaders of most non-Communist political parties and Lithuanian diplo-
mats still accredited to the Republic of Lithuania met in Berlin to establish the
LAF, whose avowed purpose was to restore the independence of Lithuania.
Col. Kazys Škirpa (1895–1979), the former Lithuanian envoy to Germany,
was chosen to head the organization. The political philosophy of the LAF,
as worked out by Škirpa and his associates, was rooted in the thinking of the
right-wing opposition to Smetona, which stressed populist nationalism with
an anti-Semitic bias, economic policies modeled on a form of corporatism,
emphasis on national will and discipline as opposed to bourgeois liberalism,
and a “realistic” appraisal of the need to accommodate Germany’s interests in
the struggle for Lithuanian independence. However, there were also elements
both within and outside the LAF opposed to Škirpa’s pro-German stance and
authoritarian ideology.
The LAF maintained sporadic contacts with the anti-Soviet resistance in
Lithuania, which as a practical matter operated without much control from
Berlin. The Soviet deportations of 14–17 June 1941 seriously disrupted the
LAF’s underground network within the country.
After the German attack on the Soviet Union of 22 June 1941, an anti-
Soviet uprising broke out in Kaunas and other parts of Lithuania. On 23
June, the rebels proclaimed a provisional government in Kaunas headed by

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 LITHUANIAN STATUTE • 177

the LAF and announced the restoration of Lithuania’s independence. Dis-

agreements with the German occupation authorities led to the disbanding of
the provisional government on 5 August and the banning of the LAF the fol-
lowing month. During the German occupation, the LAF was reorganized as
the Lithuanian Front (Lietuvių frontas) and adopted passive resistance tactics
against the Nazis.
After the war, former members of the LAF and some conservative Cath-
olic-oriented groups formed the Friends of the Lithuanian Front (Lietuvių
fronto bičiuliai), which became an influential factor in émigré politics. The
Friends affirmed a commitment to democratic norms and emphasized the
role of the historic LAF as a resistance movement. However, some Lithu-
anians and most Jewish groups have criticized the LAF as a collaborationist
organization.

LITHUANIAN METRICA. Lithuanian: Lietuvos metrika; Russian: Litovs-

kaya metrika. One of the most important collections of manuscripts and reg-
istries of historical documents for the history of Lithuania and neighboring
countries—essentially, the surviving records of the chancery of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. Although many of the originals of treaties, ducal privi-
leges, tax assessments, letters, and other important manuscripts have been
lost, the grand duke’s office maintained a meticulous registry of official docu-
ments sent and received, often with descriptions of their contents. Most of the
earlier documents and entries are in the western Russian or Belarusian form
of Old Church Slavic. Systematic archival record keeping in the grand duke’s
offices dates from the mid-14th century. In the early 1500s, the archives were
moved to Vilnius, but a considerable number of manuscripts perished dur-
ing the Muscovite sack of the city in 1655. Eventually, some of the original
documents and many copies were transferred to private ownership, the largest
number going to the Radziwiłł estate in Nesvizh, Belarus, from where they
were transferred to Warsaw.
In 1795, after the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
the records of the Lithuanian Metrica were moved to St. Petersburg, where
they were newly catalogued by a tsarist commission in 1836–1837. In 1887,
the Metrica was transferred to Moscow, where the originals still reside. The
Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty of 12 July 1920 mandated the return of the
records to Lithuania, but the agreement was never honored; microfilm cop-
ies were sent to Vilnius after World War II. The return of the Lithuanian
Metrica has continued as a subject of negotiation between the governments
of Lithuania and the Russian Federation since 1991.

LITHUANIAN STATUTE. Lithuanian: Lietuvos Statutas; Russian:

Litovskii Statut. Law code of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, one of the

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 178 • LITVAKS

few such comprehensive legal collections in medieval Europe. Until the 16th
century, the legal system of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania rested on local
customary law in the ethnic Lithuanian parts of the Grand Duchy, and on the
written and customary codes relevant to the Eastern Orthodox Russian lands.
A number of privileges granting rights to nobles and town charters were is-
sued during the 14th and 15th centuries.
In 1522, work began on the codification of a uniform law code for the
entire Grand Duchy. The result was the First Lithuanian Statute, approved by
the Grand Duchy’s diet in Vilnius and proclaimed by Sigismund I the Elder
as the law of the land in 1529. In the preface to the Statute, the Grand Duke
mandated the equality of Catholic and Orthodox Christians, one of the first
examples of legalized religious tolerance in European history. The law code
had 13 chapters and 243 articles. Some parts of the Statute obligated the ruler
to respect Lithuania’s interests and safeguard the duchy’s territorial integrity.
The code detailed judicial procedures and laid down the basis for land tenure,
including women’s property rights.
In early 1566, a revised and more systematic law code, the Second Lithu-
anian Statute, was proclaimed, which broadened the personal rights of the no-
bility in general and enhanced the legal rights of the petty gentry in particular.
The new code allowed landowners to freely dispose of their property, which
also gave them increased power over their peasants.
In January 1588, Sigismund III Vasa proclaimed the Third Lithuanian
Statute, a more comprehensive code that reaffirmed religious equality and also
included more sections reflecting local customary law. The Third Lithuanian
Statute was the only one published, as the earlier statutes were promulgated in
manuscript form. Sigismund’s law code remained in force even after Russia’s
annexation of most of Lithuania in 1795. In 1840, Tsar Nicholas I finally an-
nulled the Lithuanian Statute and placed Lithuania under Russian law.

LITVAKS. See JEWS.

LIVONIA. Historic region on the northern border of Lithuania, stretching east

of the Gulf of Riga, now part of Latvia and Estonia. The name of the region
derives from the Finno-Ugric people known as the Livs who inhabited the
region since prehistoric times. During the 12th century, the indigenous Baltic
and Finno-Ugric tribes were conquered by the crusading German Knights of
the Sword, and then came under the rule of the Livonian Order, a branch of
the Teutonic Order. After the secularization of the Teutonic Knights in 1525,
the head of the Livonian Knights was named a prince by the Holy Roman
emperor. In 1558–1559, large parts of Livonia were conquered by Ivan the
Terrible’s Muscovite forces; as a result, the Livonian nobility and the Arch-

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 LOZORAITIS, STASYS, SR. • 179

bishop of Riga obtained the protection of Sigismund II Augustus of Poland-

Lithuania in 1561. The southern part of Livonia was reorganized as the Duchy
of Courland, which became a vassal of the Polish-Lithuanian crown. In 1582,
the Muscovites were finally expelled from the Livonian lands. The northern
part of Livonia, including Riga, came under Swedish rule in 1629, but in 1721
much of the area was formally ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Nystadt. In
1918, most of historic Livonia became part of the newly independent Republic
of Latvia, while the northern section was incorporated into Estonia.

LIVONIAN ORDER (KNIGHTS OF THE SWORD). German crusad-

ing order that conquered Latvia and Estonia in the medieval period. The
Livonian Order originated as the Fraternity of the Warriors of Christ (Latin:
Fratres militiae Christi) founded by Bishop Albert of Riga in 1202–1203 to
protect the German colonists who had arrived at the mouth of the Daugava
River in Livonia at the end of the 12th century. They were widely known
as the Knights of the Sword, referring to the symbol they used as their coat
of arms. In 1207, the order received from Albert the right to rule one-third
of the lands they conquered, and during the first half of the 13th century the
Knights proceeded to forcibly convert most of the populace in what is now
Latvia and southern Estonia. The Livonian Order then invaded Lithuanian
lands and Rus’, but were decisively repulsed at the Battle of Saulė in 1236
and the Battle of Lake Peipus in 1242.
In 1237, the Knights of the Sword amalgamated with the Teutonic Knights
in Prussia and thus became the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order. The
master of the Livonian branch was usually elected by the high officers and
representatives of the knights, priests, and sergeants, and then confirmed by
the grand master of the Teutonic Knights in Marienburg (Polish: Malbork).
In 1346, the northern Estonian lands, previously ruled by Denmark, were
transferred to the Livonian Knights, whose territory now stretched to the Gulf
of Finland.
Much of the history of the Livonian Knights involved a bitter domestic
struggle over land and political jurisdiction with the powerful Archbishop of
Riga; the Lithuanian grand dukes frequently exploited the situation by inter-
vening on behalf of Riga during the 14th century. The Livonian branch of the
Teutonic Order was secularized in 1562. Many of the knights then became
landowners and formed the core of what are historically referred to as the
“Baltic Germans,” the landed and urban elite who became a powerful Ger-
manizing influence in the Latvian and Estonian lands until the 20th century.

LOZORAITIS, STASYS, SR. (1898–1983). Lithuanian diplomat and for-

eign minister of Lithuania from 1934 to 1938; born on 5 September 1898 in

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 180 • LOZORAITIS, STASYS, JR.

Kaunas. After working in Lithuania’s interior ministry and the chancery of

the Council of Ministers, Lozoraitis entered the Lithuanian foreign service
in 1923 as first secretary and then as counselor in the Lithuanian Legation
in Berlin. In 1929, he was transferred to the Lithuanian Legation at the Holy
See, where he became chargé d’affaires in 1931. He returned to Lithuania in
1932 as director of the political department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and became the foreign minister in June 1934.
During the mid-1930s, Lozoraitis was instrumental in shaping the Baltic
Entente with Latvia and Estonia and was an advocate of collective security
as well as a rapprochement with Poland; he tendered his resignation follow-
ing Poland’s ultimatum of March 1938. Lozoraitis was appointed minister
plenipotentiary to Italy in February 1939. In May 1940, Foreign Minister
Juozas Urbšys secretly authorized Lozoraitis to act as head of the Lithuanian
diplomatic corps in the event of the country’s occupation; thus, he was the
senior Lithuanian diplomat in exile from June 1940 until his death in Rome
on 24 December 1983. See also FOREIGN RELATIONS; LOZORAITIS,
STASYS, JR.

LOZORAITIS, STASYS, JR. (1924–1994). Lithuanian diplomat and

presidential candidate, and son of Stasys Lozoraitis Sr.; born in Berlin on 2
August 1924. Lozoraitis studied law at the University of Rome during 1944–
1948. In 1947, he became an attaché at the Lithuanian Legation to the Holy
See and served as first secretary there from 1964 to 1970, when he became
Lithuanian representative to the Vatican. Lozoraitis was appointed counselor
to the Lithuanian Legation in Washington, D.C., in 1983, and became chargé
d’affaires of the legation in 1987; he became Lithuania’s first ambassador to
the United States in 1991.
In the fall of 1992, Lozoraitis entered the presidential campaign in Lithu-
ania but lost to former Communist Party leader Algirdas Brazauskas in the
elections of February 1993, winning about 40 percent of the vote. Afterward,
he was appointed Lithuania’s ambassador to Italy, but died in Washington
on 13 June 1994 before he could assume his new duties. Lozoraitis is best
remembered for his representation of Lithuania’s interests during the rise
of the Sąjūdis movement and during the difficult first year of the restored
Republic in 1990–1991.

LUBLIN, UNION OF (1569). Treaty that created the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth. Despite the dynastic alliance of Poland and Lithuania stip-
ulated in the Act of Krėva in 1385, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania retained
independence in administrative, military, judicial, and foreign relations even
after 1501 when the thrones of Poland and Lithuania were occupied by the

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 LUBLIN, UNION OF • 181

same monarch. A number of issues, particularly the common threat from

Muscovy, the gradual cultural Polonization of the Lithuanian nobility, and
the approaching end of the Jagiellonian dynasty with the childless Sigismund
II Augustus, persuaded most Polish and some Lithuanian nobles to press
for closer ties between the two states. However, the king and Polish nobility
had to overcome the reluctance of the Lithuanian magnates who wanted to
preserve as much as possible of the Grand Duchy’s independence and who
resisted the notion of a common Polish-Lithuanian diet, especially after the
Lithuanian defeat of Muscovite forces at Ula and Orsha in 1564, which tem-
porarily diminished the threat from Russia.
At the end of 1568, Polish and Lithuanian delegates gathered in the eastern
Polish town of Lublin for contentious negotiations concerning a new union.
Some Poles demanded the elimination of the Grand Duchy and its replace-
ment with a territory called New Poland, while the Lithuanians reacted by
suspending the Lublin talks in March 1569. The king’s annexation of the
southeastern part of the Grand Duchy, including Ukraine, to the Kingdom,
and the resurgence of the Muscovite threat compelled the Lithuanians to
return to negotiations in June 1569 under the leadership of the Samogitian
elder statesman John Chodkiewicz, who reluctantly accepted most of the
Polish terms.
The final act of the Union and its solemn oaths were enacted on 1 July
1569 and endorsed by the king during the following week. The Union de-
clared Poland and Lithuania to be a commonwealth (Polish: rzeczpospolita)
constituting “one inseparable body” and joining two peoples into a single
nation; established a common Polish-Lithuanian Diet and Senate that were
to meet in Warsaw; foresaw the standardization of coinage; provided for a
common foreign policy; and allowed Poles to own estates in Lithuania. On
the other hand, the Grand Duchy maintained a separate legal system under
the Lithuanian Statute, as well as a separate army, treasury, and coat of
arms. Some of the provisions, such as the one stipulating common coinage
and allowing Polish ownership of Lithuanian estates, were never enforced.
Nonetheless, as a result of the Union of Lublin, Lithuania lost more than a
third of its territory and underwent more rapid cultural Polonization. The
agreement of 1569 was a turning point in Polish-Lithuanian relations and es-
tablished the constitutional basis of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
which survived until 1795.
The Union of Lublin has elicited radically conflicting interpretations in
the scholarship, popular histories, and collective memories of Poland and
Lithuania. Poles have tended to value it as a triumph of wise statesmanship
that inaugurated a unique federated state that, at least in the 16th century,
experienced a golden age. After the Lithuanian national movement (see

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 182 • LUBYS, BRONISLOVAS

NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN) of the 19th century, scholars like Theo-

dore Narbutt, as well as Lithuanians generally, began to see the Union of
Lublin as an unmitigated disaster that limited the Grand Duchy’s indepen-
dence and hastened the Polonization of the nobility. Thus, Polish and Lithu-
anian nationalists, in different ways, came to view the Union of Lublin as a
paradigm for the historic relations between the two peoples.

LUBYS, BRONISLOVAS (1938– ). Prime minister from 2 December

1992 to 10 March 1993 and a prominent business leader; born on 8 October
1938 in Plungė, Lithuania. Lubys was trained as a chemist and rose within
the ranks of the Lithuanian Communist Party, becoming the director of the
Republic’s largest fertilizer plant in 1985. As a member of the Lithuanian
Supreme Soviet, elected in February 1990, he was one of the signatories of
the 11 March 1990 declaration of independence. He served as vice premier
in 1991–1992 and was appointed prime minister in December 1992 after the
victory of the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party in parliamentary elec-
tions, but gave up the post to Adolfas Šleževičius in March 1993. That same
year, Lubys founded and headed the Lithuanian Industrialists’ Confederation
(Lietuvos pramonininkų konfederacija), which became the most powerful
business lobby in Lithuania. Since the mid-1990s, Lubys, widely seen as an
example of the former Communist nomenklatura’s hold on the country’s
economy, has been acknowledged as the wealthiest man in the country.

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 M
MACKEVIČIUS, ANTANAS (1828–1863). Polish: Mackiewicz. Priest and
revolutionary leader; born in Raseiniai district on 14 June 1828. Mackevičius
studied at the University of Kiev and then enrolled in the Samogitian Theo-
logical Seminary at Varniai in 1850. After some minor postings as an as-
sistant, Mackevičius was assigned to the parish of Paberžė. During his time
there, he became active in conspiratorial circles that were preparing for an
anti-Russian uprising. Mackevičius and his radical friend Konstanty Kalin-
owski stressed the importance of involving the Lithuanian peasantry in the
rebellion.
During the early 1860s, Mackevičius became known for his fiery sermons
urging villagers to take up arms against the tsar. On 8 March 1863, in one
of the frequently cited dramatic moments of the insurrection of 1863–1864,
Mackevičius read the rebels’ manifesto from the pulpit of the Paberžė church
and announced his own personal decision to join the revolt. He soon organized a
military unit composed primarily of peasant guerrillas and became one of the re-
bellion’s most charismatic military commanders. In April 1863, Mackevičius’s
unit reportedly enrolled almost 2,000 men. His forces were no match for the
better equipped Russian army, however, and on 5 December, Mackevičius was
captured. He was publicly hanged in Kaunas on 16 December.
Mackevičius is recognized as one of the important “Red” or radical lead-
ers of the 1863 insurrection. He was also one of the first to raise the national
issue, promoting the use of the Lithuanian language among his men and
insisting that the Lithuanian people had a right to decide their own political
future, although his conception of it was vague. Mackevičius believed that
social justice for the peasantry also implied recognition of their national and
linguistic rights. In this respect, he differed from the pro-Polish orientation
of most of the gentry leaders of the rebellion.

MAIRONIS (1862–1932). Pen name of the Lithuanian poet Jonas Mačiulis,

the major literary figure of the Lithuanian nationalist renaissance of the 19th
and early 20th centuries; born on 21 October 1862 in Raseiniai district. Af-
ter his graduation from the Russian secondary school in Kaunas, Maironis

183

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 184 • MARCH 11 1990 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

continued his education at the University of Kiev, the Kaunas Theological

Seminary, and the Theological Academy of St. Petersburg, where he gradu-
ated with a doctorate in 1892. He taught moral theology there until his return
to Lithuania in 1909, when he was appointed rector of the Theological Semi-
nary in Kaunas. Later raised to the rank of monsignor, Maironis also taught
theology at the seminary and the University of Kaunas until his death on 28
June 1932.
Maironis is Lithuania’s best known poet and, as the acknowledged bard of
the nationalism movement, did much to shape the modern Lithuanian literary
language. He published his first poem in Aušra in 1885 and is most widely
known for his collection Pavasario balsai (Voices of Spring), which appeared
in 1895, after which he became known mainly by his nom de plume. Pavasa-
rio balsai was published in six editions during his lifetime and contains many
of the most popular poems in the Lithuanian language.
Maironis’s other major works include Jaunoji lietuva (Young Lithuania),
also in 1895; Raseinių magdė (Magdė of Raseiniai) in 1909, Mūsų vargai (Our
Troubles) in 1920, and a trilogy of historic dramas composed between 1921
and 1930: Kęstučio mirtis (The Death of Kęstutis), Vytautas pas kryžiuočius
(Vytautas at the Teutonic Knights), and Vytautas Karalius (King Vytautas).
Much of Maironis’s work is imbued with a spirit of romantic patriotism,
extolling Lithuania’s landscape and people and emphasizing the country’s
heroic past. However, Maironis also contributed a number of satirical works,
criticizing the venality of government officials and the self-absorbed intel-
ligentsia of the early independence period. Several of his works were set to
music: his composition to the Blessed Mother, “Marija, Marija,” is today the
most popular Lithuanian religious hymn, while his poem “Lietuva brangi”
(Dear Lithuania) served as a kind of unofficial national anthem during the
Soviet period. See also LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

MARCH 11 1990 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. See BRAZA-

USKAS, ALGIRDAS; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL; LANDSBERGIS, VY-
TAUTAS; PRUNSKIENĖ, KAZIMIRA; SĄJŪDIS; YELTSIN, BORIS.

MASSALSKI, IGNACY (1729–1794). Lithuanian: Masalskis. Lithuanian

churchman and statesman; born on 22 July 1729 near Grodno into an old and
powerful noble family. Ignacy Massalski was educated in Rome and, after
his return to Lithuania in 1748, became a secretary in the Grand Duchy’s
chancery. He rose rapidly within the Catholic Church administration and in
1762 became Bishop of Vilnius. He also joined the Lithuanian Senate and
held various political posts. Massalski attempted to revitalize Lithuanian
Catholicism by establishing new parishes and utilizing monastic orders, es-

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 MATULAITIS-MATULEVIČIUS, JURGIS • 185

pecially the Jesuits and Dominicans, for educational and missionary work;
he expanded the diocesan seminary and strove to purify the liturgy. He also
reduced the obligations for the peasants on his estates and emphasized the
need of educating the rural population. From 1773 to 1777, Massalski headed
Lithuania’s Educational Commission. He was also an important patron of the
arts, commissioning the architect Liudvikas Stuoka-Gucevičius to build the
new Vilnius Cathedral, which is now the major landmark in the heart of the
city. Massalski also constructed the bishop’s residence in Verkiai, where he
stored valuable works of art.
Politically, Massalski came to support the conservative pro-Russian forces
in Lithuania and became a bitter opponent of the liberal Constitution of
1791, allying himself with the conservative Targowica Confederation. In
1793, Massalski was a member of the Polish-Lithuanian delegation that nego-
tiated the Second Partition of the Commonwealth with Prussia and Russia.
Because of his pro-Russian sympathies, he was arrested by Polish rebels and
hanged by a mob in Warsaw on the night of 28 June 1794.

MATULAITIS-MATULEVIČIUS, JURGIS (1871–1927). Bishop of Vil-

nius and Lithuanian religious leader, a Blessed of the Roman Catholic
Church and a candidate for canonization; born on 13 April 1871 near
Marijampolė. Matulaitis studied at the Theological Seminary in Kielce,
Poland, and continued his education in Warsaw and St. Petersburg. He was
ordained in 1899 and assigned to a parish in central Poland, then continued
his theological studies in Fribourg, Switzerland. In 1907, he was assigned to
the newly founded department of sociology at the Theological Academy of
St. Petersburg. Matulaitis was a follower of the progressive teachings of Pope
Leo XIII, who attempted to imbue Catholic doctrine with social activism. In
1909, he entered the Marian Order, which was on the verge of extinction in
Lithuania, and was instrumental in restoring and expanding the order when
he became its superior general.
In October 1918, Pope Benedict XV appointed Matulaitis Bishop of Vil-
nius, the first Lithuanian-speaking head of the diocese in centuries. During
this period of revolutionary change and the Polish-Lithuanian conflict en-
gendered by the Vilnius Question, Matulaitis consistently advocated ethnic
tolerance among the Poles, Belarusians, and Lithuanians of the diocese. His
support for the linguistic rights of the Belarusian and Lithuanian Catholic
peasantry aroused the animosity of Polish nationalists, who saw Matulaitis
as an obstacle in their efforts to maintain dominance over the cultural and
spiritual life of the region. Under intense political pressure, Matulaitis re-
signed his position and went to Rome in 1925 to devote his energies to the
Marian Order.

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 186 • MAŽVYDAS, MARTYNAS

In that same year, Pope Pius XI appointed Matulaitis titular archbishop of

Aduli and apostolic visitor to Lithuania. In his new capacity, Matulaitis led
the planning to establish the Lithuanian ecclesiastical province, with Kaunas
as the metropolitan see, and played a crucial role in negotiating Lithuania’s
concordat with the Vatican. In the summer of 1926, Matulaitis visited the
United States, where he had helped establish Marian monasteries, but soon
after his return from America, he fell ill and died on 27 January 1927 in
Kaunas. Because of Matulaitis’s reputation for spirituality, tolerance, and
charity, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 28 June 1987, gaining the
title of “Blessed.” If canonized, Matulaitis would be Lithuania’s first saint of
modern times.

MAŽVYDAS, MARTYNAS (1510–1563). Lutheran pastor and the author

of the first known Lithuanian book. Mažvydas was born in Samogitia into
a family of poor townspeople. He studied in Vilnius and is reported to have
associated there with the classical scholar Abraomas Kulvietis. As a convert
to Protestantism, Mažvydas felt unwelcome in the Catholic Grand Duchy
and moved to East Prussia, where he studied at the University of Königs-
berg. There in 1547 he published Catechismusa prasty szadei (A Catechism
in Plain Words), the first known printed work in the Lithuanian language,
based largely on the Samogitian dialect. He is thus considered the founder
of Lithuanian literature. Mažvydas published several other religious books
that served as the basis for later Lithuanian-language Protestant writings.
Mažvydas served as a priest in the East Prussian town of Ragainė (Russian:
Neman), where he became known for his pastoral and social work among the
peasantry. He died in Königsberg on 21 May 1563.

MEDININKAI. Also Medninkai. Historic town in eastern Lithuania on

the Lithuanian-Belarusian border located about 32 kilometers (19 miles)
southeast of Vilnius. In medieval times, it was an important fortress guard-
ing the road to Vilnius from Ashmyany (Lithuanian: Ašmena) and Krėva
(Polish: Krewo) and a favorite palace of the Lithuanian grand dukes Vytau-
tas, Jogaila, and Casimir IV. The area has been the site of numerous ar-
chaeological excavations. The Juozapinė hill near Medininkai is the highest
point in Lithuania at 294 meters (965 feet) above sea level. The town briefly
captured world attention when, on 31 July 1991, while President George H.
W. Bush was visiting Moscow, Soviet special forces murdered six Lithuanian
border guards and critically injured a seventh during a night raid on the Me-
dininkai border post.

MERKYS, ANTANAS (1887–1955). Lithuanian military leader and states-

man; born in Rokiškis district on 20 January 1887. Merkys studied law at the

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 MICKIEWICZ, ADAM • 187

Universities of Tartu and Kiev and then served as an officer in the Russian
army during World War I. In 1919–1920, he served as Lithuania’s minis-
ter of defense. Merkys opened a law practice in Kaunas in 1922 and soon
became one of the founders of the Nationalist Union, as well as a close as-
sociate of Antanas Smetona. After the Nationalist coup of December 1926,
Merkys once again entered government service as minister of defense in
1927 and then as governor of Klaipėda Territory from 1927 to 1932. During
1933–1939, he served as the mayor of Kaunas.
After the takeover of the Vilnius region by Lithuanian forces in October
1939 he briefly served as the area’s administrator, but on 21 November 1939
he was called back to Kaunas and appointed prime minister. As Lithuania’s
last prime minister before the restoration of independence in 1990, Merkys
led the government during the critical spring months of 1940 as relations
with the Soviet Union deteriorated. On 7 June 1940, he traveled to Moscow
hoping to persuade Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov that the Kremlin’s
charges concerning Lithuania’s violations of the Soviet-Lithuanian Mutual
Assistance Treaty of 1939 were baseless and seeking clarification of Mos-
cow’s intentions. Merkys returned to Kaunas on 12 June as the Soviet leaders
adopted an increasingly threatening attitude.
During the early morning hours of 15 June, Merkys and President Smetona
presided over the last cabinet session of independent Lithuania, which de-
cided to accept the Soviet ultimatum of 14 June demanding the military oc-
cupation of the country. When the Soviet army invaded Lithuania on 15 June,
Smetona crossed into Germany after appointing Merkys acting president.
At Soviet insistence, Merkys nominated the leftist journalist Justas Paleckis
to head a new government on 17 June, despite the questionable constitu-
tional legality of such a step, and then resigned his position. A month later,
Merkys and his family were deported to the Soviet Union. He died in Russia
on 5 March 1955. See also DEKANOZOV, VLADIMIR.

MICKIEWICZ, ADAM (1799–1855). Lithuanian: Mickevičius. Polish

writer and Romantic poet, born on 4 January 1799 in Novogrudok (Polish:
Nowogródek; Belarusian: Navahrudak) district in present-day Belarus into a
family of Lithuanian gentry. In 1815–1819, Mickiewicz enrolled at the Uni-
versity of Vilnius, then the major intellectual center of Polish cultural life in
the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1817, Mick-
iewicz and his friends organized the secret Philomath (Polish: Filomaty)
Society in Vilnius, which propagated radical social and political views. In
1819, Mickiewicz obtained a position as a teacher in Kaunas, but in 1823 he
and other Philomaths were arrested by the tsarist police for subversive activ-
ity and exiled to Russia; there, he became active in the literary salons of St.
Petersburg and Moscow.

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 188 • MIŁOSZ, CZESŁAW

After a stay in Odessa, Mickiewicz left Russia in 1828 and traveled to

Germany and Italy. In 1830, Mickiewicz went to Poznań to fight in the in-
surrection of 1830–1831, which had broken out in Congress Poland; after
the rebellion’s failure, he joined the thousands of Polish-Lithuanian rebels
who fled to France. Mickiewicz taught Latin at the University of Lausanne in
1839–1840 and then Slavic literature at the Collège de France until 1844. At
this time he briefly came under the influence of the religious mystic Andrzej
Towiański (1799–1878). In 1849, he began editing La Tribune des Peuples,
a newspaper dedicated to the liberation and mutual friendship of oppressed
European nations. When the Crimean War broke out in 1855, Mickiewicz
went to Turkey to organize a Polish-Lithuanian unit to fight the Russians. He
died in Istanbul on 26 September 1855. Mickiewicz is buried in the Wawel
Castle in Cracow.
While Mickiewicz is regarded as Poland’s greatest poet, he also influ-
enced the cultural development of the Lithuanian national movement (see
NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN) by choosing many of his themes from
a romanticized vision of the Lithuanian past. His masterpiece, the epic Pan
Tadeusz czyli ostatni zajazd na Litwie (Lord Tadeusz, or The Last Raid in
Lithuania), first published in 1834, which portrays Lithuania’s Polonized
gentry on the eve of the Napoleonic invasion, begins with the famous line:
“Lithuania, my fatherland, you are like health!” Several others of his epics—
notably Konrad Wallenrod (1828), which depicted the Lithuanian struggle
against the Teutonic Knights—utilized dramatic themes from Lithuania’s
medieval past. See also LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

MIŁOSZ, CZESŁAW (1911–2004). Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner

from Lithuania, born in Kėdainiai district on 30 June 1911. After a childhood
in central Lithuania, Miłosz received his secondary and university education
in Vilnius, graduating from the Stefan Batory University’s law faculty in
1934. After 1936, he lived in Warsaw and, during the German occupation,
was a member of the anti-Nazi underground. After the war, Miłosz served in
the Polish diplomatic corps in New York and Paris, but defected to the West
in 1951 and finally settled in the United States, where he obtained a position
as professor of Polish literature at the University of California, Berkeley. In
addition to numerous literary awards in Europe and America, Miłosz was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. He died in Cracow on 14
August 2004.
Miłosz began his literary career as a student in Vilnius in the early 1930s,
his poetry marked by a philosophical introspection concerning the human
condition. In the West, he became known for his collection of essays The
Captive Mind, both a literary commentary on totalitarianism and a survey of
prominent Polish writers imprisoned by Stalinist orthodoxy. In 1955, he pub-

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 MINDAUGAS • 189

lished the autobiographical novel Dolina Issy (The Issa Valley), an account
of the life of Lithuania’s Polish gentry during the early 1920s, celebrating
the mythology and folklore of the local peasantry. Much of Miłosz’s poetry,
fiction, and literary history (such as The Land of Ulro, 1977) deal with Lithu-
anian themes, and he maintained close ties to Lithuania and the country’s
writers. In his public appearances, including his speech at the Nobel Prize
award ceremony in 1980, he frequently asserted the right of the Lithuanian
people to independence. Miłosz often emphasized his Lithuanian origins
and visited Lithuania several times during the 1990s as a literary celebrity.
Miłosz’s birthplace and ancestral homestead at Šeteiniai, in Kėdainiai district,
has been restored as a museum and is now the site of literary and cultural
programs.

MILOSZ, OSCAR VLADISLAS DE LUBICZ (1877–1939). Lithuanian:

Oskaras Milašius. French poet of Polish-Lithuanian extraction, a cousin of
Nobel Prize winner Czesław Miłosz; born in Mogilev province, present-day
Belarus, on 28 May 1877. In 1889, Milosz went to Paris to study and lived
in France for most of the remainder of his life. After his first collection of
lyrical poetry, Le Poème des Décadences, was published in 1899, he became
progressively more interested in mystical philosophy and religion. Despite
his Polish connections, during World War I Milosz supported the idea of
Lithuania’s independence and became a member of the Lithuanian delegation
to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1919 to 1925, he served as Lithuania’s
envoy to France. During the 1920s, in addition to more volumes of French
poetry, Milosz published translations of Lithuanian folk songs and tales. He
died in Fontainebleau on 2 March 1939.

MINDAUGAS. Russian: Mendovg; Polish: Mendowg or Mendog. King of

Lithuania, c. 1253–1263, an early founder of the Lithuanian state, and the
first ruler to introduce Christianity into Lithuania. There is no reliable infor-
mation about Mindaugas’s birth or early life, although some medieval chron-
icles name his father as a powerful ruler. The first mention of Mindaugas is
in the Volhynian (or Ipatiev) Chronicle, where he is referred to as one of the
most prominent of the 20 Lithuanian princes who signed a treaty with Roman
of Volhynia in 1219. Even before the reign of Mindaugas, the nucleus of an
emerging Lithuanian state was centered around the region of Aukštaitija and
included the areas near Kernavė as well as the region of what is now Vilnius
and Trakai. Lithuania was then ruled by powerful princes in a loose military
alliance.
Mindaugas’s achievement was to gather the Lithuanian lands, albeit tem-
porarily, into a united kingdom, a process he began sometime before 1240.

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 190 • MINDAUGAS

Mindaugas also extended Lithuanian power eastward, taking advantage of

the disintegration of Kievan Rus’ following the Mongol invasions and taking
control of the important settlement of Novogrudok (Polish: Nowogródek; Be-
larusian: Navahrudak). Thus, Mindaugas initiated two important tendencies
in Lithuanian history: the internal consolidation of the state, and its expansion
into the lands of the Orthodox Eastern Slavs.
However, Mindaugas is best remembered for his unsuccessful attempt to
Christianize Lithuania and redefine his realm’s relations with the Christian
West. The date and precise circumstances of Mindaugas’s baptism are un-
known, but it probably occurred sometime in 1251 as indicated by the letters
of Pope Innocent IV, who affirmed that Mindaugas was baptized along with
his wife Martha, two sons, and “many pagans.” The diocese of Lithuania was
created by the pope’s decree of July 1251. The generally accepted date for
Mindaugas’s coronation as king of Lithuania is 1253; by this act, presided
over by Bishop Henry Heidenreich of Kulm, Mindaugas was acknowledged
as a Christian monarch. Although subsequent Lithuanian rulers were some-
times identified as rex, or king, Mindaugas was the only one to be crowned
with papal approval according to the customary law of Catholic Europe and,
thus, was Lithuania’s only medieval ruler to truly deserve the royal title.
Mindaugas’s baptism and coronation can also be viewed as an early at-
tempt to protect Lithuania from the fate of the Prussians, who had been
conquered by the Teutonic Knights. He tried to accomplish this by develop-
ing diplomatic and ecclesiastical ties with the Livonian Order. However,
partly due to the fact that Samogitia remained outside Mindaugas’s effective
control, and partly to the difficulties of organizing an effective ecclesiastical
administration under Lithuania’s first bishop, Christian, the kingdom’s Chris-
tianization proceeded only slowly. Mindaugas succeeded in his attempts to
expand Lithuanian power to the east, but this policy required numerous and
difficult military campaigns, while the Teutonic Order strengthened its posi-
tion in western Lithuania.
Ultimately, Mindaugas failed to consolidate his power within the short-
lived Lithuanian kingdom. His ambitious Samogitian rival Prince Treniota
favored military resistance against the Teutonic Knights. In addition, Mind-
augas’s policies of centralization and Christianization aroused the resentment
of many lesser princes. Toward the end of his reign, Mindaugas was drawn
into war against the Knights, and there is some question as to whether he
renounced Christianity at this time. In 1263, Mindaugas and his two sons
were assassinated in a plot probably engineered by Treniota, although other
sources ascribe his death to a personal quarrel over the wife of another prince,
Daumantas.

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 MURAVYEV, MIKHAIL NIKOLAYEVICH • 191

Mindaugas’s demise triggered a period of political instability and violent

struggle for power that lasted until the end of the 13th century. While Grand
Duke Gediminas and his successors firmly established Lithuania as a power
in eastern Europe during the 14th century, Mindaugas played an important
role in setting the precedent of supreme authority within the state and opening
up relations with the Christian West.

MIRONAS, VLADAS (1880–1954). Priest and statesman; born in Pane-

munis, Lithuania, on 22 June 1880. After graduation from the St. Petersburg
Theological Academy and ordination in 1904, Mironas became acquainted
with Antanas Smetona, the later president of Lithuania, and became active
in fostering nationalist attitudes among the Lithuanian clergy. He joined the
Taryba in 1917 and signed the Lithuanian declaration of independence of
16 February 1918. In 1926, Mironas was elected to the Seimas as a member
of the Nationalist Union, becoming one of Smetona’s closest advisors. He
was appointed chaplain of the armed forces in 1929 and in March 1938 was
called upon by Smetona to form a new government in the wake of the crisis
over the Polish ultimatum. Mironas’s government resigned after another cri-
sis precipitated by Germany’s seizure of Klaipėda in March 1939. He was
arrested during the first Soviet occupation of 1940–1941 and then again in
1947. Mironas died in Vladimir prison on 18 February 1953.

MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT. See NAZI-SOVIET PACT.

MURAVYEV, MIKHAIL NIKOLAYEVICH (1796–1866). Governor-

general of Vilnius, 1863–1865; born on 1 October 1796. In 1825, Muravyev
was involved in the abortive Decembrist Revolution against the tsar; he was
briefly imprisoned, abandoned his liberal views, and in 1828 began service
in the Russian bureaucracy as governor of Mogilev. During the insurrection
of 1830–1831, Muravyev was in charge of pacifying southeastern Lithuania
and Belarus. On 1 May 1863, Muravyev was appointed governor of the
Northwest Territory, including Lithuania and Belarus, which were then in
the throes of rebellion. He ordered over 200 executions, including those of
the important leaders of the rebellion, while the Russian army burned entire
villages and deported their inhabitants. By his own reckoning, Muravyev de-
ported 1,427 persons to Siberia and exiled more than 1,500 people to various
parts of Russia. Another 4,000 were “resettled” outside Lithuania, and several
more thousands were jailed, forcibly recruited into the army, or sentenced to
forced labor. However, the actual toll of Muravyev’s campaign of repression
was probably higher.

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 192 • MUSCOVY

Muravyev also introduced a program of Russification, intending to de-

stroy the power of the Polonized Catholic Church and nobility, which he
regarded as the main threat to Russian rule in Lithuania. Muravyev sought to
strengthen the Russian position in Lithuania by introducing Russian primary
schools, encouraging Orthodox missionary activity, and bringing more Rus-
sian officials, landowners, and settlers to Lithuania. He hoped to curry favor
with the Lithuanian peasantry and turn them against the Polish landowners by
increasing their land allotments and utilizing other economic measures. How-
ever, Muravyev’s press ban on Lithuanian publications in the Latin alphabet
in 1864 eventually provoked a strong nationalist response, and his brutal
pacification campaign, which earned him the popular epithet of “The Hang-
man” (Lithuanian: Korikas), transformed this tsarist official into a symbol of
Russian repression. He died in St. Petersburg on 29 August 1866.

MUSCOVY. The Muscovite state, which emerged as the leading East Slavic
polity by the 15th century, played a decisive role in the history of Lithu-
ania, primarily as the Grand Duchy’s major rival for control of the western
Russian lands. Since the early 14th century, especially during the reign of
Grand Duke Gediminas (R. 1316–1341), Lithuanian rulers had exploited the
disintegration of Kievan Rus’. The Grand Duchy of Muscovy emerged as a
power at about the same time Lithuania was rapidly expanding into Belarus,
Ukraine, and western Russia.
The prestige of the Muscovite princes was greatly enhanced by the transfer
of the Kievan Russian metropolitanate to Moscow in 1328 and the success
of the Muscovites against the Tatars under Dmitrii Donskoi (R. 1359–1389).
By the time of Grand Duke Algirdas (R. 1345–1377), Lithuania ruled most
of western Russia and had allied itself with Muscovy’s Russian enemies,
such as Novgorod and Tver. Algirdas desired to rule all of Russia and twice
besieged Moscow, but failed to capture the city; he also tried unsuccessfully
to subject the Orthodox Church to his rule by establishing a separate Lithu-
anian metropolitanate. Algirdas’s successors also made diplomatic attempts
to gain a dynastic foothold in Muscovy. For a brief time, Algirdas’s son
Jogaila considered marrying the Muscovite princess Sophia, while Vytautas
arranged for his own daughter (also named Sophia) to marry the Muscovite
Grand Duke Vasilii I (1389–1425). In 1495, Grand Duke Alexander married
Ivan III’s daughter Elena. However, in general, the centuries-long relation-
ship between Muscovy and Lithuania was one of rivalry and conflict.
Lithuania’s turn to Catholicism in 1386 sharpened the struggle between
Moscow and Vilnius. Muscovite rulers claimed the Orthodox East Slavic
lands of Rus’ as their rightful patrimony to be liberated from Lithuanian
Catholic hegemony. Under Ivan III (R. 1462–1505), Muscovy gained a deci-

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 MUSIC • 193

sive advantage in the struggle with Lithuania by annexing Novgorod (1471)

and Tver (1485), declaring full independence from the Tatars, and repeatedly
asserting the right to rule all of Russia. The Lithuanian-Muscovite treaty
of 1503 confirmed the loss of the easternmost lands of the Grand Duchy to
Moscow. In 1514, Muscovite forces captured the important town of Smo-
lensk. Under Ivan IV (“the Terrible”; R. 1547–1584), Muscovy engaged in a
prolonged war with Poland-Lithuania over Livonia, and the mid-16th century
saw the loss of more Lithuanian lands, including Polotsk.
Lithuania’s losses against Muscovy were the major reason for concluding
the Polish-Lithuanian Union of Lublin of 1569, which turned Ukraine over
to Poland. During Muscovy’s interregnum known as the “Time of Troubles”
in 1598–1613, Poland-Lithuania recovered some of the lost territories, in-
cluding Smolensk (1611), and Commonwealth troops even briefly held
Moscow. However, under the Romanovs, Muscovy recovered and once again
resumed its western expansion. In 1655, Vilnius was captured and destroyed
by the Muscovite forces of Tsar Alexis. The Peace of Andrusovo in 1667
gave Smolensk back to Muscovy, although Lithuania regained Vitebsk and
Polotsk. The Lithuanian-Muscovite border established at this time remained
unchanged until the partitions of the Commonwealth in 1772.
Muscovy formally became the Russian Empire under Peter the Great
in 1721. The centuries-old Lithuanian-Muscovite struggle over the lands
of western and central Russia had important historical consequences. The
conflict shaped much of the legitimizing rationale for Russia’s claims to its
western borderlands. Also, the rule of much of Russia by the Lithuanians
enhanced the political and cultural divisions of the Orthodox East Slavic
peoples, which promoted the development of distinct Ukrainian and Belaru-
sian ethnic and linguistic identities.

MUSIC. Traditional and Folk Music. In addition to the oral literature and
the remnants of pre-Christian religious customs among the peasantry, the
richest surviving Baltic cultural tradition consists of the numerous songs
of the Latvian and Lithuanian people known as dainos. Since the 16th
century, travelers and chroniclers have noted the people’s penchant to ac-
company virtually every daily activity with song. During the 19th century,
ethnographers traveled through villages researching and recording the dainos.
The first comprehensive volume of Lithuanian folk songs, Dainos oder Lit-
thauische Volkslieder, was published by Liudvikas Rėza (Ludwig Rhesa) in
Königsberg in 1825. Other more noted collectors and scholars of the musical
tradition of the people included Antanas Juška-Juškevičius (1819–1880),
Jonas Basanavičius (1851–1927), Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864), Os-
kar Kolberg (1814–1890), and writer Balys Sruoga (1896–1947). There are

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 194 • MUSIC

over 20,000 dainos on record. During the 20th century, choral music based
on the folk tradition came to be increasingly recognized as a central aspect
of national culture. Since 1924, the national song festival (Dainų šventė),
held every few years, has emerged as the most massive social gathering in
the country.
The traditional folk songs are basically divided by theme and musical
genre. The dainos accompanied virtually every aspect of village life. The
wedding songs and the laments (raudos) at funerals mark the most important
transitions in the life of the people and are still performed, especially in the
rural areas of eastern and southern Lithuania. One traditional aspect of the
wedding songs consisted of the verkavimai—literally, the weeping of the
bride at the prospect of leaving her mother and homestead for an uncertain
new life. War songs also had a long tradition; some of the older extant folk
compositions refer to wars with the Muscovites, Swedes, and Tatars. Love
and courtship songs have also been recorded since the early modern period,
but the oldest and richest sources of dainos spring from the peasants’ seasonal
calendar and work in the fields. The Christian calendar as well as the planting
and harvesting cycles produced the majority of known folk songs, which are
still performed in traditional villages. Dainos also accompanied practically
every aspect of agricultural and domestic work: planting, harvesting, herd-
ing, fertilizing, plowing, haymaking, milling, laundering, spinning, weaving,
and so on.
The musical genres of folk music vary somewhat by region. Polyphonic
compositions are most common in the Dzūkija and Suvalkija regions of the
country, while homophony is more common in western Lithuania. However,
musicologists consider the widespread practice of polyphony one of the char-
acteristic aspects of the folk heritage of the Baltic peoples. In Lithuania, this
genre is known as the sutartinė, translated as “harmonious” collective sing-
ing. Most of the sutartinė songs were recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries
and are still preserved by certain folk ensembles. Often village singing was
accompanied by traditional instruments. The native string instrument is the
kanklės, a kind of zither. The single-reed birbynė and the skudučiai, a flute
with multiple tubes played by several musicians, were popular wind instru-
ments. Accordions and fiddles came into wider use in the 20th century.
Classical, Modern, and Popular Music. Religious choral ensembles were
known in Lithuania since the 15th century. Operas were performed at the
royal palace in Vilnius and on the estates of the gentry. Michael Ogiński
(1765–1833), the last hetman of the Grand Duchy, was known as a prolific
composer of waltzes, marches, and polonaises. The famous Polish composer
Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–1872), who lived in Vilnius from 1839 to 1858,
influenced the local music scene. With few exceptions, Lithuanian composers

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 MYKOLAITIS-PUTINAS, VINCAS • 195

of the mid- and late 19th century produced choral works, religious hymns,
and adaptations of folk music. The central figure in the emergence of mod-
ern professional Lithuanian music was Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
(1875–1911), who studied piano at the Warsaw Conservatory in the 1890s
and was the first to produce symphonic compositions.
The period of interwar independence saw the emergence of national op-
era, ballet, symphony, and modern choral work. The more noted composers
included Juozas Tallat-Kelpša (1889–1949), Juozas Žilevičius (1891–1985),
Stasys Šimkus (1887–1943), Juozas Gruodis (1884–1948), and Vladas
Jakubėnas (1904–1976). After a Soviet period of socialist realism under
Stalinism, musical expression became less stilted—for example, in the works
of Osvaldas Balakauskas (1937– ) and Vytautas Barkauskas (1932– ). Since
1990, a group of musicians known as “machinists,” including Šarūnas Nakas
(1962– ), Raminta Šerkšnytė (1975– ), and Vytautas V. Jurgutis (1976– ),
have radically departed from traditional norms with their use of computer
programming and multimedia technology.
Western popular music, including rock and country, began to penetrate
Lithuania in the late 1960s and early 1970s through radio broadcasts of the
Beatles and other British groups. Despite the Communist regime’s attempts
to limit and control the new genre, it developed as a serious threat to the So-
viet political order. During the 1980s, the popular rock group Antis increas-
ingly took up anti-regime political themes, openly supported Sąjūdis, and
participated in numerous “rock music marches” across the country in support
of the independence movement. Lithuania’s best known modern folk vocalist,
Vytautas Kernagis (1951–2008), also imbued his music with the theme of na-
tional liberation. In 1979, Vytautas Babravičius (“Simas”; 1952– ) created the
first country music group, and the genre soon gained wide popularity. Since
1993, the annual Visaginas Country Music Festival has gained international
notoriety.

MYKOLAITIS-PUTINAS, VINCAS (1893–1967). Lithuanian writer and

literary critic; born on 6 January 1893 in Marijampolė district. Mykolaitis
graduated from the Theological Seminary in Seinai in 1915, then studied at
the Theological Academy of Petrograd and the Universities of Fribourg and
Munich (1918–1923). He published his first collection of poems in 1917
and during the 1920s developed his reputation as a talented lyrical poet and
dramatist under the pen name of Putinas. From 1923 until 1929, he taught
theology and philosophy at the University of Kaunas, then edited scholarly
journals and briefly lived in France. In 1932–1933, Putinas published his
three-volume autobiographical novel, Altorių šešely (In the Shadow of the
Altars), which created a literary sensation in Lithuania and went through

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 196 • MYKOLAITIS-PUTINAS, VINCAS

numerous editions. The novel describes a young priest’s inner conflict be-
tween his love for a woman and duty to the Church, a thinly veiled confession
of the writer’s own struggle with his lack of a vocation. Putinas married a for-
mer student in 1935 and, as a result, was excommunicated the following year.
During the late 1930s, Putinas achieved a reputation as a literary historian
and critic and was the president of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union. Under the
Soviet regime, he managed to continue publishing poetry and also wrote a
historical novel about the insurrection of 1863–1864, Sukilėliai (The Rebels;
1957). In 1966, his excommunication was lifted by the Holy See. Despite the
personal and ideological controversies that surrounded his life and work, Pu-
tinas remains one of the most highly regarded literary figures of 20th-century
Lithuania. He died in Vilnius on 7 June 1967. See also LITERATURE,
LITHUANIAN.

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 N
NARBUTT, TEODOR (1784–1864). Lithuanian: Narbutas. Lithuanian his-
torian born on 28 October 1784 in the district of Lida, present-day Belarus. A
mathematician and engineer who graduated from the University of Vilnius in
1803, Narbutt became interested in history as a student and began his own ar-
chaeological work in 1810. Narbutt’s writings were influenced by his roman-
tic patriotism, characterized by an exalted view of the Lithuanian past. His
best known work, the nine-volume Dzieje starożytne narodu litewskiego (The
History of the Lithuanian Nation), was published in Polish between 1835 and
1841. Narbutt ended this study with a dramatic denunciation of the Union of
Lublin as a tragic loss of Lithuania’s independence. Although some of his
work, especially that dealing with mythology and ancient history, is no longer
regarded as scholarship, Narbutt did introduce hitherto unknown sources and,
like Simonas Daukantas, with whom he corresponded, stimulated interest in
Lithuanian history as an object of study separate from the Polish past. Narbutt
died in Vilnius on 14 November 1864.

NARUTOWICZ. Lithuanian: Narutavičius. Samogitian gentry family that

produced two prominent statesmen, one Lithuanian and the other Polish.
Stanisław Narutowicz (1862–1932) became active in radical Russian and
Polish socialist circles as a student, but eventually gravitated to the Lithu-
anian nationalism movement, where he became better known by the Lithu-
anian version of his name, Stanislovas Narutavičius. He was appointed to the
Taryba, where he advocated a strong stand against Germany; he also was a
signatory of the 16 February 1918 Lithuanian declaration of independence. In
the 1920s, Narutavičius participated in agricultural organizations and was a
member of the town council of Telšiai in Samogitia.
Gabriel Narutowicz (1865–1922) became prominent in the Polish national
movement. During 1920–1922, he served as minister of public works in the
cabinet of the newly independent Republic of Poland and then as foreign
minister until his election as the country’s president on 11 December 1922.
Five days later, Narutowicz was assassinated by a Polish nationalist who op-
posed the president’s liberal stance toward Poland’s national minorities.

197

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 198 • NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN

NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN. As in the other countries of eastern and

central Europe, Lithuanian nationalism underwent a number of transforma-
tions. The first attempts to emphasize a separate Lithuanian national identity
and consciousness are traceable to early modern times, during the Lithuanian
gentry’s resistance to the Union of Lublin, and the emergence in the 16th
century of the attempt to trace the origins of the country’s princely dynasty to
Roman roots, a common practice in Renaissance Europe. The 17th-century
Lithuanian publicist Mikalojus Daukša emphasized the importance of the
Lithuanian language, one of the first known attempts to question the cultural
Polonization of Lithuania.
The initial signs of modern nationalism appeared in the early 19th century
among the petty gentry of Samogitia, especially in the works of the poets
Dionizas Poška and Simonas Stanevičius, who fostered pride in the native
language, glorified Lithuania’s medieval past, idealized traditional village
life, and opposed serfdom. Historian Simonas Daukantas was the first to
formulate a coherent anti-Polish attitude by emphasizing the negative con-
sequences of the Polish-Lithuanian union and cultural Polonization—beliefs
that are important hallmarks of the modern Lithuanian national movement.
The Lithuanian language, previously regarded as on the verge of extinction,
became more socially acceptable during the mid-19th century through the ef-
forts of Bishop Motiejus Valančius and provided a means of communicating
with and mobilizing the peasant masses.
The collapse of the insurrection of 1863–1864 and the Russian press
ban of 1864 provided additional impetus to the development of modern
Lithuanian nationalism. The emergence of a secular Lithuanian-speaking
intelligentsia, mostly from the well-to-do peasantry, weakened Lithuanian
ties to Polish culture. The newly educated class emerging from the villages
had few social ties to the Polonized gentry, who for the most part were firmly
opposed to what they perceived as a “peasant” movement. The first Lithu-
anian secular periodical, Aušra, edited by Jonas Basanavičius, emphasized
cultural themes, but its successor Varpas, founded by Vincas Kudirka in
1889, formulated political goals based on a rejection of Lithuania’s historic
connection to Poland and active resistance to tsarist oppression.
Between 1890 and 1914, a number of Lithuanian political parties were
founded, reflecting a spectrum from leftist Social Democrats to the Chris-
tian Democrats on the right. In November 1905, delegates to the Great As-
sembly of Vilnius (Lithuanian: Didysis Vilniaus lietuvių seimas) formulated
the first Lithuanian national political program, calling for an autonomous
democratic Lithuania based on universal suffrage and the equality of all
national groups in the country. The creation of the independent Lithuanian
republic in 1918 brought majority rule for the first time, inasmuch as the

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 NATIONALIST PARTY, LITHUANIAN • 199

country was now politically dominated by ethnic Lithuanians. During the

20th century, the maintenance of an independent nation-state became the
major political goal of most nationally conscious Lithuanians.
The dominance of the Lithuanian Nationalist Union (Lietuvių tautininkų
sąjunga) between 1926 and 1940 greatly influenced the intellectual develop-
ment of Lithuanian nationalism. Under the authoritarian leadership of Presi-
dent Antanas Smetona, the government sought to establish a unified national
state. The Nationalist Union’s ideology was a mixture of agrarian populism,
the personality cult of Smetona as “Leader of the Nation,” and, later in the
1930s, emphasis on the “organic state” that, unlike parliamentary democ-
racy, was supposedly best suited to express the national will. On the other
hand, the Nationalist leadership explicitly rejected racism and most aspects
of fascism. However, during the late 1930s, a more militant nationalist stance
emerged among right-wing opponents of Smetona’s regime, such as the Iron
Wolf movement, the Lithuanian Activist Movement, and younger Nationalist
and Catholic intellectuals.
The Soviet occupation of 1940–1941 strengthened these latter elements,
which came to prominence in the anti-Soviet and the non-Communist anti-
Nazi resistance. During the period of postwar Soviet rule between 1945 and
1990, the Lithuanian diaspora was generally motivated by the struggle to re-
store independence and fight Communism. Within Soviet Lithuania, nation-
alism found expression in the armed guerrilla resistance against the Soviet
occupation (1944–1953) and, later, in the Catholic and nationalist dissident
movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Lithuanian nationalism defined itself as
a struggle for human rights as expressed in opposition to the Soviet Union’s
Russification policies and the preservation of national culture. In contrast to
the 1920s and 1930s, mainstream Lithuanian nationalism once again stressed
democratic values, as it had during the turn of the 20th century. Since the
restoration of independence in 1990, the more militant nationalism of the
prewar variety has been confined to political parties of the right, primarily
the reconstituted Nationalist Union and the Young Lithuania movement. See
also SĄJŪDIS.

NATIONALIST PARTY, LITHUANIAN. Lithuanian: Lietuvių

nacionalistų partija. An extreme nationalist Lithuanian political organization
founded in 1941 by a radical faction of the voldemarininkai, or Voldemaras
group, headed mainly by air force and army officers, many of whom had been
active in the clandestine Iron Wolf and had fled to Germany when Soviet
troops occupied Lithuania in 1940. With the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet
war and the German occupation of Lithuania in June 1941, the Lithuanian
Nationalist Party (LNP) began to operate openly, advocating a racist and

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 200 • NATIONALIST UNION, LITHUANIAN

totalitarian political line close to that of the Nazis and utilizing a swastika in
the party’s emblem. Because it advocated an independent Lithuania, albeit
allied to Germany, the LNP was banned by the Nazi occupation authorities
along with all other political groups in September 1941. Some LNP members
continued to collaborate with the Germans in the police and administration,
while others joined the non-Communist anti-Nazi underground. See also
POLITICAL PARTIES.

NATIONALIST UNION, LITHUANIAN. Lithuanian: Lietuvių tautininkų

sąjunga. Lithuanian nationalist organization that ruled the country between
1926 and 1940. The beginnings of the group date back to the establishment
of the National Progress Party (Tautos pažanga) in 1916, which had coalesced
around the periodical Viltis (Hope), founded in 1907. While the Progress
Party and its peasant wing, the Agrarian Union (Žemdirbių sąjunga), did not
have wide political appeal, the leadership of these groups was prominent
among the founders of the Lithuanian state in 1918.
In 1924, the two groups merged into the Lithuanian Nationalist Union,
commonly known as the Nationalists (tautininkai). The Union included a
number of prominent intellectuals, including the first president of Lithuania,
Antanas Smetona. The Nationalists were fierce critics of both the Christian
Democratic and left-of-center parliamentary Lithuanian governments of
1920–1926.
In 1926, the Nationalists won three seats in the parliament (Seimas) domi-
nated by the Social Democrats and Peasant Populists. On 17 December
1926, the Nationalist leader Smetona came to power in a military coup sup-
ported by, among others, students and elements of the Catholic Bloc. After
Smetona dissolved parliament in April 1927, the Nationalists remained in
power until the Soviet occupation of June 1940. The Union itself numbered
nearly 15,000 members in the mid-1930s, supported by its youth wing, the
Young Lithuania movement. While formally not a part of the Nationalist
movement, the country’s volunteer national guard, the Riflemen’s Union
(Šaulių sąjunga), generally supported the Nationalist regime’s aims.
The Smetona government banned all political parties, claiming that po-
litical factionalism had led to chaos and disunity. The Nationalist Union was
not subject to the ban, however, since formally it proclaimed itself a patriotic
organization rather than a political party. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s,
the tautininkai were divided between a moderate faction, led by President
Smetona, and younger radicals who rallied around Prime Minister Augus-
tinas Voldemaras, some of whom later formed the clandestine Iron Wolf
organization. Smetona dismissed Voldemaras in 1929 and marginalized the
radical fringe; however, a younger and more militant group of intellectuals
coalesced around the Nationalist periodical Vairas (The Helm).

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 NAZIS • 201

At first, the Nationalist Union envisioned an eventual return to a form of de-

mocracy that would provide a middle road between chaotic parliamentary insti-
tutions and a rigid fascist dictatorship. The compromise was institutionalized in
the Lithuanian Constitution of 1938. The Smetona regime exhibited some su-
perficial similarities to Italian fascism and suppressed political opposition, but
it rejected racism and banned Nazi and other extreme right-wing groups while
allowing a considerable degree of religious, cultural, and ethnic pluralism.
After the Soviet occupation, the Lithuanian National Movement (Lietuvių
tautinis sąjūdis) was established in Germany in 1945 as a replacement for
the Union. In 1949, former tautininkai founded the Lithuanian-American
National Union (Amerikos lietuvių tautinė sąjunga) in the United States. In
1990, the Nationalist Union was reestablished as a political party and chose
Rimantas Smetona (1945– ), a grand-nephew of the interwar president, as its
leader. In 1992, the new Union won four seats to the Seimas.

NAZIS. The common appellation designating members of the National

Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbe-
iterpartei), which played a significant role in Lithuanian history as a sub-
versive movement before World War II and then as an occupying force in
1941–1944. In the 1920s, the fledgling Nazi movement found sympathizers
among the German speakers of Klaipėda Territory, who advocated a union
(Anschluss) of the region with Germany. In May 1933, the German pro-Nazi
organization known as the Christian Socialist Workers’ Union (Christliche
Sozialistische Arbeitsgemeinschaft), led by Lutheran pastor Theodore von
Sass, participated in the elections to the Klaipėda diet. Internal disagreements
led to the formation of Ernst Neumann’s more Nazi-like Socialist People’s
Union (Sozialistische Volksgemeinschaft), known as the Sovog. Erich Koch
(1896–1986), then Gauleiter in East Prussia, persuaded the two groups to
unite in late 1933. At their height, along with the storm trooper units mod-
eled after the Sturmabteilung (SA) and trained in Germany, the Nazi groups
in Klaipėda included almost 15,000 members.
In February 1934, the governor of Klaipėda Territory, Jonas Navakas
(1896–1956), declared martial law and arrested hundreds of members of ir-
redentist Nazi front organizations. In December, 126 Nazi conspirators were
put on trial in Kaunas for treason and ethnic incitement, creating a major
crisis in Lithuania’s relations with Berlin; as a result, a trade embargo was
imposed on Lithuania by Germany. The Neumann-Sass trial created consid-
erable interest in the European press and an outpouring of anti-Lithuanian
propaganda in the Reich. Harsh punishments, including four death sentences,
were handed down in March 1935, but French and British pressure for leni-
ency, as well as the government’s desire not to worsen relations with Ger-
many, caused most sentences to be commuted by 1938.

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 202 • NAZI-SOVIET PACT

As Lithuanian control over Klaipėda Territory weakened during the late

1930s, Neumann’s and Sass’s Nazis began operating in the open and seized
complete control of local government after the annexation of Klaipėda to
Germany in March 1939. During the German occupation of Lithuania in
1941–1944, Lithuanians were, as a rule, not eligible for admission into the
Nazi Party, although a pro-Nazi political group, the Lithuanian Nationalist
Party, operated briefly between June and September 1941. See also HO-
LOCAUST.

NAZI-SOVIET PACT (1939–1941). In historical and popular literature, this

pact often refers to the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement of August
1939. It is more useful, however, to view the term as encompassing three
separate treaties, the first of which was also a prelude to the Soviet occupa-
tion of the Baltic States.
The Soviet-German Non-Aggression Treaty of 23 August 1939. In the
spring of 1939, the Soviet government began to make overtures to both Ger-
many and its western rivals, Great Britain and France, concerning a mutual
security arrangement. When the Western powers proved reluctant to grant the
Soviet Union wide-ranging political rights of intervention in eastern Europe,
especially the Baltic States and Poland, Joseph Stalin concluded a deal with
Berlin in the summer of 1939. Adolf Hitler, anxious for a free hand in Poland,
was willing to grant the Soviets territorial gains in the Baltic, eastern Poland,
and Romania.
A final deal was negotiated on the night of 23–24 August 1939 during
a dramatic visit by the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop,
to Moscow, where he held direct talks with Soviet foreign commissar Vy-
acheslav Molotov and Stalin. The pact itself, while dated on the 23rd, was
actually signed in the early morning hours of 24 August 1939 and is consid-
ered one of the most important diplomatic revolutions in the 20th century.
The published text of the treaty prohibited the parties from attacking one
another or participating in any hostile alliance directly or indirectly aimed
at the other. It obliged each side to maintain “continuous contact” with the
other and to settle disputes by arbitration. However, the most critical part
of the agreement was the secret protocol in which the Germans and Soviets
“discussed in strictly confidential conversations the question of the boundary
of their respective spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.”
Aside from the stricture that it be kept secret, the protocol contained three
provisions. The first partitioned the Baltic States—defined as Finland, Esto-
nia, Latvia, and Lithuania—into spheres of influence “in the event of a ter-
ritorial and political rearrangement,” an obvious reference to the anticipated
attack on Poland. The first three states went to the Union of Soviet Socialist

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 NAZI-SOVIET PACT • 203

Republics (USSR), while Lithuania was to be included in the German sphere.

The Lithuanian-Latvian border was to form “the boundary of the spheres of
influence of Germany and the USSR.” Both sides declared that they recog-
nized “the interest of Lithuania in the Vilnius area.” The second point on
spheres of influence partitioned Poland approximately along the Narva, Vis-
tula, and San Rivers. The final territorial provision of the protocol reaffirmed
Soviet rights to Bessarabia.
Formally, the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement of 23 August was a non-
aggression pact. However, given the strategic realities of this partition of
Eastern Europe, the pact actually triggered war and constituted a de facto
tactical partnership, if not the strategic alliance that was to be realized in the
subsequent economic, military, and diplomatic cooperation between Hitler
and Stalin during the period between August 1939 and June 1941.
The German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of 28 September
1939. The German-Soviet attack on Poland in September 1939, especially
the rapid advance of the German armies, created new realities that required
a revision of the August agreement. When the Lithuanian government re-
fused to be drawn into a military alliance with Germany against Poland,
Berlin decided to accept a Soviet offer of renouncing the German sphere of
influence in Lithuania in return for territorial gains in central Poland. On 28
September 1939, Ribbentrop once again flew to Moscow to sign a new bor-
ders and friendship pact with the Soviet Union. Another secret protocol was
negotiated, which redefined the German-Soviet partition of the Baltic States.
It noted that in exchange for Lublin and part of the province of Warsaw, “the
territory of the Lithuanian state falls to the sphere of influence of the USSR.”
The agreement also stipulated that “as soon as the Government of the USSR
shall take special measures on Lithuanian territory to protect its interests,”
the German-Lithuanian border would be corrected to cede a small patch of
land to Germany. The strip of territory in question constituted 1,800 square
kilometers (700 square miles) and ran through Marijampolė, the largest town
in southwestern Lithuania; it is usually termed the “Suwałki strip.” The secret
protocol of 28 September also declared that the economic agreements in force
between Germany and Lithuania would not be affected by the measures of the
Soviet Union referenced in the agreement.
The German-Soviet Treaty of 10 January 1941. Despite growing tensions
between Berlin and Moscow, a series of primarily economic German-Soviet
agreements were concluded in January 1941 providing for further coopera-
tion. For Lithuania, the relevant agreements were the provisions for the repa-
triation of Baltic Germans and the territorial adjustment in Suvalkija. After
the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in June 1940, it proved politically imprac-
tical to complete the transfer of the Suwałki strip to German jurisdiction. On

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 204 • NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

10 January 1941, the last of the German-Soviet secret protocols renounced

German claims to this border strip in return for $7,500,000, payable in pre-
cious metals.
Political Impact in the 1980s. The Nazi-Soviet treaties, especially the
egregious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939 became a major issue
in the Baltic republics during their drive for independence in the late 1980s.
The Baltic delegates to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies in Moscow,
which convened in May 1989, opened the issue of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact as a violation of the sovereignty of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. On
4 June 1989, the Congress announced the formation of a commission to
evaluate the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which included Sąjūdis leader Vy-
tautas Landsbergis and other prominent Baltic politicians. In July 1989,
the preliminary findings of the majority of the commission’s working group
condemned the German-Soviet treaties of 1939 and concluded that the Baltic
States had been victims of aggression. On the 50th anniversary of the Nazi-
Soviet Pact, in the largest political demonstration in Soviet history, more
than a million persons linked hands in a 600-kilometer (370-mile) human
chain from Tallinn to Vilnius called the “Baltic Way.” The event dramati-
cally revealed the popular support that the Baltic national movements were
now able to command. See also RUSSIA; ULTIMATUMS OF 1938–1940;
URBŠYS, JUOZAS.

NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS. Early History. The first newspaper

in Lithuania was the Polish-language Kurier Litewski (Lithuanian Courier),
published from 1760 to 1763, which then continued as the Kurier Wileński
(Vilnius Courier) from 1764 to 1793. Polish newspapers continued publica-
tion under the tsars, including Tygodnik Wileński (Vilnius Weekly, 1804),
Dziennik Wileński (Vilnius Daily, 1805–1806), and other periodicals. Before
mid-century, German, French, and Yiddish periodicals were also known to
have been published in Vilnius in limited editions.
Historically, Lithuanian-language publications originated in Lithuania
Minor (East Prussia), where Protestant religious literature in the vernacu-
lar had been published since the mid-16th century. The first known periodi-
cal in the Lithuanian language, Nusidavimai Dievo karalystėje (Stories of
God’s Kingdom), was issued in Tilsit (Russian: Sovetsk; Lithuanian: Tilžė)
between 1823 and 1825; the sequel of this journal continued in Königs-
berg from 1832 to 1921. The Gothic script and Lutheran content of this
periodical limited its appeal among the vast majority of literate Catholic
Lithuanian peasants living in the Russian Empire. In 1849, a Lithuanian
newspaper, Lietuvininkų prietelis (Friend of East Prussian Lithuanians),
briefly appeared in Klaipėda.

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 NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS • 205

Between 1847 and 1877, Laurynas Ivinskis (1810–1881), a schoolteacher

from Rietavas, published the annual Kalendorius (Calendar), an almanac for
the peasantry that provided villagers with information on upcoming events
as well as practical advice on medicine and agriculture. In 1864, during the
anti-Russian insurrection, Mikalojus Akelaitis (1829–1887) published sev-
eral issues of Žinia apie Lenku vaina su Maskoliais (News of the Polish War
against the Muscovites), probably the first Lithuanian-language newspaper
published in the lands of the former Grand Duchy. The Lithuanian-language
newspaper Gazieta lietuwiszka (Lithuanian Newspaper), later issued under
several other titles, was published in New York in 1879–1880 mainly to
deliver community news to the growing Lithuanian-American population.
From the Late 19th Century to 1940. Most historians consider the monthly
Aušra (The Dawn, 1883–1886), edited by Jonas Basanavičius, to be the first
modern secular Lithuanian-language periodical. Between 1887 and World
War I, the quantity, quality, ideological diversity, and circulation of Lithua-
nian periodicals increased considerably, despite the tsarist press ban. The lib-
eral and secular wing of the intelligentsia gathered around Vincas Kudirka’s
Varpas (The Bell, 1889–1905), while Catholic students and clergy pub-
lished Žemaičių ir Lietuvos apžvalga (Samogitian and Lithuanian Review,
1890–1896) and Tėvynės sargas (Guardian of the Fatherland, 1896–1904).
The Social Democrats published Darbininkų balsas (The Workers’ Voice,
1901–1906). In sum, during the period of the press ban (1864–1904), more
than 130 Lithuanian-language periodicals were published and distributed.
The first Lithuanian daily, Vilniaus žinios (Vilnius News), appeared im-
mediately after the lifting of the ban in the spring of 1904. Numerous peri-
odicals reflecting the views of the emerging political parties appeared after
the Revolution of 1905: ranging from Viltis (Hope, 1907–1915) and Lietuvos
aidas (Echo of Lithuania, 1917–1919), which formed the ideological funda-
mentals of the future Nationalist Union, to the Communist Tiesa (Truth),
founded in Petrograd in 1917. About 200 Lithuanian-language periodicals
were published between 1905 and 1918.
During the interwar period, the official status of Lithuanian, the introduc-
tion of compulsory primary education, and urbanization spurred a rapid
growth in the number of periodicals, including dailies and local papers as well
as specialized professional and academic journals. The majority of periodi-
cals were published in Kaunas. In 1929, the government’s statistical office
counted 165 newspapers and journals, of which 136 were in Lithuanian; the
remainder were in German, Polish, Yiddish, or Russian.
In 1927, the Nationalist regime of Antanas Smetona introduced press
censorship aimed especially at publications of the far left and extreme right,
although Catholic and centrist periodicals were also scrutinized. Nonetheless,

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 206 • NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

considerable ideological diversity still characterized the newspapers, ranging

from the reconstituted Nationalist official daily Lietuvos aidas (1928–1940)
to the Catholic XX amžius (The 20th Century, 1936–1940) and the liberal
Lietuvos žinios (Lithuanian News, 1922–1940). The Jewish press was the
most prolific among the minorities, including the popular dailies Yidishe
Shtime (The Jewish Voice, 1918–1940), Folksblat (The People’s Paper,
1929–1940), as well as the Lithuanian-language weekly of the Jewish War
Veterans’ Association, Apžvalga (The Review, 1935–1940). It is estimated
that nearly 2,000 periodicals were published in Lithuania between 1918 and
1940.
Since 1940. The Soviet occupation of June 1940 led to the complete re-
structuring of the press. Virtually all non-Communist publications and public
organizations, such as the Lithuanian Journalists Association, were banned.
With the exception of the Nazi occupation of 1941–1944, strict censorship
was enforced by the Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets, or
Glavlit (Russian: Glavnoe upravlenie po okhrane gosudarstvennikh tain v
pechati). The most important Lithuanian-language Communist dailies were
Tiesa (ceased publication in 1995), Komjaunimo tiesa (Communist Youth’s
Truth, 1940–1990), and Valstiečių laikraštis (Peasant Newspaper, under new
editorship since 1992). Academic periodicals such as the series of scholarly
and scientific journals of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic Academy
of Sciences, as well as literary publications such as the weekly Literatūra ir
menas (Literature and Art, under Communist editorship 1946–1990), closely
followed the editorial practices established in Moscow.
The foreign occupations of the country between 1940 and 1990 gave rise
to an extensive underground press. While anti-Nazi publications circulated
during the German occupation, most illegal publications were directed
against the Soviets. The armed anti-Soviet resistance published several
periodicals during the 1940s, but the illegal press of the 1970s, such as the
Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, which emerged among
the dissidents protesting human rights violations had more of a historic
impact and resonated internationally. Soviet censorship weakened consid-
erably after the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev as the head of the Soviet
Communist Party and, for all practical purposes, ceased effective operation
by the late 1980s.
Since 1990, Communist and radical leftist periodicals have been marginal-
ized, while some of the former Soviet periodicals were privatized and lost
their ideological slant. Komjaunimo tiesa became Lietuvos rytas (Lithuanian
Morning) in 1990 and is now the country’s largest daily, followed by Respub-
lika (The Republic). Some periodicals, such as Valstiečiu laikraštis, main-
tained their old titles. In 2008, the Lithuanian National Library reported that

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 NOMENKLATURA • 207

there were a total of 327 newspapers with a combined circulation of 290,000

(14 were dailies with more than 108,000 subscribers).

NINTH FORT. One of a number of tsarist-era forts surrounding Kaunas that

became infamous as the site of mass executions during the Nazi occupation.
Construction of the Ninth Fort was completed in 1913, and between 1924
and 1940 it served as a hard labor penal colony. In 1940–1941, the NKVD
utilized the facility as a prison and transfer station for persons deported to
Soviet labor camps. During the German occupation, the Nazis murdered ap-
proximately 50,000 persons at the fort, the majority of whom were Lithuanian
Jews (estimated at 30,000) as well as more than 10,000 Jews from Germany
and other European countries. The largest single mass murder operation in
modern Lithuanian history occurred here on 29 October 1941, when, accord-
ing to German accounts, 9,200 Jews selected from the Kaunas ghetto were
killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. In the fall of 1943, the Nazis began
cremating the corpses of the victims in an attempt to conceal the crime, but
64 of the Jewish inmates detailed to the operation escaped in December 1943
and later provided evidence of events at the fort. After the war, the Soviets
again used Ninth Fort as a prison, but turned it over to civilian use in 1948.
In 1958, the fort became a museum and is currently, along with Paneriai, the
best known Holocaust memorial in the country.

NKVD. Russian: Narodnyi kommissariat vnutrennykh del. Best known by

its initials, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs—formed as an
all-Union governmental agency of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) in 1934—was the Soviet police ministry charged with state security.
In Lithuania, the NKVD was responsible for the executions, mass deporta-
tions, and imprisonment of alleged enemies of the Soviet regime. In June
1941, Deputy Commissar of the NKVD Ivan Serov (1905–1990) supervised
the deportation of Baltic citizens, including some 18,000 Lithuanians, to the
USSR, where many perished as a result of harsh conditions. After the reoccu-
pation of Lithuania by the Soviet army in 1944, armed divisions of the NKVD
took the lead in the suppression of the anti-Communist armed resistance.
In 1946, the NKVD was renamed the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russian:
Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del); however, most Lithuanians remember the se-
cret police of the Stalin era as the NKVD. See also RUSSIA; DEKANOZOV,
VLADIMIR.

NOMENKLATURA. A Russian term derived from the Latin nomenclatura

(a list of names) and commonly used to designate the system of appoint-
ments by the Communist Party to key positions in the Soviet administration.

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 208 • NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION

The word is associated with the corrupt bureaucratic elite that controlled the
political and economic system in the Soviet Union. In Lithuanian politics,
it serves as a pejorative sociological description of former prominent Lithu-
anian Communist Party leaders such as Algirdas Brazauskas, Justas Vin-
cas Paleckis, Kazimira Prunskienė, Bronislovas Lubys, and others who
continued to exert decisive influence in the country’s politics and business
after 1990. See also POLITICAL PARTIES.

NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (NATO). A trans-

atlantic military alliance that has provided the foundation of Lithuania’s
security since 2004. The idea of Lithuania joining international security struc-
tures was broached by independence activists within the Sąjūdis movement
as early as 1989, but the notion seemed far-fetched during the first years of
independence. However, on 4 January 1994, President Algirdas Brazauskas
notified NATO of the government’s intention to pursue membership within
the Western alliance. On 27 January, Lithuania and other former Soviet bloc
states joined the NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace program. In Decem-
ber 1996, Lithuania’s parliament approved a law that proclaimed integration
into European and transatlantic political and military structures as a strategic
priority of Lithuania’s foreign and national security policies. A Lithuanian
mission was attached to NATO headquarters in August 1997.
On 21 November 2002, at the NATO Summit in Prague, the alliance for-
mally invited Lithuania and six other central and eastern European states to
begin negotiations for membership. In March 2003, protocols outlining the
conditions for membership of the new states were approved, and on 1 March
2004 NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced that all
19 NATO member states had approved the expansion of the alliance. On 29
March 2004, Prime Minister Brazauskas presented documents in Washing-
ton, D.C., affirming Lithuania’s ratification of membership in the alliance.
Since 2004, small contingents of the country’s military have participated in
NATO and other international operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, Georgia, Iraq,
and Afghanistan. NATO’s major contribution to Lithuania’s security is the
protection of the nation’s airspace, which is patrolled by the alliance’s fighter
planes stationed at the Zokniai airbase near Šiauliai. See also ARMED
FORCES; FOREIGN RELATIONS.

NORTHERN CRUSADES. A general designation for the invasions of

Christian knights into northern Europe, most of which were carried out after
the expulsion of the crusaders from the Middle East. Pope Celestine III (R.
1191–1198) declared a crusade against Baltic pagans in 1193. In 1198, the
pope also confirmed the Teutonic Knights, the major force that carried out

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 NORTHERN CRUSADES • 209

crusades in the Baltic region, as a military order of priests. The Knights of

the Sword, who were later to be joined to the Teutonic Knights in Prussia,
conquered Livonia and Courland by the mid-13th century, thus bringing
Christianity to present-day Latvia and Estonia. The attempt by the Teutonic
Knights to extend their conquests into Orthodox Russia were defeated by
Prince Alexander Nevsky in the Battle of Lake Peipus in 1242 but the or-
der’s attempts to extend its rule from Prussia into Lithuania led to almost
two centuries of warfare with the Grand Duchy. An allied army led by Poles
and Lithuanians decisively defeated the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald on
15 July 1410.
The long-term effects of the Northern Crusades had a decisive influence
on Baltic history. The campaigns entrenched German political and cultural
influence, especially in Latvia and Estonia, well into the 20th century. The
crusades were also a major factor in persuading Lithuania to adopt Catholi-
cism and forge a political union with Poland—a process that transformed the
geopolitical situation in early modern central and eastern Europe. See also
ALGIRDAS; KĘSTUTIS; VYTAUTAS.

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 210 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 O
OGIŃSKI. Lithuanian: Oginskas. An influential noble family known for its
political power and cultural contributions. While it is thought that the family
hails from Smolensk, the Ogiński name originates from the estate of Uogintai
in central Lithuania that was granted to them by Grand Duke Alexander in
1486. At the end of the 17th century, the Catholic branch of the family estab-
lished themselves in Samogitia. Originally strong supporters of the Eastern
Orthodox Church, most of the Ogińskis converted to Roman Catholicism by
the 18th century. In 1783, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (R. 1765–1790)
granted them princely title.
The Ogińskis provided a number of Lithuanian political and military lead-
ers, most notably Marcian Ogiński (1632–1690), who served as the Grand
Duchy’s grand chancellor from 1684 to 1690; Gregory Ogiński (1654–1709),
Lithuania’s grand hetman and governor of Samogitia, who led his family in
victory over the rival Sapieha clan as well as in war against Sweden; and
Grand Hetman Michael Casimir Ogiński (1730–1800), who joined the Con-
federation of Bar against Russia and was the Grand Duchy’s last treasurer.
The Ogińskis also achieved a reputation in the 19th century as modern-
izers, gifted musicians, and proponents of culture. Diplomat Michael Cleo-
pas Ogiński (1765–1833) is now best known as the composer of mazurkas,
minuets, and the enormously popular polonaise “Pożegnanie Oyczyzny”
(Polish for “Farewell to the Fatherland”). His grandson, Michael Ogiński
(1848–1909), the last landlord of the opulent estate in Plungė, founded an
orchestra at his palace and sponsored a music school attended by Lithuania’s
best known painter and composer, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. Un-
like other landowners, Michael contributed substantial resources to peasant
education and welfare, while supporting the Lithuanian national movement
(see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN).

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 212 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 P
PAC. Lithuanian: Pacas. An influential noble family that played an important
role in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, especially in the
latter part of the 17th century. The Pac name appears in historical sources in
the 15th century; the last of the Pacs, Ludwik Pac (1780–1835), a commander
of Polish forces in Napoleon’s army, died in Paris in 1835. During the reign
of King John Sobieski (R. 1674–1696), the influence of the Pac family began
to fade as the Sapieha clan gained power within Lithuania.
Nicholas Pac (1570–1624) was Bishop of Samogitia from 1609 to 1618
and the founder of both a Jesuit college in the historic town of Kražiai and
a seminary in Varniai. Nicholas was also the author of one of the earliest
known Lithuanian-language texts published in the Grand Duchy of Lithu-
ania, a 1589 welcoming address to King Sigismund III Vasa.
Christopher Sigismund Pac (1621–1684), who had studied in Cracow and
Italy, was the chancellor of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy’s most powerful
political figure from 1658 until his death in Warsaw in 1684. He was one
of the most adamant defenders of Lithuanian interests within the Common-
wealth and is remembered as the builder of one of the country’s most impres-
sive baroque monuments: the Pažaislis monastery complex outside Kaunas.
Michael Casimir Pac, Lithuania’s grand hetman from 1667 to 1682, was
one of the Grand Duchy’s most able military leaders, distinguishing himself
during the difficult wars with Muscovy and Sweden during the 1650s and
1660s as well as against the Turks and Tatars in the 1670s. Along with the
other Pacs, Michael Casimir achieved fame as a patron of religious institu-
tions and the arts, building the famous baroque church of SS. Peter and Paul
in the Antakalnis section of Vilnius, where he is interred.

PAKSAS, ROLANDAS (1956– ). Lithuanian politician who served as

prime minister twice and president in 2003–2004; born on 10 June 1956
in Telšiai. Paksas received an engineering degree in Vilnius in 1979, then
graduated from the Leningrad civil aviation academy in 1984, after which
he worked as a flight instructor. He achieved recognition as an accomplished
aerobatics pilot and aviation specialist. A former member of the Lithuanian

213

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 214 • PALECKIS, JUSTAS

Communist Party and its successor, the Lithuanian Democratic Labor

Party, Paksas joined the conservative Union of the Fatherland in 1995. In
1997, he was elected mayor of Vilnius and successfully lobbied to have the
capital’s old town recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. In June
1999, Paksas was appointed prime minister, but his tenure as head of gov-
ernment ended five months later when he resigned in protest against the sale
of the Mažeikiai oil refinery to the American Williams Company. He then
joined the Liberal Union and once again served as mayor of Vilnius. Paksas
again served as prime minister of the 11th cabinet from November 2000 to
June 2001, when he once more resigned in the midst of a bitter conflict with
the parliament’s chairman, Artu–ras Paulauskas. In March 2002, Paksas
founded the Liberal Democratic Party.
In the presidential runoff election of 5 January 2003, Paksas won a surprise
victory over incumbent Valdas Adamkus, capturing 54 percent of the vote
with strong support from ethnic minorities, rural voters, and low-income
workers dissatisfied with the difficult transition to a market economy. On
30 October 2003, the country’s state security department informed the gen-
eral procurator that the president’s office maintained contacts with Russian
criminal organizations, thus constituting a threat to national security. Pak-
sas’s close friendship with his main campaign contributor, the Russian-born
businessman Yuri Borisov, who had been accused of corruption, proved
particularly embarrassing. Paksas toured the countryside appealing to his
core supporters, but the Seimas initiated impeachment proceedings against
the president in early 2004. On 31 March 2004, the Constitutional Court
ruled that Paksas had violated his oath of office, a decision that barred Paksas
from any state office requiring the administration of an oath. On 6 April, the
Seimas voted to remove the president, thus making Paksas the first European
head of state to lose office after impeachment. The chairman of the Seimas,
Paulauskas, became acting president.
Despite his scandalous tenure in office, Paksas continued in politics as
head of the so-called liberal democrats, renamed the Order and Justice Party,
which won 15 seats with 12.7 percent of the vote in the Seimas elections of
October 2008. Although barred from serving as a Lithuanian parliamentar-
ian, Paksas was elected to the European Parliament in June 2009. He has also
continued his flying avocation: in 2006, he became the first former head of
state to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine airplane. See also PO-
LITICAL PARTIES.

PALECKIS, JUSTAS (1899–1980). Lithuanian journalist and politician,

acting president and prime minister of Lithuania from 17 June to 3 August
1941, and chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist

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 PALECKIS, JUSTAS VINCAS • 215

Republic (SSR) from 1941 until 1967; born on 10 January 1899 in Telšiai.
Paleckis grew up in the Lithuanian community of Riga and, after completing
studies in journalism, joined the Lithuanian Peasant Populist Union and then
was briefly head of the Lithuanian Telegraph Agency, ELTA, in 1926–1927.
He became known for his leftist views and, after a visit to the Soviet Union in
1933, drew closer to the Communists, supporting the establishment of a Popu-
lar Front in Lithuania. In June 1940, Paleckis’s leftist credentials and political
inexperience made him a suitable candidate to head the pro-Soviet People’s
Government, whose makeup and policies were dictated by the Soviet ambas-
sador to Lithuania, Nikolai Pozdniakov, and the Kremlin’s special emissary,
Vladimir Dekanozov. As head of state of Lithuania during its Sovietization in
1940, Paleckis formally oversaw the incorporation of Lithuania into the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on 3 August 1940. Paleckis was admit-
ted into the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) on August 1940.
As chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR between 1941
and 1967, Paleckis was the Republic’s nominal head of state; at the same
time, he served as deputy chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet in Moscow
and was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union. As a frequent member of Soviet parliamentary
and peace delegations abroad, a journalist, and poet with an intellectual’s
reputation, Paleckis was perhaps the best known Lithuanian Communist on
the international scene, although he held little power within the LCP itself.
Paleckis died in Vilnius on 26 January 1980. See also PALECKIS, JUSTAS
VINCAS; PEOPLE’S DIET.

PALECKIS, JUSTAS VINCAS (1942– ). Lithuanian politician; born on

1 January 1942 in Samara, Russia, the son of Soviet Lithuanian head of
state, Justas Paleckis. After graduating from the diplomatic academy of the
Foreign Ministry of the Soviet Union, Paleckis served in Soviet embassies
in Switzerland and West Germany, as well as in the Foreign Ministry in
Moscow. Between 1983 and 1989, he worked in the Central Committee of
the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP), heading the culture and ideology
departments. In February 1990, he was elected to the Lithuanian Supreme
Soviet and joined other signatories in the 11 March 1990 declaration of
independence. After the LCP’s break with Moscow in December 1989, Pal-
eckis was secretary of the Party’s Central Committee. In 1990–1991, he was
deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party, before joining
the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party in 1992. In 1994, Paleckis became
President Algirdas Brazauskas’s chief advisor on foreign relations. He was
appointed Lithuanian ambassador to the United Kingdom In July 1996. In
2004 and 2009, Paleckis was elected to the European Parliament.

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 216 • PANERIAI

PANERIAI. Polish: Ponary; Yiddish: Ponar. Suburban district of Vilnius,

literally meaning “along the Neris River,” that became notorious in World
War II as one of the most infamous of the Nazi killing fields in Lithuania.
In 1941–1944, the German Security Police, assisted by local police battalions
as well as a native detachment known as the Special Platoon (Lithuanian:
Ypatingas būrys), killed tens of thousands of civilians in the Paneriai woods.
The majority were Jews, although thousands of Soviet prisoners of war and
Poles, as well as hundreds of Lithuanians, were also murdered. It is known
that Paneriai was also utilized as a burial ground for people killed elsewhere
so that the exact number of victims killed here, variously estimated between
70,000 and 100,000, has been difficult to determine. Between 1948 and
1992, a number of monuments commemorating the different national groups
murdered at Paneriai have been erected. A museum was opened in 1959 and
expanded in 1985. Since the early 1990s, Paneriai has served as the site of
official ceremonies commemorating the Day of Remembrance on 23 Septem-
ber, the anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto in 1943. See also
HOLOCAUST.

PARLIAMENT. Before 1918. Since the early 15th century, the most power-
ful political institution in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the Council
of Lords established by Vytautas (R. 1392–1430), eventually consisting
of between 35 and 50 notables. Representatives of the nobles (Lithuanian:
bajorai) along with the Lords made up the Grand Duchy’s assembly or Diet
(Lithuanian: seimas; Polish: sejm). Smaller regional diets, or dietines (Lithu-
anian: seimeliai), served as representative institutions of the lower gentry.
After the Union of Lublin in 1569, a joint diet of the Polish-Lithuanian Com-
monwealth served as an electoral and representative body.
Following Russia’s annexation of most of Lithuania in 1795, the nobility
continued to gather in the local dietines until 1863. In 1864, Tsar Alexander
II instituted the zemstvo reform, which established councils of nobles, towns-
people, and peasants as a limited form of local self-government, but the policy
was not extended to the non-Russian western provinces, including Lithuania.
The national Lithuanian political convention in Vilnius in November 1905
was later termed a “diet” in order to underscore its representative character.
Since 1918. The declaration of independence of 16 February 1918 by the
Lithuanian Council, or Taryba, called for a Constituent Assembly or Diet
(Steigiamasis Seimas), which gathered in Kaunas in May 1920 as the first
democratically elected parliament in the country’s history. The Constitu-
tion of 1922 mandated a unicameral legislature, the Seimas, to be elected
on the proportional voting system. Three Seimas elections (in 1922, 1923,
and 1926) took place before the military coup of 17 December 1926 that

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 PARLIAMENT • 217

installed Antanas Smetona as president. Smetona disbanded the legislature

on 12 April 1927. In June 1936, a 49-member parliament was chosen on
the basis of a severely restricted franchise with limited powers. This fourth
Seimas was disbanded by the Soviet-installed People’s Government on 1
July 1940.
The so-called People’s Diet voted to request incorporation of Lithuania
into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) following the arrest
of many of the country’s former leaders and a clearly fraudulent election
held on 14–15 July 1940. After the formal Soviet annexation of Lithuania,
the People’s Diet was renamed the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian Soviet
Socialist Republic (Lietuvos TSR Aukščiausioji taryba) on 25 August 1940.
The Lithuanian Supreme Soviet of 350 deputies chosen for a five-year term
constituted the republic’s legislature and elected the Presidium of the Soviet,
whose chairman was the nominal head of state of the Lithuanian Soviet So-
cialist Republic. In practice, the Soviet simply carried out the instructions of
the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party, the only permit-
ted political body.
The very first competitive Supreme Soviet elections, in February 1990,
gave a majority to the reform movement Sąjūdis. The newly elected leg-
islature proclaimed the restoration of Lithuania’s independence by a vote
of 124–0 on 11 March 1990 and became known in English as the Supreme
Council. The chairman of the Supreme Council, Vytautas Landsbergis,
served as head of state from March 1990 until the convening of a newly
elected parliament in November 1992. In 1996, the Council was also offi-
cially designated as the Restorative Seimas (Atkuriamasis Seimas).
Under the Constitution of 1992, the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania
consists of a 141-member unicameral legislature elected to a four-year term.
Seventy deputies are elected on the basis of national proportional representa-
tion, and 71 are chosen from electoral districts. Political parties not gaining
5 percent of the vote are not seated. There have been five parliamentary
elections since October 1992. Parties and coalitions of the left dominated the
elections of 1992 (Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party), 2000 (Lithuanian
Social Democratic Party), and 2004 (a coalition led by the Labor Party).
Rightist coalitions headed by the Union of the Fatherland were victorious
in 1996 and 2008.
Lithuania operates under a parliamentary system: most executive power,
especially in domestic policy, is vested in the prime minister selected by the
Seimas and subject to the approval of the president who, as head of state,
controls the military and directs foreign policy. The parliament can override
presidential vetoes and even remove a sitting president, as it did after the
impeachment of Rolandas Paksas on 6 April 2004.

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 218 • PARTITIONS OF POLAND-LITHUANIA, 1772–1795

PARTITIONS OF POLAND-LITHUANIA, 1772–1795. A major re-

alignment of territory and power in east-central Europe during the late 18th
century resulted in the destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
and the subjugation of both Poland and Lithuania to foreign rule until after
World War I. The partitions of the Commonwealth, which occurred in three
stages in 1772, 1793, and 1795, were the outcome of continuing interference
by Austria, Prussia, and especially Russia in the internal affairs of the politi-
cally and militarily weak Polish-Lithuanian state, which they had come to
view as their protectorate. Russia in particular was alarmed by the growing
movement for political, social, and economic reform in the Commonwealth
that gained ground during the mid-18th century, fearing the emergence of a
powerful rival.
The First Partition (1772). The initial partition was the direct result of the
Confederation of Bar, which aimed to end Russia’s interference in Com-
monwealth affairs and expel the tsarist army stationed in Poland-Lithuania.
During the fighting, Austrian and Prussian troops crossed the frontiers of
Poland. In 1770, Frederick II of Prussia began negotiations with Catherine
II of Russia to partition the lands of the Commonwealth. A secret partition
agreement between Russia and Prussia was signed on 6 February 1772 and,
after Maria Theresa of Austria was persuaded to join the process, a formal
treaty between the three powers was concluded on 5 August 1772. Russia
received all of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania east of the Dvina and Dnieper
Rivers, as well as eastern Livonia, annexing the cities of Polotsk, Vitebsk,
and Mogilev in present-day Belarus and thus ending four centuries of Lithu-
anian control in the region. Austria acquired most of Galicia, while Prussia
took control of Polish lands in the western part of the kingdom. However, the
First Partition also strengthened the reform movement in the remainder of
the Commonwealth, which in turn provoked a Russian invasion of Poland-
Lithuania in 1792.
The Second Partition (1793). The Russian occupation of the Common-
wealth stimulated new partition negotiations between Prussia and Russia, the
former desiring compensation for its losses in fighting revolutionary France.
Secret Russian-Prussian negotiations in St. Petersburg concluded with the
signing of the Second Partition convention on 23 January 1793. Russia’s
share of Lithuania included the entire palatinate of Minsk and the eastern
parts of the palatinates of Vilnius, Brest, and Nowogródek (Belarusian: Na-
vahrudak); Catherine also received the eastern regions of Polish Volynia and
Podolia. Prussia acquired western Poland, including Poznań, Kalisz, Toruń,
and Gdańsk (Danzig). Under Russian pressure, the Commonwealth’s Diet
ratified the Second Partition in September 1793. The Russian-Prussian sei-

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 PAULAUSKAS, ARTŪRAS • 219

zure of territory provoked a wave of patriotic indignation in both Poland and

Lithuania, leading to the insurrection of 1794 led by Tadeusz Kościuszko.
The Third Partition (1795). During the 1794 insurrection, Russia and Aus-
tria negotiated the Third Partition of the Commonwealth, and on 3 January
1795 the two powers signed a partition agreement. On 24 October, Frederick
William of Prussia acceded to the Austro-Russian agreement after some
revisions. The act of delimitation was formally accepted on 5 December
1796, and the final convention for the partition of the remainder of Poland
and Lithuania was concluded by Austria, Prussia, and Russia on 26 January
1797 in St. Petersburg. Russia acquired the remainder of Lithuania to the
east of the Nemunas River as well as the rest of Volynia and Podolia. Prus-
sia received southwestern Lithuania, known as the Užnemunė or Suvalkija
(Polish: Suwałki) region, which included the towns of Augustów, Sejny, and
Marijampolė, along with central Poland. Austria obtained Little Poland (Pol-
ish: Małopolska), including Cracow.
Effects. The partitions of 1772–1795 were a decisive event in the history
of both Poland and Lithuania, ending their statehood for 123 years and, in
the long run, fundamentally altering the relationship between the two nations
of the former Commonwealth. The elimination of a large, historic European
state came as a shock and unwelcome precedent to the international commu-
nity, especially in France and Great Britain, giving rise to the “Polish Ques-
tion,” which complicated both the internal politics of the partitioning powers
and international diplomacy during the 19th century. See also POLONIZA-
TION; RUSSIFICATION.

PAULAUSKAS, ARTŪRAS (1953– ). Jurist, politician, and acting presi-

dent of Lithuania from 6 April to 12 July 2004; born in Vilnius on 23 August
1953. After receiving a law degree from the University of Vilnius in 1976,
Paulauskas worked as an interrogator and prosecutor in a number of provin-
cial postings. He later worked in the Central Committee of the Lithuanian
Communist Party and also as deputy general procurator from 1987 to 1990,
when he was appointed general procurator of independent Lithuania, a post
he held until 1995. From 1995 until 1997, Paulauskas again served as deputy
general procurator, after which he turned to private law practice.
Paulauskas began his political career by entering the presidential cam-
paign to succeed Algirdas Brazauskas, but despite the outgoing leader’s
strong endorsement, narrowly lost to Valdas Adamkus in January 1998.
Paulauskas founded the New Union (Social Liberals) Party (Naujoji sąjunga-
socialliberalai) the same year and was elected chairman of the parliament
when New Union won a fifth of the vote in the 2000 Seimas elections.

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 220 • PEASANT POPULIST UNION, LITHUANIAN

After the impeachment of Rolandas Paksas and in accordance with the

Lithuanian constitution, on 6 April 2004 Paulauskas was named acting
president, presiding over Lithuania’s accession to the European Union; he
served until the second inauguration of Adamkus on 12 July 2004. In April
2006, Paulauskas was removed as speaker of the parliament. From January
to December 2008, he served as minister of the environment in the cabinet
of Gediminas Kirkilas. Paulauskas lost his campaign to win a seat in the
Seimas in 2008; at the same time, his New Union failed to cross the 5-percent
threshold for representation in parliament.

PEASANT POPULIST UNION, LITHUANIAN. Lithuanian: Lietuvos

valstiečių liaudininkų sąjunga. Left-of-center political party established in
1922. The Populist Union had its origins among the more radical members of
the Lithuanian Democratic Party founded by the adherents of the movement
in 1902. After the evacuation of much of the Lithuanian population to Russia
during World War I, some of the non-Bolshevik left fell under the influence
of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary movement, which advocated peasant
socialism. In November 1917, these leftists established the Lithuanian So-
cialist Populist Party (Lietuvos socialistų liaudininkų partija), which had its
first congress in Vilnius in August 1918. At the beginning of 1919, the group
published its first program, calling for the establishment of an independent
Lithuanian democratic republic and a socialist political system. The party
emphasized land reform that would provide economic justice for landless
peasants and smallholders.
In December 1922, the Socialist Populists convened a joint congress with
the Peasant Union (Valstiečių sąjunga), which had been established by the
peasant members of the Great Assembly of Vilnius in 1905. The two groups
merged into the Lithuanian Peasant Populist Union, rejected socialism, and
supported private land ownership. As a centrist, peasant-oriented secular
party, the Peasant Populist Union won a large part of the Lithuanian elector-
ate during the democratic period of the Republic of Lithuania (1920–1926).
During the May 1926 elections to the Seimas, the Populists won 22 of the 85
seats to the legislature and managed to form a government in coalition with
the Social Democrats and the ethnic minorities. The military coup of 17
December 1926 and the dissolution of the Seimas in April 1927 put an end to
the Populists’ active participation in government.
The Nationalist Union regime harassed the Populists, accusing them of
organizing an antigovernment coup in September 1927 and of fomenting the
1934 agrarian uprising of the peasants in Suvalkija. The Peasant Populist
Union, along with the other parties, was banned in 1935. During the Soviet
occupation, many Populist leaders were arrested; others joined the anti-Soviet

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 PEOPLE’S DIET • 221

and anti-Nazi underground movements. After World War II, the Populists
were active as members of the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of
Lithuania and continued their political activities after emigration, primarily
to the United States and Canada. See also AGRICULTURE; CONSTITU-
ENT ASSEMBLY.

PEOPLE’S DIET. Lithuanian: Liaudies Seimas. Communist-controlled

parliament elected in July 1940 that formally initiated Lithuania’s incorpo-
ration into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). After the Soviet
military occupation of Lithuania on 15 June 1940 and the installation of the
Soviet-controlled People’s Government headed by Justas Paleckis on 17
June, the Soviets began preparations to create a Soviet Lithuanian regime and
solve the legal problem of Lithuania’s Sovietization. In late June and early
July, the Soviets exerted intense pressure on the Lithuanian government to
call elections in order to determine the country’s future status.
On 6 July, a law for elections to a Lithuanian People’s Diet was promul-
gated. The election rules and political realities permitted campaigning and
voting for only one slate: the hastily formed and Communist-controlled
Lithuanian Union of Labor (Darbo Lietuvos sąjunga). On 11–12 July, Com-
munist-controlled security forces arrested hundreds of prominent political
and cultural leaders, thus undermining political opposition. The state media
pressed the theme that those who did not vote would be exposed as “enemies
of the people.”
The elections were held on 14–15 July. Voters’ internal passports were
stamped as they entered polling places. Despite the public campaign and the
extension of voting by a day, allegedly because of inclement weather, it is not
clear how many eligible voters actually cast ballots. It is obvious, however,
that the turnout did not approach the Communist claim that 95.5 percent of
eligible voters had cast nearly 99.2 percent of their ballots for candidates sup-
ported by the Union of Labor, which won all 79 seats to the diet.
The People’s Diet met in Kaunas on 21–24 1940. During its first ses-
sion, the deputies unanimously voted to proclaim a Soviet socialist form of
government and issued a declaration announcing their intention to seek the
admission of Lithuania into the USSR as a Union Republic. On 22–23 July,
the Diet voted to nationalize land, banks, and large enterprises and appointed
a delegation of government officials and writers to travel to Moscow to peti-
tion the USSR Supreme Soviet for Lithuania’s admission to the Union. On
3 August 1940, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR admitted the Lithuanian
Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) into the Soviet Union. On 25 August, the
Lithuanian People’s Diet declared itself the provisional Supreme Soviet of
the Lithuanian SSR.

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 222 • PEOPLE’S GOVERNMENT

After the Soviet retreat from Lithuania in June 1941, a number of the for-
mer People’s Diet deputies and other observers revealed a great deal of the
coercion, overt Soviet control, and carnival atmosphere that marked the July
1940 elections to the Diet and the body’s vote to join the USSR. See also
COMMUNIST PARTY, LITHUANIAN.

PEOPLE’S GOVERNMENT. Lithuanian: Liaudies vyriausybė. Commu-

nist-controlled government of 17 July–26 August 1940 that oversaw Lithua-
nia’s incorporation into the Soviet Union. As Soviet troops invaded Lithuania
on 15 June 1940, President Antanas Smetona left the country after temporar-
ily transferring presidential power to Prime Minister Antanas Merkys. Un-
der Soviet pressure, Merkys, as acting president, appointed Justas Paleckis
prime minister on 17 June and asked him to form a government. Paleckis
gathered a cabinet that included Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius, deputy prime
minister, foreign minister, and acting minister of education; Gen. Vincas
Vitkauskas (1890–1965), defense minister; Povilas Pakarklis (1902–1955),
minister of justice; Ernestas Galvanauskas, finance minister and acting
minister of communications; Matas Mickis (1896–1960), minister of agricul-
ture and acting interior minister; and Leonas Koganas (1894–1956), minister
of health. After the formation of the Paleckis government, Merkys resigned
the presidency, thus making Paleckis acting president as well—a move of
doubtful legality.
On 18 June, Paleckis announced a leftist political platform and friendship
for the Soviet Union; his pro-Soviet regime declared itself the “People’s Gov-
ernment.” On 27 June, the government disbanded the parliament and on 6
July called new elections. While the first cabinet of the People’s Government
contained no Communist Party members, the real power in Lithuania was
held by the Soviet army and NKVD as well as the leadership of the Lithu-
anian Communist Party headed by Antanas Sniečkus, who was appointed
head of the State Security Department.
After the People’s Diet declared Soviet rule in Lithuania in July 1940,
the Paleckis government accelerated the reorganization of the country’s ad-
ministration, police, and military along Soviet lines and enacted decrees on
nationalization. On 26 August 1941, following the incorporation of Lithuania
into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet
replaced the People’s Government with the Council of People’s Commissars
of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic chaired by Mečislovas Gedvilas,
thus completing the Sovietization of Lithuania’s government.

PHILOMATHS. Polish: filomaty; Lithuanian: filomatai. A secret student

association originating at the University of Vilnius during the early 1800s.

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 POLAND • 223

The Philomath association was established in 1817 by students who sup-

ported Masonic and Enlightenment ideals and was closely tied to a compan-
ion group called the Philarets (Polish: filareci; Lithuanian: filaretai). One
of the prominent founders of the group was Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz.
At their height, the two groups united dozens of active students and intel-
lectuals, along with several hundred sympathizers. While small in number,
the Philomaths were important in propagating the ideas of Polish-oriented
Romantic nationalism and political liberalism in Lithuania. In 1824, tsarist
authorities sentenced more than 100 alleged members of the Philomath and
Philaret associations for anti-Russian activities, although only 20 persons
actually served brief terms of imprisonment and exile.

PIŁSUDSKI, JÓZEF (1867–1935). Polish military and political leader;

born in Lithuania near Švenčionys on 5 December 1867. Piłsudski gradu-
ated from a Vilnius secondary school and then attended the University of
Kharkov. From 1887 to 1892, Piłsudski was exiled to Siberia for anti-tsarist
activities. He was one of the leaders of the Polish Socialist Party at the turn
of the century, but eventually became more interested in the struggle for Pol-
ish independence. He was instrumental in organizing the Polish legions that
fought on the German side in World War I. In his military career, Piłsudski
eventually achieved the rank of marshal. In November 1918, he was named
regent of the newly independent Polish state. He hoped to recreate the old
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth within its 1772 boundaries as a federa-
tion of Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine.
Piłsudski was particularly adamant about including his native Vilnius re-
gion in the new Poland. When the federative plans collapsed, he authorized
Gen. Lucjan Żeligowski to stage a mutiny and seize Lithuania’s capital in
October 1920. Piłsudski returned to private life in 1922 but a military coup in
May 1926 brought him to power as both prime minister and defense minister.
He was virtual dictator of Poland until his death in Warsaw on 12 May 1935.
In recognition of his sentiment for the land of his birth, Piłsudski’s heart was
buried together with his mother’s remains in the Rasa Cemetery in Vilnius.
See also CENTRAL LITHUANIA, REPUBLIC OF; VILNIUS QUESTION.

POLAND. Lithuania’s southern neighbor, an important cultural and politi-

cal factor in the country’s history. Area: 312,612 square kilometers (120,700
square miles); population: 2009 est., 38,130,000; capital: Warsaw.
Early History. Lithuanian-Polish relations date back to pre-Christian
times when the tribes of Balts encountered West Slavic groups, which later
coalesced into the modern Polish nation. The name of one of these Slavic
tribes, the Lech, gave rise to the Lithuanian terms for Poles (lenkai) and

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 224 • POLAND

Poland (Lenkija). Medieval chronicles report that Lithuanian and Old Prus-
sian tribes made numerous forays into Polish lands. The Polish tribes were
united under the Piast dynasty, beginning with Mieszko I, who oversaw his
realm’s Christianization in 966. Central power was strengthened under Casi-
mir I (R. 1034–1058) and Bolesław II (R. 1058–1079), but the real founda-
tions of the Kingdom of Poland as a power in central Europe were laid by
Casimir III (R. 1333–1370).
Lithuanian relations with Poland improved during the time of Gediminas
(R. 1316–1341), whose daughter Aldona (Anne) married Casimir. The crucial
turning point in Polish-Lithuanian relations occurred in 1385 when the Act of
Krėva established a dynastic alliance between the two states, provided for the
Christianization of Lithuania, and led to the eventual demise of the dangerous
Teutonic Knights. Grand Duke Jogaila, who assumed the Polish crown as
Władysław II in 1386, established the Jagiellonian dynasty, which ruled until
1572 and is generally considered to have inaugurated Poland’s golden age of
state power and cultural development.
After 1569. The Union of Lublin in 1569 transformed the dynastic alli-
ance of Poland and Lithuania into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a
federation of the Kingdom and Grand Duchy that survived until 1795. As a
result of the Union, Poland acquired Ukraine from Lithuania. The influence
of the Polish nobility and the Catholic Church strengthened the historic
process of linguistic Polonization that defined much of Lithuania’s cultural
history until the early 20th century.
During the initial period of tsarist rule (1795–1863), the Polish and Lithu-
anian elites generally campaigned together for a restoration of the former
Commonwealth. However, after the insurrection of 1863–1864, the increas-
ingly assertive Lithuanian-speaking intelligentsia of peasant stock began to
stake out a separate national identity in opposition to the Poles. The greatest
conflict between Poles and Lithuanians erupted after World War I over
the Vilnius Question, following the seizure of the city by Gen. Lucjan
Żeligowski in October 1920. Poland and Lithuania remained in a state of
war until 1927, and diplomatic relations between the two countries were not
established until March 1938. In October 1939, Lithuania regained control
of Vilnius.
After the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in Septem-
ber 1939, thousands of Polish refugees and military internees found refuge in
Lithuania. However, during World War II, Polish-Lithuanian relations were
marred by the violent struggle between the underground Polish Home Army
and Lithuanian authorities in eastern Lithuania, which included atrocities
against civilians by both sides. During the late 1940s, almost 200,000 Poles,

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 POLITICAL PARTIES • 225

as well as some Lithuanians who claimed Polish roots, repatriated to Poland

as part of the Warsaw’s agreements with the Soviet Union.
The restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990 transformed Polish-
Lithuanian relations. Once again, Poland gained importance as a geopolitical,
economic, and cultural factor for Lithuania. Poland’s President Lech Wałęsa
(1943– ) and majority Polish public opinion supported the Lithuanian in-
dependence movement, and relations between the two countries improved.
Some issues from the past still provided divisive rancor. Accusations of
ethnic discrimination by Polish and Lithuanian nationalists concerning their
respective national minorities (230,000 Poles in Lithuania; 10,000–15,000
Lithuanians in Poland) resonated in the press. Some Lithuanian politicians
unsuccessfully demanded that a formal statement denouncing the 1920 Polish
occupation of Vilnius be included in the Polish-Lithuanian state treaty that
was signed by presidents Wałęsa and Algirdas Brazauskas on 26 April 1994
during the Polish leader’s state visit to Lithuania. However, the treaty, rati-
fied by the legislatures of both countries on 13 October 1994, reaffirmed the
existing boundary between Poland and Lithuania, thus explicitly confirming
Lithuania’s right to Vilnius.
The visit of Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski (1954– ) in March
1996 further strengthened Polish-Lithuanian ties and established the practice
of frequent Polish-Lithuanian consultations and visits on the ministerial and
presidential levels. A closer alliance with Poland became evident during
the tenure of President Valdas Adamkus (1998–2003 and 2004–2009), who
envisioned Poland and Lithuania forming the lynchpin of a pro-Western bloc
of Baltic, central European, and eastern European states, including Ukraine.
During the late 1990s and 2000s, the Polish and Lithuanian governments
reiterated their commitment to a strategic partnership and cooperated in
successfully coordinating their integration into European and transatlantic
structures, which culminated in Poland and Lithuania’s membership in the
European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004. See
also INSURRECTION OF 1830–1831; PIŁSUDSKI, JÓZEF; ULTIMA-
TUMS OF 1938–1940.

POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH. See COMMON-

WEALTH, POLISH-LITHUANIAN.

POLITICAL PARTIES. The formation of modern political par-

ties in Lithuania can be traced to the late 19th century, a result of
both the increasing strength of the national movement (see NATIONAL-
ISM, LITHUANIAN) among Lithuanian speakers and the radicalization

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 226 • POLITICAL PARTIES

of the incipient industrial working class, largely representing Jews and

Poles. Among ethnic Lithuanians, political groupings tended to reflect the
three major currents within the national movement: First, the Catholic cleri-
cal orientation eventually coalesced into the Christian Democratic group,
which drafted a platform in 1904. Second, the secular anti-tsarist national-
ist wing that emerged from the periodicals and provided the core of the
Lithuanian Democratic Party, which later formed the basis of the Peasant
Populist Union. Third, a more conservative group established the National
Progress (Tautos pažanga) faction in 1916, from which later sprang the Na-
tionalist Union.
The socialist wing was represented by the Lithuanian Social Democratic
Party (LSDP), founded in 1896, which quickly split into a more moderate
faction and the more radical Lithuanian Bolsheviks, who joined with Vladi-
mir Lenin and later founded the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP). Rosa
Luxemburg’s Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania
(Polish: Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy) gained a limited fol-
lowing among Polish workers, while the more powerful Bund united Jewish
socialists desirous of a nationally autonomous leftist movement.
The establishment of an independent republic transformed politics by creat-
ing a democratic parliamentary system (1920–1926), but it also entrenched
the already existing ethnic Lithuanian political movements, including the
conservative nationalists, the peasant populists, and the social democrats, as
well as the minority parties, which now competed in elections. The so-called
Catholic Bloc—which included Christian Democrats, the Labor Federation,
and (until 1924) the Peasant Populists—dominated the parliament until the
elections of May 1926, which produced a left-of-center coalition of Social
Democrats and Peasant Populists. The coup of 17 December 1926 brought
the Nationalist Union to power, and it maintained its hold on the country
during the authoritarian dictatorship of Antanas Smetona until June 1940.
Smetona officially banned political parties in 1935, although vigorous repres-
sion was reserved only for the extreme right and the Communists.
After the Soviet invasion and occupation of June 1940—with the excep-
tion of the period of the Nazi occupation in 1941–1944—the Communist
Party became the sole permitted political organization in Lithuania. Virtu-
ally all of the non-Communist parties continued their activities outside the
country, drawing support from the thousands of émigrés who had fled west
in 1944–1945.
The reform policies of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s
and the emergence of Sąjūdis led to the decision of the LCP to separate from
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and repeal the article in
the constitution of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic granting the
Communists a monopoly on power. After Lithuania’s successful drive to

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 POLONIZATION • 227

independence, the LCP transformed itself into the Lithuanian Democratic

Labor Party (LDDP) in 1992 and then merged with the LSDP in 1996. In the
process, the former Communists abandoned the Marxist basis of their party
and became the major leftist force in Lithuanian politics.
The first elections to the Seimas parliament in October 1992 brought the
LDDP to power. As the Sąjūdis movement faded, the Union of the Father-
land (conservatives) emerged to unite the right and right-of-center factions.
The 1992–2008 Seimas election cycles resulted in a conservative victory in
1996, a left-of-center coalition spearheaded by the LSDP in 2000, a populist
center victory by the Labor Party (Darbo partija) of Viktor Uspaskich in
2004, and a return to a conservative majority in 2008.
In addition to the continuing swing from left to right, another tendency
in political development has been the continuous creation of new and short-
lived formations competing with the traditional parties and tied primarily to
personalities rather than coherent platforms. These include Uspaskikh’s La-
bor Party; the Liberal Union, the Liberal Democrats, and the Order and Jus-
tice Party, essentially representing supporters of ousted president Rolandas
Paksas; and most recently, the National Resurrection Party, created in 2008
as the brainchild of TV show host Arūnas Valinskas (1966– ), who chaired
the Seimas from November 2008 to September 2009. The constantly shifting
coalitions among political mutations have led to considerable instability in
Lithuanian politics. See also ADAMKUS, VALDAS; BRAZAUSKAS, AL-
GIRDAS; IRON WOLF; LANDSBERGIS, VYTAUTAS; LITHUANIAN
ACTIVIST FRONT; NATIONALIST PARTY, LITHUANIAN; RESIS-
TANCE MOVEMENTS; VOLDEMARAS, AUGUSTINAS.

POLONIZATION. The term used by historians for the process by which

Polish culture came to play an important and, at times, dominant role in
Lithuanian history. The Balts had for centuries been neighbors of the West
Slavic tribes. During the 14th century, there were a number of Lithuanian
military incursions into Poland, but also peaceful contacts: in 1325, Grand
Duke Gediminas’s daughter Aldona married Casimir the Great and, chris-
tened as Anne, became queen of Poland. The historic impact of Polish culture
on Lithuania dates from the country’s formal Christianization in 1387, which
was an outcome of the Polish-Lithuanian dynastic alliance. With the excep-
tion of a few Czechs and Germans, Lithuania’s clergy of the late 14th century
was predominantly Polish, and the Lithuanian Church was initially under the
jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Gniezno. The shortage of native priests led
to Polish dominance of the Lithuanian Church; for this reason, later Lithu-
anian nationalists came to view Catholicism as the major Polonizing force
in Lithuania.

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 228 • PONIATOWSKI, STANISŁAW AUGUST

Beginning in the 15th century, Lithuanian society underwent a long and

gradual division into a Polish-speaking nobility and Lithuanian-speaking
peasantry. The last grand duke known to have spoken Lithuanian was Jogai-
la’s son Casimir IV (R. 1440–1492). Spoken Polish came into wider use in
the grand duke’s court by the middle of the 16th century and radiated outward
to the families of magnates and landed gentry. In 1697, Polish and Latin be-
came the official languages of the Grand Duchy, replacing the Belarusian
form of Old Church Slavic, which had been utilized as the language of docu-
ments in the Lithuanian chancery since the 15th century. Spoken Lithuanian
was still used in the courts and in administration, but other than for occasional
oaths sworn by peasants, Lithuanian was not written in official documents
except in Lutheran East Prussia. Many of the lesser gentry and townspeople
of the ethnographically Lithuanian regions of the Grand Duchy continued
speaking Lithuanian until the 18th century when, except in Samogitia, they
gradually switched to Polish. By the 19th century, Polish was established as
the language of public life and social prestige in most of Lithuania even as the
country fell under tsarist rule. Russian efforts to replace Polish with Russian
were generally unsuccessful.
With the emergence of the Lithuanian national movement in the second
half of the 19th century, the process of cultural and linguistic Polonization
was gradually reversed in much of Lithuania and practically came to an
end with the establishment of the Republic of Lithuania in 1918. However,
Polonization continued in the eastern parts of the country, especially the
Vilnius region, which came under Polish rule from 1920 to 1939. During the
mid-1930s, Ludwik Bociański (1892–1970), the governor of Vilnius district
(Polish: Województwo), led a particularly harsh campaign of Polonization
aimed at the Belarusian and Lithuanian minorities, causing great bitterness
among ethnic Lithuanians as well as tensions between the governments of
Poland and Lithuania. After Lithuania regained Vilnius in 1939, the authori-
ties tried to reverse the Polonization process in the region through a policy of
Lithuanianization, with mixed success. Ethnic violence during World War
II between the Polish Home Army and Lithuanian armed formations further
inflamed tensions in the area.
Since the war, and despite a number of Polish-Lithuanian agreements safe-
guarding the rights of minorities since 1994, press reports have chronicled
complaints concerning discrimination of the Polish-speaking minority in
eastern Lithuania, and of Lithuanians living in the Suwałki (Suvalkija) re-
gion of Poland. See also RUSSIFICATION.

PONIATOWSKI, STANISŁAW AUGUST (1732–1798). Last King of

Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (R. 1764–1795); born on 17 January

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 POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY • 229

1732. Poniatowski received his early schooling at the court of the Czarto-
ryskis and then furthered his education in Germany, France, Holland, and
elsewhere in Europe; in later life, he developed a reputation as a cultured
and urbane patron of the arts. He served in the Polish-Lithuanian Com-
monwealth’s Diet from 1752 and was appointed a member of the Polish-
Lithuanian diplomatic mission in St. Petersburg from 1755 to 1758, where
he became the lover of the future Catherine II (“the Great”), then wife of
Tsar Peter III. With Russian support, Poniatowski easily won election to
the throne of the Commonwealth in Warsaw on 2 August 1764 as King and
Grand Duke Stanisław August II.
The King, although eager to halt the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian state,
soon found himself torn between the determination of Catherine’s ambas-
sador, Nikolai Repnin, to keep the Commonwealth subservient to Russia,
on the one hand, and the movement for reform supported by much of the
Polish-Lithuanian gentry, on the other. In 1771, the supporters of the reform-
minded Confederation of Bar attempted to kidnap Stanisław August and, af-
ter the First Partition of 1772, the King’s powers were even further reduced.
Poniatowski subsequently tried to secure a more independent position for the
Commonwealth vis-à-vis Russia, without much success.
At first, Stanisław August accepted the decisions of the Four-Year Diet
(1788–1792), which legislated serious reforms for the Commonwealth and
supported resistance to Russia; but, sensing defeat against superior Russian
forces, he defected to the pro-Russian Confederation of Targowica in Au-
gust 1792. However, two years later, the King gave his blessing to the insur-
rectionary movement of Tadeusz Kościuszko. After the rebellion’s failure,
Stanisław August was exiled by Tsarina Catherine II to Grodno, where he
abdicated on 25 November 1795. In 1796, Poniatowski was invited to the
coronation of Tsar Paul I, and he remained in St. Petersburg until his death
on 12 February 1798.

POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY. Before 1914. At the height of

territorial expansion in the early 15th century under Vytautas, the lands of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its dependencies totaled over 900,000
square kilometers (350,000 square miles) and had a population variously
estimated between two million and four million, of whom perhaps a half mil-
lion were ethnic Lithuanians. In the mid-17th century, the number of houses
subject to taxation by the Grand Duchy was over a half million, reflecting a
population of about three or four million, but this number was considerably
reduced by the wars with Muscovy between 1654 and 1667. The Great
Northern War (1700–1721) and the plague of 1708–1711 were the greatest
demographic disasters in Lithuanian history. In western Samogitia and East

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 230 • POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY

Prussia, it is estimated that the majority of the population perished, although

there was some recovery by the late 18th century.
In 1860, the Russian administration estimated that there were about
1,500,000 Lithuanians living in the provinces of the historically Lithuanian
lands, mostly in the Kaunas, Vilnius, and Grodno gubernias. At the same
time, about a quarter-million Lithuanian speakers lived in East Prussia. The
comprehensive Russian census of 1897 showed a marked decline in the num-
ber of people listed as ethnic Lithuanians, especially in the eastern parts of
the country, due to the Polonization and Russification of the region. Despite
a high birth rate, the Lithuanian-speaking population thus remained stable
during this period due to assimilation into surrounding Slavic communities
and emigration, primarily to the United States. On the eve of World War
I, the population of the ethnic Lithuanian lands stood at about four million,
of which about a half million were Jews.
1914–1941. In 1915, the retreating Russian forces evacuated nearly a half
million inhabitants, including about 300,000 ethnic Lithuanians, but the ma-
jority returned to Lithuania after 1918. The first detailed population census
of the Republic of Lithuania, in 1923, and the Klaipėda Territory count of
1925 revealed a total population of 2,164,199 (excluding Vilnius). The ethnic
and occupational breakdown of that population are shown in tables 1 and 2,
respectively.
Lithuania’s demographic structure underwent revolutionary change during
the interwar period as the country experienced majority rule for the first time.
The relative ethnic proportions within the population at large did not change
significantly before the late 1930s, but the ratio of urbanites rose to nearly
a fourth of Lithuanian citizens on the eve of World War II. The process of
urban “Lithuanianization,” the single most important social transformation
of the interwar period, was even more pronounced. Before World War I, not
a single city in Lithuania had a majority of Lithuanian speakers. But dur-
ing the two decades of independence, all of Lithuania’s major cities (with
the exceptions of Vilnius and Klaipėda) acquired large majorities of ethnic

Table 1. Lithuanian Population by Nationality

Nationality Number Percent
Lithuanians 1,739,489 80.6
Jews 154,321 7.15
Germans 88,568 4.1
Poles 65,628 3.0
Russians 50,727 2.35
Other 65,466 2.8
Total 2,164,199 100.0

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 POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY • 231

Table 2. Lithuanian Population by Occupation

Occupation Number Percent
Agriculture 1,129,870 76.7
Industry/Crafts 94,731 6.4
Other 248,344 16.9
Total 1,472,945 100.0

Lithuanians. For example, in 1923 Kaunas had a 59 percent ethnic Lithu-

anian population, and Šiauliai, 70 percent (1897 figures: 6.6 percent and 27.8
percent, respectively).
During the 1930s, the Lithuanian share of the urban population continued
to grow, both in the country’s larger cities and the smaller towns, which had
for centuries been bastions of Jewish, German, and Polish economic and
cultural influence. After the loss of Klaipėda and the addition of Vilnius and
its environs in 1939, the Lithuanian population stood at just over three mil-
lion; the percentage of Germans decreased, while that of Jews grew larger. It
is estimated that in 1941 the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic contained
about 3,100,000 inhabitants.
Genocide, War, and Postwar Stalinism, 1941–1953. Lithuania suffered
one of the highest rates of population loss in Europe as a result of World War
II and postwar violence. The extent of demographic losses has been a subject
of controversy and, sometimes, the object of politically motivated claims
intended to either increase or decrease the number of victims of deportation,
massacre, and postwar resistance to Soviet occupation.
The Soviet occupation of 1940–1941 exacted a large number of victims of
repression, culminating in the arrests and deportations of nearly 20,000 civil-
ians to points east and the massacres of civilians by the retreating Red Army
in mid- and late June 1941; most of the victims were ethnic Lithuanians. The
Nazi occupation and the Holocaust resulted in the deaths of nearly a quarter
of a million people, mainly Jews. The period of the first decade of the second
Soviet occupation (1944–1953) was also extremely violent, resulting in mass
deportations of Lithuanian civilians and an anti-Soviet guerrilla war that
killed tens of thousands before waning in the early 1950s.
Many deportees and refugees perished during their exile, although the ma-
jority survived and many returned; thus, an accurate appraisal as to what ex-
tent deportations and displacement constituted actual population losses may
never be possible. On the other hand, the opening of previously inaccessible
archives after 1990 and the resulting research has enabled the publication of
considerably more reliable estimates of population losses than in the past.
The figures below represent rounded estimates based on recent research and
adjusted to reflect a reasonable middle ground between the lower and higher

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 232 • POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY

numbers published in academic sources. The estimates of Lithuanian citizens

killed/murdered from 1941 to 1953 are as follows:

1940–1944/45

Soviet executions and killings, 1940–1941 2,000

Lithuanian losses: anti-Soviet uprising of June 1941 1,000
Holocaust, 1941–1944 200,000
Other Nazi executions and mass killings 5,000
Acts of war (civilian deaths) 25,000
Acts of war (Lithuanians in German and Soviet forces) 35,000

1944/45–1953

Combatants: anti-Soviet partisans 20,000

Soviet and collaborationist forces 15,000
Noncombatants 25,000

The estimates of deportations and population movements between 1939 and

1959 are:

Deportations

Soviet deportations, 1940–1941 20,000

Forced labor to Germany, 1941–1944 75,000
Soviet deportations, 1944–1953 130,000

Refugee Movements and Repatriations

Polish/Jewish refugees to Lithuania, 1939 20,000

Repatriation to Germany, 1941 50,000
Refugees to USSR, June–July 1941 25,000
Refugees escaping West, 1944–1945* 100,000
Repatriation to Poland, 1945–1959 220,000
*Not including Germans fleeing Klaipėda (Memel) Territory

The Post-Stalin Period and Independence. It took a considerable time for

Lithuania to recover from the demographic disasters of 1940–1953. The So-
viet estimate of the population in 1950 was 2,573,000, reflecting the wartime
and postwar losses; by 1970, the population had recovered to its 1939 level.
The most significant changes in Lithuania’s demographic structure during the

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 POW • 233

Table 3. Lithuanian Demographic Changes, 1959–2009

Year Total Lithuanians Urban
1959 2,711,000 79.3% 38.6%
1970 3,128,000 80.1 50.2
1979 3,339,000 80.0 60.7
1989 3,690,000 79.6 68.0
1997 3,705,000 81.0 67.5
2001 3,484,000 83.5 67.0
2009 3,349,000 84.7 67.0

Soviet postwar era were the influx of nearly 300,000 mostly Russian settlers
and the urbanization of the populace. A decreasing birthrate and the aging of
the population have been worrying demographers for the last two decades,
but the most significant shift since the mid-1990s has been massive emigra-
tion, rivaling in scale the outflow of migrants during the late 19th and early
20th centuries. On the other hand, the proportion of ethnic Lithuanians in the
population has increased slightly, due in part to the exodus of some of the
Russophone population that had immigrated during the Soviet period. Table
3 shows the population number and percentages of ethnic Lithuanians and
urban residents by estimate or census.

POŠKA, DIONIZAS (1757–1830). Polish: Paszkiewicz. Lithuanian writer

and patron of Lithuanian studies; born near Šilalė in Raseiniai district on 30
April 1757. Poška came from the Samogitian petty gentry and, along with
Simonas Stanevičius, is the best known writer of the early 19th-century
Samogitian movement that sought to preserve and nurture the Lithuanian
language and culture. Poška studied at the college of Kražiai and gathered a
circle of like-minded students from the University of Vilnius. He undertook
archaeological excavations and gathered material for the ethnographic study
of Samogitian peasants. Poška is remembered for, among other works, his
long poem Mužikas Žemaičių ir Lietuvos (The Samogitian and Lithuanian
Peasant), which was written between 1815 and 1820 and first published in
in 1886. The work criticized serfdom, empathized with the peasants, and ro-
manticized the life and work of Lithuanian villagers. Poška died on 30 April
1830. See also LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

POW. Polish: Polska Organizacja Wojskowa. Underground Polish military

organization founded during World War I. The POW established chapters
in Vilnius in 1918 and later in Kaunas. The POW leadership believed that
Lithuania should be annexed to Poland since it could not survive as an in-
dependent state and would simply become a German or Russian outpost

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 234 • PRE-CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY

threatening Polish interests. During the spring and summer of 1919, the POW
began to organize a rebellion seeking to overthrow the Lithuanian govern-
ment, involving over 300 people in the conspiracy. On 28 August, members
of the POW staged a brief armed attack on Lithuanian installations and com-
munications, but the revolt was quickly suppressed by Lithuanian troops;
about 400 people were detained and 45 were sentenced to prison by military
courts in December 1920, effectively ending POW activities in Lithuania.
While the POW coup attempt never seriously threatened the Lithuanian gov-
ernment, it provoked considerable suspicion of Poland and further worsened
Polish-Lithuanian relations. See also CENTRAL LITHUANIA, REPUBLIC
OF; ŻELIGOWSKI, LUCJAN.

PRE-CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. Despite the fact

that Lithuania was one of the last European nations to accept Christianity,
relatively little is known with certainty about the people’s pre-Christian be-
liefs and traditions. Transmission of spiritual and mythical traditions among
the tribes of Balts was entirely oral. Most scholars consider the medieval ac-
counts of religious practices among the Old Prussian and Lithuanian tribes
to be largely unreliable. Reports of large temples containing an eternal sacred
fire, a hierarchical priesthood, and vestal virgins located in a center of wor-
ship called Romuva, as described in the chronicle of Peter von Dusburg in
1326, have been questioned by historians; some regard such tales as fanciful
inventions. Romantic authors, such as historian Theodor Narbutt, theorized
that the present-day cathedral in Vilnius at Gediminas Square was built
on the site of a pagan temple, an assertion supported by some Lithuanian
archaeologists. Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994), a renowned archaeologist,
published several works on matriarchal Neolithic cultures, claiming that their
mythological world was based on worship of goddesses. Two of the more
prominent Lithuanian scholars of pre-Christian religion, Norbertas Vėlius
(1938–1994) and Gintaras Beresnevičius (1961–2006), adopted a more criti-
cal approach to the sources.
Pre-Christian Lithuanian and other Baltic tribes seem to have shared a
strong animist tradition. A number of sources report that they considered fire
sacred, and it seems probable that worshippers set aside sacred sites, espe-
cially certain groves (alka) and particular trees. The most frequently reported
deities in the sources are Perkūnas, god of thunder, and Žemyna, the mother
earth goddess. Some scholars believe that pre-Christian Lithuanians accepted
a kind of supreme being, dievas (god), a root Indo-European cognate and a
term obviously related to the Latin deus and the Greek theos. Evidence gar-
nered from folklore indicates that there were many lesser deities and spirits,
including semidivine water nymphs (laumės) and mischievous house spirits

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 PRESIDENT • 235

(aitvarai), among others. From practices reported in the 19th century, it

seems that the grass snake (žaltys) was held in high regard in ancient times
as a force for well-being.
It is generally accepted that a number of Christian practices have historic
pagan antecedents, such as the celebrations of St. John (Joninės, Rasos) dur-
ing the summer solstice in June, which still include many traditional folk
rituals, and the widespread practice of visiting ancestral grave sites during
All Souls’ Day (Vėlinės) on 1 November. See also CATHOLIC CHURCH.

PRESIDENT. The modern institution of the presidency in Lithuania was

established after World War I. The declaration of independence of 16 Feb-
ruary 1918 was issued by the Lithuanian Council, or Lietuvos Taryba (after
11 July 1918, the Lithuanian State Council, or Lietuvos Valstybės Taryba).
On 2 November 1918, the Taryba rescinded the invitation to Prince Wilhelm
von Urach to become Lithuania’s constitutional monarch and adopted a
temporary basic law that provided for a provisional three-person presidium
composed of Antanas Smetona, Justinas Staugaitis (1866–1943), and Stays
Šilingas (1885–1962) to head the state. On 4 April 1919, Smetona was named
president under a new provisional constitution, and he was succeeded as act-
ing president in June 1920 by Aleksandras Stulginskis in the latter’s capac-
ity as speaker of the Constituent Assembly.
The Constitution of 1922 provided for a president elected by the parlia-
ment (Seimas) for a three-year term. Stulginskis served as elected president
until June 1926, when the Seimas chose Kazys Grinius. The military coup of
17 December 1926 removed Grinius and installed Smetona, who as president
amassed dictatorial powers under a new basic law of 1928 and the Constitu-
tion of 1938.
After Smetona escaped to Germany following the Soviet invasion, Justas
Paleckis served as acting president and head of the People’s Government,
which supervised Lithuania’s annexation by the Soviet Union. In the Lithua-
nian Soviet Socialist Republic, the chairman of the presidium of the Supreme
Soviet of the Republic served as nominal head of state and was sometimes re-
ferred to as the president. During the Soviet period, this ceremonial function
was performed by Paleckis (1940–1967), Motiejus Šumauskas (1967–1975),
Antanas Barkauskas (1975–1985), Ringaudas Songaila (1985–1987), Vy-
tautas Astrauskas (1987–1990), and Algirdas Brazauskas (1990).
Following the restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990, the chair-
man of the legislature or Supreme Council, Vytautas Landsbergis, served as
head of state until November 1992. The constitution approved in the referen-
dum of 25 October 1992 provides for a president elected by popular vote for a
five-year term. The president’s powers are limited by the Seimas in domestic

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 236 • PRESS BAN

matters, but the head of state oversees foreign and defense policy and serves
as commander in chief of the armed forces. Brazauskas won the election
of February 1993, followed by Valdas Adamkus (1998–2003). Rolandas
Paksas, elected in February 2003, was impeached and removed from office
in April 2004. Adamkus won the special election of July 2004 and served
another full term, succeeded in July 2009 by Dalia Grybauskaitė.
On 12 March 2009, the Seimas, in an unusual legislative act, retroactively
named Jonas Žemaitis (1909–1954), a major leader of the postwar armed re-
sistance against the Soviet occupation, as a head of state or “fourth president”
representing the nation between 1949 and 1954.
A list of Lithuanian political leaders since 1918 is contained in appendix 4.

PRESS BAN (1864–1904). Tsarist decree that forbade the publication and
possession of Lithuanian-language publications in the Latin alphabet. The
idea of adapting the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, the so-called grazhdanka, to
the Lithuanian language was proposed by the Pan-Slavist Russian scholar
Alexander Hilferding (1831–1872). He hoped that the Lithuanian peasantry
could be drawn away from the influence of the anti-tsarist nobility and
Catholic Church by persuading Lithuanians to utilize their own language
in Cyrillic. The Polish-Lithuanian insurrection of 1863–1864 convinced
some Russian officials and educators—particularly Mikhail Muravyev, the
governor-general of Vilnius, and Ivan Kornilov (1811–1901), the curator of
the Vilnius educational district—that Polish cultural and political influence
was the main obstacle to Russian domination in Lithuania. In 1864, Kornilov
organized a commission to prepare Cyrillic Lithuanian books for publication
by the government; the first book was a primer for schools in Samogitia pub-
lished in the summer of 1864. In all, a total of about 50 Cyrillic Lithuanian
books for the peasantry were published by the Russian government. On 5
June 1864, Muravyev issued an administrative order forbidding the publica-
tion of Lithuanian textbooks in the Latin alphabet.
On 6 September 1865, Governor-General Konstantin von Kaufman (1808–
1882), Muravyev’s successor, formalized the prohibition into a comprehen-
sive press ban on all Latin-Lithuanian publications, which was confirmed
by the Russian interior ministry on 23 September 1865 and extended to the
whole Russian Empire. The only exceptions to the press ban were several
academic books on Lithuanian songs and literature published in Kazan and
St. Petersburg. The tsarist government devoted considerable effort to enforc-
ing the press ban, especially during its last two decades. Russian authorities
reported that during 1891–1903 the Russian police seized nearly 200,000
volumes of illegal Latin-Lithuanian publications. However, by the turn of
the century, many Russian officials had become convinced that the ban was

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 PRIME MINISTER • 237

both futile and counterproductive. In 1903, the Russian Senate declared the
original executive decree of the press ban illegal. The outbreak of the Russo-
Japanese War and the need for internal support persuaded Tsar Nicholas II to
lift the ban on Lithuanian publications in the Latin alphabet on 24 April 1904.
The tsarist press ban is considered one of the formative events of the Lithu-
anian national movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN). On the
whole, the Lithuanian-speaking peasantry rejected the government’s books in
the new alphabet. Furthermore, the policy provoked a widespread resistance
movement. During the 1860s and 1870s, Bishop Motiejus Valančius orga-
nized the publication of Lithuanian books in East Prussia, which were then
transported into Russian Lithuania by smugglers popularly known as “book
carriers” (knygnešiai). This pattern of illegal publication—which resulted
in the dissemination of over a million pieces of popular literature in Lithu-
ania during the 40-year period of the press ban—greatly contributed to the
resistance against tsarist rule and the growth of political activism within the
Lithuanian national movement. See also RUSSIFICATION.

PRIME MINISTER. After the declaration of Lithuanian independence in

1918, the Lithuanian State Council, or Lietuvos Valstybės Taryba, per-
formed governing functions as wartime conditions permitted. On 11 Novem-
ber 1918, the Taryba announced the formation of the first government headed
by Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras. Lithuania’s parliamentary
system established by the Constitution of 1922 placed most executive power
in the hands of the prime minister, chosen by the parliament or Seimas to
head the cabinet of ministers. There were 12 cabinets and ten prime ministers
during the democratic period of the Republic of Lithuania (1918–1926), and
eight cabinets and five heads of government during the years of authoritarian
rule (1926–1940).
After the Soviet invasion of 15 June 1940, Justas Paleckis headed the
pro-Communist People’s Government until the annexation of Lithuania by
the Soviet Union in August. Under the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic
(SSR), governmental functions were nominally carried out by the republic’s
Council of People’s Commissars (1940–1941 and 1944–1946) and later the
Council of Ministers (1946–1990). Actual power was vested in the Central
Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party, which essentially transmit-
ted instructions received from the all-Union authorities in Moscow to the
Lithuanian SSR’s Supreme Soviet and government.
After the Supreme Council declared the restoration of Lithuania’s indepen-
dence in March 1990, Kazimira Prunskienė was chosen as prime minister.
Between March 1990 and November 2008, the Republic of Lithuania counted
15 cabinets and 13 heads of government (excluding acting prime ministers).

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 238 • PRUNSKIENĖ, KAZIMIRA

The longer-serving prime ministers have been Gediminas Vagnorius (1991–

1992, 1996–1999), Adolfas Šleževičius (1993–1996), Algirdas Brazauskas
(2001–2006), and Andrius Kubilius (1999–2000, 2008– ).
Under the Constitution of 1992, the prime minister is nominated by the
president and confirmed by the Seimas. The prime minister appoints the cab-
inet ministers subject to approval by the president. The prime minister also
presents the annual budget and legislative proposals to the parliament. The
prime minister and the cabinet are required to resign if the Seimas rejects the
government program on two successive votes, they lose a vote of confidence,
or they cannot form a government after parliamentary elections.
A list of Lithuanian political leaders since 1918 is contained in appendix 4.
See also POLITICAL PARTIES.

PRUNSKIENĖ, KAZIMIRA (1943– ). Politician; born on 26 February

1943 in Švenčionys district. Prunskienė received a doctorate in economics in
1971 and then taught at the University of Vilnius. From 1986 to 1988, she
worked as an agricultural expert in the government of the Lithuanian Soviet
Socialist Republic, and in 1989–1990 Prunskienė became the deputy prime
minister of the Republic. She was one of the founders of the Sąjūdis move-
ment and was appointed the first prime minister of independent Lithuania
on 17 March 1990, becoming the first woman head of government in the
country’s history.
In May 1990, Prunskienė visited President George H. W. Bush in Washing-
ton, D.C., and also traveled to London, Paris, and Bonn seeking recognition
for Lithuania’s independence. In addition, she attempted to persuade Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev to accept compromises in Lithuania’s crisis with
the Kremlin. However, Prunskienė’s relationship with Vytautas Landsber-
gis, the chairman of the Supreme Council, became strained, and on 8 January
1991 she resigned under pressure, retaining her seat in the parliament.
In 1993, she cofounded and headed the Lithuanian Women’s Party.
Prunskienė was elected to the Seimas a number of times since 1996, and
from 2004 to 2008 she served as minister of agriculture. In 2004, Prunskienė
lost to Valdas Adamkus in the special presidential election to replace the
impeached Rolandas Paksas. In 2005, she was elected leader of the Peasant
Populist Union, but the party made little impact in Lithuanian politics and
she quit her post in July 2009. In December 2009, Prunskienė announced
the formation of the Lithuanian People’s Union (Lietuvos liaudies sąjunga),
widely viewed as a pro-Russian party.

PRUSSIA. The region west of Lithuania between the Nemunas and Vistula
Rivers and once the homeland of West Baltic tribes.

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 PRUSSIA • 239

Early History. In historical literature, the term “Old Prussian” is used to

describe the original inhabitants who were settled in the region, probably
by the time of the Bronze Age (about 1800 BCE). Until medieval times,
the Baltic Prussians maintained contacts with their Germanic and Slavic
neighbors. Rich archaeological finds of Roman coins and artifacts in the
Sambia (or Semba) region of what today includes Kaliningrad (German:
Königsberg) testify to a flourishing amber trade. The first extensive his-
torical report on the Prussians dates to the Anglo-Saxon traveler Wulfstan in
the 9th century. The Vikings are reported to have established a foothold in
Sambia during the 11th century. In 997, St. Adalbert (Czech: Vojtech) was
martyred in Pomerania, the westernmost region of Old Prussia, and in 1008,
according to the Quedlinburg Annals, the Benedictine monk St. Bruno of
Querfurt and 18 companions were killed during a Prussian war with the now
Christian Poles.
In 1226, Prince Conrad of Mazovia appealed to the Teutonic Knights to
subdue and convert the Prussians who had been raiding Polish lands. The
Teutonic Order’s successful crusade against the Prussians in the 13th century,
combined with steady German colonization, resulted in the disappearance of
the Old Prussian language and culture by the 17th century. The name “Prus-
sia” came to denote the state of the German settlers rather than the land of the
original inhabitants. Glossaries and several religious texts of the 16th century
have allowed scholars to reconstruct the basic characteristics of the Old Prus-
sian language as a distinct West Baltic relative of Lithuanian and Latvian.
In 1466, the Teutonic Order lost considerable territory to Poland, mainly
western Prussia, including Gdańsk (Danzig). Grand Master Albert Hohen-
zollern converted to Lutheranism in 1525 and became a vassal of the Polish
crown; the Prussian lands of the Teutonic Order then became the secular
Duchy of Prussia. In 1618, the duchy came under the Brandenburg line of
the Hohenzollerns, and in 1660 it ended its dependence on the Polish crown.
In 1701, Frederick I declared Brandenburg-Prussia a kingdom with its
capital in Berlin. The Prussian Kingdom included the Lithuanian-speaking
regions of East Prussia (German: Ostpreussen), which during the early 18th
century encompassed the area between Königsberg and the present Lithu-
anian border, known among Lithuanians as Lithuania Minor (Lithuanian:
Mažoji Lietuva). The first Lithuanian books, mostly religious texts, were
published in East Prussia during the Reformation; thus, Lithuanian East
Prussia played an important role in the development of early Lithuanian liter-
ature, especially through the works of Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714–1780).
The plague of 1708–1711 during the Great Northern War resulted in a de-
population that was compensated by large-scale immigration, primarily from
southern Germany.

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 240 • PRUSSIA

Since the 19th Century. Despite the demographic changes, the Prussian
authorities widely utilized the Lithuanian language in the local offices,
courts, schools, and Lutheran churches of Lithuania Minor during the 18th
and early 19th centuries. Official Germanization of all minorities intensified
after the unification of Germany in 1871. In 1876, German was made the
sole official language, which effectively confined the Lithuanian language
to church and home. This policy weakened but did not destroy Lithuanian
social and cultural life in East Prussia. Lithuanian culture remained stronger
in the Klaipėda region, which came under Lithuanian rule between 1923
and 1939. The chauvinistic anti-Lithuanian campaign of the Nazis during the
1930s, as well as the massive population losses and transfers of the World
War II virtually obliterated what remained of Lithuanian culture in the rest
of East Prussia.
The Potsdam agreements of 1945 divided East Prussia into northern and
southern zones administered by the Soviet Union and Poland, respectively.
The Soviet zone became the Kaliningrad Oblast (district) of the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The local German and Lithu-
anian population was almost entirely replaced by Soviet—primarily Rus-
sian—settlers, and virtually all the German and Lithuanian place names were
Russified.
The district became the home of some of the largest and most strategically
important Soviet/Russian naval and air bases. After Lithuania’s independence
in 1990, Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Federation was geographically
separated from the rest of Russia. Transit and communications between Ka-
liningrad and the rest of Russia became a major domestic and foreign rela-
tions issue for the Lithuanian government. Germany, Poland, and Lithuania
have all expressed interest in the future of this Russian enclave, stressing the
need for demilitarizing Kaliningrad, although officially all three countries
recognize Russian control of the region. Lithuania maintains a significant
diplomatic mission (consulate) in Kaliningrad in order to promote important
economic ties and maintain contact with about 25,000 Lithuanians, mainly
postwar immigrants, who settled in former East Prussia after World War II.

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 Q
QUEDLINBURG ANNALS. Latin: Saxonicae Annales Quedlinburgenses.
An important medieval chronicle recounting the history of the Holy Roman
Empire, probably written at the Quedlinburg monastery between 1008 and
the end of the 11th century, which survives in a 16th-century copy housed
in Dresden. The entry for 1009 records the martyrdom of St. Bruno of Quer-
furt, who, according to the Annals, attempted to proselytize the pagan tribes
“living on the border of Rus’ and Lithuania.” The mission failed when one
of the local rulers killed Bruno and 18 of his followers. The Quedlinburg
Annals provide the first known mention of Lithuania in written sources. The
millennium of Lithuania’s first appearance in recorded history was the occa-
sion of naming Vilnius the European Capital of Culture in 2009 and was also
marked by extensive yearlong celebrations by the government and people of
the country.

241

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 242 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 R
RADOM, CONFEDERATION OF. Political movement of Polish-
Lithuanian nobility and gentry established in the Polish town of Radom in
the summer of 1767 in order to oppose the reform policies of King Stanisław
August Poniatowski and the Czartoryski family. The Confederation of
Radom was led by Karol Stanislaw Radziwiłł, the palatinate of Vilnius,
and was encouraged by the Russian ambassador in Warsaw, Nikolai Repnin
(1734–1801), who feared that a reform of the Polish-Lithuanian Common-
wealth’s administrative and military system would strengthen the state and
prove a potential threat to Russian interests. The King and reform party
proved powerless to resist the Confederation when Russian troops were
stationed in Warsaw. In July 1767, the Confederate Diet was convened in
Warsaw with Russian support and was further reinforced by pro-Radziwiłł
forces from Lithuania.
The political result of the Radom Confederation was the passage of the
so-called Cardinal Laws for the Commonwealth, which were guaranteed by
Russia. These statutes reconfirmed the nobility’s political rights, maintained
the practice of free royal elections, and retained the infamous liberum veto,
thus perpetuating the political anarchy and weakness that had come to char-
acterize the Polish-Lithuanian state. At the same time, the Radom debacle
and the overt interference of Russia in the Commonwealth’s political affairs
enraged much of Polish-Lithuanian society and provoked the anti-Russian
Confederation of Bar, whose failure in turn led to the first partition of Po-
land and Lithuania in 1772.

RADVILA (RADVILAS). See RADZIWIŁŁ.

RADZIWIŁŁ. Lithuanian: Radvila, also Radvilas; Latin: Radivilius. The

wealthiest and best known of Lithuania’s noble magnate families who domi-
nated Lithuanian politics during the 16th and 17th centuries. The family orig-
inated from Radvilas, a palatine of Trakai and royal courtier of the late 15th
century, whose son Nicholas Radvilas (1450–1509) became chancellor of
Lithuania. Increasingly, the family came to be known by its Polonized name,

243

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 244 • RADZIWIŁŁ, BARBARA

Radziwiłł. It embraced two major branches: one centered in the Biržai region
of northern Lithuania, whose male line ended in 1669; the other centered in
the Nesvizh region of what is now western Belarus, which still claims living
descendants. In 1547, the Radziwiłłs were made princes of the Holy Roman
Empire. One of the wealthiest families in Europe, they came to own numer-
ous estates containing over 10,000 villages, hundreds of towns, and dozens of
castles and palatial residences. The Radziwiłłs also maintained the equivalent
of a private army and, at times, were virtual rulers of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania. Barbara Radziwiłł (1520–1551), the second wife of Sigismund
II Augustus, was crowned Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania.
The Radziwiłłs included some of the most important statesmen, clerics,
and military leaders of early modern Lithuania: Albert Stanislaw Radziwiłł
(1573–1656) was chancellor of Lithuania between 1623 and 1656; Chris-
topher Radziwiłł (1547–1603) was grand hetman of Lithuania; George
Cardinal Radziwiłł (1556–1600) was Bishop of Vilnius (1583–1591) and of
Cracow (1591–1600); and Janusz Radziwiłł (1612–1655) led the Lithuanian
attempt to forge a dynastic union with Sweden by the Treaty of Kėdainiai in
1655. In the 18th century, Karol Stanislaw Radziwiłł (1734–1790) first led
the pro-Russian Confederation of Radom and then joined the anti-Russian
Confederation of Bar. Nicholas Radziwiłł “the Black” (1515–1565) and
Nicholas Radziwiłł “the Red” (1512–1584) spearheaded the Reformation
in Lithuania and Poland.

RADZIWIŁŁ, BARBARA (1520–1551). Lithuanian: Barbora Radvilaitė.

Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania, daughter of the Lithu-
anian grand hetman George Radziwiłł (1480–1541), and sister of Nicholas
Radziwiłł “the Red.” After the death of his first wife, Elizabeth of Hapsburg,
Sigismund II Augustus, the heir to the Polish-Lithuanian throne who resided
in Vilnius during the mid-1540s, secretly married Barbara Radziwiłł there in
1547. Despite opposition from the Polish court and nobility, who feared the
influence of the Radziwiłł family, Sigismund Augustus refused to annul the
marriage. After the death of his father, Sigismund I the Elder, in 1548 and
his own elevation to the Polish throne, Sigismund Augustus strove to have
Barbara recognized as queen of Poland after the Lithuanian Council of Lords
had already recognized her as grand duchess. She was finally crowned queen
in Cracow on 7 December 1550, but died soon thereafter, on 8 May 1551,
and was buried in the Cathedral of Vilnius. Suspicion was rife that Barbara
had been poisoned by her mother-in-law, Bona Sforza, who had adamantly
opposed her son’s second marriage. The passionate love of Sigismund and
Barbara and the consequent political drama of their marriage have been

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 RADZIWIŁŁ, NICHOLAS, “THE RED” • 245

favorite themes in Polish and Lithuanian literature and theater. See also
POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH.

RADZIWIŁŁ, NICHOLAS, “THE BLACK” (1515–1565). Lithuanian:

Radvila. Lithuanian statesman and one of the leaders of the Reformation
in Poland and Lithuania; born in Nesvizh (Polish: Nieświeź) on 4 February
1515. In 1542, Nicholas was appointed marshal of the royal court and be-
friended Sigismund II Augustus, heir to the Polish and Lithuanian thrones.
In 1549, Nicholas was granted the title of prince by the Holy Roman Emperor.
The following year, he was appointed chancellor of Lithuania and directed
much of his effort to resisting the designs of Tsar Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) on
Lithuania’s Russian lands; until his death, he was the acknowledged de facto
ruler of the Grand Duchy.
During the 1560s, Nicholas the Black led the Lithuanian delegation in ne-
gotiations with Poland for a new union and gained a reputation as an advocate
of Lithuanian equality with the Poles. Nicholas’s historic reputation rests in
large part on his role during the Reformation. He corresponded with John
Calvin and other Protestant leaders and was instrumental in establishing the
first Reformed congregation in Lithuania. In 1564, Nicholas commissioned
the publication of the famous Bible of Brest, the first Polish translation of the
Scriptures, which is considered a landmark in the development of modern
Polish literature. Ironically, despite his devotion to Protestantism, Nicholas’s
sons eventually reconverted to Catholicism. He died on 28 May 1565. See
also RADZIWIŁŁ; RADZIWIŁŁ, NICHOLAS, “THE RED.”

RADZIWIŁŁ, NICHOLAS, “THE RED” (1512–1584). Lithuanian: Rad-

vila. Lithuanian statesman and military leader; born in Nesvizh (Polish:
Nieświeź) in 1512. After extended study in Germany and travels in Europe,
Nicholas the Red, along with his cousin Nicholas Radziwiłł “the Black,”
was granted the title of prince in 1549. As brother-in-law of King Sigismund
II Augustus, Nicholas the Red exerted great influence in Lithuania, but
he also gained notoriety as a military leader in the wars against Muscovy,
successfully fighting the forces of Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) in Livonia and
gaining a famous victory against the tsar at the Battle of Ula in 1564. During
the Polish-Lithuanian negotiations preceding the Union of Lublin in 1569,
Nicholas strongly opposed any attempts to diminish the Grand Duchy’s
autonomy and boycotted the final sessions of the diet that enacted the Union.
After the death of Sigismund Augustus in 1572, Nicholas led an unsuc-
cessful Lithuanian attempt to persuade Poland to restore the Grand Duchy’s
Ukrainian and other lands lost at Lublin and briefly obstructed King Stefan

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 246 • RAINIAI MASSACRE

Batory’s recognition as grand duke. Like his cousin Nicholas the Black of the
Nesvizh branch of the Radziwiłłs, Nicholas the Red was an ardent promoter
of Protestantism. He sponsored the classical school of Abraomas Kulvietis in
Vilnius in 1539 and also established Calvinist schools on his estate in Biržai.
The descendants of Nicholas the Red remained loyal to the Reformed Church
even after the successful Counter-Reformation in Lithuania. As a result, the
Biržai area still contains the largest congregations of the Evangelical Reformed
Church in Lithuania. Nicholas died in Vilnius on 27 April 1584.

RAINIAI MASSACRE. The killing of political prisoners by Soviet military

and police personnel at the Rainiai woods near Telšiai in northwestern Lithu-
ania in 1941. While the number of victims was not great relative to other
massacres of the period, the manner of their death aroused great indignation
so that Rainiai became a frequently cited example of Soviet atrocities to the
Lithuanian public and greatly intensified anti-Soviet attitudes. On the night of
24–25 June 1941, Red Army and NKVD secret police officers, under orders
to liquidate counterrevolutionary elements, gathered together 76 prisoners,
many of them young men, from the Telšiai prison and transported them to
the nearby Rainiai woods, where they were killed. Forensic examination of
the corpses revealed that most of the victims had been beaten to death. The
official medical reports indicated that the men had suffered severe torture;
some of the bodies showed evidence of such gruesome mutilation that they
could not be identified. The Rainiai victims were interred in a massive funeral
on 1 July 1941. After 1990, Lithuanian prosecutors launched an investigation
of the massacre, but attempts to extradite two of the alleged organizers of the
killings, Pyotr Raslan (aka Petras Raslanas) (1914– ) from Russia and Nach-
man Dushanski (1919–2008) from Israel were unsuccessful.

RAŠTIKIS, STASYS (1896–1985). Lithuanian military leader; born on 3

September 1896 in Kuršėnai. After serving in the Russian army in World
War I and completing the Military Academy of Tbilisi in 1917, Raštikis
returned to Lithuania and helped found the Lithuanian army. In 1919, he was
wounded and captured in the war against the Bolsheviks, but he returned to
Lithuania in 1921 and served both as an infantry officer and in the general
staff. In 1935, Raštikis was appointed commander of the Lithuanian army
and became known for his efforts at modernizing and reorganizing the armed
forces; in 1938, he also served as defense minister.
Raštikis’s coolness toward the Nationalist Union regime and personal
disagreements with President Antanas Smetona eventually led to his dis-
missal as army commander in January 1940. During the crisis of the Soviet
ultimatum of 14 June 1940, Raštikis was proposed as prime minister but his

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 REFORMATION • 247

candidacy was rejected by Moscow. Fearing arrest by the Soviets, Raštikis

fled to Germany in March 1941. Between 23 June and 5 August 1941, he
served as defense minister of the provisional government that was set up after
the German invasion and anti-Soviet uprising of June 1941. In 1949, Raštikis
emigrated to the United States, where he taught at the Monterey Institute of
Foreign Languages. Between 1956 and 1982, he published four volumes of
memoirs, an important source for the military and political history of interwar
Lithuania. He died in Los Angeles on 3 May 1985.

REFORMATION. Historically, Protestantism penetrated Lithuania from the

same direction as Catholicism. In 1525, Grand Master Albert Hohenzollern
of the Teutonic Knights, under the personal influence of Martin Luther and
aware that Protestant teachings were gaining ground in Prussia and Livonia,
secularized the order and became a prince in vassalage to the Polish crown.
The monarchy and the Catholic Church made efforts to halt the Reformation:
in 1520, King Sigismund I the Elder banned Luther’s teachings from the
Kingdom of Poland, and in 1527 the diocesan synod of Vilnius attacked what
it termed the “Lutheran heresy.” Lutheranism probably found its first adher-
ents in Lithuania among German merchants and craftsmen; by 1540, Fran-
ciscans reportedly had begun preaching Protestant doctrines at St. Anne’s in
Vilnius, where services were held for the city’s German community. In 1537,
Sigismund forbade Lithuanian students from attending the Lutheran-oriented
University of Wittenberg, but this did little to stem the appeal of Protestant-
ism. The best known early Lithuanian teacher of Protestant doctrine was
Abraomas Kulvietis.
While Sigismund the Elder held firm against Protestantism, his son Si-
gismund II Augustus, who became effective ruler of Lithuania in 1544,
had been educated in the Italian humanist spirit and was more tolerant of
Protestantism. It was during his reign (1548–1572) that the Reformation
reached its height in Lithuania and, at the same time, Calvinism, rather than
Lutheranism, became the dominant movement in the Grand Duchy. In 1554
and 1555, John Calvin himself urged Sigismund Augustus to turn Poland-
Lithuania away from Catholicism. Although Sigismund remained loyal to
the Catholic cause, he also refused to suppress the Protestants, and in 1563
he gave equal rights to all Christians. The conversion to Calvinism of the two
most powerful Radziwiłłs (Radvilas), Nicholas Radziwiłł “the Black” and
his cousin Nicholas Radziwiłł “the Red,” further strengthened Protestantism
through the endowment of Reformed churches and schools.
By the second half of the 16th century, the Reformation had engulfed most
of Lithuania: in 1563, the Lithuanian Council of Lords included ten Calvin-
ists out of 18 members. More radical Protestant groups also emerged, such

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 248 • RELIGION

as the Czech Brethren, the Anabaptists, and the Arians (also known in Lithu-
ania as the Socinians or Antitrinitarians). Some of the more militant Arians
advocated the abolition of social classes, taxes, and military service. During
the Reformation, groups of so-called Judaizers, fascinated by Jewish and
Eastern learning, also appeared in Lithuania. While it is difficult to gauge the
real extent of the Reformation in Lithuania, at its height it appealed to a large
part of the Lithuanian nobility and urban populace.
The fragmentation of Protestantism in Lithuania and the strong Counter-
Reformation spearheaded by the Jesuits led to the restoration of Catho-
lic dominance during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Significant
Reformed (Calvinist) communities survived in northern Lithuania around
Biržai. Lutheranism remained dominant only in Lithuanian East Prussia and
along the western border of the Grand Duchy. In general, despite occasional
outbreaks of violence, Lithuania avoided the widespread religious civil wars
and massacres that accompanied the Reformation in western Europe. Reli-
gious toleration was reaffirmed by the Polish-Lithuanian Diet in 1573 and the
Lithuanian Statute of 1588. However, during the 18th century, Protestants,
like the Orthodox, were classified as dissidents and were increasingly subject
to discrimination. See also LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

RELIGION. Early History and Contacts with Christian Powers. Until the
late 14th century, the ethnic Lithuanian population of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania adhered to pre-Christian religious traditions, many of which
were inherited from the practices of the Baltic tribes of the Neolithic era that
were distinct from the religions of neighboring Slavic peoples. Nonetheless,
both the western and eastern Balts had contact with Western and Eastern
Christians from the early medieval period, and attempts to proselytize among
the Prussian and other Baltic peoples were noted since the 11th century.
During the 13th century, the Northern Crusades carried out by the Teutonic
Knights and German economic and cultural penetration brought about the
Christianization of the Prussian tribes and the indigenous peoples of what is
now Latvia and Estonia.
Although the Lithuanians united to face the Teutonic challenge during cen-
turies of warfare, their rulers, despite conflicts, also carried on commercial
and political relations with the surrounding Christian powers: the Kingdom
of Poland, the Archbishop of Riga, and the princes of Kievan Rus’. During
the mid-13th century, King Mindaugas briefly ruled as a Catholic monarch
but his assassination in 1263 ended the experiment. Grand Duke Gediminas
(R. 1316–1341) expanded the practice of inviting foreign merchants, utilizing
Christian clerics for diplomatic communications, and permitting the construc-
tion of Christian churches. Grand Duke Ke˛stutis, who died in 1382, was the

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 RELIGION • 249

last non-Christian ruler of Lithuania reported to have been cremated accord-

ing to pagan tradition.
The East-West Schism and the Turn to Rome. Religious conflict, especially
the schism of the Western and Eastern Churches, played a decisive role in
determining Lithuania’s political history and international relations. As the
Grand Duchy expanded eastward, the Lithuanian princes sent out to rule the
Eastern Orthodox lands of the former Kievan state assimilated to the culture
of the newly conquered population and adopted Orthodoxy. Both of Grand
Duke Algirdas’s wives were Russian Orthodox princesses, for whom he
built churches in Vilnius, but claims by some Kievan sources that he himself
converted to Orthodoxy are considered dubious. The Grand Duchy’s rulers,
aware of the importance of Orthodoxy among the Eastern Slavs, attempted
to persuade Constantinople to establish an Orthodox metropolitanate for
the Russian lands then under Lithuanian rule, which would detract from the
power of Muscovy where the metropolitan of Kiev had taken up residence,
but these efforts ultimately failed.
The 1386 coronation of Jogaila (Władysław II) and the creation of a Pol-
ish-Lithuanian dynastic union brought Catholicism to the Grand Duchy’s rul-
ing elite and the ethnically Lithuanian lands; however, the state’s much vaster
Eastern Slavic regions remained staunchly Orthodox. Polish-Lithuanian rul-
ers supported ending the schism of the Western and Eastern Churches, which
would help them in their rivalry with Moscow, but the union proclaimed
at the Council of Florence in 1439 failed to take root. Partial success was
achieved at Brest in 1596 when Kievan hierarchs with support from Sigis-
mund III Vasa split from the Moscow patriarchate and accepted union with
Rome. However, the creation of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church provoked
a strong reaction from those loyal to the Moscow patriarch and sharpened
religious divisions within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. These
conflicts created internal political instability and gave the Muscovite tsars
an advantage in the centuries-long wars to gain control of Ukraine and other
East Slavic lands.
Modern Period. In contrast to Prussia, Latvia, and Estonia, the Reforma-
tion—while initially enjoying considerable success in the 16th and 17th
centuries—failed to take hold in Lithuania. The Counter-Reformation
reestablished Catholicism as the religious identity of most Lithuanian speak-
ers. During the 18th century, the Commonwealth’s Catholic rulers grew less
tolerant of religious diversity.
The destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian state in 1795 had little immedi-
ate impact on the religious and cultural dominance of the Catholic Church.
However, after the insurrection of 1830–1831, the tsarist government in-
creasingly restricted the rights and prerogatives of the Church, suspected as a

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 250 • RENAISSANCE

stronghold of Polish influence and anti-Russian agitation. Anti-Catholic dis-

crimination and persecution, epitomized by the Kražiai massacre of 1893,
was accompanied by a policy of Russification and attempts to encourage
conversions to Orthodoxy. After the Revolution of 1905, Catholics gained
equality in the Empire.
Between the wars, the Republic of Lithuania officially supported all reli-
gious groups by subsidizing the salaries of priests, rabbis, and ministers and
encouraging religious instruction in schools. Since there was no civil registry,
births, deaths, and marriages were recorded by the clerics of each community.
Nevertheless, the Catholic Church remained the most influential and politi-
cally powerful religious force in the country, despite the government’s tense
relations with the Vatican over the Vilnius Question and the Nationalist
regime’s limitations on certain Catholic organizations.
After the Soviet invasion of June 1940, the Soviet government banned
most religious organizations. The Nazis destroyed virtually all Judaic insti-
tutions but adopted a more permissive attitude toward Christian churches.
The second Soviet occupation (1944/45–1990) was marked by intense anti-
religious persecution that abated only in the late 1980s, after which the Catho-
lic Church regained much of its authority and prestige. Since independence,
the Church has played a prominent role in all spheres of public life: for ex-
ample, a solemn High Mass is part of the presidential inauguration.
Precise statistics on religious belief and practice are difficult to evaluate,
but most observers estimate that at least four-fifths of ethnic Lithuanians and
Poles identify themselves as Roman Catholics. Most of them commemorate
births, marriages, and deaths, as well as celebrating the major holy days and
feasts, as members of the Church; however, less than one in six Catholic be-
lievers attends services on a regular basis. In 2005, the government reported
the following breakdown of the population by religion: Roman Catholics,
2,752,447; Orthodox, including Old Believers, 168,897; Lutherans, 19,637;
Reformed, 7,082; Other Christian (including evangelicals), approximately
10,000; Sunni Muslims, 2,860; Jews, 1,272. Hundreds have joined the fol-
lowers of Buddha and Krishna, as well, and there are over a thousand people
committed to reviving Baltic pre-Christian rituals. Religious identity is
closely tied to ethnicity. Most Roman Catholics and Protestants are ethnic
Lithuanians or Poles, while the Orthodox and Muslim communities represent
Russians and Tatars, respectively. See also CHRONICLE OF THE CATHO-
LIC CHURCH IN LITHUANIA; DISSIDENTS; RENAISSANCE IN LITHU-
ANIA; RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS; VYTAUTAS.

RENAISSANCE. The Renaissance had its greatest influence in Lithuania

during the intellectual ferment inspired by the Reformation. During the 15th

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 RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS • 251

century, Lithuanian rulers took an increased interest in university education.

A number of students from the Grand Duchy attended the Lithuanian college
at the University of Prague, established by royal decree in 1397, as well as
the University of Cracow revitalized during the reign of Jogaila (Władysław
II). Sons of the higher nobility favored Italian universities, especially Bolo-
gna and Padua. The first extensive private libraries at the beginning of the
16th century belonged to the Lithuanian chancellor Albert Goštautas (Polish:
Gasztowt) and Abraomas Kulvietis.
Influenced by the new emphasis on the Greek and Latin classics, the no-
bility adopted the theory that the Lithuanian nation was descended from the
mythical Roman prince Palemon who had fled to Lithuania to escape a tyran-
nical emperor. The idea that Latin was a parent tongue of the Lithuanian lan-
guage greatly enhanced the popularity of Latin poetry in the Grand Duchy.
Among the most prominent of the earlier Renaissance Latin poets in Lithu-
ania were Nicolas Hussovianus (c. 1480–1533) and the Spanish humanist
Peter Roysius (1506–1571), who lived in Vilnius from 1551 until his death.
The influence of Renaissance culture in Lithuania grew during the reign of
the Italian-born Queen Bona Sforza, the wife of Sigismund I the Elder.
In the 1530s, the Italian masters Bernardino Zanobi (c. 1500–1541) and
Giovanni Cini (c. 1495–1565) were commissioned to reconstruct the Cathe-
dral of Vilnius, while other churches in Lithuania were built by Flemish and
other western European architects. The influence of the Renaissance in Lith-
uania is still seen in some of the extant architecture, although it is mingled
with the late Gothic tradition, which had prevailed until the 16th century. In
the 17th century, the baroque style tended to dominate. The Muscovite sack
of Vilnius in 1655 destroyed much of Lithuania’s Renaissance architectural
heritage.
In art, portraiture of the royal court and nobility was the most common
expression of Renaissance influence. Among the best known paintings of
Lithuania’s Renaissance is the Virgin Mary of the Aušros Vartai (Polish:
Ostra Brama), or Gates of Dawn Chapel.

RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS. The successive foreign occupations of

Lithuania in 1940–1945 spawned a variety of resistance movements. After
the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, a national and religious dissident move-
ment continued the tradition of resistance to foreign rule.
Anti-Soviet Resistance in 1940–1941. During the first Soviet occupation
of 1940–1941, the single most important anti-Soviet underground movement
was the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), although there were also a num-
ber of smaller groups as well as spontaneous acts of passive resistance, such
as the distribution of anti-Russian leaflets and the defacing of Communist

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 252 • RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS

symbols. On the morning of 23 June 1941, after the outbreak of the Nazi-
Soviet war, the LAF initiated an anti-Soviet uprising that seized Kaunas
from the Red Army and proclaimed a provisional government. In Vilnius,
smaller units of the LAF attacked Soviet troops and took control of many
public buildings. The rebellion spread spontaneously in many parts of Lithu-
ania. Much of the populace greeted the German army as liberators from So-
viet rule. The rebels’ provisional government declared a restoration of the
country’s independence under the laws existing previous to 15 June 1940,
the day of the Soviet occupation. Despite its willingness to cooperate with
the Germans, the Nazis disbanded the provisional government on 5 August
1941 and banned the LAF several weeks later.
Anti-Nazi Resistance, 1941–1944. The history of resistance against the
Nazis in Lithuania is complicated because it was divided into bitterly antago-
nistic movements. The Lithuanian non-Communist anti-Nazi underground
was basically divided into the Lithuanian Front (Lietuvių frontas, LF), an
outgrowth of the LAF; the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters (Lietuvos
laisvės kovotojų sąjunga, LLKS); and other groups. The LF represented a
Catholic wing, while the LLKS can be described as a more militantly anti-
German “secular” faction. These Lithuanian anti-Nazi groups eschewed
armed resistance, arguing that nothing should be done to assist the Soviet mil-
itary effort and instead hoping for Germany’s defeat by the Western powers.
They aimed to harbor the nation’s strength for a future showdown with the
Soviet Union to preserve Lithuania’s independence. Thus, non-Communist
resistance groups opposed such German policies as labor recruitment and
suppression of education and successfully defeated Nazi attempts to create a
Lithuanian Waffen SS legion.
In eastern Lithuania, the Polish Home Army (Armja Krajowa) fought the
Nazi occupiers but also attacked the local Lithuanian police and administra-
tion in 1943–1944, sometimes with German acquiescence. The Polish-Lith-
uanian struggle in eastern Lithuania, which was accompanied by atrocities
against civilians, was a continuation of the earlier conflict over Vilnius. The
Home Army also mistrusted Soviet designs on a future Poland.
For their part, the Soviet partisans, active primarily also in the forests of
eastern Lithuania, began to operate in larger numbers in late 1942, reinforced
by guerrillas sent from the Soviet side of the front, and in close cooperation
with Soviet partisans in Belarus. There were also Jewish partisan units, for
example, the United Partisans Organization (Yiddish: Fareinikte Partisaner
Organizatzie, FPO), established in Vilnius in 1942, as well as other Jewish
groups that joined the Soviet partisans and operated in forests east of the city.
The Soviet and Polish partisan movements had limited appeal in ethnically
Lithuanian areas because their movements were incompatible with Lithu-

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 RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS • 253

anian nationalist goals: the Soviets denied Lithuania’s independence, while

the Poles demanded that Vilnius revert to Poland after the war.
Postwar Anti-Soviet Partisans. The outbreak of armed resistance to Com-
munist rule in 1944–1945 was encouraged by several factors, including the
forced induction of men into the Red Army, which sent thousands of young
men fleeing into the forests; the widespread illusion that the Soviet presence
was short-lived because the United States and Great Britain were commit-
ted to the restoration of Lithuanian independence; and memories of Soviet
atrocities during 1940–1941. The guerrilla war against Soviet power reached
its height from 1946 to 1948, when anti-Soviet partisans controlled much of
the countryside and numbered about 20,000 men and women while enjoy-
ing considerable support from the populace. The major organizational units
that sought to unify the resistance with limited success were the Lithuanian
Freedom Army (Lietuvos laisvės armija, LLA) and the United Democratic
Resistance Movement (Bendras demokratinio pasipriešinimo sąjūdis, BDPS).
The partisan movement was geographically divided into resistance districts
(apygardos). The armed resistance began to weaken in 1948–1949 as hope for
Western assistance faded, Soviet collectivization of the peasantry cut off food
and supplies, and Soviet intelligence penetrated the movement. At the height
of the war, the Soviet security forces employed more than 100,000 men, in-
cluding NKVD units, interior ministry troops, regular army units, and local
pro-Soviet Lithuanian auxiliaries. It is roughly estimated that about 30,000–
35,000 Soviet and Lithuanian combatants were killed; between 15,000 and
20,000 civilians, mostly ethnic Lithuanians, also died. In 1947, the renowned
partisan leader Juozas Lukša-Daumantas (1921–1951) managed to reach the
West and then returned in 1950 with help from U.S. intelligence, but he was
killed in an ambush the following year. His book, Partizanai (Partisans),
became a valuable source for the history of the Lithuanian guerrillas.
The resistance gradually waned, becoming increasingly demoralized and
undisciplined, and was essentially abandoned in 1952. However, reports of
sporadic armed clashes continued into the late 1950s. A great deal of ad-
ditional material on the postwar guerrilla movement has been collected and
published since the late 1980s.
National and Religious Dissent after Stalin. During the Hungarian Revolu-
tion, there were several anti-Communist demonstrations, the largest involv-
ing a mass demonstration in Vilnius on All Souls’ Day, 1 November 1956.
Anti-Soviet protest became more pronounced in the 1960s when Catholic
dissenters began to agitate against religious persecution. Between 1970 and
1972, four major Soviet show trials were held against dissident clergy.
In May 1972, anti-Soviet riots erupted after the self-immolation of Romas
Kalanta. In November of the same year, Lithuania received international

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 254 • REVOLUTION OF 1905

attention when the Lithuanian sailor Simas Kudirka was forcibly returned
by U.S. Coast Guard officers after seeking asylum on the American ship
Vigilant at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; Kudirka’s trial in Vilnius fur-
ther galvanized anti-Soviet dissent. Also in 1972, Catholic dissenters began
circulating the underground Lietuvos kataliku˛ bažnyčios kronika (Chronicle
of the Catholic Church in Lithuania); other samizdat publications followed.
In November 1976, the Lithuanian Helsinki Committee was formed and
announced that it would monitor Soviet compliance with the human rights
provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords. In November 1978, the Catholic
Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Believers was announced at a
press conference in Moscow, resulting in the imprisonment of the priests
Alfonsas Svarinskas (1925– ), Sigitas Tamkevičius (1938– ), and others.
Some Lithuanian dissidents, such as poet Tomas Venclova (1937– ) and
Catholic nun Nijolė Sadūnaitė (1938– ), gained international support and
recognition. Others, like Antanas Terleckas (1928– ), an economist and
founder of the Lithuanian Liberty League (Lietuvos laisvės lyga), and Balys
Gajauskas (1926– ), participated in Lithuanian politics after independence.
While the active post-Stalin dissident movement involved only a few thou-
sand persons with a somewhat larger number of sympathizers, it provided
an important precedent for the emergence of the pro-independence move-
ments in the late 1980s. See also INSURRECTION OF 1830–1831; INSUR-
RECTION OF 1863–1864; KOŚCIUSZKO, THADDEUS; NAZI-SOVIET
PACT; SĄJŪDIS.

REVOLUTION OF 1905. In Lithuania, the 1905 revolution consisted of a

series of strikes, meetings, demonstrations, and uprisings that can be divided
into three basic categories: the workers’ movement in the towns, the peasant
revolts, and the Great Lithuanian Assembly of Vilnius in December 1905.
The workers’ movement was weaker in Lithuania than elsewhere in the
Russian Empire since Lithuania was less industrialized and ethnic Lithu-
anians comprised only a minority of the working class. A number of work-
ers’ strikes and demonstrations broke out in Lithuania after the news of the
“Bloody Sunday” massacre in St. Petersburg on 9 January 1905 reached
Vilnius and Kaunas. The strike movement reached its peak in October,
when 12 people were killed in Vilnius in clashes with the police. The tsar’s
October Manifesto of 1905, and the repressions of 1906 that followed,
dampened the unrest.
During the years 1905–1907, widespread rural unrest broke out in most
of Lithuania, much of it fueled by economic issues, such as the peasants’
demands for an end to the redemption payments imposed after the emancipa-
tion of 1861 and for more land, as well as for higher wages for the landless

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 RIFLEMEN’S UNION • 255

agrarian workers. Protests against national and religious discrimination were

also widespread and included two major goals: establishment of primary and
secondary education in the Lithuanian language, and the appointment of
Lithuanian Catholics to local government offices.
Peasant disturbances became numerous in the fall of 1905 and reached a
peak in December of that year, especially in southwestern Lithuania, which
was reported to be in complete anarchy. Armed bands of Lithuanian peasants
attacked Russian officials and soldiers. Many Russian government schools,
seen as centers of compulsory Russification and Orthodoxy, were also closed
or sacked by the populace. The peasantry undertook constructive action as
well, conducting local government business in Lithuanian, setting up their
own Lithuanian-language schools and curricula, and joining with Jews and
Belarusians to demand equal national rights.
In November 1905, the Lithuanian press published an appeal for a Lithu-
anian national assembly to discuss the land question, taxes, and the problems
of rural education and administration. On 21–22 November 1905, more than
2,000 delegates, half of them peasants, attended what later became known as
the Great Assembly (or Diet) of Vilnius, the first modern Lithuanian political
convention, which proposed an autonomous and democratic Lithuanian state.
During the high point of the revolution in late 1905, the governors of Vil-
nius and Kaunas provinces (gubernias) had promised the introduction of the
Lithuanian language into rural administration and permission for Catholics
to hold office. However, as the revolution weakened in 1906, and with the
appointment of Peter Stolypin as Russia’s prime minister, repression was
intensified. The imperial government sent out punitive expeditions into the
countryside, which included elements of the reactionary Union of the Russian
People, the so-called Black Hundreds—extremists who terrorized non-Rus-
sians. On occasion, the Russian army shelled population centers: the towns
of Akmenė and Žagarė were devastated.
Many of the Lithuanian intelligentsia and peasantry were imprisoned and
deported, and by 1907 the uprising in Lithuania had been largely subdued.
Despite the failure of the revolution, the events of 1905 accelerated the
radicalization of the Lithuanian national movement (see NATIONALISM,
LITHUANIAN), stimulated antagonism against tsarism, and encouraged the
movement for Lithuanian independence.

RIFLEMEN’S UNION. Lithuanian: Šaulių sąjunga or šauliai. Volunteer

military organization that served as a national guard in Lithuania between
1919 and 1940. Its founder and longtime leader was Vladas Putvinskis
(1873–1929), who established the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union in June 1919
in Kaunas. It served as a support organization for the beleaguered Lithuanian
army, which was then fighting the independence wars on several fronts. The

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 256 • RUSSIA

Union became a popular and influential patriotic organization that sponsored

cultural affairs and sports. In 1935, the šauliai, who had operated as local
groups with elected commanders, were placed under the control of the army.
By 1939, the Union numbered more than 60,000 members, including women
and auxiliaries, and sponsored hundreds of choral groups, bands, reading
rooms, and sports clubs. In June 1940, following the Soviet invasion, the
Riflemen’s Union was disbanded. The Union was reestablished in Lithuania
in 1991, although it has not regained its prewar importance. See also ARMED
FORCES.

RUSSIA. Now formally the Russian Federation. Area: 17,075,000 square

kilometers (6,590,000 square miles); population: 2009 est., 141,915,000;
capital: Moscow.
Tsarist-Imperial Period. Since the formal establishment of the Russian
Empire in 1721 by Peter the Great, Russia has played an important role in
the history of Lithuania. Even before the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth in 1772–1795, Russian military power, diplomatic influ-
ence, and open interference in Poland-Lithuania’s chaotic internal affairs
had transformed the Commonwealth into a de facto Russian protectorate. In
1795, most of Lithuania came under tsarist rule, and in 1807 the southwestern
part of the country, known as Užnemunė or Suvalkija, also came under the
sovereignty of Russia as part of the autonomous Kingdom of Poland. Until
the insurrection of 1830–1831, the Russian government interfered little with
Lithuania’s social and cultural institutions. However, the reactionary Tsar
Nicholas I (R. 1825–1855) attempted to integrate Lithuania more closely to
the rest of Russia by persecuting Catholicism and suppressing Polish culture.
A more intensive policy of Russification followed the insurrection of
1863–1864, when a press ban forbade the printing of Lithuanian books in the
Latin alphabet. Anti-Catholic repression culminated in the violent incident at
Kražiai in 1893, which did much to turn Lithuanian public opinion against
Russian rule. By the turn of the century, the Russian government, initially
concerned only with combating Polish influence in Lithuania, concluded that
some accommodation with the growing Lithuanian national movement (see
NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN) was desirable and canceled the press ban
in 1904. After the Revolution of 1905, some rights were granted the Lithu-
anian language in schools and public offices; however, the liberalization was
partly reversed during the government of the conservative Russian prime
minister Peter Stolypin. In 1915, the Russian army retreated from Lithuania
in the face of the German offensive, thus ending more than a century of
tsarist rule.
Soviet Period and After. After the revolutions of 1917, the successor state
to the tsarist empire, Soviet Russia, signed a peace treaty with Lithuania on

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 RUSSIA • 257

12 July 1920, renouncing for all time Russian claims to Lithuania. Between
the world wars, Soviet-Lithuanian relations were generally friendly, as Mos-
cow consistently supported, at least formally, Lithuania’s position on the
Vilnius Question. After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in June 1940 and
the country’s forcible incorporation into the Union of Soviet Socialist Repub-
lics (USSR) on 3 August 1940, the Kremlin attempted to integrate the Lithu-
anian economy and culture into the Soviet model, provoking both armed and
passive resistance movements. Soviet repressive policies led to enormous
population losses. After Boris Yeltsin gained the presidency of the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) in June 1990, the Russian re-
public’s government proved a useful counterweight to Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev’s attempts to suppress the Lithuanian independence movement.
The establishment of the Russian Federation within the Commonwealth of
Independent States has led to a new era in Russian-Lithuanian relations. Since
the formal independence of Belarus, Russia no longer has an eastern border
with Lithuania: the Kaliningrad District of the Russian Federation borders
the Republic on the west. A Russian-Lithuanian treaty led to the withdrawal
of all Russian troops from Lithuania by 1 September 1993. Economically,
Lithuania remained dependent for most of its oil and natural gas on Russian
supplies, although trade with Russia has decreased to less than half of the
country’s foreign commerce as economic ties to the West have grown. Rus-
sian attempts to block Lithuania’s integration into the European Union (EU)
by raising the issues of a transit corridor to Kaliningrad and alleged violations
of the rights of the Russophone minority failed when the republic was admit-
ted to the EU in 2004. Lithuania’s successful campaign to join the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led to vociferous Russian protests
and even threats.
For its part, the Lithuanian government charged Moscow with reluctance
to extradite officials and military personnel involved in the murders of
Lithuanian civilians during the troubles of 1990–1991. On the other hand, the
Lithuanian government’s relatively tolerant policy toward the small Russian
minority (about 5 percent of the population in 2009), which has received easy
terms for citizenship, has led to a somewhat more positive relationship with
Moscow compared to Latvia and Estonia.
After the early 2000s, particularly after Lithuania gained membership in
NATO, Russian-Lithuanian relations became more complicated. The more
assertive foreign policy of Yeltsin’s successors, Vladimir Putin (1952– )
and Dmitry Medvedev (1965– ), has resulted in a number of areas of seri-
ous friction. Moscow has routinely charged Lithuania with misrepresenting
the legacy of World War II and Soviet rule, while Vilnius has responded
that Russians are in denial concerning the suffering that the Kremlin’s forces

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 258 • RUSSIFICATION

inflicted on the Lithuanian people. In 2005, President Valdas Adamkus

pointedly refused to attend the 60th anniversary of the Soviet victory over
Germany in Moscow. Lithuanians have also charged Russia with utilizing
economic leverage and covert operations to influence the country’s internal
politics, as evidenced during the impeachment crisis of Rolandas Paksas
in 2003–2004. At the same time, Moscow criticized the increasingly close
Polish-Lithuanian ties and reacted sharply to Adamkus’s diplomacy during
his second term (2004–2008) when he sought to support the aspirations of
Ukraine and Georgia to join transatlantic security and economic structures.
See also NAZI-SOVIET PACT; PEOPLE’S DIET; PEOPLE’S GOVERN-
MENT; SĄJŪDIS; ULTIMATUMS OF 1938–1940.

RUSSIFICATION. Generally, the term used to describe the policy of sup-

pressing indigenous cultures and imposing Russian culture. In Lithuania,
Russification was official policy during the tsarist period, especially the
second half of the 19th century, and, in different form, during the Soviet pe-
riods of 1940–41 and 1944–90. Historically, resistance to Polonization and
Russification provided the main focus of struggle for the Lithuanian national
movement.
Tsarist Era. During the first decades of tsarist rule following the third
partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian government
generally did not interfere with the religious, cultural, and social structure of
the former Lithuanian Grand Duchy. This tolerant attitude began to change
during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (R. 1825–1855), when a policy of official
nationality, which stressed autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Russian values, was
adopted. After the suppression of the insurrection of 1830–1831, the govern-
ment launched an attack on the Catholic Church and the Polish landowning
nobility, the two forces it believed were inimical to Russian interests in Lithu-
ania. Many churches, monasteries, and schools, including the University of
Vilnius, were closed and the lands of nobles who supported the insurrection
were transferred to Russian officials. In 1840, the Lithuanian Statute was
abrogated and Russian law introduced; the very name of Lithuania was for-
mally eliminated and the country was now referred to as the Northwest Terri-
tory (Russian: Severo-zapadnyi Krai). The tsarist government proclaimed its
intent to educate the youth of the land “in the Russian spirit.”
This initial period of Russification, directed mainly at the Polish element,
did not much affect Lithuanian culture, which actually experienced a renais-
sance during the 1840s and 1850s. A second and more intensive period of
Russification followed the defeat of the insurrection of 1863–1864 and its
violent suppression by Governor-General Mikhail N. Muravyev. Initially,
the Russian cultural officials known as the “Russifiers” (Russian: obrusitely),

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 RUSSIFICATION • 259

led by Ivan Kornilov (1811–1901), the curator of the Vilnius province edu-
cational district, believed that by eliminating Polish and Catholic influence
in Lithuania, the Lithuanian peasantry would become natural allies of Russia
because of their inherent pro-Russian historic orientation (Russian: russkoye
nachalo).
The Russian press ban of 1864–1865 on Lithuanian-language publica-
tions in the Latin alphabet was initially intended to draw the Lithuanian
national movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN) to the Russian
side rather than destroy it. At the same time, the tsarist government encour-
aged the settlement of thousands of Russian peasants, mainly Old Believer
communities, in Lithuania. However, by the end of the 19th century, Rus-
sian authorities came to view the Lithuanian national movement and its
intelligentsia as an anti-tsarist and anti-Russian force; assimilation policies
now stressed linguistic Russification in the primary schools and intensified
attempts to halt the Lithuanian book-smuggling movement. The lifting of the
press ban in 1904 and the Revolution of 1905 signified the failure of tsarist
Russification policy, which was also undermined by increasing skepticism
about its effectiveness among Russian officialdom.
Soviet Period. During the period of Lithuanian independence (1918–1940),
Russian culture was of relatively minor importance in Lithuania. The So-
viet occupation of 1940, though, initiated a new period of Russification in
Lithuania, which was especially marked after 1944. While Soviet national
policy, in contrast to that of the tsars, officially stressed the national cultural
rights of the Lithuanian people, it also emphasized the preeminence of the
Russian nation as an “elder brother” and stressed the importance of the Rus-
sian language. The latter was introduced as a compulsory subject from the
early grades in all Soviet Lithuanian schools. In addition, official Russian-
Lithuanian bilingualism was mandated in public life. The business of the
large economic enterprises, and until 1988, the meetings of the Lithuanian
Communist Party’s Central Committee, as well as sessions of the Lithu-
anian Supreme Soviet, were conducted primarily in Russian even in the pres-
ence of only a handful of Russian-speaking officials.
The mass immigration of at least a quarter of a million mostly ethnic Rus-
sian industrial workers into urban areas, especially Vilnius and Klaipėda,
further promoted the Russification of the country. During the late 1950s and
1960s, the use of Lithuanian became more prevalent in many public offices;
however, pressure for the use of Russian continued, especially after the Tash-
kent Conference of 1975, which mandated more intensive Russian-language
instruction in Soviet schools. In the history curriculum of Lithuanian schools
and in academic scholarship, the progressive nature and benefits of Russian
imperialism were stressed. In the late 1970s, the government decreed that all

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 260 • RUSSIFICATION

doctoral dissertations in Soviet Lithuania, even those dealing with Lithuanian

literature, were to be published in Russian.
During the Leonid Brezhnev period (1964–1982), the Soviet government
proclaimed the convergence (Russian: sliyanie) of the nations of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) into a single Soviet people as official
long-term policy. The later Brezhnev years in particular witnessed an intensi-
fied campaign in favor of “internationalism,” the code word for Russification.
The policies of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985–1991, especially the stress on
openness (glasnost), undermined Soviet Russification policy: Russian cul-
tural dominance became a publicly debated issue and a source of national
protest.
The reestablishment of Lithuanian independence in 1990 ended compul-
sory bilingualism. The formerly omnipresent Cyrillic alphabet has largely
disappeared from the country’s streets and public buildings. The study of
Russian is no longer required in Lithuanian-language schools, and English
has replaced Russian as the most popular foreign language. History curricula
have been revamped to reflect an emphasis on Lithuanian and world history
rather than the Russian past. At the same time, the government has subsidized
Russian-language schools and cultural institutions for the Russian minority,
which in 2009 made up about 5 percent of Lithuania’s population. See also
KRAŽIAI MASSACRE; MUSCOVY; RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS.

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 S
SĄJŪDIS. Formally Lithuanian Movement for Restructuring (Lithuanian:
Lietuvos persitvarkymo sąjūdis). Lithuanian independence movement of the
late 1980s and early 1990s. As a result of the more open political climate
under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, demands for reform and greater
political autonomy gained momentum during the mid-1980s. On 3 June
1988, about 500 people representing the Lithuanian intelligentsia gathered
at the headquarters of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius and
elected a 36-member Initiative Group for the Movement for Restructuring
(Perestroika) in Lithuania, about half of whom were members of the Lithu-
anian Communist Party (LCP). The initial stated purpose of the group was
to encourage a program for reform or restructuring (Russian: perestroika),
which was being obstructed by the conservative leadership of the LCP. The
group quickly articulated a program to end the privileges of the Party elite,
the so-called nomenklatura; make government accountable; establish politi-
cal and economic self-sufficiency for Lithuania; broaden the legal rights of
citizens; halt the destruction of the environment; save Lithuania’s cultural
heritage; and provide an honest accounting of so-called blank spots in the
country’s history.
Influenced by the already strong popular front movements in Estonia and
Latvia, the Initiative Group decided to involve the public through mass
demonstrations. The growing number of people around the group became
popularly known in Lithuania and abroad as Sąjūdis, or simply, “the move-
ment.” At the same time, the Initiative Group began publishing Sajūdžio
žinios (News of the Movement), the first independent periodical permitted
by the Soviet authorities. The activists of the Initiative Group, including
Vytautas Landsbergis, Arvydas Juozaitis (1956– ), and poet Sigitas Geda
(1943–2008), among others, later formed the core of the executive council
of Sąjūdis.
On 24 June 1988, the Initiative Group sponsored a rally attended by tens
of thousands of people to demand that the delegates leaving for the 19th
Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Moscow
represent Lithuanian interests. On 9 July, about 100,000 people gathered at

261

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 262 • ŠALKAUSKIS, STASYS

a rally organized by Sąjūdis, the largest political gathering in the country’s

history to that date. The prominent display of the prewar national tricolor flag
and the speeches stressing national values indicated that Sąjūdis was now in
the forefront of political change. On 22–24 October, the nationally televised
founding congress of the Lithuanian Movement for Restructuring (Lietuvos
persitvarkymo sąjūdis) took place in Vilnius and elected an executive council
headed by Landsbergis.
While the public platform of Sąjūdis did not yet demand outright indepen-
dence for Lithuania, it formulated a program calling for a “juridical” Lithu-
anian state, economic autonomy, self-determination, social justice, legalizing
Lithuanian as the sole official language, equal rights and cultural autonomy
for the national minorities, and close ties with the Lithuanian diaspora. Nev-
ertheless, the leadership of Sąjūdis and the populace at large, including high-
ranking Communists, commemorated Lithuanian Independence Day for the
first time since the war on 16 February 1989. Calls for Lithuania’s outright
independence became commonplace.
In the elections to the Soviet Union’s Congress of People’s Deputies in
March 1989, Sąjūdis and Sąjūdis-supported candidates won an overwhelm-
ing majority. The participation of more than a million Baltic citizens in a
human chain stretching from Tallinn to Vilnius, to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1989, earned Sąjūdis in-
ternational attention but also provoked the enmity of the Soviet government.
Sąjūdis now called for an independent Lithuanian state and organized mas-
sive demonstrations on the occasion of Gorbachev’s highly publicized visit
to Lithuania on 11–13 January 1990.
On 24 February 1990, Sąjūdis, campaigning on an independence platform,
won a majority in the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian
Soviet Socialist Republic. On 11 March, the Supreme Soviet, by a vote of
124–0, elected Landsbergis chairman of the legislature and proclaimed the
restoration of Lithuanian independence.
Upon assuming Lithuania’s presidency, Landsbergis resigned from the
leadership of Sąjūdis but remained a force within the movement as well as
its honorary chairman. Tensions within Sąjūdis between moderate and more
militant nationalist elements resulted in the victory of the latter during the
December 1991 congress of the movement in Vilnius. Much of the intel-
ligentsia and the leadership of 1988–1989 abandoned the movement. The
emergence of political parties further reduced the membership and influence
of Sąjūdis. See also RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS.

ŠALKAUSKIS, STASYS (1886–1941). Lithuanian philosopher and aca-

demic; born in Ariogala on 4 May 1886. Šalkauskis graduated in 1911 from

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 SAMOGITIA • 263

the University of Moscow, where he studied philosophy and law. During

World War I, Šalkauskis continued his studies in philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Fribourg in Switzerland, writing his doctoral dissertation on the
Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyev (1853–1900). In 1922, he obtained
a position at the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy of the University of
Kaunas and in 1939 was appointed rector of the university. Šalkauskis was
soon removed from his post, however, after the Soviet occupation of June
1940.
Šalkauskis was arguably Lithuania’s most influential philosopher of the
interwar period and exerted considerable influence, particularly on Catholic
intellectuals involved in the Ateitis movement. He was critical of the Nation-
alist Union’s political dictatorship under Antanas Smetona. One of his basic
notions was that Lithuania was in a unique position to act as a synthesizer of
Western and Eastern cultures. His own ideas owed much to western European
progressive Catholic thought, although he also espoused Thomistic prin-
ciples. Šalkauskis was instrumental in fostering high standards of academic
work and nurturing the growth of the country’s Catholic intelligentsia. He
died in Šiauliai on 4 December 1941.

SAMOGITIA. Lithuanian: Žemaitija. A historically and ethnographically

distinct region of western Lithuania. The Lithuanian term for the region,
Žemaitija, literally means “Lowlands,” and the people are called žemaičiai,
or “Lowlanders.” The Latinized form of the name, Samogitia, has come into
wider use in English. Samogitia is bounded by the Latvian border to the
north, the Baltic Sea coast in the west, the Nemunas River in the south, and
the Nevėžis River in the east.
Before the unification of the Lithuanian state in the 13th century, Samo-
gitia was ruled as a separate principality. After the inclusion of Samogitia
in the Lithuanian state, it played a key role in the wars against the Teutonic
Knights: the region constituted the territorial wedge between the Prussian
and Livonian branches of the order. Between 1345 and 1382, the Knights
made some 100 forays into Samogitia from Prussia and Livonia. In 1382,
Jogaila gave up western Samogitia to the order; then again, between 1398
and 1409, Grand Duke Vytautas was forced to cede most of Samogitia to
the Knights. There were several large-scale Samogitian rebellions against
the order during 1401–1409. The Treaty of Melno in 1422 finally ended the
Teutonic Knights’ claims to Samogitia.
Within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Samogitia retained a degree of
autonomy and was governed by an elder (Lithuanian: seniūnas) elected by a
diet of the local nobility. Serfdom was less entrenched here than in the rest of
Lithuania, and there were more freeholders. During the pre-Christian period,

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 264 • SANTARA-ŠVIESA

a high proportion of Samogitia’s population consisted of freemen and nobles.

Christianization and Polonization came later to Samogitia than to the rest of
the Grand Duchy; by the early 19th century, this was the only region of the
country where the Lithuanian language was still widely spoken outside the
peasant milieu, primarily among the petty gentry and townspeople. During
the first half of the 19th century, some members of the Samogitian gentry,
such as Dionizas Poška, Simonas Stanevičius, and historian Simonas Dau-
kantas, began to publicly support the development of Lithuanian culture.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, most European maps showed Samogitia
as a distinct entity within Lithuania.
While Samogitia lost its separate administrative status in 1843, 19th-cen-
tury ethnographers and scholars often treated the people and their distinctive
dialect as separate from other Lithuanians. Periodically, separatist sentiments
have emerged in Samogitia, but, aside from the publication of a few periodi-
cals in the Samogitian dialect and local ethnographic organizations, there has
been no significant independence movement in modern times.

SANTARA-ŠVIESA. A liberal Lithuanian organization founded after

World War II. In 1947, a small group of exiles in Germany founded Šviesa
(“The Light”) as a liberal alternative to the more conservative political and
cultural organizations that dominated the Lithuanian displaced person com-
munity in the refugee camps. After the majority of the émigrés migrated to
the United States, the Šviesa group joined with the liberal academic youth
faction Santara (“Harmony”) in 1957 to create the Santara-Šviesa Federation,
although the organization is commonly known as Santara and its members,
santariečiai. Santara occupied a unique niche within the Lithuanian diaspora
as a liberal voice through its annual meetings and the monthly publication
Akiračiai (Horizons). In emigration, the group advocated cultural contacts
with Soviet Lithuania and a critical review of the Lithuanian role in the Ho-
locaust; these and other issues provoked controversy.
After 1990, the organization transferred much of its activity to Lithuania,
where it organized conferences, established a youth section, and published its
monthly periodical. While small in number and only loosely organized, San-
tara has had disproportionate influence in politics and the academy: leaders
within the movement have included President Valdas Adamkus, prominent
historian Egidijus Aleksandravičius (1956– ), and the philosopher, TV host,
and European Parliament member Leonidas Donskis (1962– ), among others.

SAPIEHA. Lithuanian: Sapiega. Lithuanian noble family descended from

boyars in Smolensk. The Sapiehas were rivals of the powerful Radziwiłł and
Pac clans. They played an important political role in the 16th and 17th cen-

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 ŠAULYS, JURGIS • 265

turies and also became one of the wealthiest landowning families of Poland
in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The most famous and powerful member of the family was Leo Sapieha
(1557–1633), who studied classical languages at the University of Leipzig
and, upon his return to Lithuania in 1581, was appointed royal secretary
to King Stefan Batory. He quickly rose to become chancellor, palatine of
Vilnius, and finally, between 1625 and 1633, grand hetman of Lithuania.
Sapieha became prominent for his insistence on safeguarding the autonomy
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from Polish interference and as an able
diplomat in dealings with Muscovy.
Casimir Paul John Sapieha (1637–1720), the grand hetman of Lithuania
and palatine of Vilnius and one of the richest men in Lithuanian history, was
also known for his anti-Polish political attitude and opposition to King John
Sobieski.
Adam Stefan Cardinal Sapieha was archbishop of Cracow from 1925 to
1951.

SAULĖ (SIAULIAI), BATTLE OF (1236). One of the most decisive

early military clashes between the Lithuanians and the Germanic crusad-
ing orders. In February 1236, Pope Gregory IX issued a bull announcing a
crusade against Lithuania. That September, the Knights of the Sword orga-
nized a large expeditionary force of German knights and native auxiliaries
from Latvia and Estonia. The crusading army was surprised by a defending
Lithuanian force in marshes near a place called Saulė, which is thought to be
near the present city of Šiauliai. Little is known about the battle except that
the master of the Livonian Order and many of his knights perished. Some
historians consider that the battle was a sign of the increasing unity among
the Lithuanian tribes against a common enemy and an important factor in
furthering the unification of the Livonian Knights of the Sword with the order
of Teutonic Knights in Prussia.

ŠAULYS, JURGIS (1879–1948). Lithuanian statesman and diplomat; born

in Tauragė district on 23 April 1879. After dismissal by tsarist authorities
from the Vilnius Theological Seminary in 1899 for distributing illegal pub-
lications, Šaulys became prominent in the Lithuanian national movement
(see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN). He became one of the founders of
the Lithuanian Democratic Party and an editor of Varpas. He was elected
to the Taryba and signed the 1918 declaration of Lithuanian independence.
Šaulys spent most of the interwar period in the Lithuanian foreign service,
with postings in Switzerland, Rome, Berlin, the Vatican, and Warsaw, and
was regarded as one of the country’s most able and urbane diplomats. Šaulys

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 266 • SEIMAS

was known for his liberal political philosophy and, as an expert on Polish
affairs within the foreign ministry, was an influential advocate of a detente
with Warsaw during the 1930s. He died in Lugano, Switzerland, on 18 Sep-
tember 1948.

SEIMAS. Historic Lithuanian designation for the diets of the medieval and
early modern periods as well as the parliament of the independent Lithu-
anian state from 1920 to 1940 and again since 1992. The word originates
from the old Lithuanian cognate denoting a “gathering” (sueiga, or suėjimas).
See also POLITICAL PARTIES.

SERFDOM. The personal bondage of the peasantry. In contrast to the de-

cline of serfdom in western Europe after the 14th century, in eastern Europe
the landowners expanded the demesne, which resulted in the strengthening
of the system of compulsory serf labor. The Lithuanian landed nobility em-
ployed the labor of slaves, usually war captives, and their descendants. How-
ever, before the 15th century, the majority of the peasants in the ethnographi-
cally Lithuanian lands of the Grand Duchy were members of a large peasant
community, the rural district (Lithuanian: valščius), which performed certain
duties for the grand duke, but remained free. Gradually, the state transferred
increasing power over the peasants to the landowners. Grand Duke Casimir
IV’s Privilege of 1447 gave authority over the peasants to their landlords and
prohibited the escape of seignorial villagers to royal domains, thus begin-
ning the process of tying the peasants permanently to the private landown-
ers’ estates. Eventually, most seignorial peasants lost all rights to leave their
holdings in search of better conditions. Even on state lands, the administrative
functions formerly held by the peasant valščius were abolished.
The Valakas or Volok Reform begun in 1547 divided the peasantry
into true serfs, who performed regular corvée labor (Lithuanian: lažas) and
formed a part of the estates’ inventories, and those who paid money rent
(Lithuanian: činšas) and contributed a limited number of days of special la-
bor but were free to move to other estates or towns. By the 18th century, this
former category, the enserfed seignorial peasantry, constituted the majority
of Lithuania’s rural population. The very name for serfdom in Lithuanian,
baudžiava, came to signify labor to be performed under pain of punishment.
One major reason for the rise of serfdom was higher grain prices in western
Europe, which created a demand for eastern European grain, thus encourag-
ing landowners to increase production on their estates by exploiting serfs.
Compulsory labor was not uniform in Lithuania, but it is estimated that
in the 17th and 18th centuries the regular summer labor obligation averaged
about three days per week for an able-bodied peasant. During the later 18th
century, estates increasingly assigned labor on the basis of household, rather

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 SERFDOM • 267

than on the area of a peasant’s holding. In addition to the regular corvée,

there were numerous other seasonal and miscellaneous obligations, including
intensive harvest work, construction labor, road repair, and transportation
duties.
Other feudal obligations included payments in kind and money. Some
peasants paid the činšas in place of the corvée, but the majority paid some
money rent along with labor obligations. In addition to taxes to the State and
Church, there were various fees for services such as marriage licenses and
hunting fees, as well as compulsory liquor monopoly purchases from the
landowners’ distilleries. Furthermore, the landowners and administrators of
Crown estates called economies had legal and administrative authority over
the peasants. A lord could punish his serf by fine, imprisonment, mutilation,
public flogging, or, in rare cases, death. Officially, there were certain legal
safeguards from excessive abuse, but these statutes were often disregarded.
Lithuania periodically experienced peasant revolts, such as the uprising of
Samogitian peasants in 1418, the Merkinė uprising of 1483, and a number
of outbreaks during the first half of the 16th century. The most famous of the
peasant rebellions was the mass insurrection of 1769 that engulfed the large
estates of the Šiauliai economy.
Proposals to reform agrarian relations and abolish serfdom became more
numerous among the gentry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Two of the early
reformers were Pawel Brzostowski (1739–1827) and Ignatius Karp (1780–
1809), who abolished labor obligations and emancipated thousands of peas-
ants. The first widespread emancipation occurred in the Lithuanian-speaking
lands of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (in Suvalkija or Suwałki), where the
peasants were emancipated without land in 1807.
During the first half of the 19th century, the Russian government initi-
ated reforms intended to limit and regulate peasant obligations. Increasing
agrarian unrest during the 1850s in Lithuania and throughout the Russian
Empire persuaded the tsarist government to consider the abolition of serfdom.
Much of the initiative for the emancipation of serfs in Russia came from the
Lithuanian nobility. On 19 February 1861, Tsar Alexander II proclaimed his
Emancipation Manifesto mandating the abolition of serfdom after a two-year
waiting period. The peasants were to receive title to their holdings through
redemption payments scheduled over 49 years. The already emancipated
Lithuanian peasants in Congress Poland (Suvalkija) received their holdings
under the reform of 1864, which did not require redemption payments.
While the emancipation abolished legal serfdom, it did not entirely end
the landowners’ exploitation of the peasantry, who were still often forced to
rent additional land from the nobility. The peasants were still subject to the
military draft, excluded from government offices, and not allowed to move

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 268 • SFORZA, BONA

without permission. Many of these restrictions were ended after the Revolu-
tion of 1905, but the last remnants of agrarian feudalism disappeared only
after the Republic of Lithuania’s Land Reform Bill of 1922, which parceled
out most of the larger estates. See also AGRICULTURE.

SFORZA, BONA (1494–1557). Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of

Lithuania from 1518 to 1550; born in Milan on 2 February 1494. Bona was
the daughter of the Duke of Milan and Bari, Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza; her
mother Isabella was the daughter of Alfonzo II of Naples. Bona was known
for her fine education and training in administration. In 1518, she was mar-
ried in Cracow to Sigismund I the Elder. As Queen of Poland, she became
renowned for her financial dealings, during which she acquired many royal
estates and became one of the wealthiest rulers of the age. Bona was a driv-
ing force behind the Volok Reform, which radically transformed Lithuania’s
agrarian world. She also sponsored humanist learning at the royal court. Bona
made great efforts to secure the throne for her son Sigismund II Augustus,
but bitterly opposed his marriages to Elizabeth of Hapsburg and Barbara
Radziwiłł. Suspicion has lingered that Bona caused the deaths of both
women, in 1545 and 1551, respectively. In 1556, Bona settled in Bari, Italy,
where she died on 19 November 1557, reportedly poisoned by her steward.

ŠIAULIAI. Fourth largest city and important industrial center, located in

northern Lithuania; 2007 population: 129,000. The first significant settle-
ments here date to the 8th century, and Šiauliai is mentioned in historical
sources since the 14th century. The Battle of Saulė (also called the Battle of
Šiauliai) is thought to have taken place in the area in 1236. A parish was es-
tablished in Šiauliai in 1445. Šiauliai was the center of a large Crown estate
or economy, which at the end of the 18th century reportedly contained 321
villages, five towns, and more than 18,000 inhabitants. In July 1769, the peas-
ants of the economy rebelled against increases in labor obligations, but were
suppressed by Lithuanian, Courlandian, and Russian troops. After the Third
Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the city and its environs
came under the rule of the Russian Count Platon Zubov (1767–1822).
During the 19th century, railroad connections and an increasing popula-
tion led to industrial growth, mainly of leather, tobacco, and food processing,
as well as the founding of a number of schools. By 1914, the population stood
at about 24,000. In addition to the plurality of Jews, nearly 45 percent, the
town had about 30 percent ethnic Lithuanians, the highest such percentage
of any urban center in Lithuania before World War I. Most of the Jewish
population of Šiauliai (known in Yiddish as Shavel), a fourth of the 1939
population of 31,600, was annihilated during the Holocaust. Heavy fighting

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 SIGISMUND I THE ELDER • 269

during the Soviet capture of the city in July 1944 destroyed about 80 percent
of Šiauliai.
The city has grown considerably since the war with the construction of
electronics, wood-processing, bicycle, and other factories and the develop-
ment of public institutions, such as the University of Šiauliai with an enroll-
ment of over 10,000 and a well-regarded theater. The Šiauliai International
Airport, formerly one of the largest Soviet military airports, now serves as
a forward base for fighters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) patrolling the airspace of the Baltic States. Twelve kilometers (7
miles) north of the city is the famous Hill of Crosses (Lithuanian: Kryžiu˛
kalnas), a major center of pilgrimage and tourism.

SIERAKOWSKI, ZYGMUNT (1826–1863). Lithuanian: Sierakauskas.

Military officer and one of the leaders of the insurrection of 1863–1864;
born on 18 May 1826 in the Lutsk district of Volynia. Sierakowski stud-
ied at the University of St. Petersburg, where he befriended students from
Lithuania, and then graduated from the Russian General Staff Academy
in 1859. Between 1860 and 1862, he was sent to western Europe with a
Russian military mission and became acquainted with such revolutionar-
ies as Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) and the Russian radical Alexander
Herzen (1812–1870). When the insurrection erupted in Lithuania in 1863,
Sierakowski defected from the Russian army and accepted the Lithuanian
rebels’ offer to lead their military campaign. He hoped to secure the Baltic
Sea coast so that the insurgents could obtain foreign assistance. On 27 April
1863, Sierakowski was captured by the Russians during a battle near Biržai,
brought to Vilnius, and court-martialed. He was hanged on 15 June 1863 in
Lukiškės Square in Vilnius; his wife, Apolonia Dalewska of Kėdainiai, was
deported to Siberia.

SIGISMUND I THE ELDER (1467–1548). King of Poland (1507–1548)

and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1506–1548); born in Cracow on 1 January
1467. Sigismund, the grandson of Jogaila, was born to King Casimir IV
and Elizabeth of Habsburg. In 1498, he traveled to Buda where his brother
Władysław ruled as King of Bohemia and Hungary. From 1499 to 1506, Si-
gismund was the viceroy of Silesia. In October 1506, Sigismund journeyed
to Vilnius to be crowned Grand Duke of Lithuania, succeeding his brother
Alexander. In January 1507, Sigismund was crowned King of Poland in
Cracow. He married Bona Sforza of Milan and Bari in 1518. His reign was
marked by three major wars with Muscovy, during which Lithuania lost
Smolensk (1514), one of the most important outposts between Moscow and
Vilnius.

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 270 • SIGISMUND II AUGUSTUS

In domestic affairs, Sigismund attempted to increase royal revenues, but

was forced to concede greater powers to the Polish diet, especially in the
critical area of military finance; increasingly, the Polish-Lithuanian nobility
preferred to rely on periodic levies for mercenaries. Just before Sigismund’s
death, his wife, Queen Bona, helped carry out the important agrarian transfor-
mation known as the Volok Reform. Both Sigismund and Bona were gener-
ous patrons of the arts and thus encouraged the ideas of Renaissance human-
ism in Lithuania, which they visited frequently. While Sigismund officially
disapproved of the Reformation and issued edicts protecting Catholicism,
he displayed a politically prudent tolerance toward the spread of Protestant-
ism. He died in Cracow on 1 April 1548. See also GRAND DUCHY OF
LITHUANIA; SIGISMUND II AUGUSTUS.

SIGISMUND II AUGUSTUS (1520–1572). Grand Duke of Lithuania

(1544–1572) and King of Poland (1548–1572); born in Cracow on 1 August
1520. The only surviving son of Sigismund I the Elder and Bona Sforza,
Sigismund Augustus was the last ruler of the Jagiellonian dynasty that traced
its roots to the House of Gediminas. During his youth, Sigismund Augustus
received the best education of any Lithuanian ruler to date and was report-
edly fluent in Latin, German, and Italian. Largely through the machinations
of Queen Bona, the young Sigismund secured Lithuania’s agreement to elect
him grand duke. In 1543, Sigismund married Elizabeth of Hapsburg, the
daughter of the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand I.
In 1544, Sigismund Augustus came to Vilnius to govern Lithuania as his
father’s viceroy. He is credited with expanding the city’s trade and manufac-
tories and encouraging Renaissance architecture, including the construction
of an opulent grand ducal palace, known as the Lower Castle, in the center
of Vilnius. Sigismund, an enthusiast of Renaissance art and scholarship, did
much to bring western European culture to Lithuania. In Vilnius, Sigismund
became friendly with the widow Barbara Radziwiłł, whom he married in
1547 following the death of his wife Elizabeth. Upon the death of his father
in 1548, Sigismund Augustus became King of Poland. His personal life was
marked by drama and tragedy, especially the bitter conflicts with his mother
and the death of Barbara soon after her coronation as queen in 1551. He mar-
ried Catherine of Hapsburg in 1553, but the union did not produce an heir.
In foreign affairs, Sigismund Augustus was faced with a prolonged war in
Livonia against Muscovy until in 1561 he succeeded in placing the region
under Lithuanian control. However, he retained good relations with the Ot-
tomans and Tatars. In domestic affairs, he continued the Volok Reform and
restructured the administration of the Grand Duchy by creating new palati-

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 SIGISMUND III VASA • 271

nates, which were subdivided into districts. In 1566, Sigismund approved the
second Lithuanian Statute. Like his father, Sigismund Augustus proved
tolerant of religious diversity during the Reformation. The major event of
his reign was the ratification in 1569, after difficult negotiations, of the Union
of Lublin that created the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Sigismund II
Augustus died on 7 July 1572 at the royal residence in Knyszyn. See also
SIGISMUND III VASA.

SIGISMUND III VASA (1566–1632). King of Poland and Grand Duke of

Lithuania (1587–1632) and King of Sweden (1594–1599); born on 20 June
1566 in Gripsholm, Sweden. He was the son of King John III Vasa of Sweden
and Catherine, daughter of Sigismund I the Elder of Poland and Lithuania,
thus a nephew of the last Jagiellonian ruler, Sigismund II Augustus. In 1587,
following the death of Stefan Batory, Sigismund was elected King of Poland
and, with the support of the Lithuanians, was named grand duke after ratify-
ing the third Lithuanian Statute. After the death of his father, Sigismund
was crowned King of Sweden in Uppsala in 1594 but was deposed by the
Swedish diet, the Riksdag, in 1599, which then chose his uncle, Charles IX,
as the new ruler. Sigismund was married twice: to Anne of Hapsburg in 1593,
and then to her sister Constance in 1602.
Sigismund III’s reign proved an especially turbulent time in the Common-
wealth. The king’s insistence on pursuing his claim to the Swedish throne
involved Lithuania in a destructive war with Charles IX and his successors in
Livonia, marking the beginning of Swedish domination in that region. Dur-
ing Muscovy’s Time of Troubles (1598–1613), Sigismund also laid claim to
the Muscovite throne, at first proposing his son Władysław (IV), but then
attempting to seize Muscovy for himself. His refusal to accommodate Or-
thodoxy and his heavy-handedness aroused Russian resistance; thus, despite
the brief occupation of Moscow by Polish-Lithuanian forces and Lithuania’s
recovery of Smolensk in 1611, Sigismund’s Muscovite adventure was ulti-
mately a failure.
Domestically, the King’s attempts to abolish the Commonwealth Diet’s
liberum veto and institute a hereditary monarchy provoked armed rebellion
among the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. Sigismund also intensified religious
conflict: raised as a Catholic, he vigorously attacked Protestantism. In 1596,
fearing the political consequences of the establishment of the Muscovite
patriarchate in 1589, he supported the conclusion of the Union of Brest,
which created the Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church, but proved divisive in
Ukraine. He died in Warsaw on 30 April 1632. See also GRAND DUCHY
OF LITHUANIA.

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 272 • SIGISMUND KARIBUTAITIS

SIGISMUND KARIBUTAITIS (?–1435). Lithuanian: Žygimantas. Lithu-

anian prince, son of Kaributas and grandson of Grand Duke Algirdas. Sigis-
mund is best known as the leader of a Lithuanian expeditionary force sent by
his cousin, Grand Duke Vytautas, to assist the Hussites of Bohemia against
Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund I in 1422. After declaring war against the
emperor, Sigismund Kaributaitis received the support of the Czech Taborite
leader, Jan Žižka (c. 1360–1424). In 1423, Sigismund was recalled from Bo-
hemia, but in the following year, he returned there on his own, proclaimed
himself a Hussite, and unsuccessfully attempted to claim the Bohemian
throne. In 1434, Sigismund traveled to Livonia, from where he supported
Švitrigaila in the latter’s civil war with Vytautas’s brother and his namesake,
Sigismund Kęstutaitis. He was wounded in the Battle of Pabaiskas in 1435
and reportedly died in captivity.

SIGISMUND KĘSTUTAITIS (c. 1365–1440). Lithuanian: Žygimantas.

Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1432 to 1440; born about 1365 in Trakai.
The son of Kęstutis, Sigismund was a close ally of his older brother Vytau-
tas during the civil strife that followed the death of their father in 1382, and
he reportedly spent much of that time as a hostage of either Jogaila or the
Teutonic Knights. After 1399, he was briefly the ruler of the principalities of
Nowogródek (Belarusian: Navahrudak) and Starodub. Following Vytautas’s
death in 1430 and the seizure of power by Jogaila’s brother Švitrigaila, who
was proclaimed grand duke, Sigismund was at first a supporter of the latter’s
struggle with Poland, but he was soon persuaded by the Polish nobility and
Švitrigaila’s Lithuanian enemies to switch sides.
Sigismund overthrew Švitrigaila in 1432 and, with the support of Poland,
sought to undermine his rival’s support among the eastern, primarily Slavic
and Orthodox, nobility of the Grand Duchy. In 1434, Sigismund issued a
decree granting equal rights to Lithuania’s Orthodox nobility, due process
to all gentry, and the transfer to landlords of dues that the peasants formerly
owed the grand duke. Sigismund finally defeated the combined forces of
the rebellious Švitrigaila and the Livonian Order knights at the Battle of
Pabaiskas in 1435.
After consolidating his rule, Sigismund schemed to break away from vas-
salage to Poland and even conspired with Holy Roman Emperor Albert II in
an attempt to create an anti-Polish alliance. He also sought to roll back privi-
leges granted the landowning nobility by strengthening ducal power with the
help of the lesser gentry. In 1440, Sigismund was assassinated in Trakai by a
faction of the nobility who were opposed to his anti-Polish and centralizing
policies.

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 SLADKEVIČIUS, VINCENTAS • 273

SKIRGAILA (c. 1353–1397). Lithuanian ruler of Kiev, son of Algirdas, and

a leading supporter of Jogaila’s policies. While little is known of Skirgaila’s
early life, he is reported to have led a mission to the Teutonic Knights and
central Europe in 1379–1380 seeking support for his brother Jogaila’s at-
tempts to gain the Lithuanian throne. After the death of Kęstutis in 1382,
Skirgaila ruled his uncle’s lands in Trakai. He was the leader of the Lithu-
anian delegation that traveled to Poland and Hungary to conduct the negotia-
tions that resulted in the Act of Krėva (Polish: Krewo), which created the
Polish-Lithuanian dynastic alliance. Afterwards, Skirgaila served as viceroy
in Lithuania for his brother Jogaila, now King of Poland as Władysław II.
However, Vytautas’s agreement with Jogaila at Ostrovo in 1392 elevated
the former to Grand Duke of Lithuania; Skirgaila was demoted and sent to
rule Kiev in 1394. Some historical sources indicate Skirgaila may have been
poisoned there in 1397, reportedly because of his cruel and capricious ways.

SKVIRECKAS, JUOZAPAS (1873–1959). Metropolitan Archbishop of

Kaunas; born on 18 September 1873 in Pasvalys district. After studies at
the Kaunas Seminary and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Skvi-
reckas was ordained in 1899. In 1919, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of
Samogitia, and in May 1926 he was installed as Archbishop of Kaunas. As
the metropolitan of the newly created Lithuanian ecclesiastical province, he
became the country’s leading Catholic prelate of the interwar period. During
his tenure, Skvireckas distinguished himself more as a reclusive scholar than
an administrator. He is best known for his translation of the Bible from the
Latin Vulgate into Lithuanian, an enormous task he accomplished between
1911 and 1937. In the summer of 1944, Skvireckas fled to the West to escape
the advancing Red Army. He died in Austria on 3 December 1959.

SLADKEVIČIUS, VINCENTAS (1920–2000). Lithuania’s first cardinal

of the modern era, Archbishop of Kaunas, and president of the Lithuanian
Catholic bishops’ conference from 1988 to 1993; born on 20 August 1920
in Kaišiadorys district. A graduate of the Kaunas Jesuit secondary school,
Sladkevičius entered the city’s seminary in 1939 and was ordained in 1944. In
1958, Bishop Teofilius Matulionis of Kaišiadorys consecrated Sladkevičius
and appointed him bishop without the approval of the Communist authorities.
As a result, Sladkevičius was held under house arrest until 1982, when he was
allowed to return to Kaišiadorys to assume his duties. In 1988, he became
president of the Lithuanian bishops’ conference and in June was formally
inducted into the College of Cardinals in Rome. He served as Archbishop of
Kaunas between 1990 and 1996. As Lithuania’s leading prelate during the

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 274 • ŠLEŽEVIČIUS, ADOLFAS

late 1980s, Sladkevičius took an active role in the Lithuanian reform move-
ment by advocating religious freedom and tolerance, criticizing the Soviet
system, and publicly proclaiming Lithuania’s right to independence. He died
in Kaunas on 28 May 2000.

ŠLEŽEVIČIUS, ADOLFAS (1948– ). Prime minister of Lithuania

from 1993 to 1996 and leader of the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party
(LDDP); born on 2 February 1948 in Šiauliai district. An economist by train-
ing, Šleževičius began his political career as deputy minister of the meat and
dairy industry of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic between 1977 and
1981. From 1983 until 1989, he worked within the Central Committee of
the Lithuanian Communist Party. For the next two years, Šleževičius was
deputy minister of agriculture. In 1991, Šleževičius headed a Lithuanian-
Norwegian joint venture company, and in 1992 he was elected president of
the Lithuanian Dairy Producers Association.
In 1993, Šleževičius was named chairman of the LDDP, and on 9 March
1993 President Algirdas Brazauskas appointed him prime minister. As pre-
mier, Šleževičius oversaw a sharp decrease in inflation and a stabilization of
the national currency. However, during the fall of 1995, he was accused of
a conflict of interest after withdrawing his personal funds only days before
the government’s closure of several major Lithuanian banks. After rejecting
the president’s calls for his resignation, Šleževičius was dismissed from
office by the Seimas by a vote of 94–26. He was replaced by Mindaugas
Stankevičius on 23 February 1996 and returned to private business.

SLEŽEVIČIUS, MYKOLAS (1882–1939). Lithuanian statesman and

prime minister from 1918 to 1919 and again in 1926; born in Raseiniai
district on 21 February 1882. Sleževičius studied law at the University of
Odessa from 1902 to 1907 and then returned to Lithuania, where he joined the
Lithuanian Democratic Party. During World War I, he served in Petrograd
as an official of the Lithuanian Central Relief Committee. At the Lithuanian
Conference in Petrograd in 1917, Sleževičius broke with the more radical
socialists by insisting on immediate Lithuanian independence. After return-
ing to Lithuania in 1918, he headed the new republic’s second cabinet from
December 1918 to March 1919, then served again as prime minister and
acting foreign minister from April to December 1919 during the most criti-
cal months in the young nation’s history. He was instrumental in organizing
the fledgling Lithuanian army and resistance against successive Bolshevik,
Bermondtist, and Polish military attacks, and took the lead in negotiating
Lithuania’s de facto recognition in crucial talks with Poland and at the Paris
Peace Conference.

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 ŠLIŪPAS, JONAS • 275

In 1920, Sleževičius was elected to Lithuania’s Constituent Assembly.

As a leader of the Peasant Populist Union in the Lithuanian parliament
(Seimas) from 1920 to 1926; he was also chairman of the body’s foreign
relations committee. When the coalition of Social Democrats and Populists
won the elections of May 1926, Sleževičius headed the center-left govern-
ment from June to December 1926, also serving as foreign minister and
justice minister. The Sleževičius government’s liberal domestic policies and
its conclusion of a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in 1926 aroused
right-wing and Christian Democratic opposition. On 17 December 1926,
Sleževičius and President Kazys Grinius were removed from office by a mil-
itary coup, which brought the Nationalist Union leader Antanas Smetona
to power. Afterwards, Sleževičius worked in the Kaunas city government
and was chairman of the Lithuanian Bar Association. He also led the Peasant
Populist Union during the years of the Nationalist dictatorship. Sleževičius
died in Kaunas on 11 December 1939. See also TARYBA.

ŠLIŪPAS, JONAS (1861–1944). One of the liberal leaders of the Lithuanian

national movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN); born in Šiauliai
district on 23 February 1861. In 1880–1883, Šliūpas studied at the Universi-
ties of Moscow and St. Petersburg and then briefly at the University of Ge-
neva. In 1883–1884, he edited Aušra, but then left for the United States as
a result of harassment by the German police. Šliūpas completed his medical
studies at the University of Maryland in 1891 and worked as a doctor among
the Lithuanian immigrants in Scranton, Shenandoah, and the other communi-
ties of Pennsylvania’s coal belt. He became one of the best known leaders of
the Lithuanian national movement in the United States as editor of a number
of secular Lithuanian-language newspapers.
Šliūpas was one of the first to urge Lithuanians to form ethnic Catholic
parishes separate from the Poles, but is probably best remembered for his
conflicts with the Catholic clergy because he popularized secular liberal-
ism and atheism. He became the acknowledged leader of the Lithuanian
freethinkers (laisvamaniai). However, Šliūpas rejected the radical socialists’
internationalist outlook, seeking to organize a liberal nationalist movement.
Despite his materialist and atheist writings, Šliūpas befriended the Lithuanian
Catholic leader Father Antanas Burba (1854–1898) and was able to cooperate
with those Catholic clergy who supported Lithuanian national causes. During
World War I, he was one of the major organizers of Lithuanian-American
efforts to support Lithuania’s independence.
In 1921, Šliūpas returned to Lithuania, where he taught the history of medi-
cine at the University of Kaunas. He continued to advocate the seculariza-
tion of Lithuanian society and criticized the Nationalist Union authoritarian

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 276 • SMETONA, ANTANAS

government. In 1933, he was elected mayor of the seaside resort of Palanga.

Displaced by World War II, he died in Berlin on 6 November 1944.

SMETONA, ANTANAS (1874–1944). Lithuania’s president in 1919–1920

and 1926–1940 and leader of the country’s nationalist movement; born in
Ukmergė district on 10 August 1874. While attending secondary school in
Jelgava, Latvia, Smetona became involved in protests against tsarist Russi-
fication policies. In 1902, he graduated from the University of St. Petersburg
Law School and then moved to Vilnius, where he quickly became prominent
in the Lithuanian Democratic Party, representing its more conservative
wing. Smetona was elected to the presidium of the Great Assembly of Vil-
nius in November 1905. He was editor of the weekly Lietuvos u–kininkas (The
Lithuanian Farmer) and was a prominent contributor to the first Lithuanian
daily newspaper, Vilniaus žinios (Vilnius News).
Smetona left the Democratic Party in 1907 to establish a more conserva-
tive nationalist movement and, together with Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas,
founded the periodical Viltis (Hope). Smetona provided a rallying point for
Lithuanian intelligentsia opposed to the Marxist call for class struggle. After
disputes with Catholic elements who were suspicious of Smetona’s liberal
secular views, in 1914–1915 he gathered—around the biweekly Vairas (The
Rudder)—the core of what was to became Lithuania’s nationalist movement.
During World War I, Smetona gained prominence as the head of Lithuanian
relief efforts in Vilnius.
Smetona was chairman of the Lithuanian Council, the Taryba, when it
issued Lithuania’s declaration of independence on 16 February 1918. He
left for Germany in December 1919, ostensibly to seek German assistance
against the invading Red Army, provoking accusations that he was abandon-
ing the country. Nevertheless, Smetona became the Republic’s first president
on 4 April 1919 and served until the convocation of the Constituent Assem-
bly on 19 June 1920. Smetona’s Nationalist Union failed to elect any depu-
ties to Lithuania’s parliament (Seimas) before 1926. He turned to journalism
and became one of the government’s most vocal critics. Smetona also taught
Greek classics at the University of Kaunas and translated much of Plato into
Lithuanian.
Smetona and two Nationalist Union colleagues won election to the Seimas
in May 1926. On 17 December 1926, pro-Nationalist army officers, with
the connivance of the Christian Democrats, overthrew the government of
President Kazys Grinius and Prime Minister Mykolas Sleževičius and chose
Smetona president in a rump session of the Seimas. In April 1927, Smetona
dissolved the parliament and dismissed the Christian Democrats from the
government, initiating a Nationalist dictatorship. A new constitution in 1928

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 SNIEČKUS, ANTANAS • 277

legitimized Smetona’s rule, and by September 1929 he had won his power
struggle with his main rival among the Nationalists, the charismatic premier
Augustinas Voldemaras, replacing him with his brother-in-law, Juozas
Tūbelis.
Smetona based his power on the Nationalist Union, the armed forces, and
a prosperous middle class of farmers, business interests, and professionals.
While all political parties were banned outright in 1935, Smetona’s regime
reserved serious repression only for the political extremes: Communists and
their allies on the left, as well as domestic fascists and Klaipėda’s German
Nazis on the right. Despite a personality cult that emphasized Smetona’s role
as the “Leader of the Nation” (Tautos vadas), Smetona’s authoritarian regime
was neither totalitarian nor fascist. Smetona himself publicly condemned rac-
ism and anti-Semitism, while the government permitted considerable cultural
and religious diversity.
During the 1930s, Smetona’s conservative leadership, especially on land
reform and in foreign relations, came under increasing attack from younger
Nationalist radicals. Others were dissatisfied with his aloof and cautious
manner of rule and even attacked him personally for having married into a
family with allegedly Polish roots. Christian Democrat, Populist, and other
centrist leaders, as well as intellectuals, criticized Smetona’s repressive rule
for creating a climate of political apathy and servility among the populace.
During the international crises of 1939–1940 that threatened Lithuania’s in-
dependence, Smetona reluctantly included opposition members in coalition
governments.
Smetona advocated armed resistance in response to the Soviet ultimatum
of 14 June 1940, but when the majority of the cabinet demurred, he appointed
Prime Minister Antanas Merkys to act in his stead and, together with his
family, escaped into Germany. He then traveled to Switzerland and Brazil
before arriving in the United States in March 1941, eventually settling in
Cleveland, Ohio. Smetona’s public anti-Soviet statements led to problems
with U.S. authorities, and his attempts to create a government in exile failed.
Smetona died in a house fire in Cleveland on 9 January 1944.

SNIEČKUS, ANTANAS (1903–1974). Longtime leader of the Lithu-

anian Communist Party (LCP); born in Šakiai district on 7 January 1903.
Sniečkus was raised in a well-to-do peasant family, but during his studies at
the Lithuanian secondary school in Voronezh between 1915 and 1918, he
began to participate in Marxist study circles. He returned to Lithuania and
joined the LCP in 1920, beginning a long career in Lithuania’s underground
Communist movement. Sniečkus was arrested in 1921 but fled to Soviet
Russia before his trial. He worked as a contributor to Lithuanian Communist

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 278 • SOBIESKI, JOHN

youth periodicals in Smolensk between 1921 and 1925, and then studied eco-
nomics for a year in Moscow, where he also worked in the Lithuanian section
of the Communist International (Comintern).
Sniečkus returned to Lithuania in December 1926 and was coopted into the
LCP’s Central Committee; while in the underground, he edited the Party’s
newspaper, Tiesa (Truth). He was sentenced to prison in 1930, but was
sent to the Soviet Union in 1933 in a prisoner exchange. He worked for the
Comintern until 1936, when he again returned to Lithuania. There, he was
appointed the LCP’s first secretary, serving another jail term in 1939–1940.
Sniečkus was released from prison in June 1940 following the Soviet oc-
cupation of Lithuania and was named director of state security in the People’s
Government. He helped orchestrate the People’s Diet vote for Lithuania’s
incorporation into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). From
1942 to 1944, Sniečkus was chief of staff of the Soviet partisans in German-
occupied Lithuania. In addition to his leadership of the LCP, Sniečkus was
a candidate member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Central
Committee from 1941 to 1952 and a full member from 1952 to 1974. He
was also a deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet. While Sniečkus occupied
no government post within Lithuania, he was the Republic’s most powerful
politician and oversaw the enlargement and entrenchment of the LCP.
Sniečkus held leadership longer than any other Soviet Bloc party boss.
The time he spent in Lithuanian prisons during the 1930s allowed Sniečkus
to avoid Joseph Stalin’s purges of the Lithuanian Communists who had re-
mained in the Soviet Union. Sniečkus’s success in holding onto his position
after 1940 can be credited to his tenacious loyalty to the Kremlin in suppress-
ing any signs of national opposition to Soviet rule, as well as to his ability
to anticipate political changes in Moscow and deflect any challenges to his
authority on the local level. For most Lithuanians of the postwar generation,
he came to personalize the country’s Sovietization. During Sniečkus’s stew-
ardship, the postwar LCP acquired a majority of ethnic Lithuanians by the
1960s; thus, he was instrumental in shaping the Lithuanian nomenklatura.
Sniečkus died in Druskininkai on 22 January 1974. See also ANGARIETIS,
ZIGMAS; KAPSUKAS, VINCAS.

SOBIESKI, JOHN (1629–1696). King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithu-

ania from 1674 to 1696; born in Olesko, Poland, on 17 August 1629 to a
noble family that was prominent in Ruthenia. Sobieski was well educated and
acclaimed as a military commander, participating in battles against the upris-
ing of Bohdan Khmelnytsky (Polish: Chmielnicki) and the Swedish invasion
of the 1640s and 1650s. He was sent as the envoy of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth to Istanbul, where he reportedly learned the Tatar language

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 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY, LITHUANIAN • 279

and became familiar with Ottoman politics and military affairs. Sobieski’s
military successes against the Turks led to his election as king–grand duke in
1674; he was formally crowned in May 1676.
Sobieski’s attempts to forge an alliance with Louis XIV of France against
the growing power of Brandenburg Prussia in the 1670s failed. He achieved
world fame when he gathered a Polish-Lithuanian army against the Ottoman
Turks who were besieging Vienna. On 12 September 1683, the King, as an
ally of the Hapsburgs, led a combined relief force of 74,000 men, including
the army of Charles of Lorraine, which attacked and routed Grand Vizier
Kara Mustafa’s Turkish army. The Lithuanian military units, led by Casimir
John Sapieha, delayed their march and arrived in Austria only after the siege
of Vienna had been broken; Sapieha then marched through Slovakia. So-
bieski pursued and destroyed the Turkish rear guard near Esztergom, opening
the way for Hungary’s liberation from the Ottomans.
Beyond his fame as the savior of Europe, Sobieski proved unsuccessful in
other areas. He failed to prevent Muscovy’s control of Ukraine and his later
anti-Turkish campaigns in Moldavia (Moldova) achieved only limited results.
In domestic affairs, opposition from the Sapieha family and other Lithuanian
nobles hindered the king’s exercise of power. Sobieski died in Warsaw on 17
April 1696.

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY, LITHUANIAN. Lithuanian: Lietuvos

socialdemokratų partija. Lithuanian social democracy developed from Marx-
ist roots in the early 1880s when Lithuanian socialists established the first
links with George Plekhanov’s Liberation of Labor (Russian: Osvobozhdenie
Truda). There was no organized Marxist movement in the country until the
early 1890s, when it gained strength primarily among Jewish workers in
Vilnius, whose earliest leaders were Arkadi Kremer (1865–1935) and the
skilled propagandist Samuel Gozhansky (1867–1943), assisted by the noted
Menshevik, Julius Martov (1873–1923). The Vilnius-based General Jewish
Workers’ Union, commonly known as the Bund, was founded in 1897 and,
at the time, was one of the best organized social democratic groups in the
Russian Empire. Among Gentile workers, socialism first developed among
the Polish proletariat in Lithuanian towns; during the 1890s, a chapter of the
Polish Socialist Party (Polish: Polska Partja Socjalistyczna) was established
in Vilnius. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, founded in Minsk in
1898, became active in Lithuania in 1901.
Socialist ideas developed slowly among ethnic Lithuanians, who com-
prised a fraction of the country’s urban workforce. Nevertheless, in 1896
Andrius Domaševičius (1865–1935) and Alfonsas Moravskis (1868–1941)
founded the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) whose platform

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 280 • SONGAILA, RINGAUDAS

was influenced by the Erfurt Program of the German Social Democrats. The
LSDP was broken up by the tsarist police in 1897–1899 and was reorganized
in 1900–1902. The LSDP published the first significant Lithuanian-language
socialist periodicals, most notably Darbininkų balsas (The Workers’ Voice)
in 1902.
Increasingly, the influx of ethnic Lithuanians into the party raised the
national issue and led to an eventual split within the Lithuanian socialist
movement between those supporting Lithuania’s independence and opposing
Polish predominance, on the one hand, and elements with a more internation-
alist outlook, on the other, the most radical of whom joined the Bolsheviks.
By the time of the emergence of independent Lithuania in 1918, the Social
Democrats had become a major force in the country’s politics, achieving their
greatest success in the May 1926 elections when the party won 15 of 85 seats
in the Seimas and was able to form a left-of-center coalition government
together with the Peasant Populist Union and the minority parties.
After the military coup of December 1926, the LSDP was harassed by
Antanas Smetona’s Nationalist Union regime, but it is estimated that be-
tween the wars it had more than 3,000 members and nearly 20,000 support-
ers within the youth movement and among trade unions. In June 1940, the
LSDP was suppressed, and its members joined other parties in resistance to
both the Soviet and Nazi occupations. After 1944, the LSDP remained active
in the diaspora, led by Steponas Kairys and Kipras Bielinis (1883–1965).
The Lithuanian Social Democratic Alliance in the United States published a
Lithuanian-language weekly, Keleivis (The Traveler), in Boston from 1905
until 1979.
Since the restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990, the LSDP has
reappeared in Lithuania; the party won seven seats in the parliamentary
elections of October 1992 and 12 seats to the Seimas in the elections of Oc-
tober–November 1996. In 2001, the majority of the LSDP agreed to merge
with the larger Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party, and as a consequence,
the Social Democrats became the major political left-of-center force under
the leadership of the former president, Algirdas Brazauskas. The party won
20 seats in the 2004 Seimas elections and spearheaded a center-left coalition
government under Gediminas Kirkilas until 2008. The LSDP won 25 seats
in the October 2008 parliamentary elections but lost power to a conservative
coalition led by Andrius Kubilius. In March 2009, Algirdas Butkevičius
(1958– ) was elected chairman of the LSDP. See also COMMUNIST
PARTY, LITHUANIAN; POLITICAL PARTIES.

SONGAILA, RINGAUDAS (1929– ). Politician and leader of the Lithu-

anian Communist Party (LCP); born in Klaipėda on 20 April 1929. A mem-

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 SOVIET-LITHUANIAN MUTUAL ASSISTANCE TREATY • 281

ber of the LCP Central Committee since 1962, Songaila served in a number
of government positions, culminating in his appointment as chairman of the
Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic’s Council of Ministers (1981–1985)
and then chairman of the Republic’s Supreme Soviet (1985–1987). Songaila
served briefly as the LCP first secretary from December 1987 until October
1988 when he was replaced by Algirdas Brazauskas. As Soviet Lithuania’s
last hard-line Communist Party leader, Songaila is mostly remembered for his
unsuccessful attempts to resist reform and the growing power of the Sąjūdis
movement.

SOVIET UNION (UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS,

USSR). See RUSSIA.

SOVIET-LITHUANIAN MUTUAL ASSISTANCE TREATY (1939).

The Soviet-German Treaty of Friendship of 28 September 1939, the second
Nazi-Soviet pact of that year, amended the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23
August 1939 and assigned Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence. On
3 October 1939, Lithuanian foreign minister Juozas Urbšys was called to
Moscow, where Joseph Stalin proposed that Lithuania and the Union of So-
viet Socialist Republics (USSR) sign two treaties: one transferring Vilnius to
Lithuania (which had been foreseen in the Nazi-Soviet treaty of 23 August)
and a mutual assistance pact providing for Soviet military bases in Lithuania.
On 7 October, a larger Lithuanian delegation arrived in Moscow, including
Urbšys, the army commander Gen. Stasys Raštikis, and Deputy Prime Min-
ister Kazys Bizauskas (1893–1941). Despite fears of a Soviet military pres-
ence in the country, the prospect of the return of Vilnius as well as threats
from the Kremlin persuaded Lithuania to sign the “Treaty on the Transfer of
Vilnius and on Soviet-Lithuanian Mutual Assistance” on 10 October 1939.
Stalin combined the treaties concerning Vilnius and the mutual assistance
pact into a single treaty, which gave the appearance that the return of Vilnius
was a reward for the acceptance of Red Army bases—an impression Lithu-
ania had been anxious to avoid.
Article 1 of the treaty proclaimed the transfer of Soviet-occupied Vilnius
to Lithuania, on the basis that it had been “unlawfully wrested from Lithuania
by Poland,” and reaffirmed the Soviet-Lithuanian treaties of 1920 and 1926
as the basis for relations between the two countries. The mutual assistance
provisions (Articles 2–9) mandated common defense in case of a military
threat to Lithuania or the USSR “by any European power” and, most impor-
tant, envisioned the stationing of Soviet land and air forces of “strictly limited
strength” in Lithuania. The pact, it was emphasized, was not to “affect in any
way the sovereign rights of the contracting parties, in particular their State

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 282 • SOVIET-LITHUANIAN PEACE TREATY

organizations, economic and social system,” and was to respect “the principle
of non-intervention in internal affairs generally.”
The treaty, which was to run for 15 years with a possible ten-year exten-
sion, was accompanied by a secret protocol detailing the deployment and
number of Soviet troops (20,000), as well as a map outlining that part of
Vilnius territory that was being transferred to Lithuania. The area assigned
to Lithuania was only a fraction of the territory granted to the Republic of
Lithuania in the Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty of 1920; however, it did
include the greater part of the Lithuanian-speaking area in the Vilnius region.
Another secret protocol to the 1939 Soviet-Lithuanian pact allowed Lithuania
to exercise neutrality, with the Kremlin’s permission, if the USSR became
involved in a war with a “third party.” A similar condition had been extended
to Estonia and Latvia, which were also forced to sign similar pacts with the
Soviet Union. These protocols proved useful in enabling the Baltic States to
avoid the embarrassing prospect of supporting the Soviet campaign against
Finland in 1939–1940.
Public reaction to the Soviet-Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty differed
significantly from that in Latvia and Estonia. For most Lithuanians, despite
their basic antipathy to Communism, the establishment of Soviet bases in Oc-
tober 1939 was accompanied by the fulfillment of a cherished national dream:
the return of Vilnius. Nevertheless, the pact curtailed Lithuania’s freedom of
action in foreign relations and was a prelude to the Soviet occupation of the
country in June 1940. See also VILNIUS QUESTION.

SOVIET-LITHUANIAN PEACE TREATY (1920). Treaty signed in

Moscow that formally renounced Russian sovereignty over Lithuania. The
defeat of the Bolsheviks in Lithuania in 1919 led Vladmir Lenin’s Soviet
Russian government to propose armistice negotiations with the Lithuanian
government on 11 September 1919, thus granting de facto recognition to the
Republic of Lithuania. The peace negotiations commenced on 7 May 1920
and proceeded quickly since, at the time, Soviet Russia was hard-pressed in
its war with Poland.
In Article 1 of the treaty signed on 12 July 1920, Soviet Russia acknowl-
edged Lithuania’s independence “in perpetuity.” Article 2 assigned Lithuania
generous boundaries encompassing parts of what is now Belarus and Poland,
including the historic towns of Grodno and Augustów—regions that were
once part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania but where ethnic Lithuanians
were now a minority. Article 4 committed both countries not to allow the
formation of armed groups on its territory hostile to the other state. Other
important provision included Russia’s promise to cancel the Lithuanian por-

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 STANISŁAW I LESZCZYŃ SKI • 283

tion of any state debts incurred during the tsarist period; to return cultural
treasures, such as the Lithuanian Metrica; and to compensate war damages.
The 1920 borders envisioned in the treaty were never realized, and the
compensation provisions were only partially fulfilled. Nevertheless, in as-
serting their right to independence, Lithuanians have tended to emphasize
the Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty of 1920 as the legal basis for defining
Lithuania’s relations with the Soviet Union, particularly since the treaty
was never formally abrogated. A few nationalist Lithuanians still claim the
1920 territorial provisions as the legitimate borders of the Lithuanian state,
although the country’s government has repeatedly stressed the inviolability
of the present borders.

STANEVIČIUS, SIMONAS (1799–1848). Lithuanian writer; born in Rasei-

niai district on 26 October 1799. Descended from Samogitian petty gentry,
Stanevičius graduated from the University of Vilnius in 1826, after which
he obtained a position with the noble Plater family as their chief librarian.
While Stanevičius wrote on a number of topics, including history, religion,
and linguistics, he is most remembered for his work in folklore. In 1829, he
published Dainos žemaičių (Samogitian Songs), a highly regarded collection
of Lithuanian folk songs. Stanevičius also produced fiction in the form of
popular fables, exhorting his readers to love the Lithuanian language and
take pride in the country’s past. Along with Dionizas Poška, Stanevičius is
considered one of the most talented figures in the so-called Samogitian move-
ment, which fostered a renaissance in Lithuanian studies during the first half
of the 19th century. He died on 27 February 1848 near Švėkšna. See also
LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

STANISŁAW I LESZCZYŃSKI (1677–1766). King of Poland and Grand

Duke of Lithuania from 1706 to 1709 and again in 1733; born on 20 Octo-
ber 1677 in Lviv, Ukraine. In 1699, Leszczyński was appointed palatine of
Poznań. In 1704, the Polish-Lithuanian Electoral Diet deposed Augustus
II, who had been supported by Russia, and chose Leszczyński, Sweden’s
favorite candidate, as king. In 1706, Augustus agreed to Stanisław’s election
in the Treaty of Altranstädt with Charles XII but Leszczyński reigned only
briefly; as a result of Russia’s victory over Sweden in 1709, Augustus II was
able to regain the throne. Leszczyński fled to France, where he achieved some
influence when his daughter Marie married King Louis XV; as a result, he
acquired the Duchy of Lorraine. After the death of Augustus II in 1733, the
Commonwealth’s Diet once again elected Leszczyński king but within weeks
the Russian government forced him to abdicate in favor of Augustus III.

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 284 • STANKEVIČIUS, LAURYNAS MINDAUGAS

Thus, during his brief reigns, Stanisław I was never able to really rule Po-
land-Lithuania. Returning to France, Leszczyński devoted himself to arts and
letters at his ducal court in Lunéville, which gained fame as one of the centers
of the Polish Enlightenment. Leszczyński himself published numerous works
on politics and philosophy; in some of his writings, he criticized the systemic
weaknesses of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was the author of
one of the most influential Polish reformist polemics of the time, Głos wolny
wolność ubezpieczający (A Free Voice Insuring Freedom), published in 1749.
Leszczyński died in France on 23 February 1766.

STANKEVIČIUS, LAURYNAS MINDAUGAS (1935– ). Politician and

prime minister; born on 10 August 1935 in Aukštadvaris. During the 1950s
and 1960s, Stankevičius worked as a senior economist at the Ministry of
Finance of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1969 to 1978, he
served as deputy to Soviet Lithuania’s representative in Moscow, and from
1978 to 1993 was deputy assistant to the chairman of the State Labor Com-
mittee. Stankevičius was minister of social security during 1993–1994, and
from 1994 to 1996 he headed the Ministry for the Reform of Public Admin-
istration. Stankevičius was appointed prime minister on 23 February 1996
after the dismissal of Adolfas Šleževičius on charges of corruption. Follow-
ing the parliamentary elections of October 1996, Stankevičius’s caretaker
government was replaced by a conservative coalition headed by Gediminas
Vagnorius.

STOLYPIN, PETER (1862–1911). Prime minister of Russia and tsarist of-

ficial in Lithuania; born in Dresden on 14 April 1862. The Stolypin family
had extensive landholdings in Kalnaberžė and other estates in the Kaunas
gubernia. Stolypin held various administrative posts in Kaunas; between
1887 and 1902, he served as the chairman of the gubernia’s nobility. He was
appointed governor of Grodno in 1902 and then served as governor of Sara-
tov from 1903 to 1906. In 1906, Stolypin was appointed prime minister by
Tsar Nicholas II and became known for an ambitious agrarian reform as well
as the violent suppression of revolutionary activities in the Russian Empire,
including the Lithuanian national movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHU-
ANIAN), during the period 1905–1907. Stolypin was a strong supporter of
Russification policies. He was assassinated in Kiev on 5 September 1911.
See also REVOLUTION OF 1905.

STULGINSKIS, ALEKSANDRAS (1885–1969). One of Lithuania’s prom-

inent Catholic politicians and its president from 1920 to 1926; born in Ra-
seiniai district on 26 February 1885. Stulginskis attended theology courses
at the University of Innsbruck, but later enrolled in agricultural studies. He

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 SUPREME COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF LITHUANIA • 285

worked as an agronomist in Lithuania during World War I. Stulginskis be-

came one of the leaders of the Christian Democratic movement, and in 1917
was elected to the Lithuanian Council, the Taryba. He was one of the signa-
tories of the 16 February 1918 declaration of independence. Soon afterward,
Stulginskis came to head the Lithuanian Farmers Union (Lietuvos u–kininkų
sąjunga), which, together with the Christian Democrats, formed the basis
for the Catholic Bloc in Lithuanian politics during the 1920s. In 1918 and
1919, Stulginskis served as deputy prime minister, as well as minister of
the interior and minister of agriculture. In 1920, he was elected speaker of
Lithuania’s Constituent Assembly and thus head of state.
Under the terms of the Constitution of 1922, Stulginskis was formally
chosen president by the Seimas and served in the office until June 1926. As
president, Stulginskis was remembered as a serious and hardworking ex-
ecutive who eschewed political ambition. After the National Union coup of
December 1926, he was again chosen speaker of the parliament until its dis-
solution in April 1927. Thereafter he retired to his farm in western Lithuania,
occasionally appearing in public and stressing the need for democracy. In
June 1941, Stulginskis and his wife were deported to Siberia by the Soviets,
but were allowed to return to Lithuania in 1956. Stulginskis died in Kaunas
on 22 September 1969.

SUPREME COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF LITHUANIA.

Lithuanian: Vyriausias Lietuvos išlaisvinimo komitetas (VLIK). Lithuanian
resistance group that claimed leadership in the efforts to restore Lithuania’s
independence. During the Nazi occupation, the major non-Communist re-
sistance and political groups sought ways to establish a body to coordinate
efforts to liberate Lithuania. The sense of urgency was heightened by the
perception of impending Allied victory and the approach of the Soviet army
in the wake of the German retreat. The Supreme Committee, which was to
become better known by its Lithuanian acronym VLIK, was founded on 25
November 1943 and represented the Christian Democrats, Peasant Popu-
lists, Social Democrats, Nationalist Union, Freedom Fighters’ Alliance,
and other groups. VLIK made its first public appeal on 16 February 1944,
proclaiming the restoration of Lithuania’s independence as its primary goal
and declaring itself the legitimate provisional authority in Lithuania until a
coalition government could be established; the group’s head in 1944–1945
was the Social Democratic leader, Steponas Kairys.
In the spring of 1944, German police arrested VLIK’s courier to Sweden,
penetrated the resistance network, and arrested nine of its leading members.
In expectation of the return of the Soviet army to Lithuania, VLIK appointed
a group to work in the West, where virtually all of its activity took place

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 286 • SUVALKIJA

after 1945. Between 1945 and 1955, while VLIK was headquartered in the
American zone of occupied Germany, it was led by Monsignor Mykolas
Krupavičius. In 1955, the headquarters of VLIK was transferred to New
York.
VLIK was initially the most active émigré political coalition, but its influ-
ence was undercut by persistent feuding between the constituent factions and
its often uneasy relationship with Lithuanian diplomatic representatives still
accredited in Western countries. Moreover, after the 1960s, other organizations
such as the Lithuanian Community (Bendruomenė) gained an increasing role
among the postwar diaspora. VLIK was formally disbanded after Lithuania de-
clared independence in 1990; its longtime leader, Dr. Kazys Bobelis (1923– ),
was elected to the Seimas in 1992 and headed the parliament’s foreign rela-
tions committee. See also POLITICAL PARTIES; UNITED STATES.

SUVALKIJA. Polish: Suwałki, Suwalszczyzna. Region of southwestern

Lithuania, located to the south and west of the Nemunas River, often referred
to in Lithuanian as Užnemunė—literally, the Trans-Nemunas territory—or
as Sūduva, the land of the Sudovians. Agricultural settlements appeared
relatively late in southwestern Lithuania. Until the 13th century, Suvalkija
was inhabited by the Sudovians (Lithuanian: sūduviai), also known as the
Yotvingians (Lithuanian: jotvingiai), a Baltic tribe speaking a dialect close
to Old Prussian, who were either exterminated by the Teutonic Knights or
assimilated by Lithuanians during the later Middle Ages. Most of the region
reverted to wilderness, which served as a buffer between the warring crusad-
ers and Lithuanians. In the 15th century, Lithuanian peasants increasingly
penetrated Suvalkija from the north, while Slavic, predominantly Polish,
settlers moved in from the south into the Augustów lake region. Towns and
Crown estates, later known as economies, were established in Suvalkija
after the Volok Reform of the mid-16th century. The final partition of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth placed Suvalkija under Prussian rule
between 1795 and 1807, when it became part of the Duchy of Warsaw, one
of Napoleon’s protectorates.
After 1815, Suvalkija came under the Kingdom of Poland, whose auton-
omy within the Russian Empire was restricted after 1831 and abolished after
the insurrection of 1863–1864. Suvalkija formed part of Augustów province
until 1867, after which it was included in the smaller Suwałki gubernia, with
the town of Suwałki as its capital. The Russian imperial census of 1897 found
that Lithuanians formed 52 percent of the population of the province; dur-
ing the 19th century, the Czarna Hańcza River, which runs through Suwałki
city, was the approximate ethnic dividing line between Lithuanian and Polish
speakers.

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 SUWAŁKI DEMARCATION AGREEMENT • 287

Since 1920, the region has been divided between Lithuania and Poland.
There are currently at least 10,000 ethnic Lithuanians living on the Polish side
of the border, primarily around the towns of Puńsk and Sejny. The eastern
edges of Lithuanian Suvalkija are inhabited by speakers of the dzūkai dialect,
while the main part of the region belongs to the suvalkiečiai, or Suvalkian,
dialect. The latter speakers are often stereotyped by other Lithuanians as in-
dustrious and thrifty to a fault.
Southwestern Lithuania played a crucial role in the development of the
modern Lithuanian nation. The preponderance of royal estates in the region
and the abolition of serfdom in 1807 led to better economic conditions for
Suvalkija’s peasantry compared to other regions of the country. During the
late 19th century, the majority of Lithuania’s intelligentsia came from this
region, most of them children of prosperous peasantry and graduates of the
Marijampolė secondary school. The kapsai dialect of northern Suvalkija
forms much of the basis of the modern Lithuanian literary language. See also
–
DZUKIJA; NATIONALISM.

SUWAŁKI DEMARCATION AGREEMENT (1920). Polish-Lithuanian

armistice. Following the capture of Vilnius by the Polish army in April
1919, there were continuous clashes between Polish and Lithuanian forces,
despite a number of armistice and demarcation agreements. The Red Army’s
counterattack of the summer of 1920 forced a Polish retreat from eastern and
southern Lithuania. The Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty of 12 July 1920
transferred Vilnius to Lithuania, and Lithuanian forces entered the city on 26
August. In September, Lithuanian and Polish delegations met in Suwałki to
negotiate a demarcation agreement that would prevent any further fighting.
On 7 October 1920, the two sides signed an agreement to end the military
conflict, exchange prisoners, and, most important, draw a temporary line of
demarcation to separate the two forces. The agreement left Vilnius in Lithu-
anian hands.
Almost immediately after the signing of the Suwałki agreement, a Polish
force under the command of Gen. Lucjan Żeligowski attacked the Lithu-
anian army and on 9 October seized Vilnius. The fighting ended after an
armistice brokered by the League of Nations on 29 November. At the time,
Żeligowski’s force was described as a mutinous army of renegade local
troops, but Polish leader Marshal Józef Piłsudski later admitted that the gen-
eral was acting under orders from Warsaw.
Among Lithuanians, the violation of the Suwałki accord was a bitter turn-
ing point in relations with Poland. A copy of the violated agreement was
placed on prominent display in the Military Museum in Kaunas to remind
the populace of the treachery. More than any other event, the violation of

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 288 • ŠVITRIGAILA

the agreement and the Żeligowski invasion mobilized Lithuanian opinion

around the Vilnius Question. This irredentism dominated the political life
of independent Lithuania between the wars and was the fundamental cause
of Polish-Lithuanian conflict in the 20th century. See also WORLD WAR I.

ŠVITRIGAILA (c. 1370–1452). Grand Duke of Lithuania (1430–1432).

Švitrigaila was the youngest son of Algirdas and his second wife, Juliana
of Tver. Very little is known of his early life. In 1386, he was baptized in
Cracow as Bolesław, although he is rarely mentioned by his Christian name.
After his mother’s death, Švitrigaila became Prince of Vitebsk, but he was
removed from that position by his cousin Vytautas when the latter came to
power in Lithuania. Švitrigaila became a perennial pretender to the Lithu-
anian throne, dissatisfied with the lands that he was given to rule in western
Podolia and Novgorod-Seversky (Ukrainian: Novhorod-Siverskyi). At dif-
ferent times, Švitrigaila allied himself with the Teutonic Knights and the
Muscovite Grand Duke Vasilii against Vytautas, who finally imprisoned
Švitrigaila between 1409 and 1418. Švitrigaila escaped but in 1419, after
unsuccessful attempts to gain support in Hungary and at the Church Council
in Constance, he made peace with Vytautas and was given to rule Lithuanian
principalities in the Slavic eastern part of the Grand Duchy.
Upon Vytautas’s death in 1430, Švitrigaila was chosen as grand duke. His
election provoked a war with Poland over the legitimate accession to the
Lithuanian throne, since Švitrigaila refused to acknowledge the King of Po-
land, his brother Jogaila, as his suzerain. Poles and Lithuanians also fought
over the disputed lands of Volynia and Podolia. Vytautas’s younger brother
Sigismund Kęstutaitis overthrew Švitrigaila in 1432 with Polish support.
Sigismund’s coup provoked a costly civil war as Švitrigaila sought allies
among Lithuania’s eastern princes, the Tatars of the Golden Horde, and the
Livonian Order branch of the Teutonic Knights. Švitrigaila’s forces suf-
fered a decisive defeat at Pabaiskas in 1435, although he continued a fruitless
struggle against Sigismund in the Grand Duchy’s south and east, which he
controlled until 1437. After Grand Duke Sigismund’s assassination in 1440,
Švitrigaila ruled in Lutsk and sought to assert Lithuanian authority in Volynia
and Podolia. He died in Lutsk on 10 February 1452.
Švitrigaila was one of the most controversial and contentious rulers of me-
dieval Lithuania. His political struggles illustrated the fragility of the Polish-
Lithuanian dynastic alliance of 1386. Švitrigaila’s opposition to union with
Poland earned him the enmity of the Polish nobility and their Lithuanian sup-
porters, who accused him of favoring Russian Orthodoxy. At the same time,
this gained him the reputation among Lithuanians as a kind of early patriot.
In his attempts to strengthen the unity of the Lithuanian state, Švitrigaila tried

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 SWEDEN • 289

repeatedly but unsuccessfully to unite the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in

the Grand Duchy. See also POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH.

SWEDEN. The Kingdom of Sweden played an important role in the affairs

of Lithuania and Poland, especially in the early modern period. Swedish
Vikings are known to have raided the eastern Baltic Sea littoral, including
lands inhabited by the Balts. Sweden’s impact on Lithuania came to be felt
during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, when Sigismund III Vasa was
elected king–grand duke of Poland-Lithuania in 1587, thus involving the
Commonwealth in Swedish dynastic struggles. Estonia and much of what
is now Latvia, including Riga, came under Swedish rule between 1561 and
the end of Sweden’s war with Poland-Lithuania, which concluded with the
Treaty of Altmark in 1629.
Since the mid-17th century, especially after the conclusion of the Thirty
Years’ War (1618–1648), the eastern Baltic region was racked by a decades-
long, extremely destructive conflict involving Poland-Lithuania, Muscovy,
and Sweden. In 1655, Muscovite armies seized Vilnius, while a massive
Swedish invasion of Poland by King Charles X Gustav overran virtually
the entire western Commonwealth—a military and political disaster known
in Polish-Lithuanian history as “the Deluge” (Polish: Potop). During this
Second Northern War (1655–1660), much of the Lithuanian gentry felt
abandoned by Poland, and in October 1655 a number of magnates led by
the Radziwiłłs signed the Treaty of Kėdainiai joining the Grand Duchy to
Sweden. However, the agreement was never put into effect because of op-
position by the Sapiehas and the remarkable military recovery of the Com-
monwealth’s forces later in the war. In the Treaty of Oliwa concluded in April
1660, John Casimir Vasa renounced his claim to the Swedish throne and
formally ceded Livonia to Sweden.
During the initial phase of the Great Northern War (1700–1721), Charles
X invaded Poland-Lithuania, defeated the forces of Augustus II the Strong,
and installed the pro-Swedish Stanisław I Leszczyński as king–grand duke
in 1706. But Swedish fortunes took a disastrous turn when Russia routed
King Charles’s forces at Poltava in 1709. Augustus II was reinstated as king–
grand duke of the Commonwealth. The Russian-Swedish Treaty of Nystadt
in 1721 transferred all of Livonia and Estonia to Russia, effectively ending
Swedish hegemony in the eastern Baltic. The tsarist empire now became the
major force in eastern Europe and an increasingly dominating factor in the
internal politics of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

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 T
TARGOWICA, CONFEDERATION OF. A confederation of conservative
Polish-Lithuanian nobility established in 1792. Following the First Partition
of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, a reinvigorated reform
movement sought to save the remainder of the state from foreign, especially
Russian, interference. The culmination of the movement was the Four-Year
Diet of 1788–1792, which adopted the Constitution of 1791 based on liberal,
Enlightenment principles. Seeking to preserve Russian influence in the Com-
monwealth, Empress Catherine II (R. 1762–1796) encouraged the formation
of an alliance of conservative Polish-Lithuanian gentry led by magnates who
feared the loss of their feudal privileges and were opposed to a centralized
state. Members of the Catholic hierarchy, mindful of the secularizing poli-
cies of the French Revolution, were also wary of the reform movement. In
Lithuania, some of the nobility were unhappy with the provisions of the new
constitution that abolished the Grand Duchy.
After concluding her war with Turkey in 1792, the Russian empress in
April invited prominent Polish-Lithuanian conservatives to St. Petersburg,
where they ratified the requisite act of confederation. The actual document
was proclaimed in the town of Targowica (Ukrainian: Targovitsa) on 14 May
1792 under the leadership of Stanisław Potocki (1753–1805), Seweryn Rze-
wuski (1743–1811), and other prominent landowners. Another similar act of
confederation was proclaimed in Vilnius on 25 June; here the most prominent
leaders of the conservative movement were Ignacy Massalski, the Bishop of
Vilnius, and the Kossakowski family. Later in 1792, the Polish and Lithu-
anian confederates united into a single movement supported by the Russian
army, which then invaded the Commonwealth.
King Stanisław II Poniatowski initially sided with the reformers, but the
royal force of 36,000 men proved no match for the superior Russian military.
In August 1792, Poniatowski went over to the Confederation. A new Com-
monwealth Diet, convened in Grodno from June to October 1793, reversed
the reforms; it was surrounded by Russian troops who arrested any deputies
opposed to Catherine.

291

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 292 • TARYBA

The Confederation of Targowica initiated the death throes of the Polish-

Lithuanian Commonwealth inasmuch as the movement led directly to the
Second Partition of the state between Russia and Prussia. The leaders of the
Targowica movement, which provoked the desperate uprising of 1794 led by
Tadeusz Kościuszko, were widely viewed as traitors and some of them, like
Massalski, were executed by the Polish-Lithuanian rebels during the anti-
Russian insurrection. In turn, the revolutionary events of 1794–1795 led to
the final partition of the Polish-Lithuanian state and its disappearance from
the map of Europe.

TARYBA. Name of the Lithuanian council that declared Lithuanian inde-

pendence on 16 February 1918. In September 1917, seeking to neutralize
growing anti-German sentiment in Lithuania and fearing the spread of
revolution, the German military authorities permitted the convocation of a
Lithuanian conference in Vilnius. The conference rejected the notion of serv-
ing as a mere advisory body and set as its ultimate goal the establishment of
an independent Lithuanian state, albeit with unspecified ties to Germany. On
21 September, the conference elected the Council of Lithuania (Lithuanian:
Lietuvos Taryba), headed by Antanas Smetona. Commonly known simply
as the Taryba, the body asserted that it was the legitimate representative of
the people of Lithuania. In order to negotiate the structure of Lithuanian
statehood, members of the Taryba traveled to Germany to consult with the
Kaiser’s government in October and attended conferences of Lithuanian rep-
resentatives in Bern and Stockholm in October and November.
On 11 December 1917, under pressure from German authorities who
were eager to use the Lithuanian card in their peace negotiations with the
Bolsheviks at Brest-Litovsk, the Taryba declared Lithuania’s conditional
independence with “eternal” military and economic ties to Germany. In Janu-
ary, several members of the Taryba, led by Steponas Kairys, left the body
in protest against what they considered the council’s pro-German stance.
The split in the Taryba was soon healed, and on 16 February 1918 a new
declaration of independence was signed without any reference to Germany.
The date of this declaration announcing the restoration of the Lithuanian state
based on a democratic political structure and the “severing of all ties that had
bound Lithuania to any other nation in the past” has since been celebrated as
Lithuania’s national Independence Day. The new state was to have its capital
in Vilnius, but the precise form of government was to be decided by a con-
stituent assembly elected through universal suffrage. The Germans rejected
the document of 16 February but on 23 March, the Kaiser’s government
recognized Lithuania’s independence on the basis of the Taryba’s earlier

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 TATARS • 293

declaration. On 11 July, the Taryba formally took the title of the Lithuanian
State Council (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Valstybės Taryba).
During 1918, the Taryba sought to neutralize Berlin’s plans to transform
Lithuania into a German protectorate. That summer, the council invited
Prince William of Urach to assume a Lithuanian throne as King Mindaugas
II, once again provoking a walkout by leftist Taryba members. The plans for
a monarchy became irrelevant upon Germany’s military and political col-
lapse; on 28 October, the Taryba created a three-man presidium to head the
Lithuanian state, made up of Smetona, Rev. Justinas Staugaitis (1866–1943),
and Jurgis Šaulys. This led to the creation of independent Lithuania’s first
government, headed by Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras, on 11
November 1918. In January 1919, the Taryba left Vilnius in the wake of
the Bolshevik advance and transferred its activities to Kaunas. In April, the
council elected Smetona Lithuania’s first president and continued to operate
as a kind of ad hoc parliament, helping create the foundations for the new
Lithuanian state and seeking foreign recognition. The Taryba formally ended
its existence with the convocation of Lithuania’s Constituent Assembly on 15
May 1920. See also POLITICAL PARTIES; WORLD WAR I.

TATARS. The Tatars, sometimes incorrectly termed Mongols, emerged as a

distinct Islamic people speaking a Turkic language during the 13th and 14th
centuries, when they began establishing powerful khanates in the eastern
and southeastern regions of European Russia exacting tribute from local
Christian princes. A complex relationship developed between the Tatars
and Lithuanians between the 13th and 16th centuries. The Lithuanian rulers
came into contact with the Tatars during Lithuania’s expansion into Rus’; in
1254–1255, Mindaugas clashed with the Tatars over the formerly Kievan
lands east of Lithuania. The Tatar military leader Burundai of the Golden
Horde, the most powerful of the Tatar states, is known to have invaded
Lithuania sometime in 1258–1260 and again during the reign of Traidenis.
In later times, the Tatars were occasional allies of the Lithuanians against
the crusading orders as well as against Muscovy. Beginning with the reign
of Gediminas, the Grand Duchy came into conflict with the Golden Horde
over control of Ukraine. Some chronicles report that about 1360 Algirdas
achieved an important victory over the Tatars at the Battle of Blue Waters
(Russian: Sinye Vody), but there are few reliable sources on Lithuanian-Tatar
relations until the late 14th century.
Grand Duke Vytautas attempted to exploit civil discord within the Golden
Horde. In 1399, he launched an ambitious expedition of combined Lithu-
anian and Teutonic Knight forces against the Tatars in an attempt to place

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 294 • TEMPERANCE BROTHERHOOD

his protégé, Tamerlane’s enemy Tokhtamysh, on the khan’s throne and thus
subdue the Golden Horde as a Lithuanian vassal state. However, Vytautas’s
army was virtually annihilated by the Tatars at the decisive Battle of Vork-
sla; chronicles report that the grand duke himself barely escaped capture. In
1410, a Tatar detachment joined the Polish-Lithuanian force at the Battle of
Grunwald against the Teutonic Knights.
During the later 15th and 16th centuries, Lithuania continued to intervene
in the Tatar states. After the disintegration of the Golden Horde, the Crimean
khanate became an object of Lithuanian-Muscovite-Ottoman rivalry. Even-
tually the Ottomans gained decisive influence in the Crimea, while the
Muscovites conquered the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan in the mid-16th
century. After these events, the Tatar role in Lithuanian policy diminished.
A number of Tatars, mainly soldiers and nobles who fled the civil wars of
the Golden Horde, settled in the Lithuanian Grand Duchy during the 15th
and 16th centuries. The majority were given the status of free people, and
although their rights were somewhat restricted by the Lithuanian Statute
of 1566, they continued to serve in separate detachments in the grand duke’s
army. Among other Tatars, the Lithuanian branch came to be viewed as a
distinct ethnic subunit of the Tatar nation. Small communities of Lithuanian
Tatars have survived into the 20th century.
During the interwar period, there were three Muslim Tatar communities in
Lithuania, including one in Kaunas, where a new mosque was constructed
in 1930. In eastern Lithuania, the Tatar community was estimated at nearly
8,000 before World War II. The best known settlement there is the Village
of Forty Tatars (Lithuanian: Keturiasdešimt Totorių Kaimas), located near
Vilnius. Most Lithuanian Tatars have linguistically assimilated into their sur-
rounding Polish and Lithuanian communities; however, in recent years, the
Lithuanian Tatar Association and the government have worked to preserve
the Tatars’ cultural heritage. The Department of Statistics estimated that in
2009 there were about 2,500 Tatars in Lithuania, constituting most of the
country’s nearly 3,000 Sunni Muslims.

TEMPERANCE BROTHERHOOD. Lithuanian: Blaivybės brolija. A so-

cial and religious movement primarily of the mid-19th century. Temperance
movements were inspired by a perceptible increase in alcohol abuse, espe-
cially in the villages; tsarist officials reported an epidemic of public drunken-
ness. Much of the problem stemmed from either compulsory consumption
quotas or intense marketing of drinks aimed at the peasants by landowners,
many of whom enjoyed a hereditary monopoly on the distilling of alcohol
(Polish: propinacja, Lithuanian: propinacija; derived from the Latin propin-
are, “to drink to one’s health”). In many cases, this lucrative business formed

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 TEUTONIC KNIGHTS • 295

the main source of income for proprietors. Another contributing factor was
the sharp drop in the cost of alcohol due to the substitution of potatoes for
grain in the production of spirits.
The Russian government tried stricter policing and reduced the number of
market days in order to combat public disorder. However, the most dramatic
response to the crisis was the emergence of the temperance societies. Similar
to the abstinence societies created by Father Theobald Mathew (1790–1856)
in Ireland in the late 1830s, the Lithuanian movement demanded total absti-
nence and was encouraged by the Catholic clergy and enforced by a solemn
pledge within the membership of a society or “brotherhood.” Local absti-
nence groups were organized by some priests in northern Lithuania during the
1840s, but in the late 1850s Bishop Motiejus Valančius of Samogitia took
the initiative to involve the peasantry as a whole.
In October 1858, Valančius issued a pastoral letter urging all Catholic
churches to organize chapters of the temperance brotherhood. By 1860, the
temperance movement had organized the majority of the inhabitants of Samo-
gitia and thence spread rapidly to the rest of Lithuania; some estimates claim
that nearly 95 percent of parishioners in certain regions had taken the pledge
and that alcohol consumption may have been reduced by four-fifths. The ab-
stinence pamphlets, posters, and religious publications that accompanied the
movement had a considerable impact on spreading literacy in the Lithuanian
language and revealed the potential power of the Church in organizing the
peasantry for social action.
The temperance brotherhood was vigorously opposed by the landowners
who controlled the liquor monopoly, as well as the largely Jewish tavern
keepers who administered the sale of alcohol. The tsarist government grew
alarmed at the implications of a huge popular movement beyond its control,
as well as the decline in liquor tax receipts, and censored most of the absti-
nence publications. In 1863, Governor-General Mikhail Muravyev banned
all organized attempts to encourage abstinence as a danger to the state. In the
Lithuanian lands of the Russian Empire, the individual proprietary rights to
distill spirits were replaced by the lucrative Russian state liquor monopoly
in 1898.

TEUTONIC KNIGHTS. German crusading order that played a pivotal role

in medieval Lithuanian history.
Early Origins. The origins of the Teutonic Order reach back to the Third
Crusade and the establishment of the Order of the Hospital of St. Mary of the
Germans of Jerusalem in 1190. In 1198, the order was reformed as a mili-
tary organization whose elite was made up largely of knights, mostly friars,
drawn from the German nobility; since then, it has usually been referred to

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 296 • TEUTONIC KNIGHTS

as the Teutonic Order. The order was headed by a master (later grand mas-
ter) elected by the knights; it grew remarkably after the election of Master
Hermann Von Salza in 1210. Much of the Teutonic Order transferred to
Hungary, where King Andrew enlisted their help against the pagan Cumans;
but the Hungarians came to fear the power of the Knights and expelled them
in 1225. The Holy Land remained the order’s concern until the fall of Acre
in 1289.
In 1226, Conrad of Mazovia appealed to the Teutonic Knights for assis-
tance against the Prussians, and the first knights arrived in the Baltic Sea
region in 1230. The Teutonic Order acquired a charter from Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick II, the Golden Bull of Rimini, granting the grand master
the status of a prince of the Holy Roman Empire as well as title to the lands
conquered during the Northern Crusades.
Crusade in the Baltic. Between 1230 and 1273, the Teutonic Knights,
known among the Balts as the Knights of the Cross (Lithuanian: kryžiuočiai),
managed to conquer the Prussian tribes and, thus, laid the basis for the even-
tual Germanization of the region. In 1237, following the Lithuanian defeat
of the Livonian Order, or the Knights of the Sword, at the Battle of Saulė
(Šiauliai), the Livonian crusaders joined the Teutonic Order as its Livonian
branch. By the mid-13th century, the reconstituted order became increasingly
involved in war with the Lithuanians and Yotvingians; Samogitia, which
geographically separated the territory of the Prussian and Livonian branches
of the order, became the main battleground.
During the 14th century, the Knights began the practice of periodically
augmenting their forces through appeals for assistance from knights in west-
ern Europe, who joined the crusades attracted by the possibilities for exercis-
ing chivalry, while others were motivated by religious salvation and plunder.
(One such knight is described in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales).
The power of the Teutonic Order, as well as the conflict with the Lithu-
anians, reached its peak during the 14th century, especially under the able and
energetic leadership of Grand Master Winrich von Kniprode (R. 1351–1382).
Lithuania’s interregnum and civil strife that followed the death of Algirdas in
1377 greatly facilitated the Knights’ campaigns. After the Treaty of Dubysa
in 1382, in which Jogaila transferred most of Samogitia to the order, the
Knights’ state for a time came to include most of the eastern Baltic littoral,
extending from the Oder River to the Gulf of Finland. Kniprode also success-
fully transformed the Teutonic Order’s domains into an economic power by
fostering foreign trade: six Prussian towns, including Gdańsk (Danzig) and
Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), joined the Hanseatic League.
Decline, Defeat, and Transformation. Lithuania’s dynastic alliance with
Poland in 1386 and the Grand Duchy’s subsequent acceptance of Roman

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 TILSIT • 297

Catholicism initiated the decline of the order. Determined to regain Samogi-

tia from the order, Jogaila and Vytautas launched a war against the Knights
in 1409, which culminated in the decisive Battle of Grunwald on 15 July
1410. The Peace of Toruń in 1411 left Samogitia to Lithuania until the death
of Vytautas, but in 1422 the Treaty of Melno established the Lithuanian-
Prussian border for the next 500 years. The unsuccessful intervention of
the Livonian Knights in the civil war between Švitrigaila and Sigismund
Kęstutaitis in 1435 is generally considered the last serious military foray of
the Teutonic Knights in Lithuania.
During the 15th century, the Teutonic Knights faced increasing opposition
from Prussian towns, dissatisfied with the order’s political and economic
dominance. The Thirteen Years’ War (1453–1466) between the order and the
Prussian towns supported by the Poles ended with the loss of considerable
territory, including Gdańsk, to Poland, and the submission of the grand mas-
ter as vassal to the Polish king. The gradual secularization of the governing
institutions of the order was finalized in 1525 with the conversion of Grand
Master Albert Hohenzollern (1490–1568) to Lutheranism and his accession
as the secular Duke of Prussia.
Remnants of the Teutonic Knights survived on their German lands in Würt-
temberg until their temporary suspension by Napoleon in 1809. In the 19th
century, the order was an extension of the House of Hapsburg. During the 20th
century, the order provided priests for German communities in Italy, Slovenia,
and other states. Revised statutes for the organization in 1929 transformed the
Knights into a purely religious order under its original 1190 title, but still includ-
ing, as ceremonial dress, the white robe with a black cross on the left shoulder.

TILSIT. Lithuanian: Tilžė; Russian: Sovetsk. Prussian border town on the

left bank of the Nemunas River, now part of the Kaliningrad Oblast of the
Russian Federation; 2004 population: 43,000. The city originated as a for-
tress of the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century. A town was built there
after the Treaty of Melno in 1422 and received a municipal charter in 1552.
Tilsit became an important gateway to Lithuania and, later, the garrison town
of the Lithuanian Dragoon Regiment of the Prussian army. On 25 June 1807,
Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I (R. 1801–1825) met on a raft near Tilsit to
negotiate their peace treaty, providing for a Russian alliance with France
against Great Britain. On the eve of World War II, the town had nearly
60,000 inhabitants, most of whom fled or were killed during the Soviet attack
into East Prussia in 1945. In 1946, Tilsit was renamed Sovetsk; most of its
inhabitants are postwar ethnic Russian settlers.
Since the Reformation, Tilsit had been an important Lithuanian cultural
center in Prussia and was the site of the first periodical in the Lithuanian

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 298 • TRADE

language. Tilsit served as the main publishing center and transit point for
Lithuanian-language publications smuggled into Russian Lithuania during
the tsarist press ban of 1864–1904. During the early 20th century, Tilsit was
the center of Lithuanian Lutheran cultural life in East Prussia: the headquar-
ters of the National Council of Prussian Lithuania was located here, as was
the residence of philosopher and writer Vydūnas. Lithuanian cultural activi-
ties in Tilsit were suppressed after the Nazis came to power in 1933. See also
NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS.

TRADE. Classical and Medieval Periods. Archaeological evidence indi-

cates that in prehistoric times the peoples of the Baltic Sea littoral had ex-
tensive commercial ties with both their neighbors and distant lands. Evidence
of the flourishing Baltic amber trade was found in the remains of one of the
oldest known shipwrecks, dating back to c. 1400 BCE, discovered in 1987
near Ulu Burun on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Extensive archaeological
finds of Roman coins reveal that Baltic trade ties with the outside world con-
tinued during the classical period with links to the Danubian and Rhineland
provinces of the Roman Empire. During the early medieval period, the focus
of trade shifted to the Scandinavian region. The discovery of 9th- and 10th-
century Arabic coins shows that trade ties had also developed with the Near
East.
During the 13th century, largely as a result of the Northern Crusades,
German merchants became increasingly active in the eastern Baltic region.
Lithuanians maintained particularly close ties with Riga, exporting furs, wax,
and other forest products in return for salt, iron, and manufactured goods from
western Europe. A number of commercial treaties between Lithuanian rulers
such as Mindaugas and Gediminas have been discovered. During the 15th
century, Grand Duke Vytautas encouraged commerce between Kaunas and
Prussian towns. Vilnius became the center of a lively trade between western
Europe and the Russian lands, including those bordering on the Black Sea.
Many streets in the capital took the names of the residential quarters of differ-
ent nationalities of merchants (for example, the Germans and Dutch).
Modern Period before 1940. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, western
European demand for agricultural products stimulated Lithuanian exports of
grain and flax, primarily through Gdańsk (Danzig) and Riga. The destructive
conflict with Muscovy and the Great Northern War depressed Lithuanian
trade, however, and it experienced only a partial recovery, primarily due to
grain exports, in the late 18th century. During tsarist rule (1795–1915), Lithu-
anian grain and flax were exported, mainly through Riga, while lumber was
floated down the Nemunas River for shipment through Klaipėda; by the end
of the 19th century, Lithuanian dairy products gained an increasing share of

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 TRADE • 299

Russia’s international trade. The expansion of the railroad system greatly

facilitated exports after 1861.
Despite initial problems because of the need to reorient Lithuania’s
economy following independence from Russia, foreign trade became a
critical component of the country’s economy during the 1918–1940 period.
Foodstuffs, flax, and live animals were the major exports. By the late 1930s,
Lithuania was the sixth leading exporter of butter in the world: in 1938,
Lithuania shipped more than 48,000,000 litais’ worth of butter, or 21 percent
of its total exports. Until the Nazi trade embargo of the 1930s, which grew out
of Lithuania’s conflict with Berlin over Klaipėda, Germany absorbed over
half of Lithuanian exports; as a result of the embargo, Great Britain replaced
Germany as Lithuania’s leading trade partner after 1933. Commerce with the
Soviet Union made up less than 10 percent of Lithuania’s volume of trade
between the wars.
Industrial products, consumer goods such as automobiles and radios, and
raw materials, especially coal and iron, made up the lion’s share of Lithu-
anian imports between 1918 and 1940. In order to facilitate trade, the Lithu-
anian government made major improvements to the port of Klaipėda and
expanded the country’s merchant marine on the eve of the Soviet occupation
in 1940. During the 1918–1939 period, Lithuania also gained earnings on
transit of goods to and from the Soviet Union, although this was hampered
by the German trade embargo. Earnings from transit shipments slowed to a
trickle after the outbreak of World War II.
Since 1940. The Soviet occupation and annexation of Lithuania in 1940
resulted in the nationalization of the Lithuanian economy. The decade before
1950—characterized by war, Nazi occupation, and the postwar guerrilla
resistance to Soviet rule—made trade impossible in the normal sense. The
industrialization of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Soviet
period of 1950–1990 resulted in the integration of the republic’s economy
into the industrial, energy, and communications system of the Soviet Union.
Inasmuch as all foreign trade was controlled by Moscow, it is difficult to
ascertain how much of Lithuania’s total production was exported abroad,
or how much was imported from foreign countries, primarily Eastern Bloc
states.
After the declaration of Lithuania’s independence on 11 March 1990, the
country experienced considerable economic difficulties, because the Soviet
government embargoed vital supplies and raw materials to Lithuanian in-
dustry. The country depended heavily on Russian supplies of petroleum and
natural gas, despite longer-range plans for diversifying energy imports. In
1992, three-fourths of Lithuanian exports, estimated at 8.7 billion litai, were
still directed to former Soviet states, primarily Russia, Latvia, and Belarus.

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 300 • TRAIDENIS

However, this pattern soon changed markedly: by the mid-1990s, about half
of foreign trade involved Western countries, especially Germany. In general,
foreign trade grew from over 20 billion litai in 1995 to nearly 130 billion in
2008.
Entry into the European Union (EU) has dramatically reshaped foreign
trade. In 2009, the government reported that countries of the EU provided
58 percent of Lithuania’s imports and received 64 percent of exports. At the
same time, the Commonwealth of Independent States—primarily Russian
energy supplies—accounted for about a third of foreign trade. Agricultural
products, textiles, and mineral products (mainly refined oil from the huge
Mažeikiai refinery) made up nearly half of all exports. See also BANKS
AND INVESTMENT.

TRAIDENIS (?–1282). Grand Duke of Lithuania. Traidenis was one of the

more prominent Lithuanian rulers between the death of King Mindaugas in
1263 and the accession of Grand Duke Gediminas in 1316. It is not entirely
clear under what circumstances Traidenis came to power. The Livonian
Chronicle mentions Kernavė as “the land of King Traidenis,” although other
sources indicate he may have resided primarily in what was to later become
Vilnius. Traidenis devoted most of his efforts to unifying the Lithuanian
tribes against the incursions of the Teutonic Knights and encouraging other
Baltic peoples, such as the Semigallians, Yotvingians, and Prussians to
resist the Teutonic Order. He also continued Lithuania’s expansion into the
Slavic lands by acquiring the lands known as Black Rus’, presently part of
Belarus, for the Grand Duchy. Generally, Traidenis is credited with con-
tinuing the process of Lithuania’s unification and with laying the foundations
of the Lithuanian state, which was further consolidated by his successors.

TRAKAI. Town located in a lake region 23 kilometers (14 miles) southwest

of Vilnius; 2007 population: 5,400. Trakai is historically significant as the
residence of medieval Lithuanian rulers, who often lived there even after the
establishment of Vilnius as the country’s capital in the early 14th century.
Trakai was the island castle of Grand Duke Kęstutis and his son Vytautas
and the center of a principality that occupied most of central Lithuania. An
early 15th-century account of the town and castle were provided by the Bur-
gundian traveler Ghillebert de Lannoy. In the early 16th century, Trakai lost
importance as a political and military center, especially after the construction
of the royal residence in Vilnius during the reign of Sigismund II Augustus;
the town and castle were substantially destroyed during the Muscovite inva-
sion of 1655–1666. Trakai was part of Poland between 1920 and 1939.

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 TUMAS-VAIŽGANTAS, JUOZAS • 301

In 1951, restoration of the island castle was begun, and much of the former
ducal residence was rebuilt, serving as a site for historical exhibits and artistic
performances. The island castle of Trakai and its picturesque environs are
visited by hundreds of thousands of domestic and foreign tourists every year.
Trakai is also home to one of the last surviving communities of Lithuanian
Karaim, also known as Karaites, a people of Turkic language related to the
Tatars but practicing a form of Judaism.

TRENIOTA (?–1264). Grand Duke of Lithuania. A prominent Samogitian

noble, Treniota became a rival and opponent of King Mindaugas, probably
because of the latter’s baptism and attempts to seek peace with the Teutonic
Knights. Some scholars consider him the leader of the pagan opposition to
the King. Treniota was involved in the assassination of Mindaugas in 1263
but his rule over Lithuania was brief, as he himself was killed in 1264.

TŪBELIS, JUOZAS (1882–1939). Lithuanian politician and statesman;

born in Rokiškis district on 9 April 1882. Trained as an agronomist, Tūbelis
was Lithuania’s first minister of agriculture in 1918–1919. From 1920 to
1926, Tūbelis was a successful businessman involved in founding and di-
recting some of Lithuania’s largest companies owned by ethnic Lithuanians,
such as the food concern Maistas and the dairy cooperative Pienocentras. In
September 1929, he was appointed prime minister. As a member of the Na-
tionalist Union and the brother-in-law and confidant of President Antanas
Smetona, he proved a compliant head of government. Tūbelis followed a
conservative fiscal policy at home and was credited with maintaining a stable
currency. He resigned the premiership on 24 March 1938 following the crisis
precipitated by the ultimatum from Poland, but continued as minister of
agriculture and director of the Bank of Lithuania. Tūbelis died in Kaunas on
30 September 1939.

TUMAS-VAIŽGANTAS, JUOZAS (1869–1933). Lithuanian writer and

publicist; born in Rokiškis district on 8 September 1869. Tumas was edu-
cated at the Daugavpils secondary school, where he became interested in
literature. In 1888, he entered the Kaunas Theological Seminary and, after
his ordination in 1893, worked in a number of parishes, often getting in
trouble with Lithuania’s Polonized hierarchy who were critical of Tumas’s
nationalist activities. Between 1896 and 1902, Tumas was the editor of
Tėvynės sargas (Guardian of the Fatherland), an illegal Catholic monthly,
which reflected the views of the early adherents of the Lithuanian Christian
Democratic Party. During this time, he became widely known as a fiction

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 302 • TYSZKIEWICZ

writer and publicist under the pen name Vaižgantas. After the Revolution of
1905, Tumas-Vaižgantas became increasingly involved in politics, gaining
respect for his tolerance of diversity, which earned him the goodwill of a
wide spectrum of Lithuanian political leaders. During the 1920s, in addition
to his pastoral duties, Tumas-Vaižgantas taught Lithuanian literature at the
University of Kaunas.
Tumas-Vaižgantas is one of Lithuania’s most popular and admired prose
writers, unrivaled in his description of the Lithuanian village of the second
half of the 19th century during the period of the national revival. In his novel,
Pragiedruliai (Sunrays), Tumas-Vaižgantas painted a broad canvas of the
social and economic transformation of Lithuania’s rural world during the
press ban period, providing colorful portraits of Lithuanian peasants, Jews,
and the Polonized gentry. Two other highly regarded works were “Rimai ir
Nerimai” (The Rimas and Nerimas Families), a short story about a family
tragedy during World War I that came out in 1915, and Dėdės ir dėdienės
(Uncles and Aunts), a novel describing Lithuanian society at the turn of the
century, published in 1920. He died in Kaunas on 29 April 1933; his funeral
was attended by thousands of mourners.

TYSZKIEWICZ. Lithuanian: Tiškevičius. Prominent Lithuanian noble fam-

ily of Ukrainian descent that was particularly influential in the 17th century
but also produced some notable leaders in modern times. George Tyszkie-
wicz (1596–1656) was Bishop of Samogitia and Vilnius, known primarily
as an energetic reformer of Catholic liturgy and monastic life; he was also
the author of some early Lithuanian-language hymns and prayers. Eustach
Tyszkiewicz (1814–1873) was one of the pioneers of Lithuanian archaeol-
ogy; he explored barrow graves in the Vilnius and Minsk regions and pub-
lished the first serious studies in Lithuanian excavations in 1850. He and his
brother Constantine Tyszkiewicz (1806–1868) amassed a large collection of
archaeological finds. While most of the Tyszkiewicz family members were
culturally Polish, Alexander Tyszkiewicz (1866–1945), a landowner from
Kretinga, became a prominent supporter of the Lithuanian national move-
ment (see NATIONALISM, LITHUANIAN) who protested the tsarist press
ban. Alfred Tyszkiewicz (1882–1930) assisted the Lithuanian delegation at
the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and was appointed Lithuanian minister
to Great Britain (1920–1921). The Tyszkiewicz family built a number of
impressive palaces: their residence in the Palanga resort (north of Klaipėda)
contains one of the largest amber collections in the world.

TYZENHAUZ, ANTONI (1733–1785). Lithuanian: Tyzenhauzas. Lithu-

anian count, statesman, and Crown treasurer of the Grand Duchy of Lithu-

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 TYZENHAUZ, ANTONI • 303

ania. A close friend of King Stanisław August Poniatowski, Count Tyzen-

hauz was appointed Crown treasurer and administrator of Lithuania’s Crown
estates known as economies in 1765. He attempted to transform the Grand
Duchy’s extensive economies into large and efficient state manorial farms
through a series of reforms. He introduced the latest agricultural technol-
ogy, organized the peasants’ compulsory labor efficiently, and dramatically
increased the incomes of the state lands. Tyzenhauz utilized serf labor for
numerous public projects, such as roads and bridges, which were intended to
facilitate the expansion of a network of manufacturing enterprises employing
compulsory labor. The largest of these industrial centers was Grodno, which
employed over 3,000 workers, including foreign specialists.
Supported by King Stanisław, Tyzenhauz became the most powerful man
in Lithuania by the late 1770s. However, despite Tyzenhauz’s introduction of
public schooling and health measures on the state lands, his reliance on new
labor obligations to the villagers provoked resistance among royal peasants,
some of whom were well-to-do rent payers who had been free of labor duties
for generations. The most dramatic outbreak was the Šiauliai peasants’ revolt
of 1769. In addition to the social unrest, business losses from his industrial
works and political opposition from Lithuania’s magnates led to Tyzenhauz’s
dismissal from public office on charges of corruption in 1780. He died in
Warsaw on 30 March 1785.

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 304 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 U
ULTIMATUMS OF 1938–1940. A period of foreign policy crises in Lithu-
ania’s relations with her three larger neighbors, Poland, Germany, and the
Soviet Union, between 1938 and 1940. The ultimatums by the three powers
undermined the international security, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of
the interwar Republic of Lithuania. Some historians have referred to these
years as the “Period of the Three Ultimatums.”
The Polish Ultimatum of 17 March 1938. The immediate cause of the first
of these confrontations was a border incident on 11 March 1938 that resulted
in the death of Polish soldier Stanisław Serafin. The Polish government,
concerned about its deteriorating international position in view of German
moves against Austria and Czechoslovakia, decided to utilize the incident to
settle its conflict with Lithuania. Despite attempts to dampen the crisis, on 17
March the Polish mission in Estonia delivered Warsaw’s ultimatum to Bro-
nius Dailidė (1892–1981), Lithuania’s envoy in Tallinn. The note demanded
“the immediate establishment of diplomatic relations without any . . . condi-
tions.” Diplomats in Kaunas and Warsaw were to be accredited no later than
31 March. Poland’s ultimatum concluded with the threat that, in the event of
a negative response, the Polish government would “guarantee the true inter-
ests of the state by its own means.” At the same time, anti-Lithuanian public
demonstrations in Poland escalated, while Nazi Germany adopted an openly
hostile attitude to Lithuania.
On 19 March, Dailidė delivered Lithuania’s acceptance of the Polish ulti-
matum. However, the attitudes created by decades of hostility changed only
gradually. The new Lithuanian Constitution of 1938 emphatically named
Vilnius as the country’s capital despite Polish protests. Both sides continued
to accuse the other of mistreating ethnic minorities. Despite bilateral agree-
ments on postal communications, transport, and the opening of borders, trade
talks moved slowly. The Polish ultimatum also precipitated a domestic politi-
cal crisis that led to criticism of the Nationalist Union regime, the dismissal
of Prime Minister Juozas Tūbelis, and the creation of a more broadly based
government.

305

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 306 • ULTIMATUMS OF 1938–1940

The German Ultimatum of 22 March 1939. A more assertive Nazi policy

toward Lithuania, especially on the Klaipėda issue, became more evident
after Adolf Hitler’s success of March 1936 in the Rhineland. Lithuanian
policy in Klaipėda during the late 1930s sought to placate Berlin through
concessions to the local German elements. Pro-Nazi forces, campaigning un-
der a so-called German list, scored a decisive victory in the December 1938
elections to the Klaipėda Territory’s diet. At the same time, Lithuania still
sought outside political support for its formal sovereignty over the territory,
both through efforts at closer ties with Poland and attempts to persuade the
Western Powers to intercede with the Reich on Lithuania’s behalf. On 12
December 1938, Great Britain and France issued a joint demarche to Berlin
demanding the preservation of the status quo in Klaipėda, but the Western
powers made it clear that they would not intervene.
On 20 March 1939, Lithuanian foreign minister Juozas Urbšys arrived in
Berlin hoping to find a compromise with the Reich over the Klaipėda crisis.
However, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946)
informed Urbšys that the situation in Klaipėda had become dangerous and
demanded the immediate transfer of the region to Germany under the threat
of military force. The urgency of the situation was heightened by a report
that Hitler was already sailing to Klaipėda aboard a German warship. On the
evening of 21 March, the Lithuanian government approved a press release
emphasizing that it was submitting to a threat of force, rather than acknowl-
edging Germany’s rights to Klaipėda, but Kaunas suffered a further humilia-
tion when a sharp German response persuaded the Lithuanians to shelve that
statement.
On the morning of 22 March, Urbšys flew to Berlin to negotiate the
transfer of Klaipėda. Having acquired the territory, the Germans allowed the
establishment of a Lithuanian free zone in the port to soften the impact of its
loss to the country’s trade. In addition to the transfer of territory and the free
trading zone, the 22 March 1939 agreement provided for a mutual nonag-
gression pact.
While the treaty stipulated an orderly transfer, the actual withdrawal of
Lithuanian police and officialdom from Klaipėda took a violent turn. Lithu-
anian civilians and Jewish refugees fled as uniformed Nazis harassed the
evacuees, settling scores with those who had supported the Lithuanian cause
in the territory. German troops crossed into Klaipėda Territory on 23 March
and, together with the local Nazi network, completed the seizure of power.
Accompanied by a large fleet (which included the famous pocket battleship
Graf Spee), Hitler sailed to Klaipėda on the same day aboard the cruiser
Deutschland. He toured the city and made a brief speech, which reasserted
the eternal “Germanness” of the city, now christened Memel, and boasted

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 ULTIMATUMS OF 1938–1940 • 307

that the Third Reich had righted a historic wrong. The annexation of Klaipėda
Territory was Germany’s last seizure of territory before the onset of World
War II.
The Soviet Ultimatum of 14 June 1940. Despite previous reassurances that
relations with Lithuania were satisfactory, in May 1940 Soviet authorities
informed the Lithuanian government that several Soviet soldiers, stationed
in Lithuania as part of the October 1939 Soviet-Lithuanian Mutual Assis-
tance Treaty, had been abducted by unnamed parties. On 25 May, Foreign
Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov presented a protest note to the Lithuanian
government concerning the killing of a Red Army man and the disappearance
of other Soviet soldiers in Lithuania, claiming that these actions were being
carried out under the protection of Lithuanian authorities. At the end of May,
the Soviet news agency TASS began to publicly air charges that Lithuania
was mistreating Soviet soldiers.
In early June, Prime Minister Antanas Merkys traveled to Moscow to
attempt to improve relations, but Molotov now charged that Lithuania was
“organizing a Baltic military alliance against the Soviets” in connivance
with the other Baltic States. On 11 June, Urbšys was sent to Moscow with
a message from President Antanas Smetona to Soviet president Mikhail
Kalinin (1875–1946) expressing friendship for the Soviet Union. However,
the Soviet attitude grew increasingly harsh. Molotov accused the Lithuanians
of sympathizing with the Finns during the recently concluded Winter War.
On 12 June, Merkys returned to Kaunas, while Urbšys remained behind to
continue the talks.
At midnight on 14 June, Molotov called Urbšys to the Kremlin and pre-
sented an ultimatum to the Lithuanian government. The Kremlin demanded
the arrest of Interior Minister Kazys Skučas (1894–1941) and Augustinas
Povilaitis (1900–1991), the chief of state security. Lithuania was then to
immediately form a new government that would ensure “the execution of
the mutual assistance treaty between the Soviet Union and Lithuania, and
resolutely suppressing the treaty’s enemies.” The final point of the ultimatum
spelled out Lithuania’s military occupation: the Smetona government was to
“assure the unhampered entry of units of the Soviet Army . . . sufficiently
numerous” to ensure the effective execution of the mutual assistance treaty
and end the “acts of provocation” against the USSR.
The Lithuanian cabinet met in the early morning hours of 15 June. Sme-
tona, along with a minority of the ministers, counseled armed resistance in
order to preserve the country’s honor. However, despite earlier plans to resist
foreign invasion, the majority of the ministers decided to accept the ultima-
tum. The fear of bloodshed and the hope that the entry of still more Soviet
troops would only curtail—rather than end—Lithuania’s independence were

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 308 • UNIATES

major factors in discouraging military action. Smetona left Kaunas on the

same afternoon, leaving Merkys as acting head of state. The first Soviet units
arrived in Kaunas that evening.
The Soviet ultimatum of June 1940 and the subsequent establishment of
the People’s Government initiated the process of Lithuania’s Sovietization.
Most Lithuanian diplomatic missions abroad and Lithuanian resistance orga-
nizations took the position that the country was under foreign occupation as
of 15 June 1940: thus, all state authority and legislation from that date until
the formal restoration of Lithuania’s independence on 11 March 1990 were
considered illegitimate. Most historians consider the Soviet ultimatum of 14
June 1940 as an act of force based on trumped-up charges that served as a
pretext for armed invasion, thus implementing the annexation of the Baltic
States already foreseen in the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939. See also
PEOPLE’S DIET.

UNIATES. Common name for Eastern Rite Catholics who had once been
members of Orthodox Churches but had chosen union with Rome. The east-
ward expansion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania beginning in the 13th
century brought into the state increasing numbers of Eastern Orthodox Chris-
tians subject to the Metropolitan of Kiev. After the late 14th century, as the
religious split between Lithuania’s western Roman Catholic regions and the
Orthodox territories solidified, the Grand Duchy’s rulers attempted to un-
successfully solve the problem by either creating a separate metropolitan for
Lithuania to offset the influence of Muscovy or encouraging a union of the
western and eastern Christian churches. Pressure from the rulers of Catholic
Poland-Lithuania and the resistance of some clergy to inclusion within the
newly created patriarchate of Moscow led a number of Orthodox bishops to
proclaim fealty to the pope in the Union of Brest in 1596, which resulted
in the creation of the Ukrainian Catholic or Greek Catholic Church, whose
members were often referred to as Uniates, a term now considered somewhat
archaic. The Ukrainian Greek Catholics comprise the largest of the former
Orthodox communities now in communion with the pope, numbering nearly
five million members, living primarily in west Ukraine, Canada, and the
United States. See also SIGISMUND III VASA.

UNION OF THE FATHERLAND (HOMELAND UNION-LITHU-

ANIAN CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS). Lithuanian: Tėvynės sąjunga-
Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai. A center-right political party founded in
1993. The Union of the Fatherland (Lithuanian Conservatives), often simply
known as the Conservatives, emerged from the right wing of the Sąjūdis
movement led by Vytautas Landsbergis as an alternative to the leftist fac-

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 UNITED STATES • 309

tion of Sąjūdis and the former Communists who had gained power in the
1992 elections to the parliament (Seimas). In 1996, the Union won an im-
pressive 40 percent of the vote to head a rightist coalition, but it suffered a
serious setback in 2000 when it garnered less than 9 percent. The party began
a comeback in 2004 when it won 25 seats to the Seimas after absorbing the
association of former political prisoners and exiles. In 2008, the party con-
solidated itself as the Union of the Fatherland-Lithuanian Christian Demo-
crats and, thus renamed, won the largest share of the parliamentary vote, 20
percent, and 45 of 141 seats, to head a coalition government under Andrius
Kubilius. In terms of membership, the Union was Lithuania’s largest politi-
cal party in 2010.

UNITED STATES. The influence of the United States on Lithuania’s history

has been twofold: as the home of the largest of the diaspora communities of
ethnic Lithuanians and Lithuanian Jews (the Litvaks) and as a significant, and
sometimes decisive, factor determining the country’s international situation.
Foreign Relations before 1990. On the eve of World War I, Lithuanian
Americans had become increasingly active in supporting the political aspira-
tions of Lithuanians within the Russian Empire. During the Revolution of
1905, emigrant communities in Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston,
and other cities sent messages of support to delegates of the Great Assembly
of Vilnius and proclaimed their own demands for autonomy and the territo-
rial integrity of a future Lithuania. However, there was little support for Lith-
uanian independence in Washington. President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen
Points, announced in January 1918, included a call for self-determination, but
the State Department at the time was reluctant to take any position that would
be perceived as undermining the territorial integrity of the Russian state. The
United States delayed the establishment of diplomatic relations with Lithu-
ania until 28 July 1922. By the end of 1939, Lithuania had received over 40
million litai in loans from the United States, but trade was not significant:
America accounted for less than 3 percent of Lithuanians imports and exports
in 1938.
Despite complaints and pressure from Moscow, the United States refused
to recognize the occupation and annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union
in the summer of 1940. On 23 July 1940, Acting Secretary of State Sumner
Welles declared that the United States considered the occupation and incor-
poration of the Baltic States illegitimate, thus applying the Stimson Doctrine
of nonrecognition of the forcible seizure of territory first enunciated against
Japanese aggression in Manchuria in 1933. The U.S. policy of nonrecognition
remained in force throughout the five decades of Soviet rule in Lithuania.
After America entered the war as an ally of the USSR in December 1941 the

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 310 • UNIVERSITIES

policy was deemphasized but not abandoned: President Franklin D. Roos-

evelt refused to follow suggestions by British foreign secretary Anthony Eden
that Washington and London recognize the annexation of the Baltic States
as a means of cementing the Grand Alliance with Joseph Stalin. While the
United States took no concrete action to affect Soviet control in the Baltics,
official government statements as well as numerous Congressional hearings
and resolutions reaffirmed the nonrecognition policy even after the Helsinki
Final Act of July 1975 declared the then current European borders inviolable.
After 1990. The collapse of the Eastern European Communist regimes
during the late 1980s and the emerging power of the Baltic independence
movements, including Sąjūdis, which threatened the disintegration of the
Soviet Union, forced U.S. diplomacy to assume a more active role. At the
Malta summit of 2–3 December 1989, President George H. W. Bush did not
bring up the issue of the Baltic States with Mikhail Gorbachev, but through-
out 1990 he tried to persuade the Soviet leader to abstain from any violence
directed at the Baltic republics. After Lithuania’s declaration of independence
on 11 March 1990 and the growing tensions in the Baltic that culminated in
the Bloody Sunday killings in Vilnius on 13 January 1991, the U.S. adminis-
tration repeatedly called for restraint without overtly encouraging Baltic inde-
pendence. The anti-Gorbachev coup of 19–21 August 1991 transformed the
situation, and on 2 September the United States followed the other Western
powers in recognizing the independence of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
During the 1990s, the United States and its allies accepted the integration
of the Baltic States into transatlantic and European security and economic
structures as a goal of foreign policy. On 22–23 November 2002, George W.
Bush became the first president of the United States to visit Lithuania, an-
nouncing in Vilnius that any enemy of Lithuania would also be America’s en-
emy. On 29 March 2004, Lithuania deposited instruments of accession with
Secretary of State Colin Powell (1937– ) in Washington, D.C., to formally
join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

UNIVERSITIES. See EDUCATION.

URBŠYS, JUOZAS (1896–1991). Lithuanian diplomat; born in Kėdainiai

district on 29 February 1896. During World War I, Urbšys served in the
Russian army; he then joined the Lithuanian forces in 1918, retiring from
military service in 1922. After that, he entered Lithuania’s diplomatic corps,
serving in Berlin (1922–1933), in Paris (1933), and as envoy to Latvia
(1933–1934). Urbšys worked as director of the political department of the
Foreign Ministry from 1934 to 1936 and then as its secretary general from
1936 to 1938. On 5 December 1938, Urbšys was appointed foreign minister

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 USPASKIKH, VIKTOR • 311

in the coalition cabinets of Gen. Jonas Černius and Antanas Merkys. He

served as foreign minister during the last two years of the interwar Republic,
when Lithuania was confronted by Polish, German, and Soviet ultimatums.
While maintaining a cautiously optimistic public stance and maneuvering to
preserve Lithuania’s sovereignty, Urbšys recognized the threats to Lithuania.
On 30 May 1940, he secretly informed Lithuanian diplomatic missions that,
in the event of a foreign occupation, the Lithuanian envoy to Rome, Stasys
Lozoraitis Sr., should handle Lithuania’s affairs.
Following the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Urbšys was removed as
foreign minister on 17 June 1940, and in July he and his wife were exiled to
Tambov in Russia; he was imprisoned from 1941 to 1954, much of the time
in solitary confinement. Urbšys was finally allowed to return to Lithuania in
1956, where he earned a living by translating French literary classics. The
publication in 1988 of his memoirs about the late interwar period spurred
public discussion about the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Soviet occupation,
which contributed to the undermining of the Soviet version of the events of
1939–1940. Urbšys died in Kaunas on 30 April 1991.

USPASKIKH, VIKTOR (1959– ). Lithuanian: Viktoras Uspaskichas. Poli-

tician; born in Archangelsk district, Russia, on 24 July 1959. Uspaskikh, one
of the country’s most controversial and colorful public personalities, arrived
in Lithuania in 1985 and worked as a welder in Kėdainiai. In 1991, he took
Lithuanian citizenship and became prominent as a successful businessman.
From 1997 to 2003, Uspaskikh was the president of the Lithuanian Employ-
ers’ Association. He was elected to the parliament (Seimas) in 2000, and in
2004 he founded the Labor Party (Darbo partija), which gained 39 seats in
the Seimas elections of that year and formed a ruling coalition with the Social
Democrats and smaller parties. Uspaskikh served as minister of economics,
but resigned in June 2005 amid accusations of conflicts of interest. In May
2006, he also resigned as head of the Labor Party and fled to Russia to escape
prosecution for accounting fraud. Two years later, he returned to Lithuania.
Despite his arrest, he was later released and allowed to stand for parliament.
Uspaskikh was elected to the Seimas in 2008, then resigned in 2009 to run
and win a seat in the European Parliament. See also POLITICAL PARTIES.

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 312 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 V
VAGNORIUS, GEDIMINAS (1957– ). Lithuanian politician; born in
Plungė district on 10 June 1957. An economist by training, Vagnorius was
elected to the Supreme Soviet (Council) on the Sąjūdis ticket in 1990 and
made his mark as a supporter of Lithuanian president Vytautas Landsber-
gis. Following the resignation of Prime Minister Kazimira Prunskienė, and
amid the crisis that erupted during the Soviet military attack in Vilnius in
January 1991, Vagnorius replaced the short-lived government of Prime Min-
ister Albertas Šimėnas on 13 January 1991. Vagnorius oversaw Lithuania’s
economic transition during 1991–1992, including the dismantling of the
country’s Soviet-era collective farm system and attempts to replace the ruble
with a new national currency. In the face of increasing opposition and criti-
cism over his economic policies, Vagnorius was replaced by Aleksandras
Abišala in July 1992. After the defeat of Landsbergis’s party in the Seimas
elections of October 1992, Vagnorius emerged as one of the leaders of the
Union of the Fatherland, the largest opposition faction in the parliament.
He was appointed prime minister again in November 1996, after the Conser-
vatives had won a majority in parliamentary elections, and served until May
1999. See also BANKING AND INVESTMENT.

VALANČIUS, MOTIEJUS (1801–1875). Bishop and writer; born in Kret-

inga district on 16 February 1801. Valančius’s well-to-do peasant parents
altered his birth record to the Polonized form, Wołonczewski, in order to
claim gentry origins. This allowed him to graduate from the Vilnius Theo-
logical Seminary and to attend the University of Vilnius, where he met fellow
Samogitians active in the Lithuanian national movement (see NATIONAL-
ISM, LITHUANIAN) of the early 19th century, including historian Simonas
Daukantas. In 1840, Valančius was assigned as a lecturer to the Vilnius
Theological Academy, where he also earned a doctorate in theology. In 1845,
Valančius was appointed the rector of the Varniai Theological Seminary,
where he worked until 1850 when he was consecrated Bishop of Samogitia.
Valančius was the first bishop of Samogitia to come from peasant stock. He
expanded and improved the Lithuanian-language parochial school system in
the diocese and in 1858 inaugurated Lithuania’s temperance brotherhood

313

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 314 • VARPAS

(blaivystės brolija), one of the largest social movements of 19th-century

Lithuania, which eventually encompassed almost a million people. Although
Valančius did not consciously seek to undermine Polish culture in Lithuania,
he was the first bishop of Samogitia to consistently publish his pastoral letters
in Lithuanian.
Valančius underwent a painful inner struggle during the insurrection of
1863–1864. Though sympathetic to the rebels, he considered their war a lost
cause and, under pressure from Governor-General Mikhail N. Muravyev,
condemned the insurgents and urged a halt to the bloodshed. This earned him
the enmity of much of the anti-Russian nobility in Lithuania. In May 1864,
Valančius was transferred to Kaunas, where his activities could be more
closely observed by the Russian authorities. In response to the press ban,
Valančius began to resist the tsarist government since he saw Russification
as a threat to the Catholic Church. Between 1867 and 1869, Valančius or-
ganized the publication of Latin-script Lithuanian books in East Prussia and
their illegal transport into Russian Lithuania. Most of his booklets exposed
the government’s plan to Russify Lithuania and introduce Orthodoxy, urging
the peasants to be loyal to their Catholic faith and native language.
An educator and able Church administrator as well as a talented writer,
historian, and ethnographer, Valančius was the most versatile and dominant
figure in Lithuania before the emergence of political nationalism in the late
19th century. Although he was concerned primarily with the defense of the
Catholic Church, his promotion of popular Lithuanian culture and the strug-
gle against the press ban made him one of the prime movers of the modern
Lithuanian national movement.
Valančius is also the father of modern Lithuanian prose, his contributions
encompassing religious publications, scholarship, and fiction. His well-docu-
mented two-volume history Žemaičių vyskupystė (The Diocese of Samogitia),
published in 1848, remains valuable to this day. Valančius’s didactic fictional
works are still considered outstanding literature. His best known work,
Palangos Juzė (Juzė from Palanga), a collection of picturesque tales told by
an itinerant tailor, was the most widely read book of Lithuanian fiction in the
19th century. His descriptions of village life became models for subsequent
Lithuanian realist writers. Valančius died in Kaunas on 17 May 1875.

VARPAS (THE BELL). Lithuanian monthly published in East Prussia.

Varpas was established in 1889 primarily through the efforts of its first edi-
tor, Vincas Kudirka, and his colleagues in the Lithuanian students’ associa-
tion at the University of Warsaw. Unlike the monthly Aušra, which featured
Lithuanian history and culture, Varpas also emphasized current political and
economic concerns that appealed to the emerging secular Lithuanian intel-

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 VELIUONA • 315

ligentsia. In 1890, the founders of Varpas also began publishing the monthly
–
Ukininkas (The Farmer) aimed at the less educated peasantry. Varpas was
the first Lithuanian periodical to promulgate a coherent modern political pro-
gram for the Lithuanian national movement (see NATIONALISM, LITHU-
ANIAN).
The members of the group that gathered around the monthly came to be
called varpininkai. Generally, they advocated secular liberal and democratic
ideas, emphasizing the need for Lithuanian-speaking society to enter govern-
ment service, commerce, and the professions, which until then were domi-
nated by non-Lithuanians. This led the varpininkai to attack Polish landown-
ing interests in the countryside and Jewish economic dominance in the towns
as inimical to the economic and educational progress of the Lithuanian
nation. However, under Kudirka’s editorship between 1889 and 1899, the
monthly reserved its harshest criticism for the tsarist autocracy’s Russifica-
tion policies, especially the press ban. Varpas was the first to emphasize the
problems created by mass emigration, especially to the United States, and
urged Lithuanians to create economic conditions that would stem the exodus.
Although it criticized tsarist anti-Catholic discrimination, Varpas was
often attacked by the more conservative clerical Lithuanian press for its
secularism and criticism of the Church. In the decade before World War I,
the Lithuanian intelligentsia of the varpininkai began to fragment into more
clearly defined political parties reflecting Christian Democratic (Catholic),
liberal nationalist, and socialist orientations. As each of these groups began
publishing its own periodicals, Varpas became less relevant, and it ceased
publication in March 1906. Periodicals called Varpas, claiming to embody
the spirit of the original monthly, have been published irregularly since 1913.
See also DEMOCRATIC PARTY, LITHUANIAN.

VELIUONA. Originally known as Junigeda, a historic town in central

Lithuania on the Nemunas River, one of the country’s oldest settlements;
2001 population: 880. Archaeological excavations reveal that Veliuona was
an important trading center from the 13th century. The town contains two
castle sites and four castle-hills, indicating that Veliuona was the site of major
military construction. The name Veliuona appears in the chronicles of the
Teutonic Knights as early as 1315. In the 14th century, Veliuona became
the most important fortification defending the western approaches to Kaunas
against the incursions of the Teutonic Order. Some scholars believe, and
popular tradition maintains, that Grand Duke Gediminas, who reportedly
hailed from the region, may have been killed here in 1341 during a siege of
the castle by the Knights. In 1421, Grand Duke Vytautas built one of the
first churches in Lithuania on the heights overlooking the Nemunas. Veliuona

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 316 • VENCLOVA, ANTANAS

received a town charter in 1443. The town remains a popular tourist attraction
for Lithuanians interested in medieval history.

VENCLOVA, ANTANAS (1906–1971). Poet, writer, politician, journalist,

and prominent Soviet cultural figure; born in Kalvarijos district on 7 January
1906. After graduating from the University of Kaunas, Venclova taught in
Klaipėda and edited the literary journal Trečias frontas (The Third Front),
published by a group of leftist literati with an antifascist bent. The journal was
banned by the Nationalist Union regime in 1931. As a well-known leftist,
Venclova was chosen minister of education in the Soviet-imposed People’s
Government in June 1940. He spent the war years (1941–1944) in the Soviet
Union and upon his return to Lithuania was inducted into the Academy of
Sciences and joined the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist
Party. Venclova composed the anthem of the Soviet Lithuanian republic, and
in 1947 he received the Stalin Prize. He was chosen chairman of the Lithu-
anian Writers’ Association in 1954. Venclova died in Vilnius on 28 June
1971. See also LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN; VENCLOVA, TOMAS.

VENCLOVA, TOMAS (1937– ). Scholar, poet, translator, and dissident;

born in Klaipėda on 11 September 1937, son of Antanas Venclova. Ven-
clova graduated from the University of Vilnius in 1960 and then continued
his studies of Russian literature and semiotics at the University of Tartu. In
the mid-1970s, he joined dissidents protesting Soviet human rights violations
and was a founding member of the Helsinki Group. In 1977 Venclova’s So-
viet citizenship was revoked, after which he came to the United States and
obtained a position at Yale University in the Department of Slavic Languages
and Literatures. Venclova is known as an essayist, critic, and prolific transla-
tor of Russian and Polish poetry and has won numerous literary awards and
honorary degrees. See also LITERATURE, LITHUANIAN.

VILNIUS. Russian: Vilna; Polish: Wilno; Yiddish: Vilne. The capital and
largest city of Lithuania, located on hilly terrain at the confluence of the Neris
and Vilija Rivers; population in 2008: 544,000.
Before 1795. There is evidence of a settlement in what is now the capi-
tal’s old town as early as the 5th century CE. By the 12th century, a town
had grown up and become an important trading center. Recent excavations
suggest that a church was constructed on the site of the present Cathedral of
Vilnius as early as the reign of King Mindaugas in the mid-13th century.
The city is referred to as Lithuania’s capital in Grand Duke Gediminas’s
diplomatic correspondence of 1323. In popular culture, the legend of the
Iron Wolf (Lithuanian: Geležinis vilkas) also ties the founding of the city to
Gediminas.

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 VILNIUS • 317

Medieval chronicles indicate that, during the reign of Gediminas in

1316–1341, Vilnius became the undisputed political and cultural center of
the Grand Duchy. German and other foreign merchants resided here in
large numbers even before Lithuania’s formal conversion to Christianity in
1386; the city also hosted a number of Catholic and Orthodox churches.
In 1387, Vilnius was placed under the Magdeburg Law, and it received ad-
ditional municipal privileges in 1432 and 1536. Vilnius has always been a
multinational city: in addition to the German and Russian communities and
the influx of Poles beginning in the late 14th century, Tatars and Jews settled
in Lithuania’s capital in increasing numbers from the early 15th century. The
cultural and economic development of Vilnius accelerated in the mid-16th
century during the reign of Sigismund II Augustus, who completed the
Renaissance-style grand ducal palace and brought in Italian artisans to help
construct a series of churches, palaces, and public buildings. The University
of Vilnius opened as a Jesuit academy in 1579.
Vilnius and its central castle were besieged and heavily damaged a num-
ber of times, especially during the civil strife and wars with the Teutonic
Knights in the late 14th century, but the city itself was first captured by for-
eign forces when it was razed during the Muscovite invasion of 1655. The
capital recovered somewhat during the late 18th century with the construc-
tion of the present cathedral and city hall, but when the Grand Duchy passed
to Russian rule in 1795 the population of Vilnius had declined to less than
20,000 inhabitants.
Since 1795. Under the tsars, Vilnius became the seat of the governor-
general of the Northwest Territory (Russian: Severo-zopadnyi krai), which
included most of the Lithuanian-speaking lands of the former Grand Duchy.
The population grew to 64,000 by 1869 and to nearly 200,000 by 1914. Since
the 18th century, Vilnius has gained fame as a center of Jewish culture, largely
because of the learned Elijah Ben Solomon (1720–1797), known as the Gaon
of Vilnius, and the establishment of YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research,
in 1925. By the 19th century, Jews had become a plurality (about 40 percent)
of the city’s population. Polish speakers and Russians constituted most of the
remainder; ethnic Lithuanians made up only 2 percent of the city’s population
before World War I (see table 4). However, Lithuanians have always consid-
ered Vilnius as the legitimate historic capital of the country.
The German army occupied Vilnius between September 1915 and January
1919, after which the city changed hands between Lithuanian, Soviet, and
Polish forces until 9 October 1920, when Gen. Lucjan Żeligowski’s Pol-
ish troops captured Vilnius from the Lithuanians; it then became the capital
of the rump state of Central Lithuania. International efforts to resolve the
Vilnius Question proved unsuccessful, and in March 1922 Vilnius and its
environs were incorporated into Poland despite Lithuanian protests.

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 318 • VILNIUS QUESTION

Table 4. Population of Vilnius by Nationality in the 20th Century

Nationality 1916 1941 1959 1994 2001
Lithuanians 2.1 28.1 33.6 52.5 57.8
Russians 1.6 3.6 29.4 19.3 14.0
Poles 50.1 5.0 20.0 19.1 18.7
Jews 43.5 16.2 7.0 0.8 0.7
Others* 2.7 1.4 10.0 8.3 8.4
Total Population 140,800 186,300 236,100 584,400 542,287
* Mostly Belarusians and Ukrainians

The Soviet-Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty of 10 October 1939

formally transferred sovereignty over Vilnius to Lithuania. While there was
an influx of Lithuanian officials, students, and others into Vilnius after the
fall of 1939, the greatest demographic changes in Vilnius occurred after June
1941. During the Nazi occupation of 1941–1944, the city’s Jewish popula-
tion was ghettoized and virtually annihilated, mainly at the killing site of
Paneriai.
After World War II, Vilnius’s Polish population diminished as a result
of repatriation to Poland and a massive influx of Lithuanians and Russians;
for the first time since the late Middle Ages, Lithuanian speakers made up a
slight majority in Lithuania’s capital.
Vilnius was at the center of the Lithuanian independence movement in
1988–1991 and was the site of the massacre of Lithuanian demonstrators at
the city’s TV tower by Soviet troops on 13 January 1991, which killed 14
people and injured hundreds. See also HOLOCAUST; PIŁSUDSKI, JÓZEF;
RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS.

VILNIUS QUESTION. The dispute between Poland and Lithuania con-

cerning the status of Vilnius and its environs. The problem of Vilnius is
rooted in a historic paradox. From the 14th century, the city was the capital of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and during the tsarist period (1795–1915),
it was the administrative center of the Lithuanian lands. At the same time,
by the beginning of World War I, Vilnius had become the center of Polish
and Jewish culture with only a small population of ethnic Lithuanians. Nev-
ertheless, Lithuanians consistently claimed Vilnius on the grounds that any
restored Lithuanian state was a historic successor to the Grand Duchy and
only this city could serve as its capital.
During the early 20th century, the Lithuanian intelligentsia sponsored cul-
tural and Catholic organizations in Vilnius and began publication of the first
Lithuanian-language daily, Vilniaus žinios (Vilnius News), in 1904. Vilnius
was also the site of the Great Assembly of Vilnius in December 1905 and

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 VILNIUS QUESTION • 319

the 16 February 1918 declaration of independence by the Taryba. A further

complication regarding Vilnius was that, while the population of the city
was predominantly Polish, Jewish, and Russian, much of the surrounding
countryside was inhabited by ethnic Lithuanians and Belarusians. In addi-
tion, some Belarusian nationalists also laid claim to Vilnius during the early
20th century.
The Polish-Lithuanian dispute over Vilnius intensified during 1918–1919
with the reemergence of Poland and Lithuania as independent states. The
Lithuanian government insisted on Poland’s recognition of Lithuania as an
independent state with Vilnius as its capital. Polish leaders, including Józef
Piłsudski, preferred that Lithuania federate with Poland. Most local Polish
politicians in the Vilnius region were adamantly opposed to Lithuanian rule.
Polish-Lithuanian talks during 1919–1920 failed to resolve the impasse,
although the Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty of 12 July 1920 granted the
city to Lithuania. Despite the Suwałki Demarcation Agreement, which left
Vilnius on the Lithuanian side, Polish troops under the command of Gen.
Lucjan Żeligowski captured the city on 9 October 1920. Between April and
December 1920, Belgian diplomat Paul Hymans led the League of Nations
efforts to resolve the dispute. The Hymans Project called for a loose Polish-
Lithuanian confederation, with Vilnius as part of Lithuania. On 24 December
1920, Lithuania officially rejected the Hymans proposals, and in March 1922,
Poland annexed Vilnius. On 15 March 1923, the Conference of Ambassadors
announced that the current Polish-Lithuanian armistice line, leaving Vilnius
to the Poles, was the de jure boundary between Poland and Lithuania. Lithu-
anian Prime Minister Ernestas Galvanauskas formally notified the Confer-
ence of Lithuania’s rejection of this decision on 16 April 1923.
Lithuanian diplomacy officially maintained the position that Vilnius was
the sole legitimate capital of the Republic even after it was compelled to
normalize relations with Poland by the ultimatum of 17 March 1938. The
issue of Vilnius galvanized Lithuanian public opinion during the interwar
period, and the goal of regaining the country’s capital united virtually the
entire political spectrum. With over a half million members and supporters,
the Union for the Liberation of Vilnius (Vilniaus vadavimo sąjunga) was one
of the most popular organizations in independent Lithuania. After the fall of
Poland to German and Soviet invasions, the Soviet-Lithuanian Mutual As-
sistance Treaty of 10 October 1939 transferred Vilnius and surrounding ter-
ritory (6,880 square kilometers/2,660 square miles) to the Republic of Lithu-
ania. Poland’s government in exile in London asserted rights to its pre-1939
borders, including Vilnius, but this position became irrelevant after the war.
In 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once again raised doubts
about the status of Vilnius in an attempt to convince Lithuanians not to seek

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 320 • VOLDEMARAS, AUGUSTINAS

independence. Since the late 1980s, there has been some heated rhetoric
about the history of Polish-Lithuanian relations in the press of both countries;
however, the Polish-Lithuanian state treaty of 1994 formally reasserted Lith-
uania’s sovereignty over Vilnius. There is currently no serious international
challenge to Lithuanian rule, although some nationalist elements in Poland
and Belarus still attempt to raise the issue. See also CENTRAL LITHU-
ANIA, REPUBLIC OF.

VOLDEMARAS, AUGUSTINAS (1883–1942). Lithuanian statesman and

political leader; born in Švenčionys district on 4 April 1883. In 1910, Volde-
maras received his degree in history and classics at the University of St.
Petersburg. He furthered his studies in Italy and Sweden in 1914–1915, after
which he returned to Russia and taught briefly at the University of Perm.
In 1917, Voldemaras was appointed Lithuanian representative to Ukraine’s
governing council, the Rada, in Kiev. He joined the Lithuanian State Council,
or Taryba, upon his return to Lithuania in the summer of 1918.
Voldemaras formed the first government of independent Lithuania on 11
November 1918, in which he served as both prime minister and foreign
minister. That December, he led the Lithuanian delegation to the Paris Peace
Conference, but was subsequently replaced as prime minister. From 1920 to
1926, Voldemaras taught at the University of Kaunas and became a promi-
nent publicist in the nationalist press. In 1926, he was elected to the Third
Seimas as a member of the Nationalist Union. After the Nationalist coup
of 17 December 1926, Voldemaras became prime minister under President
Antanas Smetona. During the late 1920s, he negotiated a series of important
agreements with Germany, Poland, and the Vatican.
At the same time, Voldemaras and his radical Nationalist supporters came
into conflict with the more moderate Smetona. Voldemaras was dismissed
from the government in September 1929 and was exiled to Zarasai, a town
in eastern Lithuania, thus ending his active political career. After an unsuc-
cessful military coup tried to restore Voldemaras to power in June 1934, he
was imprisoned and in February 1938 forced to leave the country. In August
1939, Voldemaras returned to Lithuania from France and was again exiled to
Zarasai; in January 1940, he was allowed to leave the country. Voldemaras
returned yet again to Kaunas on 19 June 1940 and was immediately arrested
by the Soviets, who exiled him to the Caucasus.
Despite his brief tenure in office, Voldemaras was a major political player
in interwar Lithuania. An ambitious and charismatic politician, he was the
focus of the radical right-wing nationalists who became known as the Volde-
marists, or voldemarininkai, and was revered by the clandestine extremist
nationalist society the Iron Wolf. Although he was admired for his obvious

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 VYDŪNAS • 321

intellectual ability, Voldemaras was hampered by his ambition and penchant

for impulsive behavior, such as his inexplicable decision to return to Soviet-
occupied Lithuania in June 1940 despite warnings from Lithuanian diplo-
mats. He died in Moscow on 16 December 1942.

VOLOK (VALAKAS) REFORM. The reform of the agrarian economy and

society of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the 16th century, so called
after the unit of land—volok in Russian; valakas in Lithuanian; włóka in Pol-
ish—that the state assigned to the average peasant household.
Until the early 16th century, Lithuania’s land tenure system was chaotic
and there existed no uniform system of rural administration. The Volok Re-
form, encouraged by Queen Bona Sforza, was initiated during the rule of
Sigismund II Augustus in 1547 and then finalized in statutes published in
1557 that introduced the comprehensive restructuring of agriculture known
as the volok system.
The land reform delineated the boundaries of the Crown domains and
private estates, assigning to the state those lands to which the nobility did
not have clear title. The statutes compelled the peasants to settle in street
villages on the Western model, while government surveyors measured and
recorded the peasant holdings. The amount of peasant feudal obligations was
then based on the size of the household’s holding and calculated according to
the unit of land, the volok, which consisted of smaller units called margai in
Lithuanian (Polish: morgi). The Lithuanian volok averaged about 30 margai
(one margas measured 0.712 hectares or 1.75 acres; one volok was approxi-
mately 21.4 hectares or 53 acres).
The main economic goals of the Volok Reform were to increase the rev-
enues of the Grand Duchy’s treasury through efficient taxation of the land
and to regulate and systematize the obligations of the peasantry. One measure
of the effectiveness of the reform was the fourfold increase in income gener-
ated from the Crown lands between 1547 and 1588. The Volok Reform also
stimulated productivity by introducing the three-field system of cultivation
on the large manorial farms of Lithuania, thus transforming Lithuanian ag-
riculture. To a considerable degree, the Volok Reform defined the structure
of Lithuania’s agrarian world well into the 19th century. See also CROWN
ESTATE (ECONOMY); SERFDOM.

VYDŪNAS (1868–1953). Pen name of philosopher and writer Vilius Sto-

rasta; born on 22 March 1868 in Šilutė district. Vydūnas graduated from the
teachers’ college in Ragainė (German: Ragnit) in 1892, then taught French
and English at the Tilsit secondary school until 1912. During his studies
at the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, Vydūnas mastered Sanskrit and

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 322 • VYTAUTAS

became a devotee of Indian philosophy. Between 1917 and 1919, he taught

Lithuanian language and literature at the University of Berlin.
During the interwar period, Vydūnas became the best known Lithuanian
cultural figure and community leader in East Prussia. His activities in foster-
ing Lithuanian-language theater and music, his criticism of the Germaniza-
tion of East Prussia’s Lithuanians, and his historical study Siebenhundert
Jahre deutsch-litauischer Beziehungen (Seven Hundred Years of German-
Lithuanian Relations, 1932), provoked the anger of German nationalists
and led to Nazi repression. Lithuanian cultural organizations sponsored by
Vydūnas were banned by 1935, and he was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1938.
Virtually all of Vydūnas’s historical work and literature is imbued with
Eastern religious thought, including pantheism and reincarnation, as well as
a romantic view of medieval Lithuania’s pagan culture, as portrayed in his
dramas Prabočių šešėliai (Shadows of the Ancestors, 1908) and Amžina ugnis
(The Eternal Fire, 1912). Vydūnas is remembered as the leading proponent
of a synthesis between Eastern mysticism and Lithuania’s pre-Christian re-
ligious tradition. He died in Detmold, Germany, on 20 February 1953.

VYTAUTAS (1350–1430). Russian: Vitovt; Polish: Witold. Grand Duke

of Lithuania (1392–1430), often termed Vytautas the Great in Lithuanian
historical literature and widely acknowledged as medieval Lithuania’s most
important ruler. Vytautas was born about 1350, probably in Trakai, the old-
est son of Kęstutis. He first achieved prominence as an ally of his father in
the struggle for power that followed the death of his uncle, Grand Duke Al-
girdas. Following the death of his father in 1382, Vytautas was imprisoned in
the castle of Krėva by his cousin Jogaila. He escaped and sought refuge with
the Teutonic Knights, with whose support he waged a lengthy campaign
against Jogaila, who had seized the grand ducal throne. In 1383, Vytautas
was baptized and added the Christian name Alexander to his signature. He
secretly reached reconciliation with Jogaila in 1384 and turned against the
Teutonic Order. Upon his return to Lithuania, Vytautas was given the lands
of Grodno, Brest-Litovsk, and Podlachia, later acquiring Volynia as well.
Vytautas was a prominent participant in the signing of the Act of Krėva,
Jogaila’s coronation as king of Poland in 1386, and the formal re-Chris-
tianization of Lithuania in 1387. However, Jogaila’s decision to appoint his
brother Skirgaila as viceroy in Lithuania provoked a fierce rebellion from
Vytautas, who once again turned to the Teutonic Knights for assistance, initi-
ating a destructive civil war that ended with the Treaty of Astravas (Russian:
Ostrov) in 1392. By this agreement, Vytautas was given the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania to rule as Jogaila’s vassal, but he later took the title of grand

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 VYTENIS • 323

duke and, in effect, ruled Lithuania without any significant interference from
his cousin.
During the 1390s, Vytautas undertook the Grand Duchy’s expansion to the
east. His daughter Sophia married Grand Prince Vasili I (R. 1389–1425) of
Moscow in 1390. Vytautas then shored up Lithuanian power in Smolensk and
extended the Grand Duchy’s influence to Riazan and Tula. But Vytautas’s
plans to subdue the Golden Horde were undone when his army suffered a
crushing defeat at the hands of the Tatars at the Battle of Vorksla in 1399.
Muscovy took this opportunity to roll back some of Lithuania’s gains in the
Russian lands, but Vytautas renewed his campaigns in the east and by 1408
had recovered the territories lost after Vorksla. In order to pursue his ambi-
tions in the east, Vytautas had ceded Samogitia to the Teutonic Order in
1398, but in 1409 a massive rebellion of the Samogitians against the Knights
elicited his support and led to a joint Lithuanian-Polish campaign against the
order, culminating in the decisive victory over the Knights at Grunwald on
15 July 1410.
In his relations with Poland, Vytautas always sought to rule Lithuania
independently. He achieved this by the Act of Radom in 1401, which made
Vytautas supreme ruler of Lithuania during his own lifetime, and the Acts of
Horodło in 1413. During the 1420s, Vytautas’s relations with Poland grew
more acrimonious as the grand duke began to entertain the idea of acquiring
a royal crown, a plan opposed by the Poles. He was married twice to Russian
princesses, first to Anna, who bore him Sophia, and in 1418 to Juliana, who
was childless.
During the reign of Vytautas, Lithuania reached its greatest territorial ex-
pansion and influence, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. He
succeeded in ending the centuries-old Teutonic threat and redefined Lithu-
ania’s relationship with Poland. In domestic affairs, the ethnographically
Lithuanian lands began an irreversible Christianization during his reign.
Vytautas constructed a number of churches and oversaw the introduction of
ecclesiastical administration. He also strengthened the nobility by granting it
lands and peasants in return for their loyalty and military service. Vytautas
fostered trade and encouraged Jews to settle in Lithuania by granting them
extensive privileges. He died on 27 October 1430 amid preparations for his
coronation.

VYTENIS (?–1316). Grand Duke of Lithuania and brother of Gediminas.

According to chronicles, Vytenis was probably the son of Pukuveras. The
exact dates of his reign are unknown, although the period 1295–1315 is
generally accepted. He is best known for his diplomatic and military struggle

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 324 • VYTENIS

against the Teutonic Knights, especially his alliance with the archbishop
and burghers of Riga against the order. In 1298, Vytenis joined forces with
Riga in a long military campaign against the Knights. A Lithuanian garrison
was stationed in Riga until 1313. In 1295 and 1306, Vytenis intervened on
behalf of Bolesław of Mazovia in the struggles for the Polish throne. Vytenis
remained a follower of traditional Lithuanian pre-Christian religion, but
allowed Catholic monks and churches to operate in the Grand Duchy and
seems to have been interested in creating an Orthodox metropolitan see in
Lithuania. Thus Vytenis reinforced the basic outlines of Lithuania’s policy
of defense in the west and expansion in the east, which was continued by his
successors in the 14th and 15th centuries. See also SWEDEN.

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 W
WIŚNIOWIECKI, MICHAEL (1638–1673). King of Poland and Grand
Duke of Lithuania between 1669 and 1673. After the abdication of John
Casimir Vasa in 1668, the Commonwealth’s diet rejected foreign contend-
ers and elected Michael Korybut-Wiśniowiecki, a descendent of Grand Duke
Algirdas’s son Kaributas. King Michael’s brief reign was marked by a series
of unsuccessful wars against the Ottoman Turks and Cossacks; in Lithuania,
it was a period of the ascendance of the Pac family, which controlled the
Grand Duchy’s chancery and army. He died near Lviv during a military
campaign on 10 November 1673.

WŁADYSŁAW II. See JOGAILA.

WŁADYSŁAW IV VASA (1595–1648). King of Poland and Grand Duke

of Lithuania (1632–1648), the son of King Sigismund III Vasa and Anne
of Hapsburg; born in Cracow on 19 April 1595. During Muscovy’s Time of
Troubles (1598–1613), Władysław was elected tsar by the boyar assembly
in 1610 under threat of the Polish-Lithuanian army that was then encamped
in Moscow; however, Russian resistance to this project and Władysław’s
father’s machinations led to the enthronement of the Romanovs instead.
After Sigismund III’s death in 1632, he was elected king and grand duke as
Władysław IV in an unusually peaceful royal election, the last of its kind.
In domestic affairs, Władysław followed a policy of religious toleration
toward the Orthodox and Protestants. In foreign relations, he succeeded in
holding off Muscovite attacks on Smolensk, but failed in his bid to gain the
throne of Sweden and unite it with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Władysław’s attempts to initiate political and social reform in the 1630s and
1640s foundered because of chaos in the Commonwealth’s diets, where the
liberum veto was ever more frequently invoked to obstruct royal decrees.
During Władysław’s last years, growing rebellion among Cossacks in the
Ukraine pushed Poland-Lithuania toward a major conflict with Muscovy.
Władysław died in Merkinė, Lithuania, on 20 May 1648.

325

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 326 • WOMEN

WOMEN. Before 1900. Little is known about the social status of women in
Lithuania before historical records. In a recent interpretation, the renowned
Lithuanian archaeologist and feminist scholar Marija Gimbutas (1921–
1994), in her groundbreaking study The Civilization of the Goddess, assumed
a matriarchal culture in Lithuania before the advent of the patriarchal warlike
Indo-European invasion. While some scholars have disputed her findings,
Gimbutas pointed out the evidence that this culture had been dominated by
female goddesses and that relicts of this matriarchal orientation had survived
in later Baltic, including Lithuanian, culture.
Medieval sources give us the first real historical view of the role of women
in Lithuanian society. In 1447, Grand Duke Casimir issued a privilege grant-
ing noble women the right of inheritance, which was also confirmed in the
Lithuanian Statute of 1529; however, these property rights were more cir-
cumscribed than those of men. In terms of criminal law, the Statute punished
assaults on women twice as severely as attacks on men. In the 16th century,
the Lithuanian commentator Michalo Lituanus (Lithuanian: Mykolas Lietu-
vis) wrote a tract portraying Lithuanian women as possessing excessive po-
litical and economic clout and envying the Grand Duchy’s Muscovite and
Tatar neighbors, who kept women subjugated. In general, despite the legal
protection enjoyed by women in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, their social
status in the culture subordinated them to men. As in the rest of Europe, albeit
on a relatively smaller scale, witch hunts, primarily against lower-class Lithu-
anian women, were conducted between the 16th and 18th centuries.
Lithuanian women became increasingly active in public life during the
19th century: Emilia Plater (1806–1831) was one of the leaders of the insur-
rection of 1830–1831 against Russian rule. During the period of the tsarist
press ban, Lithuania’s rural women established a network of illegal under-
ground schools that became the basic means of educating children in the
native language. The image of Lithuanian mothers teaching their children
to read by the spinning wheel was immortalized in perhaps Lithuania’s most
popular sculpture, Vargo mokykla (The School of Hardship), by Petras Rimša
(1881–1961).
By the late 19th century, Lithuanian women became increasingly im-
portant in the development of Lithuanian culture, especially in literature.
Since educational opportunities for peasant women were limited before
1918, most Lithuanian women writers came from the Polonized gentry,
including Žemaitė (1845–1921); Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė (1861–1943);
Marija Pečkauskaitė (1878–1930), better known as Šatrijos Ragana (The
Witch of Šatrija); and the sisters Sofija Pšibiliauskienė (1876–1926) and
Marija Lastauskienė (1872–1957) who wrote under the collective pseudonym
Lazdynų Pelėda (“The Owl in the Grove”).

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 WOMEN • 327

After 1900. During the Revolution of 1905, the Lithuanian Women’s As-
sociation (Lietuvos moterų susivienijimas) was founded with the purpose
of promoting women’s rights within a future Lithuanian state. In December
1905, a congress of Lithuanian village women convened in Šiauliai and
urged women to form their own organizations to fight for equal rights. Other
secular and Catholic women’s groups, led by proponents of women’s rights
such as pedagogue Ona Brazauskaitė-Mašiotienė (1883–1949), were formed
during World War I.
In 1920, the provisional constitution, or Basic Law, of Lithuania man-
dated equal political rights for men and women; in that year, Lithuanian
women voted for the first time during the elections for the Constituent As-
sembly, whose first sessions were opened and chaired by Petkevičaitė-Bitė.
In 1922, at the initiative of the women members of the Seimas, Lithuania’s
civil code was amended to grant women full property rights. The interwar
period also saw the emergence of the first generation of university-educated
ethnic Lithuanian women who were able to enter the professions, especially
teaching, medicine, the arts, and government service. Sofija Kymantaitė-
Čiurlionienė (1885–1958), the widow of Lithuania’s best known artist, Mi-
kalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, and a prominent author, was a member of
the Lithuanian delegation at the League of Nations in the late 1920s.
The first Lithuanian-language periodicals for women also appeared be-
tween the wars. In December 1937, the second Lithuanian Women’s Con-
gress gathered about 1,000 delegates, who issued a public appeal to translate
the legal principles of equality between the sexes into economic and social
justice for women. After the occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in
1940, most Lithuanian women’s organizations were banned or reorganized.
During the Nazi occupation of 1941–1944, women constituted a conspicu-
ously large percentage of the Gentiles who assisted Jews. Women also were
prominent in the anti-Soviet resistance and dissident movements after 1944.
The nearly five decades of Soviet rule left a mixed legacy to Lithuania’s
women. Women became a majority in the medical and teaching professions
and were showcased in such assemblies as the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet, al-
though, as in the rest of the Soviet Union, very few women actually achieved
status within the real power elites, such as the Communist Party’s Central
Committee or Politburo. In some ways, the Soviet years were a setback for
women: as many women entered the workforce, including industrial and
mechanized agricultural labor, they were also held responsible for the tradi-
tional domestic chores, creating an exhausting and stressful social and family
situation. The numerous women’s publications and official organizations
such as the Congress of Soviet Lithuanian Women did little to alleviate the
situation.

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 328 • WORLD WAR I

During the late 1980s, women actively participated in the growing Lithua-
nian independence movement, and in February 1990, 14 women were elected
to the Supreme Soviet (Council) that declared the restoration of Lithuania’s
independence on 11 March. Kazimira Prunskienė became the country’s first
prime minister (March 1990–January 1991) and the first woman to head a
government in Eastern Europe. She achieved international prominence for
her diplomatic tour of the United States and European capitals in the spring
of 1990 during the difficult days of the Soviet economic blockade against
Lithuania. Ten women were elected to the first postwar parliament (Seimas)
of the Republic in October 1992.
Recent statistics indicate that the percentage of women in top government,
managerial, and business positions is decreasing, partly due to the general
economic recession that has followed the collapse of the Soviet system.
However, many women active in more than 20 nongovernmental women’s
organizations have begun raising their voices against what they term patriar-
chal and traditional stereotypes that exclude women from positions of power
and subordinate them to men. For example, while most schoolteachers are
women, there are few women school principals and directors, especially in
the larger secondary schools. The situation of Lithuania’s women has encour-
aged the beginnings of a Western-style feminist movement. In May 2009,
Dalia Grybauskaitė won the country’s presidential vote and became the
first woman head of state in Lithuanian history.

WORLD WAR I (1914–1918). The first of two world wars of the 20th cen-
tury, initially referred to as the Great War. The international crisis that led to
the war was ignited by the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of
Austria by Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on 28 June 1914. Sub-
sequent mobilizations led to the outbreak of the first World War in August
1914. The conflict pitted the alliance known as the Central Powers, led by
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, against the Allies or
the Entente, whose major members included Great Britain, France, Italy,
Russia, Japan, and eventually the United States. World War I was the most
violent international conflict of that time: it is estimated that between 1914
and 1918 nearly ten million combatants and as many as six million civilians
perished in Europe and Asia.
An important legacy of World War I was the disintegration of Russia,
Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire—the three great multinational
monarchies that had dominated most of Eastern Europe since the collapse of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century. Their disap-
pearance led, in turn, to the emergence of states based on the principle of self-
determination, as proclaimed in January 1918 as part of President Woodrow

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 WORLD WAR II • 329

Wilson’s Fourteen Points. The legitimacy of the idea of national self-rule and
the geopolitical realities of the war were crucial in enabling the restoration of
an independent Lithuanian state.
Germany’s successful offensive against the Russian army in 1914–1915
ended over a century (1795–1915) of tsarist rule in Lithuania. The demo-
graphic dislocation produced by the war and the oppressive German military
occupation of 1915–1918 mobilized many Lithuanians to support the alterna-
tive of self-rule. Germany’s increasingly difficult military situation led Berlin
to accommodate the desires of eastern Europe’s subject peoples for greater
autonomy. In Lithuania, the Germans allowed the creation of a national
council known as the Taryba, which eventually declared the independence
of Lithuania in Vilnius on 16 February 1918. On 3 March, Soviet Russia
and the Central Powers concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended
major combat operations on the Eastern Front. Germany and the Allies signed
an armistice ending the fighting on the Western Front on 11 November. On
the same day, the first Lithuanian cabinet under Augustinas Voldemaras
took office.
Despite the armistice of 1918 and the formal conclusion of the Great War
with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, conflicts con-
tinued to plague Europe until the early 1920s, notably the Russian Civil War,
the Polish-Soviet war, civil wars in Finland and Hungary, the Silesian upris-
ings of 1919–1921, and numerous border clashes. The newly formed Lithu-
anian state was involved in wars with the Bolsheviks, the Bermondtists, and
Poland as well as minor border clashes with Latvia and armed intervention
in 1923 to secure Klaipėda. It is estimated that more than 4,000 Lithuanian
soldiers died during the independence wars of 1918–1920. See also AMERI-
CAN BRIGADE; ARMED FORCES; BELARUS; CENTRAL LITHU-
ANIA, REPUBLIC OF; CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY; FOREIGN RELA-
TIONS; GRINIUS, KAZYS; LITBEL; PIŁSUDSKI, JÓZEF; POPULATION
AND DEMOGRAPHY; POW; RIFLEMEN’S UNION; SLEŽEVIČIUS,
MYKOLAS; SMETONA, ANTANAS; SOVIET-LITHUANIAN PEACE
TREATY; SUWAŁKI DEMARCATION AGREEMENT; VILNIUS QUES-
TION; YČAS, MARTYNAS; ŻELIGOWSKI, LUCJAN.

WORLD WAR II (1939–1945). European and Global Phases. While the

root causes of the second World War can be traced to the 1930s, the strategic
arrangement that initiated hostilities was the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August
1939. That treaty allowed Germany to launch its attack on Poland on 1
September 1939 with the tacit cooperation of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR), which launched its own invasion of Poland two weeks
later. On 3 September, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany.

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 330 • WORLD WAR II

After the final surrender of the Polish forces on 6 October, the war re-
mained confined to Europe. The United States, while formally neutral, sup-
ported Great Britain and France, while the USSR provided material and tacti-
cal support to Germany. In April 1940, the German army launched a massive
offensive in western Europe that in quick succession occupied Denmark and
Norway, then subdued Belgium and the Netherlands. Italy declared war on
France on 10 June. The German defeat of French forces and the armistice of
25 June with the new government of Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856–1951)
left Adolf Hitler in control of western Europe.
Great Britain and its dominions fought Nazi Germany alone until 22 June
1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest military cam-
paign in history. On 8 December, the United States declared war on Japan
following the attack on Pearl Harbor. On 11 December, Germany and Italy
declared war on the United States, thus transforming the war into a truly
global conflict between the Grand Alliance (the United States, Great Britain,
and the USSR) and the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, Bulgaria, Roma-
nia, Hungary, and Slovakia).
Unlike World War I, the major campaigns of the second World War ex-
panded to North Africa and the Pacific as well as China and southern Asia.
The war in Europe ended with the surrender of the German army to the Al-
lies on 8 May 1945. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively, and the Soviet declaration of war on
Japan on 8 August, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of the impe-
rial forces on 15 August. On 2 September, Japanese officials formally signed
instruments of capitulation on the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay,
thus officially ending World War II.
Legacies. World War II was the most destructive military conflict in his-
tory. Estimates of the total death toll vary greatly, but, although some ac-
counts giver higher figures, it can be conservatively estimated that at least
60 million people perished in the war; perhaps, as many as two-thirds were
civilian victims. One of the defining and persistent historic legacies of World
War II was the targeting of civilian populations, both by aerial bombard-
ment and mass murder of noncombatants on the ground. Central and eastern
Europe, the Soviet Union, and East Asia (especially China) accounted for
the vast majority of casualties. The German-Soviet war, the Eastern Front,
produced an estimated 12 to 15 million battle deaths, the majority of those
killed in action during World War II. The human toll of the Holocaust, the
mass murder of other civilians, especially Poles, and the killing of prisoners
of war caused between 12 and 15 million deaths.
In addition to the destruction of life and property, World War II initiated a
massive redistribution of global economic and political power. The wartime

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 WORLD WAR II • 331

diplomacy of the Big Three (Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin
D. Roosevelt), especially the crucial conferences at Tehran (26 November–1
December 1943) and Yalta (4–11 February 1945), affirmed the emergence of
the United States and the USSR as superpowers, considerably diminishing
the influence of the major European states in world affairs. The Soviet-Amer-
ican rivalry that grew out of disagreements concerning postwar arrangements
led to the Cold War and a divided Europe, which persisted into the late 1980s.
Effects in Lithuania. World War II left behind a profound and tragic legacy
for the Lithuanian state and nation. As the international system created by
the Treaty of Versailles disintegrated during the late 1930s, the government
of Antanas Smetona hoped to preserve Lithuania’s sovereignty by adhering
to a strict policy of neutrality. When the war broke out in September 1939,
Lithuania was the only country that bordered both Poland and Germany. The
Nazi-Soviet Pact and the subsequent Soviet-Lithuanian Mutual Assistance
Treaty of October 1939 placed the nation within the Soviet sphere of influ-
ence. On 15 June 1940, the day after Paris fell to the Germans, Stalin com-
menced the occupation of Lithuania and the other Baltic States, resulting in
their annexation by the Soviet Union in August.
In addition to the loss of independence and the widespread destruction of
the military campaigns, the human toll of World War II and its aftermath
proved even more devastating for Lithuania. The first Soviet occupation of
1940–1941 resulted in the violent suppression of virtually all non-Communist
political, economic, and social institutions. Thousands of perceived enemies
of the Soviet state were arrested and tortured; hundreds were executed. More
than 20,000 persons were deported to prisons or exile in remote parts of the
USSR by the summer of 1941.
The German occupation of 1941–1944 resulted in enormous population
losses. The Nazis annihilated over 90 percent of Lithuania’s Jews during the
Holocaust. In addition, tens of thousands of ethnic Lithuanians were deported
to forced labor in Germany, and many others were killed during the fighting
or executed.
The retreat of the German forces in the summer and fall of 1944 and the
reoccupation of Lithuania by the Soviet army did not bring peace. The anti-
Soviet guerrilla war of 1944–1953 killed nearly 60,000 persons, the major-
ity of them civilians. At the same time, about 130,000 Lithuanians were
deported to inhospitable regions of Siberia and Central Asia, while hundreds
of thousands of primarily Russian and other Slavic settlers were brought to
the republic. At least a quarter of a million ethnic Poles were repatriated to
Poland before 1950. In addition to the devastating demographic dislocations,
it is widely held by Lithuanians that the half century of foreign rule, the di-
rect legacy of World War II, left behind serious economic, environmental,

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 332 • WORLD WAR II

social, and cultural problems that will afflict the nation for years to come.
See also AMBRAZEVIČIUS-BRAZAITIS, JUOZAS; ARMED FORCES;
DEKANOZOV, VLADIMIR; DISPLACED PERSONS; KANIŪKAI (KO-
NIUCHY) MASSACRE; KUBILIŪNAS, PETRAS; LITHUANIAN AC-
TIVIST FRONT; NATIONALIST PARTY, LITHUANIAN; NINTH FORT;
PANERIAI; PEOPLE’S DIET; PEOPLE’S GOVERNMENT; RAINIAI
MASSACRE; RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS; SUPREME COMMITTEE
FOR THE LIBERATION OF LITHUANIA; ULTIMATUMS OF 1938–
1940.

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 Y
YČAS, MARTYNAS (1885–1941). Lithuanian lawyer and statesman; born
in Biržai district on 13 November 1885. After graduating from the law faculty
of the University of Tomsk in Siberia, Yčas returned to Lithuania in 1912 and
was elected to the Duma, imperial Russia’s legislature, where he frequently
lobbied for Lithuanian interests. Yčas became one of the few prominent non-
Russian members of the empire’s liberal Constitutional Democrat, or Kadet,
Party. He was active in the February Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the
tsar, and he briefly became vice minister of education in Russia’s provisional
government. In 1918, Yčas returned to Lithuania and was appointed minister
of commerce. He also worked with the Lithuanian delegation at the Paris
Peace Conference in 1919 and presided over the commission to settle the
Lithuanian-Latvian border dispute in 1921. During most of the interwar
period, he engaged in private business. Yčas was also a longtime head of the
Lithuanian synod of the Reformed Church. He died in Rio de Janeiro on 5
April 1941.

YEDINSTVO. An anti-independence movement of mostly ethnic Russians,

with some following among ethnic Poles, organized as a pro-Moscow front to
oppose the Lithuanian independence movement of the late 1980s, especially
Sąjūdis. Yedinstvo (Russian for “Unity”) organized demonstrations support-
ing the Kremlin, especially during the 1989–1990 period. The main goal of
the movement was to encourage support for maintaining the unity of the So-
viet Union. Yedinstvo lost much of its relevance as support for independence
gained throughout 1990 and particularly after the failed anti-Gorbachev coup
of 19–21 August 1991. The organization was modeled after similar move-
ments in Latvia (Interfront) and Estonia. See also COMMUNIST PARTY,
LITHUANIAN.

YELTSIN, BORIS (1931–2007). Communist politician and reformer and

Russian statesman; born in Sverdlovsk district on 1 February 1931. Yeltsin
joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961 and first achieved
prominence as party boss in Sverdlovsk in 1976. He was appointed to the

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 334 • YOTVINGIANS

Politburo in 1985 and headed the Moscow party organization. Yeltsin in-
creasingly came into conflict with the Party’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev,
criticizing the latter as being insufficiently radical in his reforms. In June
1990, Yeltsin won election to the presidency of the Russian Federation of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) advocating for greater autonomy
of the constituent republics. During the Lithuanian conflict with Gorbachev
over independence, Yeltsin came to be seen as a supporter of the Baltic re-
form movements, and he sharply criticized the violent Soviet crackdown in
Vilnius in January 1991.
After the abortive anti-Gorbachev coup of 19–21 August 1991, Yeltsin led
the resistance against the plotters and then, after their defeat, marginalized
Gorbachev. In December 1991, Yeltsin, along with the leaders of Ukraine and
Belarus, declared an end to the USSR and established the Commonwealth
of Independent States. He negotiated the withdrawal of Russian troops from
Lithuania in September 1993.
Yeltsin’s political career and popularity declined sharply during the 1990s
as charges of corruption, his embarrassing public displays of alcoholism,
violence towards political enemies, and wrenching economic reforms under-
mined his power. He abruptly resigned the presidency on 31 December 1999,
naming Vladimir Putin (1952– ) his successor. Yeltsin died in Moscow on
23 April 2007.

YOTVINGIANS (SUDOVIANS). Lithuanian: jotvingiai (sudūviai). West-

ern tribe of Balts related to the Prussians. The Yotvingians first appear in
a Kievan chronicle describing Prince Vladimir’s campaign of 983, although
it is probable that they were also the “Soudinou” mentioned by the Greek
scholar Ptolemy in the 2nd century as the neighbors of the Slavs and Goths.
In Lithuanian historical literature, the term Sudovians, also used in some me-
dieval chronicles, has recently gained greater acceptance as the correct term
for the people who inhabited the region now known as Suvalkija, Sūduva, or
Užnemunė—that is, the land to the south and west of the Nemunas River. In
contrast to Lithuanian, there is no written record of the Yotvingian language
except for proper names preserved in medieval documents, but prevailing
opinion among linguists is that Yotvingian was a dialect of Old Prussian. The
Yotvingians were weakened by persistent invasions of their land from Kievan
Rus’ and its successor state of Volynia-Galicia. The tribe was finally exter-
minated or Germanized by the Teutonic Knights in the early 14th century.
The southern lands of the Yotvingians were settled by Poles, Belarusians,
and Ukrainians, while the northern region, now generally called Suvalkija,
was largely wilderness until the 16th century when Lithuanian peasants began
to settle the area.

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 YOUNG LITHUANIA • 335

YOUNG LITHUANIA. Lithuanian: Jaunoji Lietuva. A popular nationalist

Lithuanian youth organization. The Young Lithuanians, or jaunalietuviai,
as they were commonly called, were founded in 1927 at the initiative of the
nationalist student fraternity Neo-Lithuania, which sought to include the
youth of Lithuania’s villages and towns in a broader nationalist movement.
The Union of Young Lithuania was formally an independent social organiza-
tion but in practice constituted the youth wing of the Lithuanian Nationalist
Union. In 1936, the Nationalists formalized their relationship with Young
Lithuania by allowing its members to join the Nationalist Union without the
required candidacy period. At its height, Young Lithuania had about 40,000
members and operated numerous sports, cultural, and educational clubs.
The Young Lithuanians openly declared their allegiance to authoritarian
principles and Antanas Smetona as the nation’s leader. The group’s intense
nationalism, emphasis on the leader principle, uniforms, and penchant for
paramilitary-style drilling gave it a radical aura. Young Lithuania was banned
in June 1940 after the Soviet occupation, but was reestablished in 1990, albeit
on a much smaller scale.

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 336 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Z
ŻELIGOWSKI, LUCJAN (1865–1947). Polish military leader and politi-
cian; born in Ashmyany (Belarus) on 17 October 1865. Żeligowski gradu-
ated from the Riga Polytechnic Institute and served in the Russian army
during World War I. In 1918, he helped organize the Polish army and served
as a general in Poland’s war against the Bolsheviks. In September 1920,
Żeligowski received secret instructions from Polish leader Józef Piłsudski to
organize a military operation for the occupation of Vilnius. When the Polish-
Lithuanian Suwałki Demarcation Agreement of 7 October 1920 assigned
Vilnius to the Lithuanian side of the demarcation line, Żeligowski, in a ruse
to bypass the accord, declared a mutiny on the following day. His forces, for-
mally designated as the Lithuanian and Belarusian Division, were supported
by additional Polish army units in an attack on Lithuanian troops. At the same
time, Żeligowski announced a manifesto proclaiming that the inhabitants of
Vilnius, rather than the Entente or League of Nations, would decide the fate
of eastern Lithuania.
After capturing Vilnius on 9 October, Żeligowski’s forces continued their
invasion of Lithuania, but their advance was halted by Lithuanian forces in
fierce battles at the towns of Giedraičiai and Širvintos north of the capital.
An armistice brokered by the League of Nations Control Commission was
proclaimed on 21 November. As supreme commander of the army of Central
Lithuania during 1920–1922, Żeligowski controlled this ministate before its
formal incorporation into Poland. In 1925–1926, he was Poland’s minister of
defense, and he served as a member of the Polish parliament from 1927 to
1939. Żeligowski died in London on 9 July 1947. See also VILNIUS QUES-
TION.

ŽEMAITĖ (1845–1921). The pen name of Lithuanian writer Julija

Žymantienė (née Beniuševičiūtė); born on 23 May 1845 in Plungė district.
Žemaitė was raised in a family of poor Samogitian gentry and was tutored at
home, receiving no formal schooling. Like most Lithuanian gentry women,
she was raised in Polish culture but attained a command of the Samogitian
dialect through her close contacts with peasants. In 1865, she married Laury-

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 338 • ŽEMAITIJA

nas Žymantas, with whom she lived in poverty for nearly 20 years. After the
couple’s circumstances improved, Žemaitė became interested in Lithuanian
literature in part through her acquaintance with the student (and later editor)
Povilas Višinskis (1875–1906), who encouraged her literary efforts and sug-
gested her pen name, meaning “Samogitian Woman.” Her first short story,
“Piršlybos” (Matchmaking), was published in 1895 and was followed by
scores of short stories and sketches of contemporary Lithuanian life.
Žemaitė was a pioneer in developing secular, nondidactic prose fiction
in the Lithuanian language. She moved to Vilnius in 1911 and during
1913–1915 worked as a newspaper editor. In 1916, Žemaitė came to the
United States to raise funds for Lithuanian war victims; while there, she
wrote primarily for the Lithuanian socialist press. Although Žemaitė joined
the Social Democrats in 1917 and expressed anticlerical attitudes, she was
sharply critical of Bolshevism.
Žemaitė occupies a unique niche in the history of Lithuanian literature.
In contrast to the contemporary fashion of idealizing Lithuanian village life,
she penned powerful descriptions of the backwardness, ignorance, and social
injustice of rural Samogitia based on her own experiences and written in
the rough speech of the local peasantry. She portrayed the Polonized gen-
try as an alien and demoralizing exploiter of the peasants, but Žemaitė also
revealed the roots of narrowness and provincialism in Lithuanian society
itself, whether among the peasants or intelligentsia. Žemaitė was the only
Lithuanian writer of the period to consistently address the problem of the
subjugation of women as a major social issue; she is thus one of the earliest
proponents of equality for women in Lithuania. She died in Marijampolė on
7 December 1921 soon after her return from America.

ŽEMAITIJA. See SAMOGITIA.

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 Appendix 1
Pronunciation of Lithuanian Terms

The modern Lithuanian language is written in the Latin alphabet and is

modeled in part on the Czech script. The following are the most frequently
encountered letters and letter combinations with their approximate English
pronunciation.

Lithuanian English Approximation

A, ą a as in father
e, ę e as in ever
ė ay as in hay
u u as in put
ū, ų oo as in boot
i i as in hit
į, y ee as in sheep
o oa as in oar
č ch as in chair
c ts as in cuts
d d as in dental
j y as in yes
l l as in let
š sh as in sheep
t t as in tear
ž z as in azure
ius ius as in genius
ie ea as in hear
au ou as in out
ai ie as in pie
uo o as in shore
io yo as in yogurt

339

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 340 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Appendix 2
Lithuanian Rulers, 1251–1572a

Mindaugas (c. 1251–1263), King of Lithuania

Pre-Christian Rulers, 1263–1316

Treniota (1263–1265)
Vaišelga, aka Vaišvilkas (1265–1268)
Švarnas (1268–1269)
Traidenis (1270–1282)
Daumantas (c. 1282–1285)b
Butigeidis (c. 1285–1286)b
Butvydas, aka Pukuveras (c. 1285–1295)b
Vytenis (1295–1316)

Grand Dukes of the House of Gediminas

Gediminas (1316–1341)
Jaunutis (1341–1345)
Algirdas (1345–1377)
Kęstutis (1377–1378)
Jogaila (1378–1401)c
Vytautas (1401–1430)d
Švitrigaila (1430–1432)e
Sigismund Kęstutaitis (1432–1440)e

Grand Dukes–Kings of the Jogaila Dynasty (Jagiellonians)

Władysław II (Jogaila), Grand Duke of Lithuania (1378–1401), King of Po-
land (1386–1434)
Casimir IV, Grand Duke of Lithuania (1440–1492), King of Poland (1444–
1492)
Alexander, Grand Duke of Lithuania (1492–1506), King of Poland (1501–
1506)

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 342 • APPENDIX 2

Sigismund I (the Elder), Grand Duke of Lithuania (1506–1548), King of

Poland (1506–1548)
Sigismund II (Augustus), Grand Duke of Lithuania (1544–1572), King of
Poland (1548–1572)

Notes
a
For the oft-used Slavic (mainly Polish and Russian) versions of these names,
see the relevant entries in the dictionary.
b
Scant information about these rulers has led to doubts about their family
origins and historicity.
c
Jogaila, Gediminas’s grandson, was formally Grand Duke of Lithuania from
1378 to 1401; however, the period of 1377–1386 was also one of inter-
regnum and civil war.
d
De facto ruler of Lithuania 1390–1430.
e
Period of 1432–1435 was one of civil war and conflicting claims to the
throne.

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 Appendix 3
Rulers of the Commonwealth Period, 1569–1795

Henry Valois (1572–1574)

Stefan Batory (1575–1586)

Vasa Dynasty
Sigismund III (1587–1632)
Władysław IV (1632–1648)
John Casimir (1648–1668)

1668–1795
Michael Wiśniowiecki (1669–1673)
John III Sobieski (1674–1696)
Augustus II (the Strong) of Saxony (1697–1706, 1709–1733)
Stanisław I Leszczyński (1706–1709, 1733)
Augustus III of Saxony (1733–1763)
Stanisław II August Poniatowski (1763–1795)

343

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 344 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Appendix 4
Lithuanian Political Leaders since 1918

Presidents of the Republic of Lithuania, 1918–1940a

Antanas Smetona (4 April 1919–19 June 1920)
Aleksandras Stulginskis (19 June 1920–7 June 1926)b
Kazys Grinius (7 June–19 December 1926)
Antanas Smetona (19 December 1926–15 June 1940)c

Prime Ministers of the Republic of Lithuania, 1918–1940

Augustinas Voldemaras (11 November–26 December 1918)
Mykolas Sleževičius (26 December 1918–12 March 1919)
Pranas Dovydaitis (12 March–12 April 1919)
Mykolas Sleževičius (12 April–7 October 1919)
Ernestas Galvanauskas (7 October 1919–19 June 1920)
Kazys Grinius (19 June 1920–2 February 1922)
Ernestas Galvanauskas (2 February 1922–18 June 1924)
Antanas Tumėnas (18 June 1924–4 February 1925)
Vytautas Petrulis (4 February–25 September 1925)
Leonas Bistras (25 September 1925–15 June 1926)
Mykolas Sleževičius (15 June–17 December 1926)
Augustinas Voldemaras (17 December 1926–23 September 1929)
Juozas Tūbelis (23 September 1929–24 March 1938)
Vladas Mironas (24 March 1938–28 March 1939)
Jonas Černius (28 March–21 November 1939)
Antanas Merkys (21 November 1939–17 June 1940)
Justas Paleckis (17 June–24 June 1940)d
Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius (24 June–25 August 1940)e

First Secretaries of the Lithuanian Communist Party, 1940–1991

Antanas Sniečkus (15 August 1940–22 January 1974)f
Petras Griškevičius (19 February 1974–14 November 1987)
Ringaudas Songaila (1 December 1987–20 October 1988)

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 346 • APPENDIX 4

Algirdas Brazauskas (21 October 1988–8 December 1990)

Mykolas Burokevičius (1990–1991)g

Heads of State/Presidents since 1990

Vytautas Landsbergis (11 March 1990–25 November 1992)h
Algirdas Brazauskas (25 November 1992–25 February 1998)i
Valdas Adamkus (26 February 1998–26 February 2003)
Rolandas Paksas (26 February 2003–6 April 2004)
Artūras Paulauskas (6 April–12 July 2004)j
Valdas Adamkus (12 July 2004–12 July 2009)
Dalia Grybauskaitė (12 July 2009– )

Heads of Government/Prime Ministers

of the Republic of Lithuania since 1990
Kazimira Prunskienė (11 March 1990–10 January 1991)
Albertas Šimėnas (10 January–13 January 1991)
Gediminas Vagnorius (13 January 1991–21 July 1992)
Aleksandras Abišala (21 July–2 December 1992)
Bronislavas Lubys (2 December 1992–10 March 1993)
Adolfas Šleževičius (10 March 1993–15 February 1996)
Mindaugas Stankevičius (15 February–27 November 1996)
Gediminas Vagnorius (27 November 1996–4 May 1999)
Irena Degutienė (4 May–18 May 1999)k
Rolandas Paksas (18 May–27 October 1999)
Irena Degutienė (27 October–3 November 1999)k
Andrius Kubilius (3 November–26 October 2000)
Rolandas Paksas (26 October 2000–20 June 2001)
Eugenijus Gentvilas (20 June–3 July 2001)k
Algirdas Brazauskas (3 July 2001–1 June 2006)
Zigmantas Balčytis (1 June–4 July 2006)k
Gediminas Kirkilas (4 July 2006–26 November 2008)
Andrius Kubilius (26 November 2008– )

Notes
a
The Presidium of the Lithuanian State Council (Lietuvos Valstybės Taryba)
performed the functions of head of state from 2 November 1918 until 19 June
1920.

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 LITHUANIAN POLITICAL LEADERS SINCE 1918 • 347

b
Acting president (19 June 1920–21 December 1922); elected president (21
December 1922–7 June 1926).
c
Smetona transferred the presidency temporarily to Antanas Merkys on 15
June 1940. Merkys resigned on 17 June and was replaced by Justas Paleckis.
Historians consider Smetona the last legitimate president of the interwar
Lithuanian state.
d
Prime minister and acting president of the Soviet-controlled People’s Gov-
ernment.
e
Acting prime minister of the People’s Government.
f
De facto head of the underground Lithuanian Communist Party, 1936–1940.
g
Head of the minority Lithuanian Communist Party (CSPU) faction loyal to
Moscow after the Lithuanian Communist Party declared itself independent of
the Soviet party in December 1989.
h
Head of state as chairman of the parliament (Supreme Council).
i
Acting president (25 November 1992–25 February 1993); elected president
(25 February 1993–25 February 1998).
j
Acting president in his capacity as chairman of the parliament (Seimas) after
the impeachment of Rolandas Paksas on 6 April 2004.
k
Acting prime minister.

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10_646_Suziedelis.indb 348 1/20/11 11:24 AM
 Appendix 5
Peculiarities of Place and Time

Lithuanian Place-Names
For frequently encountered place-names in Lithuanian and other languages,
refer to table 5.

Calendars in Lithuanian History

Little is known about how Lithuanians kept time during the pre-Christian
era. As Lithuanian grand dukes expanded their rule eastward, they encoun-
tered the calendar in use among the Orthodox Christian East Slavs, who
reckoned time from the supposed creation of the world, calculated as having
occurred on 1 September 5509 BCE.
After the adoption of Roman Catholicism by Grand Duke Vytautas, the
Western calendar, which counted years from the incarnation of Jesus (Anno
Domini, or “the year of our Lord”), came into force. In 1582, Pope Gregory
XIII issued his bull reforming the Julian calendar, which had been in wide-
spread use throughout western and central Europe. The pope’s system was

Table 5. Lithuanian Place-Names in Various Languages

Lithuanian Polish Russian German Yiddish
Cities
Vilnius Wilno Vilna Wilna Vilne
Karaliaučius Królewiec Kaliningrad Königsberg
Kaunas Kowno Kovno Kauen Kovne
Klaipėda Kłajpeda Klaipeda Memel
Panevėžys Poniewież Ponevezh Poniewiesch Ponevezh
Šiauliai Szawle Shavli Schaulen Shavl
Tilžė Tilsit Sovetsk Tilsit
Trakai Troki Troki Tracken Trok
Ukmergė Wilkomierz Ukmerge Ukmerge Vilkomir

Geographical Formations
Nemunas Niemen Neman Memel
Kuršiu̧ marios Kurszy Kurskii zaliv Kurisches Haff
Baltija Bałtyk Baltiiskii Ostsee

349

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 350 • APPENDIX 5

eventually adopted as today’s civil international standard. King–Grand Duke

Stefan Batory introduced the Gregorian calendar to Lithuania in 1584. The
Julian calendar remained 11 days behind the Gregorian calendar during the
1700s, fell 12 days behind during the 19th century, and then lagged by 13
days after 1900.
As part of the process of modernizing the Russian state, Peter the Great
decreed the replacement of the Muscovite Eastern Orthodox system with the
Julian calendar, which took effect on 1 January 1700. Following the partitions
of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772–1795), the Julian calendar
became official on 1 January 1800 within the part of the former Grand Duchy
annexed by Russia. After the Russian army’s retreat in 1915, the German
military authorities reintroduced the Gregorian calendar.
The southwestern part of the former Grand Duchy, however, including the
Lithuanian-speaking region of Užnemunė (Suvalkija), was unaffected by the
calendar changes of the post-Commonwealth period. This territory, separated
from the rest of ethnographic Lithuania by the Nemunas River, was ruled,
in succession, by Prussia (1795–1807), the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815),
and the autonomous Kingdom of Poland under the tsar’s crown (1815–1867).
Here, the Gregorian calendar continued in use even after Russia’s formal
abolition of what remained of the Kingdom’s autonomy. Thus, the major part
of the city of Kaunas on the right bank of the Nemunas River followed the
Julian calendar, while the suburb of Aleksotas on the left bank utilized the
Gregorian system. A well-known joke of the 1800s portrayed the connecting
bridge as the longest in the world: crossing the river from the Kaunas side
took 12 calendar days.
In historical works, the Julian calendar dates are often designated as “Old
Style” (OS) and the Gregorian ones as “New Style” (NS). This dictionary
provides dates according to the calendar that was official at the time of the
event in the region in question.

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 Glossary

aktion (German) Term often used to describe Nazi killing operations dur-
ing the Holocaust.
Aukščiausioji Taryba (Lithuanian) Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian
SSR, 1940–1941 and 1944–1990; also the legislature of the Republic of
Lithuania during March 1990–November 1992, better translated into Eng-
lish during this latter period as the “Supreme Council.”
boyars The feudal warrior class and nobility in Muscovy and the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania.
grand hetman A high military rank in the Kingdom of Poland and the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, second only to the king–grand duke in the chain
of command.
gubernia (Russian) An administrative unit, or province, of the Russian
Empire, introduced by Peter the Great.
hetman A military term of Turkic origin indicating a field command in Po-
land and Lithuania from the 16th century to 1795 and, among the Cossacks
of Ukraine, a position of political leadership.
Lietuvos Respublika (Lithuanian) Official designation for Lithuania: the
Republic of Lithuania.
litas Unit of Lithuanian currency (in 1997, four litai was equivalent to one
U.S. dollar; in 2010, the exchange rate was 2.45 litai to the dollar and 3.45
litai to one euro)
nomenklatura (Russian) The elite economic and political officials of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, indicating their place on a purported
list of names for key positions.
palatine, palatinate See voivode.
Sąjūdis (Lithuanian) “Movement”; commonly used name for the Lithu-
anian Movement for Restructuring (or Perestroika; Lithuanian: Lietuvos
persitvarkymo sa˛ ju–dis).
Seimas (Lithuanian) Gentry diet of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; also the
parliament of the Republic of Lithuania, 1920–1940 and since November
1992.
szlachta (Polish) The petty (lesser) gentry of Poland and Lithuania.

351

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 352 • GLOSSARY

taryba (Lithuanian) A council, especially the Lithuanian Council of 1917–

1919; also the term for a “soviet.”
voivode (Lithuanian: vaivada; Polish: wojewoda) high-ranking royal
official with special powers; often translated into English as “palatine.”
The territory ruled by a voivode was called a voivodeship (Lithuanian:
vaivadija; Polish: województwo) or palatinate, an administrative division
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania introduced in the 16th century.

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 Bibliography

Introduction 354
Reference Works 356
Bibliographies 356
Western-Language Periodicals Relating to Lithuania 357
Encyclopedias 358
Research Aids and Guides to Collections 358
Government Reports and Statistical Publications 359
Atlases and Other Guides 361
Historical Sources 361
Primary Sources: Documents 361
Primary Sources: Diaries and Memoirs 363
Historical Studies (Chronological Divisions) 363
General 363
Prehistoric and Ancient Lithuanian Folklore, Tradition, and
Pre-Christian Religion 366
The Earlier Medieval Period (c. 1200–1387) 367
The Later Medieval Period (1387–1569) 368
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795) 369
Tsarist Rule (1795–1863) 370
Tsarist Rule (1863–1914) 371
World War I and the Struggle for Independence (1914–1920) 372
The Democratic Republic (1920–1926): Domestic Affairs 373
The Authoritarian Republic (1926–1940): Domestic Affairs 374
The Independent Republic (1918–1940): Foreign Affairs 374
Soviet Lithuania (1940–1941) 376
The Nazi Occupation (1941–1944) 377
Soviet Lithuania: The Postwar Stalin Years (1944–1953) 378
Soviet Lithuania after Stalin (1953–1988) 378
Sąjūdis and the Independence Movement (1988–1990) 379
The Republic of Lithuania since 1990 380
Historical Studies (Topical Divisions) 381
Art, Language, and Culture 381
Literature 382
Women’s History 383
Jewish History and the Holocaust 383

353

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 354 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Minorities, Emigration, and Diaspora Communities 388

Lithuanian East Prussia (Lithuania Minor) 389
Internet Resources 390

INTRODUCTION

Compiling a historical bibliography on Lithuania for the English-speaking reader

is complicated by the issue of language. There is a particular problem with primary
sources: except for Lithuanian-speaking East Prussia before World War I, the official
documents that are available for the period before the early 20th century were issued
in Latin, the Belarusian form of Old Church Slavic, Polish, German, or Russian.
There are few English-language translations of primary sources, although there is
a more extensive selection of translated memoirs. For readers familiar with Slavic
languages, and for students of medieval and modern European history, the more
important collections of primary sources in the major languages listed above are
included. Some titles in non-Western languages are included among the reference
works and atlases if they contain useful bibliographies, maps, art, statistical charts,
or summaries in English or other Western languages that can be accessed by readers
with some foreign-language skills. For the non-Western languages, a translation of
the title is provided; for Cyrillic titles, the bibliography utilizes a simplified version
of the Romanization system employed by the United States Bureau of Standards.
Before World War II, historical studies and monographs dealing with Lithuanian
history were published primarily in German, Russian, Polish, and increasingly—
especially since the early 20th century—in Lithuanian. In the last quarter-century,
the quality and quantity of historical works on Lithuania in English and the major
Western languages have improved substantially. The most important and relevant
Western-language secondary works are listed, and some Russian and Polish entries
are also included if they contain extensive bibliographies or can otherwise be useful to
the student with a smattering of Polish and/or Russian. While there is now an exten-
sive scholarly historical literature in Lithuanian, these secondary works are generally
excluded: they would be beneficial only to those with a command of the language
and thus are of little use to most readers of this dictionary. Not all publications listed
below are of equal merit regarding their level of historical scholarship or objectiv-
ity, but it should not be difficult to distinguish the more objective studies from the
polemical tracts.
For initial research, the still indispensable union catalogue on all aspects of Lithu-
ania is Adam and Filomena Kantautas’s A Lithuanian Bibliography (1975) and their
Supplement to a Lithuanian Bibliography (1979). Although dated, the six volumes
of the Encyclopedia Lituanica (1970–1978), as yet the only comprehensive English-
language reference of its kind, can be fruitfully mined for useful material. A practical
method of accessing the most recent publications on Lithuanian history is to check the
book review section of the quarterly Journal of Baltic Studies (JBS) and the annual
Nordost-Archiv. Hundreds of articles dealing with virtually all aspects of Lithuanian
history and culture can be found in Lituanus, published quarterly since 1954 and

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 355

available online, as well as the JBS, which can be accessed through the website of the
Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS; http://depts.washington
.edu/aabs/). For the newest studies and latest historiography, English readers are also
directed to Lithuanian Historical Studies, the annual journal published by the Lithu-
anian Institute of History in Vilnius.
The most recent overview from earliest times to the present is Andres Kasekamp’s
A History of the Baltic States (2010); also see History of Lithuania by Jūratė
Kiaupienė and Albinas Kuncevičius (2005). Noted archaeologist Marija Gimbutas’s
The Balts (1963) remains one of the more readable accounts of the prehistory of the
region. For the earlier medieval period, S. C. Rowell’s superbly documented Lithu-
ania Ascending (1994) is highly recommended. David Kirby’s more general Northern
Europe in the Early Modern Period is a good introduction for the general public.
For the national revival of the 19th century, the studies of Abelis Strazhas (1996)
are useful for the English-speaking reader. A current groundbreaking interpretation
of modern Lithuanian nationalism is described in Tomas Balkelis, The Making of
Modern Lithuania (2009).
There is abundant historical literature for the period since the early 20th century.
For the formation of the independent republic, Alfred Erich Senn’s The Emergence
of Modern Lithuania (1959) remains a readable and informative account. Vėjas
Liulevičius’s War Land on the Eastern Front (2000) is an insightful study of the
crucial period of the German occupation of 1915–1918. For an excellent short his-
tory of the interwar period, see Alfonsas Eidintas and Vytautas Žalys’s Lithuania in
European Politics (1998). A well-documented study of the Soviet invasion of 1940
and its aftermath is Lithuania 1940: Revolution from Above by Alfred E. Senn (2007).
The Soviet occupation of 1940–1941, the Holocaust, and the immediate postwar
period (1945–1953) have been exhaustively studied by the official International Com-
mission for the Evaluation of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania
(ICECNSORL), whose studies and statistical analyses are listed in the section on
government reports below.
A dated but still useful overview of the first decades of the Soviet period is in
Lithuania under the Soviets (1965), edited by V. Stanley Vardys, and his Catholic
Church, Dissent and Nationality (1978). Alfred E. Senn’s Lithuania Awakening
(1990) and Gorbachev’s Failure in Lithuania (1995) will take the reader through the
turbulent independence struggle of the late 1980s and early 1990s. There is as yet no
comprehensive scholarly work on the period since the mid-1990s in English.
There has been renewed interest in Lithuania’s minorities, especially the country’s
Jewish community. For the history of the Jews in the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth before World War I, Antony Polonsky’s masterful two-volume Jews
in Poland and Russia (2010) is unsurpassed. For a shorter historical overview of the
history of the country’s Litvak community, Dovid Katz’s Lithuanian Jewish Culture
(2004) and the more popular Jews of Lithuania (1995) by Masha Greenbaum are use-
ful introductions.
For the Holocaust, in addition to the official reports of the ICECNSORL, readers
should note the work of the former director of Yad Vashem, Yitzhak Arad, on the
fate of the Jews of Vilnius: Ghetto in Flames (1982) and his recent Holocaust in the

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 356 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Soviet Union (2009). Dov Levin has written widely on the Holocaust, especially on
Jewish armed participation in World War II, as in Fighting Back (1985). The fate of
the Jews in Kaunas is reflected in Avraham Tory’s well-documented diary Surviving
the Holocaust (1990). A selection of important materials in English translation, both
on the Holocaust and current discussion on the genocide, can be found in Joseph
Levinson, ed., The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania (2006). In Jews, Lithuanians and
the Holocaust (2003), Alfonsas Eidintas, the former Lithuanian ambassador to Israel,
deals with the still reverberating controversies engendered by the subject.

REFERENCE WORKS

Bibliographies
Adomonienė, Ona. Bibliografiya istorii Litvy, 1971–1975 (Bibliography of the His-
tory of Lithuania, 1971–1975) [in Russian]. Vilnius: Biblioteka Akademii Nauk
Litvy, 1992.
———. Lietuvos TSR istorijos bibliografja, 1966–1970 (Bibliography of the History
of the Lithuanian SSR, 1966–1970) [in Lithuanian]. Vilnius: Lietuvos TSR MA
istorijos institutas, 1980.
Balys, Jonas. Lithuania and Lithuanians: A Selected Bibliography. New York: Prae-
ger, 1961.
———. Lithuanian Periodicals in American Libraries: A Union List. Washington,
D.C.: Library of Congress, 1982.
———. “Retrospective and Current Lithuanian Bibliographies.” JBS 6, no. 4 (1975):
329–32.
Biržiška, Vaclovas. Lithuanian Publications in the United States, 1874–1910. Edited
by Stasė Vaškelis. Chicago: Institute of Lithuanian Studies, 1994.
Dundulis, Bronius. “A Historiographic Survey of Lithuanian-Polish Relations.”
Lituanus 17, no. 4 (1971): 5–34.
Jakštas, Juozas. “The 1863 Revolt in Soviet Lithuanian Historiography.” Lituanus 9,
no. 4 (1963): 145–48.
Kantautas, Adam, and Filomena Kantautas. A Lithuanian Bibliography: A Check-
list of Books and Articles Held by the Major Libraries of Canada and the United
States. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1975.
———. Supplement to a Lithuanian Bibliography: A Further Check-List of Books and
Articles Held by the Major Libraries of Canada and the United States. Edmonton:
University of Alberta Press, 1979.
Kaǔn, S. B., et al., eds. Vialikae kniastva Litoǔskae: historyia vyvuchenie ǔ 1991–2003
hh. Materialy mizhnarodnaha kruhlaha stala (16–18 maia 2003 h., h. Hrodna) /
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, History of Research, 1991–2003: Proceedings of the
International Round Table (16–18 May, 2003 Grodna, Belarus) [in Belarusian and
English]. Minsk: Medistont, 2006.
Krapauskas, Virgil. “Marxism and Nationalism in Soviet Lithuanian Historiography.”
JBS 23, no. 3 (1992): 239–60.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 357

Mažeika, Rasa. “The Grand Duchy Rejoins Europe: Post-Soviet Developments in the
Historiography of Pagan Lithuania.” Journal of Medieval History 21, no. 3 (1995):
289–303.
Okinshevych, Lev. The Law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: Background and Bib-
liography. New York: Research Program on the USSR, 1953.
Szameitat, Max. Bibliographie des Memellandes. Würzburg: Holzner-Verlag, 1957.
Ulpis, Antanas, et al., eds. Lietuvos TSR Bibliografija Serija A. Knygos lietuvių kalba
T. 1: 1547–1861 (Bibliography of the Lithuanian SSR. Series A. Books in the
Lithuanian Language. Vol. 1: 1547–1861). Vilnius: Mintis, 1969.
Vėbra, Rimantas. Bibliografinė rodyklė: 1957–1991 (A Bibliographical Index:
1957–1991). Vilnius: R. Vėbra, 1991.

Western-Language Periodicals Relating to Lithuania

Acta Baltica. Königstein im Taunus: Institutum Balticum, 1962–1967 (irregular).
Baltic Forum. Gothenburg, Sweden: MH International Design and Publications,
1984–1989 (semiannual).
Baltic Independent. Tallinn: Estonian News Agency, 1991–1996 (weekly) [continued
by Baltic Times].
Baltic Observer. Riga: Baltic News, 1992–1996 (weekly) [continued by Baltic
Times].
Baltic Review. New York: Committee for a Free Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, 1953–
1971 (quarterly) [continues as Revue Baltique (Vilnius).
The Baltic Times. Riga: Baltic News, 1996– (weekly).
Baltistica. Vilnius: University of Vilnius, 1965– (semiannual).
Bridges: Lithuanian-American Newsletter. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lithuanian-American
Community of USA, 1977– (monthly).
Bulletin of Baltic Studies. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Association for the Advancement of Baltic
Studies, 1970–1971 (quarterly) [continued by Journal of Baltic Studies].
Journal of Baltic Studies. Abingdon, Oxfordshire, U.K.: Association for the Advance-
ment of Baltic Studies, 1971– (quarterly).
Lietuvos TSR Mokslų akademijos darbai. Serija A: Visuomeniniai darbai (Works of
the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR. Series A: Social Sciences). Vil-
nius: Politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1955–1989 (quarterly).
Lithuanian Bulletin. New York: Lithuanian National Council, 1943–1951 (monthly).
Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review. Vilnius: Foreign Policy Research Center, 1998–
(semiannual).
Lithuanian Historical Studies. Vilnius: Lithuanian Institute of History, 1996– (an-
nual).
Lituanistikos darbai: Lithuanian Studies. Chicago: Lituanistikos institutas, 1970–
(annual).
Lituanus. Chicago: Lituanus Foundation, 1954– (quarterly).
Nordost-Archiv: Zeitschrift für Regionalgeschichte. Lüneburg: Nordostdeutsches
Kulturwerk, 1991– (annual).

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 358 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1986–
(annual).
Res Balticae: Miscellanea italiana di studi baltistici. Pisa: ECIG, 1995– (annual).
Revue Baltique: Organe de la collaboration des États Baltes. Tallinn: Bureau de
coopération esto-letto-lithuanienne, 1940– (three per year) [continued by Baltic
Review].
Revue Baltique: The Journal of Cooperation of the Baltic States. Vilnius: Scientists’
Society of Lithuania, 1991– (semiannual).
Studi baltici / Sezione baltica. Rome: Istituto per l’Europa Orientale, 1931–1961 (an-
nual, irregular) [continued by Res Balticae].
Vilnius. Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union, 1990–2003 (semiannual) [continues as
The Vilnius Review].
The Vilnius Review. Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union, 2003– (semiannual).
Vytis. The Knight. Chicago: Knights of Lithuania, 1915– (bimonthly).

Encyclopedias
Banevičius, Algirdas. 111 Lietuvos valstybes 1918–1940 politikos veikėju enciklope-
dinis žinynas (An Encyclopedic Directory of 111 Political Figures of the Lithu-
anian State, 1918–1940) [in Lithuanian]. Vilnius: Knyga, 1991.
Lietuviu enciklopedija (Lithuanian Encyclopedia) [in Lithuanian]. 37 vols. Boston:
Lithuanian Encyclopedia Press, 1953–1985.
Sužiedėlis, Simas, ed. Encyclopedia Lituanica. 6 vols. Boston: Lithuanian Encyclo-
pedia Press, 1970–1978.
Zinkus, Jonas, ed. Lithuania: An Encyclopedic Survey. Vilnius: Encyclopedia Pub-
lishers, 1986.

Research Aids and Guides to Collections

Berman, Elizabeth Kessin. “From the Depths: Recovering Original Documenta-
tion from the Kovno Ghetto.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 1 (1998):
99–117.
Cadzow, John F. “The Lithuanian Periodical Holdings in the Kent State Library.” JBS
5, no. 3 (1974): 264–75.
Crowe, David M., Jr. “Baltic Resource Material in the National Archives of the
United States.” JBS 7, no. 1 (1976): 94–100.
Dwyer, Joseph D. “The Lithuanian Collection of the University of Pennsylvania Li-
braries.” JBS 4, no. 3 (1973): 298–99.
Grimstead, Patricia Kennedy. Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the USSR,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belorussia. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1981.
———. The “Lithuanian Metrica” in Moscow and Warsaw: Reconstructing the Ar-
chives of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Including an Annotated Edition of the
1887 Inventory Compiled by Stanisław Ptaszycki. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Ukrainian Research Institute, 1984.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 359

“Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto: An Annotated Bibliography.” Holocaust and

Genocide Studies 12, no. 1 (1998): 119–37.
Koressaar, Victor. “Baltic Studies and Library Resources.” Bulletin of Baltic Studies
2, no. 1 (1970): 3–5.
———. “New Keys for Old Doors: New Finding Aids to Records Concerning the
Baltic States during World War II.” JBS 21, no. 1 (1990): 53–58.
Mulligan, Timothy P. “The OSS and the Nazi Occupation of the Baltic States, 1941–
1945: A Note on Documentation.” JBS 13, no. 1 (1982): 53–58.
———. “Source Materials for the German Occupation of the Baltic States, 1941–
1944: Problems and Possibilities.” JBS 21, no. 4 (1990): 319–34.
Nollendoris, Valters, and Betty J. Zeps. “Research Materials in Baltic Studies: A
Survey of Availability and Need.” JBS 11, no. 4 (1980): 283–314.
Paulauskas, Vaclovas. Who’s Who in Lithuania. Vilnius: Politika, 1993.
Senn, Alfred E. “The Senn Lithuanian Collection at the University of Wisconsin.”
JBS 7, no. 4 (1976): 352–66.
Šešplaukis, Alfonsas. Lituanica Collections in European Research Libraries. Chi-
cago: Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 1986.
Ziplans, Emilija E., et al., comps. “Baltic Material in the University of Toronto Li-
brary.” JBS 4, no. 3 (1973): 279–80.

Government Reports and Statistical Publications

Anušauskas, Arvydas. Pirmoji sovietinė okupacija: Teroras ir nusikaltimai
žmogiškumui / The First Soviet Occupation: Terror and Crimes against Humanity
[in Lithuanian and English]. Vol. 2 of ICECNSORL, The Crimes of the Totalitar-
ian Regimes in Lithuania: The Soviet Occupation. Vilnius: Margi raštai, 2006.
Čepaitė, Zita, Daila Gudavičiūtė, and Solveiga Daugirdaitė, comps. Lithuania:
Women in a Changing Society. Vilnius: Lithuanian Non-Governmental Women’s
Organization, 1995.
Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, 1992. Vilnius: Publishing House of the
Seimas, 1993.
Dieckmann, Christoph, and Saulius Sužiedėlis. Lietuvos žydų persekiojimas ir
masinės žudynės 1941 m. vasarą ir rudenį: šaltiniai ir analizė / The Persecution
and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews during Summer and Fall of 1941: Sources
and Analysis [in Lithuanian and English]. Vol. 3 of ICECNSORL, The Crimes of
the Totalitarian Regimes in Lithuania: The Nazi Occupation. Vilnius: Margi raštai,
2006.
Dieckmann, Christoph, Vytautas Toleikis, and Rimantas Zizas. Karo belaisvių ir
civilių gyventojų žudynės Lietuvoje, 1941–1944 / Murders of Prisoners of War and
of Civilian Population in Lithuania, 1941–1944 [in Lithuanian and English]. Vol.
2 of ICECNSORL, The Crimes of the Totalitarian Regimes in Lithuania: The Nazi
Occupation. Vilnius: Margi raštai, 2005.
Jakubčionis, Algirdas, Stasys Knezys, and Arūnas Streikus. Pirmoji sovietinė
okupacija. Okupacija ir aneksija / The First Soviet Occupation: Occupation and

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 360 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Annexation [in Lithuanian and English]. Vol. 1 of ICECNSORL, The Crimes of the
Totalitarian Regimes in Lithuania: The Soviet Occupation. Vilnius: Margi raštai,
2006.
Lietuvos moterys / Lithuania’s Women [in Lithuanian and English]. Vilnius: Lietuvos
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say on the Legacy of War.” Vilnius (Summer 1998): 129–46.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 377

The Nazi Occupation (1941–1944)

Aleksandravičius, Egidijus. “Lithuanian Collaboration with the Nazis and Sovi-
ets.” In ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungformen und Deutungen
im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Tauber, 174–91. Wiesbaden: Harras-
sowitz, 2006.
Bubnys, Arūnas. Nazi Resistance Movement in Lithuania, 1941–1944. Translated by
Vijolė Arbas. Vilnius: Vaga, 2003.
Dieckmann, Christoph. “Kollaboration? Litauische Nationsbildung und deutsche Be-
satszungsherrschaft im Zweiten Weltkrieg.” In ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa:
Erscheinungformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Tauber,
128–39. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006.
Kochavi, Alrieh. “Britain, the Soviet Union, and the Question of the Baltic States in
1943.” JBS 22, no. 2 (1991): 173–82.
Mackevičius, Mečislovas. “Lithuanian Resistance to German Mobilization Attempts,
1941–1944.” Lituanus 32, no. 4 (1986): 9–22.
McQueen, Michael. “Collaboration as an Element in the Polish-Lithuanian Struggle
over Vilnius.” In ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungformen und
Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Tauber, 164–73. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2006.
Myllyniemi, Seppo. Die Neuordnung der baltischen Länder 1941–1944: zum nation-
alsozialistischen Inhalt der deutschen Besatzungspolitik. Dissertationes historicae,
2. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1973.
Pavalkis, Victor. “The Attitude of the Vatican toward the German Church Policy in
Lithuania during Its Occupation (1941–1944).” JBS 4, no. 2 (1973): 130–34.
Raštikis, Stasys. “The Relations of the Provisional Government of Lithuania with
the German Authorities, June 23–August 5, 1941.” Lituanus 8, no. 1–2 (1962):
16–22.
Sruoga, Balys. Forest of the Gods. Translated by Aušrinė Byla. Vilnius: Vaga, 1996.
Sužiedėlis, Saulius. “Foreign Saviors, Native Disciples: Collaboration in Lithuania,
1940–1945.” In Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus,
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, edited by David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine, and Laura
Palosuo, 313–59. Bern: Peter Lang, 2004.
———. “Lithuanian Collaboration during the Second World War: Past Realities, Pres-
ent Perceptions.” In ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungformen und
Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Tauber, 140–63. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2006.
———. “The Military Mobilization Campaigns of 1943 and 1944 in German-
Occupied Lithuania: Contrasts in Resistance and Collaboration.” JBS 21, no. 1
(1990): 33–52.
———. “Thoughts on Lithuania’s Shadows of the Past: A Historical Essay on the
Legacy of War, Part II.” Vilnius (Summer 1999): 177–208.
Yla, Stasys. A Priest in Stutthof: Human Experiences in the World of the Subhuman.
Translated by Nola M. Zobarskas. New York: Manyland books, 1971.

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 378 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Soviet Lithuania: The Postwar Stalin Years (1944–1953)

Baliukevičius, Lionginas. The Diary of a Partisan. A Year in the Life of the Postwar
Lithuanian Resistance Fighter Dzūkas. Translated by Irena Blekys and Lijana
Holmes. Vilnius: Genocide and Research Center of Lithuania, 2008.
Daumantas, Juozas. Fighters for Freedom: Lithuanian Partisans Versus the U.S.S.R.,
1944–1947. Translated by E. J. Harrison. New York: Manyland Books, 1975.
Davoliūtė, Violeta. “Deportee Memoirs and Lithuanian History: The Double Testi-
mony of Dalia Grinkevičiūtė.” JBS 36, no. 1 (2005): 51–68.
Girnius, Kęstutis. “Soviet Terror in Lithuania during the Post-War Years.” Lituanus
32, no. 4 (1986): 29–49.
Kuodytė, Dalia, and Rokas Tracevskis, comps. Mass Deportations from Lithuania to
the USSR. Vilnius: Genocide and Resistance Centre of Lithuania, 2004.
———, comps. The Unknown War: Armed Anti-Soviet Resistance in Lithuania in
1944–1953. Vilnius: Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania,
2004.
Petersen, Roger Dale. Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe. Stud-
ies in Rationality and Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001.
Reklaitis, George. Cold War Lithuania: National Armed Resistance and Soviet Coun-
terinsurgency. Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1806.
Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University, Center for Russian and East European Studies,
2007.
Remeikis, Thomas. Opposition to Soviet Rule in Lithuania, 1945–1980. Chicago:
Institute of Lithuanian Studies Press, 1980.
Rudienė, Virginija, comp. Karas po karo / War after War: Armed Anti-Soviet Resis-
tance in Lithuania in 1944–1953 [in Lithuanian and English]. Vilnius: Genocide
and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania, 2004.
Tauras, K. V. Guerilla Warfare on the Amber Coast. New York: Voyages Press,
1962.
Vardys, V. Stanley. “The Partisan Movement in Postwar Lithuania.” Slavic Review
22, no. 3 (1963): 499–522.
Weeks, Theodore R. “Remembering and Forgetting: Creating a Soviet Lithuanian
Capital. Vilnius, 1944–1949.” JBS 39, no. 4 (2008): 517–33.

Soviet Lithuania after Stalin (1953–1988)

Anušauskas, Arvydas, and Birutė Burauskaitė. Freedom of the Baltics, Responsibility
of Europe: Searching the Ways for Liberation of the Baltic States; Civil protest
and the European Parliament in 1979–1983. Vilnius: Parliament of the Republic
of Lithuania, 2003.
Dauknys, Pranas. The Resistance of the Catholic Church in Lithuania against Reli-
gious Persecution. Rome: Pontificia Studiorum Universitas, 1981.
Idzelis, Augustinas. “Response of Soviet Lithuania to Environmental Problems in the
Coastal Zone.” JBS 10, no. 4 (1979): 299–308.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 379

Kinsella, David, and Rein Taagepera. “Religious Incident Statistics for Soviet Lithu-
anian Schools.” JBS 15, no. 1 (1984): 27–47.
Namsons, Andris. “Die Lage der katholischen Kirche in Sowjetlitauen.” Acta Baltica
1 (1960/61): 120–30.
Oleszczuk, Thomas A. Political Justice in the USSR: Dissent and Repression in
Lithuania, 1969–1987. East European Monographs, no. 247. Boulder, Colo.: East
European Monographs, 1988.
Rukšėnas, Algis. Day of Shame: The Truth about the Murderous Happenings aboard
the Cutter Vigilant during the Russian-American Confrontation off Martha’s Vine-
yard. New York: David McKay, 1973.
Vaitiekūnas, Vytautas. A Survey of Developments in Captive Lithuania in 1965–1968.
New York: Committee for a Free Lithuania, 1970.
Vardys, V. Stanley. The Catholic Church, Dissent, and Nationality in Soviet Lithu-
ania. East European Monographs, no. 43. Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly,
1978.
———. “How the Baltic Republics Fare in the Soviet Union.” Foreign Affairs 44, no.
3 (1966): 512–17.
———. “Human Rights Issues in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.” JBS 12, no. 3 (1981):
275–98.
———, ed. Lithuania under the Soviets: Portrait of a Nation, 1940–1965. New York:
Praeger, 1965.
———. “Modernization and Baltic Nationalism.” Problems of Communism 24 (1975):
32–48.
Vėlavičienė, Silvija. “KGB Censorship and Surveillance of Publications by Lithu-
anian Émigrés in North America during Five Decades of the Cold War.” Lituanus
55, no. 3 (2009): 37–56.

Sąjūdis and the Independence Movement (1988–1990)

Dobriansky, Paula J. The Baltic States in an Era of Soviet Reform. Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of State, 1989.
Juozaitis, Arvydas. The Lithuanian Independence Movement and National Minori-
ties. Frankfurt am Main: Peace Research Institute, 1992.
Krickus, Richard J. Showdown: The Lithuanian Rebellion and the Breakup of the
Soviet Empire. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1997.
Olcott, Martha Brill. “The Lithuanian Crisis.” Foreign Affairs 69, no. 3 (1990):
30–46.
Senn, Alfred E. Gorbachev’s Failure in Lithuania. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1995.
———. Lithuania Awakening. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
———. “Lithuania’s Path to Independence.” JBS 22, no. 3 (1991): 245–50.
———. “Toward Lithuanian Independence: Algirdas Brazauskas and the CPL.” Prob-
lems of Communism 39, no. 2 (1990): 21–28.
Vardys, V. Stanley. “Lithuanian National Politics.” Problems of Communism (July–
August 1989): 60–75.

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 380 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Republic of Lithuania since 1990

Budrytė, Dovilė. Taming Nationalism? Political Community in the Post-Soviet Baltic
States. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005.
Burant, Stephen R. “Overcoming the Past: Polish-Lithuanian Relations, 1990–1995.”
JBS 27, no. 4 (1996): 309–30.
———. “Polish-Lithuanian Relations: Past, Present, and Future.” Problems of Com-
munism (May–June 1991): 67–84.
Clark, Terry D. “Coalition Realignment in the Supreme Council of the Republic
of Lithuania and the Fall of the Vagnorius Government.” JBS 24, no. 1 (1993):
53–66.
———. “The 1996 Elections to the Lithuanian Seimas and Their Aftermath.” JBS 29,
no. 2 (1998): 135–48.
Dawson, Jane I. Eco-Nationalism: Anti-nuclear Activism and National Identity in
Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.
Donskis, Leonidas, ed. A Litmus Test Case of Modernity: Examining Modern Sen-
sibilities and the Public Domain in the Baltic States at the Turn of the Century.
London: Routledge, 2009.
Grennes, Thomas. “Inflation and Monetary Policy during Two Periods of Lithuanian
Independence.” JBS 27, no. 2 (1996): 133–42.
Hogan-Brun, Gabrielle, Meilutė Ramonienė, and Laima Grumadienė. “The Language
Situation in Lithuania.” JBS 36, no. 3 (2005): 345–70.
Kelertas, Violeta, ed. Baltic Postcolonialism. On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Iden-
tity, Freedom and Moral Imagination in the Baltics, no. 6. Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2006.
Krapauskas, Virgil. “Political Change in Poland and Lithuania: The Impact on Polish-
Lithuanian Relations as Reflected in Lithuanian-Language Publications in Poland
(1945–1991).” JBS 29, no. 3 (1998): 261–78.
Krickus, Richard J. “The Presidential Crisis in Lithuania: Its Roots and the Russian
Factor.” Lituanus 53, no. 3 (2007): 5–31.
Lasas, Ainius. “Bloody Sunday: What Did Gorbachev Know about the January 1991
Events in Vilnius and Riga?” JBS 38, no. 2 (2007): 179–94.
Meyers, William H., Natalija Kazlauskienė, and Marcelo M. Giugale, eds. Lithu-
ania’s Accession to the European Union: Successes and Challenges for a Rural
Economy in Transition. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1999.
Senn, Alfred E. “Lithuania’s First Two Years of Independence.” JBS 25, no. 1 (1994):
81–88.
Šilas, Algirdas J., ed. Lithuanian Independence: The U.S. Government Response,
1990–1991. Chicago: Ethnic Community Services, 1991.
Statteika, E. “Ethnic Minorities (Russians) in Lithuania.” Nationalities Papers 23,
no. 3 (1995): 401–4.
Tauber, Joachim. “The Rough Road to the West: Lithuania, 1990–1998.” Lithuania
Foreign Policy Review 3 (1999): 67–86.
Vėbra, Rimantas. “Political Rebirth in Lithuania, 1990–1991.” JBS 25, no. 2 (1994):
183–88.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 381

HISTORICAL STUDIES (TOPICAL DIVISIONS)

Art, Language, and Culture

Baltrušaitis, Jurgis. Lithuanian Folk Art. Munich: T. J. Vizgirda, 1948.
Baranova, Jūratė. Lithuanian Philosophy: Persons and Ideas. Lithuanian Philosophi-
cal Studies, no. 2. Washington, D.C.: Council for Research in Values and Philoso-
phy, 2000.
Bojtár, Endre. Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People. Trans-
lated by Szilvia Rédey and Michael Webb. Budapest: Central European University
Press, 1999.
Daunoravičienė, Gražina. “Exiled Modernism: Lithuanian Music through the Second
World War.” JBS 39, no. 3 (2008): 341–64.
Donskis, Leonidas. Identity and Freedom: Mapping Nationalism and Social Criticism
in Twentieth-Century Lithuania. London: Routledge, 2002.
———. Loyalty, Dissent and Betrayal: Modern Lithuania and East-Central European
Moral Imagination. Introduction by Zygmunt Bauman. On the Boundary of Two
Worlds: Identity, Freedom and Moral Imagination in the Baltics, no. 4. Amster-
dam: Rodopi, 2005.
Dunn, Stephen P. Cultural Processes in the Baltic Area under Soviet Rule. Berkeley,
Calif.: Institute of International Studies, 1966.
Ford, Gordon B., Jr. The Old Lithuanian Catechism of Baltramiejus Vilentas: A
Phonological, Morphological and Syntactical Investigation. The Hague: Mouton,
1970.
———. The Old Lithuanian Catechism of Martynas Mažvydas (1547). Assen: Van
Gorcum, 1971.
———. Old Lithuanian Texts of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, with a Glos-
sary. The Hague: Mouton, 1969.
Gruodytė, Vita. “Lithuanian Musicology in Historical Perspective: 1945 to the Pres-
ent.” JBS 39, no. 3 (2008): 263–82.
Johnson, Jeff. The New Theatre of the Baltics: From Soviet to Western Influence in
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. London: McFarland, 2007.
Johnston, Hank. “Religion and Nationalist Subcultures in the Baltics.” JBS 23, no. 2
(1992): 133–48.
Kato, Ichiro. “Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, the Lithuanian Composer and
Painter, and the Correlation between Pictorial and Musical Composition.” JBS 7,
no. 1 (1976): 40–44.
Krikštopaitis, Juozas. “The Subjection of Lithuanian Sciences to the Soviet State
System: Consequences and Prospects.” JBS 22, no. 2 (1991): 169–72.
Kudirka, Juozas. The Lithuanians: An Ethnic Portrait. Vilnius: Lithuanian Folk Cul-
ture Center, 1991.
Liutkus, Viktoras. “Lithuanian Art and the Avant-Garde of the 1920s.” Lituanus 54,
no. 2 (2008): 39–50.
Lorand, Nathalie. “Symbolist Visions: The Role of Music in the Paintings of M. K.
Čiurlionis.” Lituanus 49, no. 2 (2003): 20–32.

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 382 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Petrauskaitė, Danutė. “Lithuanian Music in America, 1870–1920.” JBS 31, no. 1

(2000): 60–79.
Pirodkinas, Arnoldas. “The Lithuanian Language: Hostage of Foreign Powers.”
Lituanus 42, no. 2 (1996): 44–59.
Plioplys, Audrius V. “The Influence of M. K. Čiurlionis (1875–1911) on His Contem-
poraries.” Lituanus 30, no. 2 (1984): 75–87.
Rupeikienė, Marija. A Disappearing Heritage: The Synagogue Architecture of Lithu-
ania. Vilnius: E. Karpavičius, 2008.
Sabaliauskas, Algirdas. Noted Scholars of the Lithuanian Language. Chicago:
Akademinės Skautijos Leidykla, 1973.
———. We, the Balts. Translated by Milda Bakšytė-Richardson. Vilnius: Science and
Encyclopedia, 1993.
Šilbajoris, Rimvydas, ed. Mind against the Wall: Essays on Lithuanian Culture under
Soviet Occupation. Chicago: Institute of Lithuanian Studies Press, 1983.
Vasinauskaitė, Rasa, ed. The Theatre of Oskaras Koršunovas: Interviews and Ar-
ticles. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2002.
Venclova, Tomas. “Four Centuries of Enlightenment: A Historic View of the Univer-
sity of Vilnius.” Lituanus 27, no. 2 (1981): 5–50.
———. Vilnius: A Personal History with a Dialogue about a City by Czesław Milosz
and Tomas Venclova. Translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo. Riverdale-on-Hud-
son, N.Y.: Sheep Meadow Press, 2009.
Zinkevičius, Zigmas. The History of the Lithuanian Language. Translated by Ramutė
Plioplys. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla, 1996.
Žygas, K. Paul. “Dogma, Art and Politics: Roman Aspects of St. Casimir’s Chapel in
Vilnius.” JBS 27, no. 3 (1996): 175–212.
———. “The Spirit of Austerity and the Materials of Opulence: Architectural Sources
of St. Casimir’s Chapel in Vilnius.” JBS 31, no. 1 (2000): 5–17.

Literature
Donelaitis, Kristijonas. The Seasons. Translated by Nadas Rastenis. Los Angeles:
Lithuanian Days, 1967.
Kelertas, Violeta, ed. ‘Come into My Time’: Lithuania in Prose Fiction, 1970–1990.
Urbana: University of Illinois, 1992.
———. “The Image of the German in Soviet Lithuanian Fiction.” JBS 10, no. 4
(1979): 345–51.
Krėvė, Vincas. The Herdsman and the Linden Tree. Translated by Albinas Baranaus-
kas, Pranas Pranckus, and Raphael Sealey. Introduction by Charles Angoff. New
York: Manyland Books, 1964.
———. The Temptation. Translated by Raphael Sealey. Introduction by Charles An-
goff. New York: Manyland Books, 1965.
Matulis, Anatole C. Lithuanian Culture in Modern German Prose. Vienna: R. Spies,
1966.
Meras, Icchokas. Stalemate. Translated by Jonas Zdanys. New York: Farrar, Straus,
& Giroux, 1980.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 383

Miłosz, Czesław. The Issa Valley. Translated by Louis Iribrane. New York: Farrar,
Straus, & Giroux, 1981.
Norkeliūnas, Kazys. “Jurgis Baltrušaitis as Rescuer of Russian Poets and Artists from
Bolshevik Persecution.” Lituanus 42, no. 4 (1996): 26–33.
Pachmuss, Temira. Russian Literature in the Baltic between the World Wars. Colum-
bus, Ohio: Slavica, 1988.
Rubulis, Aleksis. Baltic Literature: A Survey of Finnish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithu-
anian Literatures. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.
Shner-Nishmit, Sara. The Children of Mapu Street: A Novel. Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1970.
Skrupskelis, Alina, ed. Lithuanian Writers in the West: An Anthology. Chicago:
Lithuanian Library Press and Loyola University Press, 1979.
Velaikis, Jonas [pseud. Bronius Vaskelis]. “Lithuanian Literature under the Soviets.”
Lituanus 12, no. 3 (1966): 25–43.

Women’s History
Thorborg, Marina, ed. Women around the Baltic Sea. Part 1, Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania Work Report on Baltic Issues. (1) October, 1993. Lund: Lund University
Department of Education, 1993.
Udrėnas, Nerijus. “Women in the Ethnic Processes of Sixteenth-Century Lithuania.”
Lituanus 42, no. 2 (1996): 16–26.

Jewish History and the Holocaust

Abramowicz, Hirsch. Profiles of a Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish
Life before World War II. Edited by Dina Abramowicz and Jeffrey Shandler.
Translated by Eva Zeitlin Dobkin. Introductions by David E. Fishman and Dina
Abramowicz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999.
Agranovskii, G. Litovskii Ierusalem: Kratkii putovoditel’ o pamiatnym mestam evre-
iskoi istorii i kul’tury v Vil’niuse. (The Jerusalem of Lithuania: A Short Guide to
Memorable Places of Jewish Culture and History in Vilnius) [in Russian]. Vilnius:
Lituanus, 1992.
Aleksandravičius, Egidijus. “Hebrew Studies at Vilnius University and Lithuanian
Ethno-political Tendencies in the First Part of the 19th Century.” Lituanus 37, no.
2 (1991): 5–22.
Arad, Yitzhak. “The ‘Final Solution’ in Lithuania in the Light of German Documenta-
tion.” Yad Vashem Studies 11 (1976): 234–72.
———. Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the
Holocaust. New York: Holocaust Library, 1982.
———. The Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press;
Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009.
———. The Partisan: From the Valley of Death to Mt. Zion. New York: Holocaust
Library, 1979.

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 384 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atamukas, Solomonas. Evrei v Litve (The Jews in Lithuania) [in Russian]. Vilnius:
Lituanus, 1990.
———. “The Hard Long Road to the Truth: On the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Holo-
caust in Lithuania.” Lituanus 47, no. 4 (2001): 16–46.
Bartusevičius, Vincas, Joachim Tauber, and Wolfram Wette, comps. Holocaust in
Litauen: Krieg, Judenmorde und Kollaboration im Jahre 1941. Cologne: Böhlau,
2003.
Beinfeld, Solon. “Health Care in the Vilna Ghetto.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies
12, no. 1 (1998): 66–98.
Ben-Naftali, Aya. “Collaboration and Resistance: The Ninth Fort as Test Case.” In
Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania, edited by David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo, 361–82.
Bern: Peter Lang, 2004.
Benz, Wolfgang, Konrad Kwiet, and Jürgen Matthaus. Einsatz in “Reichskommis-
sariat Ostland”: Dokumente zum Völkermord im Baltikum und Weissrussland,
1941–1944. Nationalsozialistische Besatzungspolitik in Europa 1939–1945, 6.
Berlin: Metropol, 1998.
Benz, Wolfgang, and Marion Neiss, eds. Judenmord in Litauen. Berlin: Metropol,
1999.
Berdichevsky, Norman. “The Baltic Revival and Zionism.” Lituanus 38, no. 1 (1992):
69–78.
Bogomolnaya, Rivka Lozansky. Wartime Experiences in Lithuania. Edited by Susan
Logan. Translated by Miriam Beckerman. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000.
Bubnys, Arūnas. “The Holocaust in the Lithuanian Province in 1941: The Kaunas
District.” In Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania, edited by David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo,
283–312. Bern: Peter Lang, 2004.
Chura, Patrick. “Abraham Cahan’s Vilna and the Roots of ‘Litvak’ Realism.” Litua-
nus 52, no. 4 (2006): 46–69.
Cohen, Israel. Vilna. Introduction by Esther Hautzig. Philadelphia: Jewish Publica-
tion Society, 1992.
Cohen, Rose, and Saul Issroff. The Holocaust in Lithuania, 1941–1945: A Book of
Remembrance. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2002.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S. From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938–1947. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1989.
Dieckmann, Christoph. “Alytus, 1941–1944: Massenmorde in einer Kleinstadt; Ein
Fallbeispiel deutscher Besatzungspolitik in Litauen.” Lithuanian Foreign Policy
Review 8 (2001): 75–104.
Eckman, Lester Samuel. History of Yeshivot in Lithuania and White Russia from
Their Beginnings until 1945. Elizabeth, N.J.: Judaic Research Institute, 2006.
Eckman, Lester Samuel, and Chaim Lazar Litai. The Jewish Resistance: The History
of the Jewish Partisans in Lithuania and White Russia during the Nazi Occupation,
1940–1945. New York: Shengold, 1977.
Eidintas, Alfonsas. Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust. Vilnius: Versus aureus,
2003.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 385

Eliach, Yaffa. There Once Was a World: A Nine-Hundred-Year Chronicle of the

Shtetl of Eishyshok. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.
Etkes, Immanuel. The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image. Translated by Jeffrey
M. Green. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Faitelson, Aleks. Heroism and Bravery in Lithuania, 1941–1945. New York: Gefen
Books, 1996.
Freund, Florian, Franz Ruttner, and Hans Safrian, comps. Ess firt kejn weg zurik…
Geschichte und Lieder des Ghettos von Wilna, 1941–1943. Vienna: Picus, 1992.
Frome, Frieda. Some Dare to Dream: Frieda Frome’s Escape from Lithuania. Ames:
Iowa State University Press, 1988.
Ganor, Solly. Light One Candle: A Survivor’s Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem. New
York: Kodansha International, 1995.
Gaunt, David, Paul A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo, eds. Collaboration and Resistance
during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Bern: Peter Lang,
2004.
Gefen, Aba. Defying the Holocaust: A Diplomat’s Report. San Bernardino, Calif.:
Borgo Press, 1993.
———. Unholy Alliance. Tel Aviv: Yuval, 1973.
Geist, Edwin. Für Lyda. Tagebuch 1942. Introduction by Jokūbas Skiutauskas. Vil-
nius: Baltos lankos, 2002.
Ginaitė-Rubinsonienė. Resistance and Survival: The Jewish Community in Kaunas,
1941–1944. Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 2005.
Gordon, Harry. The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania. Lexington: Uni-
versity Press of Kentucky, 1992.
Greenbaum, Masha. The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable Community,
1319–1945. Jerusalem: Gefen, 1995.
Gringanz, Samuel. “Jewish National Autonomy in Lithuania (1918–1925).” Jewish
Social Studies 14 (1952): 225–42.
Hundert, Gershon David. Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A
Genealogy of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Katz, Dovid. Lithuanian Jewish Culture. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2004.
Klein, Dennis B., ed. Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto. Boston: Little, Brown,
1997.
Kostanian, Rachile. Spiritual Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto. Vilnius: Vilna Gaon
Jewish State Museum, 2002.
Kruk, Herman. The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the
Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944. Edited with introduction by Benjamin
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INTERNET RESOURCES

The following have links available in English.

Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (includes links to the Journal of
Baltic Studies): http://depts.washington.edu/aabs/
Baltic Times (English-language weekly), Riga: www.baltictimes.com
Euro.lt (history and development of Lithuania’s membership in the European Union,
from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs): www.euro.lt/en/lithuanias-membership-in-
the-eu/the-impact-of-the-eu-membership/
Government of the Republic of Lithuania: www.lrvk.lt
International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Oc-
cupation Regimes in Lithuania (short form: International Historical Commission),
Vilnius: http://komisija.lt
Lithuanian Home Page (general information on history, geography, with links to of-
ficial government sites): http://neris.mii.lt/history/history.html
Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius: www.istorija.lt
Lituanus (English-language journal dedicated to Lithuanian and Baltic art, history,
language, literature, and related cultural topics): www.lituanus.org
Online.lt (comprehensive guide to Lithuanian Internet resources): www.online.lt
Parliament (Seimas) of the Republic of Lithuania: www.lrs.lt
President of the Republic of Lithuania: www.president.lt
Wikipedia (historical overview of population changes): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Demographics_of_Lithuania

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 About the Author

Saulius Sužiedėlis is professor emeritus of history at Millersville University

of Pennsylvania. He was born in Gotha, Germany, in 1945 and grew up in the
Lithuanian community of Brockton, Massachusetts. He served with the U.S.
Peace Corps in Ethiopia from 1967 to 1969. Professor Sužiedėlis received
his PhD in Russian and East European history from the University of Kansas
in 1977. Between 1982 and 1987, he was a research historian for the U.S.
Department of Justice, and during 1989–1990 he worked as a radio journalist
and commentator for the Voice of America. Professor Sužiedėlis is the author
of a number of scholarly books and articles on Lithuanian history published
both in the United States and Lithuania. Since 1998, Professor Sužiedėlis has
been a member of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the
Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. Between
2007 and 2010, he served as director of Millersville University’s Annual
Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide.

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