Vilnius Region [a] is the territory in present-day Lithuania and Belarus that was originally inhabited by ethnic Baltic tribes and was a part of Lithuania proper, but came under East Slavic and Polish cultural influences over time.
The territory included Vilnius, the historical capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Lithuania, after declaring independence from the Russian Empire, claimed the Vilnius Region based on this historical legacy. Poland argued for the right of self-determination of the local Polish-speaking population. As a result, throughout the interwar period the control over the area was disputed between Poland and Lithuania. The Soviet Union recognized it as part of Lithuania in the Soviet-Lithuanian Treaty of 1920, but in 1920 it was seized by Poland and became part of the short-lived puppet state of Central Lithuania, and was subsequently incorporated into the Second Polish Republic.
Direct military conflicts (Polish–Lithuanian War and Żeligowski's Mutiny) were followed up by fruitless negotiations in the League of Nations. After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, as part of the Soviet fulfilment of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the entire region was occupied by the Soviet Union. About one-fifth of the region, including Vilnius, was ceded to Lithuania by the Soviet Union on 10 October 1939 in exchange for Soviet military bases within the territory of Lithuania as part of the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty. The remaining part of the region was given to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The conflict over Vilnius Region was settled after World War II when both Poland and Lithuania were in the Eastern Bloc, as Poland was the Soviet satellite state of the Polish People's Republic and Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union as the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, and Poles were repatriated to Poland. From the late 1940s to 1990, the region was divided between the Lithuanian SSR and Byelorussian SSR, and since 1990 between modern-day independent Lithuania and Belarus.
Initially, the Vilnius Region did not possess exact borders per se, but encompassed Vilnius and the surrounding areas. This territory was disputed between Lithuania and Poland after both countries had successfully reestablished their independence in 1918. Later, the western limit of the region became a de facto administration line between Poland and Lithuania following Polish military action in autumn 1920. Lithuania refused to recognize this action or the border. The eastern limit was defined by the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty. The eastern line was never turned into an actual border between states and remained only a political vision. The total territory covered about 32,250 km2 (12,450 sq mi).
Today the eastern limit of the region lies between the Lithuanian and Belarusian border. This border divides the Vilnius Region into two parts: western and eastern. The Western Vilnius Region, including Vilnius, is now part of Lithuania. It constitutes about one-third of the total Vilnius Region. Lithuania gained about 6,880 km2 (2,660 sq mi) on October 10, 1939, from the Soviet Union and 2,650 km2 (1,020 sq mi) (including Druskininkai and Švenčionys) on August 3, 1940, from the Byelorussian SSR. The Eastern Vilnius Region became part of Belarus. No parts of the region are in modern Poland. None of the countries have any further territorial claims.
The term Central Lithuania refers to the short-lived puppet state of the Republic of Central Lithuania, proclaimed by Lucjan Żeligowski after his staged mutiny in the annexed areas. After eighteen months of existing under Poland's military protection, it was annexed by Poland on 24 March 1922 thus finalizing Poland's claims over the territory.
In the Middle Ages, Vilnius and its environs had become a nucleus of the early ethnic Lithuanian state, the Duchy of Lithuania, also referred to in Lithuanian historiography as a part of the Lithuania Propria, [1] [2] that became Kingdom of Lithuania and later Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
After the Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century it was annexed by the Russian Empire which established the Vilna Governorate there. As a result of World War I, it was seized by Germany and given to the civilian administration of the Ober-Ost. With the German defeat in World War I and the outbreak of hostilities between various factions of the Russian Civil War, the area was disputed by the newly established Lithuanian, Polish and Belarusian states.
Poles based their claims on demographic grounds and pointed to the will of the inhabitants. Lithuanians used geographical and historical arguments and underlined the role Vilnius played as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. [3] [4] According to Lithuanian national activists, Poles and Belarusians of the region were "Slavicized Lithuanians". [5] [b] Their view is confirmed by both Polish [6] and Lithuanian research. [7] [8] [9] [10]
The Vilnius Conference of September 1917, organized by Lithuanian activists under German auspices, elected a council of Lithuania, and an Act of Independence of Lithuania proclaimed an independent Lithuanian state with its capital in Vilnius. The Lithuanian government, however, failed to recruit soldiers among the Vilnius area inhabitants and was unable to organize the defence of the region against the Bolsheviks. During November and December 1918, local Polish self-defence formations were created in Vilnius and many surrounding localities. They were formally included into the Polish Army by the end of the year. The Lithuanian Taryba left Vilnius together with the German garrison at the start of January 1919, when the first Polish-Soviet military clashes occurred east of the city. [11]
After the outbreak of the Polish–Soviet War, during the summer offensive of the Red Army, the region got under Soviet control as the part of planned Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Litbel). Following Lithuanian–Soviet War, Bolshevik Russia signed the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty with Lithuania on 12 July 1920. [12] According to it, all area disputed between Poland and Lithuania, at the time controlled by the Bolsheviks, was to be transferred to Lithuania. However, the actual control over the area remained in the Bolsheviks' hands. After the Battle of Warsaw of 1920 it became clear that the advancing Polish Army would soon recapture the area. Seeing that they could not secure it, the Bolshevik authorities started to transfer the area to Lithuanian sovereignty. The advancing Polish Army managed to retake much of the disputed area before the Lithuanians arrived, while the most important part of it with the city of Vilnius was secured by Lithuania.
Due to Polish-Lithuanian tensions, the allied powers withheld diplomatic recognition of Lithuania until 1922. [13] Since the two states were not at war, diplomatic negotiations were begun. The negotiations and international mediation led to nowhere and until 1920 the disputed territory remained divided into a Lithuanian and a Polish part.
In the 1920s, League of Nations twice attempted to organise plebiscites, although neither side was eager to participate. After a staged mutiny by Lucjan Żeligowski Poles took control over the area, and organised elections, which were boycotted by most Lithuanians, but also by many Jews and Belarusians [14] because of strong Polish military control.
The Polish government never acknowledged the Russo-Lithuanian convention of July 12, 1920, that granted the latter state territory seized from Poland by the Red Army during the Polish–Soviet War, then promised to Lithuania as the Soviet forces were retreating under the Polish advance; particularly as the Soviets had previously renounced claims to that region in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In turn, the Lithuanian authorities did not acknowledge the Polish–Lithuanian border of 1918–1920 as permanent nor did they ever acknowledge the sovereignty of the puppet Republic of Central Lithuania.
In 1922 the Republic of Central Lithuania voted to join Poland and the choice was later accepted by the League of Nations, [15] The area granted to Lithuania by the Bolsheviks in 1920 continued to be claimed by Lithuania, with the city of Vilnius being treated as that state's official capital and the temporary capital in Kaunas, and the states officially remained at war. It was not until the Polish ultimatum of 1938, that the two states resolved diplomatic relations.
Some historians speculated, that the loss of Vilnius might have nonetheless safeguarded the very existence of the Lithuanian state in the interwar period. Despite an alliance with the Soviets (Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty) and the war with Poland, Lithuania was very close to being invaded by the Soviets in the summer of 1920 and having been forcibly converted into a socialist republic. They believe it was only the Polish victory against the Soviets in the Polish–Soviet War (and the fact that the Poles did not object to some form of Lithuanian independence) that derailed the Soviet plans and gave Lithuania an experience of interwar independence. [16] [17] [18] [19]
In 1939, the Soviets proposed to sign the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty. According to this treaty, about one-fifth of the Vilnius Region, including the city of Vilnius itself, was returned to Lithuania in exchange for stationing 20,000 Soviet troops in Lithuania. Lithuanians at first did not want to accept this, but later the Soviet Union said that troops would enter Lithuania, anyway, so Lithuania accepted the deal. 1/5 of the Vilnius region was ceded, even though the Soviet Union always recognised the whole Vilnius region as part of Lithuania previously. Vilnius Region was under Lithuanian administration unitl June 1940, when the entire Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was awarded the Vilnius region during the Yalta Conference, and it subsequently became part of the Lithuanian SSR. About 150,000 of the Polish population was repatriated from Lithuanian SSR to Poland.
The area was originally inhabited by Lithuanian Balts. It was subjected to East Slavic and Polish cultural influences and settlement[ dubious – discuss ], which led to its gradual Ruthenization and Polonization. [20] [21] According to Polish historian Norman Davies, Vilnius was culturally Polish by the 17th century. [22] By the 18th and 19th centuries, the city was almost completely surrounded by Slavs, while the Vilnius region became exceptionally ethnically diverse Belarusian-Polish-Lithuanian territory. The Belarusian population moved into the areas devastated by wars of the 17th and the early 18th centuries (Northern Ashmyany, Trakai, Švenčionys and Vilnius counties) and only a few[ need quotation to verify ] Lithuanian settlements remained there. [23] According to the Russian census of 1897 (which studied the linguistic situation, but didn't include the category of ethnic affiliation) [24] ) the Vilna Governorate was occupied predominantly by Belarusian speakers (56,05%), while Polish speakers amounted to only 8,17% of the population. [25] The Russians maintained that the local Polish population consisted mainly of nobles, while the region's peasantry could not be Polish. [11] The later German (1916) and Polish (1919) censuses showed that Vilnius and its environs had[ when? ] a Polish majority. [11] [26] Vilnius at that point was divided nearly evenly between Poles and Jews, with Lithuanians constituting a mere fraction (about 2–2.6%) of the total population. [26] [27] [28] These censuses and their organisation were heavily criticized by contemporary Lithuanians of the region as biased. [29] [30] [31]
At the end of the First World War, 50% of the Vilnius inhabitants were Polish and 43% were Jewish. According to E. Bojtar, who cites P. Gaučas, the surrounding villages were mainly inhabited by Belarusian speakers who considered themselves Poles. [32] There was also a large group who chose their self-declared national identification in accordance with the particular political situation. [33] According to the 1916 census conducted by the German authorities Lithuanians constituted 18.5% of the population. However, during this census the Vilnius region was expanded greatly and ended near Brest-Litovsk, and included the city of Białystok. Due to the addition of further Polish regions, the percentage of the Lithuanian population was diluted. The questioned by Lithuanian side post-war Polish censuses of 1921 and 1931, found 5% of Lithuanians living in the area, with several almost purely Lithuanian enclaves located to the south-west, south (Dieveniškės enclave), east (Gervėčiai enclave) of Vilnius and to the north of Švenčionys. The majority of the population was composed of Poles (roughly 60%) according to the latter three censuses. and the Lithuanian government claimed that the majority of local Poles were in fact Polonised Lithuanians. [14] Today, the Po prostu dialect is the native language for Poles in Šalčininkai District Municipality and in some territories of Vilnius District Municipality; its speakers consider themselves to be Poles and believe Po prostu language to be purely Polish. [34] [35] [36] The population, including those of "the locals" (Tutejshy) who live in the other part of Vilnius region that was occupied by the Soviet Union and passed on to Belarus, still has a strong presence of Polish identity. Despite the fact, that this language is the uncodified Belarusian vernacular [37] with substrate relics from Lithuanian language, [35] its speakers consider themselves to be Poles and believe Po prostu dialect to be purely Polish. [35] [38] The population, including those of "the locals" (Tutejszy) who live in the other part of Vilnius region that was occupied by the Soviet Union and passed on to Belarus, still has a strong presence of Polish identity.
After the extermination of Jews, displacements and migrations, Lithuanians became the undisputed ethnic majority in the Vilnius region in 1989 (50,5%). [41] The share of Lithuanians in the Vilnius city grew from 2% in the first half of the 20th century to 42.5% in 1970, [42] 57.8% in 2001 (while the total population of the city expanded several times). [43] and 67.1% in 2021. The Poles are still concentrated in the area around Vilnius, and constituted 63.6% of the population in Vilnius District Municipality and 82.4% of the population in Šalčininkai District Municipality in 1989, [33] By 2011 the number had shrunk to 52.07% of the population in Vilnius District Municipality and 77.75% in Šalčininkai District Municipality. [44]
a. ^ Lithuanian: Vilniaus kraštas or Vilnija; Polish: Wileńszczyzna; Belarusian: Віленшчына. Also formerly known in English as Vilna Region or Wilno Region.
b. ^ According to one of the leading Lithuanian national activists, Mykolas Biržiška, "the issue of belonging to a certain nationality is not decided by everyone at will, it is not a matter that can be resolved according to the principles of political liberalism, even one cloaked in democratic slogans." Another leading activist, Petras Klimas, had already declared in September 1917: "Giving the right of self-determination to the inhabitants of Wilno, a population devoid of culture, would mean giving an opportunity to agitators to fool people. The thing is to unite former branches with the old trunk. Based on that, we draw the border far beyond Wilno, near Oszmiana. Lida County is also Lithuanian..." [45]
The history of Lithuania dates back to settlements founded about 10,000 years ago, but the first written record of the name for the country dates back to 1009 AD. Lithuanians, one of the Baltic peoples, later conquered neighboring lands and established the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy was a successful and lasting warrior state. It remained fiercely independent and was one of the last areas of Europe to adopt Christianity. A formidable power, it became the largest state in Europe in the 15th century spread from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, through the conquest of large groups of East Slavs who resided in Ruthenia.
The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. Based on a suggestion by Herbert James Paton, it was first proposed in 1919 by Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, to the Supreme War Council as a diplomatic basis for a future border agreement.
Vilnius County is the largest of the 10 counties of Lithuania, located in the east of the country around the city Vilnius and is also known as Capital Region or Sostinės regionas by the Lithuanian statistics department and Eurostat. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished, and since that date, Vilnius County remains as the territorial and statistical unit.
The Republic of Central Lithuania, commonly known as the Central Lithuania, and the Middle Lithuania, was an unrecognized short-lived puppet state of Poland, that existed from 1920 to 1922. It was founded on 12 October 1920, after successful Żeligowski's Mutiny, during which the volunteer 1st Lithuanian–Belarusian Division under command of general Lucjan Żeligowski seized the Vilnius Region that Lithuania made claims to. It was incorporated into Poland on 18 April 1922.
Tutejszy was a self-identification of Eastern European rural populations, who did not have a clear national identity. The term means "from here", "local" or "natives". This was mostly in mixed-lingual Eastern European areas, including Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia, in particular, in Polesia and Podlachia. As a self-identification, it persisted in Lithuania’s Vilnius Region into the late 20th century. For example, in 1989, a poll of persons whose passports recorded their ethnicity as Polish revealed that 4% of them regarded themselves as tuteišiai, 10% as Lithuanians, and 84% as Poles.
Eastern Borderlands or simply Borderlands was a term coined for the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic with a Polish minority, it amounted to nearly half of the territory of interwar Poland. Historically situated in the eastern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, following the 18th-century foreign partitions it was divided between the Empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary, and ceded to Poland in 1921 after the Treaty of Riga. As a result of the post-World War II border changes, all of the territory was ceded to the USSR, and none of it is in modern Poland.
The Wilno Voivodeship was one of 16 Voivodeships in the Second Polish Republic, with the capital in Wilno. The jurisdiction was created in 1926 and populated predominantly by Poles, with notable minorities of Belarusians, Jews and Lithuanians. Before 1926, the voivodeship's area was known as the Wilno Land; it had the same boundaries and was also within the contemporary borders of Poland at the time.
The city of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and its surrounding region has a long history. The Vilnius Region has been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the Lithuanian state's founding in the late Middle Ages to its destruction in 1795, i.e. five centuries. From then, the region was occupied by the Russian Empire until 1915, when the German Empire invaded it. After 1918 and throughout the Lithuanian Wars of Independence, Vilnius was disputed between the Republic of Lithuania and the Second Polish Republic. After the city was seized by the Republic of Central Lithuania with Żeligowski's Mutiny, the city was part of Poland throughout the Interwar period. Regardless, Lithuania claimed Vilnius as its capital. During World War II, the city changed hands many times, and the German occupation resulting in the destruction of Jews in Lithuania. From 1945 to 1990, Vilnius was the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic's capital. From the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Vilnius has been part of Lithuania.
The Polish–Lithuanian War was an undeclared war fought in the aftermath of World War I between newly independent Lithuania and Poland, with fighting mainly in the Vilnius and Suwałki regions, which was part of the Lithuanian Wars of Independence and lasted from May 1919 to 29 November 1920. Since the spring of 1920, the conflict happened alongside the wider Polish–Soviet War and was affected by its progress. It was subject to unsuccesful international mediation at the Conference of Ambassadors and the League of Nations.
The city of Vilnius, the capital and largest city of Lithuania, has an extensive history starting from the Stone Age. The city has changed hands many times between Imperial and Soviet Russia, Napoleonic France, Imperial and Nazi Germany, Interwar Poland, and Lithuania.
The Lithuanian Wars of Independence, also known as the Freedom Struggles, refer to three wars Lithuania fought defending its independence at the end of World War I: with Bolshevik forces, Bermontians, and Poland. The wars delayed international recognition of independent Lithuania and the formation of civil institutions.
Lithuania proper refers to a region that existed within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania where the Lithuanian language was spoken. The primary meaning is identical to the Duchy of Lithuania, a land around which the Grand Duchy of Lithuania evolved. The territory can be traced by Catholic Christian parishes established in pagan Baltic lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania subsequent to the Christianization of Lithuania in 1387. Lithuania proper was always distinguished from the Ruthenian lands since the Lithuanians differed from the Ruthenians in their language and faith. The term in Latin was widely used during the Middle Ages and can be found in numerous historical maps until World War I.
The 1st Lithuanian–Belarusian Division was a volunteer unit of the Polish Army formed around December 1918 and January 1919 during the Polish–Soviet War. It was created out of several dozen smaller units of self-defence forces composed of local volunteers in what is now Lithuania and Belarus, amidst a growing series of territorial disputes between the Second Polish Republic, the Russian SFSR, and several other local provisional governments. The Division took part in several key battles of the war. According to Paulius Pacevičius around 15-18% of the division were ethnic Lithuanians.
The Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty, also known as the Moscow Peace Treaty, was signed between Lithuania and Soviet Russia on July 12, 1920. In exchange for Lithuania's neutrality and permission to move its troops in the territory that was recognised during its war against Poland, Soviet Russia recognized the sovereignty of Lithuania. The treaty was a major milestone in Lithuania's struggle for international recognition and recognised Lithuania's eastern borders. Interwar Lithuania officially maintained that its de jure borders were those delineated by the treaty although a large territory, the Vilnius Region, was actually controlled by Poland.
The Poles in Lithuania, also called Lithuanian Poles, estimated at 183,000 people in the Lithuanian census of 2021 or 6.5% of Lithuania's total population, are the country's largest ethnic minority.
The Lithuanian minority in Poland consists of 8,000 people living chiefly in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, in the north-eastern part of Poland. The Lithuanian embassy in Poland notes that there are about 15,000 people in Poland of Lithuanian ancestry.
The Vilna Governorate was a province (guberniya) of the Northwestern Krai of the Russian Empire. In 1897, the governorate covered an area of 41,907.9 square kilometres (16,180.7 sq mi) and had a population of 1,591,207 inhabitants. The governorate was defined by the Minsk Governorate to the south, the Grodno Governorate to the southwest, the Suwałki Governorate to the west, the Kovno and Courland Governorates to the north, and the Vitebsk Governorate to the east. The capital was located in Vilna (Vilnius). The city also served as the capital of Vilna Governorate-General, which existed until 1912. The area roughly corresponded to the Vilnius Region, which was later occupied by Germany, Bolsheviks, and Poland.
Żeligowski's Mutiny was a Polish false flag operation led by General Lucjan Żeligowski in October 1920, which resulted in the creation of the Republic of Central Lithuania. Józef Piłsudski, the Chief of State of Poland, surreptitiously ordered Żeligowski to carry out the operation, and revealed the truth only several years afterwards.
Suwałki Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (guberniya) of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire, which had its seat in the city of Suwałki. It covered a territory of about 12,300 square kilometres (4,700 sq mi).
The history of Poles in Lithuania describes the history of Polish culture and language in Lithuanian lands, as well as the process of formation in the Polish community there before 1990.
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