70 years ago Lithuania took control over Vilnia. On October 27-28, 1939, Lithuanian troops entered the city.
This conversation took place in the summer of 1992. As the editor of “Nasha Niva,” I came to visit Liavon Lutskevich, uncle of Liavon, the chief and universally respected representative of Belarusians in Vilnia, to ask him all the most uncomfortable questions about Vilnia - the old Belarusian capital, about how we lost it and whether we have any historical chances of recovering what was lost. Today, on the 70th anniversary of the moment when Vilnia became exclusively Lithuanian, those former answers to my questions from the old Belarusian resident of Vilnia, a witness to the pre-war history, seem both relevant and interesting.
Liavon Lutskevich
Liavon Lutskevich (1922-1997) was born and lived his entire life in Vilnia, except for the years spent in the GULAG. He was a graduate of the Vilnia Belarusian Gymnasium, the finest expert on the old capital, as evidenced by his guidebook “Wanderings through Vilnia.”
We began our conversation about the city with its name.
Dubavets: For the majority of current residents of Belarus, Vilnia is a less familiar word than Vilnius. And the city itself, with its distinctive culture, is perceived as it is today - with the Lithuanian language on signs, in shops, on the lips of elegant passersby, with a distinctive Baltic character overlaying local life. But was it always so? What place did Lithuanians occupy in Vilnia before the last war, could they be heard, did people from the local Belarusian community have contacts with them? Whose city was Vilnia considered to be altogether?
Liavon Lutskevich: The Belarusian community had contacts with them and even good contacts. Relations were more sincere than now. There was no such wariness caused by Belarusians being viewed as one of the claimants to Vilnia. At that time, when the city was held by Polish authorities, our interests were nearly identical. The discussion was about liberation from the regime that both Belarusians and Lithuanians considered occupational and foreign.
Dubavets: And the interests were identical, and the weight?
Lutskevich: The weight was not identical. Perhaps Lithuanians today should also acknowledge that in that situation they were incomparably weaker here than Belarusians. They had only a small handful of intelligentsia here. Moreover, that part of the ethnic Lithuanian population that inhabited the Vilnia region, which was part of Poland, was so isolated from the Kaunas region, from that independent Lithuania, that they received very little help from there, from their center. Belarusians were also isolated from the Minsk center, but they had a large hinterland in the form of all of Western Belarus, including Palessie. While in Western Belarus in the early 1920s there were many secondary schools and gymnasiums, by the mid-1920s they had been liquidated almost everywhere, except in Vilnia. Vilnia also had a functioning university. In short, intelligentsia and youth who wanted to join the intelligentsia flowed here. So the imbalance was in favor of Belarusians. An example I have used more than once in conversations on this topic is the periodical press. Despite the fact that the authorities were Polish, and Poles naturally had primacy, in second place by number of publications and circulation were Belarusians. Such statistics were published in 1928 by the Vilnia University, and not by those who wanted to show the Belarusian presence. In third place was the Jewish periodical press, in fourth place Russian, and perhaps in fifth - Lithuanian.
Dubavets: So there were five national groups. How did they relate to each other?
Lutskevich: You see, Belarusians and Lithuanians existed in the Vilnia region because this was their borderland, while Polish and Russian influence was dictated by the Polonization of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russification during the Russian occupation. And all these, so to speak, intellectual forces had their reflection here. But we forget about the Jewish problem. Because Jews constituted approximately 40% of the population. Speaking of education, they were in second place after Poles in terms of schools; they had several Jewish gymnasiums. There was one Belarusian gymnasium, one Lithuanian, one Russian. For some time there may have been even two Russian ones, because by old tradition the women’s school was separate.
Dubavets: Mutual attraction between different national groups: Belarusians, Jews, Lithuanians, Russians (not counting Poles)…
Lutskevich: I think all the division went along the line: Poles, as the ruling authority, and all the other minorities. Like two fronts. These minorities grouped together and showed solidarity among themselves in both political and intellectual life, while Poles stood above them, separating themselves as masters. As for Russians, they were not particularly eager for such unification among minorities. The joint public life of three nationalities was most noticeable: Belarusians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians. For example, there were national student unions that jointly organized many events.
Dubavets: Ukrainians? Were they locals or only those who came to the university?
Lutskevich: They came to study. There were certainly not many of them here. They did not have a school, but had their student union and always showed quite good organization. They had moral, and possibly even material support from the Lviv region.
Dubavets: And what place did the Jewish population occupy in this arrangement?
Lutskevich: It was also divided along social strata. The Jewish poor (and they were, of course, the numerical majority) generally belonged to leftist movements, were under the influence of the Communist Party (as was, incidentally, the Belarusian proletariat). The bourgeoisie was quite indifferent in the political sense, always adapted and tried to be loyal to whatever authority existed. Therefore, the Jewish bourgeoisie and intelligentsia easily fit into the Russian presence here and easily adopted the Russian language. Even under Poland, one could still feel that the older generation of Jewish intelligentsia had a better command of the Russian language than Polish.
Dubavets: And in your childhood environment… Games in the yard… Were there Lithuanians?
Lutskevich: No, there were not. To tell the truth, in the yard I mostly heard far from high-quality Polish, maybe Russian, but I more likely heard Russian in the intelligentsia circles my father encountered. You understand, in 1930 I was only 8 years old. But those years were still so close to the Tsarist era, when Russian culture dominated all of Vilnia, that in very many families the tradition of Russianness was still preserved, especially Orthodoxy. It influenced the common people to gravitate toward this Russianness through the church, although ethnically they may have been Belarusians.
Dubavets: You say that Lithuanians and Belarusians were united by opposition to the Polish establishment. Were there conversations about the possibility that Polish rule might change to Lithuanian, Belarusian, or some other? Or, on the contrary, was it thought that this was forever: Poland was, Poland is, and Poland will be?
Lutskevich: Absolutely not. The majority of Belarusians of the Vilnia region… people knew, somehow felt that all this was not permanent. And they expected changes.
Dubavets: From which forces did they expect changes? From external ones? The Soviet Union? Germany?..
Lutskevich: You know, among Belarusians it was felt that Vilnia, as the capital of Western Belarus…
Dubavets: That was unambiguous?
Lutskevich: Unambiguous - as the capital of Western Belarus, that is how it was perceived, it could not be perceived otherwise… And that small group of Lithuanian intelligentsia with whom my father had contacts… it seems to me they were moderate about the fact that Belarusians perceived Vilnia as their own and associated it with the entire territory of Western Belarus. And since Belarusians always dreamed of reunification… and I think these thoughts were shared by all Belarusians, of the most diverse orientations - from communists to Christian democrats… The Treaty of Riga was unambiguously perceived as an act of injustice by both Belarusians and Ukrainians. There could not be two views on this matter.
Dubavets: And Lithuanians were moderate about such a perception by Belarusians and nevertheless themselves looked at Vilnia as their own territory…
Lutskevich: Yes, undoubtedly. But I think the stronger sentiments toward gaining (in their understanding - returning) Vilnia to Lithuania (according to this terminological misunderstanding: after all - Lithuania, and the capital of Lithuania - Vilnia), such sentiments were stronger in independent Lithuania than among the Lithuanian population here, on Polish territory.
Dubavets: They saw the reality, that everything was not so simple…
Lutskevich: Yes. But I think that among Lithuanian patriots, Vilnia was always regarded as their capital that necessarily had to be annexed to Lithuania.
Dubavets: But there were no disputes on this topic with Lithuanians…
Lutskevich: No. And it seems to me that this was a tradition from that Lithuanian-Belarusian solidarity that existed at the beginning of the century, when “Nasha Niva” was published, when its subscriptions were accepted at the Lithuanian bookshop of Piasetskaitie-Shliapelene, when the Lithuanian Martsin Kukhta printed Belarusian newspapers - it was as if it carried over to the interwar period as well. Stsepan Kairys, the husband of Tsiotka, quite unambiguously said: at that time (this was 1915-1916) the question of Vilnia did not arise between us and Belarusians; we all felt that injustice, that the Tsarist authority was foreign, imposed on both us and Belarusians. Already manifestations of national revival had appeared among both sides, and it was important to throw off this yoke, and what would come next - probably was not much thought about.
Dubavets: If Vilnia residents of that time from the Belarusian community, from the leaders, had suddenly been able to see today’s Vilnia, a Lithuanian-speaking capital of an entirely different, Baltic state, would this have been - nonsense for them?..
Lutskevich: Yes, it would have been for them an incomprehensible, unpleasant moment, like an unexpected dream. Thanks precisely to the proportions of national forces in Vilnia at that time, the news about annexation to Lithuania was perceived as a surprise. The fact is that for at least two months after September 17, 1939, Vilnia was vigorously preparing for a plebiscite on joining Belarus.
Dubavets: By Soviet authorities?
Lutskevich: Yes, agitation points were organized with red banners, and all this was in the Belarusian language, a Belarusian newspaper was being published… And this was perceived as, well, this is how it should be.
Dubavets: And the joining - from whom?
Lutskevich: Simply joining, because Poland had already ceased to exist as a state. But you must understand the psychology of the local people of all nationalities (except for the Lithuanians themselves). They were all, as a rule, either Russian-, or Polish-, or Belarusian-speaking. Ah, joining Belarus, so Belarus it is. That is all. There was no problem for them. Existence as part of Belarus was perceived as… well, not such a sharp transition as the arrival of an authority with a completely foreign and absolutely incomprehensible language for more than 90% of Vilnia’s population. This language was unknown here. Personally, I heard the first two Lithuanian words not from the street, not from a Lithuanian milieu, but from my father. When my brother Yurka started fooling around, father called him “Yurgis durnelis”… Understand, not from the street, not from a Lithuanian milieu… Because there was not, there was nowhere to hear this language.
Dubavets: And how can what you are saying be reconciled with your earlier words that this was a land of two peoples…
Lutskevich: As for the region, the ethnic presence in the vicinity of Vilnia was always predominantly Belarusian. I think that Lithuanian researchers are also right when they say that even in the 19th century the process of moving the linguistic border from south to north in favor of the Belarusian language was still ongoing, independently of the influence of the governing authority. This was some kind of diffusion, dissolution of Lithuanian villages that initially penetrated as peninsulas very deeply, much deeper than today, into Belarusian territory, then they narrowed, then were cut off and formed small islands, and hence these Belarusian islands in Lithuania and Lithuanian islands in Belarus. Once I happened to work in the Trakai district on the electrification of collective farms, and in one family where I was renting a room (a Catholic family, peasant, they considered themselves local Poles, although shepherds in the fields everywhere sang Belarusian songs, chatted and cursed in Belarusian), the grandmother in the house, when I came there together with my brigade (where everyone was Lithuanian except me alone, the foreman; they spoke Lithuanian among themselves), the old lady would say: I still understand Lithuanian, I understand everything you say… This was on the borderland, Similishki, a collective farm named after Kosciuszko, where the ethnic composition was very diverse. So an unconditional ethnic influence existed. This can also be traced through surnames. I remember, in the first or second class of the Vilnia Belarusian Gymnasium there was a Belarusian boy. His surname was Keturka. He did not know he was a Lithuanian, but the surname spoke for itself. And the process of Belarusianization was happening precisely at the level of rural localities that bordered each other. A certain advantage was because our language was closer to the Slavic state languages. There had never been a Baltic state language here. This also had a negative influence on the formation of their national consciousness, but they managed to overcome this. That is the achievement of the Lithuanian revival, that they managed to overcome all these difficulties, to create their own bourgeoisie, and their own technical and their own humanities intelligentsia.
Dubavets: Did such “diffusion” occur at the city level?
Lutskevich: You see, the national or rather linguistic structure of the city is very changeable. And therefore I think one should somewhat abstract this state of the city from national self-consciousness. And that there were really very few of them here numerically, all statistics acknowledge.
Dubavets: But statistics also acknowledge very few of us…
Lutskevich: Yes, quite right. Because at that time we were also still a layer of those who had come to the city from the village. At the beginning of this century, Belarusians and Lithuanians were peasant nations. Such a small percentage was their own national intelligentsia; it was only being born.
Dubavets: What was the reaction of the Belarusian community to the annexation of Vilnia to Lithuania?
Lutskevich: What did it seem like to me, as a still very inexperienced young man? This was such a great surprise!.. Incidentally, I do not know from what sources, but just before his arrest my father had already “sniffed out” somewhere and said: there is still a possibility that Vilnia might end up within Lithuania. This was in October. And then we were all so surprised when his words came true after the arrest. We simply could not understand whether this was political foresight or information from somewhere…
Dubavets: What do you think about the national future of Vilnia? It is clear that what is, is. But, let us say, what would you wish for?
Lutskevich: I would like to soften the inter-ethnic tension, because in favor of whichever nation it goes, it will always provoke hostility from all three others. I mean: the Polish element, the Russian, the Belarusian, and the Lithuanian - this quadrilateral must now somehow rub together so as not to create tension. Because it always works out this way here. Lithuanians defend themselves against the influences of three nationalities: Polish, Russian, and now - again - Belarusian (because the revival of Belarusianness in Belarus creates, as it were, an additional burden under this pressure). The Poles, those who hold revisionist views (the borders of 1939), feel that Lithuanians, Russians, and Belarusians will be against them. The Russian great-power chauvinists… since this was the Soviet Union, therefore Soviet Russia, therefore Russia, therefore all these are “inorodtsy,” invented nations that should not exist. So it turns out that each has claims against all three.
Dubavets: And you did not mention Belarusians…
Lutskevich: And I do mention Belarusians and with great sorrow must state that we also have to feel pressure from three sides. Especially us, because we have always felt the pressure of the dominant nation, be it Russian or Polish. And now Lithuanian identity is also pressing, especially because among the younger generation of Lithuanians there is absolutely no understanding of the Belarusian nation’s right to existence. Lithuanians, educated in the Soviet school, would probably like Belarus to cease to exist as a nation, because Belarusians, thanks to their borderland position, also exerted a certain pressure on Lithuania.
Dubavets: As claimants?
Lutskevich: As claimants. Especially considering the shared history. This was perhaps even intuitively, even subconsciously perceived: well, if Belarus perishes as a nation, why should we cry? A certain national egoism appeared. At the time when there was one common enemy, there was not so much altruism, but there was a commonality of interests of always all three nations against the fourth, which at that moment was dominant. Vilnia was constantly forming under such conditions.
Dubavets: What could be the best scenario for the future?
Lutskevich: I think that first of all, probably, borders should not be touched. But conditions must be created, with full state sovereignty of all already formed peoples, so that the borders between these sovereign states would be imperceptible. There must be the closest possible economic, cultural, and everyday connections. Any restriction on movement across the border is, it seems to me, a restriction on human rights. And this option is very important for the Vilnia region. Of course, a certain ethnic diffusion will occur; perhaps even in some villages the Lithuanian influence will strengthen, and in some where Belarusians predominate, the Belarusian influence will strengthen. In the same Salechniki.
Dubavets: Now at the border, a full-scale construction of “barriers” is underway on both sides. Probably plowed strips will appear soon…
Lutskevich: Yes, this is a very sad phenomenon. But it seems to me that this will still be a transitional stage. When economic relations are put in order, then probably at the European level these strips will not be needed. The border will remain as a purely administrative division, because somewhere one authority must end and another begin, just as between districts, provinces, and so on. I remember, in earlier times we often drove our old Moskvich, as it was called - “bobik,” from Vilnia toward Minsk. And always, when we crossed the border, the good road immediately turned into one full of potholes, and we would shout: hurray! We crossed the border! That is the kind of sensation of the border that should exist. Only God grant that the road on both sides should be equally good in quality.