Lithuanian Paths to Modernity VYTAUTAS MAGNUS UNIVERSITY EGIDIJUS ALEKSANDRAVIČIUS Lithuanian Paths to Modernity UDK 94 Al-79 ISBN 978-609-467-236-1 (Online) © Egidijus Aleksandravičius, 2016 ISBN 978-9955-34-637-1 (Online) © Vytautas Magnus University, 2016 ISBN 978-609-467-237-8 (Print) © “Versus aureus” Publishers, 2016 ISBN 978-9955-34-638-8 (Print) To Leonidas Donskis 7 Table of Contents Preface / Krzysztof Czyżewski. MODERNITY AND HISTORIAN’S LITHUANIA / 9 Acknowledgements / 21 Part I: Before Down A Lost Vision: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Political Imagination of the 19th Century / 25 Hebrew studies at Vilnius University and Lithuanian Ethnopolitical tendencies in the First part of the 19th century / 39 The double Fate of the Lithuanian gentry / 57 Political goals of Lithuanians, 1863–1918 / 69 Associational Culture and Civil Society in Lithuania under Tsarist Rule / 87 The Union’s Shadow, or Federalism in the Lithuanian Political Imagination of the late 19th and early 20th centuries / 105 Part II: The Turns of Historiography The Challenge of the Past: a survey of Lithuanian historiography / 137 Jews in Lithuanian Historiography / 155 Lost in Freedom: Competing historical grand narratives in post-Soviet Lithuania / 167 8 LITHUANIAN PATHS TO MODERNITY Part III: The Fall, Sovietization and After Lithuanian collaboration with the Nazis and the Soviets / 195 Conspiracy theories in traumatized societies: The Lithuanian case / 227 Lithuanian routes, stories, and memories / 237 Post-Communist Transition: The Case of Two Lithuanian Capital Cities / 249 Emigration and the goals of Lithuania’s foreign policy / 267 Guilt as Europe’s Borderline / 281 9 Preface Krzysztof Czyżewski MODERNITY AND HISTORIAN’S LITHUANIA I worry about ‘progressive’ history teaching… The task of the historian is to supply the dimension of knowledge and narrative without which we cannot be a civic whole... The necessary condition of a truly democratic or civil society – what Popper dubbed the ‘open society’ – is a sustained collective awareness of the ways in which things are ever changing, and yet total change is always illusory.1 Tony Judt Here is the country called the Republic of Lithuania, once erased from the map of Europe, small and unvanquished, similar in that perhaps to Portugal and Ireland, member of the Europe- an Union, which did not share the fate of Languedoc, Savoy or Transylvania and was able to claim its independence. A traveler visiting here from the west or north will find open borders, Eu- rozone and a mosaic of languages and ethnicities, religions and traditions, just as it used to be in the distant past. The borders with the neighbors belonging to the Moscow’s sphere of influ- ence are guarded by a visa regime and the fear of a return to 1 Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century… [I worry about ‘progressive’ history teaching… The task of the historian is to supply the dimension of knowledge and narrative without which we cannot be a civic whole. […]The necessary condition of a truly democratic or civil society – what Popper dubbed the ‘open society’ – is a sustained collective awareness of the ways in which things are ever changing, and yet total change is always illusory.] 10 LITHUANIAN PATHS TO MODERNITY authoritarianism. There are still tension and conflicts between the ethnic majority and minorities that account for 20 percent of the country’s population, but establishing a democratic state with Lithuanian as the official language, for many years regard- ed as the language used only by peasants, coupled with a strong civic-national identity turned out to be possible without ethnic cleansing or bloodshed. Although the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ceased to exist many years ago, and all attempts at its restora- tion failed in confrontation with History, it does not mean that its spiritual tissue is dead – still alive are people who regard themselves citizens of the Grand Duchy and their premonition to be “the last ones” is contradicted by representatives of young- er generations who in spite of the changes taking place before their eyes, or perhaps because of them, join the “inheritors of the whole” of the multicultural heritage of Lithuania. There was a time when modernity was associated here with nationalism or internationalism in the service of the Spirit of History, but the country’s real road to modernity led through a symbiosis of tra- dition and continuation of the democratic processes with their roots in the cultural matrix that amalgamated historical, civic and national identities. The best proof of the fact is the contem- porary Lithuanian historiography which – in dialogue with the policy of remembrance and the literary narrative of the times past – was able to achieve autonomy, be critical in its analysis of the past and try more to understand history than subordinate it to an apology. This is how our story of Lithuania Anno Domini 2016 could begin. It differs significantly to the story once spun by Czesław Miłosz in his introduction to Wiktor Sukiennicki’s East Central Europe during World War I, a story of a country which built its statehood in the Middle Ages to lose it at the brink of modernity. Miłosz attributed to his professor of law at the Stefan Batory Uni- versity in Vilnius the intention “to write an epilogue to the histo- ry of his homeland, so that everybody could learn how the Grand Duchy, which lasted until 1914, at least as an idea, has ceased PREFACE / KRZYSZTOF C Z Y ż E W S K I . MODERNITY AND HISTORIAN ’S LITHUANIA 11 to exist.”2 Therefore, he could write about the country whose pa- triots referring to themselves as “Lithuanians” belonged to the past, and compared it to historical realms such as Languedoc, Savoy or Transylvania. This new story, reflecting new Lithuania, is told by Egidijus Aleksandravičius and a whole generation of historians who liberated Lithuanian historiography from inter- national isolation and local domination of national myths. You could call them “a new generation of Miscreants” referring to the affinity with their nineteenth century patrons who – being dedi- cated patriots and devotees of a strict moral code – did not feel at ease in the corridors of power or lodges nursing rituals detached from life; they valued freedom of thought and unruly citizenship, denounced the provincial imitation of foreign ways and uncriti- cal infatuation with one’s own nationality; they were sensitive to social solidarity and civic education. Egidijus Aleksandravičius’ Lithuanian Road to Modernity is a fascinating testimony to the challenges of dramatic dilemmas and deepening self-awareness of a historian, but also a pub- lic intellectual who together with other Lithuanians of his time goes beyond freedom – towards modernity. Freedom in Lithua- nia, similarly to what happened in all countries of the Central and Eastern Europe, was during the last two centuries a sacred cause for which many have given their lives. Therefore, histori- ans and other co-authors of the civilizational narrative of this part of Europe, have for generations developed their skills in the service of national independence. But ,what for them and for their posthumous disciples stood for the culmination of their patriotic and academic aspirations, time of euphoria associated with the recovery of the free homeland, for Aleksandravičius and “new Miscreants” was only the beginning of a new era. The author of a book about the cultural rebirth of Lithuania in the mid-nineteenth century, was well aware when he began his aca- demic career that the challenge of his time is to face up to the 2 Czesław Miłosz, Sukiennicki, Andrzejewski [in:] Zaczynając od moich ulic. Kraków 2006, p. 459. 12 LITHUANIAN PATHS TO MODERNITY legacy of the past in a way that allowed to enter into a dialogue with the modern world and to overcome every anachronism that could cause the future of his fellow citizens to escape once again beyond the horizon. The struggle of the former guards of re- membrance in the reborn Lithuania, was fought about the fu- ture, or – in other words – about this understanding of history which opens to the world, is both innovative and critical and forms an important part of the development of the potential of a modern society. Facing the challenge took a real revolution in the construction of the historical narration, a new historian workshop developed in the service of modernity. Egidijus Aleksandravičius’ book is not only about Lithuania’s path to modernity. To a large extent, it is also a book about con- struction of a modern narrative about the history of Lithuania, in this case, covering the period from the Spring of Nations until the Fall of Communism and beyond. One would like to repeat once again “and beyond”, because reading texts by this author, who specializes in the nineteenth century, confronts the reader constantly with his contemporary realities and encourages re- flection on the past that opens to him prospects of the future and asks questions about tomorrow. The key to this book is in- separability of the subject and the language used to talk about it. The Lithuania of Aleksandravičius aspires to modernity and can be told only by a historian who possesses a well correspond- ing workshop: interdisciplinary and analytical, developed in a dialogue with one’s own tradition and focusing on the historical thought in other parts of the world, sufficiently autonomous so as not to be subject either to the weight of the rigid forms of tell- ing a historical narrative and the pressures of current policies, especially the policy of remembrance. The best testimony to the importance the author attaches to the issue of the workshop is the very structure of the book. Thus, he breaks down the linear arrangement of the narrative, so characteristic for dissertations of researchers of history who usually arrange it along a chronological timeline.