History of Vilnius

The oldest settlements in the modern territory of Vilnius, as evidenced by archaeological finds in various parts of the city, belong to the Mesolithic era.

The first mention in written sources sometimes, following the “History of the city of Vilna” ( “Historya miasta Wilna” , 1836–1837 ) by the Polish historian Michal Balinsky, describes the 12th-century travel of Snorri Sturluson , in which Vilnius is allegedly mentioned in Velni form ^{[1] [2 ] ]} .

More remarkable is the story of the famous Scandinavian traveler all over the North (in the XII century) Snorro-Sturlezon, who writes that in the vicinity of the city of Vilno (Vilna, Vylne, Velne) he met his fellow countrymen, with whom he could speak in his native language. ^[3]

In fact, in written sources the city was first mentioned in the first quarter of the XIV century , when it became the residence of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania : in a letter in Latin dated January 25, 1323 , Gedimin called Vilnius his capital city ^{[4] [5 ] ] [6] [7] [8]} .

On January 30, 1387, the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Jagiello granted Vilno city ​​(Magdeburg) rights .

According to the legends recorded in the annals, the mythical Lithuanian prince Svintorog ( lit. Šventaragis , Polish. Świntorog , belorussian. Svintarog ) chose a place at the confluence of the Vilna river ( lit. Vilnia , Vilnelė , Polish. Wilejka , belor. Vileyka ) in Vilnius ( lit. Neris , Polish Wilija , Belorussian Viliya ) for his burial. After his death, he ordered his son to burn his body at the mouth of Vilna and continue to perform ritual corpse burnings here. The place was named the valley of Svintoroga (Šventaragis valley; lit. Šventaragio slėnis , Polish. Dolina Świntoroga , Belorussian. Dalina Svintaroga ).

According to legend, years later, the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas went from Trok to hunt in the forests surrounding the Svintorog valley. He managed to kill the tour ; after a successful hunt, Gedimin left to spend the night on Svintorog. In a dream he saw a huge iron wolf on the very mountain ^[9] on which the prince killed the tour; the wolf howled like a hundred wolves. In the morning, the prince told his retinue, but no one could explain its meaning. The high priest Lizdeika was able to interpret the dream. He explained that a wolf means a castle and a city that a ruler will lay here. The city will become the capital of all Lithuanian lands, and the howl of wolves means glory that will spread throughout the world thanks to the dignity of the inhabitants of the city.

In 1503-1522 the city was surrounded by a city ​​defensive wall with nine gates and three towers. Vilnius reached the pinnacle of development under the rule of the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund the Old ( lit. Žygimantas Senasis , Polish. Zygmunt I Stary , Belorussian. Жigіmont Stary ), who settled here with his court in 1544 . In the future, the city constantly grew and developed.

In 1570 the college was founded by the Jesuits . In 1579, the King of Poland Stefan Batory ( lit. Steponas Batoras , Polish. Stefan Batory , Belorussian. Stefan Batori ), the college was transformed into the Academy and University of the Vilnius Society of Jesus ( Almae Academia et Universitas Vilnensis Societatis Jesu ). Thus, Vilno became the first university city of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its major scientific and cultural center.

Damage to the city was caused by destructive fires of 1610 , 1737 , 1748 , 1749 and epidemics. During the Russo-Polish War, the city ​​was taken on July 28, 1655 by Ukrainian Cossacks Ivan Zolotarenko and Russian troops of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich , looted and destroyed a large part of the population (the massacre lasted three days, more than 25 thousand people were killed in one day ^[10] , according to others twenty thousand ^[11] or up to twenty thousand people ^[12] , or up to a third of the inhabitants ^[13] ); The destruction was completed by a fire lasting 17 days ^[14] . After which a truce was concluded in the city itself. The flight of inhabitants, devastating fires and the epidemic caused hunger:

The hunger was so terrible that people killed each other for a piece of bread, devoured corpses and a brother killed his brother for food. Contemporaries write that after these disasters in Vilna it was impossible to recognize Vilna. ^[15]

After the resumption of hostilities, the Poles took the city . Since the fall of 1661, he again became part of the Commonwealth .

In 1769, the Rasu cemetery was founded ( lit. Rasų kapinės , Polish. Cmentarz na Rossie ) - the oldest necropolis of Vilnius.

In 1793, the city ​​was occupied by Russian troops. In 1794, Vilna became the center of the uprising of Tadeusz Kosciuszko . After the third division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795 , Vilna retreated to the Russian Empire .

Vilna became the administrative center of Vilnius ( 1795 - 1797 ), then Lithuanian ( 1797 - 1801 ), Lithuanian-Vilnius ( 1801 - 1840 ), and from 1840 - again the Vilnius province , which was part of the North-Western Territory of the Empire. The jurisdiction of the Vilnius military governor (governor-general) also included Kovenskaya , Grodno and, at different times, other provinces.

In 1799 - 1805 the city walls were destroyed. Separate fragments and the Sharp Brahma ( lit. Aušros Vartai , “Gate of the Dawn”; Polish. Ostra Brama , Belorussian. East Brahma ) with a chapel and a miraculous icon of the Ostrobramskoy Mother of God are preserved .

In April 1803 , Imperial University of Vilna was established by Emperor Alexander I.

In the summer of 1812 , the city was occupied by the French troops of Napoleon . The remains of the defeated great army retreated to their homeland also through Vilna. The streets and surroundings were dotted with mountains of dead corpses, dead from hunger and disease of soldiers; they were buried only a few months later.

After the uprising of 1831, Vilnius University was closed in 1832 . The city did not affect the 1863 uprising , but after its suppression by General Muravyov , measures were taken to eradicate Polish culture and give Vilna a Russian character. Prechistenskaya and Pyatnitskaya churches, which had fallen into decay, were rebuilt again, other Orthodox churches were repaired and updated.

In the second half of the XIX and early XX centuries, Vilna became the center of the Belarusian national revival. The first literary works in modern Belarusian were published in Vilna, Belarusian organizations acted, the first Belarusian newspapers - Nasha Niva , Gomon and others — were published.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Vilno became the center of the cultural and political revival of the Lithuanian nation. After the lifting of the ban on the use of the Lithuanian language (in Latin) in print in 1904, the first Lithuanian language newspaper “Vilniaus žinios” began to be published in Lithuania in Lithuania. In 1905, the Great Vilnius Seimas ( Didysis Vilniaus Seimas ) was held - a congress of representatives of the Lithuanian people, which formulated the requirements for political autonomy of Lithuania.

World War I

Before the war, the 27th Infantry Division was stationed near the city of Vilno. On August 14, 1914, with the beginning of mobilization, the 27th Infantry Division left the vicinity of the city and was sent to the border with East Prussia in the area of ​​the village of Simno. ^[16] During the war, from 1915 to 1918, the city ​​was occupied by German and Austrian forces. On September 18-22, 1917, a “conference of Lithuanians" was held in Vilnius. It was decided to revive the independent Lithuanian state with the capital in Vilnius and ethnographic borders. On February 16, 1918, the Act of Independence of the State of Lithuania was signed in Vilnius.

Interbellum

After the German army left the city on December 31, 1918, on January 1-5, 1919 the city ​​was in the hands of local Polish self-defense units, and on January 5 it was occupied by the Red Army . The Soviet Provisional Revolutionary Workers 'and Peasants' Government headed by V. Miscavičius-Kapsukas moved to Vilna from Dvinsk . At the First Congress of Lithuanian Councils on February 18-20, a Declaration on the Unification of Soviet Lithuania and Soviet Belarus was adopted. February 27 proclaimed the formation of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (" Litbel ").
During the Soviet-Polish war on April 19, 1919 the city ​​was occupied by Polish units, July 20, 1920 - units of the Red Army. Soon after the defeat in the Battle of Warsaw, the retreating Red Army transferred the city of Lithuania in accordance with an agreement signed between July 12, 1920 between Soviet Russia and the Republic of Lithuania. Poland also recognized Lithuania's sovereignty over Vilnius and the Vilnius Region under the Suwalki Treaty, signed on October 7, 1920 . However, already on October 9, 1920, parts of General L. Zheligovsky, with the unspoken sanction of Yu. Pilsudsky, were occupied by Vilnius and part of Southeast Lithuania.

In 1920 - 1922, Vilno was the capital of the state formation of Middle Lithuania , which corresponded to the federalist concept of Y. Pilsudsky and his supporters, in particular, General Lucian Zheligovsky. On February 20, 1922, the Vilnius Seimas adopted a resolution on the annexation of the city and the region to Poland . However, in the Provisional Constitution of Lithuania of 1918 , in the constitutions of 1928 and 1938, Vilno was called the capital of Lithuania. The city of Kovno ( Kaunas ) was officially called the “Provisional Capital" of Lithuania. In 1926, the Vilnius Voivodeship was formed on the territory of the former Middle Lithuania.

In the interwar period, Vilna ( Belorussian. Vilnia ) was the center of the Belarusian national movement . In the city there was a Belarusian gymnasium, a Belarusian museum of the Lutskevich brothers . After Vilnius became part of the USSR, many of the Belarusian national figures were repressed.

The Polish authorities in the period 1920-1939 suppressed the activities of the Lithuanian national movement. Most of the Lithuanian national intelligentsia left the city. The only church where services were held in Lithuanian (since 1901 ) was the church of St. Nicholas ( Šv. Mikalojaus bažnyčia ) ^{[17] [18] [19]} .

World War II

On September 18, 1939, the Red Army occupied Vilnius and its environs, a significant part of the Vilnius Territory was transferred to the Byelorussian SSR, and according to the “Treaty on the Transfer of the City of Vilnius and the Vilnius Region to the Republic of Lithuania and on Mutual Assistance between the Soviet Union and Lithuania” of October 10, 1939, the remaining part of the Vilnius region along with Vilno were transferred to the Republic of Lithuania. On October 27, units of the Lithuanian army entered Vilna (by this time, ethnic Lithuanians, according to official statistics, made up a minority, about 2%).

In the rest of the former territory of Poland (including 2/3 of the Vilnius Territory recognized by Lithuania under the peace treaty of Lithuania and Soviet Russia of July 12, 1920), a People's Assembly was convened on October 28-30, 1939, which proclaimed the establishment of Soviet power in Western Belarus and its reunification with the Byelorussian SSR. On November 2, 1939, the Supreme Council of the USSR and November 14, the Supreme Council of the BSSR respectively adopted laws on the inclusion of Western Belarus in the USSR and its reunification with the BSSR.

Since the summer of 1940, Vilnius became the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic , which was included in the USSR, and officially began to be called “Vilnius” in Russian.

During World War II, the city ​​from June 23, 1941 was captured by German troops , in September of the same year the Vilnius ghetto was formed. During the occupation , 95% of the Jewish community of the city became victims of the Holocaust .

On July 13, 1944, as a result of the Vilnius operation , after the assault on the city from July 7 to 13, Vilnius was liberated from Nazi invaders by the troops of the Third Belorussian Front under the command of Ivan Danilovich Chernyakhovsky . ^[20]

In battles with parts of the German garrison for the liberation of the city from July 7 to July 14, 1944, 12,500 soldiers of the Polish Border Army also took part ( Operation Sharp Brama , part of the AK Storm campaign ; in different sources, the number of AK soldiers comes up to 15 thousand ^{[21] [22]} ). On July 16, commanders of AK formations were invited to a meeting with General Chernyakhovsky and arrested ^[23] .

In the memorial ensemble in memory of the Soviet soldiers of the Great Patriotic War on Antakalnis , 2906 Soviet soldiers of the Third Byelorussian Front who died during the liberation of Vilnius were buried.

Thomas Wenclova in 1978 wrote:

I am not from Vilnius ... ... but then I became a Vilnius, like many thousands of Lithuanians who, during the war and after the war, gathered in their historical capital. For them, it was a completely unfamiliar city. Before the war, between Vilnius and independent Lithuania, as you know, there were practically no ties. True, there was a myth about Vilnius, essential for the Lithuanian imagination - but more on that later and this is different. ... On the very first day after school, I got lost in ruins (there was no one to ask, because I met a few people, besides, no one spoke Lithuanian) ... ... Here I must say a few words about the language. Vilnius - the city is now half Lithuanian and speaks an amazing “koyne”, as representatives of all Lithuanian dialects came here.

In 1990, Vilnius again became the capital of an independent Lithuanian state.

In 2009, Vilnius became the cultural capital of Europe .

• The most important dates
• Vilensky region

• A. Papshis . Vilnius. Vilnius: Mintis, 1977.

• The article “Vilnius (Vilnius, Vilnius) - the Jewish Community of the City” in the JEZWIK - Academic Wiki Encyclopedia on Jewish and Israeli Themes
• d / f "Vilnius Territory and Belarus" from East. “Countdown” cycle ( Belarus-TV , broadcast on November 1, 2012)