Vilensky question

With the destruction of the Russian Empire in 1917, Poland and Lithuania entered into a prolonged conflict over the possession of Vilna. On July 26, 1919, the Entente Supreme Council approved the demarcation line between Lithuania and Poland (the so-called “ Foch line ”). On May 15, 1920, the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania proclaimed the Republic of Lithuania ( Lietuvos Respublika ). On September 25, 1920, Polish troops launched an offensive, occupying Grodno . To prevent further clashes under pressure from the military control commission of the League of Nations, a preliminary treaty was signed. According to the agreement signed on October 7, 1920 in Suwalki by the representatives of Lithuania and Poland on the cessation of hostilities, the exchange of prisoners and the establishment of a demarcation line, Vilnius with the territories adjacent to it was supposed to leave Lithuania. However, on October 12, 1920, the Polish general Lucian Zheligovsky , capturing Vilna , announced the creation of an interim government of Middle Lithuania . Soon, by decree of January 7, 1921, a court and police were established. All people who lived in the central part of Lithuania from January 1, 1919 or who lived for five years until August 1, 1914 were granted civil rights .

In the spring of 1921, the Entente countries made an attempt to settle the conflict, hoping in many respects for the inclusion of Lithuania in the chain of small countries of the Baltic States and Eastern Europe - a “ sanitary cordon ” against their ideological and geopolitical adversary in the East ^[1] . The role of the buffer territory could be taken by a strong Poland, which included Lithuanian lands. Or a counterweight to Soviet Russia could be a lasting alliance of small states of the Baltic states and Eastern Europe. However, in both cases, the Lithuanian-Polish conflict impeded the implementation of the plans of the Entente countries and demanded an early resolution.

Diplomatic negotiations continued behind the scenes. Lithuania was proposed to create a confederation consisting of Baltic Western Lithuania (with Lithuanian as official ) and Central Lithuania (with Polish as official). Poland demanded that the new state be a federation with Poland, thus pursuing the goal of Pilsudski to create a federation of Intermarium . The Lithuanians rejected this demand, since Lithuania was afraid that in this association it would be subordinate to Poland. With the collapse of empires and the growth of nationalist sentiments throughout Europe after the First World War , many Lithuanians were afraid that such a federation, reminiscent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the past centuries, would pose a threat to Lithuanian culture, similar to how many of the Lithuanian nobility underwent polonization during this Commonwealth influenced by Polish culture .

A general vote in Middle Lithuania , capable of changing the fate of the region, was scheduled for January 9, 1921, and the provisions governing the conduct of these elections were to be worked out before November 28, 1920. However, due to the boycott of Lithuania and the negative assessment of the plebiscite by the League Nations ^{[2] [3]} , it was moved.

Peace talks were held under the auspices of the League of Nations . The initial agreements were signed by both parties on November 29, 1920, and the decisive phase of negotiations began on March 3, 1921. The League of Nations considered the Polish proposal for a plebiscite on the future of Middle Lithuania . In early May 1921, negotiations began in Brussels, during which Belgian diplomat Paul Gimans proposed to recognize the inviolability and sovereignty of both parties, and at the same time bring them as close as possible in the military and economic fields, transfer Vilnius to Lithuania, while guaranteeing the Vilnius Territory broad autonomous rights ^[4] . The delegations of the conflicting parties were represented by young and ambitious diplomats - Vaclovas Sidzikauskas from the Republic of Lithuania and Szymon Askenazi as the plenipotentiary representative of Poland in the League of Nations. The central place in the talks was occupied by the speeches of the Lithuanian and Polish delegations detailing the positions of their countries on the Vilnius issue. Both delegations took turns, first Lithuanians on May 14, then Poles on May 23, presented their positions on the Vilnius issue to the international community, combining all considerations into four groups of arguments - historical, legal, ethnographic and economic.

The historical basis of the rights of Lithuania to the territory of the Vilnius region, according to Lithuanian diplomats, was as follows:

1. Vilnius was founded by the great Lithuanian prince Gediminas on the territory, which from time immemorial has been inhabited by Lithuanian tribes .
2. All public buildings, churches and infrastructure of the city were built by the labor of Lithuanians and Russians, not Poles.
3. Even after being incorporated into the Russian Empire, the Vilensky Territory was a single territorial unit, and all the power structures of the North-Western Territory were located in Vilna.
4. Vilno has always been the center of Lithuanian culture and science.
5. The Union of 1569 was not a free expression of the will of Lithuania, but was imposed by Poland, which sought to benefit from the difficult situation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

The Polish delegation, speaking second, built its speech on criticism of the Lithuanian position. First of all, the Poles identified all the arguments of the Lithuanian delegation as "unreasonable claims on the territory of Vilna." They stated that Poland’s rights to the Vilnius lands are undeniable and that Poland, despite the fullness of its legal rights to Vilna, without pressure from any side offers to determine its fate to the people of this region by a plebiscite ^[5] .

However, it should be noted that even then the League of Nations did not approve of this idea. Paul Gimans wrote ^[6] : “According to the Council of the [League of Nations], a plebiscite should have been carried out in conditions of complete freedom, speed of implementation and general sincerity. This turned out to be impossible due to the Zheligovsky coup. The League does not need a fake plebiscite when leaving the Zheligovsky troops in the Vilnius region ... "

The historical counterarguments of the Polish delegation were as follows.

The legal arguments of Lithuanian diplomats were as follows.

1. According to the second article of the Soviet-Lithuanian treaty of July 12, 1920, Soviet Russia recognized the independence of the Republic of Lithuania and its right to the Vilnius Region, and note No. 1 to this article says that the border between Poland and Lithuania will be established by mutual agreement of both states.
2. According to the second paragraph of the third article of the Soviet-Polish Riga Treaty of March 18, 1921, the issue of the ownership of the disputed territories should be decided exclusively between Poland and Lithuania.
3. The People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR G.V. Chicherin on January 20, 1921 declared that the city of Vilno and its environs should be transferred to Lithuania and that in the Moscow Treaty, Soviet Russia renounced its rights to Vilna in favor of Lithuania.

The legal arguments of the Polish side were based on other diplomatic documents.

1. The Soviet government on August 28, 1918, in accordance with the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of October 28, 1917, completely canceled the treatises and treaties concluded by the three states that divided the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century , that is, two years before the signing of the Moscow Treaty, the Soviets renounced all Russian rights in the territory which before the sections were part of the Commonwealth. And, consequently, at the time of signing the peace treaty with the Kaunas government, Russia already had no right to resolve issues of managing the former territories of the Commonwealth.
2. The third article of the Riga Treaty enshrined the following: Poland renounced its rights and claims on the territory of Ukraine and Belarus, which lie east of the established border between Russia and Poland . Russia, having obtained rights in Belarus and Ukraine, confirmed its decree of August 28, 1918, which granted Poland rights to a number of lands that belonged to it until 1772 . It follows that the Riga Treaty recognized the ancient right of the Commonwealth not only in the territory of the Vilnius Region, but also on the Kaunas lands as former Polish territories until 1772. Poland generously did not demand the return of its ancient lands, currently occupied by the Lithuanian population, it recognized the undisputed rights of the Lithuanian people to these territories, but it never renounced its rights to the lands of the Vilnius region inhabited by the Poles.
3. In this case, we mean the territories lying to the east of the " Curzon line " - the demarcation line, according to which Poland belonged to the territory that belonged to it before the partition of 1793.

Both delegations identified ethnographic considerations as a separate group of evidence.

The ethnographic arguments of the Lithuanian delegation were as follows.

1. Villena land has long been multinational - there is evidence of the residence of Jews, a small number of Orthodox Russians, Tatars and Karaites. As for the Polish population, it was made up of emigrants who settled in Vilenchina only in small groups.
2. Language in this case cannot be an indicator of nationality. Where, due to the political situation or administrative oppression, the Lithuanian language is out of use, its place was taken not by Polish, but by mixed Polish-Russian dialect , with traces of Lithuanian pronunciation and grammatical constructions. Pure Polish is spoken only by a few representatives of the most distinguished families of Vilnius and other cities.
3. The low level of education of the general population of the Vilnius region and the long-standing “Polish propaganda” from the church (a Catholic can only be Polish and speak Polish, and only pagans speak Lithuanian and call themselves Lithuanians) caused ordinary peasants during the censuses population, the question of nationality answered "Catholic of the Polish faith."
4. The first statistics on the composition of the population of the Vilnius province were published by the Russian Geographical Society on the basis of the census of 1858 and looked as follows ^[7] :

Table 1
Total amount	Lithuanians	Poles	Belarusians	Russians and Ukrainians
714 061	58.8%	20.3%	22.3%	2%

In 1861, "Materials on the geography and statistics of Russia, collected by officers of the General Staff" ^[8] were published. Data on the Vilnius province was processed by the captain of the General Staff A. Korev:

table 2
Total amount	Lithuanians	Poles	Belarusians	Russians	Jews	Other
841 090	58.8%	12.3%	29.4%	2.3%	eight%	2%

A few years earlier, during the general census of the population of the Russian Empire in 1897, the leader of the nobility of the Vilnius province Adam Plater collected a lot of materials concerning the language used by the rural population of the Vilnius province. This information formed the basis of the scientific work of Rozvadovsky , published at the University of Cracow . The Lithuanian delegation brought these data of a “certain Polish professor” to prove that the Poles themselves agree with such statistics on the number of Polish population in the Vilnius region:

Table 3
Total amount	Lithuanians	Poles	Belarusians	Russians	Jews
714 061	32.6%	3.2%	54%	1.4%	7.1%

And only the census data of 1909 were criticized by the Lithuanians, since they showed a much larger number of the Polish population. The main conclusion of the Lithuanian delegation was that the number of Poles living in the Vilnius province does not exceed a little more than 20% in none of the statistics.

The Polish side made such ethnographic arguments.

1. Historical documents clearly show that the Polish language from the time of Gediminas and Olgerd , even before the conclusion of the Polish-Lithuanian Union , was considered from a cultural point of view and was used along with the Belarusian language . By 1840, the Polish language was compulsory in schools and in administrative clerical work; 99% of officials in this region were Poles. Then its distribution and influence decreased due to the policy of Russification and repression by the authorities of the Russian Empire.
2. The dialect spoken by the population of Vilnius Land is not a Lithuanian dialect, and the Lithuanian language is as little understood by the population of this region as Japanese or Turkish.
3. Analyzing the statistics, the Lithuanian delegation used incorrect methods. The statistics of 1858 cannot be taken into account, since this statistical study was not scientific. The authors vary widely information. As for the percentage of Lithuanians, A. Korev indicates 46% of the population of the Vilnius region, P. Erkert ^[9] - 40%. The Poles are even more ambiguous: according to A. Korev, - 12% of the population of the Vilnius region, M. Lebedkin ^[10] , - 20%, R. Erkert, - 25%.

1. According to the Poles, the data of the general census of the population of the Russian Empire in 1897, the Russian government falsified intentionally. And it was not difficult to do. After all, the Lithuanian-speaking population is an ethnographic group, in the determination of which it is difficult to make a statistical error. The Polish population is not so much different from the Belarusians than the Lithuanian, and therefore often the ethnographic border between Poles and Belarusians is erased.

Much more needs to be trusted in the Lithuanian delegation’s census of the 1909 census, which was initiated by the government of Stolypin , “one of Poland’s biggest enemies that ever existed in Russia” (S. 16). According to data from 1909, the share of Poles among the population of the Vilnius Region was not 8.17, but 17.8%. This is largely due to the fact that the census of 1909 was carried out after the First Russian Revolution, during which a decree on religious tolerance was issued ^[11] , as a result of which the population of Vilenchina could openly convert to the Catholic faith and call themselves “Polish Catholics”.

In the final part of their speeches, Lithuanian and Polish diplomats drew attention to the economic consequences of the Vilnius Territory joining the territory of a state.

The economic arguments of the Lithuanians.

1. The Lithuanian territories lying in the Neman valley represent a single economic and geographical region, the center of which has always been and is Vilna. To divide the Neman valley into parts (that is, to separate the Vilensky Territory from the territory of Lithuania) means "chopping a living organism into pieces", as a result of which the economic life of the region will gradually decline.
2. Vilna’s separation from Lithuania will lead to the decline of the city, the first signs of which have already appeared: the number of trading operations has decreased, real estate prices have fallen, unemployment has risen, large groups of people have already left and continue to leave Vilnius for Kaunas.
3. The Polish government is not able to cover the deficit of the city ​​budget of Vilna and satisfy the needs of 30 thousand people immersed in total poverty.

Opponents strongly disagree with the Lithuanian representatives, saying that the arguments presented by the Lithuanian delegation have no basis and are not supported by any figures. The Polish side put forward economic counterarguments.

1. The efficient operation of railways has nothing to do with one or another tracing of the border between Poland and Lithuania. The operation of the main railway line (the Grodno-Vilno-Dinaburg line) will be most effective if it becomes part of Poland, and this line will become one of the main transport arteries between Poland, Latvia and Russia.
2. It cannot be argued that the accession of the Vilnius Region to Poland will entail fatal consequences for its inhabitants. It is incorrect to draw such conclusions, based on those phenomena and facts that are characteristic for any region that has been a theater of military operations for three years.
3. Kaunas Lithuania itself would be able to satisfy only a fifth of the food needs of the inhabitants of the Vilnius region. In order for the Vilnius land to be able to return to a more or less normal state from an economic point of view, it needs minerals, fuel, cars, implements, fabrics, etc. Kaunas Lithuania is not able to provide any of this list, while Poland could satisfy most of these needs.

The Poles concluded their speech with the conclusion that in reality the government of Kaunas Lithuania is simply striving to seize the Polish territories (Vilnius Krai) with a view to their further depolonization and lithuanization .

In economic characteristics, Poland and Lithuania overestimated the industrial and economic importance of the Vilnius Region. As part of the Russian Empire, the province of Vilna was always an agricultural province, and its population was mainly engaged in agriculture. The most numerous estate were peasants: in 1889 there were 871,725 ​​people (70.7%); bourgeois and merchants - 319,056 (25.8%), and hereditary nobles - 41137 (4%) ^[12] . The Polish and Lithuanian delegations again operated on statements that were not supported by any figures or facts.

After hearing the positions of both sides, representatives of the League of Nations tried to find common ground and establish relations between the two countries. The league hoped to obtain from Lithuania consent to form a federation with Poland in exchange for Vilna's return. As a compromise, the parties were offered the so-called Gimans Plan (named after Gimans Fields). The plan consisted of 15 points, among which were ^[13] :

• Both parties to the conflict recognize and guarantee each other’s independence.
• Middle Lithuania will be included in the Lithuanian Federation, consisting of two cantons: Zemaitiya, populated mainly by Lithuanians, and Vilnius region multinational (populated by Belarusians, Tatars, Poles, Jews and Lithuanians). Both cantons will have separate governments, parliaments, official languages, but a common federal capital in Vilnius ^[14] .
• The Lithuanian and Polish authorities will create interstate bilateral commissions to resolve issues in the field of international affairs, trade and industry, as well as regional policy.
• Poland and Lithuania will sign a defensive allied treaty.
• Poland gains access to the use of ports in Lithuania.

Negotiations stopped when Poland demanded that a delegation from Middle Lithuania (boycotted by Lithuanian diplomats) be represented in Brussels ^[13] . On the other hand, Lithuania demanded the withdrawal of Polish troops in the central part of Lithuania for the line drawn by the ceasefire agreement on October 7, 1920, because according to the draft of Gimans, Vilnius remained in the hands of the Poles, which was categorically unacceptable to Lithuania ^[13] .

A new plan was presented to the governments of Lithuania and Poland in September 1921. It was a revised “Gimans plan”, with the difference that the Klaipeda Territory (territory in East Prussia north of the Neman River ) was to be included in Lithuania in exchange for providing a certain level of internal autonomy to the central part of Lithuania. On January 13, 1922, the Council of the League of Nations issued a decision “to consider the Polish-Lithuanian dispute completed”, and on February 9, by its resolution, divided the “neutral strip” between Poland and Lithuania and transferred part of the Vilnius-Grodno railway to the Poles, which effectively secured the territory of Vilna for Poland ^[15] . Nevertheless, both Poland and Lithuania openly criticized this plan and, soon, negotiations were again stopped.

After the negotiations in Brussels broke, tensions in the region increased. The most acute problem was the large army of Middle Lithuania (up to 27,000), which in reality was an autonomous part of the Polish Army . General Lucian Zheligovsky decided to transfer power to the civilian authorities and confirmed the appointed date for the election (January 8, 1922). Before the election, there was a significant pre - election propaganda campaign by the Poles, who thus tried to enlist the support of other ethnic groups living in this region.

The composition of the territories where the elections were to be held was changed in order to maximize the number of inhabitants of Polish nationality ^[16] : for example, the Polish-speaking regions of Lida and Braslava were included in Middle Lithuania, while the Lithuanian-populated areas around Druskininkai were excluded from it composition ^[17] . According to official Polish data, 735,089 people lived in the territory designated for the plebiscite. Of these, 11.5% were Jews, 8.8% were Belarusians, and 7.2% were Lithuanians. The requirements for candidates for the Sejm of the Republic were: age (at least 25 years), education (at least an elementary school), and language (good knowledge of Polish) ^[17] . The Polish authorities officially allowed freedom of the press and assembly, but with the condition - up to one year in prison for campaigning against elections ^[16] . This provision was directed against the Lithuanians who decided to boycott the elections. The Lithuanian government protested against the holding of such elections and even tried to revive the idea of ​​a plebiscite under the supervision of the League of Nations, but the League in this situation remained only a mediator of the Polish-Lithuanian dispute ^[18] .

The elections were boycotted by the Lithuanians, most Jews and some Belarusians. The Poles were the only large ethnic group, of which the majority voted ^[19] . The Government of the Republic of Lithuania on December 14, 1921 sent a note of protest to the League of Nations against the upcoming elections, and the elections themselves were not recognized by the Government of Lithuania.

Polish factions that gained control of the Vilnius Diet on February 20 sent a request to include the republic in Poland. The request was considered by the Polish Sejm on March 22, 1922. And on March 24, the Warsaw Sejm ratified the decision of the Vilnius Seimas on the reunification of the Vilnius Region with Poland. The act of accession took the form of an agreement between Poland and the Vilnius Region, establishing the accession of the region to Poland with the granting of the rights of an autonomous province to it ^[15] . All territories of the former republic were included in the newly formed Vilnius Voivodeship . Lithuania refused to recognize Polish power over the territory. She continued to consider the so-called Vilnius region within its own territory and the city itself as a constitutional capital, considering Kaunas only as a temporary residence of the government. The dispute over the ownership of the Vilnius Region led to tensions in Polish-Lithuanian relations in the interwar period .

Решением Лиги Наций от 3 февраля 1923 года Виленский край закреплялся за Польшей. Переговоры между Литвой и Польшей осенью 1925 г., в марте-июле 1928 г. и в последующие годы ни к чему не привели ^[15] .

17 марта 1938 года Польша при поддержке Германии выдвинула Литве в ультимативной форме ряд требований: установить дипломатическую, экономическую и почтово-телеграфную связи и отменить статью конституции, указывающую, что столицей Литвы является Вильно, угрожая в случае их отклонения оккупировать страну. В марте 1938 между Польшей и Литвой были установлены дипломатические отношения. В сентябре 1939 в ходе Польского похода РККА статус Виленской области был изменен ^[20] . По « » от 10 октября 1939 года большая часть Виленского края (территория в 6909 км² с 490 тыс. жителей) была передана Литве.