A proposal to pay tribute to the father of the Second Polish Republic, Józef Piłsudski, in a Lithuanian town remains controversial even after the two nations seem to have long buried historical feuds.
Druskininkai, a spa town overlooking the Nemunas River in the southernmost tip of Lithuania, has a long pedigree of catering to prominent residents and visitors. The town wants to memorialise some of them in one way or another: the painter-composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, the sports educator Karolis Dineika, the cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, the chemistry professor Ignacy Fonberg.
A tribute to one luminary, however, raised eyebrows: Józef Piłsudski.
A native of Lithuania – he was born near the village of Zalavas and attended a gymnasium in Vilnius – Piłsudski is revered as one of the most important statesmen in the history of modern Poland. In Lithuania, however, he is remembered as the leader who took away Vilnius, something that Lithuanians to this day call “occupation”.
During his lifetime, Piłsudski visited Druskininkai many times, the town used to host his house and a favourite bench.
Therefore, when the town invited local entrepreneurs and community members to propose and finance commemoration ideas, Piłsudski made it to the list. The town is considering the idea to build a commemorative bench as a tribute.
“Sure, Piłsudski is remembered very negatively in Lithuania. For Poles, he is a revered figure, and for Europeans, he is important too, because Piłsudski and the Polish army stopped the Soviet advance,” says Gintaras Dumčius, director of the Druskininkai Museum.
Žygimantas Buržinskas, historian and archaeologist, has a slightly different take.
“No matter how we look at it, even if we give Piłsudski credit for defeating the Bolsheviks and for his influence on this entire region of Europe, his activities were in any case directed against the statehood of Lithuania,” he tells LRT PLIUS radio station. “Lithuania as a separate state did not exist in his vision.”
Piłsudski, the first head of state of the Second Polish Republic that emerged after World War One, saw himself as a descendant of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Initially, he envisioned Poland as a multi-ethnic state to include both Poles and Lithuanians. The latter, however, wanted a national state of their own with a capital in Vilnius, at the time a predominantly Polish-speaking city.
Vilnius changed hands several times in the post-war turmoil before General Lucjan Żeligowski took control in October 1920, declared the lands as the Republic of Central Lithuania and soon handed it over to Piłsudski’s Poland. Lithuanians never let go of the “Vilnius question”, which remained a bone of contention between the two nations until 1940 and beyond.
However, some see the “Piłsudski bench” as a small gesture of reconciliation and letting go of past grievances.
“I think that a Polish tourist will sit on that bench, and a Lithuanian tourist will also sit on it, and this will show that we are not a vindictive country,” says Eugenija Sidaravičiūtė, a member of the Union of Lithuanian Political Prisoners and Exiles.
This is not the first time the idea of commemorating Piłsudski in Druskininkai has been raised. Antanas Vailionis, Druskininkai branch chairman of the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Exiles, complains that the municipality often claims to be listening to the local community, but ignores any negative feedback. Moreover, he says, the move to memorialise Piłsudski is aimed at potential tourists from Poland rather than the locals.
“If we need [a monument of] Piłsudski just for marketing, then maybe we shouldn’t do it,” he says.
Buržinskas, a historian, suggests that there are less controversial personalities that the town could pay tribute to.
“If Druskininkai wants to promote itself in the Polish context, we have [Stanisław August] Poniatowski, the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who essentially founded the Druskininkai resort,” he says. “This would bring together all the great things – the common history with Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – and keep out the occupation grievances and other issues.”
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