Today, Kaunas is taken to be the “most Lithuanian” of the country’s major cities, but that is a relatively recent development. “Kaunas has been a Lithuanian city for about 100 years,” says Mindaugas Balkus, a historian and senior bibliographer of Kaunas County Public Library.
According to the census of 1897, Kaunas – or Kovno, as it was officially known, at the time the centre of the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire – had a population of 70,920, only 5.8 percent of whom identified as Lithuanians. The most sizeable community was Jewish, some 35 percent, followed by Russians and Belarusians, 27.5 and 22.7 percent respectively.
By the 1923 census, the city had transformed dramatically. Out of the population of 92,400, the majority, 59 percent, identified as Lithuanian. Twenty-seven percent were Jewish.
According to Balkus, who recently published his study How Kovno Became Kaunas: Lithuanisation of the City 1918-1940, the process was not entirely smooth and predicated on the city serving as the temporary capital of the interwar Lithuanian Republic.
“Kaunas has been a Lithuanian city for about 100 years. Until then, it had been a distinctly multiethnic and multicultural city. Most Lithuanian cities only became Lithuanian in the 1920s and 30s,” says Balkus.
Political transformations
A key date for the Lithuanisation of Kaunas was 1904, says the historian. After a revolution, the Russian Empire revoked its 40-year ban on publishing in Latin characters. This opened space for developing cultural and educational activities in the Lithuanian language. The following year, Saliamonas Banaitis founded the first printing house in Kaunas and the Catholic Lithuanian educational society Saulė was set up in 1906, followed by the first primary schools instructing in Lithuanian.
“The First World War was a time of turmoil and hardship. However, the Lithuanian intelligentsia was active in the city and thanks to their efforts, the first Lithuanian gymnasium was established in Kaunas in 1915,” continues Balkus.
A true turning point in the development of the city was 1919 when the government of the newly established Republic of Lithuania moved to Kaunas. Vilnius – its declared seat and the official capital of Lithuania – was threatened by the advancing Red Army and was later taken over by Poland. Kaunas therefore became a de facto capital.
“Becoming the provisional capital was a very strong impetus for Kaunas to become more Lithuanian, because the central government of the country resided in the city, and the absolute majority of its members were Lithuanians,” says Balkus. “The Lithuanian military was being established in the provisional capital. In 1922, the University of Lithuania was opened, the first higher education institution in Lithuania where the main language of instruction was Lithuanian. Between 1918 and 1940, the number of primary schools and gymnasiums in Kaunas, where the language of instruction was Lithuanian, increased significantly. There was a large migration of Lithuanians to Kaunas from the countryside. In 1938, Lithuanians made up 61.4 percent of the city’s population.”
Anti-Polish sentiments
Kaunas has always been home to many different national groups, Balkus notes. The Jewish community was particularly large, while the number of Poles in Kaunas between the two world wars is difficult to estimate.
Strong anti-Polish sentiments – due to the dispute over Vilnius, Lithuania and Poland did not have diplomatic relations until 1938 – forced many inconveniences and discrimination on Poles in Kaunas. Some began to officially identify themselves as Lithuanians for pragmatic reasons, for example, to access government jobs.
“Between the wars, there were many families in Kaunas – in Žaliakalnis, Vilijampolė, etc. – where the older generation communicated mainly in Polish, considered themselves Polish, but their children attended Lithuanian schools and became more accustomed to speaking Lithuanian than Polish,” says Balkus.
According to him, the German community in Kaunas had existed since the 15th and 16th centuries, and at the end of the 19th century it was joined by specialists from Germany who came to work in German-owned factories. Many Germans settled in Žemieji Šančiai at the beginning of the 20th century.
Meanwhile, the Russian population contracted significantly after the First World War. They had made up the majority of public servants in the tsarist administration in Kaunas, and many served in the garrison of the Kaunas fortress.
“During the war, most of them left or were evacuated by government decision. After the end of the First World War, many Russians did not return to Kaunas,” says Balkus.
Ethnic tensions
According to Balkus, relations among different ethnic groups before the Second World War were mostly peaceful, although there were periods of tension. One happened in 1923, when non-Lithuanian signs – in Yiddish, Polish or other languages – would be smeared with paint.
“This was done by right-wing Lithuanian youth, who felt that the status of the Lithuanian language was not respected,” says the historian. “In 1923-1924, violent incidents took place in several Kaunas Catholic churches, when Lithuanian-speaking and Polish-speaking believers were in conflict in the churches over the language of the service. For example, the Lithuanian-speaking congregation would sing in Lithuanian when Polish was being sung in the church, or vice versa.”
In the 1920s and 30s, Kaunas was still a largely multilingual city, contrary to the national ideal of many Lithuanians, says Balkus. There were active efforts to turn it into a Lithuanian city.
“The Lithuanisation of Kaunas was effected by encouraging people (and in some cases using legalised coercion) to use the Lithuanian language in public, to identify with the modern Lithuanian nation. Being Lithuanian meant not only being able to communicate fluently in the Lithuanian language, but also respecting and cherishing Lithuanian national culture: taking an interest in Lithuanian folk art, folklore, customs, history, etc.,” explains Balkus.
Sometimes, national identity was not left to free choice. For example, children from mixed families where at least one of the parents was Lithuanian were forced to attend Lithuanian schools. “Ethnicity would be marked in the internal passports of the Lithuanian Republic,” says Balkus.
Lithuanisation was not particular to Kaunas, he adds. It was happening throughout the country between the two world wars.
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