Lithuanians
Lithuanians are a Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another two million make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil and Canada. Their native language is Lithuanian, one of only two surviving members of the Baltic language family along with Latvian. According to the census conducted in 2021, 84.6% of the population of Lithuania identified themselves as Lithuanians. Most Lithuanians belong to the Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the northern part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Lutherans.
Theories on the origin of Lithuanians
Theories about the origin of Lithuanians have been recorded since the 15th century, when, like many European nations, Lithuanian nobles sought to emphasize a noble and ancient descent. The most influential was the Roman theory, which claimed Lithuanians originated from Roman patricians led by a nobleman named Palemon who fled Rome, a legend repeated in 16th–17th century chronicles to strengthen noble authority and political legitimacy. From the 16th century, other versions appeared, linking Lithuanians to the Goths, Heruli, Greeks or Hittites, reflecting Western European historiographical traditions that tied nations to ancient peoples known from classical sources, though these accounts were more ideological than historical. Similar legendary origin theories were common across Europe in the Middle Ages, as noble families and ruling dynasties sought to link themselves with the prestige of antiquity. The Palemon legend in particular was especially influential in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where it appeared in chronicles and genealogical works to bolster the political autonomy of the Lithuanian nobility. In the 18th century, Enlightenment scholarship began to critically question such legends, and by the late 19th century research into Lithuanian origins was based on linguistics, archaeology, onomastics, and Baltic studies, which clarified the position of Lithuanian among Indo-European languages and the settlement patterns of Baltic tribes. Modern scholarship situates the Lithuanian language within the Baltic branch of the Indo-European family, notable for preserving many archaic features. It holds that Lithuanians formed from eastern Baltic tribes, with the Lithuanian language and culture developing from the first centuries CE through the early Middle Ages, and the Lithuanian ethnos consolidating between the 9th and 13th centuries, culminating in the emergence of a unified Lithuanian identity and statehood.Origin and history
The territory of the Balts, including modern Lithuania, was once inhabited by several Baltic tribal entities, as attested by ancient sources and dating from prehistoric times. The Lithuanian nation traces its origins to the Lithuanian tribe and the land called Litua in the 1009 Annals of Quedlinburg; by the 11th–12th centuries it appears in Rus chronicles as Litva, referring to territory east of the Šventoji, the middle Nemunas, the upper Merkys, and the upper Gauja. Over the centuries, and especially under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, neighbouring tribes consolidated into the Lithuanian nation, mainly as a defence against the marauding Teutonic Order and Eastern Slavs. The Lithuanian state was formed in the High Middle Ages, with different historians dating this variously between the 11th and mid-13th centuries. Mindaugas, Lithuania's only crowned king and its first baptised ruler, is generally considered Lithuania's founder. The Lithuanians are the only branch of Baltic people that managed to create a state entity before the modern era. During the Late Middle Ages, Lithuania was ravaged by the Lithuanian Crusade, which ended only by the Treaty of Melno in 1422. In fact, the crusade persisted after the definite Christianization of Lithuania in 1387, when Europe's last pagan people were baptised. Simultaneously, the Lithuanian state reached its apogee under the rule of Vytautas the Great, when it ruled the lands between the Baltic and Black seas. Thereafter, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania continued existing until 1795, however, since the Union of Lublin in 1569, it maintained its independence in the bi-confederal Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the 16th century the Lithuanian humanists based the national consciousness of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the idea of their national singularity or uniqueness and considered the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as an independent country.There is a current argument that the Lithuanian language was considered non-prestigious enough by some elements in Lithuanian society, meaning that the number of Lithuanian language-speakers decreased with Polonization in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as a Germanisation of Prussia. The subsequent imperial Russian occupation from 1795 until 1915, with some interpositions such as the French invasion of Russia in 1812, the Uprisings of 1831 and 1863, accelerated this process of Slavicization. While under Russian occupation, Lithuanians endured Russification, which included the 40-year-long ban on public speaking and writing in Lithuanian. In such a context, the Lithuanian National Revival began in the 19th century. Some believed at the time that the Lithuanian nation as such, along with its language, would become extinct within a few generations.
Some of the Polish- and Belarusian-speaking persons from the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania expressed their affiliation with the modern Lithuanian nation in the early 20th century, including Michał Pius Römer, Stanisław Narutowicz, Oscar Milosz and Tadas Ivanauskas.
In February 1918, while World War I was ongoing, the re-establishment of an independent Lithuanian state was declared, 122 years after it was destroyed. In the aftermath of World War I, Lithuanians militarily defended their country's independence from Poland, Whites and Soviet Russia during the Lithuanian Wars of Independence. However, a third of Lithuania's lands, namely the Vilnius Region, as well as its declared capital, fell under Polish occupation during the Interwar. A standardised Lithuanian language was approved. In the lead-up to the World War II, the Klaipėda Region was occupied by Nazi Germany after the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania.
The territory inhabited by the ethnic Lithuanians has shrunk over centuries; once Lithuanians made up a majority of the population not only in what is now Lithuania, but also in northwestern Belarus, in large areas of the territory of the modern Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, and in some parts of modern Latvia and Poland.
In 1940, Lithuania was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union, and forced to join it as the Lithuanian SSR. The Germans and their allies attacked the USSR in June 1941, and from 1941 to 1944, Lithuania was occupied by Germany. The Germans retreated in 1944, and Lithuania fell under Soviet rule once again. The long-standing communities of Lithuanians in the Kaliningrad Oblast were almost destroyed as a result.
The Lithuanian nation as such remained primarily in Lithuania, a few villages in northeastern Poland, southern Latvia and also in the diaspora of emigrants. Some indigenous Lithuanians still remain in Belarus and the Kaliningrad Oblast, but their numbers are small compared to what they used to be. Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, and was recognized by most countries in 1991. It became a member of the European Union on 1 May 2004.
Ethnic composition of Lithuania
Among the Baltic states, Lithuania has the most homogeneous population. According to the census conducted in 2001, 83.45% of the population identified themselves as ethnic Lithuanians, 6.74% as Poles, 6.31% as Russians, 1.23% as Belarusians, and 2.27% as members of other ethnic groups such as Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, Tatars, Latvians, Romani, Estonians, Crimean Karaites etc.Poles are mostly concentrated in the Vilnius County. Especially large Polish communities are located in the Vilnius District Municipality and the Šalčininkai District Municipality.
Despite being the capital, Vilnius was not the largest city by number of Lithuanians until mid-2000s. According to the 2011 census Vilnius had 337,000 Lithuanians while Kaunas had 316,000.
Russians, even though they are almost as numerous as Poles, are much more evenly scattered. The most prominent community lives in the Visaginas Municipality. Most of them are workers who moved from Russia to work at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. A number of ethnic Russians left Lithuania after the declaration of independence in 1990.
In the past, the ethnic composition of Lithuania has varied dramatically. The most prominent change was the extermination of the Jewish population during the Holocaust. Before World War II, about 7.5% of the population was Jewish; they were concentrated in cities and towns and had a significant influence on crafts and business. They were called Litvaks and had a strong culture. The population of Vilnius, which was sometimes nicknamed the northern Jerusalem, was about 30% Jewish. Almost all its Jews were killed during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, some 75,000 alone between the years 1941 – 1942, while others later immigrated to the United States and Israel. Now there are about 3,200 Jews living in Lithuania.
Cultural subgroups
Apart from the various religious and ethnic groups currently residing in Lithuania, Lithuanians themselves retain and differentiate between their regional identities; there are 5 historic regional groups: Žemaičiai, Suvalkiečiai, Aukštaičiai, Dzūkai and Lietuvininkai, the last of which is virtually extinct. City dwellers are usually considered just Lithuanians, especially ones from large cities such as Vilnius or Kaunas.The five groups are delineated according to certain region-specific traditions, dialects, and historical divisions. There are some stereotypes used in jokes about these subgroups, for example, Sudovians are supposedly frugal while Samogitians are stubborn.