Vilna Governorate
The Vilna Governorate was a province of the Northwestern Krai of the Russian Empire that existed from 1795 to 1918. Established after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, it encompassed territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania and was one of the administrative divisions created by the Russian Empire to replace the institutions of the dissolved Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In 1897, the governorate covered an area of and had a population of 1,591,207 inhabitants. It bordered the following governorates: Minsk to the south, Grodno to the southwest, Suwałki to the west, Kovno and Courland to the north, and Vitebsk to the east. Its capital, Vilnius, also served as the seat of the Vilna Governorate-General, which existed until 1912.
History
Following the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, the former lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were annexed by the Russian Empire. The Russians established two administrative units: the Vilnius Governorate and the Slonim Governorate. On 12 December 1796, by order of Tsar Paul I, these were merged into a single administrative unit called the Lithuania Governorate, with its capital in Vilnius.On 9 September 1801, Tsar Alexander I divided the Lithuanian Governorate into two: the Lithuania Vilnius Governorate and the Lithuania Grodno Governorate. Around 1840–1843, during the administrative reforms of Tsar Nicholas I, the word "Lithuania" was officially erased from both names and the Vilna Governorate and Grodno Governorate were established.
In 1843, another reform created the new Kovno Governorate out of seven western districts of the Vilna Governorate, including most of Samogitia. In exchange, the Vilna Governorate received the districts of Vileyka and Dzisna from the Minsk Governorate and Lida from the Grodno Governorate. Thereafter, the Vilna Governorate consisted of the districts of Vilnius, Trakai, Dzisna, Ashmyany, Lida, Vileyka and Švenčionys. This administrative structure remained in place until the outbreak of World War I, when the region came under German occupation as part of the Ober Ost military administration.
Demographics
Plater's statistics of 1825
Count Stanisław Plater was the first one in 1825 to publish approximate statistics on the ethnic makeup of the Vilnius Governorate, which then included most, but not all, of Lithuania. His work's purpose was to show the area's indicative ethnic composition. In the case of the Vilnius Governorate, before a major redrawing of the governorate's borders in 1843, he concluded that it was majority Lithuanian.| Language | People | Percentage of total |
| Lithuanian | 780,000 | 65% |
| - | - | |
| Yiddish | 180,000 | 15% |
| Polish | 100,000 | 8,3% |
| Russians | 80,000 | 6,7% |
| Ruthenians | 50,000 | 4,2% |
| Tatars | 10,000 | 0,8% |
| Total | 1,200,000 | 100% |
Due to the lack of systematic primary data on nationalities, Plater resorted to comparing the revision censuses and religious distribution statistics to provide the general statistics on the population's ethnic distribution. He referred to nobles and townspeople, with the exception of soldiers and Jews, as Poles, whereas he separated the peasants into Lithuanians, Ruthenians, or Russians. Overall, the total number of Catholics in the Vilnius Governorate was 930,000, i.e. ¾ of the population.
Plater's ethnic and social classification of the population also reflected the contemporary thought among the elite classes, where in addition to a class difference, an ethnic dividing line was also drawn compared to the lower classes. Thus, Plater categorically renamed the Lithuanians of the traditional political Lithuanian nation as Poles, whereas the lower classes in his view were termed as Lithuanians. A similar attitude could be found elsewhere in Europe, for example, the Hungarian nobility called itself as Natio Hungarica, in contrast to the commoners they called Magyars.
In 1856, a clear example of the ethno-social alienation between a Polish-speaking Lithuanian noble and a Lithuanian-speaking peasant was documented when the poet and writer Władysław Syrokomla, who traditionally considered himself a Lithuanian, traveled through the Dūkštos parish. Somewhere between the Geišiškės and Europa estates, Syrokomla spoke to a villager in Polish, but the latter replied in Lithuanian that he did not understand him, upon which Syrokomla disappointedly exclaimed that: "A Lithuanian in a Lithuanian land could not speak to a Lithuanian".
Russian Empire Census
According to the Russian Empire census on, The Vilna Governorate had a population of 1,591,207, including 790,880 men and 800,327 women. According to the census, the majority of the population indicated Belarusian to be their mother tongue, which followed by a significant Lithuanian and Jewish speakers.| Language | Native speakers | Percentage |
| White Russian | 891,903 | 56.05 |
| Lithuanian | 279,720 | 17.58 |
| Jewish | 202,374 | 12.72 |
| Polish | 130,054 | 8.17 |
| Great Russian | 78,623 | 4.94 |
| German | 3,873 | 0.24 |
| Tatar | 1,969 | 0.12 |
| Little Russian | 919 | 0.06 |
| Latvian | 471 | 0.03 |
| Gypsi | 182 | 0.01 |
| Others | 1,119 | 0.07 |
| Total | 1,591,207 | 100.00 |