Sorry to derail but I have a simple question - why do Lithuanians have such a problem with Poles? We're neighbours but we never seem to have anything in common. What happened?
It's cultural inferiority and seething historical resentment, simple as that. Every Lithuanian openly says that Vilnius (modern-day capital, formerly belonged to Poland) isn't a real "Lithuanian" city, and everyone deep down knows it never will be. Remember that Poles were the larger power in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and traditional landed elite of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania had undergone centuries of Polonisation. By the nineteenth century, many noble families considered themselves culturally Polish regardless of whether their ancestors had originally been ethnically Lithuanian, Ruthenian, or mixed. Poles and Jews had much higher status during the time Lithuania was part of Imperial Russia, while Lithuanian was the language of the peasantry and servants. This is literally from the mouth of freakin' Levinas:
“We never spoke Lithuanian. I only heard Lithuanian spoken in the kitchen.”
Until 1900
Polish remained the prestige language of much of the traditional nobility (
szlachta) and landed aristocracy, while
Russian was the language of the Imperial administration, higher education, and many assimilated urban elites. Consequently, the great estates were overwhelmingly owned by Polish-speaking nobility; social life among the aristocracy was conducted largely in Polish; Polish remained the language of salons, literature, and Catholic high society throughout much of the former Grand Duchy.
When the Lithuanian national movement emerged in the late nineteenth century, one of its principal challenges was precisely that the country’s historic elite generally identified with Polish culture rather than Lithuanian.
Let me do a bit more TMI:
I am not myself Lithuanian, I am married to one, and moved here from the west many years prior and we have a half-Lithuanian kid together. As a result, I don't have any rose-tinted glasses or sentimental obligation on this subject.
There's lots of really great things about Lithuania, most importantly of all it's a very safe place for my kid to grow up in, and it's a very green place.
