The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was far from being just “Poland”

Photo courtesy of the International Cultural Institute (Kraków, Poland).

NIKODEM SZCZYGLOWSKI: Lithuania and Poland shared a common state for several centuries. This union could be compared to, let’s say, the union between England and Scotland. However, no one dares call Scotland “England”. As for the Republic of the Two Nations – or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – to this day it is often simplistically referred to as “Poland”. Why is that? Is there a lack of terminology? 

TOMAS VENCLOVA: Yes, this is due to a lack of terminology. England and Scotland have a common term – Great Britain. Lithuanians and Poles also have a common term, but it is a long and not very convenient term – Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, the Republic of the Two Nations – which nevertheless emphasizes the fact that there were two nations, as in the case of England and Scotland. There are also differences between the English and the Scots and the Poles and the Lithuanians. The Scots have hardly preserved their language – unlike the Lithuanians, who did – and the Lithuanian language is very distinct from Polish, which clearly separates Lithuanians from the Poles. And what unites Lithuania and Poland is the Catholic religion. Whereas the Scots have their own religious tradition, the English have theirs. By the way, it is not only the Scots who can be compared to Lithuanians, but also the Irish. There was a violent conflict between the English and the Irish nations, I would say bloodier and worse than the Lithuanian-Polish conflict in the 20th century. But it has now ended there too. The Irish have also not preserved their language and speak English, the old Gaelic language is almost non-existent. It is again a different situation when compared to the Lithuanian one. In Lithuania, three million people speak Lithuanian, and mostly, primarily or exclusively Lithuanian. And that is how we differ from the Scots. I always say that we have to remember that the Republic of the Two Nations – or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – was far from being just “Poland”, it was a common state made up of two different entities. 

Can Lithuania and Poland now be regarded as equal heirs to this common state? And what about the Belarusians and Ukrainians? How should their role in this common state be viewed? 

That state consisted of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was ruled from Vilnius, that is to say, from the territory of what is now Lithuania, but which nevertheless also included Belarus and, until the Union of Lublin, also Ukraine. Lithuania, just like Poland, now recognizes the May 3rd Constitution proclaimed in 1791 and believes that this legal act, had it not been destroyed by the Russian Empire, would have opened up a certain space for the development of Lithuanian culture, as well as – perhaps – for the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages and cultures. Since this failed, things began to develop differently. 

Czesław Miłosz once said of Vilnius that it was a strange city. I quote: “It was a city of different, intertwined forms, like Trieste or Czernowitz.” Of course, Miłosz was referring to the city of his childhood and youth, which, in fact, no longer exists in that form. You mentioned in a recent speech that Vilnius is “a city of all the peoples to whom it is important”. That includes also Poles and Belarusians. How do you feel about the recent discussion which is taking place in Lithuania about the so-called Litvinism, which is essentially a claim stating that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was “primarily Belarusian”? 

I have spoken to a Belarusian activist, an independence activist, somebody who is against Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and I asked him what percentage of the Duchy of Lithuania he thought was Belarusian and he said that it was 100 per cent. I was surprised to hear that, so I asked him what the Lithuanian percentage was then. He thought about it for a while and said: also, 100 per cent. Well, if this is the way to understand Litvinism, then we have nothing against such Litvinism. Certainly, the Belarusian element was very noticeable in Lithuania. A large part of the nobility was of Belarusian origin, of the Orthodox faith, but not only that. If the Radziwiłłs were Catholic and of Lithuanian origin, although they spoke Polish, the Chodkiewiczes were of Belarusian origin, their ancestors spoke Ruthenian or Old Belarusian, and they themselves already spoke Polish – and in that sense they were not too different from the Radziwiłłs. But still, these are two different branches of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The problem is being overblown a little bit, I think for provocative purposes, and I believe Lukashenka has his own interests in raising the issue, so that, you know, there is a claim that Lithuanian statehood is effectively “Belarusian statehood”. That is not the case. It was a common state. There were both Lithuanians and Belarusians. Of all those national differences today, you cannot apply them to those times. It was different. The concept of Lithuanian back then meant both Lithuanian and Belarusian. It was about both. Mikalojus Daukša1 was Lithuanian, spoke Lithuanian and wrote Lithuanian books. Francišak Skaryna2 was Belarusian. He spoke Ruthenian or Old Belarusian, and published Slavic books. Both of them published those books in Vilnius. So, old Lithuania was in fact dual. There was both a Baltic element and a Slavic element in it. This, I think, has to be acknowledged. Only those Litvinists who do not recognize this fact are wrong, but I do not think that they are very influential, and I do not think that they are very numerous. The smarter ones recognize the duality of the Grand Duchy. 

Let’s imagine that in the near future Belarus is a free and democratic country. How, in your opinion, should that country and Lithuania regulate their relations in order to avoid disputes, for example, about common historical symbols, such as the coat of arms?  

Based on my current contacts with the Belarusian diaspora, which includes refugees, academics, as well as independence activists, I daresay that our disputes will not go that far. I think that it will be made clear that the current borders are not disputed. In Europe, it is only Vladimir Putin who is violating borders now. Vilnius, even in the 20th century, used to be to a large extent the capital of the Belarusian culture – but it was also one of the capitals of Polish culture and, in a sense, perhaps even one of the most important ones, because it is the city of such Polish artists as the poets Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Władysław Syrokomla, or the composer Stanisław Moniuszko. It was also the capital of Jewish culture, and it was a place where Russian culture was expressed, and far from always in a bad way, sometimes in a good way, by theatres, painters, and so on. Miłosz said it well that there is a little bit of Trieste and a little of Czernowitz in Vilnius. I would say that there is even in it a little bit of New York, which is a centre of many cultures. But Vilnius is even more multicultural than New York, because in New York the English language culture is clearly dominant, whereas in Vilnius, if we take the whole of its history, no culture or language is clearly dominant. In some periods it was one, in other periods another, but several national cultures have a right to Vilnius and that right cannot be challenged. But the cultural law is one thing, the state law is another. Lithuania, thus, has the only state right to Vilnius. 

You mentioned Putin, the only person who is violating borders in Europe. In your opinion, how is the Putin regime and its imperialism today different from the older manifestations of tsarist, or even Soviet, imperialism? 

First of all, today’s Russian imperialism is anachronistic. Before, imperialism was more or less a natural thing which was universally accepted. Today, imperialism is anachronistic because the modern world is no longer divided into spheres of influence of individual empires, it is becoming more and more homogeneous, more and more globalized. Russia broke away from that general trend in this regard and is dragging us back to the 19th, 18th and even earlier centuries. This must change, because you cannot swim against the tide and get somewhere successfully. From a historical perspective, Lithuania probably has never had such a good time in its history as the last 20 years. This is especially true in terms of the political and economic opportunities that membership in the European Union and NATO has provided. However, the last few years have brought back some uncertainty. The brutal war waged by Russia represents a real threat that cannot be underestimated. What is being said is that it is also a war of values, a conflict between democracy and authoritarianism, which is based precisely on colonialism and imperialism. Britain was once colonialist and imperialist, now it is not anymore. Germany was once colonialist and imperialist, now it is not anymore. Though it is not proven, it is often said that Russia is fundamentally different from Britain and Germany. It’s just that in Russia the process took longer. Partly because it inherited the Byzantine imperial tradition. Eventually that too may change. When one argues that Russia has never been a democracy, I say that is not true. Russia was democratic in 1917 – for eight months, from the February Revolution to the October Revolution. Russia was also democratic after the fall of the Soviet Union – and not for eight months, but for at least eight years. The next period may well be 80 years; and then it could be 800 years. But this requires effort and first of all it requires effort by the Russians themselves. I often recall Andrei Sakharov or Natalya Gorbanevskaya, and the other dissidents who were Russian and who spoke out not only against communism, but also against Russian imperialism. There were such people even in the 19th century, such as Alexander Herzen, who supported the 1863-64 uprising and even sent a ship with weapons to support the Lithuanian rebels. Unfortunately, the wind threw that ship ashore in the Curonian spit, the arms did not reach Lithuania to help. 

Russia today is first and foremost an extremely centralized country despite the “federation” in its name. There is not a single state school in Russia where all subjects are taught in a language other than Russian. The situation of the cultures of the so-called “small nations” is particularly difficult. Russification has reached unprecedented heights not only through education but also through mass culture. What is more, Russification continues outside Russia wherever there are admirers of the “Russian world”. We can even say that the Poles in Lithuania, for example, remain rather on the orbit of Russian, not Polish, mass culture. Is the process of decolonization in Russia, whose future at these moments is extremely vague and difficult to predict, possible in your opinion? What should it look like? 

In terms of language and Russification, Putin’s Russia is even worse than the Soviet Union. In Soviet times, there were schools of many languages. But the Russian Empire is permanently crumbling. This process started in 1917, when Poland, Finland and the Baltic states broke away from the empire. This was continued under Mikhail Gorbachev, when the empire continued to collapse, the Caucasian republics broke away, the Baltic republics regained their independence and the Central Asian republics became independent. I believe that the time will come when the Buryats, the Yakuts, the Tatars, the Bashkirs and many other peoples will have far greater sovereignty than they have ever had. That is certainly the next stage that will come, I am sure of that. How it will happen and by what means is difficult to say, but it will happen. As for the Poles in Lithuania being influenced by the Russian culture, Putin is indeed trying very hard to make sure that this is the case. But perhaps not always successfully. I think that the Poles in Lithuania are, however, also influenced by present-day Poland, which is strictly anti-Putin and, so to speak, its influence on the Poles in Vilnius is, I think, at least as great as Putin’s. And it is our duty as Lithuanians to make sure that it is Warsaw’s influence that is stronger than Putin’s influence. 

How could this be achieved in your view? Does the end of a rather silly dispute over the spelling of surnames make any difference in this context?  

In my opinion, the dispute over the spelling of surnames was stupid, and there was a malicious element, because it took advantage of Lithuanian prejudices and the narrow-mindedness of some of our figures, and was also influenced by Putin’s propaganda. But the dispute ended well. I think that nothing terrible would have happened either if, in places where there are numerous Polish speakers, there had been place names in two languages. It is often said that there are no Poles there, just Polonized Lithuanians. This is not quite the case, because there are many Poles in Vilnius who are not of Lithuanian origin, just as there are many Poles who are definitely of Lithuanian origin, whose great-grandparents still spoke Lithuanian. But so, what? They are now speaking Polish and forcing them back into Lithuanian is a wrong, I would say imperialist, policy. It is a petty, little imperialism, which is no less disgusting than great-power imperialism. Those people should be left alone and they will inevitably learn the state language because it is difficult, if not impossible, to exist in Lithuania without the state language. In the public space, where Poles live, the Polish language has a right to exist, just as the Lithuanian language exists in the Sejny region (in northern Poland), and nothing terrible is happening there. Concessions are sometimes more helpful than the introduction of a so-called strict statehood. 

You have spent most of your life in the Cold War period. Would you agree with those who call what is happening now a “new Cold War”? 

Yes, and I would dare say it is even worse. Much worse. During the Cold War there were still some rules. The Soviets were more cautious and there was some kind of contact, at least towards the end, between the Soviets and the West, which closed the door to major threats, especially nuclear war. Now that contact is all but non-existent. Putin is worse than Brezhnev. He may not be as bad as Stalin, because he has not imprisoned millions, not yet, but he is clearly going in the direction not of Nikita Khrushchev, not of Leonid Brezhnev, but of Joseph Stalin. So, yes, we do have a real, new Cold War, and it is much worse than the one that I remember. 

Tomas Venclova is a Lithuanian philosopher, writer, poet and translator. During the Soviet times he was a dissident known for his advocacy for human rights. He was a co-founder of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group.  

Nikodem Szczygłowski is a reporter, a writer and a translator from Lithuanian and Slovenian. He is a frequent contributor with New Eastern Europe as well as other media outlets. 

history, Lithuania, memory, Poland, Polish-Lithuania commonwealth, Venclova