Demographic history of the Vilnius region

Already in the 1st century, Lithuanian tribes inhabited Lithuania proper. Slavicisation of Lithuanians in eastern and southeastern Lithuania began in the 16th century. It is recorded that in 1554, Lithuanian, Polish and Church Slavonic were spoken in Vilnius. The Statutes of Lithuania, officially enforced from 1588 until 1840, forbid Polish nobility to buy estates in Lithuania, hence a mass migration of Poles into the Vilnius region was impossible. The Lithuanian nobility and Bourgeoisie was gradually Polonized over the 17th and 18th centuries. Until the end of the 19th century, Peasants in eastern Lithuania proper were Lithuanians. This is attested by their un-Polonized surnames, and most Lithuanians in eastern Lithuania proper were Slavicized by schools and churches in the last quarter of the 19th century. Polonization resulted in the mixed language spoken in the Vilnius region by Tutejszy, where it was known as "mowa prosta". It is not recognized as a dialect of Polish and borrows heavily from the Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian languages. According to Polish professor Jan Otrębski's article published in 1931, the Polish dialect in the Vilnius Region and in the northeastern areas in general are very interesting variant of Polishness as this dialect developed in a foreign territory which was mostly inhabited by the Lithuanians who were Belarusized (mostly) or Polonized, and to prove this Otrębski provided examples of Lithuanianisms in the Tutejszy language. In 2015, Polish linguist Mirosław Jankowiak attested that many of the region's inhabitants who declare Polish nationality speak a Belarusian dialect which they call mowa prosta ('simple speech')., oak, and fire. From Olaus Magnus' A Description of the Northern Peoples, book 3, 1555 According to recent ethnographic research by Yury Vnukovich (2023), this situation represents an "ethnic anomaly": while local Lithuanians are identified primarily by their language, for the local Slavic-speaking population, their everyday language ("prostaya mova") is not a marker of ethnicity. Instead, residents identify as Poles based on other factors, primarily their Catholic faith (locally perceived as the "Polish faith") and their origin from the region. Vnukovich notes that "prostaya mova" is often stigmatized by its speakers as "uneducated," whereas standard Polish holds high prestige as a symbol of their identity, even if they do not speak it fluently in daily life. ==Ancient period==

In the eldership of Vilkpėdė, remnants of a Magdalenian settlement were found which date to . Around 1000 BC, the confluence of the Neris and Vilnia was densely inhabited by the Brushed Pottery culture, which had a half-hectare fortified settlement on Gediminas' Hill. Tribes of this culture inhabited present-day Lithuania east of the Šventoji River and in western Belarus. The descendants of this culture were a Baltic tribe, the Aukštaitians (). Kairėnai, Pūčkoriai and Naujoji Vilnia had large settlements during the first millennium AD. The most densely populated area was the confluence of the Neris and Vilnia, which had fortified homesteads. ==Medieval period==

Vilnius was part of the Kingdom of Lithuania; King Mindaugas did not permanently live there, however, despite building Lithuania's first Catholic church for his coronation. (Gediminas' male-line offspring) with his wife, the Grand Duchess Barbara Radziwiłł, in Vilnius. The city prospered during his reign.Vilnius' growth is attributed to Grand Duke Gediminas, who invited knights, merchants, doctors, craftspeople and others to come to the duchy to practice their trades and religion without restriction during the 14th century. Vilnius' multiculturalism was increased by Grand Duke Vytautas the Great, who introduced Litvaks, Tatars and Crimean Karaites. After several centuries, the number of local residents in Vilnius was smaller than the number of newcomers. However, according to an analysis of the 1572 tax registers, Lithuania had 850,000 residents; 680,000 were Lithuanians. ==Lithuanian Golden Age==

It became a multicultural city, with 14th-century sources noting that it consisted of a Great (Lithuanian) city and a Ruthenian one. By the 16th century, German merchants, artisans, Jews and Tatars had also settled in Vilnius. During the 16th– and 17th-century Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the city's Polish-speaking population began to grow; by the middle of the 17th century, most writing was in Polish. however, it was severely damaged by a 1610 fire. ==Russian and Swedish occupations==

After the 1655 Battle of Vilnius the city was under Russian control until 1661. During the Great Northern War, the Swedish Empire controlled Vilnius from 1702 to 1709. The occupation ended with the Great Northern War plague outbreak, and the city took over 50 years to recover. The city's population fell to 17,500 in 1796 due to the 1794 uprising, the last attempt to save it from Russian control. Vilnius was incorporated into the Russian Empire, and was its third-largest city at the beginning of the 19th century. According to parish censuses in 1857–1858, the Lithuanian population was between 23.6 and 50 percent in the Vilna Governorate. Among the szlachta (nobility) in Vilnius in the 1897 census were 5,301 (46 percent) local nobles and 6,403 (54 percent) newcomers; of the newcomers, 24.1 percent were from the Vilna Governorate and the remainder from Grodno, Minsk, Vitebsk and Kovno Governorates, Vistula Land and other regions. ==After the partitions of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth==

Most of the former lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were annexed by the Russian Empire during the Partitions in the late 18th century. While initially, these former lands had certain local autonomy, with local nobility holding the same offices as before the Partitions, after several unsuccessful rebellions in 1830–31 and 1863–64 against the Russian Empire, the Russian authorities engaged in intense Russification of the regions' inhabitants. Following the failed November uprising all traces of former Polish–Lithuanian statehood (like the Third Statute of Lithuania and Congress Poland) were replaced with Russian counterparts, ranging from the currency and units of measurement to offices of local administration. The failed January Uprising of 1863–64 further aggravated the situation, as the Russian authorities decided to pursue the policies of forcibly imposed Russification. The discrimination of local inhabitants included restrictions and bans on usage of Lithuanian (see Lithuanian press ban), Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian (see Valuev circular) languages. This however did not stop the Polonization effort undertaken by the Polish patriotic leadership of the Vilna Educational District even within the Russian Empire. File:19th C. sign in Lithuania.jpg|Official tsarist sign in Vilnius "Speaking Lithuanian is strictly forbidden" (second half of the 19th century) File:AGAD (10) Obwieszczenie o zakazie rozmawiania po polsku, Pudło 663, s 121 (square).png|Official tsarist decree from 1864 forbidding to speak Polish in all public places in Vilnius Despite that, the pre-19th-century cultural and ethnic pattern of the area was largely preserved. In the process of the pre-19th-century voluntary Polonization, much of the Lithuanian nobility adopted Polish language and culture. This was also true to the representatives of the then-nascent bourgeoisie class and the Catholic and Uniate clergy. At the same time, the lower strata of the society (notably the peasants) formed a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural mixture of Lithuanians, Poles, Jews, Tatars and Ruthenians, as well as a small yet notable population of immigrants from all parts of Europe, from Italy to Scotland and from the Low Countries to Germany. During the rule of the Russian tsars, Polish remained the lingua franca as it had been in Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. By the middle of the 17th century, most Lithuanian upper nobility was Polonized. Over time, the nobility of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth unified politically and started to consider themselves to be citizens of one common state. The leader of interwar Poland, the Lithuanian-born Józef Piłsudski, was an example of this phenomenon. ==Statistics==

Following is a list of various estimates, statistics and censuses that have been taken in the city of Vilnius and its region since the 19th century. The list is incomplete. Data are at times fragmentary. Plater's statistics for the Vilnius Governorate in 1825 Count Stanisław Plater was the first one to publish approximate statistics on the ethnic makeup of the Vilnius governorate, which included the Vilnius region as well as many other parts of Lithuania, in 1825. His work's purpose was to show the area's indicative ethnic composition. In the case of the Vilnius Governorate, he concluded that it was majority Lithuanian. 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 (which refers to the Old Believers). 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". Lebedkin's statistic of 1862 File:Lithuania-1867-1914-EN.svg|Vilnius Governorate (light green), 1843–1915 File:Ethnographische_Karte_von_Europa_by_Heinrich_Berghaus,_1847_%28fragment%29.jpg|Lithuanian language area (1840s). A fragment of an ethnographic map of Europe (1847) File:Ethnographic map of Vilno governorate of Russian empire - made by an officer A. Koreva - 1861 AD.jpg|Ethnographic map of the Vilnius governorate in 1861 The first attempt at a statistical study of the ethnic structure of the Vilnius region was undertaken by Mikhail Lebedkin, who based his work on parish Catholic and Orthodox data. He published his findings in 1861 in the article On the Ethnic Composition of the Population of the Western Region of the Russian Empire in the Saint Petersburg–published scientific geographical journal . The largest percentage of Poles were in districts of Dysna (43.4%), Vilnius (34.5%) and Vileyka (22.1%). Lebedkin believed that in earlier times only Lithuanians and Slavs lived in the Vilnius Governorate, and therefore, he considered the Lithuanians to be the governorate's indigenous population. He classified the Poles as part of the "Slavo-Russian" group. Lebedkin's data also included information on the number of Orthodox and Catholic believers, classifying all Poles, as well as portions of Lithuanians and Belarusians, as Catholics. In 1862 a slightly revised version of the article was published in the Kyiv-based journal , annotated by the editors with anti-Polish comments (Poles referred to as "insurgents"). Russian census of 1897 File:Litauisches_Sprachgebiet_(1876).JPG|Lithuanian language area (without language islands outside the compact area). A map by Friedrich Kurschat (1876) File:Polska1912.jpg|Distribution of Polish population (1912) incorporates data from the 1897 Russian census. A map by Henryk Merczyng File:Mapa rozsiedlenia ludności polskiej z uwzględnieniem spisów z 1916 roku.jpg|Map of areas where Polish was used as a primary language in 1916 In 1897, the first Russian Empire Census was held. The territory covered by the tables included parts of today's Belarus, that is, the Hrodna, Vitebsk and Minsk voblasts. Its results are currently criticised concerning ethnic composition because ethnicity was defined by the language spoken. In many cases, the reported language of choice was defined by general background (education, occupation) rather than ethnicity. Some results are also thought of as skewed since Pidgin speakers were assigned to nationalities arbitrarily. Moreover, the Russian military garrisons were counted in as permanent inhabitants of the area. Some historians point out the fact that the Russification policies and persecution of ethnic minorities in Russia were added to the notion to subscribe Belarusians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Poles to the category of Russians. Russian Population Figures for the 1897 Census: 1916 German census During World War I, all of modern-day Lithuania and Poland was occupied by the German Army. On 9 March 1916, the German military authorities organized a census to determine the ethnic composition of their newly conquered territories. Many Belarusian historians note that the Belarusian minority is not noted among the inhabitants of the city. The census was organised by Oberbürgermeister Eldor Pohl. Representatives of local population were included in the commission. Poles were represented by Jan Boguszewski, Feliks Zawadzki and Władysław Zawadzki, Jews by Nachman Rachmilewicz, Simon Rosenbaum and Zemach Shabad, Lithuanians by Antanas Smetona, Aleksandras Stulginskis and Augustinas Janulaitis. Belarusians did not have any representation. Each member of the commission was responsible for the census in one of the nine parts into which the city was divided, and was accompanied by two representatives of other nationalities. As a result each part of the city was entrusted to commission consisted of one Pole, Jew and Lithuanian. Each commission had an ethnically mixed team of clerks at their disposal. Overall 425 of them were engaged in carrying out the census; 200 of them were Jews, 150 Poles, 50 Lithuanians and 25 Belarusians. Many Lithuanians at the time pointed to the fact, that many of the clerks employed in carrying out the census were Polish citizen of Germany, mainly from Poznań, so the results of the census were unreliable. Census itself was carried out in days 9–11 March, for 5 more days people were able to correct their declarations and make complaints. The main complain was that many of the clerks, mainly Jewish ones, did not know any other language other than Yidish or Russian, often also didn't know latin script, which in effect let to many mistakes, also many people simply refused to answer the questions they didn't understand. There were also instances when for political reasons people were registered as belonging to different nationality than they declared. Overall according to census city was inhabited by 140 480 people, 76 196 of them were Roman Catholics (54,10%), 70 692 were Polish (50,15%). The second group were Jews, 61 265 declared such nationality (43,5%) and 61 233 declared Judaism as their religion (43,47%). The population of the city decreased from 205 300 in 1909 to just 140 800 registered in the new census. Almost all of Russians left the city with the army, their percentage shrank from 20% in 1909 to just 1,46% now. In comparison with the first Germans census (carried out in November 1915, wasn't asking about nationality), the number of inhabitants decreased by 1,223 from 142,063. The most striking result was the difference in the number of inhabitants and the number of people registered for food ration stamps. According to responsible office in March 1916 there was 170 836 people in the city eligible to receive food rations, which gave the difference of about 18%. German authorities alarmed by the results reformed the rationing system and in October the number of stamps was reduced so the number of registered persons decreased to 142 218. Given people were rather leaving Vilnius — refugees were going back to their homes, people were trying to find better life conditions in the countryside — the numbers were still most likely inflated. In a result Germans decided to carry out additional census. Every inhabitant of Vilnius was ordered to appear in the right office with a passport and a ration card. In front of ethnically mixed commission he needed to declare his and his family nationality and religion, and also declare the number of people in the household. After that he was given a new ration card where such information was included. Results were even more favourable for Poles, their number increased to 74,466 (53.65%), while the overall number of people in the city decreased to 138,787. AData collected from the following districts (Kreise): Suwałki, Augustów, Sejny, Grodno, Grodno-city, , Lida, Radun, Vasilishki, Vilnius-city, Vilnius, Širvintos, Pabradė, Merkinė, Molėtai, Kaišiadorys, and Švenčionėliai. File:MWP Pilsudski odezwa.JPG|Piłsudski's bilingual Appeal to the citizens of former Grand Duchy of Lithuania of April 1919 File:Polska-ww1-nation.png|Polish pre-WWI ethnographic boundaries and territorial claims File:Mapa rozsiedlenia ludności polskiej na terenie Litwy w 1929.jpg|Polish state-sponsored cartographic propaganda from the Institute for the Study of Nationalities from 1929, claiming to show the number of Poles in Lithuania, extrapolated from the elections to the Lithuanian Seimas in 1923, the Polish Sejm in 1922 and censuses in 1921 1921–1923 Polish census The Peace of Riga, which ended the Polish–Soviet War, determined Poland's eastern border. In 1921, the first Polish census was held in territories under Polish control. However, Central Lithuania, seized in 1920 by General Lucjan Żeligowski's forces after a staged mutiny, was outside of de jure Poland. Poland annexed the short-lived state on 22 March 1922. As a result, the Polish census of 20 September 1921 covered only parts of the future Wilno Voivodeship area, that is the communes of Breslauja, Duniłowicze, Dysna and Vileika. The remaining part of the territory of Central Lithuania (that is the communes of Vilnius, Ašmena, Švenčionys and Trakai) was covered by the additional census organised there in 1923. The tables on the right give the combined numbers for Wilno Voivodeship's area (Administrative Area of Wilno), taken during both the 1921 and 1923 censuses. It is known that Lithuanians were forced to declare their nationality as Polish. Source: 1921–1923 Polish census Polish census of 1931 The 1931 Polish census was the first Polish census to measure the population of the whole Wilno and Wilno Voivodeship at once. It was organised on 9 December 1931 by the Main Statistical Office of Poland. However, in 1931 the question of nationality was replaced by two separate questions of religion worshipped and the language spoken at home. Because of that, it is sometimes argued that the "language question" was introduced to diminish the number of Jews, some of whom spoke Polish rather than Yiddish or Hebrew. A Lithuanian sanitary platoon didn't find any Lithuanian-speaking villages despite traveling for two weeks in the surrounding countryside. In December 1939, shortly after the return of Lithuanian control to what it claimed was its capital city, the Lithuanian authorities organized a new census in the area. However, the census is often criticized as skewed, intending to prove Lithuania's historical and moral rights to the disputed area rather than determine the factual composition. Lithuanian figures from that period are criticized as significantly inflating the number of Lithuanians. People receiving Lithuanian citizenship were pressured to declare their nationality as being Lithuanian rather than Polish. However, Wilna-Gebiet did not include Breslauja, Dysna, Maladečina, Pastovys and Vileika counties but included Svieriai district. That explains the decline in the number of Belarusians in Wilna-Gebiet. Einsatzgruppen population report on 1 July 1941 About 90% of the Vilnius Jewish community had perished in the Holocaust. All Vilnius Poles were required to register for resettlement, and about 80% of them were relocated to Poland. Soviet census of late 1944-early 1945:'''A Soviet census of 1959 During the 1944-1946 period, about 50% of the registered Poles in Lithuania were transferred to Poland. Dovile Budryte estimates that about 150,000 people left the country. During 1955–1959 period, another 46,600 Poles left Lithuania. However, Lithuanian historians estimate that about 10% of people who left for Poland were ethnic Lithuanians. While the removal of Poles from Vilnius constituted a priority for the Lithuanian communist authorities, the depolonization of the countryside was limited due to the concerns of depopulation and agricultural labour force deficit. The population transfers and migration processes resulted in the formation of territorial ethnic segregation, with Lithuanians and Russians prevailing in Vilnius and Poles predominating in the city's surroundings. These are the results of the migration to Poland and the growth of the city due to industrial development and the Soviet Union policy. 1959 Soviet census: Soviet census of January 1989

Poles accounted for 63.6% of the population in Vilnius rayon/county (currently Vilnius district municipality, excluding the city of Vilnius itself), and 82.4% of the population in Šalčininkai rayon/county (currently known as Šalčininkai district municipality). Lithuanian census of 2001 2001 Lithuanian census: Lithuanian census of 2011 ==20th century==

The city's population increased to 205,300 in 1909. During World War I, thousands of residents were forced to flee, were killed, or were taken to labor camps; the city's 1919 population fell to 128,500. Vilnius recovered during the interwar period, with 209,442 residents in 1939, but its population fell to 110,000 in 1944. in Dominikonų Street, 19th century until World War I. After the 1939 Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty, Lithuania regained one-third of Vilnius Region and tried to Lithuanize Vilnius by introducing Lithuanian laws. Prime Minister Antanas Merkys said that this was "to make everybody think like Lithuanians. First of all, it was and still is necessary to comb out the foreign element from the Vilnius Region". About 150,000 Poles were repatriated from the Lithuanian SSR from 1945 to 1956. == Historic ethnic makeup==

Jews of Vilnius The Jews living in Vilnius had their own complex identity, and labels of Polish Jews, Lithuanian Jews or Russian Jews are all applicable only in part. The majority of the Yiddish speaking population used the Litvish dialect. in 2021 == The situation today ==

The Vilnius urban region is the only area in East Lithuania that doesn't face a decrease in population density. Polish people constitute the majority of native rural inhabitants in the Vilnius region. However, the share of Poles across the region is dwindling mainly due to the natural decline of rural population and process of suburbanization – most of new residents in the outskirts of Vilnius are Lithuanians. Colloquial Polish in Lithuania includes dialectic qualities and is influenced by other languages. Educated Poles speak a language close to standard Polish. ==See also==