They were called smugglers and “criminals”… But, in fact, they were scholars, teachers, avid readers… They loved their country more than anything else and they wanted to be Lithuanians. They became book smugglers to protect their identity, their traditions and the soul of Lithuania. They were the knygnešiai… the book carriers.
From 1864 to 1904 they tried to keep the Lithuanian language alive, despite the efforts of the Czarist administration which wanted to erase it. Because to conquer a nation, you have to erase its language, its traditions, you have to prevent the language from being used and taught at schools.
Every year, on May 7th, Lithuania celebrates the end of the Czarist ban that forbade the publishing and distribution of books in Lithuanian: it is the Lithuanian Press Restoration, Language and Book Day.
Lithuanian is an ancient language. Many scholars believe it is one of the oldest still alive today. It belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European languages and it still shows some influences from Sanskrit.
Throughout its long history the use of the Lithuanian language was forbidden many times, but today it is very much alive thanks to the efforts and the bravery of the people who secretly kept on publishing books and newspapers. Many history books were hidden during the darkest times of the country’s past. From the Czarist to the Nazi and the Soviet eras when brutal regimes had a goal to erase the Lithuanian identity.
During the Czarist times, the country had to face the policy of russification that forbade people from using their own Lithuanian language. In those years, the resistance against the disappearance of the language was very strong. Books were printed abroad and smuggled into the country thanks to the citizens who emigrated to Europe and to the US. The help of the Catholic church was essential, too.
The Russian ban was put into place in 1864. The riots in the second half of the 19th century – all of them brutally suppressed – induced another government crackdown. The use of the Lithuanian language was completely prohibited along with the Latin alphabet. Catholic church was prevented from printing prayer books in Lithuanian, while in schools and universities it became mandatory to study Russian and to use the Cyrillic script.
Catechism by Matinas Mazvydas printed in Lithuanian
However, Lithuanians were not going to give up easily: they kept on secretly printing books in their own language. One of the examples of their struggle for national identity was the Knygnešyst movement. Unique to Lithuania, the word means “book smuggling”; it was carried out by knygnešiai, or book smugglers. From the point of view of Russian Czarist administration, those people were criminals who had to be punished. The books were published abroad, particularly in Eastern Prussia and then smuggled across the border into Russian-controlled Lithuania.
Those who were involved in those activities risked death by firing squad. If they were lucky, they would be sent to Siberia instead.
Despite the ban and thanks to the book smuggling, the Lithuanian language flourished. Hidden from the sight of the Czarist government, in the countryside, many “daraktoriai” taught to write and speak Lithuanian in makeshift schools. The knygnešiai movement was very important for the whole country, especially in the countryside.
In 1904 Czar Nicholas lifted the ban as it clearly hadn’t worked. The Lithuanian language was still alive. A year later, the first Lithuanian bookstore was officially inaugurated in Panevėžys, in the Eastern part of the country. It was Juozas Masiulis who founded it, a proactive man who loved to read, loved Lithuania and had been a knygnešiai. The bookstore had a pivotal role in the dissemination of the Lithuanian culture and traditions. During the republican times (1918-1940) it maintained good relationships with bookstores and libraries abroad.
During the Interwar period, between 1918 and 1940, Lithuania was an independent country. With the Nazi and the Soviet occupations the country had to go through one of its darkest periods of history: the Holocaust almost completely obliterated the Jewish community, around 250.000 people; hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians were deported to Siberia or had to flee their own country which became the theater of guerilla war against the Soviet army that lasted until 1953.
The opposition to the Soviet regime, albeit not armed and in other forms, continued until the restoration of Lithuanian independence in 1990.
The “Cultural Cleansing”
The Soviets were not much better than the Czars: they tried in any way possible to limit the printing of books and magazines in Lithuanian. Erasing the national identity of a conquered nation has been a typical goal of any totalitarian regime. At schools, teaching Russian became mandatory in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, and many books, also those of great historical value, were burned or became unavailable.
Today you will find National Public Library of Lithuania at the end of Gedimino Prospect in Vilnius, next to the Parliament. The building itself which was erected in 1919, had quite a troubled history. As troubled, as the history of Lithuania herself. Within the the first few years upon its opening, National Library became a part of a wide cultural ecosystem which comprised universities and bookstores abroad. It acquired many books, and from 1919 to 1921 a public reading room was opened.
When the Soviets came to Lithuiania, the Library changed. Books in Lithuanian disappeared, the shelves were stocked with books in Russian. The goal was clear: destroying culture and traditions, as well as preventing any contact with libraries and bookstores that were beyond the borders of the USSR. In 1941 came the Germans. The premises of the National Library were occupied by German soldiers and it almost ceased to function. For a short period of time, at the end of the war and under the Soviet rule, the building was closed and all the books were moved to the Chamber of Commerce.
The “cultural cleansing” was just beginning. The Soviets were raging an ideological battle against anything that had connection with the history of Lithuania, forcing schools to speak Russian and banning books in Lithuanian which were labelled as dangerous and anti-Soviet. Many books and papers were removed from the library catalogue, hidden or burned. A few books were available only to those who could show a special permit released by Soviet security services. That permit was of course denied to average citizens.
“Lietuva, Tėvyne mūsų,
Tu didvyrių žeme,
Iš praeities Tavo sūnūs
Te stiprybę semia”
These are the first lines of Lithuanian national anthem:
Lithuania, our dear homeland,
Land of worthy heroes!
May your sons draw strength
From your past experiences.
The Soviets, just like the Czars before them, were unsuccessful in their efforts to erase Lithuanian national identity. Lithuania had always been a thorn in the side of the leadership of the USSR and it was the first country to gain freedom from the galaxy of the Soviet empire.
Reprinted with minor editing from here.
Andrew Andersen 