A City of Many Names and Many Claims

Vilnius—or Wilno, Vilna, Vilne, or Vilnia, depending on who spoke of it—stood at the crossroads of empires, cultures, and national aspirations in the early 20th century. Once the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, this city became a battleground for competing visions of nationhood among Lithuanians, Poles, Belarusians, Jews, and Russians. By 1914, it was a microcosm of the tensions tearing apart the western borderlands of the Russian Empire.

Under Russian rule, Vilnius was a city of contradictions. Most schools taught in Russian, yet the majority of churches were Roman Catholic. Over a third of its residents were Jewish, making it one of the most important centers of Jewish intellectual and religious life in Eastern Europe. The city’s population had more than tripled since 1863, fueled by industrialization and migration. Yet its identity remained fiercely contested.

The Grand Duchy’s Shadow: Competing Historical Narratives

For Lithuanian activists, Vilnius was the ancient capital of a once-great Lithuanian state, founded by Grand Duke Gediminas in the 14th century. They saw the medieval Grand Duchy as a precursor to a modern Lithuanian nation, even though Lithuanian speakers made up only 1–2% of the city’s population. Their claims rested not on demographics but on historical legacy—a legacy they believed had been distorted by centuries of Polish cultural dominance.

Belarusian nationalists, meanwhile, also traced their lineage to the Grand Duchy. Unlike the Lithuanians, they viewed the 1569 Union with Poland more favorably, imagining a revived Polish-Lithuanian federation that included Belarusian lands. Their early 20th-century movement, led by socialist intellectuals from Polish-speaking Catholic families, struggled to gain traction in a region where Belarusian peasants remained politically marginalized.

For Poles, Vilnius was an integral part of their cultural world. Polish-speaking elites, many descended from Lithuanian nobility, saw the city as the heart of a unique borderland civilization—one that was Polish in culture but rooted in the traditions of the Grand Duchy. The krajowcy (local patriots) movement epitomized this vision, advocating for a federal Poland that would include Lithuania and Belarus as autonomous partners.

The Jewish Jerusalem of the North

Vilnius’s Jewish community, known as the “Jerusalem of Lithuania,” was both deeply rooted and dynamically modern. For centuries, the city had been a center of Talmudic scholarship, home to figures like the Vilna Gaon, an 18th-century rabbinic authority who famously opposed Hasidic Judaism. By 1900, Jews made up 40% of Vilnius’s population and dominated its commerce.

The Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) flourished here, giving rise to secular Jewish political movements. Zionists, Bundists (Jewish socialists), and other factions debated the future of Jewish life—whether in a homeland in Palestine, through socialist revolution, or via cultural autonomy in Eastern Europe. Unlike in Lviv or Vienna, where Jewish assimilation into Polish or German culture was common, Vilnius’s Jews maintained a strong separatist identity, partly due to their distrust of both Polish nationalism and Russian autocracy.

World War I and the Battle for Vilnius

The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917–1918 turned Vilnius into a prize fought over by newly emerging states. Lithuanian nationalists declared independence in 1918, hoping to reclaim Vilnius as their capital. Polish federalists, led by Józef Piłsudski (himself a son of the Lithuanian nobility), envisioned the city as part of a multinational federation. Belarusian activists briefly proclaimed Vilnius as their capital before being swept aside by larger forces.

The Polish-Soviet War (1919–1920) sealed Vilnius’s fate. After Piłsudski’s forces drove out the Red Army in 1919, he proposed a federation with Lithuania—an offer rejected by Lithuanian leaders determined on full independence. In 1920, a Polish general staged a mutiny, seizing Vilnius and declaring it the capital of a puppet state, “Central Lithuania.” A rigged plebiscite in 1922 “confirmed” the city’s annexation by Poland, despite protests from Lithuania and the international community.

The Legacy of Division

The interwar years hardened national divisions. In Polish Vilnius, authorities suppressed Lithuanian and Belarusian cultural institutions while tolerating Jewish autonomy. Meanwhile, Kaunas became the provisional capital of a Lithuania that refused to recognize Poland’s rule over Vilnius. The city’s status remained a bitter point of contention until World War II, when Soviet and Nazi occupations reshaped the region yet again.

The poet Adam Mickiewicz—claimed by Poles, Lithuanians, and Belarusians alike—became a symbol of these unresolved tensions. Attempts to build monuments to him in interwar Vilnius failed spectacularly, with one statue struck by lightning and another destroyed in the 1939 German invasion. Only in 1984, under Soviet rule, did a Mickiewicz monument finally stand in Vilnius—this time as a Lithuanian national icon.

Conclusion: A Mirror of Modern Nationalism

Vilnius’s 20th-century struggles reveal the power—and pitfalls—of modern nationalism. Competing claims based on history, language, and demography collided in one city, exposing the fragility of multiethnic states in an age of nation-building. The failure of federalist visions like Piłsudski’s underscored how difficult it was to reconcile romanticized pasts with political realities.

Today, Vilnius is the capital of an independent Lithuania, its Jewish community memorialized but decimated, its Polish minority diminished. Yet its history remains a testament to the enduring complexity of identity in Eastern Europe—a region where borders shift, but memories of lost worlds linger.