Политика русификации в Литве: случай Казиса Шкирпы

ENThis article sheds some light on the early life of Kazys Škirpa (1895–1979), a prominent military officer and statesman of interwar Lithuania. Škirpa was best known for his efforts to re-establish Lithuanian independence with the support of Nazi Germany after his country was annexed by the Soviet Union during the Second World War. For this reason, evaluation of his personal biography has previously been neglected by scholars. Striving to fill this research and knowledge gap, this paper hypothesises that the formation of the future politician was deeply influenced by processes that took place during his youth in Russia. Škirpa’s biography offers a fascinating insight into changes in the Russian Empire. The changes included the two trajectories of Russification; “from above” and “from below” and the transformation of the loyalty principles as well — social-religious loyalty became ethnonational. Russian governmental policy was to categorise its population on the basis of formal criteria. Škirpa’s biography demonstrates how the representatives of various ethnic groups (including Lithuanians) bypassed bureaucratic peculiarities to develop their national identity, which worked against the raison d’être of the empire. However, at the same time these representatives of the various ethnic groups remained “ideal subjects” of the Tzar. It was the First World War that contributed to the realisation of the national and political aspirations of such ethnic communities. The article also in cludes some of Škirpa’s previously undiscovered personal documents, which were found in the Russian archives. Keywords: Russian Empire, Lithuania, Russification, World War I, Lithuanian national movement. [From the publication]

• An Army never created : Lithuanian national units in Russia and their veterans organisation in Lithuania in the interwar period / Vytautas Jokubauskas. Acta historica universitatis Klaipedensis. 2017, t. 34, p. 101-122.
• Demobilization and remobilization of German and Lithuanian paramilitaries after the First World War / Tomas Balkelis. European history quarterly. 2015, 50, 1, p. 38-57.
• Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941-1944 / Christoph Dieckmann. Göttingen : Wallstein, 2011. 2 t. (1652 p.).
• Великое Княжество Литовское : стереотипы историческойй памяти в Литве / Дарюс Вилимас. Ab Imperio. 2004, 4, p. 507-522.