Satirical discourse and projects of modernisation in early nineteenth-century Vilnius. The weekly "Wiadomości Brukowe" (Street News, 1816-1822)

ENIn the emergence of the modern Lithuanian and Polish nations, the continuity and division of the heritage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is one of the essential problems that shaped the national thought of these communities and still affects their relations. This article focuses on the roots of this process going back to early nineteenth-century Lithuania, i. e. to the multi-ethnic society of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) that was incorporated together with Ukraine into the Russian Empire (1795). At the time, Lithuanian society was dealing with a problem that the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau had identified before the collapse of the Commonwealth in his political essay "Considerations sur le gouvernement de Pologne" (Considerations on the Government of Poland, 1772): “You may not prevent them from swallowing you up; see to it at least that they will not be able to digest you”. Under the new political circumstances, the condition of a stateless nation encouraged the articulation of cultural patterns of self-identification that were more difficult for imperial Russia to “digest”. These patterns defined the relationship with the heritage of the former state and also modelled the perspectives of the emergence of a modern society. One of the most prominent societal initiatives in this regard was the satirical weekly paper "Wiadomości Brukowe" (Street News), published in Vilnius in 1816-1822.It brought together a group of Vilnius intellectuals of liberal reformist views, who cheekily called themselves Towarzystwo Szubrawców (The Society of Scoundrels). Their paper was intended for the reading community of Polish-speaking social elites in Lithuania and became an influential means of shaping public opinion. The satire in "Wiadomości Brukowe" stemmed from the social rivalry that developed during the process of modernisation between the traditional nobility by birth and the new cultural professional elites. It therefore coincided with the general European trend of the time “to denounce the vices of the nobility and to praise the civic virtues’ of the middie classes”. [Extract, p. 141-142]