Lietuviškas Vilnius: ar tokio būta?

ENThe article examines the connection of Vilnius, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with the Lithuanian language, culture, and the Lithuanian community. In texts written in Vilnius in the 14th century, a multicultural, multi-confessional city is primarily defined as the capital of the “Lithuanian king,” in which the ruler and his people, unlike Russians, Poles, and others, “worship God according to their rites” and speak their own language. The myth of the origin of Vilnius is also Lithuanian, and it reached us from the chronicles of the first half of the 16th century. It was already recorded in the myth of the Roman origin of the Lithuanian political nation. The myths of the origin of Vilnius, the iron wolf, and the Lithuanian Palemonas origin story, were combined by the authors in the Grand Duchy of Lithuanias capital into one story, over the centuries forming important support for the political and cultural identity of the Lithuanian nation. In the 16th-17th centuries, intellectuals in Vilnius developed two concepts of the state of Lithuania: one of these concepts called for the state to base its “Lithuanian ancestry" on Roman language, culture, and Latin schools, while the second called for the state to support and strengthen the spoken Lithuanian language to use it in public and private life, to write laws and books.The idea of the first Lithuanian book is associated with the Lithuanian intellectuals who were active in Vilnius in the mid- 16th century. Lithuanian books, which began to be published in Vilnius at the end of the 16th century, were prepared and printed throughout the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania some of them, as an element of the Lithuanian language, were constantly reprinted and expanded. Catholic churches in Vilnius also preached in the Lithuanian language in the 18th updated. The Supreme National Council, which led the insurrection against Russia inl794, addressed the people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in two national languages Lithuanian and Polish. At the end of the 19th centurybeginning of the 20th century, the cultural and political tradition of Lithuanian Vilnius was continued in the city by Lithuanian writers, scientists, and publicists. [From the publication]