Tautinė Vilniaus vyskupijos gyventojų sudėtis 1867-1917 m.

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Baltarusių kalba; Etninė sudėtis; Kalbos politika; Lenkų kalba; Statistika; Tautinis identitetas; Tautinė asimiliacija; Tautinė sudėtis, Vilniaus vyskupijos gyventojai, tautybė, asimiliacija; Vilniaus vyskupija; Visuotinis gyventojų surašymas; Belorussian language; Diocese of Vilnius; Ethnic assimilation; Ethnic composition; Ethnic composition, residents o f Vilnius dioces, nationality, assimilation; Language policy; National identity; Statistics; Universal census.

ENThe primary sources for this article are A. Rittich, the 1897 universal census, the 1909 statistics, and the 1872-1874 and 1890 descriptions of the valsčiai [small rural districts]; A. Rittich, F. Kurschat, F. Tetzner, J. Kuznecov, J. Rozwadowski, P. Vileišis, and V. Verbickis, philological and ethnographical maps; and material from the offices founded by the Russian administration and the Catholic diocese. The origin of the statistics and maps; the methods used; and their political affiliations were critically examined in order to ascertain their relative cognitive value. At that time nationality was established according to the language spoken; the prestigious Russian and Polish nations were given prominence at the expense of the common Lithuanian and Belarusian nations. Officially Belarusians were considered a constituent part of the Russian nation. Another tendency was to ascribe Belarusian Catholics and in part Lithuanians to the Poles. The effects of the horizontal (at the level of the castes and social classes) and vertical (more modern where the caste and social divisions have become insignificant) assimilation are explained. Due to migration, the representatives of the common nationalities, who ended up in the cities, associated themselves with those prestigious nationalities, which corresponded to their religion. National assimilation, both horizontally and vertically, was costliest for the Lithuanians, who became Belarusians (generally) and Poles, which reduced the relative number of Lithuanians, narrowed their range, and the lines between Lithuanians and Slavs became indistinct and fragmented.At the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, those valsčiai, which had started to tum Polish, began to push into the gaps in the areas dominated by the Lithuanian and Belarusian languages, which were in the area extending to the north and west of Vilnius. However, the claim of some demog-raphists that a big Polish 'island' had formed near Vilnius at that time is refuted. With the consolidation of the Lithuanian nation through its entry into the political arena at the beginning of the twentieth century, objective statistics about the ethnic composition of the inhabitants was predictably accumulated independently and maps of the supposed ethnic localisations were created, motivated by the need for national sclf-delcncc and eventual sovereignty. [From the publication]