Middle Lithuania as a seed of contention

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Middle Lithuania as a seed of contention93 a year ago, in October 1920, in Eastern Europe, on a part of the territories of modern Lithuania and Belarus, a second Polish state emerged, formed as a result of territorial seizure and called Middle Lithuania (Litwa Środkowa). It existed from October 1920-th to March 1922 of the year. And although the national composition of this territorial-political entity was not purely Polish, the Poles constituted 70% of the population, and the Lithuanians represented the second largest population group — in the ideas of Warsaw, which started this adventure, “Median Lithuania” would have forever become part of Poland ...

Middle Lithuania was the idea of ​​the Polish dictator Józef Pilsudski, who dreamed of uniting the Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian states that emerged from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the auspices of Warsaw into a federation that would become a new edition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The direct executor of this plan was General Lucian Zeligovsky (1865-1947). The seizure by the Poles of a new territory, and above all Vilnius (present-day Vilnius), was staged as a “revolt” of the Zeligovsky division that had come out of obedience to the command of the command. Everything was presented as if the faithful parts of Zeligovsky rushed into battle voluntarily in order not to allow the outbreak of the graves of their Polish ancestors "Lithuanians, Bolsheviks and Germans" (the Poles looked at independent Lithuania as a puppet regime created by the Germans). Located in 50 kilometers from Vilna, parts of Zeligovsky occupied the city of 9 in October 1920 of the year, and in October 12 Zeligovsky declared himself the Supreme ruler of the “state” created by him. In his “secret” dispatch to the command of the Polish army, Zeligovsky would call the capture of Vilna “the liberation of the Fatherland”. Pilsudski, who planned this roll to the east, officially dissociates himself from Zeligovsky’s actions and only three years later admits: “I myself organized the march of L. Zheligovsky. My order acted until the very end. ”

The creation of Middle Lithuania allowed Poland to use the seized territory as a strategic springboard. First, the Middle Lithuania, with its center in Vilna, separated Northern Lithuania (with its center in Kovno) from the remnants of the Belarusian lands, which were Russia, and served as a buffer between them. Secondly, Northern Lithuania had access to the Baltic coast, and Pilsudski’s next strategic step in the “expansion” of Poland to the east was to join the Vilnius ’Lithuanian covenant to Lithuania. It was also supposed to include Klaipeda (Memel) in the area of ​​Polish influence in order to have access to the sea. In the complex, these measures would give Poland the opportunity to take the territory of Prussia into a semiring and get a parapet on the way "from Russia to Europe", establishing the Polish political order from the Carpathians to the Baltic Sea.

The creation of Central Lithuania envisaged the redrawing of administrative and ethnic borders in this part of Europe: the inclusion in the second Polish state of Belarusian lands (parts of the Grodno and Vitebsk regions of modern Belarus), as well as parts of the Lithuanian territory that remained outside of the Middle Lithuania. The uprising in Klaipeda, which the Lithuanians raised in 1923, testifies to the tensions of the Polish-Lithuanian relations of that era, in order to prevent the French from transferring the Memel region to Poland. Memel was under the collective control of the Entente, and French troops were stationed in the city. At that time, Lithuania saw the main threat in Europe, and the Lithuanian rebels fought with the French and British units. The intervention of Poland as the most interested party in this conflict was impeded by the USSR, concentrating troops on the Polish border. This saved the Lithuanians from complete defeat, and yet Memel was incorporated into Lithuania.

Today in Poland reigns nostalgic cult of the Middle Lithuania. For the Poles, this is part of stories "Eastern Kresov", remained outside the Polish state. Lucian Zeligowski and Józef Piłsudski (both, by the way, natives of Lithuania) are honored as heroes and prominent Polish patriots. Warsaw is not going to repent to Lithuania for the campaign of General Zeligovsky. Repentance as a moral category is not for Poland at all. No matter how angry the Lithuanians are, apologies from the lips of Polish politicians will never be heard. For the Poles, to apologize for any episode in their history is to cause irreparable damage to the authority of the Polish state. Another thing is to continuously demand repentance from others, for example from Russians.

Vilnius and Warsaw, being NATO partners and subordinating their actions to the Euro-Atlantic course, in every way avoid giving a principled assessment of the bloody military episodes accompanying the formation of Middle Lithuania. Warsaw and Vilnius have to put up with each other on the basis of anti-Russian ideology, and the "inconvenient" episodes of the past both capitals are in a hurry to send to the archive forever, away from the public eye. It is better not to rock the boat of the official Polish-Lithuanian friendship, so as not to run into a cry from Brussels, which needs the Polish-Lithuanian bloc to “contain” Russia.

There is no end to this historical propaganda casus in Polish-Lithuanian relations. The controversy does not subside, however, mainly at the public level. Sometimes Vilnius becomes in a position, prohibiting the use of Polish at the official level in places of compact residence of people of Polish nationality, and the Lithuanian official body criticizes the historical legacy of the Commonwealth. Polish historians are not in debt, arguing that the federal union of Poland and Lithuania (under the leadership of Warsaw, of course) is the only path to the power of both states.

Periodically, Lithuanian patriotic inscriptions appear on the monument in Vilnius, where the heart of Yu. Pilsudski is buried, a clear sign that the Lithuanians had not forgotten how the Poles “liberated” their capital, and that until the truce between Lithuania and Poland in matters of history that so strongly gives away politics, still far away.
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  1. Kostya pedestrian
    +1
    29 October 2013 09: 48
    That's right, like the Julvern! We have already quarreled with iron crosses so much that Deutsche will not help them. They now have genius on genius!



    1. +1
      29 October 2013 17: 17
      Przekia is the most infamous and disgusting hyena of the European continent. One thing calms this territory, as a joke of the Almighty, populated by the population from House No. 6 of the Kashchenko Clinic, is the most ideal base for maneuvering tank armies of Russia and Germany.
      1. Kostya pedestrian
        0
        30 October 2013 13: 24
        You are probably one of those "indigenous" invincible samurai whom the Red Army in 1945 threw from our continents to your sismically shaky islands. And given that both the Trans-Baikal and Far Eastern fronts were headed by Poles by birth, you can see them and do not see them and the bile rushes from your powerlessness that we be Poles, be Lithuanians, be Russian - invincible.

        And you can only hang monuments or vandal. In short work retroactively. Just pigeon as-tarot.

  2. +2
    29 October 2013 12: 19
    The Poles will never rest here. According to "genetic haplogroups" they are with Russians, especially Belarusians and most Ukrainians (and Slovaks), one people!
    This "line" is where the tug-of-war controversy lies. At the level of "European integration" (the Poles "integrated" with the adoption of Catholicism 1000 years ago), etc. "Russian-Euro-Asian civilization" (Russia adopted Orthodoxy also 1000 years ago).
    So it will never end.
  3. kripto
    -1
    29 October 2013 18: 39
    Nothing new, what the European Hyena was, it remains the same, only the owner has changed.
  4. tooth46
    0
    29 October 2013 19: 03
    The friction between Poles and Lithuanians at the everyday level was also felt in Soviet times. To this day, many Poles live around Vilnius and in the city itself. I don’t know how it is now, but in Soviet times there were Polish schools in Vilnius, and the university had a faculty of "Polish language and literature". The guys are not lucky: then we prevented them from gnawing, and now - the European Union. They have something to fight with each other.
  5. 0
    30 October 2013 07: 26
    By the way, about the birds: the Lithuanian "rebels", who recaptured Klaipeda from the French in 1923, are parts of the then Lithuanian army, dressed in civilian clothes. Present-day Vilnius admits this at a semi-official level. Somewhere in the Internet there are even photos of those years posted with the corresponding comments and names of units, the names of the commanders who participated in this action. By the way, the French didn't really resist!

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