Vilnius Region - Vilnius Dispute

Vilnius Dispute

In the Middle Ages, Vilnius and its environs had become a nucleus of the early ethnic Lithuanian state, the Duchy of Lithuania, also referred to in Lithuanian historiography as a part of the Lithuania Propria, that became Kingdom of Lithuania and later Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

After the Partitions of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in late 18th century it was annexed by the Russian Empire which founded here the administrative district of the Vilna Governorate. In the effect of World War I it was seized by Germany and given to the civilian administration of the Ober-Ost. With the German defeat in World War I and the outbreak of hostilities between various factions of the Russian Civil War, the area, while controlled by Poles became disputed by Lithuania and the short-lived Belarusian People's Republic.

After the outbreak of the Polish–Soviet War, during the summer offensive of the Red Army, the region got under Soviet control as the part of planned Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Litbel). In exchange for military cooperation after Lithuanian–Soviet War, the Bolshevist authorities signed a peace treaty with Lithuania on July 12, 1920. According to the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty, all area disputed between Poland and Lithuania, at the time controlled by the Bolsheviks, was to be transferred to Lithuania. However, the actual control over the area remained in Bolsheviks hands. After the Battle of Warsaw of 1920 it became clear that the advancing Polish Army would soon recapture the area. Seeing that they could not secure it, the Bolshevik authorities started to transfer the area to Lithuanian sovereignty. The advancing Polish Army managed to retake much of the disputed area before the Lithuanians arrived, while the most important part of it with the city of Vilnius was secured by Lithuania.

Since the two states were not at war, diplomatic negotiations were begun. As Lithuanians made up a small minority in the disputed area and Poles constituted approximately 58% of its inhabitants (the rest being mostly Jews and Belarusians, see Ethnic history of the region of Vilnius), the Polish authorities wanted the region to part of Poland. The Lithuanian government argued that the majority of those who declared Polish nationality were in fact Polonized Lithuanians, that the area historically belonged to Lithuania Propria part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and believed that their historical claim to the city of Vilnius (which at that point was divided near evenly between Poles and Jews, with Lithuanian speaking as constituting a mere fraction - about 2-3% - of the total population ) had precedence over self-determination rights of the mostly Polish speaking population of the region. The negotiations and international mediation led to nowhere and until 1920 the disputed territory remained divided into Lithuanian and Polish part.

Finally, in 1920, after a staged coup on October 9, Polish general Lucjan Żeligowski seized the Lithuanian part of the disputed territory and created there a semi-independent Republic of Central Lithuania. Although the following year it voted to join Poland and the choice was later accepted by the League of Nations, the area granted to Lithuania by the Bolsheviks in 1920 continued to be claimed by Lithuania, with the city of Vilnius being treated as that state's official capital and the temporary capital in Kaunas, and the states officially remained at war. It was not until the Polish ultimatum of 1938, that the two states resolved diplomatic relations.

The Polish government never acknowledged the Russo-Lithuanian convention of July 12, 1920, that granted the latter state territory seized from Poland by the Red Army during the Polish–Soviet War, then promised to Lithuania as the Soviet forces were retreating under the Polish advance; particularly as the Soviets had previously renounced claims to that region in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In turn, the Lithuanian authorities did not acknowledge the Polish–Lithuanian border of 1918–1920 as permanent nor did they ever acknowledged the sovereignty of puppet Republic of Central Lithuania that was soon incorporated into Poland.

The loss of Vilnius might have nonetheless safeguarded the very existence of the Lithuanian state in the interwar period. Despite an alliance with Soviets (Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty) and the war with Poland, Lithuania was very close to being invaded by the Soviets in the summer of 1920 and having been forcibly converted into a socialist republic. It was only the Polish victory against the Soviets in the Polish–Soviet War (and the fact that the Poles did not object to some form of Lithuanian independence) that derailed the Soviet plans and gave Lithuania an experience of interwar independence.

In 1939, the Soviets proposed to sign the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty. According to this treaty, about one fifth of the Vilnius Region, including the city of Vilnius itself, was returned to Lithuania in exchange for stationing 20,000 of Soviet troops in Lithuania. Lithuanians at first did not want to accept this, but later Russia said that troops would enter Lithuania, anyway, so Lithuania accepted the deal. 1/5 of the Vilnius region was ceded, despite of the fact that the Soviet Union always recognised the whole Vilnius region as part of Lithuania previously.

The Soviet Union was awarded the Vilnius region during the Yalta Conference, and it subsequently became part of the Lithuanian SSR. About 150,000 of the Polish population was repatriated from Lithuanian SSR to Poland.