page_title: Demographic history of the Vilnius region
section_title: Polish census of 1931
hierarchical_section_title: Demographic history of the Vilnius region / Censuses / Polish census of 1931
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Wilno Voivodeship, 1937. Polski: Mapa województwa wileńskiego, stan 1937 rok. Українська: Карта Віленського воєводства станом на 1937 рік.
context_page_description: The city of Vilnius, now the capital of Lithuania, and its surrounding region have at various times come under Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, German, and Soviet rule. The population has been categorised by linguistic and sometimes also religious indicators. At the end of the 19th century the main languages spoken were Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian and Russian. Both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity were represented, while a large proportion of the city's inhabitants were Jews. The "Lithuanian" element was seen as declining, while the "Slavic" element was increasing.
  Census data are available from 1897 onward, although the territorial boundaries and ethnic categorisation have not been consistent. The Jewish population decreased greatly because of the Holocaust of 1941-44, and subsequently many Poles were removed from the city, but less so from the surrounding countryside. Consequently, recent Census figures show a predominance of Lithuanians in the city of Vilnius, but of Poles in the Vilnius district outside the city.
context_section_description: The 1931 Polish census was the first Polish census to measure the population of whole Wilno and Wilno voivodeship at once. It was organised on 9 December 1931 by the Main Statistical Office of Poland. However, in 1931 the question of nationality was replaced by two separate questions of religion worshipped and the language spoken at home. Because of that, it is sometimes argued that the "language question" was introduced to diminish the number of Jews, some of whom spoke Polish rather than Yiddish or Hebrew. The table on the right shows the census findings on language. Wilno voivodeship did not include Druskininkai area and included just a small part of Varėna area where the majority of inhabitants were Lithuanians. The voivodeship, however, included Brelauja, Dysna, Molodečno, Ašmena, Pastovys and Vileika counties which now belong to Belarus.
caption: Wilno voivodeship
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