page_title: Polish-Lithuanian identity
section_title: 19th and 20th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Polish-Lithuanian identity / 19th and 20th centuries
caption_attribution_description: Lithuanian professor Mykolas Römeris
context_page_description: The Polish-Lithuanian identity describes individuals and groups with histories in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or with close connections to its culture. This federation, formally established by the 1569 Union of Lublin between the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, created a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state founded on the binding powers of national identity and shared culture rather than ethnicity or religious affiliation. The term Polish-Lithuanian has been used to describe various groups residing in the Commonwealth, including those that did not share the Polish or Lithuanian ethnicity nor their pre-dominant Roman Catholic faith.
  Many famous figures from Lithuanian and Polish history, such as Adam Mickiewicz, Józef Piłsudski, Mykolas Römeris, Teodor Narbutt and Czesław Miłosz, identified themselves with this Polish-Lithuanian identity.
context_section_description: The Commonwealth ceased to exist after the late 18th century Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; Poland and Lithuania achieved independence as separate nations after World War I. The development of nationalism through the Lithuanian National Revival was a crucial factor that led to the separation of the modern Lithuanian state from Poland; similar movements took hold in Ukraine and later in Belarus (the territories of both modern countries had formerly been part of the Commonwealth, but did not achieve independence until after the late 20th-century collapse of the Soviet Union). Lithuanian nationalism was a reaction to both the Russification in the Russian partition, and to the threat of further Polonization due to the pressure of Polish culture. The Lithuanian nationalist desire to be separate from Poland was exemplified for example in the adoption of the Czech alphabet over the Polish one for the Lithuanian alphabet. The old cultural identities lost the fight to the more attractive ethnic, religious and linguistic-based ones. Following the abolition of serfdom in the Russian Empire in 1861, social mobility increased, and Lithuanian intellectuals arose from the ranks of the rural populace; language became associated with identity in Lithuania, as elsewhere across Europe.
  The dual identity maintained by many leading figures of Polish-Lithuanian history, the gente Lithuanus, natione Polonus attitude still popular in the early 19th century, was increasingly less feasible as the century pressed ahead. The leaders of the unsuccessful January Uprising of 1863–1865 invoked the former commonalities, appealing to "Brother Ruthenians and Lithuanians" and to "Brothers of the Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion". The peasants in the region were largely unmoved since they had never shared the constructed national identity of the elites. While some non-noble inhabitants saw no contradiction in describing themselves as "a Pole, and a Lithuanian as well", dual identity was not widely considered as a matter of course. From this point of view, the conduct of Napoleon in Lithuania is noteworthy. On 1 July 1812, Napoleon formed the Lithuanian Provisional Governing Commission. The provisional government of Lithuania had no connections to Poland. Napoleon also refused to attach the military units consisting of Lithuanians to the Polish
  ones.
  A group of individuals who tried to maintain the dual identity during that period was called the krajowcy. Their political program, as well as Piłsudski's idea of a Polish-led federation re-creating the Commonwealth (Międzymorze), became a failure. An analogy can be drawn here with regards to the split between Finnish and Swedish culture (see Finnish Declaration of Independence).
  Lithuanian nobleman Mečislovas Davainis-Silvestraitis published newspapers Litwa (Lithuania, 1908–1914) and Lud (People, 1912–1914) in Vilnius with the objective of returning of the nobility into the Lithuanian nation. The main point of returning was to make Lithuanian their family and everyday language. An active figure in 1863 rebellion, writer and publicist Mikalojus Akelaitis wrote:
  We should lift up the Lithuanian language, wrest away from scorn that language which has the Sanskrit greatness, the Latin force, the Greek refinement, and the Italian melodiousness.
  Simonas Daukantas (1793 – 1864), who wrote the voluminous history of Lithuania in Lithuanian Darbai senųjų lietuvių ir žemaičių (Deeds of the Ancient Lithuanians and Samogitians), and identified the language as the determining factor of nationality was rather critical regarding the Polish–Lithuanian union and considered it to be the cause of the Lithuanian state declining.
  The gulf between those who chose to use Polish and those who chose to use Lithuanian was growing, and both groups began to see the very history of the Commonwealth in a different light. Events such as the Polish-Lithuanian War, the 1919 Polish coup d'état attempt in Lithuania, and the conflict over Vilnius (Wilno) Region led to major tensions in the interwar Polish-Lithuanian relations.
  It
caption: Mykolas Römeris, was a member of Piłsudski legions, but later chose to be a citizen of Lithuania
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