Вопрос дворянства в литовском национальном дискурсе: на примере периодического издания «Litwa» (1908–1914)
The question of gentry and the Lithuanian national project: the example of the newspaper Litwa (1908–1914)

Summary/Abstract: At the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries some national movements in the Eastern and Central Europe actualized the question of how to include the gentry into the process of the formation of modern nations. Similar initiatives were taken in Lithuania. During 1908–1914 in Vilnius, a highborn poet and publicist Mečislovas Davainis Silvestraitis (Mieczysław Dowojna-Sylwestrowicz, 1849–1919) also edited a periodical Litwa in Polish, which was aimed to welcome gentry into the Lithuanian national movement. Lithuanian and Polish historians who studied the relations between Lithuanian national movement and gentry, in general dealt with two questions, namely: how Polonization of the gentry evolved the issue and why major part of the gentry did not participate in the Lithuanian national movement. Otherwise, the question was the attitude of the ideologists of Lithuanian national movement had towards the gentry at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in academic works. In this article, after using for research the ideological basement of Litwa that is to welcome gentry to Lithuanian national movement, three questions are studied: the attitude to that question of different Lithuanian parties and political groups during this period, circumstances that caused changes of these attitudes and the role in this process of returning gentry to Lithuanian nation played by the periodical Litwa.

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