Wileńskie jednodniówki polskojęzyczne z października 1939 r.

Abstract

On October 27-28, 1939, Vilnius and the Vilnius province were taken by the Lithuanian Republic. Almost immediately a local substitute of the press in the Polish language was organised in the form of a series of dailies: Nasza Depesza (October 28, 1939), Witaj Litwo! (October 29, 1939), Pogoń - Vytis (October 30, 1939) and Braterstwo (October 31, 1939). Edited by a Lithuanian journalist Andrius Rondomanskis, modest one-page editions of the 47 x 32 cm format were filled with official announcements and ordinances of the new Lithuanian government, news dispatch and anonymous propaganda. They were distributed in streets posted on pillars. Presentation of the mentioned dailies is the subject matter of this article. All four dailies propagated the Lithuanian approach to the Vilnius issue, which was based on the “Vilnius myth” cultivated in the inter-war Lithuanian Republic. Vilnius was an ancient Lithuanian city, in the period of 1920-1939 occupied by Poland and inhabited by the people who were polonised language-wise but who were strongly attached to Lithuania culturally and spiritually, and who were intentionally kept by the Polish occupational government in the state of intellectual downfall and poverty. Annexation of Vilnius to the Lithuanian State was treated, in this approach, as a finite conclusion of the period of misery, poverty and foreign occupation, which had lasted since the 17th centuiy. However, the dailies (although not consistently) assured the readers that the Lithuanian Republic will allow all non-Lithuanian nationality groups of the Vilnius province (Poles including) to preserve and maintain their own cultures, on the condition of total loyalty towards the Lithuanian state and the final approval of October 27-28,1939 territorial changes. Social unrest of October 31 and November 1, 2, 1939 showed that the propaganda policy of the dailies was not based on realistic assumptions and it did not reflect the actual moods and reality of the Vilnius province. The idea of “polonised Lithuanians” welcoming changes of their statehood turned out to be a propaganda fiction. Under the circumstances, Lithuanian forces reviewed their policy giving agreement to creating the press for Poles that would be edited and published by Poles themselves. Thus, on November 2, 1939 “Kurier Wileński” came into being, and then another periodical started on November 25, 1939 entitled “Gazeta Codzienna”, which were permanently registered in the post-war history of the Vilnius province. At the same time, the Lithuanians did not give up on the idea of “polonised Lithuanians”, initiating the third Lithuanian daily in Polish “Nowe Słowo” for this group of putative readers (more real in the Lithuanian government imagination than reality) since January 14, 1940, and which presented merely the Lithuanian perspective through its peculiar continuity of the October dailies line of thinking.