Some were looking more to the west, others to the south. They all greatly valued freedom. The history of the Baltic nations is a story of a not-so-easy battle for autonomy.
The names of the three countries are often said in one breath and looked at as a single entity. However, the fates of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, although often intertwined, are decidedly separate. Even a superficial knowledge of them makes it easier to understand the cultural, religious, and linguistic differences between these peoples and nations.
The Last Polytheists of Europe
Today’s Baltic countries had a similar early history. In the early Middle Ages, the tribes inhabiting these territories were surrounded from the east and the south by the far more numerous Slavs, and over the Baltic Sea by the Germanic peoples. They created a kind of linguistic and religious island, although they were not uniform themselves. They belonged to two distinct language groups: the larger of them was composed of the Balts, whose languages gave birth to the Lithuanian and Latvian languages of today, while the other group used the Finno-Ugric dialects from which the modern Estonian language originates. Both groups had their own polytheistic religion.
The highest deity in the Lithuanian pantheon was the mighty Perkūnas, god of heaven and thunder, unknown to ancient Estonians, who basically did not recognize any hierarchy among their gods and guardian spirits.
Religious isolation had its long-term effects. Remnants of the old faith lingered on the Baltic for many centuries after the formal introduction of Christianity. At the end of the sixteenth century, the papal nuncio in Lithuania lamented that peasants from villages located just a day’s journey from Vilnius did not know the basics of the Christian faith. The inhabitants of Lithuanian Samogitia worshiped snakes even many years later, and Estonians in the nineteenth century were still leaving gifts of food and money in special wooden boxes for their guardian spirits. These traditions are still alive in the folklore of the Baltic nations.
The territories of modern Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would have probably remained non-Christian for much longer if it hadn’t been for the outrage of medieval Catholics: Germans, Danes, Swedes, and Poles. Their ignorance of the Gospel and worship of many gods, trees, and sacred groves was corrupting and in need of change. In 1171, or 1172, Pope Alexander III issued a bull where he called for conversion of the heathens from the north by fire and sword. During the Baltic crusades, the knightly orders were the most active—particularly the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword—as well as the Danes. In reality, the crusaders were more interested in prestige, power, and acquiring new territories than evangelization.
Already in the thirteenth century, German-speaking colonists subjugated the territory of today’s Latvia and Estonia and christened, at least formally, its former inhabitants. The Germans and Danes founded many cities under German law, including Riga, Reval (today’s Tallinn), and Dorpat (currently Tartu in Estonia), where they built monumental Gothic cathedrals. In the end, after the Danes sold their territories in Estonia to the Teutonic Knights in 1346, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword—who from the thirteenth century up until the early sixteenth century became an autonomous branch of the Teutonic Order, known as the Livonian Order—contributed to the establishment on these lands of the Livonian Confederation, often abbreviated as Livonia. It was an association of micro-countries, subordinate to local bishops and the dominant knightly order in Livonia. It is to the Livonian Order that we owe the picturesque medieval castles, of which so many were erected in today’s Estonia and Latvia, for example in Rakvere and Bauska.
When Christianized Livonia was established, the Lithuanians formed their own state. Its first known ruler was prince Mindaugas, who was crowned king in 1253; he was the first and only Lithuanian king, as all other rulers bore the title of Grand Duke. The day of Mindaugas’s coronation, July 6, is today an important national holiday. The strength of the young nation lay mainly in its army and the extraordinary political skills of its fourteenth-century princes, particularly Gediminas, his son Algirdas, and also his grandsons—Jogaila (later, Władysław II Jagiełło) and Vytautas. The Lithuanians were thus able to efficiently resist the expansion of the Teutonic Knights for over a hundred years. The order had organized attacks on Lithuania almost every year, in which they used scorched earth tactics. The Lithuanians’ response was equally brutal, ruthlessly destroying the castles and towns established by the invaders. The course of these cruel fights was described by the Teutonic chroniclers, Peter von Dusburg and Wigand of Marburg. At the end of the fourteenth century, however, it became clear that Lithuania would not be able to maintain its independence and continue to develop if it did not adopt Christianity. Given the choice of Orthodoxy or Catholicism, the Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila chose the Latin rite. In 1385, he was baptized in Kraków, then married the Polish queen Jadwiga, leading to the Polish-Lithuanian union.
Between Two Seas
It was then, at the end of the fourteenth century, that the history of the Baltic peoples and nations became separated for a long time. If the knightly orders had succeeded in conquering the ethnically Lithuanian lands, as had happened with the Livonian and Prussian territories, Vilnius today would probably resemble Riga or Tallinn. However, the Lithuanian rulers did not allow that to happen. After the defeat of the Teutonic Order at Grunwald in 1410, territorial disputes ceased. Today’s Lithuanian-Latvian border largely coincides with the one established between Livonia and Lithuania in the fifteenth century.
Up until the mid-sixteenth century, the Livonian Confederation progressively resembled other, relatively small German cities located in the Baltic basin, such as the Duchy of Stettin, Teutonic Prussia, and Mecklenburg. The cities constituted strong economic centers, both handicrafts and international trade were developing there; Riga and Reval were port cities. Architecture, sculpture, and painting were blooming. The famous painter Bernt Notke came from Reval, where he painted his Danse Macabre for St Nicholas Church in around 1490. To this day, the centers of these two cities have retained their medieval urban layout: fortifications, narrow streets, rectangular market squares, townhouses, churches, and castles.
The Lithuanians under the rule of their princes went in a completely different direction. To say the Gediminids expanded their territory would be an understatement. Over the course of several decades, the rulers residing in Vilnius and Trakai subjugated the territories where Belarus, most of Ukraine, and large parts of Poland and Russia now lie. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania stretched from sea to sea, i.e., from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Within its boundaries were today’s Belarusian Minsk, Polish Białystok, Russian Smolensk, and also Ukrainian Kyiv. Moscow was under 125 miles from the Lithuanian border. In this multiethnic and multilingual empire, the power was in the hands of the initially non-Christian, and later Catholic descendants of Gediminas and Jogaila, however the Orthodox Ruthenians, ancestors of today’s Belarusians and Ukrainians, were numerically dominant.
For this reason, Vilnius is much different from Tallinn and Riga. Although one can find magnificent Gothic churches, such as the 1530 St Anne’s Church, a flamboyant Gothic masterpiece, Orthodox churches including the Cathedral of the Theotokos—funded by Russian magnates and also in Gothic style—were erected right next to Catholic churches; later, so too were Protestant and Uniate churches.
Vilnius, like the entire Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was much more ethnically diverse than Livonia. The Livonian elites—the bourgeoisie, the nobility, and the clergy—were German-speaking (in the streets of Tallinn and Riga, only German could be heard), while in the countryside, primitive Estonian and Latvian dialects were spoken. It was different in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The inhabitants of ethnic Lithuania, of course, communicated in Lithuanian, but in the south, the Slavs, i.e., the Ruthenians, prevailed. More Poles were arriving, and the Polish language gradually became more dominant among the elites; already in the second half of the fifteenth century the Lithuanian rulers—by then known by the Polonised name, the Jagiellons—used Polish. There were also many Germans living in the cities. Thanks to the privileges granted to Lithuania, Jews happily went there, and Prince Vytautas also brought Tatars and Karaites to his country, whom he made his bodyguards. In the former Vilnius, apart from Christian temples, there was a Jewish synagogue, a Muslim mosque, and in the nearby town of Trakai, a Karaim kenes. The inhabitants of Vilnius spoke Ruthenian, Polish, Lithuanian, German, Kipchak, and Yiddish. In terms of religious and ethnic diversity, medieval and early modern Vilnius resembled modern metropolises such as London or New York, although of course it was much smaller. To this day, the capital of Lithuania has retained its multiethnic character.
As can be seen, in the Middle Ages and later, Livonia was basically oriented towards Germany, and from the mid-sixteenth century also towards Scandinavia, while the Grand Duchy of Lithuania directed itself towards Ruthenian (Belarusian and Ukrainian) lands and Poland. The traces of this division are visible to this day, in the way the national consciousness of Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians has been shaped, which is manifested in their literature, architecture, economy, and national symbolism.
Lithuanians are aware that in the Middle Ages a large part of Slavic Europe was under their rule; their surnames often come from Polish or Belarusian surnames, etc. On a contemporary Lithuanian one-euro coin, we can see the same Vytis, i.e., the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as on the historic half-grosz coins of Alexander Jagiellon or Sigismund Augustus minted in Vilnius. In turn, the Estonians and Latvians had remained for centuries first under German influence, then under Swedish, and then Russian rule, so their state and national symbolism, including the coats of arms of both countries, came into being only in the twentieth century. Due to the fact that Riga and Tallinn are located by the sea, unlike inland Vilnius, it was also easier to reach Stockholm and Helsinki from these two important commercial centers in the early modern era. These economic ties were successfully rebuilt only after Latvia and Estonia regained their independence in 1991 (for instance, many Scandinavian banks are active in Riga and Tallinn). It would be very hard to find any traces of lush Lithuanian baroque in the austere Gothic churches of these cities, converted into Protestant ones in the 16th century.
Just as many German cities of the former Hanseatic League have impressive Artus courts, Riga also has the House of the Blackheads, which served its wealthy merchants from the fourteenth century. This symbol of the city, built in the style of northern European mannerism, was meticulously reconstructed after the war in the 1990s. There has never been such a structure in Vilnius, but there was a castle of the Grand Dukes built in the style of the Italian renaissance and baroque. It was this building, demolished by the tsarist authorities at the beginning of the 19th century, that the Lithuanians decided to reconstruct exactly at the same time when the Latvians were rebuilding the House of the Blackheads. These two reconstructions show how different the traditions are that Latvians and Lithuanians identify with today.
This division is to some extent apparent in the language. The word “yes” is jah in Estonian and jā in Latvian, which is almost the same as the German ja. Lithuanian, which belongs to the same linguistic group as Latvian, has a different word for “yes,” taip, which is close to the Slavic tak (in Polish, Belarusian, and Ukrainian) or da (in Russian). “Tea” is tee in Estonian, and tēja in Latvian—in both cases, it comes from the German Tee. The Lithuanian for “tea” is arbata, similar to herbata in Polish. Many such examples can be found. Behind these differences in vocabulary lie the aforementioned centuries-old relations of Latvians and Estonians with Germanic peoples, and of Lithuanians with Slavs.
Moscow’s Long Shadow
From the beginning of the sixteenth century, both the Livonian Confederation, as well as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, had to contend with the growing power of the Grand Duchy of Moscow—also known as Muscovy. The Muscovite rulers set themselves two goals that forever defined the policy of the Kremlin. The first was the subjugation of all Ruthenian lands, i.e., the territories of today’s Ukraine and Belarus; the second—gaining access to the Baltic Sea. This meant an inevitable conflict with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Livonia, which in turn defined the later history of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and several other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. A perhaps paradoxical consequence of Muscovy’s aggressive policy is that it brought the histories of the Baltic states closer together again.
The wars between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Muscovy were fought periodically and with varying fortunes for almost two hundred years. Field battles were usually won by the Polish-Lithuanian coalition. One of the greatest military successes was the Battle of Orsha in 1514. As a result of the historical policy of the Russian authorities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is today somewhat forgotten, but during the Renaissance, it was as important to Lithuanians, Ruthenians, and Poles as the victory over the Teutonic Order at Grunwald one hundred years earlier. It was praised in literature, historical works, and paintings. The painting The Battle of Orsha, most likely created by an artist from the circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder (today in the National Museum in Warsaw), faithfully depicts the armament and tactics of the Polish and Lithuanian troops.
The landing of the Polish-Lithuanian knights across the river and the use of modern artillery are especially eye-catching. The commander-in-chief was one of the most accomplished Lithuanian hetmans, Konstanty Ostrogski, an Orthodox prince from Volhynia (today in Ukraine). In gratitude to God for his victory over the Muscovites, he founded the magnificent Monastery of the Holy Trinity near the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius. An Orthodox monastery was built next to it, later taken over by Uniate Basilian monks (this is where Adam Mickiewicz and other Philomaths were imprisoned in the years 1823–1824). The towers of this church, rebuilt in the Baroque era, are an inseparable element of the urban landscape of modern Vilnius.
In spite of the successes of the Lithuanians, Muscovy continued to annex more parts of the Grand Duchy, becoming a threat even to Livonia. The Livonian Order tried to save their state, running for help to the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund II Augustus. At the same time, the Livonian bishops and the last Master of the Livonian Order Gotthard Kettler, together with his confreres abandoned Catholicism for Lutheranism and dissolved the order. Livonia became a Protestant and secular country as a Lithuanian, and later Polish vassal. These events resulted in a clear religious division in the Baltic states. In Livonia, Lutheranism became the leading religion, while ethnic Lithuania and the part of Livonia that was incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Polish Livonia), remained Catholic. To this day, the Evangelical Augsburg Church is dominant in Estonia and Latvia, while in Lithuania, Catholicism is the most widely represented denomination.
Even though, in the sixteenth century, Lithuania and Livonia joined forces against their common enemy, Livonia was not saved from catastrophe. In 1558, for over eighty years, the Baltic states became a theater of war and rivalry between Poland, Muscovy, and Sweden, who had just started the fight for hegemony over the Baltic coast. The most horrific, however, was the aggression of the troops of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who in 1577 occupied almost all of Livonia, with the exception of Riga and a few other cities. Five years later, the Polish King and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Stefan Batory, liberated Livonia from occupation, but the once rich country lay in ruins. One of the royal secretaries, Jan Piotrowski, who took part in the liberation of Dorpat in February 1582, wrote about this city with admiration and horror in his Dzienniku wyprawy Stefana Batorego pod Psków [Journal of Stefan Batory’s Campaign Against Pskov]:
The townhouses are all made of solid walls, the kind you would find in Toruń; you don’t see a single wooden house. But what of it, if not one of them stands whole? Muscovy destroyed it all, having ruined all the vaults, having demolished the precious rooms; they have turned them into smoke-filled caves. They need a grand restoration. It seems that people here used to be rich and orderly. If our Poles were to settle here, I doubt that they would be able to learn from Muscovy how to run their households. One would need those scarce German merchants.
Ever since, the largest Gothic church in the Baltics, Dorpat Cathedral, has remained a picturesque ruin. However, contrary to Piotrowski’s fears, the former German inhabitants returned to Dorpat and other cities. In the following decades, Livonia once again flourished economically.
However, this did not mean the end of the wars. In the seventeenth century, as a result of the conflict between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden, the territory of Livonia was finally divided into three parts. Most of it, including Riga and Reval, became part of the Swedish crown. The long triangular strip of land between Livonia and Lithuania was occupied by the tiny Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, whose rulers—the Kettlers, descendants of Gotthard Kettler, and from the 18th century the Birons—were vassals of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and later the Polish crown and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The beautiful late Baroque residence of the Courland rulers in Latvian Jelgava (formerly Mitau) has survived to this day. Finally, the third part, with its capital in Daugavpils (today in Latvia), a town on the Daugava river, found itself within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Many people who played significant roles in the later history and culture of Poland and Livonia came from Polish Livonia, including the noblewoman Konstancja Benisławska (1747–1806), author of beautiful Polish-language baroque poems, and countess Emilia Plater (1806–1831), captain of the Lithuanian army during the November Uprising.
Lithuania shared the fate of Livonia, only a bit later. In 1655, Moscow’s army occupied almost the entire country, ravaging it, murdering and abducting its inhabitants. Vilnius was completely destroyed: “As it was getting well past dusk, Mr Trop, the cejkwart [officer in charge of the arsenal] of Vilnius, who was staying with me at night, lured me out of the chamber to see the flames of burning Vilnius; I came out, and although my [village] Suderwa is a mile-and-a-half from Vilnius, I could see the flame as if on my hand; Troy is said to have never burned more fiercely,” wrote the royal physician and mayor of Vilnius, Maciej Vorbek-Leow, in his memoirs (Skarbnica pamięci , ed. E. Galos, F. Mincer, Wrocław 1968). The Muscoivian occupation lasted for almost five years, after which a period of painstaking reconstruction began.
Under the Aegis of the Commonwealth
After the Union of Lublin was concluded in 1569, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania together with the Kingdom of Poland, and later with Polish Livonia and Courland, constituted a federal state known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with a common ruler and a parliament meeting in Warsaw. Despite close political ties, all these countries had a lot of autonomy, which was manifested, among other things, in the freedom permitted to develop a Lithuanian national identity. This was based on literature, history, and ethnogenetic myths (i.e., those concerning the ethnic origin of the Lithuanian people). During the Renaissance, Lithuanian historians—among others, Maciej Stryjkowski, in the Kronika Polska, Litewska, Żmudzka i wszystkiej Rusi [Chronicle of Poland, Lithuania, Samogitia, and all Ruthenia] of 1582—described the beginnings of their nation. According to them, the area on the Neman River was initially inhabited by the Gepid tribe. In the times of Nero, a group of persecuted Romans led by Publius Palemon decided to emigrate by circumnavigating Europe and reaching the Baltic coast, where they joined the Gepids, together created the Lithuanian nation. In this way, the Lithuanians, who came “from the Romans,” emphasized their separateness from the Poles, who believed they were descended from the ancient Sarmatian tribe.
The long union of these states led to the formation of a relatively uniform culture throughout the Commonwealth. Polish became the language of most political and cultural elites. This in itself does not mean, however, that all people who spoke Polish identified or were even Poles. Members of the powerful aristocratic families—the Radziwiłłs, the Sapiehas and the Ogińskis—despite being entirely Polonized, considered themselves citizens of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, rather than Poles.
Similar processes occurred in Swedish Livonia and Courland, whose elites spoke German. At the time, language did not determine one’s identity. The Livonian nobility and bourgeoisie clearly emphasized their national identity, both in historical works and through cultivating tradition. That’s why it came as a shock to the Courlanders when their state was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1795, and they had to give up a large part of their political rights, including the loss of their own parliament. Courland patriotism is manifested in the memoirs of the outstanding writer Elisa von der Recke (1754–1833), whose works today belong to a common German and Latvian cultural heritage.
The situation was similar with Polish Livonia. When, as a result of the partitions, it came under the rule of Russia, noblemen from Daugavpils and Krāslava actively protested against being deprived of their rights. They secretly crossed to the other side of the Daugava River—to Lithuanian territory—to legally elect their deputies to the Sejm [the lower house of the Commonwealth’s parliament] in Warsaw. Kazimierz Bujnicki, a Livonian nobleman, writes about this in his memoirs.
One of the most important ideas present in the culture of the Commonwealth was the belief that citizens have the right to personal, political, and religious freedom. The long adherence to this view probably had a considerable impact on how Latvians, Estonians, and especially Lithuanians now perceive their own national identity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they repeatedly defended their liberty, particularly against Russia. The most spectacular event took place in 1989, when the citizens of all three Baltic republics—then under Soviet occupation—created a 430-mile human chain of two million people.
If you walk through the streets of Vilnius today, it is worth approaching the Seimas, the Lithuanian Parliament. You can see there fragments of the barricade built during the heroic defense against Soviet tanks in January 1991. The raw concrete blocks, similar to the magnificent Baroque churches and the Gate of Dawn, are among the most valuable monuments showing the history of Vilnius, Lithuania, and the entire region. A history that for a long time ran parallel until finally, at the beginning of the 21st century—on the day when all three Baltic states were admitted into the European Union—it merged into one story.
Read similar:
