Lithuania’s prime minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, has called for Polish to become the most commonly taught second language in her country’s schools rather than Russian.
As a result of its turbulent history – having at various stages been part of a commonwealth with Poland, the Russian empire, the interwar Polish state and the Soviet Union – Lithuania has large Polish and Russian minorities.
According to the 2021 census, ethnic Poles made up 6.6% of the country’s population and ethnic Russians 5%. Meanwhile, 6.8% of people said they spoke Russian as their native language and 5.1% Polish.
…to concerns over the fact that many ethnic Poles in Lithuania watch Russian TV channels, which feed them Kremlin propaganda.
'TVP Wilno is a very good attempt to find an alternative to Russian TV,' says the former deputy mayor of Vilnius https://t.co/NPbI9RSdqQ
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 17, 2019
In an interview with Znad Wilii, a Polish-language Lithuanian radio station, Šimonytė noted that, “during the Soviet occupation, Lithuanian society became tired of Russian culture”.
However, after the country gained its independence in 1990, “a myth was created that this culture is something very great, so even now part of society puts it on a pedestal”. Lithuanian “society has become intoxicated with Russian culture” while neglecting others, such as Polish, she said.
Asked if there should therefore be less Russian and more Polish in schools, the prime minister agreed.
“I am in favour of having as much Polish as a foreign language as possible in schools,” she said. “I am in favour of Polish being the second foreign language to choose from, instead of Russian.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Poland and Lithuania have been among Kyiv’s closest and most vocal allies, providing military, humanitarian and diplomatic support, as well as calling for tougher international sanctions against Moscow.
Yet despite the countries’ close historical ties, Lithuania’s Polish community has long raised concerns over its rights to Polish-language education and to spell names in their Polish form.
A breakthrough came last year, when Lithuania’s laws were changed to allow the Polish spelling of names in official documents, a development celebrated by the justice minister, an ethnic Pole, who can now be known as Ewelina Dobrowolska rather than Evelina Dobrovolska.
Main image credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
