History of Citizenship

There is no citizenship without statehood; in human history, however, arising of a state did not necessarily imply arising of citizenship. State-like formations have existed for thousands of years (ancient Egypt – 3000 BC; Babylon, China – 2000 BC), but inhabitants of ancient states were not considered citizens.

A clear message about a political situation in Lithuania comes from 1219 when a peace treaty with the land of Volhynia (Lithuanian Voluinė) was signed on behalf of twenty one Lithuanian dukes.

The text of the treaty says that five “senior” dukes of Lithuanian lands (Živinbudas, Daujotas, Viligaila, Dausprungas, and Mindaugas) represented the supreme power thus were the only ones that may have used political power in the country. 

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) established itself more securely among other Christian nations in the 16th century, and its elite felt the need to have plausible and extraordinary historical proof of their ancestry.

People in the GDL used to tell the story about their Roman roots. The legend goes that about 500 Romans came to Lithuania in the 1st century. They left their native country because of unbearable tyranny there. The Roman nobleman Palemon reached the mouth of the Nemunas and settled in what now is the territory of Lithuania. 

Citizenship is characteristic of modern states. It has evolved differently in different states. Participation in political life was the privilege of a minority, the upper classes of society (nobility, clergy), in Europe for centuries. 

The traditional concept of a Lithuanian political nation and a citizen covered representatives of the nobility of various nations (Lithuanians, Poles, Ruthenians), percentage-wise, however, there was only 5–6 per cent of all the population of the 16th century Grand Duchy of Lithuania enjoying real political power. 

It is important to know what was happening in the wings of the nobles’ democracy stage to understand a decision-making process in the Commonwealth of Both Nations. The nobles of the Commonwealth (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland concluded an agreement on their union in Lublin in 1569) did take constructive decisions despite differences in wealth, nationality and religion.  

Realisation of civil rights in Europe and America stems from the declarations adopted in the 2nd half of the 18th century: the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, proclaimed at the time of the French revolution. 

Essential changes that led to modern understanding of citizenship in the Commonwealth of Both Nations were related to the reforms endorsed by the Four-Year Seimas (1788–1792) and the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first Constitution in Europe and the second one in the world! 

People used to say in the late 18th century that there were three rather than two nations/republics in the Commonwealth of Both Nations: Poland, Lithuania, and Paulava.

Povilas Ksaveras Bžostovskis (Polish Paweł Ksawery Brzostowski, 1739–1825) instituted the Republic of Paulava (Lithuanian Paulavos respublika, Polish Rzeczpospolita Pawłowska) in his estate in Merkinė (Polish Merecz) in 1769. They had their own small parliament, flag, coat of arms, stamp, money, and militia. Peasants enjoyed personal freedom, therefore could use the rights that were incomprehensive elsewhere: to travel freely, farm land, get education, and, last but not least, be active citizens. The charter of the Republic of Paulava (similar to a constitution) was later approved by the Seimas of the Commonwealth of Both Nations and the King. 

The 19th century witnessed appearance of national states and shaping of civil and democratic societies around the world.

Men enjoyed voting rights in the majority of Western states in the late 19th century. The first state to have granted voting rights to women was New Zealand in 1893. Lithuanian women were granted voting rights upon adoption of the Constitution in 1922. The Constitution granted voting rights to both women and men at the same time, which in the general context of equality in Europe was a positive step because Switzerland, for instance, granted voting rights to women in 1971 and Lichtenstein – in 1984. 

After the 3rd partition of the Commonwealth of Both Nations, the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became the subjects of the Russian Empire in 1795.

The Lithuanian nobility were deprived of civil rights, but that did not prevent them from drawing on their civil consciousness. They staged the uprisings of 1831 and 1863–1864 aspiring to break away from the Russian Empire and to restore the Commonwealth and Lithuania, too.

A wave of patriotic and religious manifestations swept across Lithuania in 1861–1862: church services in city squares and churches, spontaneous singing of patriotic songs, and peaceful processions.

The Lithuanian and Polish population, driven by their religious feelings and the routine of tsarist oppression, used to get together for marking common historical dates. The inhabitants of Vilnius were inventive pioneers of civil actions. They expressed their discontent with the erection of the statue of the Russian Governor-General Mikhail Muravyov (in what now is Simono Daukanto Square) by spreading wolf grease on it. The inhabitants of Kražiai tried to protect their freedom of belief and not to allow the Tsar officials to close down and destroy the Benedictine Convent in 1893. The Russian military units attacked with violence (nine people died, several dozens were wounded), vandalised the church and the town. 

At the turn of the century, French society was overwhelmed by the case of the French army officer of Jewish background Alfred Dreyfus. He faced charges of treason, was convicted of spying for Germany, and sentenced to life imprisonment even though there was evidence against him. In the end, the officer was officially exonerated and readmitted into the army. The Dreyfus Affair is known as the first instance of unfair trial when sentenced on the charges, motivated by an ethnic sentiment, the individual was unanimously supported by other citizens of his country and readmitted as an equal member of society.

In the late 18th – early 19th centuries, the definition of a nation, beside a political aspect, included ethnicity, differentiation by language, cultural identity, and historical development. The broader argument rested on the belief that a nation had the right to be involved in governing the state, hence the wish to do so in a national state.

The concept of a modern nation was popular among Lithuanian peasants, the nobility that maintained close ties with the peasantry, the Roman Catholic clergy, and the intelligentsia. The publications in the Lithuanian language (newspapers: Aušra, Varpas, Tėvynės sargas) had Lithuanian peasants as their target group; they strengthened comprehension of ethnic belonging and made people conscious of their national identity. The political parties cropping up in Lithuania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had statehood on their agenda.  
 

Till the end of the 19th century, the majority of the cultural elite in Lithuania could consider themselves Lithuanians if they believed in freedom and complied with the Statute (The Third Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was in force till 1840).

The end of the 19th century, however, saw the weakening of political and legal and strengthening of national attributes of a Lithuanian identity – the Lithuanian language, the customs cherished by peasants, the wish to stand out from the surrounding nations (Polish, Russian). There were increasingly many cases where people, who associated themselves with the Polish environment but considered themselves Lithuanians, started to identify themselves with Lithuanian culture.

There are quite a few impressive stories about those who “converted” to the Lithuanian identity. Vincas Kudirka, the future author of the Lithuanian national anthem, acquired the sense of and experienced Lithuanian identity as if by Providence; he turned from an ardent Polonophil to a passionate “Litvomaniak” by reading the newspaper Auszra and by interacting with Jonas Basanavičius. When the noble Vladas Putvinskis publicly announced that he was a Lithuanian and wanted to learn to speak his ancestors’ language as fluently as possible, he was rejected by most of his Polish-speaking family and close friends. While two brothers from the noble Samogitian family of Narutavičius chose two diverging political careers: Gabrielius (Polish Gabriel Narutowicz) became a prominent Polish politician and the first President of Poland, and Stanislovas became the Signatory to the 16 February 1918 Act on the Independent State of Lithuania. 

The League of Nations was instituted in 1919. The main goal it pursued was global peace and collective settlement of international conflicts.

Besides, the League of Nations established a Commission for Refugees in 1921 that was tasked with supporting World War I refugees and stateless persons, who were numerous because the borders of many states had changed. The Commission, chaired by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, established an international identification document (passport) for stateless persons, which made it easier for them to cross state borders. The passport helped hundreds of thousands refugees stranded in the aftermath of WWI. 

The first and extremely important general election in Lithuania was held in April 1920.

People went to elect the Constituent Seimas. Subsequent general elections were held in 1922, 1923 and 1926. It was for the first time in the history of Lithuania that all citizens of Lithuania, at least 21 years old, regardless of their religion, convictions, gender, or nationality, could cast their ballots.

Every citizen of Lithuania, who on the day of the election was at least 24 years old, could be elected. The representatives of the nation were very young in the inter-war period, in many cases they were under 40. In the case of the Constituent Seimas one third of its members were younger than 30. The majority of seats were won by people whose roots were in the countryside, but they had become lawyers, teachers or farmers by then. Lithuanian women politicians, even though only a few, were elected to every Seimas; Lithuanian Jews, Germans, and Poles had their representatives as well.  

The Republic of Perloja was born in 1918–1919 when the south-eastern part of Lithuania was changing political hands, and German, Russian, Polish armies were marching back and forth, people suffered from frequent requisitions and robber gangs.

The parish of Perloja was devastated; therefore people united in order to manage the safety situation themselves. The population of Perloja and the surrounding villages elected their government – a committee and had their militia, court, and even a small volunteer army. The independent self-government (with the big name of a republic) existed for more than six months. Then it was integrated into independent Lithuania. 

With the development and practical application of the principles of political citizenship (right to vote, to form associations and groups), at the turn of the 20th century, the concept of social citizenship was defined as the right to economic welfare and security. 

The notion of modern citizenship came to Lithuania with its independence in 1918. It was repeatedly established in every Lithuanian Constitution (of 1922, 1928 and 1938) and every Law on Citizenship. 

The Lithuanian higher school had over four thousand students, an active students’ self-government and over 90 student organisations, which were active in study and professional matters, in culture or politics. Students’ festivities, processions, campaigns, and other civil actions were noticed and discussed not only in Kaunas but elsewhere in Lithuania too. 

The inter-war period was characterised by economic growth and crises, social and cultural revolutions, confrontation between capitalism and socialism, rapid development and trampling of democratic and civic processes. 

Regardless of the coup d'état of 17 December 1926, when the democratic model of government was replaced by an authoritarian regime which restricted the political rights of the population, civil society continued to develop and enjoy freely the cultural, public and religious life of the country. It must have been mature society if it produced fierce fighters for Lithuanian statehood traditions, who fought in the war against the USSR (1944–1953). 

Almost 100 thousand Lithuanian citizens emigrated to Western Europe and the Americas in 1920–1940. Taking into account the scale of emigration and realising that Lithuania was in a particularly unfavourable geopolitical situation – the big surrounding powers could encroach on its independence at any point in time, while Lithuania was not capable of withstanding their power, Prof. Pakštas conceived an idea of managed emigration flows (all go to one destination) thus creation of a “spare” Lithuania.

What destinations did he choose? Angola was his choice before World War II, and British Honduras (Belize now) was seen as a potential Lithuanian land after the war. 

Isn’t it a paradox that the processes of democratisation and civil rights that had unfolded since the early 20th century were halted in the mid-20th century? Part of the population became “second-class”; the people were deprived of everything, humiliated, their lives ruined; the “epoch” of concentration camps and gulags set in.  

During the period of violence and coercion in 1940–1953, Lithuania lost the fostered notion of citizenship and every fifth of its citizens.

25 thousand citizens were killed as a result of the coerced mobilisation into the Red Army in 1944–1945; about 60 thousand were illegally deported to Germany for forced labour. Almost 200 thousand (almost all the Jewish community) Lithuanian citizens of Jewish origin were exterminated in 1941–1943. The hardships did not cease upon the “official” end of WWII – almost 200 thousand war refugees had to leave their country; 280 thousand citizens were brutally deported to Siberia or imprisoned in gulag archipelagos; 22 thousand partisans perished in Lithuania because of their involvement in the resistance to the Soviet occupation. 

The list of the Righteous Among the Nations, one of the most honourable global lists, had 877 names of Lithuanian citizens in 2015 (the title has been granted to almost 26 thousand people worldwide). 

Having fenced itself and part of Europe with the iron curtain, the USSR had the constitution in place that promised “traditional” freedoms: of the press, of speech, conscience, assembly, demonstrations, association, etc., however it was impossible to enjoy the freedoms in the totalitarian state, which the Soviet Union was (even after Stalin’s death). 

The war that the Lithuanian partisans fought against the soviet occupation was the highest level of Lithuanian national resistance (1944–1953) aimed at making the occupants leave and at restoring Lithuanian statehood.

The Lithuanian partisans pursued military as well as political goals. The latter were expressly stipulated in the political declaration of the Movement of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters in February 1949. Having gathered in a small bunker at a symbolic date, on 16 February, eight partisan leaders, representatives of all the freedom fighters of Lithuania (hence the whole Lithuania nation) signed the document underpinned by democratic, civil and political aspirations. It was the declaration on the future of Lithuania noting that Lithuania should be guided by the 1922 Constitution, and that future governments should be formed by free, democratic, universal, equality-based, secret-ballot elections of the Seimas. The Declaration also guaranteed equal rights and social care to all Lithuanian citizens. 

There were approximately two thousand organised and active resistance partisans in Lithuania in 1949.

Under international law they represented the Lithuanian population that could not afford to express their political views openly because of the terror environment. Eight partisan leaders, who were delegated by all the partisans, met in Minaičiai Village (Šiauliai District). They set up a resistance centre – the Movement of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters, with Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas as Chairman of the Presidium.

The Declaration they adopted on behalf of all the partisans on 16 February 1949 stipulated that he was the head of the Lithuanian state which was fighting for its freedom until it became a free country and until a Constituent Seimas was convened. Vytautas was killed in 1953, and the partisans’ fight was stifled, however, from today’s perspective and taking into account the functions of a head of state, he was elected President, that is why he should be justly referred to as the fifth President of Lithuania. The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania has passed the resolution to that end. 

The United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the sample document of international protection of human rights. 

After Lithuania’s annexation, the puppet People’s Seimas of Lithuania adopted the Constitution of Soviet Lithuania in 1940 (the second one was adopted in 1978) that effectively was the same for all the soviet republics. It was no more than a sham piece of legislation. 

When asked to name the best known and never publicly told lie in Soviet Lithuania, one would most probably mention the soviet Constitution. 

Dual citizenship does not arise from holding EU and Lithuanian citizenships since an EU citizenship only adds an EU dimension to a Member State’s citizenship and affects neither an individual’s legal ties with his/her national state nor his/her rights and duties towards it. 

Awareness of national identity and sense of citizenship as attributes of a modern Lithuanian identity came to the fore in 1988, the year of national rebirth, and became part and parcel of Lithuanian citizenship in 1991–1993, when soviet passports were replaced by respective citizenship documents of the Republic of Lithuania. 

The identity documents “Lozoraitis passports”, issued by the Lithuanian diplomatic service in exile in 1940–1991 (the soviets did not manage to close down all Lithuanian embassies), were a deliberate attempt to preserve Lithuanian citizenship “unoccupied”.  

“Lozoraitis passports” were the documents issued by the Lithuanian diplomatic service that with time became the symbols of survival of Lithuanian statehood and resistance to USSR occupation. (Stasys Lozoraitis was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania from 1934 to 1938. From 1940 to his death, he was the head of the Lithuanian diplomatic service in exile.)