Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The article aims to explains why, among all the non-dominant ethnic groups, the imperial authorities in the so-called Western region allowed the existence of only the Lithuanian educational society ‘Saulė’ [The Sun]. The argument is made that this was due to the recognition of Kaunas governorate as a Lithuanian ‘national territory’ on the Russian mental map, the lack of assimilation potential (from the point of view of the officials), the admission that the Lithuanians were ethnically-culturally detached from the ethnic Russians, as well as the efforts of the governor of Kaunas, Piotr Verevkin, to prevent the closure of this society. Part of the article is devoted to a discussion of Verevkin’s motives.

The article explains why, in 1909, there appeared instigations in Russian public discourse calling for closure of the Lithuanian Catholic educational society ‘Saulė’ (The Sun), and at the same time criticism was directed at the governor of Kaunas, who supposedly was the patron of this association. This action of Russian nationalist is interpreted as a reflection of the empirewide struggle against non-Russian public organisations. It was Russian public figures and civil servants promoting a nationalistic nationality policy who wanted to close the ‘Saulė’.