Lithuanian Press Ban - Origins and Legal Basis

Origins and Legal Basis

After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century, significant portions of Lithuania and Poland were incorporated into the Russian Empire. The uprising of 1863, seeking to re-establish the Commonwealth, convinced many Russian politicians that Polish cultural and political influence was the main obstacle hindering the Russification of Lithuania. They believed that if the Lithuanian peasantry were distanced from the Polonized nobility and the Catholic Church, Lithuanians would naturally come under Russian cultural influence, as they had allegedly been during previous eras. The Russian politician Nikolai Miliutin wrote that "Russian letters will finish that which was begun with the Russian sword."

On May 13, 1863 Tsar Alexander II of Russia appointed Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov as the Governor General of the Vilna Governorate. His duties included suppression of the uprising and implementation of the Russification policy. Because the situation was perceived as critical, Muravyov was temporarily granted extremely wide powers. Muravyov and Ivan Petrovich Kornilov, the newly appointed director of the Vilnius educational district, prepared a radical long-term Russification program that became known as the Program of Restoration of Russian Beginnings (Lithuanian: Rusų pradų atkūrimo programa). Its stated goals were to:

1. Eliminate the Polish language from public life
2. Prevent the employment of Catholics in government institutions
3. Control and restrict the Catholic Church
4. Create favorable conditions for the spread of Eastern Orthodoxy
5. Replace Lithuanian parish schools with Russian grammar schools
6. Encourage ethnic Russians to resettle in Lithuanian lands
7. Replace the Latin alphabet with the Cyrillic alphabet
8. Ban any Lithuanian-language publications in the Latin alphabet

On May 22, 1864 Tsar Alexander II approved this program. A few days later Muravyov issued an administrative order that forbade printing Lithuanian language textbooks written in the Latin alphabet. This order was developed into a comprehensive ban on September 6, 1865 by Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman, Muravyov's successor. Kaufman issued an order to six neighboring governorates declaring a full ban on all publications and demanding that censorship committees enforce it without hesitation. A week later the order was extended to the entire Empire by Pyotr Valuev, Minister of the Interior. In 1866 the ban was further extended to include all academic books.

Despite its strict and widespread enforcement, none of the ban's supporting measures were ever actually codified into law. The ban was enforced based solely on administrative orders and the tsar's approval. When the special temporary powers of the Governor General were revoked in 1871, these administrative orders lost any legal value. From that point on the ban had no legal basis, but it was still strictly enforced.