Lithuanian Press Ban - Resistance

Resistance

Anti-Russian sentiment and distrust of the tsarist authorities had arisen after the 1863 revolt. The ban was also perceived as a threat to the Catholic Church; the Eastern Orthodox Church used the Cyrillic alphabet, and loyalty to the Latin alphabet was also a symbolic loyalty to Catholicism. Attempts were made to circumvent the ban by using Gothic script. However, that was also banned in 1872. A number of problems arose with the various Lithuanian-Cyrillic orthographies, which were all criticized as ill-adapted to the Lithuanian language. Within Russia, the ban was opposed by scholarly, liberal, and pro-democratic groups, which served to mitigate the punishments.

The organized resistance to the ban, both legal and illegal, was largely initiated by bishop Motiejus Valančius, who petitioned the government to exempt prayer books from the ban. He then moved towards sponsoring the illegal flow of books from outside Lithuania. Valančius died in 1875. The period from 1875 to 1883 saw the establishment of the Lithuanian-language newspaper Auszra (The Dawn), and the resistance at this time is associated with bishop Antanas Baranauskas. The resistance intensified towards the end of the 19th century, after another major newspaper, Varpas (The Bell), edited by Vincas Kudirka, was established in 1889. Between 1891 and 1893, 31,718 publications were confiscated and destroyed; between 1900 and 1902 this number increased to 56,182, reflecting their increased flow.

The period from 1890 to 1904 saw the publication of about 2,500 book titles in the Lithuanian Latin alphabet. The majority of these were published in Tilsit, a city in East Prussia, although some publications reached Lithuania from the United States. A largely standardized written version of the language was achieved by the turn of the twentieth century, based on historical and Aukštaitijan (highland) usages; the letters -č- and -š- were taken from Czech orthography. The widely-accepted Lithuanian Grammar, by Jonas Jablonskis, appeared in 1901.

A number of challenges to the ban's legal basis were made, and the use of this venue intensified at the end of the 19th century, along with an increasing number of letters, petitions, and protests from Lithuanians. In 1902 and 1903 the Russian Supreme Court reversed two press ban convictions that had been brought against Antanas Macijauskas and Povilas Višinskis. The court's decisions stated that the original executive decree creating the ban was illegal. The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904 contributed to the Russian government's perception that its minorities needed to be accommodated. The ban was officially lifted on April 24, 1904.