The Krajowcy (, ''Fellow Countrymen'' or ''Natives''; lt, Krajovcai, be, Краёўцы) were a group of mainly Polish-speaking intellectuals from the

Vilnius Region Vilnius Region is the territory in present-day Lithuania and Belarus that was originally inhabited by ethnic Baltic tribes and was a part of Lithuania proper, but came under East Slavic and Polish cultural influences over time. The territor ...

who, at the beginning of the 20th century, opposed the division of the former

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi-confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Crown of the Kingdom of ...

into

nation state A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may ...

s along ethnic and linguistic lines. The movement was a reaction against growing

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. The Krajowcy attempted to maintain their dual

self-identification In the psychology of self, one's self-concept (also called self-construction, self-identity, self-perspective or self-structure) is a collection of beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to the question ''"Who am I? ...

as Polish–Lithuanian (''gente Lithuanus, natione Polonus'') rather than just Polish or Lithuanian. The Krajowcy were scattered and few in number and as a result failed to organize a widescale social movement.

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The Krajowcy were mostly descendants of the nobles of the former

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was Partitions of Poland, partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire, Habsburg Empire of ...

(

Lithuanian nobility The Lithuanian nobility or szlachta ( Lithuanian: ''bajorija, šlėkta'') was historically a legally privileged hereditary elite class in the Kingdom of Lithuania and Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including during period of foreign rule 1795–191 ...

being part of the

szlachta The ''szlachta'' (Polish: endonym, Lithuanian: šlėkta) were the noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth who, as a class, had the dominating position in ...

). They identified themselves with Polish culture but maintained a sense of loyalty to the old Grand Duchy. The Krajowcy consisted of two wings: the conservative-moderate wing, composed mostly of large landowners, and the democratic wing, formed from the Vilnius intelligentsia. The conservative wing was generally wary of social upheaval and thus supported authorities of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

. They sought expansion of local self-government and cultural freedoms, but did not wish to separate Lithuania from the Russian Empire. The democratic Krajowcy wanted to neutralize ethnic strife and proposed the creation of a

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.Belarusian and

Lithuanian National Revival The Lithuanian National Revival, alternatively the Lithuanian National Awakening or Lithuanian nationalism ( lt, Lietuvių tautinis atgimimas), was a period of the history of Lithuania in the 19th century at the time when a major part of Lithuania ...

s, but only to an extent—they opposed

s and anti-

Polonization Polonization (or Polonisation; pl, polonizacja)In Polish historiography, particularly pre-WWII (e.g., L. Wasilewski. As noted in Смалянчук А. Ф. (Smalyanchuk 2001) Паміж краёвасцю і нацыянальнай ідэя� ...

. They did not want to cut the cultural ties with Poland as they saw it as an integral part of Lithuanian and Belarusian history and heritage. The democratic Krajowcy either lukewarmly supported or opposed the Polish federalists who dreamed of resurrecting the Polish-led Commonwealth. These ideas were not adopted by the nationalists: the Lithuanians resented Polish culture and the Poles could not adopt regional traditions and loyalties.

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Bishop

Antanas Baranauskas Antanas Baranauskas ( la, Antonius Baranovski, pl, Antoni Baranowski; 17 January 1835 – 26 November 1902) was a Lithuanian poet, mathematician and Catholic bishop of Sejny. Baranauskas is best known as the author of the Lithuanian poem '' ...

(1835–1902) held views similar to the early Krajowcy (although he was not one of them). Even though he wrote about "our dear nation" in the

Lithuanian language Lithuanian ( ) is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language of Lithuania and one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.8 mill ...

, he was against disintegration of the former Grand Duchy into ethnic entities: he was against both Lithuanian and Polish nationalism and hoped that the Lithuanian and Polish languages and cultures could co-exist and expand together. The conservative-traditionalist Krajowcy believed that the nobility was the natural leader of nations and wanted to preserve its privileged status. Their members included and

Konstancja Skirmuntt Konstancja Skirmuntt (also Konstancja Skirmunttówna, lt, Konstancija Skirmuntaitė; 1851–1934) was an amateur Polish-Lithuanian historian, a member of the Krajowcy movement who wanted to preserve the dual Polish-Lithuanian identity. Born to a ...

. The democratic Krajowcy were led by Michał Römer / Mykolas Römeris (1880–1946),

Tadeusz Wróblewski Tadeusz Stanisław Wróblewski (8 November 1858 – 3 July 1925) was a Polish noble, politician, lawyer, bibliophile and cultural activist. He supported the democratic wing of the Krajowcy movement and founded the Wróblewski Library in Vilni ...

(1858–1925) and Ludwik Abramowicz (1879–1939). After the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, and especially after the re-establishment of the Polish and

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

n national states, members of the Krajowcy were hard-pressed to hold onto their dual self-identification and had to declare their loyalty to one country or the other. Most of them, like Mieczysław Jałowiecki, declared loyalty to Poland. Some, like Michał Pius Römer and Stanisław Narutowicz, chose Lithuania and became citizens there.

Raman Skirmunt Raman (Roman) Skirmunt ( be, Раман Скірмунт; 7 May 1868 – 7 October 1939) was a Belarusian and Polesian statesman, aristocrat and landlord. Patron, significant landowner, vice-chairman (1907-1917, 1918-?) of the Minsk Agricultu ...

, an activist of the Krajowcy movement in Belarus, became one of the leaders of the

Belarusian Democratic Republic The Belarusian People's Republic (BNR; be, Беларуская Народная Рэспубліка, Bielaruskaja Narodnaja Respublika, ), or Belarusian Democratic Republic, was a state proclaimed by the Council of the Belarusian Democratic R ...

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , last= Krapauskas , first= Virgil , title= Nationalism and Historiography: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Historicism , year= 2000 , publisher= Columbia University Press , location= New York , isbn= 0-88033-457-6 , pages=38, 95–96, 159 {{cite book, last=Kulakauskas , first=Antanas , year=2002 , chapter-url=http://mkp.emokykla.lt/gimtoji/index.php?id=916 , chapter=Lietuvių ir lenkų santykiai XX a. pradžioje , title=Gimtoji istorija: Nuo 7 iki 12 klasės , location=Vilnius , publisher=Elektroninės leidybos namai , isbn=9986-9216-9-4, language=lt {{cite journal , first=Jadvyga , last=Kulikauskienė , title=1940-2000 m. publikacijų apie Tado Vrublevskio gyvenimą ir veiklą apžvalga , journal=Lietuvos mokslų akademijos biblioteka , url=http://www.mab.lt/leidiniai/lmab2001-2002/39-50.pdf , page=43 , issn=1648-9772 , year=2001–2002 , language=lt , access-date=2010-12-18 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110722151745/http://www.mab.lt/leidiniai/lmab2001-2002/39-50.pdf , archive-date=2011-07-22 , url-status=dead {{cite book , first=Olga , last=Mastianica , title= Bajorija lietuvių tautiniame projekte (XIX a. pabaiga – XX a. pradžia) , location= Vilnius , publisher= Lietuvos istorijos institutas , year= 2016 , isbn=978-609-8183-13-9 , language=lt , pages=140 {{cite book , first=John , last=Neubauer , author2=Włodzimierz Bolecki , title=History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and disjunctures in the 19th and 20th centuries , editor=Marcel Cornis-Pope, John Neubauer , chapter=Two Regionalists of the Interwar Period: Józef Mackiewicz and Mária Berde , chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YINYl4iv4ecC&pg=PA541 , page=541 , publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company , year=2010 , series=Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages , volume=4 , isbn=978-90-272-3458-2 {{cite book, first=Timothy , last=Snyder , author-link=Timothy D. Snyder , title=The reconstruction of nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xSpEynLxJ1MC&pg=PA55 , page=55 , publisher=Yale University Press , year=2004 , isbn=978-0-300-10586-5 {{cite book, last=Staliūnas , first=Darius , date=July 2005 , chapter-url=http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no7_ses/chapter14.pdf , chapter=From Ethnocentric to Civic History: Changes in Contemporary Lithuanian Historical Studies , title=Emerging Meso-Areas in the Former Socialist Countries: Histories Revived or Improvised? , editor=Kimitaka Matsuzato , publisher=Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University , series=Slavic Eurasian studies , volume=7 , page=325 , isbn= 978-4-938637-35-4 {{cite book, title=The lands of partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 , first=Piotr Stefan , last=Wandycz , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TVMmGKsbWJ4C&pg=PA349 , page=349 , volume=7 , series=A History of East Central Europe , publisher=University of Washington Press , year=1974 , isbn=978-0-295-95358-8 1900s in Lithuania 1900s in Belarus 1900s in Poland 1910s in Lithuania 1910s in Belarus 1910s in Poland Polish nationalism (1795–1918)

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See also

References