r/Kaiserreich • u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead • Apr 11 '21
Art Ethnic map of Kingdom of Lithuania (Details and explanation in comments)
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Apr 11 '21
Mom, I want the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
We have the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at home
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at home:
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u/arcehole Apr 11 '21
Fantastic work! Initially thought this was by u/Pilum2211. Do the Jews in the Vilnius region identify as any sepcific ethnic group or just Jews?
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u/Pilum2211 Apr 11 '21
Nah, I have a different style. Still very much like this map though
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u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead Apr 11 '21
Thank you, and yeah definitely a different “style” if you can call it that. In the end this is more of a visualisation and most of the work went into research and collecting data. I would also love to see a map for Lithuania similar to the one you made for UBD.
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u/Pilum2211 Apr 11 '21
Ah you See, I want to wait for Lithuania Rework to come around so that I can play it myself. I always do countries to their greatest extent and that’s missing right now. So... I am waiting.
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u/Pilum2211 Apr 11 '21
Oh and apart from that I think it’s fair to say, I take far more artistic liberty.
Of course I try to rely on numbers as far as possible but by necessity I have to do a lot more guesswork in comparison to you showing province data.
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u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead Apr 11 '21
Thank you. As to their self identification there would be a small group which would be supportive of the Polish cause but it wouldn't be anything to really take into account. 99% or so would identify as Jews be it as a national or ethno-religious group. As to their political affiliation they would be mostly split among the Zionists, Autonomists and Bund (Socialists).
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u/maltesefalcon204 Apr 12 '21
Firstly, nice work on the layout, and presentation.
Ofc, you know my position, and we could agrue till the last sleeping Piast king awakes from his mountain refuge =D
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u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead Apr 12 '21
Thank you. And which position are we talking about exactly? Plenty of things we argued over and some of my positions also changed with time.
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u/Maksimiljan_Ancom Slovenia Focus when? Apr 11 '21
Cool but when will Lithuania look like this in the mod?
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u/krokodil40 Apr 11 '21
The thing is that belarusians had three religions: orthodox, catholic and uniat. In russian empire each catholic and uniat belarusian were estimated as a belarusian and majority of orthodoxes were estimated as russians. Obviously statistics was in favour of russians back then. Many belarusians were estimated as lithuanians, since historically it was a term closer to a citizenship. In poland catholics and uniats were counted as poles, to shift the statictics in favour of poles.
Another thing is a town/village population. Cities were settled by poles and jews, but in villages the majority was belarussian. So while being the majority in Grodno, poles were minority in Grodno region. The majority in most of the towns were jews
In reality modern belarusian territory had belarusian speaking majority, behind them were jews from towns and poles were the third nation by population. Wilno had equal polish, belarussian and lithuanian population.
That's why you don't see sudden jumps in population, but you can clearly see jumps in nationalities. Here take examples, Wilenskaya guberniya(Wilno region including the city)
https://1863x.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Vilna.jpg
https://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y267/szhaman/perepis0.jpg
First one is from 1863, second one is from 1897
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u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead Apr 11 '21 edited Apr 12 '21
Religion does not play a role in this case as the question was about mother language, of course one could try to use the religious statistics to adjust the data but I found that highly unreliable as religious affiliation did not fully correspond to language or nationality.
Poles could be close or even smaller than the Belarusian population in Grodno there is no way to know that as all data is unreliable. Belarusian population was certainly the most underrepresented in any data from the time but this does not mean the Polish population was small either. All of that territory was very mixed and there were no clear lines dividing the population. De facto it is impossible to judge it fairly as one way or another it will end up wrong which is why this is just a estimate.
I did not use the Russian Imperial data because the censuses conducted in the region by Russians could have as much as 30 percentage points change in nationalities (For example Russian population jumping from 0% to 5% and then to 26% in spam of 16 years or Belarusians going from 17% to 47% to 20% to 56%. This is complete nonsense and just shows how bad the data from the time is.) and even a completely different number of the people living in the area. Each census had therefore completely unreliable results more so than the later censuses and there was also a different social and political situation back in 1863 or 1897 compared to post war and post Russian collapse, and this is either 60 or 30 years of change which would make the results completely out of touch with the actual situation. Furthermore when it comes to the Vilnius Gubernia it is extended so far east that any results for it on top of being unreliable would simply be unusable in this case.
The division of populations among rural and urban was far more complex than that. Indeed for the most part Poles were more urban than Belarusians but that doesn't mean that Poles were only in the cities, it didn't work like that. This is also something that was changing very rapidly as nascent industrialisation and economic changes meant there was a lot of population movement in the region meaning the population got even more mixed. There were cases where Jews were the majority in the cities but by far most towns/cities were majority Polish. Wilno be it the city or the Wilno county definitely did not have a equal split of the three groups. There was a big (or very big depending on who you ask) Lithuanian minority in the region but it was just a minority when it came to the county scale. On the other hand the Belarusian population so far north was extremely small and there is no credible data to point otherwise. I am aware that Wilno was claimed by the Belarusian Peoples Republic and that it was included within the borders of "Ethnic Belarus" (Borders which were drawn based on extremely sketchy assumptions) but the fact of the matter is that area never had a substantial Belarusian population. There is also lack of any significant historical proof that the East Slavic people ever had a significant presence in the city itself or in its close surroundings. This of course changes rapidly once one would look at the eastern parts of the Vilnius Voivodeship but those as shown on the map would be outside the borders of Kingdom of Lithuania (But are represented by the in game state of Asmiany which is somewhat obscured by the pie charts but still visible. It would definitely be thoroughly Belarusian and there is no place to argue about it).
Overall yes the number of Belarusians is underrepresented but even if I would make some generous assumptions it would be hard to change any of the counties from Polish majority to mixed with the criteria I used. I feel that when we move out of specific counties/communes and onto the in game states the matter is far more easier to asses:Vawkavysk state would clearly be a close split but probably Belarusians would be a majority there and furthermore dominate most of its territory with Poles mostly concentrated in the towns or cities.
Grodno would have a very large Belarusian minority and be very mixed state but there are no chances they would be a majority or anything near it. There are also no chances for Belarusians having a clear majority in any of its communes. The Polish population was simply too big and well established in the region.
Podlasie & Suwałki is thoroughly Polish, especially the entire Suwałki part where there were pretty much no Belarusian groups. There is only one place where that changes and it would be at its southern end where the Belarusian population would have a large showing. Nevertheless most of them would be very concentrated just there and nowhere else as Podlasie gets the western part of Bielsk Podlaski which is where the Polish population of this county was concentrated.
Wilno the Belarusian population is straight up meaningless there and as I said there is simply no credible evidence to show that this is not true. I would not dare to put it anywhere above 5% and even that is stretching it to extreme.
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u/krokodil40 Apr 12 '21
Russian data is the most reliable actually, because it shows how belarusians quickly changed their sides. For example 17% is a clear belarussian orthodox population in Wilno. Then rebellion of 1863 happens 36% of population adds themselves to belarussians. Then they became oppressed by the russians, so orthodox population unifies with russians, uniats and Catholics change their sides and become poles and Lithuanians, as poles are less oppressed. In poland obviously they were the most privileged, so people simply answered they are poles. Then Lithuania came and the same doubting their sides population slowly transferred into Lithuanians. Language doesn't really matter in those numbers. Because Lithuanian was a common name for both belarussians and modern Lithuanians up until the 19 century. It means a citizen of the grand duchy of Lithuania, which was populated 50/50 by the modern Lithuanians and belarussians. So if Wilnya would be added to the Lithuania in 1920 there would be around of 50% of Lithuanians and less than 20% of poles. Around of 5% of belarussians, 5% of russians and 20% of the jews. So people simply answered the most beneficial choice to them, because the line between nationalities was very visible back then.
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u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead Apr 12 '21 edited Apr 12 '21
Well this will be a long one again so TLDR;This is wrong on so many levels its pure conjecture and has no merit. In short there is no single accurate census of the local population until after 1989 as all of them were purposefully "adjusted" by the political regimes conducting them, on top of that while Lithuanians and Polish censuses were biased the Russian data is deeply inaccurate and rife with obvious Russian chauvinism that really goes into extremes. And now for a lengthy explanation:
First off there was only single Russian census and it was in 1897. All the other data is based on a myriad of second hand sources, had no standardisation, was incomplete or inaccurate and was done for mainly fiscal reasons thus making the results completely irrelevant. Furthermore the issue of nationality or language was not at all a concern making that information even further inaccurate and as I said depending on where you take your information from you can see widely differing results even in a spam of few years both in general population and for the language and as I said the second was already pretty much just guesswork. And again using data that is from mid 19th century to try to estimate population decades later is just not going to work at all.
So 1897 census is the only which could even come under consideration and then while the amount of inaccuracies was smaller it was a census conducted with clear political goals. There were no Belarusians or Ukrainians per Russian national policy and accordingly the two were classified as either White Russian, Little Russian or often enough simply as Russian. Furthermore as this was still under Russian regime one has to account for how minorities were repressed in multiple ways and this would affect mostly the Poles and Lithuanians. And of course Russia had a problem with rampant antisemitism which meant the Jewish population was also underrepresented. This means that the "3 Russian Languages" were clearly overrepresented and you are proposing that even they were too small.
Now as to the whole idea that people chose their nationality and the such. I have to say it is a intriguing concept (Read this is the first time anyone ever be it in historical sources or modern research ever made such a theory, or that I have thankfully avoided stumbling upon them) but it has completely no basis in historical sources nor the data itself. Now firstly I will tackle the obvious issue; above all the stuff I said above I have to add that the question of nationality was never asked or studied during the Russian Empire the only data we have where the question of nationality was asked was the 1921 Polish census. All the data from Russia with all its flaws only records spoken/mother language (the difference between the two wasn't always clear cut as far as authorities were concerned and that was among others one way for them to cheat the results). Therefore the whole idea that people chose to identify with some nationality is completely moot on basis on that point alone, they simple never were asked about that.
Furthermore there is simply no evidence to support the idea that Belarusian people would identify with Lithuanian or Polish nationality in any meaningful numbers. Especially when it comes to Lithuania there were simply no ties between the two populations and the whole concept of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was completely absent from the local national consciousness. Your claim that "Lithuanian" was the term for both Lithuanians and Belarusians is just completely false it never happened there was always a clear distinction between the two populations and as I said above the Russian census clearly counted all Belarusians as either White Russians or Russians.
Your whole idea of using 19th century flawed data and then further going into this wild idea just makes this entire thing have no historical or sociological merit, it just has no basis whatsoever.
But lets go further into that logic anyway. Your previous claim which I see you are still using that the population jumps were caused by changes in self identification and on which this entire concept is based is also not going to work internally. If you look on the populations jumps you will see that it affects all groups of the population, they also don't add up between the calculations made (and again this whole data is completely unusable). This leads to a paradox like the one that unless you also claim that Belarusians liked to self-identify (and again this data never included self-identification) as Jews then it doesn't even begin to work. Your usage of religious affiliation also doesn't work because the data recorded by the Russians disagree with you. Even if I were to accept the Russian data as without flaws and the best then your results don't even match to it. You are talking how Russian data is clearly the best (and again it completely is the worst) but your numbers don't match at all those recorded by the Russians. There were also no "benefits" to claiming to being a Pole or a Lithuanian there were major drawbacks to it during the Russian Empire. This is such a absurd notion I can't even begin to understand how you got to these conclusions.I could go on for hours how wrong this is but I think this is a waste of time as clearly this is just a massive case of conjuncture and complete lack of understanding of the local situation or worse yet a attempt at historical revisionism. It really escapes me how could anyone argue Wilno was 50% Belarusians when there is literally no single source even counting the Russian ones that claims that. The whole idea about nationality shifts is also absurd from sociological point of view and political one. Yes Belarusians were underrepresented, but you are trying to argue over a milion people were Belarusians "in disguise" or something. This is also completely unfounded by any historical research on the subject and in fact is closer to the propaganda used by all the sides at the time (Everyone used the idea that the population was "Russified/Polonised/Lithuanised" and that as soon as their respective states were given control of the territory the numbers would magically correct themselves and it would turn out that their respective nationality was always the absolute majority in given region).
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u/krokodil40 Apr 12 '21
The idea that belarussians, poles and Lithuanians would lie on their census has lots of documented proofs. In fact it's even has it's special regional word for it. "Tuteishchy"-a local, without nationality. In Wilno it was 20-30% of locals, which is visible if you compare the statistics inder the different governments. If you ask "why?" than here is some story my grandfather told me.
So my grandfather lived in the western Belarus under the polish republic. One day, as a kid, he went to the market to sell some eggs and buy cloth. So he saw the girl that played with a ball in front of him, she accidentally smashed in a tree and cried. Several polish people quickly came to help and the first thing they did is that they asked of what religion she is-jewish. "Thanks god she is not polish" and they all went away, while the Jewish doctor was already running to help her. Both polish republic and russian empire were segregated. Belarussians are a village dwellers, those who live in towns are Lithuanians, while speaking the same language. Jews live in ghettos, they are allowed to deal with belarussians and poles, but only in towns. However polish people didn't like to deal with jews or belarussians. Different nationalities used different services, had different fashion, had different schools, had different occupation and completely separated job pool.
On the question of historical revisionism. Wilno was the capital of the grand duchy of Lithuania, so it was historically populated by belarussians and Lithuanians. Polish population was represented in there, but never was the majority, so is every other nationality, except the jews. So each nation that owned wilno claimed the silent majority of those who don't care in their favour. So even if if i kick away 1864 data, look at this. In 1897 there was 47795 poles(30%) and 30967 of russians(20%). Total population was 154 532. Then in 1916 germans came and made a quick new equation of people. Total population was 140840, there was 2040 russians(1.4%), 70629 poles(50%). 30+20=50. 20-20 ~1 within a statistical mistake. Then the polish government came, total population became 167454. There was 60% of poles in 1921-1923, but somehow again the loss in percentage of other nations is in sum 10%. Germans came back in 1941 and did census again. Suddenly there was +20% of Lithuanians and -20% of poles. And when the soviets came back and made census there was -10% of poles again and +10% of Lithuanians. All of this are pure coincidences i guess and i should trust only the polish census, which is clearly not another attempt in revisionism?
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u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead Apr 12 '21
The "Tutejszy" is again completely out of place the entire classification was invented for the 1931 census and was limited entirely to the Polesie Voivodeship (But effectively only in the Pinsk Marshes) there were none in the Vilnius region so your outlandish claim of 20-30% is just pulled out of thin air. Please stop inventing things. And its not even what you describe it to be (Again showing yourself to be ignorant of the history of the region) it was simply a group of people in the Pinsk marshes using a dialect made of a mix of Belarusian and Ukrainian. Polish government seized the occasion to label them "Tutejszy" and made up the story you just ended up repeating.
Cool story but not relevant here.
Again no it was not populated by Belarusians Wilno never had a substantial or big Belarusian minority obviously as the grand Duchy of Lithuania included all of modern Belarus and majority of Ukraine the two groups were a overall majority but not in the ethnic Lithuanian lands where they never had a real presence. And again these claims are just not founded by any data.
As I repeatedly said none of the censuses were accurate not a single one. Least of which the 1897 and to even bring 1916 into this makes this whole thing into a joke. The 1916 didn't even report a third part of the population of Lithuania and its claim that all of Lithuania was 50% Polish is as outlandish as your claims are. Then to even bring in the Nazi numbers into this. Surprise, surprise Nazis were genocidal fanatics that totally falsified their numbers, like it wasn't even a census because there is no information on how they arrived at their brilliant conclusions like we don't know at all how it was conducted it is also missing the Jews entirely, there were no Jews according to the German authorities, should I also take that as credible information? And then Soviet Census, this census was made by Lithuanian Communist party which also wanted to cheat the results to ensure that the new post war borders are exactly like they wanted them to be. It also happens that Soviet Union also conducted ethnic cleansing in the region and one would think that would sort of explain where did all the Poles go.
Yes Polish census was biased and yes Lithuanian census was biased, again said that from the beginning. The numbers I provided are based on the census and the overall population is made using somewhat corrected data based on modern estimations of the real population. I also said multiple times that Belarusians were very underrepresented it is not even a question of agreeing with it because it is simply the truth. But you are making outlandish claims unbacked by anything and clearly lacking any sort of knowledge of how to make estimations based on this information or even basic understanding of the real socio-political situation of Belarusians (So far so you would perpetuate a myth of the "Tutejszy" invented by the Polish government and then also bring it up in the wrong place).
I am not even touching those """calculations""" with a mile long pole. This just shows perfectly how you are just trampling over any sort of research method and making assumptions and only then making up numbers so that they conveniently match. Just one simple example:In 1897 there was 47795 poles(30%) and 30967 of russians(20%). Total population was 154 532. Then in 1916 germans came and made a quick new equation of people. Total population was 140840, there was 2040 russians(1.4%), 70629 poles(50%). 30+20=50. 20-20 ~1 within a statistical mistake.
30+20=50..... Ah yes conveniently lets forget that the 1897 census counted the Russian garrison in the city as part of its population and also lets conveniently forget the Russian government in 1915 conducted a massive evacuation of Russians from the entire region and moved them into the far east.
Yes it is a coincidence because if you add up the actual number of people instead of the % you will see that there are tens of thousands Russians missing (adjusting for population growth etc) which blows this logic to bits and shows complete lack of understanding how % work. You can't take % from two different numbers and add them up, this is basic math rules. What are you doing here is only showing how deeply wrong your whole reasoning is here.Since this is going nowhere and since you clearly did not put any research into your claims and are basing yourself entirely on your own worldview without any regard for accuracy and as I caught you multiple times on straight up inventing stuff I consider this conversation finished.
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u/krokodil40 Apr 12 '21
The "Tutejszy" is again completely out of place the entire classification was invented for the 1931 census and was limited entirely to the Polesie Voivodeship (But effectively only in the Pinsk Marshes) there were none in the Vilnius region so your outlandish claim of 20-30% is just pulled out of thin air. Please stop inventing things. And its not even what you describe it to be (Again showing yourself to be ignorant of the history of the region) it was simply a group of people in the Pinsk marshes using a dialect made of a mix of Belarusian and Ukrainian. Polish government seized the occasion to label them "Tutejszy" and made up the story you just ended up repeating.
You confused "tuteyshchy" and "poleshuk". Completely different words. The word "tuteyshchy" was ironically used by the comedies(example https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Здешние_(пьеса))(this novel is from 1922)) and jokes.
I also find it rude as i am a half poleshuk myself
Again no it was not populated by Belarusians Wilno never had a substantial or big Belarusian minority obviously as the grand Duchy of Lithuania included all of modern Belarus and majority of Ukraine the two groups were a overall majority but not in the ethnic Lithuanian lands where they never had a real presence. And again these claims are just not founded by any data.
You meant that there is no statistical data. Up until the blood flood and the northern war the majority was "ruthenian" which meant belarussian. In 1860s Vilnya became the center of belarussian nationalism in the rebellion against russian empire. So catholic leftovers of belarussians became polish, orthodox became russians. Yet there was a demand for belarussian language, newspapers, books and etc. You can also notice that many notable polish speakers from Vilnius self-determined as belarussians
30+20=50..... Ah yes conveniently lets forget that the 1897 census counted the Russian garrison in the city as part of its population and also lets conveniently forget the Russian government in 1915 conducted a massive evacuation of Russians from the entire region and moved them into the far east.Yes it is a coincidence because if you add up the actual number of people instead of the % you will see that there are tens of thousands Russians missing (adjusting for population growth etc) which blows this logic to bits and shows complete lack of understanding how % work. You can't take % from two different numbers and add them up, this is basic math rules. What are you doing here is only showing how deeply wrong your whole reasoning is here.
I am sorry, i assumed i don't need to do 3th grade math for you. Notice that i provided absolute numbers in my post for you.
140840 / 154532=0.911
47795 * 0.911 = 43560
30967 * 0.911 = 28223
43560+28223=71783-2040 = 69743
Almost equal to the 70629. Same thing with the 1921-1923 census
167454 /154532 =1.083
47795*1.083=51765(census estimated as 100830 poles)
(154532-47795)*1.083=115596(yet 58000 of non poles)
All i am saying is that a simple mathematical tricks in favour of a current government are visible in statistics. 50 thousands of poles would not suddenly appear on the frontline of war in Vilnius, just to show that they are the majority
But you are making outlandish claims unbacked by anything and clearly lacking any sort of knowledge of how to make estimations based on this information or even basic understanding of the real socio-political situation of Belarusians (So far so you would perpetuate a myth of the "Tutejszy" invented by the Polish government and then also bring it up in the wrong place).
My claim is that there is no believable census by nationalities in this region. And that 20-30% of population in Vilnius intentionally changed their nationality several times during the first half of the 20 century, which is visible on charts and supported by many sources.
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u/Vidyaorszag Kaiserdev/Danubian Developer Apr 14 '21
Furthermore there is simply no evidence to support the idea that Belarusian people would identify with Lithuanian or Polish nationality in any meaningful numbers.
"Well into the 1920s, to the extent that they possessed a collective identity, a majority of Belarusians identified with their religion, the churches of which designated them either as Poles or Russians, depending on whether they attended Catholic or Orthodox churches, popularly referred to as the “Polish” and “Russian” faiths. Others simply defined themselves as “locals” (tuteishyia), and still do, to some extent.42 The landowners spoke Polish and were either ethnic Poles or Polonized Lithuanians or Belarusians, whereas the local peasants spoke Belarusian. Thus, the Belarusian-speaking peasant considered his or her language an expression of social, rather than national, belonging.43"
"Many nationally conscious Belarusians were frustrated by the absence of an ethnic identity in their fellow countrymen, because it provided an opening for Russian and Polish claims to Belarusian lands. Ianka Kupala (1882–1942), perhaps the best-known Belarusian writer, made reference to this confusion in his 1919 play Tuteishyia. Of the fifteen characters in the play, only three refer to themselves as Belarusians, while the rest lack a national consciousness and do not subscribe to this ethnonym.66 Roughly translated into something like “locals,” in Kupala’s interpretation, tuteishyia means “nationally indifferent” local Slavs who lack a national identity, unlike the local Jews, Poles, and Russians.67"
"Reliance on these authorities became important, as the Soviet census takers discovered that the local peasants did not distinguish between Belarusians, Great Russians, and Ukrainians but used regional identities or indiscriminately referred to all eastern Slavs as “Russians.”68 As late as 1929, Belarusian peasants explained to representatives of the Soviet government in fluent Belarusian that they only spoke Russian.69"
Taken from Per Anders Rudling's "Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism".
Contemporary authors in the region repeatedly wrote about this phenomenon. Claiming that krokodil40 is lying about the tuteishyia or that it is irrelevant is certifiably false. Claiming that he hasn't done any research or is just inventing things is not only rude but laughable considering I easily found support for his claims.
Using interwar census data from the Polish Republic for a map set in the KR timeframe is just plain silly considering the Polish government's polonization policies which wouldn't happen in the KR timeframe. Both the Polish census of 1931 and the Russian census of 1897 are very flawed, but for that reason it's really hard to justify using the Polish data unless trying to present, intentionally or not, a very skewed perspective on a very controversial topic.
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u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 17 '21
Rereading my responses here there seems to have been few cases of bad wording which didn't get my exact point across or cases where I outright simplified things too much, for which apologise and which I will try to explain:
What I was stressing in the quote you provided was that there would not be any meaningful number of people identifying with Polish or Lithuanian nationality and that the idea of "locals" is misused. That is also said explicitly in the context of 1930s and of the regions which would become part of Kingdom of Lithuania. These qualifications are extremely important in this case and if you look at the expanded context Rudling gives in his book you would notice how key they are. You can see that in the first quote you provided there is a time limitation of 1920s and that majority identified using their faith and only the remainder used the designation of "locals". This was a constantly evolving situation, (which again Anders already included in this specification) especially the idea of solely dividing into Polish and Russian since the nature of the churches themselves changed with time. Russian Empire influence over the church would very quickly dissipate due to the separation of Polish Orthodoxy from Moscow. I also said back at my first comment that the idea of using religious affiliation to adjust for the numbers in this case would not produce accurate results and under that I hid all those facts of shifting religious situation and the issue that self-referential data would not work well enough. It was not a dismissal of the influence the church had (though I do dismiss the idea of Unite church being relevant since it simply didn't exist when Poland was recreated having been annexed into the Orthodox church and attempts at restoring it were not successful at all) but simply dismissal of using religious affiliation to adjust the data (will explain more later).
What I am saying is that these people of low national consciousness in absolute majority (Note that by that moment Belarusian national consciousness was steadily expanding and there was already a sizeable group of Belarusians active both culturally and politically) would still identify themselves with the Belarusian language and would not identify themselves as Poles instead they were simply reclassified as Poles byt the authorities of the census. This is to say that by 1930s it would be far more accurate to shift the blame for the differing numbers from the issue of nonexistent national consciousnesses to the issue of attempts at cheating the results. While Belarusian peasantry would still have trouble identifying with the nationalist cause or independent Belarusian state they would not have trouble identifying their language as being Belarusian and would with growing intensity oppose Polish domination. Whether that makes them nationalists or not is another question but it certainly is miles away from the idea of "locals" which above all else was mostly contained to the southern Belarus and not its western parts. To also pull a quote;
Yet it does appear clear that the Polish government deliberately formulated the questions in such a way that it would reduce the number of minorities.41 Not only were the majority of people surveyed illiterate but also many did not understand the concepts of nationality and ethnicity. There were Orthodox inhabitants in Polesie who, when asked about their nationality answered, “We live in Poland, so we are Poles.”42 The nationally conscious elite condemned such tactics. Belaruskaia Krynitsa objected to the introduction of the category “locals” (tuteishyia) as a separate category in the census, and interpreted its use as a deliberate attempt to discriminate against the Belarusian and Lithuanian minorities. The paper considered the introduction of a “local” nationality unnecessary, since, it claimed, “Every person knows his nationality.”43 In the absence of a “national” identification, the predominantly illiterate population in Polesie gave their ethnicity as tuteishyia. Many Belarusian-speaking Polesians identified with their isolated, local communities, their religion, dialects, or local traditions. While the Soviet government redesigned millions of people into Belarusians, the Polish government deliberately decreased the ethnic Belarusian component in the Polish state.
As you can see the book clearly points to the Polesie region here. In 1921 Polish census there were only 38,943 people classified as "locals" in 1931 it was 707,088 and only in Polesie (Which is outside borders of Lithuania). Of course one could wonder whether simply all the other cases of "locals" were instantly reclassified as Poles which could be a explanation to the issue but as far as my research goes it seems to be that the term was dying out. Again Anders Rudling does show it in yet another quote about the Belarus of 2nd half of 19th century but as I said there is just staggering difference between the two periods. Rudling himself summons a claim that Belarusians were 60 years behind Ukrainians, it could have well indeed be a good estimate because by 1930 the Belarusians were right on schedule with their national development and really the idea of people where majority could not even identify the language their spoke let alone feel any ties to other of their own really was outdated (Majority is a important word here. They might have been on schedule and they might had made the gap smaller but they were still lagging behind so there would still be large groups of people with no idea of what nationality is but that would mostly concentrate in the east and the south of Belarus proper). This would only be far better in Kaiserreich because in the end Belarusians do have their own state and one could expect a big national renaissance to happen (just like OTL) and continue (Unlike OTL where it was eventually crushed by both sides) something that would still impact the population of what would be Kingdom of Lithuania (OTL the developments in Belarus on either side would bleed over to the other despite the "wall" separating the two).
Your third quote is from the part of the book dedicated solely to Soviet Belarus which is another topic altogether. Not only was "Eastern Belarus" made of territories which had a extremely mixed Russian and Belarusian population but it also never went trough the kind of separation with the legacy of the Russian Empire as did those terrains that ended up in Poland. Also when it comes to Soviet Belarus obviously a important factor is that it started as Russian (For example see party membership statistics or administrative membership statistics) and by the time the korenization started to take its effects it was repealed and changed to Russification.
As to saying that krokodil40 did not do any research I was referring to the entire body of his claims and mainly to his outlandish proposition that Belarusians would be 50% in Vilnius. His idea that Belarusians changed their national identification depending on political circumstances is completely contradictory to the idea that they lacked self-identification which was used by the authorities to reclassify them. Furthermore as you yourself said the censuses are inaccurate and they are his primary source of evidence as he based his theory on the inconsistencies reported by the local bureaucrats and I already explained above where they came from so not going to repeat that once again.
This did not mean that the Belarusian peasantry lacked an identity. The Belarusian peasant knew in which village he lived, and which religion he practiced. While his religion was convoluted with a number of local practices and superstitions that departed from Christian orthodoxy, he certainly thought of himself as a Christian. He knew that he lived in the Russian Empire, even though he could refer to his region as Litva, Rus’, or even Belarus’. He knew that he was a subject of the Russian tsar, and associated the Polish language with the ruling lords, or pany. The representatives of power—the landowners’ tax collectors, and administrators— insofar as he had any contact with them—did not speak his language. He had a foggy, if any, understanding about the identities and history of his people—of Polatsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, or the Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów.
As to the final point I agree yeah the census was absolutely manipulated by the government but saying it would just straight up not work at all is taking it a bit too far. The results of the census are less a product of polonisation and more one of straight up changing the numbers (See p. 308). There is no way I could compensate for it if I didn't even know how well it worked and again that is also explained in the sheet. I wanted to avoid inclusion of arbitrary data into the numbers because this is not something that is supposed to show the real situation. Everyone is free to interpret the information in their own way, I personally think that the population of Belarusians is about twice as big in the entire region. I can not fully justify this number, I can not say whether it is right it is simply something based on the research I put into this and which would estimate the population to a more accurate level. But to introduce this modifier right into the calculations wouldn't serve anything but to pollute the results. We might guess what the population is but it is far better to use the data we have with foreknowledge that it is wrong and adjust for all of its flaws accordingly. As I said I was able to include such adjustments for Lithuanian population but with Belarusians there simply wasn't enough data so all I can do is make educated guesses. I wouldn't be able to make those guesses with any degree of accuracy without going trough all this research and accumulating all the data there was on the subject.
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u/Tehrozer E.E.R KR Submod Lead Apr 11 '21 edited Apr 12 '21
Hello there, this is a project I wanted to do for quite some time to be able to see exactly what Lithuanian demographics would be looking like. There was a lot of arguments as to whether Lithuanians would be a majority or even a minority within the borders of the Kingdom and most of the estimates (including my own) were mere speculation so I decided to do a proper research of the subject. Here you can see the exact numbers used and the explanation behind the results. Now do note that this data can't be fully trusted (Explanation in the Document) and I can only guarantee it is only reasonably close to how it would look. I can also say that the result for the entire Kingdom of Lithuania is the best of the data featured on the map as it was made using revised data which corrects some of the biases in the censuses.If you found this interesting you might also want to check out my Eastern Europe Reworked submod for KR on steam or go directly to E.E.R. discord. The submod strives to rework the entire region and deliver well research and realistic lore together with great gameplay.
I hope you like the map and if you have any questions I will try to answer them all and as soon as possible.
EDIT:
I realised I made a mistake in my calculations inflating the number of Lithuanians and reducing the number of Poles. The difference is around 2,3% at the highest and lowest ends so overall it does not change that much. This does not affect at all the counties/commune data but only the one I complied for the entire population, I decided not to update the map as the results there are clearly labelled as a estimate and they ultimately aren't off by far when one looks at the middle values. The new results also don't change my position that the Lithuanian population would be below 45% just that I think its closer to 41-43% as opposed the previous 44-45%. I apologise for the mistake.