SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND SOCIOCULTURAL ATTITUDES OF THE LITHUANIAN NOBILITY IN THE DIETINE PETITIONS OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY (UNTIL 1863)

Summary

TAMARA BAIRAŠAUSKAITĖ

       The Russian absolute monarchy, according to the ‘Letter of Favour’ (a privilege) of 1785, recognized the right for its own nobility to discuss and formulate their estate needs, as well as to present them to particular institutions to decide whether those requests would be taken into account and in which way it could be done. It was an endeavour to achieve the formation of a balanced system of relations between the authorities and the privileged class: the nobility was offered a sphere of its autonomous interests, while the authorities undertook the function to exercise the control and satisfaction of those needs.
       The petition institution of the dietines or assemblies of the nobility was in a way related to the category of socio-political modifications. In the 1870s and 1880s the monarchy involved the privileged estate into the sphere of state governing, clearly defining the limits of the activity. The petitions were assigned the function of a public opinion, equal to providing advice on how to organize a more effective local government. The Lithuanian noblemen actively exploited this legalized possibility for a dialogue with the autocracy in order to express their attitude to the issues dealing with their estate problems. Among the everyday social needs some were given priority by the nobility. Thus, three basic recurring questions can be distinguished, the positive solution of which may have initiated the socio-economic and sociocultural changes useful to the estate and society in general. They were: (1) the emancipation of peasants, (2) a rational system of granting credits to farmers and (3) public education. However, it took the authorities much time to tackle these questions. In the latter half of the nineteenth century positive results were achieved by the changes in the court system. The implementation of renewal ideas had to re-establish higher education, to return the Polish language to schools, and to restore the Lithuanian-Polish union. The realization of these ideas would have meant partial autonomy from Russia, therefore they were unacceptable for the autocracy.
       The possibilities to express those attitudes varied. Until the early 1830s, the noblemen had been promulgating them being sure in their ability to initiate progressive changes and to defend their own and society’s interests. In fact, they were more often engaged in the struggle to defend themselves against the actions of the authorities than in the formation of the basis for serious reforms. The years between the uprising of 1831 and the middle of the 1850s was a period of severe depression. The beginning of the rule of Alexander II, however, was favourable for the rebirth of the old ideas and endeavours to introduce sociocultural and political reforms, but after the uprising of 1863–1864, the dialogue between the Lithuanian nobility and the authorities came to an end.
       The dietines of Lithuanian noblemen, in the activity of which the most active part of the privileged class was engaged, did not (and could not) become an organized grouping, able to initiate the general directives of social development. In the dietines the noblemen were more often inclined to react to current affairs or the internal policy of the authorities rather than to try making the dietines a forum for the discussion of the most urgent social problems.