Lithuania needs to listen to its Poles before the Kremlin does

Vilnius (Wilno), the capital of Lithuania. Wikimedia. Public domain.Poles are the biggest ethnic minority in Lithuania. There are over 200,000 Poles (6.6% of the population) and 177,000 Russians (5.8%) in the country of 3 million people. Russians are scattered throughout the country, but Poles are concentrated in south-eastern Lithuania and comprise a local majority in the Salcininkai (Soleczniki in Polish) and Vilnius (Wilno) districts, which both comprise the Vilnius region.

This Polish-inhabited land in Lithuania has been causing bitterness between Lithuania and Poland for years. In 1920-1939 it had been a part of Poland (together with the Lithuanian capital Vilnius), and it was given back to Lithuania at the beginning of the WW2 by the Soviets.

In the tumultuous 1988-1991 period, political leaders in these two regions were trying to establish an autonomous Polish territorial unit with assistance from the Kremlin. But their plans fell apart after the Moscow putsch, and the central Lithuanian government took matters into their own hands.