Third round of the Lithuanian-Polish discussion on education

VILNIUS - On Oct. 14, the third round of the joint experts’ group of Lithuania and Poland on the education of the Polish minority in Lithuania and the Lithuanian minority in Poland was held in Vilnius. The experts were led by deputy ministers of education of both countries. The decision on the creation of such a group was made on Sept. 4, during a meeting of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his Lithuanian counterpart, Andrius Kubilius, in the Lithuanian sea resort of Palanga. Representatives of the Polish minority in Lithuania and the Lithuanian minority in Poland take part in the meetings of the experts’ group. No final agreement was reached on Oct. 14 and the group’s meetings will continue. The next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 7 in Augustow, Poland.

The Polish side did not agree with the recent changes in Lithuania’s law on education, which envisaged the introduction of some lessons in the Lithuanian language on geography, history (only Lithuania-related themes on geography and history were supposed to be taught in Lithuanian) and civic society matters in the Lithuanian government-funded minority schools and the equalization of the level of the exam on the Lithuanian language in all Lithuanian schools.
The law is boycotted in ‘Polish’ schools in Lithuania. “Everything is taught in Polish in all schools, as it was before,” Jan Gabriel Mincevic, vice mayor of the Polish Electoral Action-governed Vilnius region municipality, said. This is not exactly the truth, because when LNK TV visited a ‘Polish’ school, the lesson was taught in Lithuanian.

According to Lithuania’s Education Deputy Minister Vaidas Bacys, the Polish side demands a lesser length and complexity of the essay written during the exam on the Lithuanian language. On Oct. 14, the Lithuanian side agreed to consider the return of the exam on the Polish language, which was abolished in 1999, in Lithuania’s ‘Polish’ schools. The Polish side agreed to consider an increase of financing for Lithuanian schools in Poland.

Bacys expressed his unease over payments of 1,000 zlotys (232 euros), which are made via Polish diplomats in Vilnius to families deciding to send their children to ‘Polish’ schools in Lithuania. The payments started in September on the initiative of Poland’s Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education. Lithuania supports Lithuanian schools abroad, but it pays schools, not families. “It is not a measure to attract children to attend Polish schools. If an uncle sends money from abroad, usually nobody complains,” Poland’s Education Deputy Minister Miroslaw Sielatycki said during the meeting of Oct. 14.

Maria Wiernikowska, who is a former journalist with Radio France Internationale, BBC (in the communist era) and post-communist Poland’s national TV and who is famous due to her reports from the Balkan and Chechen wars, in an article titled “Polish skansen in Lithuania” in the issue of Oct. 8 of the Polish-language version of the magazine Newsweek (Newsweek Polska), criticized the flow of money from the state of Poland to Lithuania’s Poles (she states that Poles in Lithuania has become a “profession”) whose demonstrations provoked the creation of the joint experts’ group on education. Wiernikowska visited the Vilnius region and talked to the locals in little towns governed by the Polish Electoral Action, which reminded her of Belarusian towns due to heavy alcoholism and the language – a majority of locals spoke Russian only.

This Newsweek Polska journalist expressed full support for Lithuania’s new law on education, introducing more Lithuanian language into ‘Polish’ schools, in her article because, according to her, it would give better career perspectives for Lithuania’s Poles. Wiernikowska wrote that a recent demonstration organized by the Polish Electoral Action near the Lithuanian parliament reminded her of pro-Soviet demonstrations in the same place in 1990-1991, when “all” (according to her) the people brought by buses to support Moscow communist hardliners were Lithuania’s Poles from the Vilnius region (she talked to them in those demonstrations 20 years ago). Wiernikowska also criticized the situation in Polish-language media in Lithuania, which she described as “schizophrenic” due to pre-WWII-style Polish chauvinism. She mentioned that a female journalist of the Vilnius-based Polish-language radio Znad Wilii got reprimanded by her boss for not being loyal enough during an interview with Valdemar Tomasevski, leader of the Polish Electoral Action. Wiernikowska also criticized Polish arguments justifying the occupation of Vilnius from 1920-1939 – they reminded her of propaganda during the Balkan wars.

“Lithuanians are patient like angels,” Wiernikowska wrote, stating that Poland would not be so tolerant of its German minority if the latter would behave like Poles in Lithuania.
Tomasevski claims that Poles should have more rights than other minorities because they are natives. Wiernikowska expressed doubts of the Polish-ness of the Vilnius region, pointing out that even national costumes for folklore dances of Vilnius’ Poles were designed rather recently in Poland.

Indeed, the lifestyle in the regions near Vilnius can remind one of Belarus due to the Belarusian roots of a big part of its inhabitants - historian Jonas Rudokas wrote the following official statistics in his article in the magazine Veidas: “there were 100,000 Poles in Lithuania in 1947, while in 1959, already 230,000 were found.” Such statistics were found despite a mass repatriation of Poles from the USSR-occupied Lithuania to communist Poland during that period. After WWII, Polish colonists, who arrived in the Vilnius region from Poland in the 1920s-1930s, as well as other former citizens of Poland (including 17,000 ethnic Lithuanians and 3,000 Jews) were allowed to move to Poland. They were replaced mostly by Poles who arrived in the Vilnius region from Belarus.

The actions of Tomasevski instigate Russian minority radicals in Lithuania. On Oct. 13, Russia’s news agency RIA Novosti organized a TV discussion with Russians in Lithuania. During that discussion, some of Lithuania’s Russians were urging Russia to be as aggressive as Poland on the issue of Lithuania’s law on education.

Unfortunately, the investigative article in Newsweek Polska is a rarity in Poland, where most of the media takes its information from the Lithuania-based Polish Electoral Action-friendly Polish-language media. The current Warsaw attitude toward Lithuania puzzled even Alfredas Bumbalauskas, a Lithuanian historian who is well-known for his pro-Polish stance. On Oct. 13, during the presentation in Vilnius University of a project of discussions of intellectuals from Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, and Belarus, even he spoke about the “imperialism” of Poland. Bumblauskas urged Poland to remember the ideas of Jerzy Giedroyc, publisher of the France-based Polish-emigre literary-political journal Kultura from 1947-2000. Giedroyc was a fierce critic of Polish imperialism and, after the collapse of communism in Poland, he was an extremely influential figure among Poland’s political elite until his death in 2000.