Population of Lithuania: size and composition

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:46

The B altic states have been a territory for which wars have often been waged from time immemorial. It is not surprising that only in the last 500 years it has changed hands many times, and many peoples have always lived on the territory of the states that were located here.

Lithuania is no exception. Of course, the population of Lithuania was almost always mainly represented by the titular nation, but other peoples also lived there permanently. Today the situation is similar. In this article you will find information about how the composition and size of the population in the territory of this state has changed.

Since ancient times…

The first census in these parts was tried back in the 13th century, but it ended with almost nothing, since the data collected was very approximate. Only in 1790, a normal census campaign was carried out, according to the results of which it turned out that about 3.6 million people lived on the territory of modern Lithuania. From 1812 to 1945, the population of Lithuania decreased by about 30%.

Early 19th century

In 1897 another assessment was madenumbers. According to its results, it turned out that at that time about 1,924,400 people lived in Lithuania. For those times, this result was very impressive.

Oddly enough, but at that time there were few Lithuanians themselves on the territory of Lithuania. Their share then was only 61.6%. In addition, at least 13% of Jews, 9% of Poles, about 5% of Russians, as well as a similar number of Belarusians and Germans, lived in the country. The number of Latvians was less than one and a half percent, and the share of Tatars never exceeded 0.2%.

Even more interesting is the fact that in any major city the percentage of Lithuanians was even lower. So, no more than 41% of Jews lived in Vilna, at least 30% of Poles, and the share of Russians and Belarusians was about 24%. The Lithuanians themselves lived in the city no more than 2% of the total population.

In Kovno the situation was about the same: Jews here accounted for approximately 35%, the number of Russians, Belarusians and Poles was 36%, Lithuanians were 6.6%. All the rest are Germans. By the way, almost the entire population of Klaipeda was German. This is due to the fact that this part of East Prussia became part of Lithuania only at the end of the 18th century. Only in the Suwalki province did the Lithuanian population reach 72%.

Notes on ethnogenesis

We hasten to note that at that time the process of ethnogenesis was still going by leaps and bounds: in addition to 1,210,000 Lithuanians themselves, 448 thousand Zhmudins also lived in the Russian Empire. Without them, the indigenous population of Lithuania was only 44%. This contrasts sharply with the overtly populist statements of some B altic politicians about the “centuries-old quantitative superiority of the Lithuanian population.”

Early 20th century

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the situation with "indigenous" peoples worsened even more.

By 1914, the share of the Russian population grew to 6%, while the number of Lithuanians immediately dropped to 54% in percentage terms. In the eastern part of the country, their share fell to 30%. The situation changed only after the First World War, when more than 300 thousand Russian-speaking residents emigrated from the country en masse. In addition, in those years there was a significant influx of Lithuanians from other countries, which was associated with the creation of an independent Republic of Lithuania.

Before World War II

In 1923, the population of Lithuania was already 2,028,971 people. Compared with 1897, the proportion of Lithuanians themselves has grown to 84-85%. The number of Jews has almost halved, amounting to 7.5% (153,473 people). Poles in the territory of the state already lived 3.2%, or 65,599 people, Russians were only 2.5% (50,460 people), the number of Germans rapidly (due to deportations and terror) dropped to 1.4% (29,231), Belarusians remained no more than 0.2% (4421). There were about 8771 people of other nationalities in those years.

Thus, the composition of the population of Lithuania at that time was very multinational.

Other national composition changes

In Kaunas, which became the capital of an independent republic,even more fundamental changes have taken place. Thus, there were practically no Poles and Russians, who had previously been practically the backbone of the urban population (less than 8 thousand people). The number of Germans was 3.5%, Jews became 27.1% (25,041 people). But the number of Lithuanians has grown, amounting to 54 thousand people (59% of the city's population).

The census in the Klaipeda region, which was conducted by local authorities in 1925, showed that the number of Lithuanians does not exceed 26.6% of the total population (no more than 37,626 people). There were many Germans, whose share was about 41.9% (59,337), Memels with their 24.2% (34,337), as well as other nationalities.

Memels - who are they?

By the way, who are memelers? To date, a number of prominent historians believe that this term meant a certain number of people of different (!) Nationalities who did not accept the independence of Lithuania and the formation of the republic. Some historians believe that these are the descendants of the Germans from East Prussia, who never assimilated after the transfer of their lands to Lithuania, did not adopt the language and customs of the B altic states.

Most likely, this is true, because almost all ethnographers note the fact that in the places inhabited by the Memel people, the grandiose influence of German culture and language was felt. Thus, when counting the population in Lithuania in those years, these nuances should be kept in mind. It is likely that the actual share of the German population in these areas reached 66% in those years,surpassing the 90,000 mark.

In the Vilna region there was a similar situation, but with regard to the Poles. The fact is that this land several times passed from Lithuania to Poland, and the Poles conducted a conscious colonization, which involved the maximum displacement of other nations or their assimilation (most often by force).

Thus, in Lithuania of the "sample" of the 20s of the last century, the Lithuanians themselves accounted for a little more than 60% of the total population of these lands. The total population of Lithuania was close to 1 million 900 thousand (at the beginning of 1930).

From 1939 to 1970

In 1940, Lithuania became part of the USSR. The reverse process began, when the Poles were replaced by the Lithuanian population. During the German occupation, the Polish population began to increase again. So, in 1942, there were 309,494 Lithuanians in the Vilnius region alone, and the number of Poles increased to 324,757 people.

The fate of the Jewish population is sad. Only on the territory of Lithuania, 136,421 people of this nationality were killed (and this is without taking into account a couple of regions). No more than 20 thousand people survived. This is also evidenced by the 1959 census, according to which only 24,672 Jews remained in Lithuania.

German statistics from 1937 numbered 157,527 people belonging to this nationality in the country. Thus, during the entire period of the German occupation, at least 175 thousand Jews were destroyed, and in total by 1941 there were 225 thousand of them living in Lithuania.

About post-war agreements

In 1945-1946, 178,000 Poles were deported from the country. If we take the period from 1945 to 1950, half of the Polish population left Lithuania. If we talk about re-Russification, even Lithuanian researchers admit that during the Soviet era it proceeded very slowly, slightly changing the national composition of the state. Thus, in 1959-1989, the number of Russians increased to only 9.4%, while Belarusians and Ukrainians accounted for 1.2% of the total population.

By 1991, the number of Lithuanians is approaching 79.6%, and the population of Lithuania is 3 million 666 thousand people. If we talk about the general trend of the union republics, Lithuania was perhaps the only example of how the number of the titular nation increased: even the number of Russians in the central regions of the RSFSR fell to 81%, although it was 85%.

New time

So what kind of population in Lithuania prevailed (significantly) at the time of the collapse of the USSR? Of course, Lithuanian. With this simple argument, Russian researchers have been trying for years now to convince their B altic colleagues that there was no "occupation". However, so far without much success.

How did the population of Lithuania change after the death of the USSR? Dynamics is extremely deplorable. Immediately after 1991-1993, more than 300,000 Russians left its territory. If by 1991 almost four million people lived in the country, today the population has decreased by almost one and a half times!

It is not surprising that the population of Lithuania in 2014 is 2 million 900 thousand people. It seems to be not so little. Although there is one "but". The fact is that the country's government adds to this number almost all Lithuanians from other EU countries, even using Internet voting during the census. Young people are leaving the country en masse, so independent experts agree on one thing: according to unofficial information, the population of Lithuania in 2014 is a maximum of 2 million people.

Most likely, the dynamics of intensive population decline will continue in the coming years.