Activities of Ukmergė municipal Duma and the level of expression of citizenship in it

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama Ukmergės miesto savivaldybės veikla ir pilietiškumo joje raiška 1879-1915 metais, kai galiojo carinėje Rusijoje liberaliausi savivaldos įstatymai. Tiriama, kokias sąlygas pilietiškumas turėjo reikštis savivaldos institucijose ir kokiomis konkrečiomis formomis jis pasireiškė. Tuo tikslu tiriama savivaldybių rinkėjų sudėtis, kiekis, pačių savivaldybės narių socialinės ir nacionalinės charakteristikos. Nagrinėjami savivaldybės veiklos prioritetai, finansinės jų realizavimo galimybės, carinės administracijos siekiai ir požiūris į savivaldybę.[...] The goal of the article is to single out the features and consistency of expression of citizenship in self-government through the analysis of activities of the municipality of Ukmergė in the final quarter of the 19th century – the beginning of the 20th century. It sets an objective to find out the possibilities of the municipal community and its participation in local self-government, the courses and priorities of activities of the municipality, and the interests of the tsarist administration. It is the first scientific article covering the activities of the municipality of Ukmergė of the late 19th century – early 20th century and one of the first articles in the Lithuanian historiography addressing the past of the municipal community in the aspect of expression of citizenship. The main source of the study is the Fund of the Committee for Municipal Affairs of the Kaunas Governorate No. 1567 kept in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives. The Committee was the principal institution supervising the municipalities in the governorate. It contains the material elaborating on the activities of the local selfgovernment of Ukmergė in a wide variety of aspects: minutes of the meetings of the duma, cases on municipal elections, correspondence for budget formation purposes, documents on taxation and municipal assets, activities of self-government institutions, environmental management, plenty of information of general type on the town and its residents. This highly informative source has not been used for providing the information on the history of Ukmergė to this day. A rather concise but important Ukmergė Municipal Board Fund kept at the Kaunas County Archives was used as well. The study led to the following main conclusions. A small and isolated group of most active and richest townspeople could participate in the self-government of Ukmergė in the manner identical to other towns. In the ninth decade the activities in the municipality were appealing to the noble elite of the region; representatives of the nobility used to chair it. The Municipal Statute and the tsarist administration gave the main priorities of municipal activities to the maintenance of force structures important to the country – the police, military units, prisons. The administrative capacities and funds of the municipality were used for that matter; as a rule, a lump sum from the municipal budget was allocated for that. The governorate’s administration supervised that the public interests were first met; the costs for meeting public interests were compensated from the state budget in extreme cases only. Despite the aforesaid, in the early 20th century the municipality of Ukmergė made education its main priority, established secondary schools and searched for ways to finance them. The priority of education chosen by the municipality of Ukmergė and maintained through its changing terms of office demonstrates the active citizenship of the local elite. In the beginning of the 20th century the municipality of Ukmergė saw the manifestation of the interests of the town community, which gained the clearest form in the field of education. According to the chosen criteria, the traits of citizenship can be singled out in the municipality of Ukmergė. However, it was not consistent and did not manifest to the extent of all members of the municipality but was rather random. The expression of citizenship got more active in the early 20th century when the municipality set the development of education as its priority. Active citizenship apparent in the conduct of certain members of the municipality and an important role of the nobility members in self-government enable us to speak about the tradition of noble citizenship, which was corrected by the elements of citizenship manifest in the 19th century