Eastern and South-Eastern Lithuania in 1944–1989: administrative territorial reforms and their impact on the ethnic and demographic profile of the region

The paper deals with the administrative territorial reform of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania during the second Sovietisation period. The aims and objectives of party administrative authority as well as the regional characteristics of the changes and their impact on the ethnic and demographic profile of Eastern and South-Eastern Lithuania have been discussed in the paper. During the period under consideration, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic underwent 2 administrative territorial changes: 1) 1944–1953. The changes of this period, even the smallest ones, were sanctioned from Moscow. They led to the creation of smaller administrative territorial units: provinces (at macro level), counties (at mezzo level) and regions with villages and homesteads (at micro level); 2) 1954-1989. During this period party administrative authorities were given more power over the administrative territorial structure. The changes of this period made on the economic and social grounds led to the creation of bigger administrative territorial units (regions and districts). The administrative territorial changes of the first period were implemented by Lithuanian authority as prescribed from Moscow on the economic rather than ethnic grounds: there was a need to strengthen regional economy and formally reduce the number of economically weak collective farms by distributing them across regions. The administrative territorial changes of the second period were implemented on the economic and objective grounds: the boundaries of state farms had to follow the boundaries of the administrative units, rural depopulation was intensifying, urbanisation, industrialization was growing. In Eastern and South-Eastern Lithuania, the administrative territorial reform was implemented as part of the general reform, no regional specificity was characteristic of it. Nevertheless, some administrative territorial changes (in settlement status, developing targeted industry) brought about changes in the demography of the towns and fostered migration. People from neighbouring regions as well as from other republics settled in the towns of Eastern and South Eastern Lithuania, its ethnic structure changed, the Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian minorities became larger