Territorial identity in Eustachy Tyszkiewicz’s social-political worldview

Eustachy Tyszkiewicz was the most active organiser of cultural life in Lithuania in the middle of the 19th century, its spiritus movens. As has been noted in the latest research, his attitude to social-political life cannot be merely described as conservative – rather, it is positivistic and expresses the approach of the socalled “organic work”. At least from the viewpoint of the assessment of Lithuanian history, cultural phenomena and cultural scene, Tyszkiewicz can definitely be described as a cultural liberal, who defended and expressed a consciously realised multicultural tradition. In this respect he is very close to Czesław Miłosz. Territorial identity plays a very important role in Tyszkiewicz’s social-political views. In general terms, it means identifying oneself with the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (hereinafter referred to as the GDL) from a civilisational viewpoint. In the subjective sense, i.e. in social consciousness, a different Lithuania than the one including the lands of the former GDL basically did not exist in the middle of the 19th century. Both in the Polish and Lithuanian public space – the press, writings, etc., – an image of Lithuania as the territory of the former GDL was predominant. This approach was typical of Tyszkiewicz as well. On the other hand, he distinguished two parts of this territory: “Lithuania proper” and “Slavic Lithuania”. “Lithuania proper” basically coincided with the ethnically defined Lithuania, whose image or idea took shape in the middle of the 19th century. It was called “Lithuania and Samogitia”, “Lithuania proper”, or “Lithuania” (the latter term was the least frequent in the middle of the 19th century, and was basically found only in Lithuanian texts, above all those influenced by the writings of Lithuania Minor).[...]Viešojo administravimo katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta