1919: Memory of Vilnius – memory in Vilnius

Tis article applies the framework of three types of memory – individual, communicative and cultural – as an efective tool for describing the phenomenon of “circulation” of the content of memory in communities of memory. I approach the Polish community in Vilnius, especially the intelligentsia, as a community of memory, and show how the three forms of memory were activated at a particular historical time. I argue that the year 1919 and the time of reviving Vilnius University was crucial for the transfer of the content of communicative memory in general, and family memory in particular, to cultural memory. Te efort to revive the university was directly related to the restoration of cultural memory in the urban landscape of Vilnius. Te person who played the main role in this process was Ferdynand Ruszczyc, the artistic supervisor of revitalisation of university buildings, the author of toponyms and the key fgure of cultural life of the city at the time