“Go home Belarusian pigs,” the graffiti read, with broken glass strewn on the windowsill and pavement underneath. Scrawled in red paint on the walls of the Kropka gift shop, the words couldn’t have looked more out of place amid the fairytale lanes of Vilnius’s Old Town. Yet when Źmicier Furmanaŭ discovered the damage to the store he co-owns with his wife, he initially felt himself transported — not to a land of knights and maidens, but to the darkest days of the 20th century. “At first it caused us horror,” the bearded, amber-haired Belarusian recalls. “The Nazis did such riots in the Thirties.”
The defacement of Kropka was not an isolated incident. Around the same time, similar graffiti appeared in front of the office of an NGO providing assistance to Belarusian refugees, even as a Belarusian cultural centre in Vilnius was vandalised, and an air gun was fired at a Belarusian Orthodox chapel in the Lithuanian capital, leaving bullet holes in its grill-guarded glass windows. If, however, Furmanaŭ was momentarily terrified as the assault on his shop, recalling the ethnic cleansing and genocide that devoured the Baltics in the Second World War, the former Belarusian political prisoner soon realised what he was really looking at, realising the assault was a “provocation” by the Lukashenko regime.
In April, Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) confirmed what Furmanaŭ had suspected — that this string of incidents had indeed been the work of Putin and his Belarusian stooge Alexander Lukashenko. Yet according to the agency, Belarusian and Russian intelligence services have now gone even further, and had started recruiting individuals to ambush and assault Belarusian students living in Lithuania, and to film themselves carrying out other violent attacks elsewhere in the country.
Three years since the start of the war in Ukraine, and four since the beginning of Lukashenko’s manufactured migration crisis along Belarus’s borders with Nato, such activity might seem hardly surprising. In March, to give one example, Lithuania accused Russia’s GRU of conducting an arson attack on an Ikea in the country. But while these local, socially incendiary, and much less high-profile actions might seem innocuous by comparison, there is much more going on in Vilnius than mere vandalism. Attacks like the one against Kropka are the real-world manifestation of a long-running fight over identity. Increasingly stoked by Moscow and Minsk, it’s now playing out on a potent historical battlefield: the legacy of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The multi-ethnic and pluralistic character of the Grand Duchy, which endured for centuries until its destruction in the late 18th century, has since given rise to a uniquely Eastern European problem. Despite its name, the fact that the state encompassed not only modern Lithuania but all of today’s Belarus means it does not easily fit into the rigid boxes of 20th century nationalism. In a region where history bestows legitimacy, the battle over who owns the inheritance of the Grand Duchy carries implications not just for how Lithuanians and Belarusians see themselves, but what territory they have the right to control.
It is no surprise, then, that this niche corner of history has become fertile soil for geopolitical manipulation by the Kremlin and its allies, whose campaign of hybrid attacks in Vilnius aims to provoke an ethnic conflict between Lithuanians and Belarusians. In this, however, Lithuania is just the tip of the iceberg. Putinist efforts to use history to foment chaos in Vilnius are a hallmark of the Kremlin’s playbook elsewhere in the region, and a means of extending Putin’s soft power at his rivals’ expense. “These attacks are a blow not only to the safety of Belarusians in Lithuania, but also to the trust and unity between communities,” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the head of the Belarusian democratic opposition tells UnHerd. “Attacking its history, its democracy, its role in the EU and Nato — it’s all part of the same imperialist playbook.”
At the core of Putin and Lukashenko’s hybrid warfare lies an ideology called Litvinism, whose most radical fringe claim that modern Lithuanians are in fact a different people entirely than the ones who dominated the Grand Duchy of Lithuania — and that therefore Vilnius should rightfully belong to Belarus. To that end, graffiti with slogans like “Vilnius is ours!” began appearing in the city last year, while in late 2023 a video even surfaced of self-described Litvinists threatening Lithuanian politicians.
“Historical conflict and historical misunderstandings offer very good ground, especially in Eastern Europe for hostility among nations,” says Vadim Vileita, a Lithuanian political scientist and linguist with Belarusian roots. “This situation with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the legacy of this old state is one of the examples of how a common heritage can not unite, but divide nations, especially in difficult geopolitical situations.”
Certainly, the Grand Duchy itself was a place of contradictions. Led by largely pagan Lithuanian leaders, in the 13th century they dramatically expanded the polity’s borders. Soon enough, their borders stretched across modern Poland, Belarus and Ukraine into Russia itself, with many of their subjects Orthodox Slavs. After the Grand Duchy and Poland fell under the sway of the same royal house, in 1386, laying the foundation for the creation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth two centuries later, pagan Lithuanian leaders adopted Roman Catholicism and were crowned as Polish kings. While the Lithuanian language continued to be spoken on the territory of Lithuania proper, the dominant language of literature and administration in the Grand Duchy became Ruthenian, an East Slavic language similar to modern Ukrainian and Belarusian. As if this multicultural maelstrom wasn’t enough, the Lithuanian nobility was increasingly Polonised, even as the country’s laws were drafted in Latin.
None of this would survive the convulsions of nationalism. By 1918, indeed, it would be the Poles who weaponised Litvinism, as they fought to establish the northeastern borders of the Second Polish Republic. In their view, it was Polonised inhabitants of Lithuania, who called themselves Litwini, who were the real heirs of the Grand Duchy — distinct, they claimed, from the Baltic Lithuanians trying to use the mantle of this history to carve out their own modern state. It was under this pretext that Polish General Lucjan Żeligowski captured Vilnius in 1920 and annexed it to the new Polish Republic. Never mind that Żeligowski considered himself to be a Polish Lithuanian, and indeed grew up speaking a dialect of Belarusian.
In its more modern guise, however, it is Belarusians who have assumed the mantle of Litvinism. Though adherents today hold a spectrum of views, the most extreme believers see the modern Lithuanian state as a usurper of the Grand Duchy’s legacy. By extension, that means Belarusians have the right not just to the duchy’s heritage — but also to cities like Vilnius. Just like in the past, these ideas didn’t spread organically. According to Nerijus Maliukevičius, a political scientist at Vilnius University, Litvinism remained “marginal” in Lithuanian discourse until around 2020, when an influx of Belarusians into Lithuania provided Minsk with a chance to sow mischief.
That’s ironic. For though 57,000 Belarusians live in Lithuania, most of them loathe the Lukashenko regime and indeed fled Belarus for their own safety. Yet if few Belarusians have ever even heard of Litvinism, let alone support seizing Vilnius for themselves, that hasn’t stopped Lukashenko from using history to instrumentalise elements of the Belarusian diaspora, alongside other Russian speakers in the country, to carry out his dirty work. It’s unlikely that these saboteurs-for-hire are political hardliners. Rather, they’re mostly cash-strapped individuals eager for work, providing Lukashenko with a fertile base for exploitation. “He’s a huge opportunist, that’s not a surprise,” says Hanna Liubakova, a Vilnius-based dissident who fled Belarus and now serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
As so often, though, history rushes in to complicate things once more. Lukashenko, for his part, is an undiluted product of Soviet Belarus, viewing his country’s history through a distinctly Russian lens. In this Sovietised historiography, Belarusians, as Moscow’s long-lost Slavic brothers, were rescued from oppression first by the Tsar and then by Stalin.
In other words, then, Minsk’s embrace of Litvinism in Lithuania is less an ideological position than a cold, calculated cudgel of realpolitik. Even so, it is precisely Lukashenko’s Soviet heritage that has made connections to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania so appealing in the eyes of many opposition-minded Belarusians, a minority of whom have sometimes embraced Litvinist ideas themselves. Figures like Zianon Pazniak, who fled Belarus out of fear of arrest by Lukashenko in the Nineties, have made statements denouncing the modern Lithuanian state — in their eyes, Litvinism distances Belarus from Russia, but also twists Lithuania into a usurper of stolen Belarusian glory.
As Liubakova says, such people are a small minority in the Belarusian opposition. But as the Litvinist threat continues to rise, Belarusians in Lithuania are increasingly seen as a menace. The Lithuanian state last year revoked the residence permits of around 600 Belarusian on national security grounds, while the country’s spies have increased screenings of Belarusian residents. And while Lithuania’s leaders have largely welcomed the foreigners in their midst, some politicians say it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“We have no problems with Belarusians if Belarusians respect our country,” Laurynas Kasčiūnas, an MP and former defence minister, tells UnHerd. “Not all Belarusians in Lithuania are democratic, we have economic migrants, we have other people who could be used by the regime for different reasons.” Kasčiūnas recently introduced a law that will allow the state to revoke the residency of Russians who travel to Russia or Belarus over three times a month without clear reasons. Though he stresses he doesn’t have the political backing to do so, he tells UnHerd he’d have liked to extend the law to Belarusians living in Lithuania too. Though such moves by the Lithuanian state would potentially make it easier to weed out Belarusians susceptible to Lukashenko’s schemes, they could conceivably also play into his propaganda, making it easier for him to drive a wedge between Lithuanians and Belarusians.
Amid the bickering over Litvinism, meanwhile, Lithuania has much bigger fish to fry. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently wrote a foreword to a book arguing that modern Lithuania is an artificial state built on “pro-Nazi” ideology. According to Lavrov, meanwhile, the Vilnius government has “elevated the use of falsified historical narratives to the rank of state policy to stimulate anti-Russian and Russophobic sentiments.”
Though such narratives are hardly new, it’s hard not to be reminded of Putin’s infamous 2021 essay about Ukraine. Through a selective reading of history, it makes the case that Ukrainian national identity is actually just a Westernised version of Russianness promoted by Nazis, serving as a prelude to his invasion of the country. Lithuania isn’t taking any chances — in addition to unveiling plans for a wholesale evacuation of Vilnius in the event of a Russian invasion, Lithuania is also upgrading its military transport routes to Poland via the strategic Suwałki Gap. Led by Kasčiūnas, lawmakers in parliament have also proposed following Poland’s example and building a line of fortifications along the country’s borders with Russia and Belarus.
Nor, of course, is Lithuania the only place where Russia has combined historical revisionism with hybrid attacks to make a real impact on national politics. Aside from the extreme example of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has also claimed that Moldova is an artificial state bound to Russia, undermining the security of this increasingly pro-Western state. Though the Kremlin has long organised acts of hybrid warfare and spread historical disinformation in Poland, it has yet to combine the two. But just like segments of Lithuania’s Belarusian community, Moscow may eventually encourage Poland’s large Ukrainian population to undermine the state there too, inspired by the bloody legacy of the Second World War. “The genius of this strategy, in a sense, is that you don’t need to artificially create these divisions,” Maliukevičiuss says. “They objectively exist in each society, and you just work hard on them.”
Not that the situation is hopeless. Despite Putin and Lukashenko’s best efforts, and the Lithuanian state’s countermeasures, Belarusians here mostly feel at home. For her part, Liubakova underscores how much Vilnius is doing to support Belarusians at home while putting pressure on Lukashenko’s regime abroad — something Furmanaŭ, the co-owner of Kropka, was “pleasantly surprised” to experience himself. Though the assailants remain mysterious, local politicians expressed full-throated support for the Furmanaŭs in the aftermath of last July’s attack.
Though Litvinism therefore exists on the sidelines of the Belarusian community, both in Lithuania and elsewhere, what many Belarusians ultimately crave is a new perspective on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania — with a historical legacy that can be shared by Belarusians and Lithuanians alike. As Belarusians continue refining their own national self-image, after all, the Grand Duchy not only gives them an anchor to a shared regional past, it also helps them escape the Kremlin’s shadow. Whatever their varied historical grievances, that’s something most Eastern Europeans today can surely understand.
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Author: Michal Kranz
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