April 21, 2022 • 43 mins
When people think of rebellion, they often think of guerilla warfare, rousing speeches and protests. But what about books? When the Russian Empire sought to "Russify" much of what is now Lithuania, the Tsar's forces waged a war against culture, forcing children to learn a Cyrillic alphabet -- and even banning the pre-existing Lithuanian alphabet from printing presses. Native Lithuanians from all walks of life responded by becoming knygnešiaĩ, or book carriers. Tune in to learn how this vast smuggling ring preserved the Lithuanian alphabet, and eventually won the war for a country's hearts and minds.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That is our super producer,
Mr Max Williams. They call me ben fun fact nol Uh.
Neither of us speak the Lithuanian language. It's true. I
did try it for about a half an hour on
(00:47):
duo lingo and I am point o O O one
two three six repeating proficient awesome, dude, congratulations and you
know what which means I can pronounce the word of
the day. That's yeah, Kinnygnatia. Uh, we'll get, we'll get,
We'll get to what this means. We want to shout
out any Lithuanian Ridiculous Historians in the audience today, because
(01:12):
just a little more than a month ago, Lithuania celebrated
something called kyn Ignatia Diana the day of the book Smugglers,
and that's kind of what this episode is about. It's
so interesting the way history works, because yes, the three
of us don't ourselves speak the Lithuanian language with fluency,
(01:32):
but if things have gone just a little bit differently,
nobody would be speaking this language today. And it's there's
an amazing tale of the struggle for literacy and the
struggle for culture here. And I don't know about you guys,
but after I was after I caught up with this
and learned this story, which was totally new to me,
I was gassed. I was inspired. I love nerd fights. Well, yeah,
(01:54):
and I think we're all I mean, we're not. We're
not fans of book bands as a thing. Stories of
book bands are always interesting because it usually points to
a power struggle. Anytime there's like a desire to kind
of tap down on information, it means that some ruling
power is losing their grasp on control. And it's always
(02:16):
an interesting tipping point because, as we know, usually when
you do things like that, like say, oh no, you
can't have these books around anymore, let's burn them all,
there's usually a backlash of some kind or other, and
the one in today's story is particularly interesting and creative. Yes, agreed,
this is crime for the greater good. We hope that
(02:36):
you will agree with that assessment. By the end of
today's story. Let's maybe let's later get the lay of
the lands here, So this has Russia involved during this time,
we're talking about sarist Russia. Russia dominated by the Star system.
They had taken control of a place called Lithuania after
(03:00):
the Commonwealth of Poland. Lithuania was divided in annexed like Prussia, Austria,
and Russia all came in and they split up this
area in sevent If you were living in Lithuania at
this time, the majority of your country fell under the
control of Russia, who had absolutely zero respect for Lithuanians
(03:24):
as a people or culture. Yeah, and we know that.
You know. Oftentimes conquering powers when they take their cut,
they liked the new subjects under their rule to fall
in line with their way of life, which includes, of
course their religion and sarist Russia, I believe would fall
under Russian Orthodoxy, but historically Lithuanians practiced Roman Catholicism. This
(03:47):
was not a good thing in the eyes of their
new rulers. They saw it as a potential threat to
their supremacy. We see this all the time. Any conquering
forces coming in, the first thing they do is try
to convert by force, usually um the people under their
rule to their religion. So that's exactly what Russia did.
(04:09):
The folks in power. They did it very much with
an iron fist by demolishing churches or chapels. Rather, they
also prohibited construction of certain types of shrines, and these
were structures that were all over the place. Apparently they
were around two shrines per kilometer there in Lithuania. And
(04:32):
another thing that happens in these situations, especially when folks
are overtaken by forces, they don't want to do that thing.
It's gonna take a lot to force this and usually
historically takes a very long time and results in a
lot of death and chaos and blood shed. So understandably,
the Lithuanian people wanted to hold onto their own culture,
(04:55):
and they had a university system there, and this is
a very learned people and a lot of scholars specializing
in the study of this religion, their faith in their
history and culture. So these university systems they essentially organized
the students rather organized um along with the clergy, and
(05:16):
they led a pretty violent uprising in eighteen thirty one
against the Russian occupiers. And it was initially a pretty
small scale kind of thing because Lithuania had a very
small population of only around a million people. By the way,
incredible Atlas Obscure article always love their work. If you
(05:39):
want to check out the article by Michael Waters from
July nine, seventeen the nineteenth century Lithuanians who smuggled books
to save their language, sort of giving you a little
bit of a taste of what's to come here. Yeah,
and I want to I want to go back to
this because I'm a big fan of contextualizing history, So
these wayside shrines will familiar to people who are history
(06:02):
buffs in this area. But the best one are the
best comparison that I could think of is Starbucks in
the US. Imagine if Starbucks had religious significance to people,
which they made for some big coffee fans. Imagine if
some foreign power came in and demolished every Starbucks. That's
how common these things were. So this was very much
(06:25):
an attack on this culture, and the resistance went on
for such a long time. We talked about the eighteen
thirty one University student resistance, which stands out because, like
you said, most resistance was operating on a pretty small scale,
and that was kind of an exception. But if you
fast forward about three decades, you see another massive insurrection,
(06:48):
and this is the backlash of This is what leads
to the cracked down on the Lithuanian language itself. The
war shifts to become a war on hearts, minds, culture
and language. I want to shout out the Vintage News
this awesome, awesome article by E. L. Hammington's. In the
nineteenth century, Lithuanians smuggled books in an act of rebellion
(07:09):
against Russian control. Here's what happens before, Here's why these books.
Book smugglers exist. Eighteen sixty three, Like always say, this
is the biggest resistance movement. Sixty six thousand Lithuanians out
of a population of around a million, from all walks
of life, clergy, merchants, surfs, you know, like small scale
(07:32):
agricultural folks. They launch an armed rebellion, and that rebellion
is crushed. Thousands of people are dead, thousands are exiled
to Siberia, which at this time is pretty much a
death sentence as well. And then sorry, Alexander the Second says,
screw you, guys, We're going to crack down on this.
(07:54):
We're going to What they wanted to do is Russia
fi the Lithuanian population real world, to make things more
Russian Russia PI and remove its history. So like you know,
remove the Catholic Church. We want to issue we being sorry,
Alexander the second want to issue temporary rules for state
(08:15):
junior schools of what they called the Northwestern Cry. And
this was a law against children speaking or reading Lithuanian
in school. You could only read Russian. As you can imagine,
this is really difficult for kids who are you know,
already pretty far along in the education process and now
they have to learn a new language. This is uh
(08:37):
and it even gets worse the next year they're like, no,
no Lithuanian language in print. Ever. Yeah, it's just I mean,
you see these kinds of things throughout history and you
wonder it's like, are you're not able to read the room?
I mean, this is not gonna end well like short
of just like app outright genocide, you know, I mean,
it's it's just not very functional. You know, these folks
(08:58):
have their own language, they have their own culture. Short
of just wiping them out and starting from scratch, it's
very uh unlikely. But there's going to be a mass
you know, falling in line and just a wiping the
slate clean of all of this stuff. And this is
how human beings cling to language and culture in history
um is. So it's always them a little bit wondering,
(09:18):
and I guess it's just a matter of when you're
a supreme leader, you guess you can do whatever you
want and no one really questions you, and people just say, yeah,
it's a great idea, that'll totally work. But as we know,
because these small scale, even the big ones, small scale
sixty six thousand, pretty small scale, um compared to the
the Russian military might, you really can't fight the power here.
You have to kind of resort to more creative, kind
(09:41):
of sneaky means. So this ban on the Lithuanian press
was essentially an attempt to completely erase their language and
their culture and replace it with that of of of
Mother Russia. Lithuanian kids were also supposed to attend state
schools where they learned the sur really alphabet, which, by
the way, I mean, despite Russia being a pretty cruel
(10:05):
and uh intense occupier in the situation, I do think
that this relic alphabet is one of the most beautiful
printed languages I've ever seen. It's really really cool looking,
but also I imagine, very very complex and difficult to
learn from scratch. So a lot of historical reports from
the time kind of indicated mainly what I was surprised by,
just that the Russian rulers didn't really think that this
(10:27):
would be that big a deal to institute this span.
It's like, come on, Russians, great, they think they're alphabets
beautiful too. This will be a great opportunity for them
to you know, start a new under, a new uh,
a new culture, and a new language. But like I
also said, and I think everyone probably pretty easily can
see how this is the case. This is not something
(10:48):
they were willing to just give up without a huge fight.
Oh yeah, yeah. It has uh similar assumptions as the
more recent assumptions about in the invasion of you crying.
You can't think that people will just say they have
(11:13):
no nationality or cultural identity because you told them they didn't. Actually,
that's something that people will go to the map for.
Throughout history we see this happen. And the Lithuanian I
guess you can call them the intelligentsia, you know, the
university folks, the clergy, so on. They're not going out
without a fight, and they figure out first they figure
(11:35):
out a loophole, very obvious loophole. Russia is has annexed
and has occupied in this area, so they can prevent
printing presses in this country from making stuff in Lithuanian,
but they can't do anything for books printed in foreign lands.
And so these guys get together and start printing things
(11:58):
in other countries and then they ugle them into Lithuania.
This is the rise of the kenneg Nazi or pardon
my Lithuanian her book carriers would be the translation. They
transported books across the border, and then they functioned as
an underground distribution service to get them to Lithuanian children,
to get them to other cities and villages, and at
(12:21):
first there was a cottage industry. These guys were lone wolves.
They were walking alone, literally carrying books and sacks like
some kind of reading rainbow Santa Claus or. They were
in covered wagons and they had these way stations where
they would drop these books off. Of course, they were
traveling by cover of night, and they were also traveling
(12:43):
when the weather was bad, particularly during winter blizzards, because
that's when guards and Russian authorities would be most likely
to you know, stay in and stay warm. Sure, I
mean it reminds me of like, you know, in in
robin Hood, the Disney cartoon with the cartoon Fox, robin
Hood dresses up as a beggar, you know, to kind
of like be incognito and and and kind of slide
(13:05):
under the radar. That was a big thing they did
as well. Oftentimes women who were smuggling these books dressed
like beggars and they hid these books in sacks of
cheese or eggs or bread, kind of like a bindle situation.
Some even used tool belts and pretended to be workmen
and disguised newspapers under their clothes, like you might be
(13:29):
able to wrap your body, you know, and clothes if
you had like a kind of like layers on, you
wouldn't necessarily notice that there were, you know, printed materials
being concealed underneath. So by around late in the nineteenth century,
everyone was kind of getting in on the game because
this was a way of participating in the preservation of
(13:50):
the Lithuanian culture, which meant a lot to everybody. Again,
the whole layered clothing. They would sometimes pretend to be
overweight by stuffing clothes with these newspapers and books, and
doctors even got it on them by hiding books inside
of their medical bags. We had farmers who were moving around,
you know, grain and things like that and vegetables. Um,
(14:12):
they would hide publications in there as well. Even musicians
would hide things in their in their instrument cases. Yeah,
these are all common tricks for smugglers nowadays. But we
have to realize that these folks weren't coming from a
criminal background. In the vast majority of cases, this was
a life to which they were not acclimated and they
(14:34):
were doing it. Again, I count emphasized this enough for
a greater good. They even set up underground schools. If
the authorities are keeping too much of an eye on
the actual school buildings, then they start teaching in churches
and it holds and they be These book smugglers become
folk heroes. They become a a national symbol. They're the
(14:56):
face of the resistance, and the Russians are deaf infinitely
after them. We want to introduce the guy is a
key figure in this. His name is Bishop multi Laos Valencius.
He had already been an historian for a long time.
He had written a lot of religious and secular works
in Lithuanian and he was sometimes called the greatest Lithuanian
(15:20):
personality in the nineteenth century, which is a very specific award.
He's the guy who made the first large scale attempt
to get these books into the country, and he did
this by me. He was religiously motivated, at least in part.
He wanted to publish more prayer books in the native language,
(15:40):
so he sent some cash to Prussia across the border
to create a printing press, and then in eighteen sixty
seven he got a bunch of priests who were in
Prussia to bring the books back into Lithuania and start
handing him out to locals. He was organizing this and
at first he was just doing Latin reprints of religious text.
(16:04):
Their problem with that, of course, was it was Roman Catholic.
They weigh everything in Russian, hence Cyrillic not Latin. Lithuanian
is in Latin alphabet and or a Latin alphabet and
uh as as stuff grew kind of like a way
nicer version of Walter White and breaking bad, his operation
grew and his ambitions grew in step. So he started
(16:27):
to commission original works, and then he started to get
some of his own works printed out at this press
in Prussia at this press and Prussia and his his
team started moving them across the border. And one thing
that's interesting about this operation is because of the way
it started, because of this bishop. A lot of these
(16:48):
are early smugglers were priests, which is probably not what
they were thinking of when they took their vows, but
they were. They were down to clown Many shore to
the tune of around nineteen thousand books that were printed
in East Prussia and brought back into the country, back
into Lithuania. Eleven of these smugglers are at the very least,
according to the vintage news piece and their research, were caught.
(17:11):
It wasn't necessarily an instant death sentence, but you did
get banished to a little place called Siberia, he might
have heard of, pretty brutal, basically a death sentence, if
not just the most unpleasant long term existence you could
possibly imagine. And we're gonna get more into that and
just a little bit. But despite the dangers um and
(17:34):
in some of the negative outcomes, this movement and this
resistance did grow. Valencius's own, uh you know, kind of
initial group, the Kindnignace started to kind of shoot off
into little splinter groups, uh, And then those sort of
developed into a larger smuggling organization, sort of a network,
(17:57):
and they had uh names such a Stimulus, Rebirth, the Sprout,
the Truth, the Ray of Light Compulsion that's the weird one, uh,
and the morning Star. And they started to import books
from even as far as the US, where there was
a pretty large Lithuanian American expat population who would help
(18:19):
with the printing. Yeah, and these organizations all they kind
of collaborated, but they could also act independently when needed.
So they distributed textbooks, science books, fiction, sermons, folklore, you
name it. They became printing houses almost And yes, this
(18:40):
this was a widespread activity in its glory days, right
at its apex, But that doesn't mean it was easy.
The Lithuanian border was tough to cross. There were three
different lines of Russian security, much more intense than the
Custom Agency would run into a border crossings today. The
first line was a bunch of soldiers along the border
(19:03):
who were purposely distributed really densely so that they could
see each other. They were like line of sight with
each other. And then if you made it past that line,
there was another row of soldiers a little less intense,
spread further out, and then the last line of defense.
That third line was the Russian Empire police officers. They
(19:23):
rode around on horseback and they had a network of
local informants who I think, we're very unethical people. If
you got caught, you would get first off, you would
get tied to a post and they would whip the
snot out of you. This is not like a fun
birthday spanking. This kind of stuff leaves scars for the
rest of your life. And then you were either imprisoned
(19:46):
and maybe in Lithuania, or you were sent to Siberia.
And if you tried to run, like if you somehow
had a high enough constitution role to get back on
your feet after you get whipped and then make a
go for it, they would just shoot you in the back. Uh.
They burned the Russian soldiers, that is, they burned every
single book or journal that they found on the smugglers.
(20:09):
We know that the number of smugglers caught and transported
to Siberia or shot or imprisoned, it's kind of lost
to history. The first major arrest was sometime in either
eighteen seventy or eighteen seventy one. Russian forces caught and
sentenced eleven members of Valentius crew. They were eight of them,
(20:34):
five priests of farmer and even a noble were sent
to Siberia and the operation was compromised. So just a
few years later, in eighteen seventy five, he died. But
in the words of che ga Vera, it's like, shoot, fool,
you were only killing a man because his mission continued
(20:56):
well after his death, thanks to his thanks to his mentee,
his disciple, and that I mean, honestly, ben that's that
quote sums up this whole situation. You know, you just
can't do what the Russians are trying to do without
the most draconian measures, like literally genocide. Human beings are
going to cling on to the things that that they
(21:19):
give them, uh, identity, uh. And this stuff is very
deeply ingrained through generation. So I mean, yeah, it's absolutely true.
And so it's sort of like a losing battle on
the Russian side, But boy did they continue to try.
But to your point, ben, Um, this message and this
you know struggle, this uh cause did continue and the
(21:40):
leadership was passed on to somebody else. Valencia's basically had
a successor sort of already in place a guy named
Urgus Bielini's, who is a Lithuanian nationalist whose father was
a very um intense political activist, and so he kind
of followed in his father's footsteps there and was ready
(22:03):
to go. Biolini's met Valencius in eighteen seventy three, after
Billinus graduated from a university in Latvia and Riga, Latvia,
and by that point this resistance we've been talking about
was already happening in a big way, and he was
of course very ardently in favor of a Lithuanian culture
(22:25):
and identity and those things not being wiped away by Russia.
So he and Valencius really hit it off. They kind
of formed a pact essentially that they were going to
band together um and continue this preservation of the culture
and the language that they both loved and felt was very,
very very important to continue. And he was adamant in
(22:49):
this cause. He said that he would not rest until quote,
the Muscovites got out of Lithuania. That's what led him
to create the Garsha ken Ignashi Society in eighteen five.
This would become the largest smuggling operation of its type
in the country and he was given the unofficial title
(23:12):
the King of the Book Carriers, which is no, yeah,
you know what, I think it is cooler than Wallace
Stevenson's Emperor of ice Cream. So that's a great poem.
But by the way, muscow By just refers to people
native to Moscow. Yeah. So basically he was saying he
was gonna do whatever it took. He was going to
continue in this cause until every last Russian was gone,
(23:33):
which was not something that was very much in the
car and so basically saying almost it was almost as
if to say until I die. Yeah. And so members
of the society created Soon there were thousands of them.
This was by far the biggest organization and it had
the power of the people because they crowdsourced money to
get books from these publishers in Prussia, and then they
(23:55):
started a subscription service. How cool is this You could
put some money in for the cause, right, and instead
of just like buying guns or something for hopelessly outnumbered militia,
by the way, you are buying books. And this guy
is credited with smuggling. Get this, folks, Nearly half of
(24:15):
all the books brought into Lithuania from East Prussia during
this time, he even was smuggling to Lithuania's living in Latvia.
The heat was on. The Russian authorities were hip to
this guy, and by the eighteen nineties they put out
a bounty on him. This is like the most militant
reading rainbow ever and there were several man hunts. He
(24:38):
was able to evade capture for a long time because
literally everybody except for Russians and turn Coats are on
his side. Again, we have to emphasize these folks aren't criminals.
They're doing an act that has become criminalized by a
foreign power. And at the turn of the century, while
(25:01):
he is on the run, mind you, how badass is this?
He created a Lithuanian newspaper and if you got a subscription,
he would just deliver it to you regularly. It was
called the White Eagle. It was printed on one of
the only press is active in Lithuania at the time,
and he brought it in from Prussia. That's why I
(25:22):
think is so cool. He said, why are we just
smuggling books? I want to smuggle in an actual printing press.
We're not sure exactly how he was able to pull
this off, but he got it past those three lines,
and he was also able to get the supplies you
need to run a printing press. And then he taught
a dot another smuggler, a guy named Stepanus Povlionis, to
(25:46):
work a printing press. I mean, I am, I am
imprinting pressed with these kids. Yeah, it's pretty incredible because
it's kid man I like that. But you know what
I mean, think about it. A sprinting press is like
a massive operation, a massive piece of machinery so to smuggling,
and it would have had to come in and pieces
and then be assembled. I mean, this is like difficult
(26:08):
stuff that you can't just kind of intuitively figure out.
But they worked out all the logistics and they made
it happen. Um So, I don't know if we mentioned,
but Bielinas came from a lower class background. He was
a peasant and through his own you know, blood, sweat
and tears and effort, he kind of ascended to the
position of an intellectual. And this atics obscure article very
(26:32):
apthlete describes him as a defender of the Lithuanian language.
But this was something that was not the most out
of the ordinary thing. Under these extraordinary circumstances of the time,
because the Russian Empire had abolished serfdom in the early
eighteen sixties, and therefore there was this kind of new
class that emerged, a class known as peasant intellectuals that
(26:56):
kind of begun to take shape because if you weren't
just constantly having to work the land as a surf
it kind of freed up some bandwidth, like read and
educate yourself and become something different than just a run
of the mill, you know, manual laborer. Uh So this
became almost an unanticipated outcome of Russia taking that action,
(27:19):
you know, getting rid of the surf class. They kind
of created the groundwork for their own overthrow, at least
in terms of um, the spread of anti Russia information
and and the idea of being able to kind of
preserve the culture of these invaded people. So there's a person,
a writer named Zigmantis Kiopa who wrote a book called
(27:42):
the History of Lithuania UM. He described this class as
the most faithful users of the Lithuanian language and largely
occupying the majority of this you know, book smuggling kind
of contingent. Yeah, Like s of the smugglers were peasants,
And I do want to amend the Russian Empire. When
(28:04):
they were putting out their man hunts for Bullinias, they
caught him five times. He just kept getting away because again,
everybody who actually is Lithuaitian is on his side. The
Robin Hood example is pretty spot on there. So it's
(28:25):
the late eighteen hundreds. Now these guys are getting creative.
Some people are even getting the Russian police to help them.
The head officer of Ario Gala, they're in Central Lithuania,
joins the smuggling conspiracy. That's really what it is, all
smuggling as a conspiracy in and then other people are saying, hey,
(28:47):
there's some loopholes in this press band because if we
print stuff on slabs of clay, they're not considered books,
so they're not technically illegal. We're going to old school
with it. We mentioned the Sea grid schools, right. We
didn't mention how this is tough on the kids though,
because imagine you're a kid. Your parents are basically telling you, look,
(29:10):
now you have two schools. You have the fake school
you have to go to for these Russian jerks, and
then you go to real school at night, and your
neighbor's house and that's where your actual education is going
to happen, So you know, look like you're paying attention
during the day, but don't stress about it, don't try
so we can only imagine how many kids funked. Well,
(29:33):
you say that, and I think there's probably some truth
to that, and I know you're joking, but also, like,
isn't it such a privilege that Americans have We speak
the English, we learn a second language kind of almost
as like a luxury or like as like sort of
like an elective, you know, in school. I know, anytime
I've traveled abroad, it is just like understood nearly that
(29:56):
just about everyone speaks English because it is something that
is just taught and it is a necessity for business
in many ways. But you know, we are so privileged
in you know, it's just not nearly as common for
Americans to like speak multiple languages. But I've bet a
lot of these kids probably did learn Russian pretty well
in addition to Lithuanian and had to kind of like
(30:17):
hide it because honestly, I bet ben if they were flunking,
that would be a bad look, and I bet it
might come back to visit the parents, you know, if
the kids weren't doing well. Yeah, if all, if all
the kids in class were funking, that would be sus.
But you know, to that point they were because this
is Europe, there were probably already a lot of kids
who were bilingual to some degree in Russian or maybe
(30:39):
another language in that area. And yes, of course, the
idea of a secondary extracurricular program after school is still
pretty common throughout the world. Like a lot of Japanese
American kids here in the US go to Japanese school
on the weekends, you know, and it's totally separate from
whatever school they're going to for grade school through high school.
(31:01):
But they're not forced to do this by a state power,
you know. And I think that's one of the big distinctions.
So now we have to ask how many books did
the Russian forces at this time actually burn or actually confiscate.
We know that in one decade to one they confiscated
(31:22):
well over a hundred and seventy three thousand different publications,
and we don't know how many books were actually printed
and smuggled, because we only know the ones that were
caught as a result of the illegality of the operation.
You wouldn't want to keep a tally that could be
easily found by the authorities, because that would be a
(31:43):
tremendous boon to them. The confiscation rate skyrocketed over the
next few years, nights, you know, one to oh four.
And this is why you'll see historians like the one
we referenced earlier saying, if they had to guess, there
could have been millions of smuggled books. Virtually every town
(32:04):
in village had their own treasure trove of illegal books,
as well as a secret Lithuaitian school. And if you
want kids to think school is cool as lame in
ess that sounds, tell them it's secret. People love secrets, man,
And uh, we know that more and more people were
(32:27):
engaging in this conspiracy towards the height of it. It
was kind of like the Hydra organization in Marvel comics
and Marvel films, because anybody could be Hydra and you
didn't really know until they leaned in and whispered, like
hell Hydra. So you would see widows, farmers, doctors, musicians,
like organists, traveling salesman. You know, they would just be
(32:50):
their regular Lithuaitian selves until they leaned in and said,
I've got some bocks. That was like their hale Hydra moment,
and I think that is awesome. But then we see
more secret newspapers, more and more people are rallying against
this idea of Russification. As you can tell, fellow ridiculous historians,
Russification is not going well. It might look okay to
(33:12):
this are on paper, but it's it's not working. People
start organizing music, will get togethers secret plays about how
awesome Lithuanian culture and languages, and then they start having
these things they called picnics, which look like you know,
regular picnics until you hear what people are saying. It's
all about the rebirth of the Lithuanian state or the
(33:36):
resistance against the what they saw as the evil empire
of Russia. So this is inspiring stuff, and it I
think eventually at some point, if we take the Russian perspective,
you're gonna have to say, how long are we gonna
keep up this band, especially if it's not working. You know,
(33:56):
we got like hundreds of soldiers on the border and
they're obviously not great at this. Yeah. Look, I mean
it kind of reminds me of like what happened with
the Berlin Wall for example. You know, where you had
Russia realizing that it was too expensive to maintain that
segregation between East and West Berlin, and to maintain that
(34:16):
iron grasp over information and controlling information and keeping tabs
on everybody and all of these operations, they just balloon
out of control. Um. It just seems like historically Russia
has a history of biting off a little more than
they can chew in the pursuit of ideology. What do
you think about that? Then? Well, it's tough because these
are very very different versions of Russia. That's why I'm
(34:40):
pointing out the thematic commonality of underestimation, you know, with
with Ukraine. Me when I say earlier and I agree,
you know, society should not hold the current government of
Russia responsible for the actions of Sarrost Russia. It's very
very different, but for sure. But yeah, there's there's a
fail earlier to uh, to really understand the vibe here
(35:04):
and the war or the objections. The resistance against this
band is being fought in legal channels too. It's not
all just books smuggling, although that's probably the coolest part
of the story. People were organizing actual petitions to the
Russian Empire and the Russian government would receive these requests
that would say, you know, stuff like we the people
(35:25):
of this village or some sort of constituency, would like
to end the ban on the Lithuanian language. We're just
asking you through legal channels, and eventually the tide turns,
not in Lithuania, but in Russia. Russian intellectuals are saying,
what's the point of this band? We didn't really define it.
(35:47):
People are still writing and speaking and reading in Lithuanian.
They're just using clay tablets because whoever wrote this law
didn't understand how to define stuff. The Council of Ministers
in Russia says, okay, this is officially a failure. Nineteen
o four, they retire the band they ended. They're trying
(36:10):
to reconcile with military groups because something else is happening.
They need more support from anything affiliated with the Russian
Empire because they're in the Russian Japanese War. But it's
too little, too late. Lithuanians are not having it, you
know what I mean. And our guy here bilinists. He
(36:30):
starts talking more and more about being fully independent from Russia.
He becomes like, you know, we we kind of say
it was always an ardent nationalist. Now he is like
a spokesman for Lithuania, and he is one of the
driving forces for the active independence of Lithuania in February
nineteen eighteen. Unfortunately, and this is one of the sad
(36:55):
ironies that happens so often in history, he passed away
eight the month before he died in January eighteen, before
he saw the legislation he had fought so hard for
come to pass. But then, on a lighter note, imagine
you're a book smuggler. Imagine you're one of the teachers,
(37:17):
remember the clergy, and he got all these books, all
these secret cool books, and now the book ban is lifted.
Your book rich What are you gonna do? Do people
still want books? I don't know. How do you move
all these books? You got like a hundred copies of
I don't know, you've got a hundred copies of the
New Testament in Lithuanian or in Latin or whatever. What
(37:37):
do you do? Well? Uh, you could open a bookshop. Hey,
that'd be cool. And not only would it just be
a bookshop, you know with all this inventory, I mean,
it's essentially an incredible foundation to start a long lasting
legacy historical bookshop, and this place exists. In nineteen o five,
right after the band was lifted, one of the bugglers,
(38:00):
a dude named Joossis massi ulis Um, opened such a
store in Ponnisis. And again apologies for butchering these pronunciations.
And it's still open today and it is actually part
of a chain of bookstores um that have since sprung
up in Lithuania under the same name. So in to
(38:22):
further honor the legacy of this period, statue was built
in the capital at the time was the capital of Kawanas,
and that was to commemorate the placard read the unknown
book Smuggler, more of like a symbolic thing to talk
about the people who we will never know their names
because we only really have a handful of figures because,
like you said, Ben, the record keeping was a little wonky.
(38:44):
So cool. So today in Lithuania, March sixteenth is the
birthday of Urgus bielinis Um and it is celebrated as
Kei Ignestio Dianna, which is translated to the day of
the book Smugglers or carriers, depending on um your preference. Um, yeah, um,
(39:06):
pretty big deal. Yeah, that's why we opened with this,
So a happy day of the book smugglers. Happy belated
KIGSI Dania to all who celebrate. I think I don't
know but you guys, but I'm celebrating this now. I
think saving things through the power of literacy is awesome.
That's one of the reasons that people like me end
up in things like podcasts. At this point, maybe we
(39:28):
give the last word to Jonas step Sish, who talked
about his father and his uncle as book smugglers. He
says smuggling is the reason, or one of the primary reasons,
Lithuania was able to regain independence when he writes, the
struggles of the book carriers have been praised in modern
times by people like father you Willonius Casperavicius, who said
(39:52):
the work of restoring Lithuania's independence began not in eight
nineteen eighteen, when it declared itself a state, but rather
the time of the book carriers, with bundles of books
and pamphlets on their backs. These warriors were the first
to start preparing the ground for independence, the first to
propagate the idea that it was imperative to throw off
the yoke of Russian oppression. So pretty cool. And also,
(40:17):
you know, kudos Tsarist Russia because there miscalculation about banning
a language in a very real way set the dominoes toppling, right,
That's what led to Lithuania's ultimate independence. I think it's
a cool lesson. I know we went a little bit
long on this one, but we hope you enjoyed it
as well, folks, and we can't wait to hear from you.
(40:40):
What are some other awesome acts of literacy as rebellion
or literacy as resistance? I would say the still yaga
are up there. Music literacy is the same as print literacy,
and there are a lot of examples about these. Can't
wait to hear about them. Yeah, you can hit us
up on the internet. Were ridiculous historians on Facebook. That's
(41:03):
the name of our Facebook group. A lot of good
meme activity and chatter there around the shows that we
do every week. You can also find Ben and I
as individual human people on the Internet. I am pretty
much exclusively on Instagram, where you can find me at
how now Noel Brown, Mr Boland about yourself? Well, Mr Brown,
fellow ridiculous historians, you can indeed find me on the internet.
(41:26):
The rumors are true. I've got a lot of exciting
stuff coming up that I can't yet announce on air,
But get in on the ground floor. Follow me at
ben Bowling b O W l I N on Instagram.
You can also find me on Twitter where I'm at
ben Bowling hs W. That's a great place to send
suggestions for episodes and questions. Great place to send terrible puns.
(41:47):
I love them. Hashtag no pun left behind bonus. If
you're on Twitter, you may also catch the one and
only Mr Max Williams. Yes it is I, Mr Max Williams.
You can find me on Twitter at at He'll underscore
Max Williams where you'll see all my fun interests and
stuff and Max may end up also throwing us for
(42:07):
a curl ball and then your future not a curveball.
That's no other spoilers, but it's curling reference right. No.
Spoiling was a big one with the smooth stone used
to move around ice thingies bucks. What do you call it?
MACI give us the skinny rocks. They are rocks, throwing rocks,
(42:30):
throwing rocks with Max Williams on the curling field of
play on the sheet of ice. Yeah, yes, the sheet
device of course, how could I be so foolish? Yes,
still brooms and there there are that didn't totally didn't
totally cripple the spoilers. So yeah, just stay tuned on that.
I'm sticking with the curlball thing. Yeah, thanks to Mr
(42:51):
Matt Williams. Thanks to Casey pegroove. I looked at my
old Casey on the case T shirt. Man, it's still
it's still a good idea classic shirt, classic Shure vintage
at this point. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
(43:13):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That is our super producer,
Mr Max Williams. They call me ben fun fact nol Uh.
Neither of us speak the Lithuanian language. It's true. I
did try it for about a half an hour on
(00:47):
duo lingo and I am point o O O one
two three six repeating proficient awesome, dude, congratulations and you
know what which means I can pronounce the word of
the day. That's yeah, Kinnygnatia. Uh, we'll get, we'll get,
We'll get to what this means. We want to shout
out any Lithuanian Ridiculous Historians in the audience today, because
(01:12):
just a little more than a month ago, Lithuania celebrated
something called kyn Ignatia Diana the day of the book Smugglers,
and that's kind of what this episode is about. It's
so interesting the way history works, because yes, the three
of us don't ourselves speak the Lithuanian language with fluency,
(01:32):
but if things have gone just a little bit differently,
nobody would be speaking this language today. And it's there's
an amazing tale of the struggle for literacy and the
struggle for culture here. And I don't know about you guys,
but after I was after I caught up with this
and learned this story, which was totally new to me,
I was gassed. I was inspired. I love nerd fights. Well, yeah,
(01:54):
and I think we're all I mean, we're not. We're
not fans of book bands as a thing. Stories of
book bands are always interesting because it usually points to
a power struggle. Anytime there's like a desire to kind
of tap down on information, it means that some ruling
power is losing their grasp on control. And it's always
(02:16):
an interesting tipping point because, as we know, usually when
you do things like that, like say, oh no, you
can't have these books around anymore, let's burn them all,
there's usually a backlash of some kind or other, and
the one in today's story is particularly interesting and creative. Yes, agreed,
this is crime for the greater good. We hope that
(02:36):
you will agree with that assessment. By the end of
today's story. Let's maybe let's later get the lay of
the lands here, So this has Russia involved during this time,
we're talking about sarist Russia. Russia dominated by the Star system.
They had taken control of a place called Lithuania after
(03:00):
the Commonwealth of Poland. Lithuania was divided in annexed like Prussia, Austria,
and Russia all came in and they split up this
area in sevent If you were living in Lithuania at
this time, the majority of your country fell under the
control of Russia, who had absolutely zero respect for Lithuanians
(03:24):
as a people or culture. Yeah, and we know that.
You know. Oftentimes conquering powers when they take their cut,
they liked the new subjects under their rule to fall
in line with their way of life, which includes, of
course their religion and sarist Russia, I believe would fall
under Russian Orthodoxy, but historically Lithuanians practiced Roman Catholicism. This
(03:47):
was not a good thing in the eyes of their
new rulers. They saw it as a potential threat to
their supremacy. We see this all the time. Any conquering
forces coming in, the first thing they do is try
to convert by force, usually um the people under their
rule to their religion. So that's exactly what Russia did.
(04:09):
The folks in power. They did it very much with
an iron fist by demolishing churches or chapels. Rather, they
also prohibited construction of certain types of shrines, and these
were structures that were all over the place. Apparently they
were around two shrines per kilometer there in Lithuania. And
(04:32):
another thing that happens in these situations, especially when folks
are overtaken by forces, they don't want to do that thing.
It's gonna take a lot to force this and usually
historically takes a very long time and results in a
lot of death and chaos and blood shed. So understandably,
the Lithuanian people wanted to hold onto their own culture,
(04:55):
and they had a university system there, and this is
a very learned people and a lot of scholars specializing
in the study of this religion, their faith in their
history and culture. So these university systems they essentially organized
the students rather organized um along with the clergy, and
(05:16):
they led a pretty violent uprising in eighteen thirty one
against the Russian occupiers. And it was initially a pretty
small scale kind of thing because Lithuania had a very
small population of only around a million people. By the way,
incredible Atlas Obscure article always love their work. If you
(05:39):
want to check out the article by Michael Waters from
July nine, seventeen the nineteenth century Lithuanians who smuggled books
to save their language, sort of giving you a little
bit of a taste of what's to come here. Yeah,
and I want to I want to go back to
this because I'm a big fan of contextualizing history, So
these wayside shrines will familiar to people who are history
(06:02):
buffs in this area. But the best one are the
best comparison that I could think of is Starbucks in
the US. Imagine if Starbucks had religious significance to people,
which they made for some big coffee fans. Imagine if
some foreign power came in and demolished every Starbucks. That's
how common these things were. So this was very much
(06:25):
an attack on this culture, and the resistance went on
for such a long time. We talked about the eighteen
thirty one University student resistance, which stands out because, like
you said, most resistance was operating on a pretty small scale,
and that was kind of an exception. But if you
fast forward about three decades, you see another massive insurrection,
(06:48):
and this is the backlash of This is what leads
to the cracked down on the Lithuanian language itself. The
war shifts to become a war on hearts, minds, culture
and language. I want to shout out the Vintage News
this awesome, awesome article by E. L. Hammington's. In the
nineteenth century, Lithuanians smuggled books in an act of rebellion
(07:09):
against Russian control. Here's what happens before, Here's why these books.
Book smugglers exist. Eighteen sixty three, Like always say, this
is the biggest resistance movement. Sixty six thousand Lithuanians out
of a population of around a million, from all walks
of life, clergy, merchants, surfs, you know, like small scale
(07:32):
agricultural folks. They launch an armed rebellion, and that rebellion
is crushed. Thousands of people are dead, thousands are exiled
to Siberia, which at this time is pretty much a
death sentence as well. And then sorry, Alexander the Second says,
screw you, guys, We're going to crack down on this.
(07:54):
We're going to What they wanted to do is Russia
fi the Lithuanian population real world, to make things more
Russian Russia PI and remove its history. So like you know,
remove the Catholic Church. We want to issue we being sorry,
Alexander the second want to issue temporary rules for state
(08:15):
junior schools of what they called the Northwestern Cry. And
this was a law against children speaking or reading Lithuanian
in school. You could only read Russian. As you can imagine,
this is really difficult for kids who are you know,
already pretty far along in the education process and now
they have to learn a new language. This is uh
(08:37):
and it even gets worse the next year they're like, no,
no Lithuanian language in print. Ever. Yeah, it's just I mean,
you see these kinds of things throughout history and you
wonder it's like, are you're not able to read the room?
I mean, this is not gonna end well like short
of just like app outright genocide, you know, I mean,
it's it's just not very functional. You know, these folks
(08:58):
have their own language, they have their own culture. Short
of just wiping them out and starting from scratch, it's
very uh unlikely. But there's going to be a mass
you know, falling in line and just a wiping the
slate clean of all of this stuff. And this is
how human beings cling to language and culture in history
um is. So it's always them a little bit wondering,
(09:18):
and I guess it's just a matter of when you're
a supreme leader, you guess you can do whatever you
want and no one really questions you, and people just say, yeah,
it's a great idea, that'll totally work. But as we know,
because these small scale, even the big ones, small scale
sixty six thousand, pretty small scale, um compared to the
the Russian military might, you really can't fight the power here.
You have to kind of resort to more creative, kind
(09:41):
of sneaky means. So this ban on the Lithuanian press
was essentially an attempt to completely erase their language and
their culture and replace it with that of of of
Mother Russia. Lithuanian kids were also supposed to attend state
schools where they learned the sur really alphabet, which, by
the way, I mean, despite Russia being a pretty cruel
(10:05):
and uh intense occupier in the situation, I do think
that this relic alphabet is one of the most beautiful
printed languages I've ever seen. It's really really cool looking,
but also I imagine, very very complex and difficult to
learn from scratch. So a lot of historical reports from
the time kind of indicated mainly what I was surprised by,
just that the Russian rulers didn't really think that this
(10:27):
would be that big a deal to institute this span.
It's like, come on, Russians, great, they think they're alphabets
beautiful too. This will be a great opportunity for them
to you know, start a new under, a new uh,
a new culture, and a new language. But like I
also said, and I think everyone probably pretty easily can
see how this is the case. This is not something
(10:48):
they were willing to just give up without a huge fight.
Oh yeah, yeah. It has uh similar assumptions as the
more recent assumptions about in the invasion of you crying.
You can't think that people will just say they have
(11:13):
no nationality or cultural identity because you told them they didn't. Actually,
that's something that people will go to the map for.
Throughout history we see this happen. And the Lithuanian I
guess you can call them the intelligentsia, you know, the
university folks, the clergy, so on. They're not going out
without a fight, and they figure out first they figure
(11:35):
out a loophole, very obvious loophole. Russia is has annexed
and has occupied in this area, so they can prevent
printing presses in this country from making stuff in Lithuanian,
but they can't do anything for books printed in foreign lands.
And so these guys get together and start printing things
(11:58):
in other countries and then they ugle them into Lithuania.
This is the rise of the kenneg Nazi or pardon
my Lithuanian her book carriers would be the translation. They
transported books across the border, and then they functioned as
an underground distribution service to get them to Lithuanian children,
to get them to other cities and villages, and at
(12:21):
first there was a cottage industry. These guys were lone wolves.
They were walking alone, literally carrying books and sacks like
some kind of reading rainbow Santa Claus or. They were
in covered wagons and they had these way stations where
they would drop these books off. Of course, they were
traveling by cover of night, and they were also traveling
(12:43):
when the weather was bad, particularly during winter blizzards, because
that's when guards and Russian authorities would be most likely
to you know, stay in and stay warm. Sure, I
mean it reminds me of like, you know, in in
robin Hood, the Disney cartoon with the cartoon Fox, robin
Hood dresses up as a beggar, you know, to kind
of like be incognito and and and kind of slide
(13:05):
under the radar. That was a big thing they did
as well. Oftentimes women who were smuggling these books dressed
like beggars and they hid these books in sacks of
cheese or eggs or bread, kind of like a bindle situation.
Some even used tool belts and pretended to be workmen
and disguised newspapers under their clothes, like you might be
(13:29):
able to wrap your body, you know, and clothes if
you had like a kind of like layers on, you
wouldn't necessarily notice that there were, you know, printed materials
being concealed underneath. So by around late in the nineteenth century,
everyone was kind of getting in on the game because
this was a way of participating in the preservation of
(13:50):
the Lithuanian culture, which meant a lot to everybody. Again,
the whole layered clothing. They would sometimes pretend to be
overweight by stuffing clothes with these newspapers and books, and
doctors even got it on them by hiding books inside
of their medical bags. We had farmers who were moving around,
you know, grain and things like that and vegetables. Um,
(14:12):
they would hide publications in there as well. Even musicians
would hide things in their in their instrument cases. Yeah,
these are all common tricks for smugglers nowadays. But we
have to realize that these folks weren't coming from a
criminal background. In the vast majority of cases, this was
a life to which they were not acclimated and they
(14:34):
were doing it. Again, I count emphasized this enough for
a greater good. They even set up underground schools. If
the authorities are keeping too much of an eye on
the actual school buildings, then they start teaching in churches
and it holds and they be These book smugglers become
folk heroes. They become a a national symbol. They're the
(14:56):
face of the resistance, and the Russians are deaf infinitely
after them. We want to introduce the guy is a
key figure in this. His name is Bishop multi Laos Valencius.
He had already been an historian for a long time.
He had written a lot of religious and secular works
in Lithuanian and he was sometimes called the greatest Lithuanian
(15:20):
personality in the nineteenth century, which is a very specific award.
He's the guy who made the first large scale attempt
to get these books into the country, and he did
this by me. He was religiously motivated, at least in part.
He wanted to publish more prayer books in the native language,
(15:40):
so he sent some cash to Prussia across the border
to create a printing press, and then in eighteen sixty
seven he got a bunch of priests who were in
Prussia to bring the books back into Lithuania and start
handing him out to locals. He was organizing this and
at first he was just doing Latin reprints of religious text.
(16:04):
Their problem with that, of course, was it was Roman Catholic.
They weigh everything in Russian, hence Cyrillic not Latin. Lithuanian
is in Latin alphabet and or a Latin alphabet and
uh as as stuff grew kind of like a way
nicer version of Walter White and breaking bad, his operation
grew and his ambitions grew in step. So he started
(16:27):
to commission original works, and then he started to get
some of his own works printed out at this press
in Prussia at this press and Prussia and his his
team started moving them across the border. And one thing
that's interesting about this operation is because of the way
it started, because of this bishop. A lot of these
(16:48):
are early smugglers were priests, which is probably not what
they were thinking of when they took their vows, but
they were. They were down to clown Many shore to
the tune of around nineteen thousand books that were printed
in East Prussia and brought back into the country, back
into Lithuania. Eleven of these smugglers are at the very least,
according to the vintage news piece and their research, were caught.
(17:11):
It wasn't necessarily an instant death sentence, but you did
get banished to a little place called Siberia, he might
have heard of, pretty brutal, basically a death sentence, if
not just the most unpleasant long term existence you could
possibly imagine. And we're gonna get more into that and
just a little bit. But despite the dangers um and
(17:34):
in some of the negative outcomes, this movement and this
resistance did grow. Valencius's own, uh you know, kind of
initial group, the Kindnignace started to kind of shoot off
into little splinter groups, uh, And then those sort of
developed into a larger smuggling organization, sort of a network,
(17:57):
and they had uh names such a Stimulus, Rebirth, the Sprout,
the Truth, the Ray of Light Compulsion that's the weird one, uh,
and the morning Star. And they started to import books
from even as far as the US, where there was
a pretty large Lithuanian American expat population who would help
(18:19):
with the printing. Yeah, and these organizations all they kind
of collaborated, but they could also act independently when needed.
So they distributed textbooks, science books, fiction, sermons, folklore, you
name it. They became printing houses almost And yes, this
(18:40):
this was a widespread activity in its glory days, right
at its apex, But that doesn't mean it was easy.
The Lithuanian border was tough to cross. There were three
different lines of Russian security, much more intense than the
Custom Agency would run into a border crossings today. The
first line was a bunch of soldiers along the border
(19:03):
who were purposely distributed really densely so that they could
see each other. They were like line of sight with
each other. And then if you made it past that line,
there was another row of soldiers a little less intense,
spread further out, and then the last line of defense.
That third line was the Russian Empire police officers. They
(19:23):
rode around on horseback and they had a network of
local informants who I think, we're very unethical people. If
you got caught, you would get first off, you would
get tied to a post and they would whip the
snot out of you. This is not like a fun
birthday spanking. This kind of stuff leaves scars for the
rest of your life. And then you were either imprisoned
(19:46):
and maybe in Lithuania, or you were sent to Siberia.
And if you tried to run, like if you somehow
had a high enough constitution role to get back on
your feet after you get whipped and then make a
go for it, they would just shoot you in the back. Uh.
They burned the Russian soldiers, that is, they burned every
single book or journal that they found on the smugglers.
(20:09):
We know that the number of smugglers caught and transported
to Siberia or shot or imprisoned, it's kind of lost
to history. The first major arrest was sometime in either
eighteen seventy or eighteen seventy one. Russian forces caught and
sentenced eleven members of Valentius crew. They were eight of them,
(20:34):
five priests of farmer and even a noble were sent
to Siberia and the operation was compromised. So just a
few years later, in eighteen seventy five, he died. But
in the words of che ga Vera, it's like, shoot, fool,
you were only killing a man because his mission continued
(20:56):
well after his death, thanks to his thanks to his mentee,
his disciple, and that I mean, honestly, ben that's that
quote sums up this whole situation. You know, you just
can't do what the Russians are trying to do without
the most draconian measures, like literally genocide. Human beings are
going to cling on to the things that that they
(21:19):
give them, uh, identity, uh. And this stuff is very
deeply ingrained through generation. So I mean, yeah, it's absolutely true.
And so it's sort of like a losing battle on
the Russian side, But boy did they continue to try.
But to your point, ben, Um, this message and this
you know struggle, this uh cause did continue and the
(21:40):
leadership was passed on to somebody else. Valencia's basically had
a successor sort of already in place a guy named
Urgus Bielini's, who is a Lithuanian nationalist whose father was
a very um intense political activist, and so he kind
of followed in his father's footsteps there and was ready
(22:03):
to go. Biolini's met Valencius in eighteen seventy three, after
Billinus graduated from a university in Latvia and Riga, Latvia,
and by that point this resistance we've been talking about
was already happening in a big way, and he was
of course very ardently in favor of a Lithuanian culture
(22:25):
and identity and those things not being wiped away by Russia.
So he and Valencius really hit it off. They kind
of formed a pact essentially that they were going to
band together um and continue this preservation of the culture
and the language that they both loved and felt was very,
very very important to continue. And he was adamant in
(22:49):
this cause. He said that he would not rest until quote,
the Muscovites got out of Lithuania. That's what led him
to create the Garsha ken Ignashi Society in eighteen five.
This would become the largest smuggling operation of its type
in the country and he was given the unofficial title
(23:12):
the King of the Book Carriers, which is no, yeah,
you know what, I think it is cooler than Wallace
Stevenson's Emperor of ice Cream. So that's a great poem.
But by the way, muscow By just refers to people
native to Moscow. Yeah. So basically he was saying he
was gonna do whatever it took. He was going to
continue in this cause until every last Russian was gone,
(23:33):
which was not something that was very much in the
car and so basically saying almost it was almost as
if to say until I die. Yeah. And so members
of the society created Soon there were thousands of them.
This was by far the biggest organization and it had
the power of the people because they crowdsourced money to
get books from these publishers in Prussia, and then they
(23:55):
started a subscription service. How cool is this You could
put some money in for the cause, right, and instead
of just like buying guns or something for hopelessly outnumbered militia,
by the way, you are buying books. And this guy
is credited with smuggling. Get this, folks, Nearly half of
(24:15):
all the books brought into Lithuania from East Prussia during
this time, he even was smuggling to Lithuania's living in Latvia.
The heat was on. The Russian authorities were hip to
this guy, and by the eighteen nineties they put out
a bounty on him. This is like the most militant
reading rainbow ever and there were several man hunts. He
(24:38):
was able to evade capture for a long time because
literally everybody except for Russians and turn Coats are on
his side. Again, we have to emphasize these folks aren't criminals.
They're doing an act that has become criminalized by a
foreign power. And at the turn of the century, while
(25:01):
he is on the run, mind you, how badass is this?
He created a Lithuanian newspaper and if you got a subscription,
he would just deliver it to you regularly. It was
called the White Eagle. It was printed on one of
the only press is active in Lithuania at the time,
and he brought it in from Prussia. That's why I
(25:22):
think is so cool. He said, why are we just
smuggling books? I want to smuggle in an actual printing press.
We're not sure exactly how he was able to pull
this off, but he got it past those three lines,
and he was also able to get the supplies you
need to run a printing press. And then he taught
a dot another smuggler, a guy named Stepanus Povlionis, to
(25:46):
work a printing press. I mean, I am, I am
imprinting pressed with these kids. Yeah, it's pretty incredible because
it's kid man I like that. But you know what
I mean, think about it. A sprinting press is like
a massive operation, a massive piece of machinery so to smuggling,
and it would have had to come in and pieces
and then be assembled. I mean, this is like difficult
(26:08):
stuff that you can't just kind of intuitively figure out.
But they worked out all the logistics and they made
it happen. Um So, I don't know if we mentioned,
but Bielinas came from a lower class background. He was
a peasant and through his own you know, blood, sweat
and tears and effort, he kind of ascended to the
position of an intellectual. And this atics obscure article very
(26:32):
apthlete describes him as a defender of the Lithuanian language.
But this was something that was not the most out
of the ordinary thing. Under these extraordinary circumstances of the time,
because the Russian Empire had abolished serfdom in the early
eighteen sixties, and therefore there was this kind of new
class that emerged, a class known as peasant intellectuals that
(26:56):
kind of begun to take shape because if you weren't
just constantly having to work the land as a surf
it kind of freed up some bandwidth, like read and
educate yourself and become something different than just a run
of the mill, you know, manual laborer. Uh So this
became almost an unanticipated outcome of Russia taking that action,
(27:19):
you know, getting rid of the surf class. They kind
of created the groundwork for their own overthrow, at least
in terms of um, the spread of anti Russia information
and and the idea of being able to kind of
preserve the culture of these invaded people. So there's a person,
a writer named Zigmantis Kiopa who wrote a book called
(27:42):
the History of Lithuania UM. He described this class as
the most faithful users of the Lithuanian language and largely
occupying the majority of this you know, book smuggling kind
of contingent. Yeah, Like s of the smugglers were peasants,
And I do want to amend the Russian Empire. When
(28:04):
they were putting out their man hunts for Bullinias, they
caught him five times. He just kept getting away because again,
everybody who actually is Lithuaitian is on his side. The
Robin Hood example is pretty spot on there. So it's
(28:25):
the late eighteen hundreds. Now these guys are getting creative.
Some people are even getting the Russian police to help them.
The head officer of Ario Gala, they're in Central Lithuania,
joins the smuggling conspiracy. That's really what it is, all
smuggling as a conspiracy in and then other people are saying, hey,
(28:47):
there's some loopholes in this press band because if we
print stuff on slabs of clay, they're not considered books,
so they're not technically illegal. We're going to old school
with it. We mentioned the Sea grid schools, right. We
didn't mention how this is tough on the kids though,
because imagine you're a kid. Your parents are basically telling you, look,
(29:10):
now you have two schools. You have the fake school
you have to go to for these Russian jerks, and
then you go to real school at night, and your
neighbor's house and that's where your actual education is going
to happen, So you know, look like you're paying attention
during the day, but don't stress about it, don't try
so we can only imagine how many kids funked. Well,
(29:33):
you say that, and I think there's probably some truth
to that, and I know you're joking, but also, like,
isn't it such a privilege that Americans have We speak
the English, we learn a second language kind of almost
as like a luxury or like as like sort of
like an elective, you know, in school. I know, anytime
I've traveled abroad, it is just like understood nearly that
(29:56):
just about everyone speaks English because it is something that
is just taught and it is a necessity for business
in many ways. But you know, we are so privileged
in you know, it's just not nearly as common for
Americans to like speak multiple languages. But I've bet a
lot of these kids probably did learn Russian pretty well
in addition to Lithuanian and had to kind of like
(30:17):
hide it because honestly, I bet ben if they were flunking,
that would be a bad look, and I bet it
might come back to visit the parents, you know, if
the kids weren't doing well. Yeah, if all, if all
the kids in class were funking, that would be sus.
But you know, to that point they were because this
is Europe, there were probably already a lot of kids
who were bilingual to some degree in Russian or maybe
(30:39):
another language in that area. And yes, of course, the
idea of a secondary extracurricular program after school is still
pretty common throughout the world. Like a lot of Japanese
American kids here in the US go to Japanese school
on the weekends, you know, and it's totally separate from
whatever school they're going to for grade school through high school.
(31:01):
But they're not forced to do this by a state power,
you know. And I think that's one of the big distinctions.
So now we have to ask how many books did
the Russian forces at this time actually burn or actually confiscate.
We know that in one decade to one they confiscated
(31:22):
well over a hundred and seventy three thousand different publications,
and we don't know how many books were actually printed
and smuggled, because we only know the ones that were
caught as a result of the illegality of the operation.
You wouldn't want to keep a tally that could be
easily found by the authorities, because that would be a
(31:43):
tremendous boon to them. The confiscation rate skyrocketed over the
next few years, nights, you know, one to oh four.
And this is why you'll see historians like the one
we referenced earlier saying, if they had to guess, there
could have been millions of smuggled books. Virtually every town
(32:04):
in village had their own treasure trove of illegal books,
as well as a secret Lithuaitian school. And if you
want kids to think school is cool as lame in
ess that sounds, tell them it's secret. People love secrets, man,
And uh, we know that more and more people were
(32:27):
engaging in this conspiracy towards the height of it. It
was kind of like the Hydra organization in Marvel comics
and Marvel films, because anybody could be Hydra and you
didn't really know until they leaned in and whispered, like
hell Hydra. So you would see widows, farmers, doctors, musicians,
like organists, traveling salesman. You know, they would just be
(32:50):
their regular Lithuaitian selves until they leaned in and said,
I've got some bocks. That was like their hale Hydra moment,
and I think that is awesome. But then we see
more secret newspapers, more and more people are rallying against
this idea of Russification. As you can tell, fellow ridiculous historians,
Russification is not going well. It might look okay to
(33:12):
this are on paper, but it's it's not working. People
start organizing music, will get togethers secret plays about how
awesome Lithuanian culture and languages, and then they start having
these things they called picnics, which look like you know,
regular picnics until you hear what people are saying. It's
all about the rebirth of the Lithuanian state or the
(33:36):
resistance against the what they saw as the evil empire
of Russia. So this is inspiring stuff, and it I
think eventually at some point, if we take the Russian perspective,
you're gonna have to say, how long are we gonna
keep up this band, especially if it's not working. You know,
(33:56):
we got like hundreds of soldiers on the border and
they're obviously not great at this. Yeah. Look, I mean
it kind of reminds me of like what happened with
the Berlin Wall for example. You know, where you had
Russia realizing that it was too expensive to maintain that
segregation between East and West Berlin, and to maintain that
(34:16):
iron grasp over information and controlling information and keeping tabs
on everybody and all of these operations, they just balloon
out of control. Um. It just seems like historically Russia
has a history of biting off a little more than
they can chew in the pursuit of ideology. What do
you think about that? Then? Well, it's tough because these
are very very different versions of Russia. That's why I'm
(34:40):
pointing out the thematic commonality of underestimation, you know, with
with Ukraine. Me when I say earlier and I agree,
you know, society should not hold the current government of
Russia responsible for the actions of Sarrost Russia. It's very
very different, but for sure. But yeah, there's there's a
fail earlier to uh, to really understand the vibe here
(35:04):
and the war or the objections. The resistance against this
band is being fought in legal channels too. It's not
all just books smuggling, although that's probably the coolest part
of the story. People were organizing actual petitions to the
Russian Empire and the Russian government would receive these requests
that would say, you know, stuff like we the people
(35:25):
of this village or some sort of constituency, would like
to end the ban on the Lithuanian language. We're just
asking you through legal channels, and eventually the tide turns,
not in Lithuania, but in Russia. Russian intellectuals are saying,
what's the point of this band? We didn't really define it.
(35:47):
People are still writing and speaking and reading in Lithuanian.
They're just using clay tablets because whoever wrote this law
didn't understand how to define stuff. The Council of Ministers
in Russia says, okay, this is officially a failure. Nineteen
o four, they retire the band they ended. They're trying
(36:10):
to reconcile with military groups because something else is happening.
They need more support from anything affiliated with the Russian
Empire because they're in the Russian Japanese War. But it's
too little, too late. Lithuanians are not having it, you
know what I mean. And our guy here bilinists. He
(36:30):
starts talking more and more about being fully independent from Russia.
He becomes like, you know, we we kind of say
it was always an ardent nationalist. Now he is like
a spokesman for Lithuania, and he is one of the
driving forces for the active independence of Lithuania in February
nineteen eighteen. Unfortunately, and this is one of the sad
(36:55):
ironies that happens so often in history, he passed away
eight the month before he died in January eighteen, before
he saw the legislation he had fought so hard for
come to pass. But then, on a lighter note, imagine
you're a book smuggler. Imagine you're one of the teachers,
(37:17):
remember the clergy, and he got all these books, all
these secret cool books, and now the book ban is lifted.
Your book rich What are you gonna do? Do people
still want books? I don't know. How do you move
all these books? You got like a hundred copies of
I don't know, you've got a hundred copies of the
New Testament in Lithuanian or in Latin or whatever. What
(37:37):
do you do? Well? Uh, you could open a bookshop. Hey,
that'd be cool. And not only would it just be
a bookshop, you know with all this inventory, I mean,
it's essentially an incredible foundation to start a long lasting
legacy historical bookshop, and this place exists. In nineteen o five,
right after the band was lifted, one of the bugglers,
(38:00):
a dude named Joossis massi ulis Um, opened such a
store in Ponnisis. And again apologies for butchering these pronunciations.
And it's still open today and it is actually part
of a chain of bookstores um that have since sprung
up in Lithuania under the same name. So in to
(38:22):
further honor the legacy of this period, statue was built
in the capital at the time was the capital of Kawanas,
and that was to commemorate the placard read the unknown
book Smuggler, more of like a symbolic thing to talk
about the people who we will never know their names
because we only really have a handful of figures because,
like you said, Ben, the record keeping was a little wonky.
(38:44):
So cool. So today in Lithuania, March sixteenth is the
birthday of Urgus bielinis Um and it is celebrated as
Kei Ignestio Dianna, which is translated to the day of
the book Smugglers or carriers, depending on um your preference. Um, yeah, um,
(39:06):
pretty big deal. Yeah, that's why we opened with this,
So a happy day of the book smugglers. Happy belated
KIGSI Dania to all who celebrate. I think I don't
know but you guys, but I'm celebrating this now. I
think saving things through the power of literacy is awesome.
That's one of the reasons that people like me end
up in things like podcasts. At this point, maybe we
(39:28):
give the last word to Jonas step Sish, who talked
about his father and his uncle as book smugglers. He
says smuggling is the reason, or one of the primary reasons,
Lithuania was able to regain independence when he writes, the
struggles of the book carriers have been praised in modern
times by people like father you Willonius Casperavicius, who said
(39:52):
the work of restoring Lithuania's independence began not in eight
nineteen eighteen, when it declared itself a state, but rather
the time of the book carriers, with bundles of books
and pamphlets on their backs. These warriors were the first
to start preparing the ground for independence, the first to
propagate the idea that it was imperative to throw off
the yoke of Russian oppression. So pretty cool. And also,
(40:17):
you know, kudos Tsarist Russia because there miscalculation about banning
a language in a very real way set the dominoes toppling, right,
That's what led to Lithuania's ultimate independence. I think it's
a cool lesson. I know we went a little bit
long on this one, but we hope you enjoyed it
as well, folks, and we can't wait to hear from you.
(40:40):
What are some other awesome acts of literacy as rebellion
or literacy as resistance? I would say the still yaga
are up there. Music literacy is the same as print literacy,
and there are a lot of examples about these. Can't
wait to hear about them. Yeah, you can hit us
up on the internet. Were ridiculous historians on Facebook. That's
(41:03):
the name of our Facebook group. A lot of good
meme activity and chatter there around the shows that we
do every week. You can also find Ben and I
as individual human people on the Internet. I am pretty
much exclusively on Instagram, where you can find me at
how now Noel Brown, Mr Boland about yourself? Well, Mr Brown,
fellow ridiculous historians, you can indeed find me on the internet.
(41:26):
The rumors are true. I've got a lot of exciting
stuff coming up that I can't yet announce on air,
But get in on the ground floor. Follow me at
ben Bowling b O W l I N on Instagram.
You can also find me on Twitter where I'm at
ben Bowling hs W. That's a great place to send
suggestions for episodes and questions. Great place to send terrible puns.
(41:47):
I love them. Hashtag no pun left behind bonus. If
you're on Twitter, you may also catch the one and
only Mr Max Williams. Yes it is I, Mr Max Williams.
You can find me on Twitter at at He'll underscore
Max Williams where you'll see all my fun interests and
stuff and Max may end up also throwing us for
(42:07):
a curl ball and then your future not a curveball.
That's no other spoilers, but it's curling reference right. No.
Spoiling was a big one with the smooth stone used
to move around ice thingies bucks. What do you call it?
MACI give us the skinny rocks. They are rocks, throwing rocks,
(42:30):
throwing rocks with Max Williams on the curling field of
play on the sheet of ice. Yeah, yes, the sheet
device of course, how could I be so foolish? Yes,
still brooms and there there are that didn't totally didn't
totally cripple the spoilers. So yeah, just stay tuned on that.
I'm sticking with the curlball thing. Yeah, thanks to Mr
(42:51):
Matt Williams. Thanks to Casey pegroove. I looked at my
old Casey on the case T shirt. Man, it's still
it's still a good idea classic shirt, classic Shure vintage
at this point. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
(43:13):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
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