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Why Lithuania Owns a 'Part of Belarus' (Dieveniškės Explained)
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Apr 19, 2025
Use COUPON CODE GK51 for 51% OFF Any Yearly Membership to World Anvil: https://www.worldanvil.com/?c=GK51 In this video I explore why Lithuania controls a strange enclave that extends deep into Belarus, known as Dieveniškės. This unusual border has a rich backstory tied to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later, the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union. After being assigned to the Byelorussian SSR in 1939, the area was transferred to the Lithuanian SSR in 1940 - partly due to local Lithuanian officials lobbying for the change based on the area's ethnic makeup and historical ties although a local legend claims Stalin’s smoking pipe accidentally shaped the border during a meeting, and no one dared to move it off the map, drawing around it. Today, Dieveniškės remains Lithuanian and might be a good introduction into a potential claim for Lithuania's territorial expansion into the rest of the Vilnius region - now ruled by Belarus - but historically their territory. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Lithuania's (Not So) Strange Border 01:15 The Origins of Dieveniškės 02:02 The Grand Duchy of Lithuania 02:36 Old Jewish Population 03:13 The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania 03:37 Interwar Lithuania & Poland 04:01 German & Soviet Occupations During WW2 04:39 WorldAnvil 06:17 Soviet Population Displacements & Belorussian Annexation 06:28 How Dieveniškės Became Lithuanian Again 08:03 Transfer of the Territory 09:09 How Is It Today? 10:05 A Town Where Time Stands Still? 10:18 And... It's Inhabited By Polish People? 10:43 Previous Polish Occupation of Vilnius
View Video Transcript
0:00
Take a look at this map of Lithuania. They have a pretty normal border, no weird exclaves and
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pretty solid lines, but when you zoom into the south you find something pretty odd. It's an
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enclave and I think for lack of a better descriptive word, a sort of bulge that goes into
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Belarus. It's called, and I'm going to mispronounce this, Die Veniskis. It contrasts with other less
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borders of theirs like Mielaginai because the area that connects it to the rest of Lithuania is
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so incredibly narrow almost like a dedicated land corridor. After I noticed this on a map I went on
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to do a little bit of research to try and find out why this is the way that it is and it turns
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out that the history behind it is pretty interesting so in this video we are going to find out what it
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is. Last week I made a video on European country names and I forgot that the Baltic countries
1:09
existed. I'm sorry and so this week there's a fully dedicated video for at least one of them
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So why do they control this piece of land that would instinctively belong to their neighbors of
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Belarus, only being connected by a tiny sliver of land. The short answer, history. Mostly connected
1:26
with the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then the Soviet Union, so let's learn about that
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The region of the Aveniskes was first mentioned in 1385. It was created around the estate of a
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Lithuanian noble called Mikolas Mingaila. It was later transferred to the control of the
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Gostautai family, whose coat of arms is this super cool red shield with two V-shaped-like
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elements in white, quite different from the coat of arms of the town in modern times
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adopted in 2006, which is blue with two connected golden horse shoes
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At that time, in 1385, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was beginning its rise to power
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and it went on to control gigantic parts of Eastern Europe, then joining up with Poland
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to create the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, at one time the largest country in all of Europe
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And within the Grand Duchy, despite its small size, the Avaniscus seemed to remain relevant
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It is even said that after the local church was built in the 16th century
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Grand Duchess Barbara Radziwil would often travel there to pray and attend religious service
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And religion is actually an interesting topic in connection to this town, or village rather
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According to the 1897 census, at one point, 75% of the village population was Jewish
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The town had two synagogues and Jewish culture was prevalent. Ruins of an old Jewish cemetery can still be found there with gravestones of carved Hebrew words on them
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However, all of them were murdered or displaced during World War II in Lithuania
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but this didn't prevent a local population from remaining ethnically mixed, some being Lithuanian, others Polish and some Belarusian too
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Now as you may know, if you're a fan of history, after the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian
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Commonwealth began, those territories were slowly partitioned by the three neighbouring powers Prussia Russia and Austria each taking a piece For a long time over 100 years since 1795 Poland and Lithuania were wiped off the map
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only returning after the end of World War I in 1918. Lithuania specifically as a region was also annexed by the Russians
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and it, along with what is now Belarus, were effectively directly part of the Russian Empire's territory
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Lithuania regained independence in 1918, but it seemed like they, along with Poland, were doomed to continue facing the wrath of their two neighbors
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Germany to the west and Russia to the east. As the war broke out in 1939, Poland was invaded by both of these nations
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and Lithuania and the other Baltic nations were soon to suffer a similar fate at different times
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Eastern Poland, including the Vilnius region, which the Poland controlled during this period
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and we're going to learn why a little later on in the video, were annexed by the Soviets
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And soon after, in 1940, so were all three Baltic nations. As the USSR reorganized its territory
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following the Bolsheviks' victory in their internal conflict, Dioviniskes was assigned to the
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Bielousian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1939. Now, just like the Soviet Union
4:41
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And now, let's get back to the video. In April of 1940, Soviet authorities began deporting many of the town's residents to Siberia
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following their typical strategies of population displacement to take better control of territories
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But how did this specific region then become a part of Lithuania
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Well, according to a local legend, the top officials of the Kremlin were meeting with Stalin
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to redraw the borders of the Soviet Union. As they did so, Stalin's smoking pipe was laying on the map
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Since nobody dared to move it, the cartographers would have drawn a line around it, causing
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the territory to be annexed by Lithuania I guess if we look at it a certain way it is somewhat shaped like a smoking pipe Of course this isn true it just a legend that people made up The real story is a little bit different
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More credible accounts tell us that local Lithuanian officials, aware of the mixed ethnicity
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of the town and the prevalence of Lithuanian people living there, contacted the Kremlin
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requesting that the Aveniskes would be incorporated into Lithuania, in fact that it should be
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returned to Lithuania as the region was historically part of the Grand Duchy
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Sure, this argument could probably be made to annex a whole lot of territory
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namely in Belarus, but the point was that ethnic Lithuanians still live there
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Surprisingly, the USSR agreed. According to them, the territorial transfer was part of a broader
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policy of aligning state borders with ethnic populations to create more cohesive and ethnically
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homogeneous republics. Of course this contrasts with what we know of history. They objectively
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moved ethnic populations from their homelands, displacing them so that they could replace them
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with Russians and better control the territories. However, the USSR had open borders between its
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supposed member states so this was probably irrelevant for the Soviets and gave some
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consolation to the locals. And regardless of the reason, on November 6, 1940, the Aveniscus became
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a 207 square kilometer Lithuanian salient. I guess that's a better word than bulge
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Surrounded by and projecting some 30 kilometers into the Belarusian territory, at its narrowest
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point the Lithuanian appendix is less than 3 kilometers wide. This transfer wasn't unique
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Two other parcels of land were annexed along with it at the same time, as we can see on this map
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and the Vilnius area itself holding the nation's current capital had also been returned to Lithuania
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a year earlier, Belarus voluntarily offered to hand over almost 3,000 square kilometers of land
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with 80,000 people in them. Before that, the Lithuanian-Soviet border ran along, again
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I'm going to mispronounce this, Salsininkalai, leaving many Lithuanian populated lands in the
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territory of the already Soviet-controlled Belarus. Interestingly, both Latvia and Estonia suffered
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opposite results losing part of their lands that were annexed by Russia. And so, the old territory
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of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was returned to the now Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania
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As the Soviet Union collapsed and the countries east of the Iron Curtain regained their independence
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Lithuania did too and kept this sliver of territory that stretches into their now also
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independent neighbor of Belarus. Well, I guess the facto independence from Russia is questionable
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but you know what I mean. Today, the region is locally known as the Appendix. The corridor that
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connects it to the rest of Lithuania is surrounded by security fences, there is one single road that
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leads to it, and the way that it curves make it so that at one point you're literally 3 meters
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away from the border with Belarus. What's funny is that Lithuania itself has a border control at
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the start of this road, making the Aveniskes effectively an island. It's surrounded by
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Belarus's border on all sides and then even blocked off from the rest of Lithuania where
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they are connected. Matias Schwarzer, a fellow YouTube creator, actually made a video about this
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few months ago and drove in there. If you find this story interesting you should definitely watch this video, I'll link it
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in the description. The Aveniscus also contrasts with the rest of Lithuania in the fact that it seems to
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not have followed the trend of the rest of the country in modernizing. Many articles and reports about it describe it as a land where time stands still And what is the most interesting fact of all in my opinion is the fact that while most people that live there today are Lithuanian by passport their ethnicity is Polish According to the 1989 census a little over 60 of the people there say they were ethnically
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Polish and some projections point to that figure being closer to 80% today
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Lithuanian is barely spoken there. Most inhabitants of the village just speak Polish on a daily basis
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While Lithuania could make a wild claim to all of their old Grand Duchy territory, the
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territory of Vilnius could be a more reasonable claim. Because and this is related to why the village speaks Polish, between World War I and World
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War II, interwar Poland was given this region and ruled it under the central Lithuania puppet
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state before being fully integrated into the second Polish Republic. Despite having been a key part of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania, at this moment in
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history, Vilnius, the historical capital of Lithuania, had a majority Polish-speaking population
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too, with a Lithuanian minority of only 2-3%. This is connected to the fact that after World
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War I, there was a Polish-Lithuanian war when Poland briefly invaded and occupied Vilnius
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then fully annexing it. After the removal of the Jewish population, along with Soviet
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displacements and migrations, Lithuanians became the undisputed majority in the Vilnius region as
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a whole in 1989, the share grew from 2% in the first half of the 20th century to 42.5
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in 1970 and up all the way to 67% in 2021. And hey, if they got the Avniskis back when it's mostly Polish today, why not claim
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all of their old Vilnius region? Poland's modern borders, which they got after WWII, are much further west and so this
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territory is now split between Lithuania, who control West Vilnius, and Belarus, who
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control East Vilnius. This propaganda poster from 1930s Lithuania writes, Remember enslaved Vilnius, depicting a map claiming all of the old region
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And while they got the city of Vilnius itself, the eastern part of the region remains under the control of their neighbors up to today
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with the exception of this small enclave. Another map shows the region of the Lithuanian language area in 1876
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demonstrating how it extended much further than the country's borders, but that was back then
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According to the 2009 census in Belarus, there were over 19,000 ethnic Lithuanians in Belarus
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almost all of them precisely in this region, but they still represent a minority in it
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It's mostly inhabited by Belarusians now. I'm not sure if there's any strong support within Lithuania to recover this land
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and I'm not even sure if it makes any sense for that to happen, and if every European country started claiming lands that they historically controlled
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well, there would be a total war between everybody. But what do you think
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Should Lithuania keep this village despite being an enclave surrounded by Belarus on all sides and hosting a population that is mostly Polish
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Should they go further and annex all of the eastern Vilnius region
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Let me know what you think in the comments. Thank you so much for watching this video. Thank you to my patrons for supporting me directly
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And I will see you next time for more general knowledge. today's movement cup is again a repeat guys i'm just grabbing it i have no idea which ones i've
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shown at this time at this point it's spring today i mean i technically it's spring but it's
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very cloudy very gray but the sun keeps on shining inside each and every one of us
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