The Act of Tilžė: Alternatives and Imperatives

   Twenty-four members of the National Council of Lithuania Minor met in Tilžė on 30 November 1918 and issued a Declaration known as the Act of Tilžė. As has been sharply observed by one of the most consistent modern-day servers of the will of Lithuania Minor, Vytautas Šilas – the Act contains only two but highly profound sentences:

    “Taking into consideration that all that exists has the right to be, and that we Lithuanians who live in Prussian Lithuania are in the majority in this region, we demand that Lithuania Minor would be united to Lithuania Major on the basis of the right to self-determination defined by Woodrow Wilson. By signing this declaration we, the undersigned, promise to devote all our efforts to fulfil such aspirations”.

    The profound essence of this is the following: the nation, which has been ruthlessly torn to pieces, deranged by the neighbours during its whole history, but has withstood, must have and has the right to live in an integral national State.

    For the first time the theses of Woodrow Wilson invoked in the Declaration of the Council of Lithuania Minor, brought the democratic development of the world to the awareness that nations were also objects of democracy. That provision determined the most essential geopolitical processes of the twentieth century, without which it would not have been possible to withstand two as yet most powerful projects of totalitarianisation of the world – Communism and National Socialism. Unfortunately, Wilson’s theses were not processed in the form of some declaration of the United Nations, therefore, now they are almost totally smothered in anti-national dissemination of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    Today the significance of the Act of Tilžė is even more topical for us, people of Lithuania subjected to globalisation.

    What is the significance of the Act?

    Firstly: legal significance of the Act. The Declaration of the National Council of Lithuania Minor still is that legally valid document which continues to hold its constitutive imperativeness. Even though now it belongs to history, it still is an eloquent evidence of the will of the lietuvininkai (one of the five ethnic communities of our nation - Western Lithuanians who lived in Lithuania Minor) which has not been fulfilled and serves as the grounds for transcriptions under new historical conditions, testifying with its changes and renewals the debt of Lithuania Major to Lithuania Minor. There are many people who would rather forget this debt!

    The Act has not been denounced. Even the ratification of the Treaty with Russia on the Borders of the Republic of Lithuania, assigning Lithuania Minor to the exclave of Russian Kaliningrad (Karaliaučius), has not revoked the powers of the Act of Tilžė, because the assigning was carried out by totally ignoring the will of the party to the Act – the lietuvininkai of Lithuania Minor, which was expressed in the form of many official documents before and after the signing of the Treaty between Lithuania and Russia on the Borders. Therefore, the Act continues to hold its legal powers and, rephrasing the words of the Act, one may say that those who care about Lithuania Minor still work for the good of the “uniting of Lithuania Minor to Lithuania Major”.

    Secondly: political significance of the Act. The drawing-up and proclamation of the Act of Tilžė was the beginning of the elimination of a long-lasting political crime against the Lithuanians and all people of the Baltic nations. That is an alternative of the Act’s epochal significance to the past. The Prussian tribes had already been killed by the Crusaders or denationalised by the German colonialists, and nobody is able to repair such crime against humanity and mankind. That is what makes this crime even more horrible. However, in respect of the lietuvininkai, the Act of Tilžė has changed a lot and might have changed even more. But even when mankind turned to humanity in the twentieth century, the colonialists of Prussia chose inhumanity. Only through the resolution of the Lithuanian statesmen at least a part of Lithuania Minor could make use of the validity of the Act and implement the “uniting to Lithuania” at least with the Klaipėda Region.

    Thus, practical restoration, legalisation and political establishment of historical justice began by means of the Act of Tilžė.

    That a piece of the land of the Balts, appropriated by the Germanic people, which in some places did not even adjoin Germany, was a huge problem not only of Lithuanians, other Baltic nations and Poles, but also of the entire Europe, was clearly perceived by Winston Churchill who after the Second World War together with Joseph Stalin marked new borders of Europe and wanted to eliminate that Knigsbergish exclave of Germany. Seeking to take it to himself, Stalin was determined to yield even to the point where Knigsberg would be recognised as a Baltic region (I bear in mind the fundamental study by Kushner, which was specially ordered for that cause) and assigned to Lithuania. However, Churchill’s admiration of Stalin and Western fear of Russia subdued the Brit’s trustlessness and he allowed to be deceived, providing Moscow with an opportunity later to take Karaliaučius over under its complete protection (that was carried out during the fulfilment of the so-called Helsinki agreements). Instead of the German exclave of Knigsberg, Karaliaučius became the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, changing one historically illegal subjection with another illegal subjection but not eliminating the problems for either Lithuania, or Poland, or ultimately the entire Europe. Today political reality is such that neither France, intoxicating itself with Gaullism, nor Germany, convulsively trying to be a leader, has the willpower to pose before Russia the problems related to the settlement of the issue of the Karaliaučius region; but Russia’s claims to this geopolitically strategic territory will pose such issue sooner or later.

    Will Lithuania be prepared for that? Judging from the character of the political will demonstrated during the years of the re-established independence, it seems that “no” is the answer: it will have neither a wish, nor the ways, nor the means to solve the issue substantially.

    The main problem of Lithuania is its anaemic political lite: a total lack of willpower to show the resolution in the spirit of the Act of Tilžė. But there were plenty of possibilities to do so after the war, during the Soviet times and following the re-establishment of the independence. At present such possibilities are also available: compensations for the damages made during the occupation may be evaluated not necessarily in conventional monetary units.

    What are political prospects of the future?

    If Lithuania is not hindered from joining the European Union, its activities there, turning Karaliaučius thereto as well (this is possible to achieve by increasing the influence of Lithuanian capital and culture there), would be the sole presently envisaged practical way of implementing the spirit and the letter of the Act of Tilžė.

    It is evident that there can be no political justification of the said Russia’s exclave. It has been and remains to be an epicentre of the nation’s discord and political tensions. Peaceful Europe is possible only by eliminating the exclave.

    Thirdly: geopolitical significance of the Act. Until now the following truth has been adhered: those who rule Karaliaučius, rule the Eastern-Western threshold. A porch of such threshold may be extended as far as Vilnius. This has been done before. But Karaliaučius has been and still is a threshold. If taking into consideration such situation Lithuania and the Lithuanians wish to have a somehow stable place in the future world, they must act in Karaliaučius as well. And a decisive word in this situation may be and must be said by the world lietuvininkai. Because they are the sole lawful sovereigns of this region, possessing the Act of Tilžė which established an alternative for the past and the imperatives for the future.

    The world is undergoing globalisation. We must believe that we will learn to recognise the evil and the good of such world, and to resist the misdemeanours done by globalists against humanity and mankind, but most important that we will learn how to act without losing a bond with our community and nations. If so will be the case, Lithuanians’ negative aggressiveness may soon become positive one, creating common prospects. The first precondition of the implementation of the Act of Tilžė is that all lietuvininkai join the organisations able to help to generate their human activism and to nurture civil awareness. The interaction and activities of these organisations in the world is a concrete, authentic expression of the political will of Lithuania Minor today.

    The European Union will reshape all ethnicities, their locations and, maybe, even the duration. Being aware of such dangers some European nations start uniting into EU subregions. The unimplemented Act of Tilžė shows that during an upcoming period of such reshaping of the nations, the first to take common actions must be the kindred neighbouring nations. I agree that not Lithuanians Minor prevail in the present-day Karaliaučius region. However, the Russians residing there are no longer the Russians of Moscow, Petersburg or Novgorod. Although Moscow “gifted” a diplomatic note to Lithuania because of my declaration that Karaliaučius did not longer belong to Russia, I would like to repeat once again: Karaliaučius cannot be an exclave of Moscow, because it has never been and will never be identical to Russia, and some day the will of the Russian-speaking population of Karaliaučius will declare its otherness in a juridical form. This is our guide for the unification with other nationalities of the Karaliaučius region in order to solve the problem of Lithuania Minor.

    Globalisation rises an imperative of ecologisation of a lifestyle as well. Almost every nation lives in the area of one or another river basin. Prieglius, Nemunas and Dauguva are the rivers of the three Baltic nations. Soon will come the time when water will be more expensive than oil. Sooner or later the water basins will be assigned by the world to the responsibility of those nations which dispose of such water basins. This is another, ecological, precondition for our regional joining which might exercise a noticeable influence on the life of the Baltic Sea countries. The EU regionalisation will inevitably demand our self-determination as well. Maybe we will be mature enough not to seek protection of a stronger neighbour, but will try to supplement lacking resources by creating a related association?

    A confederation of the Baltic nations is a course, which would provide new possibilities for the implementation of the vows of the Act of Tilžė at least in future.

   Translated by Jonas Varnas

Romualdas Ozolas, philosopher, signatory of the Act of Independence of, "The Article was originally published in "Donelaicio zeme" ("the Land of Donelaitis")", Nr. 1-2, 2004 m. vasario 6 d.