The Vilna Governorate was a province (guberniya) of the Northwestern Krai of the Russian Empire that existed from 1795 to 1918. Established after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, it encompassed territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania and was one of the administrative divisions created by the Russian Empire to replace the institutions of the dissolved Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

In 1897, the governorate covered an area of and had a population of 1,591,207 inhabitants. It bordered the following governorates: Minsk to the south, Grodno to the southwest, Suwałki to the west, Kovno and Courland to the north, and Vitebsk to the east. Its capital, Vilnius, also served as the seat of the Vilna Governorate-General, which existed until 1912.

History Following the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, the former lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (themselves part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) were annexed by the Russian Empire. The Russians established two administrative units: the Vilnius Governorate and the Slonim Governorate. On 12 December 1796, by order of Tsar Paul I, these were merged into a single administrative unit called the Lithuania Governorate, with its capital in Vilnius.

On 9 September 1801, Tsar Alexander I divided the Lithuanian Governorate into two: the Lithuania Vilnius Governorate and the Lithuania Grodno Governorate. Around 1840–1843, during the administrative reforms of Tsar Nicholas I, the word "Lithuania" was officially erased from both names and the Vilna Governorate and Grodno Governorate were established.

In 1843, another reform created the new Kovno Governorate out of seven western districts of the Vilna Governorate, including most of Samogitia. In exchange, the Vilna Governorate received the districts of Vileyka and Dzisna from the Minsk Governorate and Lida from the Grodno Governorate. Thereafter, the Vilna Governorate consisted of the districts of Vilnius, Trakai, Dzisna, Ashmyany, Lida, Vileyka and Švenčionys. This administrative structure remained in place until the outbreak of World War I, when the region came under German occupation as part of the Ober Ost military administration.

Demographics

Plater's statistics of 1825 Count Stanisław Plater was the first one in 1825 to publish approximate statistics on the ethnic makeup of the Vilnius Governorate, which then included most, but not all, of Lithuania. His work's purpose was to show the area's indicative ethnic composition. In the case of the Vilnius Governorate, before a major redrawing of the governorate's borders in 1843, he concluded that it was majority Lithuanian. +Stanisław Plater's statistics in 1825LanguagePeoplePercentage of totalLithuanian780,00065%Yiddish180,00015%Polish100,0008,3%Russians80,0006,7%Ruthenians50,0004,2%Tatars10,0000,8%Total1,200,000100% Due to the lack of systematic primary data on nationalities, Plater resorted to comparing the revision censuses and religious distribution statistics to provide the general statistics on the population's ethnic distribution. He referred to nobles and townspeople, with the exception of soldiers and Jews, as Poles, whereas he separated the peasants into Lithuanians, Ruthenians, or Russians (which refers to the Old Believers). Overall, the total number of Catholics in the Vilnius Governorate was 930,000, i.e. ¾ of the population.

Plater's ethnic and social classification of the population also reflected the contemporary thought among the elite classes, where in addition to a class difference, an ethnic dividing line was also drawn compared to the lower classes. Thus, Plater categorically renamed the Lithuanians of the traditional political Lithuanian nation as Poles, whereas the lower classes in his view were termed as Lithuanians. A similar attitude could be found elsewhere in Europe, for example, the Hungarian nobility called itself as Natio Hungarica, in contrast to the commoners they called Magyars.

In 1856, a clear example of the ethno-social alienation between a Polish-speaking Lithuanian noble and a Lithuanian-speaking peasant was documented when the poet and writer Władysław Syrokomla, who traditionally considered himself a Lithuanian, traveled through the Dūkštos parish. Somewhere between the Geišiškės and Europa estates, Syrokomla spoke to a villager in Polish, but the latter replied in Lithuanian that he did not understand him, upon which Syrokomla disappointedly exclaimed that: "A Lithuanian in a Lithuanian land could not speak to a Lithuanian".

Russian Empire Census According to the Russian Empire census on , The Vilna Governorate had a population of 1,591,207, including 790,880 men and 800,327 women. According to the census, the majority of the population indicated Belarusian to be their mother tongue, which followed by a significant Lithuanian and Jewish speakers. + Linguistic composition of the Vilna Governorate in 1897 Language Native speakers Percentage White Russian 891,903 56.05 Lithuanian 279,720 17.58 Jewish 202,374 12.72 Polish 130,054 8.17 Great Russian 78,623 4.94 German 3,873 0.24 Tatar 1,969 0.12 Little Russian 919 0.06 Latvian 471 0.03 Gypsi 182 0.01 Others 1,119 0.07 Total 1,591,207 100.00

+ Religious composition of the Vilna Governorate in 1897Faith Male Female Both Number Percentage Roman Catholic 460,627 475,222 935,849 58.81 Eastern Orthodox 214,225 201,070 415,295 26.10 Judaism 98,193 106,493 204,686 12.86 Old Believer 12,686 12,987 25,673 1.61 Lutheranism 2,172 2,291 4,463 0.28 Islam 2,572 1,803 4,375 0.27 Karaite 251 325 576 0.04 Reformed 92 85 177 0.01 Armenian Catholic 22 25 47 0.00 Armenian Apostolic 9 3 12 0.00 Mennonite 2 0 2 0.00 Anglican 0 2 2 0.00 Other Christian denomination 19 16 35 0.00 Other non-Christian denomination 10 4 14 0.00 Total 790,880 800,327 1,591,207 100.00

Subdivisions The counties (uezd) of the Vilna Governorate in 1897 was composed of seven uezds as follows: County Capital and the largest city Arms of capital Area Population(1897 census) Transliteration name Russian Cyrillic1897 Vileyskiy Вилейскій Vileyka 3.560 208,013 Vilenskiy Виленскій Vilna 154.132 363,313 Disnenskiy Дисненскій Disna 6.756 204,923 Lidskiy Лидскій Lida 9.323 205,767 Oshmyanskiy Ошмянскій Oshmyany 7.214 233,559 Smorgonskiy Сморгонскій Smorgon --- 241,565 Sventsyanskiy Свѣнцянскій Sventsyany 6.025 172,231 Trokskiy Трокскій Troki 3.240 203,401

Ethnic composition Russian authorities periodically performed censuses. However, they reported strikingly different numbers:

Year Total Lithuanians Poles Belarusians Russians Jews Other 1862 838,464 418,880 % 154,386 % 146,431 % 14,950 % 76,802 % 27,035 % 1865 891,715 210,273 % 154,386 % 418,289 % 27,845 % 76,802 % 4,120 % 1883 1,192,000 417,200 % 281,312 % 239,592 % colspan="2" 176,416 % 77,480 % 1897 1,561,713 274,414 % 126,770 % 880,940 % 75,803 % 197,929 % 5,857 % 1909 1,550,057 231,848 % 188,931 % 570,351 % 408,817 % 146,066 % 4,094 %

Governors Name In office Yakov Bulgarov 1797–1799 Ivan Friesell 1799–1801 Dmitry Lanskoy 1802–1804 Ivan Rickman 1804–1806 Prokopy Bogmevsky 1806–1808 Nikolay Brusilov 1808–1810 Aleksandr Lavinsky 1811–1816 Friedrich Drutsky-Lyubetsky 1816–1823 Pyotr Gorn 1823–1830 Dmitry Obreskov 1830–1832 Grigory Doppelmayr 1832–1836 Dmitry Bantysh-Kamensky 1836–1838 Yuri Dolgorukov 1838–1840 Aleksey Semyonov 1840–1844 Nikolay Zherebtsov 1844–1846 Mikhail Begichev 1846–1851 Arkady Rosset 1851–1857 Mikhail Pokhvisnev 1857–1863 Ivan Galler 1863–1863 Stepan Panyutin 1863–1868 Ivan Shestakov 1868–1869 Yegor Steblin-Kamensky 1869–1882 Aleksandr Zhemchuzhnikov 1882–1885 Nikolay Grevenits 1885–1895 Aleksandr Frese 1895–1896 Ivan Cheplevsky 1896–1899 Nikolai Gruzinsky 1899–1901 Viktor Wahl 1901–1902 Konstantin Palen 1902–1905 Sergey Tatishchev 1905–1906 Dmitry Lyubimov 1906–1912 Pyotr Veryovkin 1912–1916 Aleksandr Tolstoy 1916–1917

See also Demographic history of the Vilnius region History of Vilnius Wilno Voivodeship (1926–1939) Vileyka Region

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