Politicians in Vilnius cannot agree on how to name the new streets, in order to honor the memory of the rebels of 1863-1864 - to use a Lithuanian or Polish variant of the last name.
This issue has been stuck for more than a year, and it does not allow the city administration to form 300 plots in New Vilnius. They would be returned to the people for property expropriated during the Soviet occupation.
This week at the council meeting, it was not possible to agree that the issue should be considered in committees, although it was previously coordinated with the mayor and the heads of the administration.
After long negotiations in the administration, politicians were presented with two possible solutions in which the names of several rebels are spelled differently, such as Titus Dalevskis or Titas Daliauskas, Juzefs Jablanovskis or Juozapas Jablanauskas.
"Without street names, we cannot give addresses to plots and the National Land Service cannot offer those plots to people who are waiting in line to reclaim their property," Raimonda Rudukienė, deputy director of the municipality's Urban Development Department, told BNS.
The Lithuanian version was presented by the municipality's Names, Monuments and Plaques Commission, but the council was also presented with the second one, initiated by the election campaign of Lithuanian Poles - Union of Christian Families (LLRA-KŠS).
"The commission's proposal was somewhat different. It is a political decision of the city government to propose this, taking into account the context of the coalition partners and the political situation," Audronis Imbrasas, the chairman of the naming commission and a colleague of mayor Remigijaus Šimašius' faction, told BNS.
His deputy in the commission, representative of the opposition, Darius Kuolys, said that the State Lithuanian Language Commission also opposed the LLRA-KŠS proposal.
"The State Lithuanian Language Commission was simply shocked by the second option, because we are breaking all the requirements of the Lithuanian language, we are trying to make a decision in the council while ignoring the opinions of specialists and experts. This is political adventurism," D. Kuolys explained at the meeting.
Both the mayor and historians are against it
At that time, LLRA-KŠS representative, vice mayor Edita Tamošiūnaitė told BNS that the faction proposed to write surnames in titles "as they were written at that time".
"If there was Dalevski, then it is clear that it was Dalevski, not Daliauska, because it is a completely different last name," she testified.
R. Šimašius he also supports his colleague - he told BNS that "respect for a person requires calling him as he calls himself or used to call him", and this principle must also be followed "when naming streets after our heroes".
Some historians say that Lithuanianization of surnames can mislead the public. Neither Lithuanians interested in history nor people of other nationalities living here would recognize Lithuanian surnames.
"Such a desire to linguistically Lithuanianize everything, in my understanding, it is not appropriate, it is not acceptable, and such writing of history is in some sense based on a certain, as we call it, egocentric approach," said Darius Staliūnas, deputy director of the Lithuanian History Institute, to BNS.
According to him, there is no need to try to hide the multilingual history and multiculturalism, therefore rational thinking people will never propose to artificially Lithuanianize the names of the participants of the uprising.
Most of the rebels, after whom the streets are to be named, were executed by hanging or shooting in the capital Lukiškiai square, later the remains were buried in Gediminas Hill, where most of them were found during excavations.
The remains of 20 of the 21 rebels shot in Lukiški Square were found on Gediminas hill, including the remains of the leaders of the rebellion, Zigmantas Sierakauskas and Konstantinas Kalinauskas. All discovered remains are to be reburied in the Rasa cemetery this year.
Author Ignas Jačauskas, Ramūnas Jakubauskas
