Tautinio Vilniaus universiteto klausimas lietuvių politikoje (1915 m. ruduo - 1919 m. žiema)
The Issue of Vilnius National University in the Lithuanian Policy (Autumn, 1915-Winter, 1919)

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the activities of politicians- historians, namely Mykolas Biržiška, Jonas Yčas, Petras Klimas and Augustinas Voldemaras to establish Vilnius National University from autumn, 1915, to the beginning of 1919. The analysis itself is based on the attitudes and concepts of the above mentioned politicians-historians, and it concentrates on the following questions: 1. Why was it necessary to establish Lithuanian Vilnius University? 2. What kind of university was it supposed to be – Catholic or secular? 3. Should the university be Lithuanian or open to national or confessional minorities? 4. What kind of university was it to be – autonomous or with a limited autonomy? 5. What should the language of studies at the university be? 6. Was it necessary to establish the faculty of Sociology? The author distinguishes two different concepts concerning the establishment of Lithuania’s national university. Historians Biržiška and Klimas favoured a secular, autonomous Vilnius University open to national or confessional minorities, whereas historians Voldemaras and Yčas favoured a national Catholic Vilnius University with limited rights of self-rule. The above mentioned historians were united in two respects: firstly, realizing the actual situation, they agreed that studies at the restored Lithuanian Vilnius University should not be conducted exclusively in Lithuanian and should tolerate teaching in foreign languages as well; secondly, realizing that for the independent Lithuanian state its human capital was educated people, they were striving for a university that corresponded in its standards to those of West European universities of those times. It could be presupposed that the historians had chosen the model of a German university (Berlin) as the basis for the establishment of Vilnius national university, and the model of language policy at Helsinki University seems to have been the most acceptable to them in solving the question of the language in which the studies at Vilnius national university should be organised. Thus, Vilnius national university was to be established by using the international experience of the universities of that period. In this respect the historians did not emphasise that the university should be exclusively Lithuanian. The author comes to the conclusion that these different concepts of Vilnius national university reflected attitudes of Lithuanian politicians at the time and was some kind of watershed for the creation of higher school concepts as well as the main obstacle for the establishment of the Lithuanian University in 1920’s.

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