During the “Creative Vilnius” project, three lectures took place at Vilnius Town Hall:
- June 20, 6 PM: Lecture “When Did Vilnius Become a Modern City?”
- Stanley Washburn, an American-born correspondent for London’s “The Times,” who passed through the city, wrote in his diary on October 8, 1914: “We arrived in Vilnius the next morning. I’ve passed through here more than once, but never stopped. It’s one of the largest Jewish cities in Russia and very old. Since there was nothing interesting here, after walking around for an hour or so, I returned to the train.” Is this metaphorically brief impression not proof that Vilnius, at the beginning of the 20th century, was already a modern, i.e., uninteresting city, similar to dozens of other European cities? Darius Pocevičius will propose this hypothesis, supporting it with an analysis of the city’s infrastructure and relics from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- June 27, 6 PM: Lecture “Interwar Vilnius: A Neglected City?”
- Lithuanian historiography often claims that Vilnius during the interwar period was a neglected and dilapidated provincial city under Polish administration, receiving neither sufficient funds nor attention. But is this true? Darius Pocevičius, based on surviving relics from that time, thinks differently. According to him, the fact that Vilnius developed quite rapidly during this period is evidenced by pure modernist buildings, the extensive defense ring around Vilnius, the renovation of the Town Hall following the latest architectural trends, and many other relics of Vilnius.
- July 11, 6 PM: Lecture “Those Dreadful Words ‘Soviet Vilnius'”
- The saying “Speak well of the dead or not at all” finds its opposite in the case of Soviet-era Vilnius. The unwritten rule of today seems to be: speak badly of it or not at all. The history of Vilnius from 1944 to 1990, often portrayed in monochromatic black or dark gray, is, in fact, far more colorful, contrasting, and contradictory. After the post-war deportation of Polish residents in livestock wagons, the nearly empty city, with only tens of thousands of residents, grew into a metropolis with nearly 600,000 new inhabitants.
Lecturer:
Darius Pocevičius,
Researcher of Vilnius,
Author of the book “100 Historical Relics of Vilnius.”
