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Demographic history of Vilnius

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Further information: Demographics of Vilnius

The demographic history of Vilnius goes back to the times after the Last Glacial Period some 12 thousand years ago.

Ancient period

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In the eldership of Vilkpėdė, remnants of a Magdalenian settlement were found which date to c. 10000 BC. Around 1000 BC, the confluence of the Neris and Vilnia was densely inhabited by the Brushed Pottery culture, which had a half-hectare fortified settlement on Gediminas' Hill.[1] Tribes of this culture inhabited present-day Lithuania east of the Šventoji River and in western Belarus. The descendants of this culture were a Baltic tribe, the Aukštaitians (English: Highlanders).[1] According to historian Antanas Čaplinskas, who researched the surnames of Vilnius residents, the city's oldest surviving surnames are Lithuanian.[1] Pagan Lithuanians primarily lived at the northern foot of Gediminas' Hill and in the Crooked Castle.[2] Kairėnai, Pūčkoriai and Naujoji Vilnia had large settlements during the first millennium AD.[3] The most densely-populated area was the confluence of the Neris and Vilnia, which had fortified homesteads.[3]

Medieval period

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Vilnius was part of the Kingdom of Lithuania; King Mindaugas did not permanently live there, however, despite building Lithuania's first Catholic church for his coronation.[4][3] The city began to develop in the late 13th century, during the reign of Grand Dukes Butvydas and Vytenis.[5]

A red-and-blue graph
Vilnius population pyramid in 2021
A woodcut of people praying
Pagan Lithuanians worshiping a grass snake, oak, and fire. From Olaus Magnus' A Description of the Northern Peoples, book 3, 1555

Vilnius' growth is attributed to Grand Duke Gediminas, who invited knights, merchants, doctors, craftspeople and others to come to the duchy to practice their trades and religion without restriction during the 14th century.[3] However, the city's growth was limited by Teutonic Order attacks and the 1389–1392 Lithuanian Civil War.[3] Invited by Grand Duke Gediminas, merchants and craftsmen began moving to Vilnius from the cities of the German Hanseatic League, France, Italy and Spain; Lithuanian surnames were replaced with German, Polish, and Russian ones.[1] In the late 14th century, during the reign of Grand Duke Algirdas, Vilnius had a Ruthenian quarter (Latin: Civitas Ruthenica) in present-day Latako and Rusų Streets. Trade between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Ruthenian principalities was well-developed, with Ruthenian merchants and Ruthenian nobility living in the quarter.[1][2][6] Vilnius' multiculturalism was increased by Grand Duke Vytautas the Great, who introduced Litvaks, Tatars and Crimean Karaites.[7] After several centuries, the number of local residents in Vilnius was smaller than the number of newcomers.[1] However, according to an analysis of the 1572 tax registers, Lithuania had 850,000 residents; 680,000 were Lithuanians.[8]


Grand Duke Sigismund II Augustus (Gediminas' male-line offspring)[9] with his wife, the Grand Duchess Barbara Radziwiłł, in Vilnius. The city prospered during his reign.

Lithuanian Golden Age

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It became a multicultural city, with 14th-century sources noting that it consisted of a Great (Lithuanian) city and a Ruthenian one. By the 16th century, German merchants, artisans, Jews and Tatars had also settled in Vilnius. During the 16th– and 17th-century Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the city's Polish-speaking population began to grow; by the middle of the 17th century, most writing was in Polish.[3] During the Lithuanian Golden Age, Vilnius was a major city in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and home to the Lithuanian nobility;[10][11] however, it was severely damaged by a 1610 fire.

Russian and Swedish occupations

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After the 1655 Battle of Vilnius the city was under Russian control until 1661. During the Great Northern War, the Swedish Empire controlled Vilnius from 1702 to 1709. The occupation ended with the Great Northern War plague outbreak, and the city took over 50 years to recover.[3] According to historian Vytautas Merkys, the city lost much of its old population under Swedish and Russian domination during the 17th and 18th centuries; although they were replaced by newcomers, Lithuanians continued to live in Vilnius.[1]

A printed document
Manifesto of the 1794 Vilnius uprising, encouraging Lithuanians to defend the city against Russia. Its population fell precipitously.

According to the first Commonwealth census in 1790, the Vilnius Voivodeship had a population of 718,571 and Vilnius County had 105,896 residents; after the Second Partition, the Grand Duchy had a population of 1,333,493.[8] The city's population fell to 17,500 in 1796 due to the 1794 uprising, the last attempt to save it from Russian control.[3][12] Vilnius was incorporated into the Russian Empire, and was its third-largest city at the beginning of the 19th century.[3] The city was again affected by the 1830 November Uprising and the January Uprising in 1863.[3] According to the 1897 Russian census, Vilnius had a population of 154,532 residents and the Vilna Governorate had 1,561,713. Vilnius' population became ethnically less Lithuanian.[1] In the Russian census of 1897, 2.1 percent identified as Lithuanian speakers; speakers of Polish (30.8% percent) and Yiddish (40 percent) were the city's largest linguistic groups.[13] According to parish censuses in 1857–1858, the Lithuanian population was between 23.6 and 50 percent in the Vilna Governorate.[14] In 1863, ethnographer Roderich von Erckert identified the governate's largest ethnic group as Lithuanians (45.04 percent).[15] Among the szlachta (nobility) in Vilnius in the 1897 census were 5,301 (46 percent) local nobles and 6,403 (54 percent) newcomers; of the newcomers, 24.1 percent were from the Vilna Governorate and the remainder from Grodno, Minsk, Vitebsk and Kovno Governorates, Vistula Land and other regions.[16]

20th century

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The city's population increased to 205,300 in 1909.[14][17]

Population, 1530–1914[18][19][20]
Year Population
1530 30,000
1654 Decrease 14,000
1766 Increase 60,000
1795 Decrease 17,700
1800 Increase 31,000
1811 Increase 56,300
1818 Decrease 33,600
1834 Increase 52,300
1861 Increase 60,500
1869 Increase 64,400
1880 Increase 89,600
1886 Increase 103,000
1897 Increase 154,500
1900 Increase 162,600
1911 Increase 238,600
1914 Decrease 214,600

During World War I, thousands of residents were forced to flee, were killed, or were taken to labor camps; the city's 1919 population fell to 128,500.[3][21] Vilnius recovered during the interwar period, with 209,442 residents in 1939,[22] but its population fell to 110,000 in 1944.[3]

The city's population increased as the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic; according to the 1989 census, it had 576,747 residents.[3] Although Lithuania experienced much emigration after independence in 1990, Vilnius' population was almost unchanged (542,287 in 2001) and has increased every year since 2006; its 1 January 2020 population was 580,020.[3][23]


An old, color-coded map
Vilnius (in green) in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in a 1712 map


Early 19th-century painting of a cobbled city street
Near the Dominican Church of the Holy Spirit in Dominikonų Street, 19th century
Photo of a wide city street
Pilies Street in 1873


Tinted photo of a busy street scene
Vilnius in 1915–1916. The city was known for its ethnic tolerance until World War I.[1]

The city's Lithuanian population reached a record low in 1931 (0.8 percent); Poles numbered 65.9 percent after the 1922 annexation of Vilnius Region by Poland and the Lithuanian retreat from the region to the temporary capital of Kaunas.[24]

After the 1939 Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty, Lithuania regained one-third of Vilnius Region and tried to Lithuanize Vilnius by introducing Lithuanian laws.[25] Prime Minister Antanas Merkys said that this was "to make everybody think like Lithuanians. First of all, it was and still is necessary to comb out the foreign element from the Vilnius Region".[25] The Lithuanian government enacted a law in which those "who on 12 July 1920 (...) were regarded as Lithuanian nationals, and on 27 October 1939 were resident in the territory became Lithuanian nationals".[26][27] About 150,000 Poles were repatriated from the Lithuanian SSR from 1945 to 1956.[25] Nearly the entire Jewish population was exterminated during the Holocaust in Lithuania.[24]

After World War II, the number of ethnic Lithuanians in Vilnius rebounded; however, Lithuanization was replaced with Sovietization.[24][28] Following independence in 1990, Vilnius' ethnic-Lithuanian population increased to 63.2 percent in 2011 and 67.44 percent in 2021.[29][30][31]

Historic ethnic makeup

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Main article: Demographic history of the Vilnius region
Historic ethnic makeup of Vilnius
Year Lithuanians Poles Russians Jews Others Total
1897[32] 3,131 2% 47,795 31% 30,967 20% 61,847 40% 10,792 7% 154,532
1916[33] Increase 3,669 2.6% Increase 70,629 50.1% Decrease 2,080 1.5% Decrease 61,265 43.5% Decrease 3,217 2.3% Decrease 140,840
1917[34] Decrease 2,909 2.1% Increase 74,466 53.65% Increase 2,212 1.6% Decrease 57,516 41.44% Decrease 1,872 0.77% Decrease 138,787
1919[33] Decrease 2,900 2.3% Decrease 72,067 56.1% Increase 4,049 3.2% Decrease 46,506 36.2% Increase 2,954 2.3% Decrease 128,476
1923[33] Decrease 1,445 0.9% Increase 100,830 60.2% Increase 4,669 2.8% Increase 56,168 33.5% Increase 4,342 2.6% Increase 167,454
1931[35] Increase 1,579 0.8% Increase 128,628 65.9% Increase 7,372 3.8% Decrease 54,596 28% Decrease 1,159 0.6% Increase 195,071
1941[36] Increase 52,370 28.1% Decrease 94,511 50.7% Decrease 6.712 3.6% Decrease 30,179 16.2% Increase 2,541 1.4% Decrease 186,313
1942[33] Decrease 29,480 20.5% Increase 103,203 71.9% Decrease 6,012 2% — — Decrease 1,220 0.4% Decrease 143,498
1951[33] Increase 55,300 30.8% Decrease 37,700 21% Increase 59,700 33.3% Decrease 5,500 3.1% Increase 21,100 11.8% Increase 179,300
1959[28] Increase 79,363 33.6% Increase 47,226 20% Increase 69,416 29.4% Increase 16,354 6.9% Increase 23,719 10% Increase 236,078
1970[33] Increase 159,156 42.8% Increase 68,261 18.6% Increase 91,004 24.5% Increase 16,491 4.4% Increase 37,188 10% Increase 372,100
1979[33] Increase 225,137 47.3% Increase 85,562 18% Increase 105,618 22.2% Decrease 10,723 2.3% Increase 48,785 10.3% Increase 475,825
1989[33] Increase 291,527 50.5% Increase 108,239 18.8% Increase 116,618 20.2% Decrease 9,109 1.6% Increase 51,524 8.9% Increase 576,747
2001[37] Increase 318,510 57.5% Decrease 104,446 18.9% Decrease 77,698 14.1% Decrease 2,770 0.5% Decrease 50,480 9.1% Decrease 553,904
2011[29] Increase 337,000 63.2% Decrease 88,380 16.5% Decrease 64,275 12% Decrease 2,026 0.4% Decrease 45,976 8.6% Decrease 535,631
2021[38] Increase 373,511 67.1% Decrease 85,438 15.4% Decrease 53,886 9.7% — — Decrease 43,655 7.8% Increase 556,490

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Vilniaus tautos". quest.lt (in Lithuanian). Archived from the original on 8 January 2020. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
  2. ^ a b Baronas, Darius (29 March 2013). "Knyga, kuri išliks: Gedimino Vaitkevičiaus Vilniaus įkūrimas". bernardinai.lt (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 31 August 2020.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "Vilniaus istorija". vle.lt (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 8 November 2019.
  4. ^ "Karaliaus Mindaugo portretui faktų vis dar stinga". vz.lt (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  5. ^ Tiukšienė, Zita; Sisaitė, Nijolė (2015). Pasižvalgymai po Vilnių (PDF). Vilnius: Adomo Mickevičiaus viešoji biblioteka. p. 167.
  6. ^ "Vilniaus konfesinė įvairovė". ldkistorija.lt (in Lithuanian). Archived from the original on 11 December 2017. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
  7. ^ "Vytautas Didysis". vle.lt. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
  8. ^ a b "Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės gyventojai". vle.lt (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  9. ^ "Gediminaičiai". vle.lt. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  10. ^ "Laiko ženklai. Didikai Vilniuje". Lrt.lt (in Lithuanian). 15 October 2005. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  11. ^ Jokubauskas, Vytautas. "Lietuvos aukso amžius – vienas sprendimas galėjo pakeisti visą istoriją". DELFI (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  12. ^ "Vilniaus gynimas". vle.lt. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
  13. ^ Janušauskienė, Diana (1 October 2012). "Tolerancijos apraiškos Lietuvoje: vertybinės nuostatos tautinių mažumų atžvilgiu" (PDF). p. 425. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 November 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  14. ^ a b "Lietuvos gyventojai Rusijos imperijos valdymo metais (1795–1914)". vle.lt (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  15. ^ Roderich von Erckert (1863). Atlas ethnographique des provinces habitées en totalité ou en partie par des polonais (in French). Saint Petersburg. p. 3. Retrieved 6 March 2023.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  16. ^ Jurginis, Juozas; Merkys, Vytautas; Tautavičius, Adolfas (1968). Vilniaus miesto istorija [Vilnius city history] (in Lithuanian). Vilnius. p. 303.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  17. ^ Janušauskienė, Diana (1 October 2012). "Tolerancijos apraiškos Lietuvoje: vertybinės nuostatos tautinių mažumų atžvilgiu" (PDF). p. 426. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 November 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  18. ^ Srebrakowski 2020, p. 39-40.
  19. ^ Lexykon geograficzny, dla gruntownego poięcia gazet i historyi z różnych autorów zebrany, przetłumaczony i napisany przez x. Hilaryona Karpińskiego, Z. S. Bazylego w prowincyi litewskiey kapłana i teologa. Po śmierci iego, z przydatkiem odmian, które zaszły, z wykładem na początku terminów geograficznych, i słownikiem nazwisk łacińskich na końcu położonym, do druku podany [A geographic Lexicon, for the thorough help of newspapers and histories from various authors collected, translated and written by x. Hilaryon Karpiński, Z. S. Bazyli in the provinces and a Lithuanian priest and theologian. After the death of iego, with the advent of variations that have occurred, with a lecture at the beginning of geographical terms, and a dictionary of Latin names at the end, printed for publication] (in Polish). Vilnius. 1766. p. 602.
  20. ^ Juozas Jurginis; Vytautas Merkys; Adolfas Tautavičius (1968). Vilniaus miesto istorija [Vilnius city history] (in Lithuanian). Vilnius.
  21. ^ "Lietuvos gyventojai Pirmojo pasaulinio karo metais (1914–1918)". vle.lt. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  22. ^ "Lietuvos Respublikos gyventojai (1918–1940)". vle.lt. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  23. ^ "Gyventojų skaičius pagal savivaldybes 2020 m. sausio 1 d." (PDF). registrucentras.lt. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  24. ^ a b c Janušauskienė, Diana (1 October 2012). "Tolerancijos apraiškos Lietuvoje: vertybinės nuostatos tautinių mažumų atžvilgiu" (PDF). p. 427. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 November 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  25. ^ a b c Crowe, David (1993). The Baltic States And The Great Powers: Foreign Relations, 1938–1940. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-00-031480-9. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
  26. ^ Lietuvos rytai: straipsnių rinkinys – K. Garšva, L. Grumadienė, 1993, Valstybinis leidybos centras
  27. ^ Mackonis Rapolas - Amžiaus liudininko užrašai 2001, Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla
  28. ^ a b Snyder, Timothy (2003). The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999. Yale University Press. pp. 92–93. ISBN 978-0-300-10586-5.
  29. ^ a b Lietuvos gyventojai 2011 metais (2011 m. gyventojų surašymo rezultatai / Lithuanian 2011 Population Census in Brief) [Population of Lithuania in 2011 (Population Census 2011 results)]. Statistics Department of Lithuania. ISBN 978-9955-797-17-3. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
  30. ^ "Ethnic composition of Lithuania 2021". pop-stat.mashke.org.
  31. ^ "Rodiklių duomenų bazė - Oficialiosios statistikos portalas". osp.stat.gov.lt.
  32. ^ Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г. – Вильна [First general census of the Russian Empire in 1897 – Vilna] (in Russian).
  33. ^ a b c d e f g h Srebrakowski 2000, p. 129.
  34. ^ Brensztejn 1919, p. 24.
  35. ^ "Drugi powszechny spis ludności z dn. 9.XII.1931 r. Miasto Wilno" [Second general population census of 9.12.1931. Vilnius city] (in Polish). 1937.
  36. ^ Srebrakowski 2020, p. 47.
  37. ^ "Gyventojai [Population]" (PDF). Statistics Department of Lithuania. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 April 2012.
  38. ^ "Rodiklių duomenų bazė - Oficialiosios statistikos portalas". Osp.stat.gov.lt. Retrieved 28 February 2022.

Works cited

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