Social Democracy in Tsarist Lithuania, 1893-1904

Abstract

From the demise of Poland-Lithuania in 1795 until their emergence as two independent states in 1918, Lithuania was an integral part of the Russian Empire. At the close of the nineteenth century the Lithuanian provinces of that empire had a total population of approximately 2.6 million. Ethnic Lithuanians, 63 percent of the total number of inhabitants, lived mainly in rural regions and were engaged in farming; the rest were members of other ethnic groups, mostly Jews and Poles, who resided in towns and depended for their livelihood on the urban economy. The dominant agricultural hinterland possessed a considerable degree of ethnic unity. The urban centers were multinational. The influx of Russian military and civilian personnel, if small in relation to the total population, contributed to this intermixture of nationalities.