THE POLES IN THE VILNIUS DISTRICT AS LITHUANIAN CITIzENS IN THE CONTExT OF RESEARCH ON POST- TRANSFORMATIONAL REALITY

39 Annotation. The author elaborates the idea of social capital that becomes helpful while making attempt to determine the Polish minority living in Lithuania, as a potential of this country. This article presents research on the citizenship, and the conditions enabling or disabling the process of its emergence among the Polish minority in Lithuania. The background of the undertaken issue was the process of transformation in the context of the following: examining changes within the assessment of the living conditions and quality of life, attitudes towards the occurring changes, but predominantly – shaping citizenship among contemporarily biggest Lithuanian national minority. The last decade of the 20th century is for Europe a time of intense changes and transformation. The wave of revolution, that swept through the territory of the countries of the former Soviet bloc, initiated some of the changes, starting from the Round Table, through the fall of Berlin wall, Lithuanian, or Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution, processes of political and economic system transformation, resulting in shift in social policy of the new bodies, shaped qualitatively different reality, involved in the consequences of the occurring changes. The changes – massive, numerous and quick ones – as characterized by A. Ziemilski that time – moved entire groups of people towards a complex and temporary situation, requiring quick decisions and difficult choices: “The growing sense of the scale of changes one participates in, or will take part in, results in experiencing number of fears and anxiety, disabling the appropriate interpretation of one’s and country’s situation, bring about crisis in own beliefs or values; often leading to rebellion and aggression” (Ziemilski, 1995, p. 16). The occurring changes bore fruit in rich literature, where – apart from various interpretation and different judgment of their social results – attention is drawn to the coherence of the inspiration, that is not incidental, but comes as a consequence of common history, and equally strong need to deal with the negative consequences of a long-term isolation and regression. Krystyna Dziubacka


TRANSFORMATIONAL REALITY
The Republic of Lithuania gained its independence at the beginning of 1990s.The declaration of renewed independence of Lithuania declared on March 11th 1990, initiated transformation processes implying far-reaching changes both tackling the political, economic, cultural as well as educational aspects.The young Republic entered a stage of quick and -in some spheres of life -radical reforms.They mainly considered the political and economical aspects in the functioning of a young country, but also affected social, cultural and educational aspects of the Lithuanian reality (Szerląg, 2001, p. 114).
The striking similarity between Poland and Lithuania, with regards to the experiences resulting from the belonging to one political and cultural bloc, the aspirations directed at independence, and the need for democratization and pro-European aspirations, enabled comparisons concerning individual and group adaptations to the consequences of occurring changes, as well as regarding the observance and analysis of the course of changes taking place.
For a multinational, culturally diverse young Republic of Lithuania, establishing a civic society appeared as a challenge.This process, with relation to the issue of adaption to the new social, political and economic circumstances, became a subject of exploration within a scientific cooperation between the University of wroclaw (Poland) and the Vilnius Pedagogical University (Lithuania).In 1996 the research team of Alicja Szerląg and Krystyna Dziubacka launched a research by and large tackling "the families of the pupils of Polish comprehensive schools in Lithuania in the socio-pedagogical perspective".The research was carried out in two directions -the issue tackled by A. Szerląg explored the identity and interculturalism, whereas in the second case the quality of life and citizenship were the main topic of analysis.These two issues, having been explored commonly by the two researchers many times -were meshing with each other, creating an image of dynamically changing Lithuanian reality.
Focusing on the directions of the research carried out by the author of this article, it must be remembered that the issue of the undertaken topics within, over the years has been evolving (from the conditions and quality of life, adaptation to the new reality, social support, to citizenship per se), to finally become a trail in the search for the answer to what kind of a potential the Poles of Vilnius region posses, as far as the establishment of Lithuanian democracy is concerned.
The research lasted two years, with the last stage taking place in 2010, and embraced all the area of Vilnius district municipality.Applying the in-depth interviews, empirical material was gathered, that will soon constitute the foundation for a monograph tackling the above-mentioned topic.Hence, this article presents the review of the research on Polish dwellers of the Vilnius municipality in the reality of establishing Lithuanian democracy -their citizenship and factor determining this process.

Why the Poles of the Vilnius district?
The reasons for choosing Poles in Lithuania as the target group seems quite obvious, however, to justify this choice it may be stated that, first of all Poles constitute the biggest minority group in the Republic of Lithuania, secondly -it is a minority, that at the initial stage of formulating the concept of free Lithuania, actively participated in the political movements, what in turn significantly influenced the nature of the process of democratizing the political life of the new Republic.Moreover, as Z. Kurcz claimed "the almost concurrent processes -transformation and independency, constitute the essential situations of recognizing the state country and the biggest national minority group (Kurcz, 2005, p. 7).
Lithuania is a multinational country.There are 109 various nationalities living there, making up a society of 3.5 million inhabitants, of which Poles are the biggest minority group reaching 6.7 % of the entire population. 1 Such significant national diversification is a real challenge for the state policy, and implies demands concerning the process of democratization of the social, political and cultural life.Each system of democratic rule provides for the ethnic, linguistic or confessional minorities legal regulations not only to preserve own identity, but also the right to gather, establish and sustain own institutions, organizations or educational associations, the right to have own representatives in all bodies of the state authorities and democratic elections, or "the right for each citizen, originating from any national minority, to work at any post of the state authorizes, enterprises, institutions or organizations" (Szerląg, 1998, p. 65).The rights and freedoms of the citizens belonging to the minority groups of linguistic, national or confessional origin in Lithuania is guaranteed by The Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, that came into force on 2 nd November 1992, as well as number of many decrees and legal acts (Vaitekus, 1995, p. 10).
Those of Polish nationality live in almost all the cities and regions of Lithuania, of which 92 % in the Vilnius municipality, making up 25.4 % of all its inhabitants.Taking into account the data from 2001, the Polish minority constitutes statistical majority in the two Vilnius districts -in Šalčininkai (79.5 % of the entire population) and Vilnius itself (61.3 % of the population), whereas in the rest of the Vilnius district, the Polish minority was also a minority in the statistical sense as in Trakai area (322 %), Švenčionys (27.4 %), the area of Širvintų rajono savivaldybė (10 %), or Ukmergė region (0.7 %) (Kurcz, 2005, p. 168).According to the Lithuanian census from 1998, Poles constitute 6 % of the population in the Lithuanian cities, whereas in the rural areas they number reached 9.2 % of the entire population (Vaitekus, 1995).
Before entering the essential stage of the research, it had to be precisely determined, or actually defined, how is a "Polish family", as a subject of given stages of research, understood.Therefore, it was assumed that a "Polish family" meant a family, with at least one of adult member of Polish nationality (the literal participant of the surveying), with a child as a pupil of a Polish school, or a Polish class in a Lithuanian secondary school.The above assumption narrowed the potential research to the parents, whose motivation behind sending a child to a Polish school or a class was considered as their "Polishness".It must be also added, that given stages of the research embraced holders of Lithuania citizenship, whether adults as representatives of a given family, or the teenagers attending Polish secondary schools.

The conditions and quality of life in the research concerning Polish Lithuanians
The research on the conditions and quality of the Poles' life in the period of transformation drew interest of many scientific circles in Poland.within such research, the relation between occurring changes and subjective assessment of their results or consequences was subject of exploration, concurrently making assumption, that each social change is a moment of questioning the routine existence of an individual.Therefore, it is connected with the necessity to work out individually new cultural competences, adequate to the dynamically changing reality, i.e. such one, that questions or discontinues the socially crucial patterns of behavior and common sense of identification.The response to a change, i.e. adopted strategy enabling one to adapt to new living conditions, depends on the ability to read new cultural codes, i.e. skills, the level of a culture, the type of beliefs etc.It all, in turn, corresponds to the subjective assessment of the life quality.
Skipping the extensive literature on the topic of defining the category of the "life reality", I shall only mention, that for the purpose of this part of the research, references were made to the Polish literature on the topic, where the concepts of such notion concentrated on two basic ways of perceiving this phenomenon: describing it whether as objective life conditions, essential for human's needs, or as subjective states expressing conviction concerning the stage of accomplishing such needs (Kaleta, 1988).
Proceeding to the works on conceptualizing the issue, for the purpose of the recalled research, it was assumed that the analysis of the broadly-understood economic, social and cultural situation of the researched family should embrace the two abovementioned dimensions, i.e. objective and subjective one.First of them refers to the features of the life surrounding, including the nature, as well as the condition of the landscape and architectural space, as well as social and cultural aspects of the environment, level of the family's life, access of the family members to the most significant socially desired values, such as access to the labour market, access to the cultural and economic goods, opportunities to protect one's health.The second dimension reflected the level of life satisfaction measured by the level of the declared satisfaction derived from living conditions and advancement of accomplishing basic life values.
In accordance with the accepted methodological assumptions, the undertaken research was of interenvironmental nature, hence the research took place concurrently within the Vilnius conurbation, i.e.Vilnius itself, Pabradė in the Švenčionys region, as well as the Rukainiai village in the Vilnius district (Dziubacka, 1998).
It was possible to formulate quite obvious in this regards thesis, that the living conditions of the Lithuanian society are deteriorating, hence -the assessment of its level is adequately low.The premise for such assumption was constituted by the author's familiarity with Polish transitional reality and the social consequences of the occurring changes, such as rapid decrease in the level of life among most of the citizens, the unemployment -a phenomenon unknown until that time, rise in the threat of being made redundant, decrease in many various social welfare benefits, as well as the necessity to take individual responsibility for own's life and to think pragmatically.
The analysis of the research carried out in May 1996 led to a conclusion that all the abovementioned negative phenomena of the consequence of the changes taking place in Lithuania affected the inhabitants of all the locations where the survey took place.Shirking of the labour market was caused by the dynamics of restructuring processes leading to the process of closing down the kolkhozes or unprofitable plants, as well as rebranding or privatizing the enterprises.
with regards to the three research locations, increasing poverty among inhabitants was caused not only by the rise in unemployment rate, but also by passiveness and the demand for support with no worked out efficient strategies enhancing effective process of counteracting the poverty.It is interesting enough, that similarly as in Polish researches on this issue, there were noticeably expressed symptoms of the learned helplessness and nostalgia for the former system, where the "authority and the party took real care of the people".Among all the 240 participants of the research, 64.1 % claimed their family situation deteriorated after 1990.The country dwellers overwhelmingly assessed their living conditions as extremely bad, with the highest indicator of pathological adaptive behaviour (alcoholism, theft, robbery, trans-frontier mafia activities and prostitution).Taking into account the living conditions, 10.8 % of the respondents signalized some improvement in comparison with the period preceding the transformation, whereas 16.2 % noticed no significant changes whatsoever. 2he quality of life was generally assessed low, with highest percentage of positive notes reported among the inhabitants of Vilnius -15.9 %, 10.1 % in the village of Rukainiai and the lowest rate of 6.8 % in Pabradė.The reason for the declared lack of satisfaction included not only lowly assessed living conditions, but also other phenomena of various origin, such as intruding the law and regulations concerning the Polish language, implementing the project "Greater Vilnius", problems with getting back the lands that arose enormous sense of injustice (perhaps not always appropriate) and frustration (Dowdo, 1996, p. 2).
It all affected given attitudes, stimulating some to act, and discouraging others, weakening the willingness to get socially engaged.The results of the carried out research indicated significant diversification within the range of civic activity and social engagement of the dwellers of given place of residence.In the village Rukainiai, the weakening local governmental activity of Poles living there, as well as indifference and isolation, were explained by difficult living conditions in such environment.The dwellers of Pabradė manifested their activity oriented mainly at preservation of the Polishness by participation in the Association of the Poles in Lithuania.Nevertheless, their activity was described by the local leaders as merely excessive over-discussing, rather than concrete actions enabling to solve problems affecting this environment.
Diverse and dynamic activity was specific for the Polish minority in Vilnius, as during the period of carrying out the research, there were operating many head offices of Polish organizations, e.g.: Association of Poles in Lithuania, Polish Business Club, Polish Medical Association, Association of Polish Scientists of Lithuania (there was Polish University operating within in the past), The Polish Scout Association in Lithuania, Polish Section of the Community of Exiles, The board of Polish schools, Sports Club "Polonia", Catholic Association of Poles in Lithuania, Foundation of Polish Culture in Lithuania, Polish Youth Forum in Lithuania.Despite setting various goals and launching different initiatives, it seemed that all these associations and organizations were rather competing with each other rather than cooperating, contributing to the disintegration, not the consolidation of the Polish circles.Separate celebration of the same events may provide a typical example in this regard. 3he issue of the quality of life emerged in the further research next years, with its basic aim to capture changes both within subjective assessment of the conditions and quality of life, as well as shift in the attitudes of the transformation participants taking into account its repercussions.
The assumption was made that in the changing circumstances people face the necessity to adopt a given strategy of dealing with the change.Some are able to adopt an active approach thanks to which they become an active participants of the occurring changes, whereas others remain passive and helpless awaiting this, whatever the fate shall bring.However, it was not the point to confirm the truism that a given strategy depends on the ability trained upon socialization to read new cultural code .i.e.skills, the level of a culture or education or types of drives, but the priority was to have the opportunity to trace the changes within shaping the citizenship.

The citizenship of Poles in the Vilnius district as seen in the research
The point of departure for initiating another trend of the research tackling the Polish minority in Lithuania were numerous interpretations and assessments of the social results of the occurring changes.Their authors emphasized difficulties given society faced in their lonely struggle with the transformational consequences.It was concurrently implied that in a situation when simultaneously the state, as well as the local authorities, are incapable of dealing with number of consequences of changes that appear traumatic for the society, it is necessary for the citizens to get more engaged, as only by overtaking part of the responsibility for the common wealth it is possible to fight back marginalization and state enfeeblement (wciórka, 2005, p. 259).
Such engagement and rising awareness among the society on the necessity of undertaking given action, constitute the foundation for shaping the civic society perceived as an indicator of the established democracy.
The conviction that while strengthening democracy constitutive role is played by strong and active civic society, is represented by many researchers of democracy (Śnieżek, 2002, p. 190).It is simultaneously emphasized that in the countries of a established model of democracy, the category of a "civic society" constitutes its foundation (Geisler, 2005, p. 301).As Benjamin Barber wrote, "strong democracy needs citizens, the citizens need civic society, however the civic society requires a bond that would not relate to the policy of identity, hence democracy should constitute such a bond" (Barber, 1997, p. 373).
As early as the begging of 1990s, both for Lithuania, as well as for other former Soviet bloc countries, the process of shaping civic society was one of the most crucial aspects of system transformation. 4"Civic society" was referred to as a social deal basing on pluralism of organization and voluntary cooperation.Its concept was developed "in the opposition to the model of a monocentric country (defined by some of the critics of communistic system as totalitarian or authoritarian), that composed an imposed organization based on constraints.Concurrently, the reference to modern, western European concepts of a civic society, thataccording to Hegel's tradition -juxtaposed it with the state" (Bartkowski, Jasińska-Kania, 2002, p. 9).The problem usually accompanying such type of reflections questioned whether "young democracies" have at own disposal the capital enhancing the establishment of standards and structures of a civic type, making them concurrently the participants of forming such a kind of a society.
This question became a point of departure for a series of research initiated in 2004, tackling the issue of the citizenship of Poles in Lithuania.Their essential objective was to gather empirical material, constituting a basis to propose the answer to the questions such as what kind of citizens the Lithuanian Poles are, whether the awareness of functioning within Polish minority in Lithuania influences their sense of citizenship, and whether the social capital (in the shape of given civic values) is sufficient enough to shape civic culture in the young generation.
The empirical material gathered upon four years of accomplishing various stages of the research provided important information on the basis of which it was possible to: • characterize the civic attitudes of Poles living in Lithuania in the context of establishing the civic society (research from the period 2004-2005, 116 respondents) (Dziubacka, 2007, pp. 181-198).It was assumed that a civic society refers to such a situation in the country and social life, where "the citizens have influence on the authorities and may control it, while exercising the right to undertake own initiatives and get engaged in various ways" (Krzemiński, 2005 reveal the importance of the citizenship experience in the process of civic education, defined as a process of approaching the understanding of values and their internalization.It was also recognized that a process referred to as the social growth on one hand concerns the development of social awareness (shaping attitudes, beliefs, moral stands and social approaches), and on the other -to prepare for playing given social role and undertake more and more responsible social tasks (wiejak-Jezierska, 2004, pp.153-170).
The leading question was how the citizenship of the adult part of the society influences the process of shaping civic culture among the youth of secondary schools (research from 2007, 76 respondents) (Dziubacka, 2010, pp. 313-334).
The entire material, gathered over the years of carrying out the researches, apart from providing crucial information enhancing the process of reconstructing the image of the researched community, favoured the attempt to present a potential that Polish minority in Lithuania has at own disposal.Research, conducted in this regard in the years 2008-2010 may become a source of information on the quality of the social capital.
It is worth to emphasize that a social capital "is rooted in the structures of social relations, both of formal and informal origin (structure of kinship, neighbourhood, compatriotism, informal groups)" (Giza-Poleszczuk, 2000, p. 97).Hence, the social capital enables the creation of civic culture at the same time allowing the individual's assimilation of the "set of ethical, moral, intellectual, legal, social, cultural and mental disposition and behaviour expressed by a citizen, shaped on the basis of his/her subjective legal status" (Sladek, 2007, p. 86).Therefore, shaping the civic culture (including civic competences) is a point of reference for the civic education.

Few more reflections on citizenship as a challenge for education
As it been mentioned above, the participants of the conducted research consisted of both adult representatives of the Polish community, as well as the school teenagers.The research carried out in 2007 tackled the latter group, aiming at finding answers the question, whether the adopted strategies of dealing with the new post-transformational reality expressed/manifested by the adults contradict the process of shaping civic society among the youth.It was concurrently assumed that shaping civic society among the youth takes place as a result of deliberate or unintended, aware or unaware interactions with given groups or individuals.
The theoretical grounds from the undertaken issues referred to the conviction that for a society of the citizens to become a civic society it is necessary to provide for the youngest the desired patterns of behaviour and attitudes, as only through such it possible to shape given features of the citizenship, e.g. the civic culture or civic awareness.The individual civic awareness is established also by experiencing the citizenship (embracing patterns of behaviour from the past and presence), conduct of the citizen elected by the society representatives, the result of democracy mechanisms, familiarity with the systems, and last but not least -consequences of the political choices (Kobylarek, 2007, p. 68).
In such context, particular significance is drawn to the period of adolescence, when a young man, preparing for the adulthood and playing various social roles, acquires given civic competences.Family environment is of paramount importance in this period, as observing the conduct of parents in a situation of providing support, expressing readiness and abilities to cooperate or following the moral rules in social life, generally enhance the perception of their attitudes as a role model and inspiration (Sladek,p. 94).Hence, the experiences derived from family home, or values and beliefs that are the source of pro-social behaviour of the parents as well as their civic engagement constitute the foundation for own citizenship.
Apart from the family, school is the another institution that appears significant in the context of shaping a young man.School, as the educational unit and institution of secondary socialization, incorporates the objective of shaping civic knowledge and rising awareness within the range of the rights and obligations for each member of the society (community).Its aim is to prepare for making aware choices and the ability to assess and make the democracy participants aware of their own possibilities to act within.
Shaping citizenship also refers to the observation of the society representatives, whose conduct should teach (among others) respect for the law and strengthen the conviction that a state is a common wealth of all the citizens.
Common, socialising and educational success of the representative of a civic society is manifested in given features, which a young generation should posses, with specific values such as honesty, responsibility, ability to cooperate, sense of obligation, frugality, rational approach to problem solving, readiness to undertake risks, considered as indicators of high social capital.
Conclusion: for the Polish youth of the Vilnius district the adults and their representatives: relatives, neighbours, representatives of Polish social and political organizations, are the point of reference for shaping moral attitudes and the sense of citizenship.The beliefs of the Polish youth, as presented in this article, referring to selected spheres of their social functioning, provided the picture a of a transgenerational transmission concerning the issue "how to live" and "how to be".Nevertheless, not always was this picture satisfying.

Summary
It was not possible to present the entire, extensive theoretical aspects of this issue within the framework of this paper.It is equally infeasible to recall the result of the gathered empirical material and profound conclusions drawn.Due to the lack of the possibility to present wider context of the social environment of the Polish minority in Lithuania, its atmosphere determining given attitudes, approaches or deeply rooted stereotypes, it could imply circumstances to misinterpret the phenomena descried within the framework of this article.Therefore, I shall focus on the attempt to answer the question what image the citizenship among the Polish Lithuanians depicts.
Answering the question "what it means to be a good citizen" the straight majority replied that one should "participate actively in the elections" -90.7 %, belong to various organizations and be socially active -equally 51 % each of the responses, get engaged in the issues crucial for the growth of the region and the country (i.e.reading press and gathering information what happens in their own country, participating in referendum etc) -37.2 %.
The minority of voices claimed that the citizenship means "not to gossip", "not to quarrel", "to help the neighbours", "to set a good example", "raise children in the patriotic atmosphere". 5 Are the Poles living in Lithuania good citizens?while searching for the answer to this question, the analysis of convergence of the key words in the researched definition was carried out, comparing the key words of the notion "a good citizen" with the declarations of own attitudes.The analysis proved that 86.1 % of the respondents actively participated in the elections concerning various levels of political and social life (83 % of the researched took part in the referendum on the process of accession to the European Union by the Republic of Lithuania), 13.8 % declared their membership in one of the political organizations in Lithuania, whereas 11.1 % participated in a local organizations, or association of a social character at a local level.36.1 % of the researched declared knowledge on the region and familiarity with its urgent problems.Of course, it must be remembered that the presented analysis is predominantly a measurement of the declarations stated by the researched, not the indicator of their authentic engagement.Moreover, it is also difficult to firmly judge whether the declared activity (particularly the one regarding elections) is the result of self-aware decision (determined by the citizenship of the researched group), or just a habit from the period, when the election activity was imposed by the previous system and this duty became a habit embedded in the collective memory of that generation.
Both the rich theoretical material, as well as the empirical one, gathered upon the field research method favour the conviction that the repercussions of the transformation experienced by the representative of Polish Lithuanians, as well as strategies of dealing with the occurring problems, did not significantly distinguish them from the group of other subject of European changes.As in the case of many heirs of the socialistic system, there are specified by the learned helplessness, individuality, lack of widespread community worker patterns, consumptionism, permissiveness and amorality (Dziubacka, 2005, pp. 27-41).The inheritance of the communistic regime, with the compromised social work ethos and other intelligence values, did not empower the creation of civic attitudes.
Nevertheless, in some situations, many of the researched were willing to undertake public activity and cooperation with others, as in cases showing 5 The results are not summed to 100 as the researched recalled more than one example consideration for the homeland (e.g.taking part in the referendum on accession to the EU by Lithuania), significant activity was manifested.Moreover, in the critical situation questioning their preservation of cultural identity or independence, in other wordswhile expressing consideration for the particular interests of Polish minority -they overtly expose their Polishness and patriotism.(Dziubacka, 2007, pp. 181-198).
Nevertheless, following the words of P. F. Drucker, "apart from patriotism, there must be also sense of citizenship […], without which the system is empty, and the nationalism may emerge.with no citizenship there might be no appropriate engagement that would shape the citizen, and in the end maintain the political system united.There may be also no satisfaction nor pride of the act that we do something important" (Drucker, 1993, p. 141).