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- Title
Lietuvių ir lenkų ryšiai emigracijoje XIX a. pabaigoje-XX a. pradžioje.
- Authors
Dapkutė, Daiva
- Abstract
The history of Lithuanians in America is closely connected with that of Poles in America. The influence and example of the latter impacted the former in major ways. The Lithuanians of the first immigrant wave from 1868 onwards settled near the Polish communities that had formed a decade earlier. What Lithuanians had in common with Poles was a similar emigration experience, the same religion, and some knowledge of Polish. They were also bonded by the fate of cheap immigrant laborers in an alien environment and by the hostility that English-speaking locals felt towards them. Insofar as national consciousness had not yet awakened, Lithuanians felt at home in Polish organizations and communities; in many U. S. locations joint Polish-Lithuanian mutual assistance and mixed parishes were formed. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that a separate national self-consciousness emerged. This made itself felt first of all in the establishment of separate parishes in those localities where the number of Lithuanians increased and the difference in language became a dividing factor. Sometimes the often stressful division expressed itself in physical clashes between members of the two nationalities. Eventually the Catholic Church in America became a fortress of Lithuanianism, encouraging the faithful occasionally to resort even to physical force in their defense of Lithuanian values in Lithuanian parishes against the claims of Polish priests. The division also manifested itself in the joint Lithuanian-Polish mutual assistance and other organizations. This struggle with the Poles over ethnic matters, church ownership, and language was one of the earliest and most important factors in the formation of the Lithuanian national consciousness in the diaspora.
- Subjects
POLAND; LITHUANIA; UNITED States; LITHUANIA-Poland relations; LITHUANIANS; DIASPORA; EMIGRATION &; immigration; NATIONALISM; CATHOLIC Church
- Publication
Oikos: Lithuanian Migration & Diaspora Studies, 2009, Vol 2009, Issue 8, p81
- ISSN
1822-5152
- Publication type
Article