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Lithuanian Book Smugglers Vs. The Russian Empire · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. That is our super producer,
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Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams. They call me ben fun fact nol Uh.
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Speaker 1: Neither of us speak the Lithuanian language. It's true. I
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Speaker 1: did try it for about a half an hour on
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Speaker 1: duo lingo and I am point o O O one
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Speaker 1: two three six repeating proficient awesome, dude, congratulations and you
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Speaker 1: know what which means I can pronounce the word of
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Speaker 1: the day. That's yeah, Kinnygnatia. Uh, we'll get, we'll get,
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Speaker 1: We'll get to what this means. We want to shout
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Speaker 1: out any Lithuanian Ridiculous Historians in the audience today, because
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Speaker 1: just a little more than a month ago, Lithuania celebrated
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Speaker 1: something called kyn Ignatia Diana the day of the book Smugglers,
1:21
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what this episode is about. It's
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Speaker 1: so interesting the way history works, because yes, the three
1:27
Speaker 1: of us don't ourselves speak the Lithuanian language with fluency,
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Speaker 1: but if things have gone just a little bit differently,
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Speaker 1: nobody would be speaking this language today. And it's there's
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Speaker 1: an amazing tale of the struggle for literacy and the
1:42
Speaker 1: struggle for culture here. And I don't know about you guys,
1:45
Speaker 1: but after I was after I caught up with this
1:47
Speaker 1: and learned this story, which was totally new to me,
1:50
Speaker 1: I was gassed. I was inspired. I love nerd fights. Well, yeah,
1:54
Speaker 1: and I think we're all I mean, we're not. We're
1:57
Speaker 1: not fans of book bands as a thing. Stories of
2:01
Speaker 1: book bands are always interesting because it usually points to
2:04
Speaker 1: a power struggle. Anytime there's like a desire to kind
2:08
Speaker 1: of tap down on information, it means that some ruling
2:12
Speaker 1: power is losing their grasp on control. And it's always
2:16
Speaker 1: an interesting tipping point because, as we know, usually when
2:19
Speaker 1: you do things like that, like say, oh no, you
2:21
Speaker 1: can't have these books around anymore, let's burn them all,
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Speaker 1: there's usually a backlash of some kind or other, and
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Speaker 1: the one in today's story is particularly interesting and creative. Yes, agreed,
2:33
Speaker 1: this is crime for the greater good. We hope that
2:36
Speaker 1: you will agree with that assessment. By the end of
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Speaker 1: today's story. Let's maybe let's later get the lay of
2:43
Speaker 1: the lands here, So this has Russia involved during this time,
2:48
Speaker 1: we're talking about sarist Russia. Russia dominated by the Star system.
2:55
Speaker 1: They had taken control of a place called Lithuania after
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Speaker 1: the Commonwealth of Poland. Lithuania was divided in annexed like Prussia, Austria,
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Speaker 1: and Russia all came in and they split up this
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Speaker 1: area in sevent If you were living in Lithuania at
3:15
Speaker 1: this time, the majority of your country fell under the
3:19
Speaker 1: control of Russia, who had absolutely zero respect for Lithuanians
3:24
Speaker 1: as a people or culture. Yeah, and we know that.
3:26
Speaker 1: You know. Oftentimes conquering powers when they take their cut,
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Speaker 1: they liked the new subjects under their rule to fall
3:33
Speaker 1: in line with their way of life, which includes, of
3:35
Speaker 1: course their religion and sarist Russia, I believe would fall
3:40
Speaker 1: under Russian Orthodoxy, but historically Lithuanians practiced Roman Catholicism. This
3:47
Speaker 1: was not a good thing in the eyes of their
3:50
Speaker 1: new rulers. They saw it as a potential threat to
3:54
Speaker 1: their supremacy. We see this all the time. Any conquering
3:57
Speaker 1: forces coming in, the first thing they do is try
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Speaker 1: to convert by force, usually um the people under their
4:05
Speaker 1: rule to their religion. So that's exactly what Russia did.
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Speaker 1: The folks in power. They did it very much with
4:13
Speaker 1: an iron fist by demolishing churches or chapels. Rather, they
4:17
Speaker 1: also prohibited construction of certain types of shrines, and these
4:23
Speaker 1: were structures that were all over the place. Apparently they
4:26
Speaker 1: were around two shrines per kilometer there in Lithuania. And
4:32
Speaker 1: another thing that happens in these situations, especially when folks
4:36
Speaker 1: are overtaken by forces, they don't want to do that thing.
4:40
Speaker 1: It's gonna take a lot to force this and usually
4:43
Speaker 1: historically takes a very long time and results in a
4:46
Speaker 1: lot of death and chaos and blood shed. So understandably,
4:51
Speaker 1: the Lithuanian people wanted to hold onto their own culture,
4:55
Speaker 1: and they had a university system there, and this is
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Speaker 1: a very learned people and a lot of scholars specializing
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Speaker 1: in the study of this religion, their faith in their
5:05
Speaker 1: history and culture. So these university systems they essentially organized
5:11
Speaker 1: the students rather organized um along with the clergy, and
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Speaker 1: they led a pretty violent uprising in eighteen thirty one
5:20
Speaker 1: against the Russian occupiers. And it was initially a pretty
5:26
Speaker 1: small scale kind of thing because Lithuania had a very
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Speaker 1: small population of only around a million people. By the way,
5:34
Speaker 1: incredible Atlas Obscure article always love their work. If you
5:39
Speaker 1: want to check out the article by Michael Waters from
5:42
Speaker 1: July nine, seventeen the nineteenth century Lithuanians who smuggled books
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Speaker 1: to save their language, sort of giving you a little
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Speaker 1: bit of a taste of what's to come here. Yeah,
5:52
Speaker 1: and I want to I want to go back to
5:54
Speaker 1: this because I'm a big fan of contextualizing history, So
5:58
Speaker 1: these wayside shrines will familiar to people who are history
6:02
Speaker 1: buffs in this area. But the best one are the
6:07
Speaker 1: best comparison that I could think of is Starbucks in
6:10
Speaker 1: the US. Imagine if Starbucks had religious significance to people,
6:15
Speaker 1: which they made for some big coffee fans. Imagine if
6:18
Speaker 1: some foreign power came in and demolished every Starbucks. That's
6:21
Speaker 1: how common these things were. So this was very much
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Speaker 1: an attack on this culture, and the resistance went on
6:29
Speaker 1: for such a long time. We talked about the eighteen
6:31
Speaker 1: thirty one University student resistance, which stands out because, like
6:36
Speaker 1: you said, most resistance was operating on a pretty small scale,
6:40
Speaker 1: and that was kind of an exception. But if you
6:42
Speaker 1: fast forward about three decades, you see another massive insurrection,
6:48
Speaker 1: and this is the backlash of This is what leads
6:50
Speaker 1: to the cracked down on the Lithuanian language itself. The
6:54
Speaker 1: war shifts to become a war on hearts, minds, culture
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Speaker 1: and language. I want to shout out the Vintage News
7:02
Speaker 1: this awesome, awesome article by E. L. Hammington's. In the
7:05
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, Lithuanians smuggled books in an act of rebellion
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Speaker 1: against Russian control. Here's what happens before, Here's why these books.
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Speaker 1: Book smugglers exist. Eighteen sixty three, Like always say, this
7:19
Speaker 1: is the biggest resistance movement. Sixty six thousand Lithuanians out
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Speaker 1: of a population of around a million, from all walks
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Speaker 1: of life, clergy, merchants, surfs, you know, like small scale
7:32
Speaker 1: agricultural folks. They launch an armed rebellion, and that rebellion
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Speaker 1: is crushed. Thousands of people are dead, thousands are exiled
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Speaker 1: to Siberia, which at this time is pretty much a
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Speaker 1: death sentence as well. And then sorry, Alexander the Second says,
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Speaker 1: screw you, guys, We're going to crack down on this.
7:54
Speaker 1: We're going to What they wanted to do is Russia
7:57
Speaker 1: fi the Lithuanian population real world, to make things more
8:00
Speaker 1: Russian Russia PI and remove its history. So like you know,
8:05
Speaker 1: remove the Catholic Church. We want to issue we being sorry,
8:09
Speaker 1: Alexander the second want to issue temporary rules for state
8:15
Speaker 1: junior schools of what they called the Northwestern Cry. And
8:18
Speaker 1: this was a law against children speaking or reading Lithuanian
8:24
Speaker 1: in school. You could only read Russian. As you can imagine,
8:27
Speaker 1: this is really difficult for kids who are you know,
8:30
Speaker 1: already pretty far along in the education process and now
8:33
Speaker 1: they have to learn a new language. This is uh
8:37
Speaker 1: and it even gets worse the next year they're like, no,
8:39
Speaker 1: no Lithuanian language in print. Ever. Yeah, it's just I mean,
8:44
Speaker 1: you see these kinds of things throughout history and you
8:46
Speaker 1: wonder it's like, are you're not able to read the room?
8:49
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not gonna end well like short
8:52
Speaker 1: of just like app outright genocide, you know, I mean,
8:55
Speaker 1: it's it's just not very functional. You know, these folks
8:58
Speaker 1: have their own language, they have their own culture. Short
9:00
Speaker 1: of just wiping them out and starting from scratch, it's
9:03
Speaker 1: very uh unlikely. But there's going to be a mass
9:06
Speaker 1: you know, falling in line and just a wiping the
9:08
Speaker 1: slate clean of all of this stuff. And this is
9:11
Speaker 1: how human beings cling to language and culture in history
9:15
Speaker 1: um is. So it's always them a little bit wondering,
9:18
Speaker 1: and I guess it's just a matter of when you're
9:20
Speaker 1: a supreme leader, you guess you can do whatever you
9:22
Speaker 1: want and no one really questions you, and people just say, yeah,
9:25
Speaker 1: it's a great idea, that'll totally work. But as we know,
9:27
Speaker 1: because these small scale, even the big ones, small scale
9:31
Speaker 1: sixty six thousand, pretty small scale, um compared to the
9:34
Speaker 1: the Russian military might, you really can't fight the power here.
9:38
Speaker 1: You have to kind of resort to more creative, kind
9:41
Speaker 1: of sneaky means. So this ban on the Lithuanian press
9:47
Speaker 1: was essentially an attempt to completely erase their language and
9:50
Speaker 1: their culture and replace it with that of of of
9:54
Speaker 1: Mother Russia. Lithuanian kids were also supposed to attend state
9:58
Speaker 1: schools where they learned the sur really alphabet, which, by
10:01
Speaker 1: the way, I mean, despite Russia being a pretty cruel
10:05
Speaker 1: and uh intense occupier in the situation, I do think
10:08
Speaker 1: that this relic alphabet is one of the most beautiful
10:11
Speaker 1: printed languages I've ever seen. It's really really cool looking,
10:14
Speaker 1: but also I imagine, very very complex and difficult to
10:17
Speaker 1: learn from scratch. So a lot of historical reports from
10:20
Speaker 1: the time kind of indicated mainly what I was surprised by,
10:24
Speaker 1: just that the Russian rulers didn't really think that this
10:27
Speaker 1: would be that big a deal to institute this span.
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Speaker 1: It's like, come on, Russians, great, they think they're alphabets
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Speaker 1: beautiful too. This will be a great opportunity for them
10:36
Speaker 1: to you know, start a new under, a new uh,
10:38
Speaker 1: a new culture, and a new language. But like I
10:41
Speaker 1: also said, and I think everyone probably pretty easily can
10:45
Speaker 1: see how this is the case. This is not something
10:48
Speaker 1: they were willing to just give up without a huge fight.
10:58
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. It has uh similar assumptions as the
11:04
Speaker 1: more recent assumptions about in the invasion of you crying.
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Speaker 1: You can't think that people will just say they have
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Speaker 1: no nationality or cultural identity because you told them they didn't. Actually,
11:17
Speaker 1: that's something that people will go to the map for.
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Speaker 1: Throughout history we see this happen. And the Lithuanian I
11:26
Speaker 1: guess you can call them the intelligentsia, you know, the
11:28
Speaker 1: university folks, the clergy, so on. They're not going out
11:32
Speaker 1: without a fight, and they figure out first they figure
11:35
Speaker 1: out a loophole, very obvious loophole. Russia is has annexed
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Speaker 1: and has occupied in this area, so they can prevent
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Speaker 1: printing presses in this country from making stuff in Lithuanian,
11:48
Speaker 1: but they can't do anything for books printed in foreign lands.
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Speaker 1: And so these guys get together and start printing things
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Speaker 1: in other countries and then they ugle them into Lithuania.
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Speaker 1: This is the rise of the kenneg Nazi or pardon
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Speaker 1: my Lithuanian her book carriers would be the translation. They
12:10
Speaker 1: transported books across the border, and then they functioned as
12:13
Speaker 1: an underground distribution service to get them to Lithuanian children,
12:17
Speaker 1: to get them to other cities and villages, and at
12:21
Speaker 1: first there was a cottage industry. These guys were lone wolves.
12:25
Speaker 1: They were walking alone, literally carrying books and sacks like
12:29
Speaker 1: some kind of reading rainbow Santa Claus or. They were
12:32
Speaker 1: in covered wagons and they had these way stations where
12:35
Speaker 1: they would drop these books off. Of course, they were
12:39
Speaker 1: traveling by cover of night, and they were also traveling
12:43
Speaker 1: when the weather was bad, particularly during winter blizzards, because
12:46
Speaker 1: that's when guards and Russian authorities would be most likely
12:50
Speaker 1: to you know, stay in and stay warm. Sure, I
12:53
Speaker 1: mean it reminds me of like, you know, in in
12:55
Speaker 1: robin Hood, the Disney cartoon with the cartoon Fox, robin
13:00
Speaker 1: Hood dresses up as a beggar, you know, to kind
13:02
Speaker 1: of like be incognito and and and kind of slide
13:05
Speaker 1: under the radar. That was a big thing they did
13:08
Speaker 1: as well. Oftentimes women who were smuggling these books dressed
13:12
Speaker 1: like beggars and they hid these books in sacks of
13:15
Speaker 1: cheese or eggs or bread, kind of like a bindle situation.
13:19
Speaker 1: Some even used tool belts and pretended to be workmen
13:24
Speaker 1: and disguised newspapers under their clothes, like you might be
13:29
Speaker 1: able to wrap your body, you know, and clothes if
13:31
Speaker 1: you had like a kind of like layers on, you
13:33
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily notice that there were, you know, printed materials
13:36
Speaker 1: being concealed underneath. So by around late in the nineteenth century,
13:43
Speaker 1: everyone was kind of getting in on the game because
13:45
Speaker 1: this was a way of participating in the preservation of
13:50
Speaker 1: the Lithuanian culture, which meant a lot to everybody. Again,
13:54
Speaker 1: the whole layered clothing. They would sometimes pretend to be
13:58
Speaker 1: overweight by stuffing clothes with these newspapers and books, and
14:02
Speaker 1: doctors even got it on them by hiding books inside
14:05
Speaker 1: of their medical bags. We had farmers who were moving around,
14:09
Speaker 1: you know, grain and things like that and vegetables. Um,
14:12
Speaker 1: they would hide publications in there as well. Even musicians
14:16
Speaker 1: would hide things in their in their instrument cases. Yeah,
14:19
Speaker 1: these are all common tricks for smugglers nowadays. But we
14:24
Speaker 1: have to realize that these folks weren't coming from a
14:27
Speaker 1: criminal background. In the vast majority of cases, this was
14:31
Speaker 1: a life to which they were not acclimated and they
14:34
Speaker 1: were doing it. Again, I count emphasized this enough for
14:37
Speaker 1: a greater good. They even set up underground schools. If
14:41
Speaker 1: the authorities are keeping too much of an eye on
14:45
Speaker 1: the actual school buildings, then they start teaching in churches
14:49
Speaker 1: and it holds and they be These book smugglers become
14:53
Speaker 1: folk heroes. They become a a national symbol. They're the
14:56
Speaker 1: face of the resistance, and the Russians are deaf infinitely
15:00
Speaker 1: after them. We want to introduce the guy is a
15:03
Speaker 1: key figure in this. His name is Bishop multi Laos Valencius.
15:07
Speaker 1: He had already been an historian for a long time.
15:12
Speaker 1: He had written a lot of religious and secular works
15:15
Speaker 1: in Lithuanian and he was sometimes called the greatest Lithuanian
15:20
Speaker 1: personality in the nineteenth century, which is a very specific award.
15:24
Speaker 1: He's the guy who made the first large scale attempt
15:28
Speaker 1: to get these books into the country, and he did
15:32
Speaker 1: this by me. He was religiously motivated, at least in part.
15:36
Speaker 1: He wanted to publish more prayer books in the native language,
15:40
Speaker 1: so he sent some cash to Prussia across the border
15:43
Speaker 1: to create a printing press, and then in eighteen sixty
15:47
Speaker 1: seven he got a bunch of priests who were in
15:51
Speaker 1: Prussia to bring the books back into Lithuania and start
15:55
Speaker 1: handing him out to locals. He was organizing this and
15:59
Speaker 1: at first he was just doing Latin reprints of religious text.
16:04
Speaker 1: Their problem with that, of course, was it was Roman Catholic.
16:07
Speaker 1: They weigh everything in Russian, hence Cyrillic not Latin. Lithuanian
16:11
Speaker 1: is in Latin alphabet and or a Latin alphabet and
16:15
Speaker 1: uh as as stuff grew kind of like a way
16:20
Speaker 1: nicer version of Walter White and breaking bad, his operation
16:24
Speaker 1: grew and his ambitions grew in step. So he started
16:27
Speaker 1: to commission original works, and then he started to get
16:31
Speaker 1: some of his own works printed out at this press
16:34
Speaker 1: in Prussia at this press and Prussia and his his
16:38
Speaker 1: team started moving them across the border. And one thing
16:42
Speaker 1: that's interesting about this operation is because of the way
16:45
Speaker 1: it started, because of this bishop. A lot of these
16:48
Speaker 1: are early smugglers were priests, which is probably not what
16:51
Speaker 1: they were thinking of when they took their vows, but
16:53
Speaker 1: they were. They were down to clown Many shore to
16:57
Speaker 1: the tune of around nineteen thousand books that were printed
17:00
Speaker 1: in East Prussia and brought back into the country, back
17:02
Speaker 1: into Lithuania. Eleven of these smugglers are at the very least,
17:07
Speaker 1: according to the vintage news piece and their research, were caught.
17:11
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily an instant death sentence, but you did
17:15
Speaker 1: get banished to a little place called Siberia, he might
17:18
Speaker 1: have heard of, pretty brutal, basically a death sentence, if
17:22
Speaker 1: not just the most unpleasant long term existence you could
17:26
Speaker 1: possibly imagine. And we're gonna get more into that and
17:30
Speaker 1: just a little bit. But despite the dangers um and
17:34
Speaker 1: in some of the negative outcomes, this movement and this
17:37
Speaker 1: resistance did grow. Valencius's own, uh you know, kind of
17:43
Speaker 1: initial group, the Kindnignace started to kind of shoot off
17:49
Speaker 1: into little splinter groups, uh, And then those sort of
17:52
Speaker 1: developed into a larger smuggling organization, sort of a network,
17:57
Speaker 1: and they had uh names such a Stimulus, Rebirth, the Sprout,
18:02
Speaker 1: the Truth, the Ray of Light Compulsion that's the weird one, uh,
18:07
Speaker 1: and the morning Star. And they started to import books
18:11
Speaker 1: from even as far as the US, where there was
18:15
Speaker 1: a pretty large Lithuanian American expat population who would help
18:19
Speaker 1: with the printing. Yeah, and these organizations all they kind
18:25
Speaker 1: of collaborated, but they could also act independently when needed.
18:29
Speaker 1: So they distributed textbooks, science books, fiction, sermons, folklore, you
18:34
Speaker 1: name it. They became printing houses almost And yes, this
18:40
Speaker 1: this was a widespread activity in its glory days, right
18:43
Speaker 1: at its apex, But that doesn't mean it was easy.
18:47
Speaker 1: The Lithuanian border was tough to cross. There were three
18:51
Speaker 1: different lines of Russian security, much more intense than the
18:55
Speaker 1: Custom Agency would run into a border crossings today. The
18:59
Speaker 1: first line was a bunch of soldiers along the border
19:03
Speaker 1: who were purposely distributed really densely so that they could
19:08
Speaker 1: see each other. They were like line of sight with
19:10
Speaker 1: each other. And then if you made it past that line,
19:13
Speaker 1: there was another row of soldiers a little less intense,
19:16
Speaker 1: spread further out, and then the last line of defense.
19:19
Speaker 1: That third line was the Russian Empire police officers. They
19:23
Speaker 1: rode around on horseback and they had a network of
19:27
Speaker 1: local informants who I think, we're very unethical people. If
19:31
Speaker 1: you got caught, you would get first off, you would
19:35
Speaker 1: get tied to a post and they would whip the
19:37
Speaker 1: snot out of you. This is not like a fun
19:40
Speaker 1: birthday spanking. This kind of stuff leaves scars for the
19:42
Speaker 1: rest of your life. And then you were either imprisoned
19:46
Speaker 1: and maybe in Lithuania, or you were sent to Siberia.
19:49
Speaker 1: And if you tried to run, like if you somehow
19:52
Speaker 1: had a high enough constitution role to get back on
19:57
Speaker 1: your feet after you get whipped and then make a
19:59
Speaker 1: go for it, they would just shoot you in the back. Uh.
20:02
Speaker 1: They burned the Russian soldiers, that is, they burned every
20:05
Speaker 1: single book or journal that they found on the smugglers.
20:09
Speaker 1: We know that the number of smugglers caught and transported
20:13
Speaker 1: to Siberia or shot or imprisoned, it's kind of lost
20:18
Speaker 1: to history. The first major arrest was sometime in either
20:22
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy or eighteen seventy one. Russian forces caught and
20:28
Speaker 1: sentenced eleven members of Valentius crew. They were eight of them,
20:34
Speaker 1: five priests of farmer and even a noble were sent
20:38
Speaker 1: to Siberia and the operation was compromised. So just a
20:43
Speaker 1: few years later, in eighteen seventy five, he died. But
20:48
Speaker 1: in the words of che ga Vera, it's like, shoot, fool,
20:52
Speaker 1: you were only killing a man because his mission continued
20:56
Speaker 1: well after his death, thanks to his thanks to his mentee,
21:01
Speaker 1: his disciple, and that I mean, honestly, ben that's that
21:04
Speaker 1: quote sums up this whole situation. You know, you just
21:07
Speaker 1: can't do what the Russians are trying to do without
21:11
Speaker 1: the most draconian measures, like literally genocide. Human beings are
21:16
Speaker 1: going to cling on to the things that that they
21:19
Speaker 1: give them, uh, identity, uh. And this stuff is very
21:23
Speaker 1: deeply ingrained through generation. So I mean, yeah, it's absolutely true.
21:27
Speaker 1: And so it's sort of like a losing battle on
21:29
Speaker 1: the Russian side, But boy did they continue to try.
21:32
Speaker 1: But to your point, ben, Um, this message and this
21:36
Speaker 1: you know struggle, this uh cause did continue and the
21:40
Speaker 1: leadership was passed on to somebody else. Valencia's basically had
21:45
Speaker 1: a successor sort of already in place a guy named
21:49
Speaker 1: Urgus Bielini's, who is a Lithuanian nationalist whose father was
21:55
Speaker 1: a very um intense political activist, and so he kind
22:00
Speaker 1: of followed in his father's footsteps there and was ready
22:03
Speaker 1: to go. Biolini's met Valencius in eighteen seventy three, after
22:09
Speaker 1: Billinus graduated from a university in Latvia and Riga, Latvia,
22:14
Speaker 1: and by that point this resistance we've been talking about
22:17
Speaker 1: was already happening in a big way, and he was
22:21
Speaker 1: of course very ardently in favor of a Lithuanian culture
22:25
Speaker 1: and identity and those things not being wiped away by Russia.
22:30
Speaker 1: So he and Valencius really hit it off. They kind
22:34
Speaker 1: of formed a pact essentially that they were going to
22:37
Speaker 1: band together um and continue this preservation of the culture
22:41
Speaker 1: and the language that they both loved and felt was very,
22:44
Speaker 1: very very important to continue. And he was adamant in
22:49
Speaker 1: this cause. He said that he would not rest until quote,
22:53
Speaker 1: the Muscovites got out of Lithuania. That's what led him
22:58
Speaker 1: to create the Garsha ken Ignashi Society in eighteen five.
23:04
Speaker 1: This would become the largest smuggling operation of its type
23:08
Speaker 1: in the country and he was given the unofficial title
23:12
Speaker 1: the King of the Book Carriers, which is no, yeah,
23:16
Speaker 1: you know what, I think it is cooler than Wallace
23:18
Speaker 1: Stevenson's Emperor of ice Cream. So that's a great poem.
23:21
Speaker 1: But by the way, muscow By just refers to people
23:24
Speaker 1: native to Moscow. Yeah. So basically he was saying he
23:27
Speaker 1: was gonna do whatever it took. He was going to
23:29
Speaker 1: continue in this cause until every last Russian was gone,
23:33
Speaker 1: which was not something that was very much in the
23:34
Speaker 1: car and so basically saying almost it was almost as
23:37
Speaker 1: if to say until I die. Yeah. And so members
23:41
Speaker 1: of the society created Soon there were thousands of them.
23:45
Speaker 1: This was by far the biggest organization and it had
23:48
Speaker 1: the power of the people because they crowdsourced money to
23:51
Speaker 1: get books from these publishers in Prussia, and then they
23:55
Speaker 1: started a subscription service. How cool is this You could
24:00
Speaker 1: put some money in for the cause, right, and instead
24:03
Speaker 1: of just like buying guns or something for hopelessly outnumbered militia,
24:07
Speaker 1: by the way, you are buying books. And this guy
24:11
Speaker 1: is credited with smuggling. Get this, folks, Nearly half of
24:15
Speaker 1: all the books brought into Lithuania from East Prussia during
24:20
Speaker 1: this time, he even was smuggling to Lithuania's living in Latvia.
24:25
Speaker 1: The heat was on. The Russian authorities were hip to
24:28
Speaker 1: this guy, and by the eighteen nineties they put out
24:30
Speaker 1: a bounty on him. This is like the most militant
24:35
Speaker 1: reading rainbow ever and there were several man hunts. He
24:38
Speaker 1: was able to evade capture for a long time because
24:43
Speaker 1: literally everybody except for Russians and turn Coats are on
24:47
Speaker 1: his side. Again, we have to emphasize these folks aren't criminals.
24:52
Speaker 1: They're doing an act that has become criminalized by a
24:55
Speaker 1: foreign power. And at the turn of the century, while
25:01
Speaker 1: he is on the run, mind you, how badass is this?
25:05
Speaker 1: He created a Lithuanian newspaper and if you got a subscription,
25:10
Speaker 1: he would just deliver it to you regularly. It was
25:12
Speaker 1: called the White Eagle. It was printed on one of
25:15
Speaker 1: the only press is active in Lithuania at the time,
25:19
Speaker 1: and he brought it in from Prussia. That's why I
25:22
Speaker 1: think is so cool. He said, why are we just
25:25
Speaker 1: smuggling books? I want to smuggle in an actual printing press.
25:29
Speaker 1: We're not sure exactly how he was able to pull
25:32
Speaker 1: this off, but he got it past those three lines,
25:35
Speaker 1: and he was also able to get the supplies you
25:37
Speaker 1: need to run a printing press. And then he taught
25:41
Speaker 1: a dot another smuggler, a guy named Stepanus Povlionis, to
25:46
Speaker 1: work a printing press. I mean, I am, I am
25:49
Speaker 1: imprinting pressed with these kids. Yeah, it's pretty incredible because
25:53
Speaker 1: it's kid man I like that. But you know what
25:56
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. A sprinting press is like
25:58
Speaker 1: a massive operation, a massive piece of machinery so to smuggling,
26:03
Speaker 1: and it would have had to come in and pieces
26:05
Speaker 1: and then be assembled. I mean, this is like difficult
26:08
Speaker 1: stuff that you can't just kind of intuitively figure out.
26:11
Speaker 1: But they worked out all the logistics and they made
26:13
Speaker 1: it happen. Um So, I don't know if we mentioned,
26:16
Speaker 1: but Bielinas came from a lower class background. He was
26:20
Speaker 1: a peasant and through his own you know, blood, sweat
26:24
Speaker 1: and tears and effort, he kind of ascended to the
26:28
Speaker 1: position of an intellectual. And this atics obscure article very
26:32
Speaker 1: apthlete describes him as a defender of the Lithuanian language.
26:35
Speaker 1: But this was something that was not the most out
26:39
Speaker 1: of the ordinary thing. Under these extraordinary circumstances of the time,
26:43
Speaker 1: because the Russian Empire had abolished serfdom in the early
26:47
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, and therefore there was this kind of new
26:51
Speaker 1: class that emerged, a class known as peasant intellectuals that
26:56
Speaker 1: kind of begun to take shape because if you weren't
26:59
Speaker 1: just constantly having to work the land as a surf
27:02
Speaker 1: it kind of freed up some bandwidth, like read and
27:06
Speaker 1: educate yourself and become something different than just a run
27:10
Speaker 1: of the mill, you know, manual laborer. Uh So this
27:14
Speaker 1: became almost an unanticipated outcome of Russia taking that action,
27:19
Speaker 1: you know, getting rid of the surf class. They kind
27:22
Speaker 1: of created the groundwork for their own overthrow, at least
27:26
Speaker 1: in terms of um, the spread of anti Russia information
27:31
Speaker 1: and and the idea of being able to kind of
27:33
Speaker 1: preserve the culture of these invaded people. So there's a person,
27:38
Speaker 1: a writer named Zigmantis Kiopa who wrote a book called
27:42
Speaker 1: the History of Lithuania UM. He described this class as
27:46
Speaker 1: the most faithful users of the Lithuanian language and largely
27:51
Speaker 1: occupying the majority of this you know, book smuggling kind
27:55
Speaker 1: of contingent. Yeah, Like s of the smugglers were peasants,
28:00
Speaker 1: And I do want to amend the Russian Empire. When
28:04
Speaker 1: they were putting out their man hunts for Bullinias, they
28:06
Speaker 1: caught him five times. He just kept getting away because again,
28:12
Speaker 1: everybody who actually is Lithuaitian is on his side. The
28:15
Speaker 1: Robin Hood example is pretty spot on there. So it's
28:25
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds. Now these guys are getting creative.
28:30
Speaker 1: Some people are even getting the Russian police to help them.
28:34
Speaker 1: The head officer of Ario Gala, they're in Central Lithuania,
28:38
Speaker 1: joins the smuggling conspiracy. That's really what it is, all
28:41
Speaker 1: smuggling as a conspiracy in and then other people are saying, hey,
28:47
Speaker 1: there's some loopholes in this press band because if we
28:50
Speaker 1: print stuff on slabs of clay, they're not considered books,
28:55
Speaker 1: so they're not technically illegal. We're going to old school
28:58
Speaker 1: with it. We mentioned the Sea grid schools, right. We
29:02
Speaker 1: didn't mention how this is tough on the kids though,
29:06
Speaker 1: because imagine you're a kid. Your parents are basically telling you, look,
29:10
Speaker 1: now you have two schools. You have the fake school
29:13
Speaker 1: you have to go to for these Russian jerks, and
29:16
Speaker 1: then you go to real school at night, and your
29:20
Speaker 1: neighbor's house and that's where your actual education is going
29:24
Speaker 1: to happen, So you know, look like you're paying attention
29:27
Speaker 1: during the day, but don't stress about it, don't try
29:30
Speaker 1: so we can only imagine how many kids funked. Well,
29:33
Speaker 1: you say that, and I think there's probably some truth
29:35
Speaker 1: to that, and I know you're joking, but also, like,
29:37
Speaker 1: isn't it such a privilege that Americans have We speak
29:41
Speaker 1: the English, we learn a second language kind of almost
29:44
Speaker 1: as like a luxury or like as like sort of
29:47
Speaker 1: like an elective, you know, in school. I know, anytime
29:50
Speaker 1: I've traveled abroad, it is just like understood nearly that
29:56
Speaker 1: just about everyone speaks English because it is something that
29:59
Speaker 1: is just taught and it is a necessity for business
30:02
Speaker 1: in many ways. But you know, we are so privileged
30:05
Speaker 1: in you know, it's just not nearly as common for
30:08
Speaker 1: Americans to like speak multiple languages. But I've bet a
30:10
Speaker 1: lot of these kids probably did learn Russian pretty well
30:14
Speaker 1: in addition to Lithuanian and had to kind of like
30:17
Speaker 1: hide it because honestly, I bet ben if they were flunking,
30:20
Speaker 1: that would be a bad look, and I bet it
30:22
Speaker 1: might come back to visit the parents, you know, if
30:24
Speaker 1: the kids weren't doing well. Yeah, if all, if all
30:27
Speaker 1: the kids in class were funking, that would be sus.
30:30
Speaker 1: But you know, to that point they were because this
30:32
Speaker 1: is Europe, there were probably already a lot of kids
30:34
Speaker 1: who were bilingual to some degree in Russian or maybe
30:39
Speaker 1: another language in that area. And yes, of course, the
30:43
Speaker 1: idea of a secondary extracurricular program after school is still
30:48
Speaker 1: pretty common throughout the world. Like a lot of Japanese
30:50
Speaker 1: American kids here in the US go to Japanese school
30:54
Speaker 1: on the weekends, you know, and it's totally separate from
30:57
Speaker 1: whatever school they're going to for grade school through high school.
31:01
Speaker 1: But they're not forced to do this by a state power,
31:05
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that's one of the big distinctions.
31:08
Speaker 1: So now we have to ask how many books did
31:10
Speaker 1: the Russian forces at this time actually burn or actually confiscate.
31:16
Speaker 1: We know that in one decade to one they confiscated
31:22
Speaker 1: well over a hundred and seventy three thousand different publications,
31:27
Speaker 1: and we don't know how many books were actually printed
31:30
Speaker 1: and smuggled, because we only know the ones that were
31:33
Speaker 1: caught as a result of the illegality of the operation.
31:37
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to keep a tally that could be
31:40
Speaker 1: easily found by the authorities, because that would be a
31:43
Speaker 1: tremendous boon to them. The confiscation rate skyrocketed over the
31:48
Speaker 1: next few years, nights, you know, one to oh four.
31:51
Speaker 1: And this is why you'll see historians like the one
31:54
Speaker 1: we referenced earlier saying, if they had to guess, there
32:00
Speaker 1: could have been millions of smuggled books. Virtually every town
32:04
Speaker 1: in village had their own treasure trove of illegal books,
32:09
Speaker 1: as well as a secret Lithuaitian school. And if you
32:12
Speaker 1: want kids to think school is cool as lame in
32:17
Speaker 1: ess that sounds, tell them it's secret. People love secrets, man,
32:22
Speaker 1: And uh, we know that more and more people were
32:27
Speaker 1: engaging in this conspiracy towards the height of it. It
32:30
Speaker 1: was kind of like the Hydra organization in Marvel comics
32:35
Speaker 1: and Marvel films, because anybody could be Hydra and you
32:38
Speaker 1: didn't really know until they leaned in and whispered, like
32:41
Speaker 1: hell Hydra. So you would see widows, farmers, doctors, musicians,
32:47
Speaker 1: like organists, traveling salesman. You know, they would just be
32:50
Speaker 1: their regular Lithuaitian selves until they leaned in and said,
32:54
Speaker 1: I've got some bocks. That was like their hale Hydra moment,
32:58
Speaker 1: and I think that is awesome. But then we see
33:02
Speaker 1: more secret newspapers, more and more people are rallying against
33:05
Speaker 1: this idea of Russification. As you can tell, fellow ridiculous historians,
33:09
Speaker 1: Russification is not going well. It might look okay to
33:12
Speaker 1: this are on paper, but it's it's not working. People
33:16
Speaker 1: start organizing music, will get togethers secret plays about how
33:21
Speaker 1: awesome Lithuanian culture and languages, and then they start having
33:25
Speaker 1: these things they called picnics, which look like you know,
33:28
Speaker 1: regular picnics until you hear what people are saying. It's
33:32
Speaker 1: all about the rebirth of the Lithuanian state or the
33:36
Speaker 1: resistance against the what they saw as the evil empire
33:40
Speaker 1: of Russia. So this is inspiring stuff, and it I
33:45
Speaker 1: think eventually at some point, if we take the Russian perspective,
33:49
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to say, how long are we gonna
33:52
Speaker 1: keep up this band, especially if it's not working. You know,
33:56
Speaker 1: we got like hundreds of soldiers on the border and
33:58
Speaker 1: they're obviously not great at this. Yeah. Look, I mean
34:01
Speaker 1: it kind of reminds me of like what happened with
34:04
Speaker 1: the Berlin Wall for example. You know, where you had
34:08
Speaker 1: Russia realizing that it was too expensive to maintain that
34:12
Speaker 1: segregation between East and West Berlin, and to maintain that
34:16
Speaker 1: iron grasp over information and controlling information and keeping tabs
34:21
Speaker 1: on everybody and all of these operations, they just balloon
34:23
Speaker 1: out of control. Um. It just seems like historically Russia
34:27
Speaker 1: has a history of biting off a little more than
34:29
Speaker 1: they can chew in the pursuit of ideology. What do
34:33
Speaker 1: you think about that? Then? Well, it's tough because these
34:36
Speaker 1: are very very different versions of Russia. That's why I'm
34:40
Speaker 1: pointing out the thematic commonality of underestimation, you know, with
34:45
Speaker 1: with Ukraine. Me when I say earlier and I agree,
34:48
Speaker 1: you know, society should not hold the current government of
34:52
Speaker 1: Russia responsible for the actions of Sarrost Russia. It's very
34:56
Speaker 1: very different, but for sure. But yeah, there's there's a
34:59
Speaker 1: fail earlier to uh, to really understand the vibe here
35:04
Speaker 1: and the war or the objections. The resistance against this
35:08
Speaker 1: band is being fought in legal channels too. It's not
35:11
Speaker 1: all just books smuggling, although that's probably the coolest part
35:14
Speaker 1: of the story. People were organizing actual petitions to the
35:19
Speaker 1: Russian Empire and the Russian government would receive these requests
35:23
Speaker 1: that would say, you know, stuff like we the people
35:25
Speaker 1: of this village or some sort of constituency, would like
35:30
Speaker 1: to end the ban on the Lithuanian language. We're just
35:34
Speaker 1: asking you through legal channels, and eventually the tide turns,
35:39
Speaker 1: not in Lithuania, but in Russia. Russian intellectuals are saying,
35:44
Speaker 1: what's the point of this band? We didn't really define it.
35:47
Speaker 1: People are still writing and speaking and reading in Lithuanian.
35:51
Speaker 1: They're just using clay tablets because whoever wrote this law
35:55
Speaker 1: didn't understand how to define stuff. The Council of Ministers
36:01
Speaker 1: in Russia says, okay, this is officially a failure. Nineteen
36:05
Speaker 1: o four, they retire the band they ended. They're trying
36:10
Speaker 1: to reconcile with military groups because something else is happening.
36:15
Speaker 1: They need more support from anything affiliated with the Russian
36:18
Speaker 1: Empire because they're in the Russian Japanese War. But it's
36:22
Speaker 1: too little, too late. Lithuanians are not having it, you
36:27
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And our guy here bilinists. He
36:30
Speaker 1: starts talking more and more about being fully independent from Russia.
36:35
Speaker 1: He becomes like, you know, we we kind of say
36:38
Speaker 1: it was always an ardent nationalist. Now he is like
36:40
Speaker 1: a spokesman for Lithuania, and he is one of the
36:44
Speaker 1: driving forces for the active independence of Lithuania in February
36:50
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen. Unfortunately, and this is one of the sad
36:55
Speaker 1: ironies that happens so often in history, he passed away
37:00
Speaker 1: eight the month before he died in January eighteen, before
37:05
Speaker 1: he saw the legislation he had fought so hard for
37:09
Speaker 1: come to pass. But then, on a lighter note, imagine
37:13
Speaker 1: you're a book smuggler. Imagine you're one of the teachers,
37:17
Speaker 1: remember the clergy, and he got all these books, all
37:20
Speaker 1: these secret cool books, and now the book ban is lifted.
37:23
Speaker 1: Your book rich What are you gonna do? Do people
37:26
Speaker 1: still want books? I don't know. How do you move
37:29
Speaker 1: all these books? You got like a hundred copies of
37:32
Speaker 1: I don't know, you've got a hundred copies of the
37:34
Speaker 1: New Testament in Lithuanian or in Latin or whatever. What
37:37
Speaker 1: do you do? Well? Uh, you could open a bookshop. Hey,
37:41
Speaker 1: that'd be cool. And not only would it just be
37:43
Speaker 1: a bookshop, you know with all this inventory, I mean,
37:46
Speaker 1: it's essentially an incredible foundation to start a long lasting
37:52
Speaker 1: legacy historical bookshop, and this place exists. In nineteen o five,
37:57
Speaker 1: right after the band was lifted, one of the bugglers,
38:00
Speaker 1: a dude named Joossis massi ulis Um, opened such a
38:04
Speaker 1: store in Ponnisis. And again apologies for butchering these pronunciations.
38:10
Speaker 1: And it's still open today and it is actually part
38:13
Speaker 1: of a chain of bookstores um that have since sprung
38:17
Speaker 1: up in Lithuania under the same name. So in to
38:22
Speaker 1: further honor the legacy of this period, statue was built
38:27
Speaker 1: in the capital at the time was the capital of Kawanas,
38:31
Speaker 1: and that was to commemorate the placard read the unknown
38:34
Speaker 1: book Smuggler, more of like a symbolic thing to talk
38:37
Speaker 1: about the people who we will never know their names
38:39
Speaker 1: because we only really have a handful of figures because,
38:42
Speaker 1: like you said, Ben, the record keeping was a little wonky.
38:44
Speaker 1: So cool. So today in Lithuania, March sixteenth is the
38:49
Speaker 1: birthday of Urgus bielinis Um and it is celebrated as
38:54
Speaker 1: Kei Ignestio Dianna, which is translated to the day of
38:58
Speaker 1: the book Smugglers or carriers, depending on um your preference. Um, yeah, um,
39:06
Speaker 1: pretty big deal. Yeah, that's why we opened with this,
39:08
Speaker 1: So a happy day of the book smugglers. Happy belated
39:12
Speaker 1: KIGSI Dania to all who celebrate. I think I don't
39:16
Speaker 1: know but you guys, but I'm celebrating this now. I
39:18
Speaker 1: think saving things through the power of literacy is awesome.
39:22
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons that people like me end
39:25
Speaker 1: up in things like podcasts. At this point, maybe we
39:28
Speaker 1: give the last word to Jonas step Sish, who talked
39:32
Speaker 1: about his father and his uncle as book smugglers. He
39:37
Speaker 1: says smuggling is the reason, or one of the primary reasons,
39:40
Speaker 1: Lithuania was able to regain independence when he writes, the
39:45
Speaker 1: struggles of the book carriers have been praised in modern
39:48
Speaker 1: times by people like father you Willonius Casperavicius, who said
39:52
Speaker 1: the work of restoring Lithuania's independence began not in eight
39:56
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, when it declared itself a state, but rather
40:00
Speaker 1: the time of the book carriers, with bundles of books
40:02
Speaker 1: and pamphlets on their backs. These warriors were the first
40:05
Speaker 1: to start preparing the ground for independence, the first to
40:08
Speaker 1: propagate the idea that it was imperative to throw off
40:11
Speaker 1: the yoke of Russian oppression. So pretty cool. And also,
40:17
Speaker 1: you know, kudos Tsarist Russia because there miscalculation about banning
40:22
Speaker 1: a language in a very real way set the dominoes toppling, right,
40:27
Speaker 1: That's what led to Lithuania's ultimate independence. I think it's
40:32
Speaker 1: a cool lesson. I know we went a little bit
40:34
Speaker 1: long on this one, but we hope you enjoyed it
40:37
Speaker 1: as well, folks, and we can't wait to hear from you.
40:40
Speaker 1: What are some other awesome acts of literacy as rebellion
40:45
Speaker 1: or literacy as resistance? I would say the still yaga
40:49
Speaker 1: are up there. Music literacy is the same as print literacy,
40:54
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of examples about these. Can't
40:56
Speaker 1: wait to hear about them. Yeah, you can hit us
40:58
Speaker 1: up on the internet. Were ridiculous historians on Facebook. That's
41:03
Speaker 1: the name of our Facebook group. A lot of good
41:04
Speaker 1: meme activity and chatter there around the shows that we
41:08
Speaker 1: do every week. You can also find Ben and I
41:11
Speaker 1: as individual human people on the Internet. I am pretty
41:14
Speaker 1: much exclusively on Instagram, where you can find me at
41:17
Speaker 1: how now Noel Brown, Mr Boland about yourself? Well, Mr Brown,
41:21
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians, you can indeed find me on the internet.
41:26
Speaker 1: The rumors are true. I've got a lot of exciting
41:29
Speaker 1: stuff coming up that I can't yet announce on air,
41:31
Speaker 1: But get in on the ground floor. Follow me at
41:34
Speaker 1: ben Bowling b O W l I N on Instagram.
41:37
Speaker 1: You can also find me on Twitter where I'm at
41:39
Speaker 1: ben Bowling hs W. That's a great place to send
41:42
Speaker 1: suggestions for episodes and questions. Great place to send terrible puns.
41:47
Speaker 1: I love them. Hashtag no pun left behind bonus. If
41:50
Speaker 1: you're on Twitter, you may also catch the one and
41:53
Speaker 1: only Mr Max Williams. Yes it is I, Mr Max Williams.
41:58
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at at He'll underscore
42:00
Speaker 1: Max Williams where you'll see all my fun interests and
42:04
Speaker 1: stuff and Max may end up also throwing us for
42:07
Speaker 1: a curl ball and then your future not a curveball.
42:11
Speaker 1: That's no other spoilers, but it's curling reference right. No.
42:17
Speaker 1: Spoiling was a big one with the smooth stone used
42:21
Speaker 1: to move around ice thingies bucks. What do you call it?
42:25
Speaker 1: MACI give us the skinny rocks. They are rocks, throwing rocks,
42:30
Speaker 1: throwing rocks with Max Williams on the curling field of
42:35
Speaker 1: play on the sheet of ice. Yeah, yes, the sheet
42:37
Speaker 1: device of course, how could I be so foolish? Yes,
42:40
Speaker 1: still brooms and there there are that didn't totally didn't
42:45
Speaker 1: totally cripple the spoilers. So yeah, just stay tuned on that.
42:48
Speaker 1: I'm sticking with the curlball thing. Yeah, thanks to Mr
42:51
Speaker 1: Matt Williams. Thanks to Casey pegroove. I looked at my
42:53
Speaker 1: old Casey on the case T shirt. Man, it's still
42:56
Speaker 1: it's still a good idea classic shirt, classic Shure vintage
43:00
Speaker 1: at this point. We'll see you next time, folks. For
43:10
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