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Portal 15 minutes invites you to familiarize yourself with 5 interesting and worth knowing facts about Kazis Pakštas, a person with exceptional vision, and his ideas.
1. All of Lithuania did not want to move to Africa
The idea that the whole country could be moved to another place sounds pretty far-fetched, but K. Pakštas did not suggest moving all Lithuanians to Africa or anywhere else.
Their idea was different: to establish a small Lithuanian colony somewhere in a remote country, in agreement with the local government, at the expense of the Lithuanian state, creating opportunities for it to grow.
In the first stage, according to K.Pakštas’ plan to create a “Lithuanian reserve”, only 25 families had to move to the colony, forming there a village with a school and a church. Later, the population of this colony had to be populated by Lithuanians who emigrated there voluntarily.
Yes, according to K.Pakštas, in what 25 years it is possible to get about 60 thousand people to live in the colony. population. Such a colony could have autonomy, a university.
The geographer did not present such numbers “from the air.” During the interwar period, emigration from Lithuania was active, during the 20 years of independence around 100 thousand emigrated. Lithuanian.
photo from epaveldas.lt / Press release inviting to travel to South America
K.Pakštas realized that it was impossible to stop emigration, but he thought that it was possible to control it, that Lithuanians would not move to any place, but to a specific country, where their compatriots would already be, where they could more easily assimilate and settle. immediately.
In raising the idea of a “reserve Lithuania”, the geographer had another goal. He feared that Lithuania, which was among its large and aggressive neighbors, would still one day be occupied and lose its independence. And he thought that in such a case it would be “backup Lithuania” that could protect the Lithuanian nation.
2. Not only Madagascar was considered, but also the most diverse countries
It is now often imagined that K. Pakštas proposed creating a backup Lithuania on the island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa. Marius Ivaškevičius’s play “Madagascar” also encouraged this idea.
But Madagascar was neither the only nor the main option. K.Pakštas traveled a lot and looked for a place for the “Lithuanian Reserve” all over the world. 1927 visited Brazil in 1930-1931. – In Africa.
He had singled out Angola and Southern Rhodesia as possible locations for a free Lithuania. It also considered Tanganyika, Quebec, and western Canada.
In the most serious way, Angola seemed to be a possible site for a Lithuanian reserve, then a Portuguese colony, where he himself visited. He wrote that the highlands of this country, which are closer to the Atlantic, are suitable for the permanent life of Europeans, that farmers can sow and reap here at least twice a year, herding cattle in the fields throughout the year. . It is true that during his visit to Angola, he pointed out that this is not a perfect land after all, as some might imagine.
photo from epaveldas.lt / Kazys Pakštas in 1927.
And Madagascar just didn’t seem like the right place for a geographer. All Lithuanians were sent to Madagascar in a huge ship a little earlier, in the 20th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was proposed by the Lithuanian writer Vincas Pietaris.
3. It was proposed to move the capital to Klaipeda.
“Reserve Lithuania” was not the only idea of K.Pakštas. During the interwar period, K.Pakštas also proposed to move the temporary capital of Lithuania from Kaunas to Klaipėda. He thought that Lithuania should turn to the sea and absorb it as well as possible.
“Vytautas was riding on horseback there … Our expansion must go in the direction of the Pripetis swamps and non-Gudian sandy areas. Our path leads west, to the waters. One foot from the shore of the sea is more expensive than hundreds of hectares at the bottom … ”, wrote K. Pakštas.
As an example, K.Pakštas showed the Norwegians: according to him, although this nation is not very different from the Lithuanians, they became “carriers of the world” because they looked at the sea.
K.Pakštas also proposed to create a Lithuanian merchant fleet, establish new schools of maritime navigation and fishing in Klaipėda, establish a Maritime Department or a ministry. It was under the influence of the ideas of K.Pakštas that the development of the city and port of Šventoji was planned in the interwar period.
K.Pakštas dreamed that by the end of the century Klaipėda could become a city with a population of half a million and equal in importance to Riga or Karaliaučiai, and Šventoji could also become a city.
J. Andriejauskaitės / 15min nuotr./Klaipėda
This did not happen, but at least one idea born from K. Pakštas, the Festival of the Sea, which K. Pakštas offered as a way to encourage Lithuanians to get to know the sea, lives on.
4. I do not agree with A. Smetona
K.Pakštas was not a fringe – he taught at the University of Lithuania, communicated with other great thinkers of the time, such as Stasys Šalkauskis, and the interwar Lithuanian government really knew about K.Pakstas. A.Smetona had also personally met K.Pakštas.
Photo from the History Museum of Lithuania Minor / Antanas Smetona
However, A. Smetona, although generally during his reign Lithuania tried to pursue a pro-emigration policy of emigration, did not take K.Pakstas seriously for various reasons, both because K.Pakštas was a Christian Democrat and because his ideas seemed unfounded and causing unnecessary panic.
1938 During the meeting, K.Pakštas tried to convince A. Smetonas that he would prepare the “valuable inventory of the nation” – libraries, archives, gold and foreign exchange reserves – for temporary transfer abroad.
K. Pakštas saw that the situation in Europe was heating up and feared that it was too late. He even suggested creating opportunities for the best students to study abroad to avoid a possible occupation.
A.Smetona, although K.Pakstas was received quite amicably and even had tea, he simply replied that maybe we would somehow avoid all this, and the secretary to the president also accused K.Paktas of “bringing unnecessary cowardice.”
“Oh, that Pakštas with his plans is only causing panic,” Smetona complained after meeting with the geographer.
“The inexcusable naivety of our mad rulers,” complained K. Pakštas later, in 1940.
5. Ideas were not abandoned in emigration either
1939 K.Pakštas left for the United States and Lithuania, never returning after the Soviet occupation of the country. But thoughts on the backup Lithuania did not leave him. K.Pakštas considered Australia, New Zealand and Oceania as possible locations for the “Lithuanian Reserve”.
He eventually settled in British Honduras (present-day Belize in Central America, then an autonomous colony of the United Kingdom).
1958 he presented his plans in the Lithuanian-American newspaper Draugas, but the Lithuanian-Americans did not impress him. Lithuanians in the United States were in no rush to take practical steps to help K. Pakštas implement the idea and reacted slowly to K. Pakštas’ invitations to organize.
Many of them had just started to manage their lives in the United States and once again moved to a new land with an uncertain future that did not burn at all.
Read more about Kazis Pakštas, his life and work in the 15Max article published a few months ago.
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