Act of Independence of Lithuania

On 16 February 1918, in German-occupied Vilna, the Lithuanian Taryba adopted an act proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuanian state, based on democratic principles, with Vilna as its capital. It also proclaimed the severing of all state ties that had until then bound Lithuania to other states. Unlike the declaration of 11 December 1917, the new act said not a word about a “perpetual” union with Germany. The state’s system of government and its relations with its neighbours were to be decided by a constituent assembly.

Dispute in the Taryba

The December declaration had divided Lithuanian politicians. Many of them believed that the Taryba had exceeded the mandate given to it by the Vilna conference, which had left the country’s future to an assembly elected by the people. On 8 January 1918 the Taryba adopted a new text, with a commitment to a constituent assembly and without the alliance with the Reich, but the German military administration rejected it and made clear that the Council was to be merely an advisory body. When the majority gave way, four members, Mykolas Biržiška, Steponas Kairys, Stanisław Narutowicz and Jonas Vileišis, left the Taryba in protest. During the dispute Antanas Smetona also resigned the chairmanship, and his place was taken by Jonas Basanavičius.

At the beginning of February the situation changed. The talks at Brest had stalled, and on 10 February Trotsky broke them off, announcing that Russia was leaving the war but would not sign an annexationist peace. The Taryba decided to wait no longer for the Germans. For several weeks a text was negotiated that everyone could accept, and on 15 February it was ready. The four members who had left returned for the session.

The act

The session began on 16 February at 12.30 p.m. in a room used by the Lithuanian Society for the Relief of War Sufferers, in the house of the merchant Sztrall at 30 Didžioji (Great) Street. It was chaired by Basanavičius, who read out the act. In it the Taryba announced that, as the sole representative of the Lithuanian nation, on the basis of the right of nations to self-determination and the resolution of the September conference, it was restoring the independent Lithuanian state. The foundations of its system of government and its relations with other states were to be settled by a constituent assembly, convened as soon as possible and elected in democratic elections by all the inhabitants. The Taryba notified the governments of Russia, Germany and other states of the restoration of the state. According to some accounts, the four left-wing members had reservations about one of the phrases on the role of the constituent assembly, but the act was adopted as a whole. All twenty members of the Taryba signed it, Basanavičius first. Among the signatories was Narutowicz, brother of the future President of Poland.

On the same day Jurgis Šaulys handed the signed document to a representative of German diplomacy. The German occupation authorities did not allow the act to be published in Lithuania. Almost the entire print run of the newspaper Lietuvos aidas, which had printed it, was confiscated, but its editor Petras Klimas hid several dozen copies, and the text circulated in illegal copies. The act did, however, reach Germany. On 18 February German newspapers, among them the Vossische Zeitung and the Tägliche Rundschau, reprinted it, and on 20 February it was read out in the Reichstag.

Significance

The act did not change Lithuania’s position. The country remained under occupation, and according to the Lithuanian encyclopaedia Chancellor Georg von Hertling declared that the German government could not accept such independence. The Polish historian Grzegorz Błaszczak writes that the act “did not mean the creation of a Lithuanian state, but expressed the will of the Lithuanian nation to create such a state”. The Poles, who according to the German census of 1916 made up about half of Vilna’s inhabitants, had no representatives in the Taryba and denied its right to speak for all the inhabitants of the country. The proclamation of Vilna as the capital of the Lithuanian state heralded a dispute that was to set the two nations at odds for years.

When Emperor Wilhelm II recognised independent Lithuania on 23 March 1918, he relied on the declaration of 11 December, not on the February act. It acquired significance only in the autumn of 1918, after Germany’s defeat. Lithuanians celebrate 16 February as the day of the restoration of their state. The signed original of the act was considered lost after the Second World War. In 2017 Professor Liudas Mažylis found it in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Berlin.