<論説>一九世紀前半ヴィルノの知識人とリトアニア : 「ならず者」がみた社会

Abstract

分割によってロシア帝国に併合された旧ポーランド＝リトアニア地域では、一九世紀前半、ポーランド文化を受け継ぐ知識人層が誕生した。本稿では、知識人の活動のなかでも影響力の大きかった「ならず者の会」とその機関誌『街角ニュース』を取り上げ、リトアニアの文化や、民衆を含む地域社会との関わりを検討する。主な考察対象は、彼らの身分制度への態度とネイション観、リトアニアの歴史や言語への関心の二点である。考察の結果、ならず者の会は、リトアニアの住民の民族的・言語的な多様性を認識し、理論的には全身分に開かれたネイションを想定しているものの、最終的には、ポーランド語による啓蒙・教育を通じた、民衆のポーランド語共同体への統合を考えていたと指摘した。ただし、会の中には、民衆向けのリトアニア語の使用を後押しし、多言語の社会を支持した者もいた。こうした結果は、一般には言語的な共同体に基づくと捉えられることの多い、近代東欧のネイション形成の多様な様相を示している。

At the beginning of the 19th century intellectuals who had inherited the cultural traditions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth appeared around Vilnius University in the Russian Empire. This article tries to reconsider these Polish-speaking intellectuals and their relationships with local society in the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (nowadays Lithuania and Belarus), which have not been fully considered because of the division of the history of this region into separate national histories. This article focuses on Towarzystwo Szubrawcow (the Society of Scoundrels), which consisted of progressive intellectuals in Vilnius, and its publication Wiadomosci Brukowe (Street News, 1816-1822), a famous satirical journal, criticizing various social pathologies. Here two issues are mainly analyzed. The first is the intellectuals' opinions about the nation (narod in Polish) as a community of people with political rights and the class system. In the latter half of the 18th century the nation of the Commonwealth, which had consisted solely of the nobility, was partially opened to the lower classes. In the Russian part of the former Commonwealth languages and religions of the common people differed from those of the upper class, and at the beginning of the 19th century the elites, usually Polish-speaking, became interested in Lithuanian history and folk languages. Thus the second issue to be considered is the intellectuals' attitudes towards the history and folk languages in Lithuania. The first section shows the situation of the intellectuals in Vilnius, who were from families of the nobility of middle and lower means or burghers and who had been brought up under the cultural and educational autonomy of the nobles of the region of the former Commonwealth. This section takes also a general view of the character of Wiadomosci Brukowe and Towarzystwo Szubrawcow, around whom intellectuals of Vilnius, such as Jakob Szymkiewicz, Jedrzej Sniadecki, Michal Balinski, gathered. In the second section Towarzystwo Szubrawcow's concepts of the nation and opinions about the class system are considered. Based on analyses of the articles on Wiadomosci Brukowe one sees that its members considered the nation should be composed not only of the nobles but also of the other classes and that there should not be a strict barrier between classes. They were concerned with non-ruling classes, especially the peasantry, and they observed the ethnic diversity of the population, too. They criticized serfdom in the journal and directed public attention to its problems. The abolition of serfdom was discussed on the nobles' dietine of Vilnius Guberniya in 1817-1818. They also made efforts to broaden education among the poorer nobles and the peasantry. They tried to open the road for the non-ruling classes to join the nation through the abolishment of serfdom and establishment of education. These attitudes were pioneering in this region at that time. The last section considers the interest of the members in the history and languages in Lithuania. According to their regulations, the Kodex Szubrawski, members were required to use names taken from Lithuanian mythology and there was a plan to compile a Lithuanian mythological history. Some articles in Wiadomosci Brukowe described ancient Lithuanian society as democratic in order to criticize contemporary society. During the latter half of its activities, however, the interest in Lithuanian history was reduced and sometimes even ridiculed. On the other hand, the use of the Lithuanian language was satirized throughout the existence of the journal. Many members of the society regarded Polish as their mother tongue and a cultivated language and tried to purify the Polish language used in Lithuania. For them Lithuanian was just the language of the rustic populace. Thus there was a gap between their interest in history, which was the past of the nobles and the intellectuals, and their interest in language, which was not used by them. But some members, such as Kazimierz Kontrym, promoted the use of Lithuanian as a literary and educational language for Lithuanian-speaking people. Additionally, the members showed no interest in the language or history of the Eastern Slavs in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The following are the conclusions of this article: the members of Towarzystwo Szubrawcow had a concept of the nation that would be open to all classes including the peasantry, but they thought of integrating the non-ruling classes into the Polish-language community through improvement of their circumstances and education in Polish. This nation would have been a community built on the region of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania or of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, united by the Polish language, but could have been multilingual with Polish culture reigning as the high culture. In any case, it differs from the concept of the class-defined nation of the early modern age, and from the conception of the linguistically homogeneous nation consisting of all classes, which began to gain popularity in the second half of the 19th century. Thus it is possible to say that there was diversity in the formation of modern nations in Eastern Europe.