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Lithuania, Donatas Malinauskas, Great Seimas of Vilnius, Great Seimas of Vilnius, the memorandum, Jonas Basanavičius, Lithuanian-Polish relations, National awakening, Poles, Press, and Revolution of 1905

The article analyses twenty-one Polish newspapers and magazines published not only in Warsaw, but also in Krakow, Vilnius, Petersburg and Poznan. The periodicals analysed represented the National-Democratic Party, the conservative and progressive directions. Nine of them did not even mention the Great Sejm. The Lithuanian memorandum handed to Prime Minister Sergei Witte in October and November of 1905 received much more coverage. A few newspapers printed laconic Statements of general nature. The Kurier Litewski, the main Polish newspaper published in Vilnius, printed just a few sentences about the 'gathering of Lithuanians'. There were several reasons for such position of the Polish periodicals of that time. Firstly, they avoided issues associated with the Lithuanian national movement and the prevailing opinion was that it would be 'promotion of Litvomans'. Secondly, at that period Russia was the centre of other significant events: the insurrection in Moscow, the Convention of gubernias' municipalities and agricultural unrest in the Baltic gubernias. The Lithuanian Convention beside such events seemed less important. Only The Prawda published in Warsaw a year later devoted three exhaustive articles on the Great Sejm of Vilnius written by Mykolas Romeris.