Litvinism (, or ) is a branch of nationalism, philosophy and political current in Belarus, which bases the history of its state on the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and emphasizes the Baltic component of the Belarusian ethnic group. According to this branch of Belarusian nationalism, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (they refer to this state as , and to modern Lithuania as or ) was a Slavic or Belarusian state, the medieval Lithuanians were Belarusians, and modern Lithuania is a consequence of a falsification of history. On the other hand, some Russian Litvinists refer to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a Slavic Russian state.
The ideas of Litvinism claiming that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a "Belarusian state" and that the Belarusians have "historical rights" to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius were expressed by the interwar period Belarusians, Belarusian Communists, long-term Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, members of the Belarusian opposition to Lukashenko, and modern Belarusian scientists.
Opponents of Litvinism consider it a fringe pseudohistorical theory. The usage of the word "Letuva" [] when referring to modern Lithuania in Belarusian language was also criticized among the Belarusians themselves who deemed it "unacceptable", "monstrous" and stressed that in the early 1990s there was an agreement between the Belarusian and Lithuanian intellectuals to stop using terms "Letuva" [], "Letuvísaŭ" [] in Belarusian publications. Belarusian political activist Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya had described Litvinism as "marginal cases", which seek to artificially set at variance Lithuanians and Belarusians, she had also claimed that the Belarusians respect the integrity and heritage of Lithuania. Litvinism was also described as a form of fascism with expansionistic territorial claims to neighboring countries of Belarus.
Some Litvinists reject their Belarusian national identity and affiliation with the Republic of Belarus, in favor of a reconstructed Baltic Catholic Litvin ("Lithuanian") identity, based on the history and legacy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to national censuses, only a few dozen residents of Belarus state their ethnic identity as Litvin rather than Belarusian.
History
According to the Lithuanian author Tomas Baranauskas, who claims to have coined the term, "Litvinism" is the synthesis of two different historiographies: the Tsarist Russian, which claimed that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a Russian state, and the interwar Polish historiography, which deemed the Polonized Lithuanians of eastern Lithuania proper as "Litwins" (i.e. "real Lithuanians"), in contrast to the "Lietuvisy" of the Republic of Lithuania.
Litvinism began following the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, due to the Russian Empire's needs to change the old Grand Ducal Lithuanian identity into a new one that would better suit the Empire's interests. Professor Osip Senkovsky from St. Petersburg University, originally from the Vilnius Region, collaborated with the Tsarist administration and developed the theory that the Lithuanian state's origin was Slavic and that it was allegedly created by the Ruthenians who had moved westwards due to Mongol attacks. Furthermore, his contemporary, the pseudo-historian I. Kulakovskis, propagated theses that Lithuania was Slavic before the creation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
After the First World War, Józef Piłsudski's plans to restore Poland-Lithuania were shattered by Lithuanian desires for an independent state, manifested in the nation state of the Republic of Lithuania. For propaganda purposes, theories about how the inhabitants of the Republic of Lithuania are lietuvisai, who were unrelated to the "right" and "historical" Lithuanians, the Litvins, appeared. The Polish historian Feliks Karol Koneczny used the terms letuwskije, Letuwa and letuwini to describe the "fake Lithuanians" in his book Polska między Wschodem i Zachodem ("Poland between East and West") and other works. He also wrote about how Vilnius should belong to the Litvins and thus be a Polish-owned city, instead of a lietuvisai one.