Talk:Vilnius district municipality
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Since there's been doubts whether "tutejsi" in Vilnius district are Poles, or not, let me explain my position. The 63.5% figure for Poles originates from a population census, where people declared their nationality. Apparently 63.5% declared themselves to be Polish. We do not have any better data than that. The "tutejsi", on the other hand, are those who were not able or not willing to declare if they are Polish, Lithuanians, Belarusian etc. Of course, for this reason, those who declared their Polish nationality are not "tutejsi" because otherwise they would not be able to do so. I find it rather unacceptable to claim that these people are not Polish, but only think they are Polish. This assumes that someone knows better who these people are than they do, which is groundless, arrogant, and borders on racism and Nazi nationalistic theories. I do strongly believe that people decide who they are themselves, as is best evidenced by Tadas Ivanauskas case. Personally, I find nothing wrong in admitting that despite the post-WW2 deportations there are still Polish communities living in Lithuania. What's wrong with this ? This does not mean that their territory should belong to Poland or something similarly crazy, only that there is a Polish ethnic minority in Lithuania. Nothing more and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. --Lysytalk 15:21, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
- Everything I meant is fatual accuracy of naming even 63.5 percent "ethnic Poles" and not just "Poles", as many of them really are not as there has not been any migration of the large scale of people from nowaday Poland lands. To my thinking, the real number of "ethnic Poles", i.e. people communicating in Polish language (not "po prostu") and being of true Polish descent should be much smaller.
- Ivanauskas is not the case: he was not an ethnic Lithuanian whatsoever, althoug he indeed did knew Lithuanian language well as he communicated in Lithuanian with his comrades, my great-grandfathers.Iulius 17:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree that "ethnic" is rather ambiguous and can be disputed. I have removed the word, hope that's OK. I think I misunderstood your edit (and probably you also misunderstood my intentions). --Lysytalk 18:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
