Dieveniškės is in the detail

April 26, 2022 3:17 AM

A couple of weeks ago the outline of Lithuania featured in Worldle. The peculiar appendix pene-exclave blurfing into Belarus from the SE border is called Dieveniškės [Polish: Dziewieniszki, Belarusian: Дзевянішкі]. In a border-fluid region of Europe, Dieveniškės came to be Lithuanian because of a petition by the inhabitants in Soviet times. Since shortly after Lithuania joined the EU in 2004, because Schengen, the border has been marked by a neighbour dividing chain-link fence. Dieveniškės is about the size of Liechtenstein or Martha's Vineyard.
posted by BobTheScientist (11 comments total)

I managed to get that Worldle specifically because I recognised the Lithuanian appendix. In classic Eastern European patchwork style, many of the inhabitants identify as ethnically Polish.
posted by atrazine at 3:24 AM on April 26, 2022

in Soviet times

They must be counting their lucky stars. At the time would have been all "wevs, nbd" and now it is EU instead of Lukashenko. Massive win for these guys and their descendants!!!!1
posted by Meatbomb at 5:57 AM on April 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm mostly enjoying the use of the verb "to blurf".
posted by foldedfish at 6:43 AM on April 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

FYI, I had to disable my ad blocker to see the text on the roadsandkingdoms.com link.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:48 AM on April 26, 2022

wevs

This scanned for me as Lithuanian at first
posted by saturday_morning at 6:52 AM on April 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

It's Lithuania's Madagascar.
posted by xris at 8:31 AM on April 26, 2022

In classic Eastern European patchwork style, many of the inhabitants identify as ethnically Polish.

When my mom wanted to marry my dad, her born-in-Lithuania grandmother had just one question: Is he Polish? Since the answer was no, my mom was given the OK to marry him.

I've often wondered what exactly led to that vehemence.
posted by FencingGal at 8:54 AM on April 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

appendix pene-exclave salient
posted by kickingtheground at 9:19 AM on April 26, 2022

Fencing Gal , relations between Poland and Lithuania have varied over centuries , from friendly to hostile . Given that it's your greatgrand mother it may be from memory of the Lithuanian -Polish war
( 1918-1920) following the First World war and independence from Tsarist Russia.
posted by yyz at 12:22 PM on April 26, 2022

Thanks yyz. She would have been in the US before that. I'm not sure exactly when she came here, but her daughter was born in the US in 1897.

I know there's a long history of hostility - I just wondered if this was related to something specific. My understanding was always that my Lithuanian family members had been fleeing life under the Tsar, so I would have been less surprised if she had asked if my father were Russian.
posted by FencingGal at 12:38 PM on April 26, 2022

In that case it probably dates from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - for all that Lithuania was the territorially bigger partner to start with, Poland had a denser population and was the culturally dominant partner because the condition of the union was Lithuania accepting Roman Catholicism from Poland (protecting them from incursions by Germans and Teutonic knights to which were fair game as the last remaining pagans in the vicinity). So the upper classes polonised quickly, while Lithuanian remained the language and culture of the peasants. This is also why Vilnius had a mostly Polish and Jewish population, unlike the surrounding countryside. The Polish and polonised elites in current Lithuania repressed the Lithuanian efforts at nation building and generally treated Lithuanian speakers with a coloniser-like attitude. Kind of akin to current Russian attitudes to Ukraine, alas.

(Disclosure: am Polish, with Lithuanian-Polish relatives.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:33 AM on April 27, 2022 [3 favorites]