Jonas Basanavičius (, ; 23 November 1851 – 16 February 1927) was an activist and proponent of the Lithuanian National Revival. He participated in every major event leading to the independent Lithuanian state and is often given the informal honorific title of the "Patriarch of the Nation" () for his contributions.
Born to a family of farmers, Basanavičius was to become a priest but instead chose to study medicine at the Moscow Medical Academy. He worked as a doctor from 1880 to 1905 in the Principality of Bulgaria. Despite the long distance, he dedicated substantial effort to the Lithuanian cultural work. He founded the first Lithuanian-language newspaper Aušra (1883), contributed articles on Lithuania to the press, collected samples of Lithuanian folklore (songs, fairy-tales, legends, riddles, etc.) and published them. He was also involved with local Bulgarian politics. He returned to Lithuania in 1905 and immediately joined Lithuanian cultural life. He became chairman of the organizing committee of the 1905 Great Seimas of Vilnius. In 1907, he founded the Lithuanian Scientific Society, a learned society dedicated to Lithuanian history, ethnography, linguistics. Basanavičius became chairman of the society and dedicated the rest of his life to its affairs. In 1917, he was elected by the Vilnius Conference to the Council of Lithuania. He chaired the council's session that adopted the Act of Independence of Lithuania on 16 February 1918 and was the first to sign it. In the aftermath of World War I, Vilnius changed hands and regimes several times, but Basanavičius refused to leave, safeguarding the city's museums, libraries and archives, and continuing his lifelong research of Lithuanian cultural matters. After Żeligowski's Mutiny in October 1920, Vilnius became part of Poland and Lithuanian activities were censored and limited. Basanavičius' continued presence in the city became a symbol of Lithuanian claims to the bitterly contested Vilnius Region. When he died in 1927, the Lithuanian government declared a five-day mourning period.
Early life and education Basanavičius was born in the village of Ožkabaliai () in the Augustów Governorate of Congress Poland, a client state of the Russian Empire, to a family of Lithuanian farmers. His younger brother Vincas was born in 1861; other children died in childhood. Birth complications prompted his parents, devout Catholics, to pray and promise that they would educate their firstborn to be a priest. Keeping up with the promise, the parents supported a village tutor for local children. There Basanavičius learned basic reading, writing, and arithmetic as well as serving the altar. He further attended an elementary school in Lukšiai. During that time Polish was regarded as the more prestigious language of the nobility and well educated people. Russian was used in state administration, while Lithuanian was used among the peasants. After the Uprising of 1863, Tsarist authorities implemented various Russification policies in an attempt to reduce the influence of Polish language and culture. One of such policies allowed Basanavičius to attend Marijampolė Gymnasium. Before the uprising, a son of a Lithuanian could hardly expect to be admitted to a school catering to Polish nobility. Basanavičius failed his first entrance examinations in 1865, but succeeded a year later.
Basanavičius developed appreciation for the Lithuanian language, culture, and history from local hill forts and his parents, who provided a loving treasure of local songs, legends, stories. This appreciation grew and deepened at the gymnasium where Basanavičius got acquainted with classical authors of Lithuanian history (Maciej Stryjkowski, Alexander Guagnini, Jan Długosz, Marcin Kromer), studied Lithuanian folk songs, read classical poems The Seasons by Kristijonas Donelaitis, Konrad Wallenrod by Adam Mickiewicz, Margier by Władysław Syrokomla, and historical fiction by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. In 1883, he wrote in Aušra:But who, we ask, composed all these songs about Lithuania's past, which made famous the name of Polish poetry in Europe? The answer is short: Lithuanians! Adomas Mickevičius, L. Kondratavičius, J. I. Kraševskis, T. Lenartavičius, Kotkis (Chodźko), Adinčius (Odyniec), Asnikis and many other lesser bards had Lithuanian surnames, are Lithuanians, come from Lithuania and Lithuanian blood is pulsating through their veins. If they wrote about the past of their loved Lithuania in a non-Lithuanian language, the Polish influence in Lithuanian affairs is to blame.
He drifted away from religion after reading a critical essay of Life of Jesus by Ernest Renan. Upon graduation in 1873, he managed to persuade his parents to allow him to attend Moscow University and not to send him to the Sejny Priest Seminary.
Basanavičius traveled to Moscow first to study history and philology, but after two semesters he transferred to the Moscow Medical Academy. Again, he benefited from the post-uprising Russification policies. He received one of ten fellowships (360 rubles annually) established for Lithuanian students from Congress Poland. He also supplemented his income by taking up private tutoring, but the living conditions were harsh and that had a lasting impact on his health. Basanavičius actively participated in student affairs, followed developments in Lithuania, and continued his studies of Lithuanian heritage. Collecting data from Rumyantsev and university libraries, he hoped to write a study on Grand Duke Kęstutis. He usually spent his summers in Lithuania, collecting folk songs, fairytales, riddles.
Medical career in Bulgaria After his graduation in spring 1879, Basanavičius traveled back to Lithuania and had a few patients in Ožkabaliai, Vilkaviškis and Aleksotas. He returned to Moscow in October 1879 hoping to establish his private practice, but soon he accepted a lucrative proposal from the Principality of Bulgaria to become the head of a hospital in Lom Palanka, a town of about 8,000 inhabitants. After arrival in late January 1880, he found a run-down hospital located in a former hotel and energetically took measures to construct a new building, establish outpatient service, and combat perception that the hospital was a place to die rather than to get well. In 1880, the hospital had 522 inpatients and 1,144 outpatients compared to just 19 patients during 1879. The position paid well, expenses were low, so he was able to quickly repay debts and accumulate savings. Basanavičius also wrote medical research articles, liberal political articles supporting Bulgarian politician Petko Karavelov, and cultural articles for Prussian Lithuanian press, including Tilžės Keleivis and Lietuwißka Ceitunga, and academic journal Mitteilungen der Litauischen literarischen Gesellschaft. However, these publications were too much under German control and did not satisfy growing needs of Lithuanian activists. Basanavičius contemplated establishing a truly Lithuanian newspaper.
After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia in March 1881, Bulgarian Prince Alexander of Battenberg attempted to crack down on liberal politicians. Afraid of persecution, Basanavičius left Bulgaria in May 1882. He traveled for several months, visiting Belgrade, Vienna, Lithuania, before settling down in Prague in December 1882. There he organized publication of Aušra, the first Lithuanian-language newspaper. The first issue appeared in March 1883 and is often cited as the beginning of the Lithuanian National Revival. Basanavičius directed the editorial policies, while Jurgis Mikšas handled printing in Ragnit in East Prussia. The newspaper then would be smuggled to Lithuania as publication in the Lithuanian language was illegal in the Russian Empire. Basanavičius soon lost editorial control of Aušra to Jonas Šliūpas. His involvement in an illegal publication prevented Basanavičius from returning to Lithuania until 1905.
In Prague, Basanavičius met Gabriela Eleonora Mohl, a Bohemian German, and they married in May 1884. Immediately after the wedding, the couple moved to Bulgaria, where political situation had improved. Basanavičius first found a position in Elena, but managed to return to Lom Palanka in 1885. Life there was marked by a series of hardships. The Serbo-Bulgarian War brought a wave of war casualties to the hospital and a typhus epidemic. Basanavičius became seriously ill with pneumonia and typhus in February 1886. In August 1887, he survived an assassination attempt, but one bullet remained logged under his left shoulder blade for the rest of his life and caused various health issues. His attacker, Alexander Manoilov, served a ten-year sentence but never fully explained his reasoning. On 16 February 1889, Mohl died of tuberculosis that she apparently contracted from her dying mother while still in Prague. The death of his wife sent Basanavičius into depression and melancholy for almost a year.
In 1891, Basanavičius acquired Bulgarian citizenship and was promoted to Varna, a city of 25,000 residents, in 1892, but his health problems intensified. He suffered from arrhythmia, neurasthenia, neuralgia, paraesthesia. That prompted him to resign from public position in 1893 and limit his work to his private practice and palace visits to Ferdinand I of Bulgaria. When Nicholas II of Russia became the new Tsar in 1894, Basanavičius petitioned to be allowed to return to Lithuania but was refused. Basanavičius traveled to Austria several times searching for cures to his ailments. In 1900 he suffered a stroke and traveled to Vienna, where he had an X-ray taken which showed where the assassin's bullet was logged under the bones. Doctors refused to operate to extract it.
Despite his ailments, Basanavičius continued to work both on medical and ethnographic studies and even joined politics. In 1898, he was elected to the Bulgarian Literature Society. He traveled to East Prussia, where he campaigned on behalf of four Prussian Lithuanian candidates to the German Reichstag in the 1898 elections (Jonas Smalakys was elected). He also joined the Democratic Party and was elected to the Varna City Council from 1899 to 1903. He also participated in the party congresses and helped develop the party program on health care. However, his passion remained with Lithuanian language and culture. Despite the long distance, he collected Lithuanian tales and songs and published them in 1898–1905 in Lithuanian American presses in United States. Personally he thought that his most important work was the lifelong thesis that Lithuanians descended from Thracians and Phrygians and therefore were closely related to the Bulgarians. The thesis has not been accepted by other scholars.
Return to Lithuania Great Seimas of Vilnius
Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War and became engulfed in the Revolution of 1905. In Lithuania, the press ban was lifted. Basanavičius, after years of service, was entitled to receive a Bulgarian pension and considered this a good time to return to Lithuania even though he did not have a permission to return. He departed Bulgaria in May 1905 and arrived to Vilnius in August. Immediately he joined activities of Lithuanian activists and promoted the idea of a Lithuanian assembly which would become the Great Seimas of Vilnius. With help from the staff of Vilniaus žinios, a fifteen-member organizing committee was formed and Basanavičius became its chairman. In November 1905, in the name of the organizing committee Basanavičius authored a controversial memorandum to Sergei Witte, Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, which demanded autonomy for Lithuania in the Russian Empire.