The countries of Eastern Europe that have recently achieved independence have developed very nationalistic policies. The new states want to authoritatively take the steps that the old Western nation states have taken on the road of uniformization for centuries in the short term. The method is already known in the West, the truth is that it was done here in historical contexts of low democratic density or without democracy. In the 21st century, on the other hand, the defense of minorities and hegemonic democracy have become the liberal political discourse.

Most of the time the borders of the states are not natural, so some nationalisms are pleased to turn to history to justify their territorial claims, especially if they do not dominate their national sentiment. In public buildings in Lithuania, a map of the largest size of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania can be found everywhere. The Lithuanians will often hear them say that the Lithuanian lands had reached Odessa. What they are not going to explain is that this Duchy was Slavic: the official language was Russian (according to theories it was the precursor of Belarus, Ukrainian, Russian or people) and the Grand Vytautas, to which they praise so much, did not know the Lithuanian.

The situation of the weakened Lithuanian worsened significantly when the Duchy and Poland formed the confederation: some of their citizens left the rute and the Lithuanian in favour of the Polish. Since then, the majority of Vilnius spoke Polish, although the presence of the Eastern Slavic languages was also important. In the early twentieth century, the Jews were the first nationality of the city, the Yiddisha could easily be heard and read. In the case of Lithuanian it was the opposite, the presence of Lithuanians in the city according to the censuses from 1897 to 1931 was between 0.8% and 2.6%, and in the Vilnius region it did not reach 20%.

During the First World War, the Germans bet that the Vilnius region would be a new Lithuanian state, but as they lost the war, the Poles seized the weapons. The revenge came in World War II. Lithuanian nationalists became one of the protagonists of progroms against Jews, removing Vilnius, with a Jewish population of approximately 45%. During the war, the capital was repopulated with the Lithuanians and in the Soviet era this trend was reinforced. Still, about 20 per cent of the population of Vilnius is Lithuanian/Polish (another 20 per cent are Slavi-Eastern Lithuanians). On the other hand, the capital is surrounded by a ring formed by the peoples of the majority of Poland.

In Soleczniki, 77 per cent of the population is Lithuanian and Polish, but the state wants to eradicate Polish from public life. For example, Lithuanian Poles cannot write their names in their language in official documents and it is forbidden to write any posters in Polish, including in businesses and private homes. However, citizens, on their own, raised funds for the installation of bilingual street names in private single-family homes. The citizens received astronomical fines that the City Hall would be obliged to pay if they did not pay them themselves. The mayor, Zdzislav Paleviček, sadly explained to me that every day the amount of money to be paid is increasing and that the only option to avoid it is to remove the posters from private homes. It is a difficult and ugly task for a city council that does not have municipal police to invade private property.