![\"2004-01-15-LHERITAGE-01a\"](\"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2004-01-15-LHERITAGE-01a-300x181.jpg\")
<\/p>\nby John Millar (Jonas Step\u0161is)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The two swimmers carefully pushed their water-proof wrapped bundles onto the sloping riverbank and slipped silently out of the water. Shaking themselves like dogs to rid their bodies of as much water as possible, they hurriedly donned the clothes that were secured to the top of the bundles. For some time before darkness fell they had lain hidden on the opposite riverbank, timing the frequency of any border guard patrols and choosing a landing area on the other side. Although the river was not particularly wide at this point, the current was reasonably strong and rather than fight it they planned to allow the current to aid them in a diagonal crossing. Dressed, they hoisted the packs by the rope harness, adjusted them on their backs, and set off for the pre-arranged rendezvous with their colleagues. They had some ten kilometers to cover during the short hours of summer darkness, avoiding any military patrols enroute.<\/p>\n
The year was 1899, the country was Lithuania, the river was the \u0160e\u0161upe, which at that point was the border between East Prussia and Lithuania, before it merged with the Nemunas, Lithuania\u2019s largest river, which then became the border. The two swimmers were my father, Vincentas (Vincas) Step\u0161is, and my uncle Juozas, both of whom were smugglers\u2014 in the literal sense of the word\u2014 as the bundles they carried, according to the occupying Imperial Russian authorities, contained illegal material. However, the contraband they carried across the frontier of the two countries was not to evade revenue payable on taxable commodities, nor were they doing so for personal gain or profit. They were risking their lives, incarceration, or banishment to the frozen wastes of Siberia for nothing more than Lithuanian language literature\u2014books, journals, newspapers\u2014 which would be secretly disseminated to their fellow countrymen; the hazardous task voluntarily undertaken without any thought of gain or glory.<\/p>\n
But why was it necessary to bring their own-language literature into the country covertly and at the risk of life and limb? Why would ordinary countryfolk\u2014 peasants\u2014 at best only semi-literate undertake such risky, dangerous missions for the sake of printed paper? Why, indeed, had this to be done clandestinely and why was apprehension by the Russian authority so severely punished? To comprehend the why and the wherefore thousands of people like Vincas and Juozas Step\u0161is gladly did this task, despite the consequent hazards, it is necessary to understand something of the troubled history of the ancient land of Lithuania.<\/p>\n By virtue of a 16th century treaty with Poland, a \u201cCommonwealth of Two Nations\u201d had lasted more than two hundred years until the Third Partition of the Commonwealth in 1795 resulted in Lithuania being seized by Imperial Russia. During the 19th century, as with most occupied and subjugated countries, there were uprisings and insurrections against the occupying authority. After the 1863 insurrection was quashed, Tsar Alexander the Second imposed the most stringent of measures on Lithuania and its people. He installed a GovernorGeneral, one Mikhail Nikolaevich Muravyov, with instructions to produce a Lithuania \u201cwith nothing Lithuanian in it.\u201d Muravyov began his implementation of the Tsars orders by proclaiming a complete ban on the Lithuanian press, the usage of the Latin alphabet and the Lithuanian language\u2014 only the Cyrillic alphabet and Russian language were to be used and taught. In essence everything Lithuanian\u2014 language, culture, religion\u2014 was proscribed, and so severe were the penalties for contravention that, during his time as Governor-General (till March 1865) Murav-yov became known as the \u201cHangman of Lithuania.\u201d The period from 1864 to 1904 when the ban was lifted, made the native Lithuanian press nonexistent resulting in an unrelenting struggle to restore it. In all of European history Lithuania is the prime instance of an occupying authority denying a former independent nation its language and press and a people\u2019s forty-year battle against a foreign language and culture being forced upon them. It is no wonder that the time of the prohibition became known in Lithuania as the \u201cForty Years of Darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n An underground movement began printing the forbidden literature in their native tongue across the border in East Prussia. Originally inspired by the clergy, particularly Bishop Motiejus Valancius whose rallying call was \u201cVisada ir visur buk lietuvis\u201d (\u201cAlways and everywhere be Lithuanian\u201d) and who exhorted everyone to discard the Russian books and keep teaching the old Lithuanian language, even if in secret. In answer to his call, men who were themselves unable to read or write, ferried the packages of books across the border and distributed the contents. And so the knygne\u0161iai (book-carriers) came into being. The womenfolk taught the children at their knee during the performance of the daily domestic chores. Both Tsar Alexander and Muravyov completely underestimated the nationalism, resilience, and stubbornness of the Lithuanian people. The more repressive the measures they inflicted, the greater grew the resistance.<\/p>\n On that night in 1899, my father and my uncle Juozas delivered their bundles to the distribution center in the village of Pilvi\u0161kiai before dawn and spent the daylight hours resting and sleeping at the house of a friend and fellow \u201csmuggler.\u201d As darkness fell that evening, they made preparations to return to the Sakalupio area; having said their farewells they set off. About two kilometers or so from their hideaway, a figure loomed up in the gloom in front of them and the voice of the local policeman said: \u201cAh! Vincai, Juozai, I would not go home tonight.\u201d Not another word was said or needed. The brothers understood, the military were waiting for them. Turning their footsteps toward the \u0160e\u0161upe river, they swam across to the East Prussian bank intending to lie low with their book-smuggling colleagues until the authorities gave up the search for them.<\/p>\n Four weeks later word reached the brothers that they were still being vigorously sought after, the hue and cry had not diminished as they had hoped. After some soulsearching they decided it would be disastrous to return to Lithuania for some foreseeable time with incarceration or Siberia as the only future facing them. The only choice was to bid farewell to their native land, their usefulness as covert book-carriers gone, and head west\u2014 to the land of opportunity and freedom, the United States of America.<\/p>\n Working their way across Prussia and Germany to the port of Hamburg they found they had insufficient funds for the fare to America. Almost exactly twelve months from their encounter with the friendly policeman, the boat they were on docked at the Port of Leith, Scotland.<\/p>\n Vincas Step\u0161is was born on the 9th of July 1870, his brother Juozas two years later, at Sakalupio Dvaras (estate), near the town of Kudirkos Naumiestis, Lithuania, about two kilometers from the banks of the \u0160e\u0161upe river, to Tadas Step\u0161is and his wife Petronele Barzdai-tyte Step\u0161iene. His father Tadas (my grandfather) died when Vincas was 4 years old and my grandmother Petronele died shortly before Vincas reached his 10th birthday. Orphaned in childhood, the two boys worked from that early age on the Sakalupio estate where their father had been coachman to the dvarininkas (estate owner).<\/p>\n On reaching the age of 21, Vincas was conscripted for military service in the Imperial Russian Army on 12th November 1891, and posted to the 6th Battery, 3rd Brigade Grenadiers Artillery on 10th December 1891, far away from his homeland, in the Ukraine. Two and a half years later he was lying in a bed of a military hospital in Rostov with a fractured skull where a horse had kicked him about an inch above his right eye.<\/p>\n While hovering between life and death, a court of inquiry, held at his bedside, ruled that he was no longer fit for any military duties and should be released from any further service. His discharge booklet entitled \u201cCertificate of Completion of Military Service, No. 286\u201d says: \u201cThe bearer of this is a cannoneer, Vikenty Tadeusovich Stepshis… after examination on 5th February 1894, the Commission held in a military hospital recognized his incapacity to continue military service and gave him his discharge. Stepshis is incapable to continue either combatant or non-combatant service and so discharged from the military service forever. Capable of private labor. N ot requiring care. At the time of his arrival at his place of residence, Stepshis is obliged to report at the local police station with this Certificate to reregister in his local community.\u201d<\/p>\n On returning home after making a complete recovery from his dreadful injury (which the Russian Commission had thought highly unlikely), Vincas found that his brother had not complied with his call-up to the Russian Army but had joined the local \u201cunderground\u201d as a covert book-carrier. W ithin a week Vincas and Juozas were a twoman unit in the team of smugglers. As border dwellers from birth, they were familiar with the whole area and knew all the nooks and crannies from their boyhood adventures. For the next five years the brothers carried out their book-carrying exploits, miraculously avoiding apprehension by the occupying authorities, until the night in 1899, when they were, fortunately, warned allowing them to evade certain capture.<\/p>\n Although I was born in Scotland, my first language was Lithuanian, taught by my mother who, unlike my father, was literate and I spent my impressionable childhood years listening to, and begging for, tales of the \u201cold country\u201d\u2014 its history, its occupation and subjugation, and the struggles to retain the language and literature; not just told by my father but by his friends, like Juozas Kasulaitis, a fellow knygne\u0161ys, when they all gathered socially in our house. A boy\u2019s eagerness for blood and thunder stories prompted me to ask if they ever ran into trouble, were they ever shot at by Russian soldiers when crossing the border? The short answer was: \u201cNo, we were lucky.”<\/p>\n There were occasions as a child when the tales I heard seemed so fantastic to me living in Scotland that I thought they were fictional stories, like fairy tales told to satisfy a youngster\u2019s demand for a bedtime story. Not until I visited Lithuania for the first time in 1993, when I was welcomed as the son of a knygne\u0161ys, did I fully realize just how understated my father\u2019s stories really were. I still have a memento of my father\u2019s book-carrying days\u2014 my mother\u2019s prayer book-titled \u201cSzaltinis\u201d (\u201cThe Wellspring\u201d)\u2014 it has been confirmed as one of the \u201cillegal\u201d publications by the Lithuanian National Archives, probably published between 1894 and 1899.<\/p>\n The struggles of the book-carriers have been praised in modern times by Father Julijonas Kasperavicius who said:<\/p>\n \u201cThe work of restoring Lithuania\u2019s independence began, not in 1918, but rather at the time of the book-carriers. With bundles of books and pamphlets on their backs, these warriors were the first to start preparing the ground for independence, the first to propagate the idea that it was imperative to throw off the yoke of Russian oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n In any other country a smuggler as an ancestor would probably be cause for embarrassment but, as the son of a Lithuanian \u201csmuggler\u201d of the 19th century, I have no sense of shame or embarrassment. The very opposite, for I have a heartstirring pride that my immediate ancestor was one of the warriors described by Father Kasperavicius and had been a hero\u2014 however minor\u2014 of his country and his, and his many colleagues\u2019 exploits are part of the folklore of his native land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John Millar (Jonas Step\u0161is) The two swimmers carefully pushed their water-proof wrapped bundles onto the sloping riverbank and slipped silently out of the water. Shaking themselves like dogs to rid their bodies of as much water as possible, they hurriedly donned the clothes that were secured to the top of the bundles. For some …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[78,167],"class_list":["post-3265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-history-before-1900","tag-lith-heritage","tag-millar-j"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2004-01-15-LHERITAGE-02-213x300.jpg\")
![\"Last](\"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2004-01-15-LHERITAGE-03-212x300.jpg\")
Service of Vincentas Step\u0161is (1894).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"2004-01-15-LHERITAGE-04\"](\"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2004-01-15-LHERITAGE-04-300x201.jpg\")
![\"2004-01-15-LHERITAGE-05\"](\"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2004-01-15-LHERITAGE-05-237x300.jpg\")