The Territorial Expansion of Vilnius: Plans and their Realisation (1916–1940)

Abstract

The paper analyses the territorial expansion of Vilnius in the first half of the 20th century, based on archival and historiographic material. The ‘grand’ plan for Vilnius’ expansion that the German government started realising during the years of the First World War continued into the ‘Polish’ (1919–1939) and ‘Lithuanian’ (1939–1940) stages of the city’s development. The author concentrates not just on the government’s decisions to geographically expand the city, but also on the ethnic demographic structure of the day, its changes, and how it related to the territorial expansion of Vilnius.