ABSTRACT
Modern Lithuanian nationalism was born in the second half of the nineteenth century with the celebration of the language and culture of the peasantry. By the beginning of the twentieth, it had evolved into a relatively small but fastgrowing social and political movement that staked a claim to a Lithuanian presence in the cities as an essential precondition of modern nationhood. And as the sons and daughters of the more prosperous farmers began to migrate to the cities to study and find work, they formed the core of a small but ambitious urban elite, seeking to challenge the social, economic and political dominance of the more established communities.
