Sudervė is one of the oldest villages in

Vilnius District Municipality Vilnius District Municipality ( lt, Vilniaus rajono savivaldybė) is one of 60 municipalities in Lithuania. It surrounds the capital city of Vilnius on 3 sides, while the rest borders the Trakai District Municipality. At the 2011 Census, Poles in ...

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

. It is located just north of

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

, on the road from

Kernavė Kernavė was a medieval capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and today is a tourist attraction and an archeological site (population 272, 2011). It is located in the Širvintos district municipality located in southeast Lithuania. A Lithuanian ...

and is the center of Sudervė eldership. At the 2011 census, the village had a population of 523 and grew to 588 as of 2021 census. That was an increase from the 1989 census which recorded the population of 393 inhabitants.

History

In 1594, Sudervė was given to the Orthodox St. Trinity brotherhood of Vilnius, but was sold to the Jesuit novitiate in 1669. Bishop

Ignacy Jakub Massalski Prince Ignacy Massalski ( lt, Ignotas Jokūbas Masalskis) (1726–1794) was a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman. Ignacy became a Catholic priest and was named Bishop of Vilnius by Pope Clement XIII on 29 March 1762.''Hierarchia Catholica medii et recen ...

bought Sudervė in the second half of the 18th century. Catholic church of a rare in Lithuania rotunda type was built in Sudervė in 1803–1822. Some historians attribute its project to

Laurynas Gucevičius Laurynas Gucevičius ( pl, Wawrzyniec Gucewicz; 1753–1798) was an 18th-century architect from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and all of his designs were built there. In his youth he travelled to Italy and Paris and other countries in Western Eur ...

, while others argue, that it was built already after his death and the project was prepared independently by his student Laurynas Bortkevičius.

Demography

Sudervė belongs to the suburban belt of Vilnius, which grew substantially during the last 20 years.THE METROPOLITAN REGIONS OF LITHUANIA. RESIDENTIAL DIFFERENTIATION IN THE XXI CENTURY
/ref> New houses are being built in the village for newcomer residents from

. Because of this, ethnographic picture of the eldership is changing rapidly: according to the census of 2001, 88.5% of inhabitants out of population of 1,643 in the Sudervė eldership were

Lithuanian Poles The Poles in Lithuania ( pl, Polacy na Litwie, lt, Lietuvos lenkai), estimated at 183,000 people in the Lithuanian census of 2021 or 6.5% of Lithuania's total population, are the country's largest ethnic minority. During the Polish–Lithuanian ...

, 7.5% were

Lithuanians Lithuanians ( lt, lietuviai) are a Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another million or two make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, Uni ...

and 2.6% were

Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 ''Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...

. In 2011 out of 2,382 inhabitants,

constituted 47.7%, Lithuanians – already 41.6%, Lithuanian Russians – 5.8%. According to the results of 2021 census, there were 2829 inhabitants in Sudervė eldership: 1421 Lithuanian, 1099 Poles, 144 Russians, 49 Belarusians, 15 Ukrainians and 94 of other ethnicity. The percentage of Lithuanians increased to 50.2%, percentage of Poles decreased to 38.8%. These same tendencies persisted in the 2020s as well.

References

Villages in Vilnius County Vilnius District Municipality {{VilniusCounty-geo-stub