Ginkūnai is a village located in

Šiauliai District Municipality Šiauliai ( ; ) is a city in northern Lithuania, the List of cities in Lithuania, country's fourth largest city and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, sixth largest city in the Baltic States, with a population of 112 581 in 202 ...

Šiauliai County Šiauliai County () is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is in the north of the country, and its capital is Šiauliai. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished, and since that date, Šiauliai County remains as a territorial a ...

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, 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, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

. The village is located on the northeastern border of

Šiauliai Šiauliai ( ; ) is a city in northern Lithuania, the List of cities in Lithuania, country's fourth largest city and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, sixth largest city in the Baltic States, with a population of 112 581 in 202 ...

and the western shore of the Ginkūnai Lake (the lake is part of Šiauliai). Ginkūnai has a school,

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

and

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

. There are also two agricultural cooperatives.

History

In 1792,

Catherine the Great Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...

gifted , state land with more than 13,000 serfs, to her favorite

Platon Zubov Prince Platon Alexandrovich Zubov (; ) was the last of Catherine the Great's favourites and the most powerful man in the Russian Empire during the last years of her reign. Early life The prince was a member of the Zubov Russian noble family a ...

. He then purchased Ginkūnai (six peasant houses, 24 men and 18 women serfs, an inn, windmill, and permit to use the lake) for 5,600 Dutch daalders in 1805. The family established the Ginkūnai Manor, which became the administrative center of the estates around it. Zubovs supported the

Lithuanian National Revival The Lithuanian National Revival, alternatively the Lithuanian National Awakening or Lithuanian nationalism (), was a period of the history of Lithuania in the 19th century, when a major part of Lithuanian-inhabited areas belonged to the Russian ...

and opened a secret Lithuanian school in 1896 in violation of the

Lithuanian press ban The Lithuanian press ban () was a ban on all Lithuanian language publications printed in the Latin alphabet, in force from 1865 to 1904, within the Russian Empire, which controlled Lithuania proper at the time. Lithuanian-language publications t ...

. Zubov's descendants continued to own Ginkūnai until 1940 when the property was nationalized after the

Soviet occupation During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively handed over by Nazi Germany in the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. These included the eastern regions of Poland (incorporated into three differe ...

. At the beginning of the 20th century, a freethinker's cemetery was established, which in 1966 became Šiauliai cemetery. During the Soviet times, the settlement became a centre of the local gardening-oriented

sovkhoz A sovkhoz ( rus, совхо́з, p=sɐfˈxos, a=ru-sovkhoz.ogg, syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated from , ''sovetskoye khozyaystvo''; ) was a form of state-owned farm or agricultural enterprise in the Soviet Union. It is usually contrasted w ...

Population

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ginkunai Villages in Šiauliai County Shavelsky Uyezd Šiauliai District Municipality