Tverečius () is a town in

Ignalina district municipality Ignalina District Municipality is one of 60 municipalities in Lithuania. Structure District structure: * 2 cities – Dūkštas and Ignalina; * 3 towns – Mielagėnai, Rimšė and Tverečius; * 726 villages. * Ignalina District Municipality ...

, in

Utena County Utena County () is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is the country's most sparsely populated county. The capital and the largest city in the county is Utena, which is from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. On 1 July 2010, the county admini ...

, eastern

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 ...

. According to the 2011 census, the town has a population of 231 people.

History

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania, to the late 18th century, when the territory was suppressed during the 1795 Partitions of Poland, ...

Tverečius was first time mentioned on 21 July 1501. In same year at 24 July order of

Augustinians Augustinians are members of several religious orders that follow the Rule of Saint Augustine, written about 400 A.D. by Augustine of Hippo. There are two distinct types of Augustinians in Catholic religious orders dating back to the 12th–13 ...

settled in town.

Interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...
(1918–1939)

In the

aftermath of World War I The aftermath of World War I saw far-reaching and wide-ranging cultural, economic, and social change across Europe, Asia, Africa, and in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were a ...

, the newly independent countries of Lithuania and

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

found themselves in dispute over the

Vilnius Region Vilnius Region is the territory in present-day Lithuania and Belarus that was originally inhabited by ethnic Baltic tribes and was a part of Lithuania proper, but came under East Slavic and Polish cultural influences over time. The territory ...

through two conflicts known as the

Polish–Lithuanian War The Polish–Lithuanian War was an undeclared war fought in the aftermath of World War I between newly independent Lithuania and Poland, with fighting mainly in the Vilnius and Suwałki regions, which was part of the Lithuanian Wars of Independe ...

and

Żeligowski's Mutiny Żeligowski's Mutiny (, also , ) was a Polish false flag operation led by General Lucjan Żeligowski in October 1920, which resulted in the creation of the Republic of Central Lithuania. Józef Piłsudski, the Chief of State of Poland, surreptit ...

. These conflicts resulted in the creation of the short-lived

Republic of Central Lithuania The Republic of Central Lithuania (, ), commonly known as the Central Lithuania, and the Middle Lithuania (, , ), was an unrecognized short-lived puppet state of Poland, that existed from 1920 to 1922. It was founded on 12 October 1920, after ...

in 1920. A disputed election in 1922 incorporated this territory into the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

through annexation. As Tverečius was geographically part of the Vilnius Region, and subsequently included in the Republic of Central Lithuania, the town became Polish territory in March 1922: Tverečius found itself incorporated as Twerecz, part of Święciany ()

Powiat A ''powiat'' (; ) is the second-level unit of local government and administration in Poland, equivalent to a county, district or prefecture (Local administrative unit, LAU-1 ormerly Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, NUTS-4 ...

(county) in the newly created (1926) Wilno Voivodeship, the northeasternmost province then in Poland.

Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...

As part of the Soviet invasion of Poland, the Red Army defeated the Poles in the Battle of Wilno, and control of the Vilnius Region was fractured: Vileyka Voblast was a territorial unit in the

Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, Byelorussian SSR or Byelorussia; ; ), also known as Soviet Belarus or simply Belarus, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922 as an independent state, and ...

created out of the eastern powiats of the Wilno Voivodeship after the annexation of West Belarus (then part of Poland) in November 1939. One of these eastern powiats was Święciany; thus Tverečius found itself included as part of the Belarusian SSR, albeit briefly. When the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania in 1940, Tverečius was transferred from the Belarusian SSR into the newly incorporated

Lithuanian SSR The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (Lithuanian SSR; ; ), also known as Soviet Lithuania or simply Lithuania, was '' de facto'' one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union between 1940–1941 and 1944–1990. After 1946, its terr ...

Dialect

Town use East

Aukštaitija Aukštaitija (; literally ''Highland'' or ''Upland'') is the name of one of five ethnographic regions of Lithuania. The name comes from the fact that the lands are in the upper basin of the Nemunas, as opposed to the Lowlands that begin from Š ...

dialect.

Notable people

* Boleslovas Jonas Masiulis (1889–1965), Lithuanian

minister of justice A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice, is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...

, judge.

References

Ignalina District Municipality Towns in Utena County Towns in Lithuania {{UtenaCounty-geo-stub