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contraband system was able to distribute a large number among the people who
read and re-read them surreptitiously. Thousand of journals, prayer books and
other pamphlets sent by secret press associations crossed the frontier despite all
the law could do to prevent it. Many of these publications were not printed but
written by hand and they circulated until they became illegible.
To mock the Russian Government, notoriously stupid, as well as brutal, the
larger part of them, printed abroad, bore the name of Vilnius on their title pages,
together with the date 1863, the last year of freedom for the Lithuanian press.
Posters sprung up overnight and in 1892 many were distributed in broad daylight. The
struggle on both sides grew more and more embittered.
In 1904 Russia capitulated, the interdict against Lithuanian printing was removed.
Shortly afterwards the Russian revolution extended to Lithuania but the
struggle was not violent thanks to the concessions made by the government on
the question of the national language.
Adapted from, Lithuania Past and Present, by E.J.Harrison,1922