From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that Suvalkai Region be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

Etnographic regions of Lithuania with Sudovia highlighted in light orange.

Sudovia (Lithuanian: Sūduva / Suvalkija, Polish: Suwalszczyzna / Jaćwież; German: Sudauen) is the area around Suwałki in north-eastern Poland and southern Lithuania and also a name of one of the ethnographic regions of Lithuania. Suwałki is the major city of Sudovia in Poland and Marijampolė is considered to be its capital in Lithuania.

Suwalszczyzna is also used as a name of a small geographic region on the border of Poland and Lithuania, roughly corresponding with the Lithuanian ethnographic region. Because the town of Suwałki (Lithuanian: Suvalkai) is located in the Polish part of the region, it is sometimes called Suvalkija in Lithuanian: that is because the northern part of Suwalki Guberniya of the Russian Empire almost corresponded to the region of Sudovia, therefore people started to call people from the land "suvalkiečiai", literally meaning persons living in the region around the town of Suvalkai, and the whole land - Suvalkija. However now the historic name Sūduva, on which the English name Sudovia is based, is preferred. There are also variants of the name, such as Sudova and so on. The name of Sudovia - Sūduva - most likely originated from a Baltic noun *sūdas/šūdas, and meant "a muddy place".^[1] The same word means "shit" in the colloquial Lithuanian language.

Originally, the region was inhabitated by the Baltic tribe of the Sudovians of the West Baltic group of tribes. Much of the territory belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until the 3rd Partition of Poland in 1795, when it was occupied by Kingdom of Prussia until 1807. In 1807-1815 it belonged to Duchy of Warsaw and then to Congress Kingdom until 1915. In 1918 the area was divided between Poland and Lithuania along the ethnic lines, despite the whole of it being claimed by the nascent Republic of Lithuania. The Lithuanian government claimed the rights to the region based on its 1920 peace treaty with Soviet Russia, which had delimited borders to Štabinas only, with further borders up to the German province of East Prussia not defined. In 1920, after the Polish-Bolshevik War, Marshal Ferdinand Foch proposed that the area be granted to Poland. The proposal was accepted by the Paris Peace Conference and after a series of skirmishes, the Lithuanian forces withdrew from the area and Poland resumed control over it.

In 1939 the area was occupied by Nazi Germany and, despite Lithuanian claims, annexed to East Prussia. After World War II it returned to Poland. The government of the puppet state Lithuanian SSR, that replaced the Republic of Lithuania, and was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, renounced all claims to the area, which was later accepted by the authorities of independent Lithuania.

Most of the population of the region today is Lithuanian or Polish on both sides of the border. According to the Polish National Census of 2002 there were 5846 Lithuanians living in Poland, the majority of them inhabitating the region. There are Lithuanian schools and cultural societies present in the area and the Lithuanian language is spoken in the offices in the commune of Puńsk. In Lithuanian part, many local Lithuanians speak Sudovian dialect which is also spoken in some parts of Lithuania Minor, Samogitia and Aukštaitija.