Authors

Discussion

In its heyday, i.e. in the 14^th and 15^th Centuries, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania extended over lands vastly more extensive than those of proper Lithuania. Included within its borders were also wide-ranging Ruthenian lands – later to become Belarus, Ukraine and more.  In 1569, on the virtue of a union concluded with PolandUkraine and other lands were included in the borders of the Kingdom of Poland where they remained up until the partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795). As another consequence of the partitions, virtually all the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became part of the Russian Empire. In the early 19^th Century  Polish historian J. Lelewel came up with a concept in which he argued that the Ruthenian lands belonging to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania together with Poland had originally, from the very beginning, formed a common civilisation circle. Lelewel was adamant in his belief that, instead, the areas around Moscow, i.e. the cradle of the Russian Empire, had belonged to an inherently different civilisation circle. In Russia, meanwhile, quite a different interpretation was developed, one that justified the country’s historical rights to Belarus, Ukraine, but also Lithuania. In a comprehensive form this was presented in 1830s by a Russian historian M. Pogodin who put forth a concept of the “Russian world”. As he saw it, lands populated by Eastern Slavs, which had been politically brought together in the 9^th-12^th Centuries by the Rurikid dynasty, formed a community: ethnic and cultural, as well as political for some time, although that was later broken by expansionist efforts of neighbouring states – of which Poland was considered the biggest threat. Seen in this perspective, Russia’ involvement in the partitions of Poland was but a restoration of the status that had originally been natural for the “Russian world” – that of its political singleness. Pogodin’s ideas were adopted by later Russian historians who were quite resolute in arguing that there was only one nation that had evolved in the territory of the “Russian world” – namely, Great Russian (understood as Russian). After the Bolsheviks had taken over, Russian historians transformed the concept of the “Russian world” into one recognizing an “Eastern Slavic commonwealth” which, over time, led to the evolvement of three “brotherly” nations: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian. Starting from the 1930s, the latter concept had been adopted as obligatory in the Soviet Union. In the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian science, instead, concepts emphasising historical distinctness were formulated.