The Heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: perspectives of historical consciousness

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Tautos; The Grand Duchy of Lithuania; Nations.

ENIt is recognised not only in Lithuanian but also in Polish and Russian historiography that the first Lithuanian State, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which existed from the 13th to the 18th century, was an emanation of the Lithuanian people. On the other hand, it is well known that the Grand Duchy was a multinational, multidenominational and multicultural country. Nowadays the claim is even heard that this diversity gives Lithuania an exceptional position in European history. All the attributes just cited apply to the country’s capital Vilnius as well. The idea of a multicultural Grand Duchy and a multicultural Vilnius was renounced in the era of nationalism, which was also the era of occupation of Lithuania (19th-20th centuries). Attempts have been made to find an ideological justification for annexations or for the creation of national states by proposing ethnically ‘pure’ (Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and nowadays even Belorussian) models of the history of the Grand Duchy, or by describing Lithuania as a battleground of civilisations (Russian, Polish and German). In this way, stereotypes like that of Vilnius as an ‘old Polish town’ or the Grand Duchy as a ‘Russian’ or ‘White Russian’ state were born. These stereotypes, the debates about the ‘true nature’ of the Grand Duchy, and the above-mentioned claims to Vilnius are still affecting relations between neighbouring countries, and they have left their traces in the national consciousness of the peoples of modern Lithuania (Lithuanians, Poles, Russians and Belorussians).We should therefore not be astonished by such stereotypes, coming to us like voices from the past, as that of the ‘Polish’ town of Vilnius, recognisable as such by its landscapes and architecture, or that of a ‘Belorussian’ or ‘Russian’ Vilnius betraying itself by the domes of its churches. After all, the Lithuanians return like for like by ‘Lithuanianising’, without evident reason, the names of some squares and streets of Vilnius. Such claims and policies are obviously wrong as they are based on the obsolete paradigm of nationalist ideologies. In public debates now taking place in Lithuania, the emphasis seems to be not so much on this entanglement of conflicting stereotypes and national identities as on the more ‘exotic’ ethnic communities like the Jews, Karaims, Tatars and Russian Old Believers, who do not claim their share in a partitioned Vilnius but can nevertheless boast a long tradition going back to the times of the Grand Duchy. The aim of this text is to formulate historiographical premises which would make it possible for the concepts of the Grand Duchy and Vilnius to coexist in the national consciousness of different communities, especially Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians. Our analysis will be responsive to recent trends in historical investigations, and perhaps this will enable us to formulate new questions about the history of the Grand Duchy and Vilnius, and to suggest themes and hypotheses which the different communities could use in defining their national and cultural identity. [From the publication]

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