№18-19, 2012

The article reviews how contemporary Belarusian historiography has debated the ethnopolitical structure of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the changing meanings of the concepts of Lithuania and Rus. It maps the main schools, controversies and civilizational interpretations that shaped this discussion since the late 1980s.

The article examines Adam Honory Kirkor’s self-identification and the Belarusian and Lithuanian components of his historical concepts. It also places his thinking in the broader context of the emerging kraj idea and regional intellectual traditions.

The article studies the earliest stage of kraj idea formation in Belarus and Lithuania through the first narratives and biographies of Raman Skirmunt and Michal Romer. It reconstructs the motives, interests and concepts that shaped the first regionalist debates.

The article examines the idea of personal cultural autonomy in Lithuania and Belarus at the beginning of the twentieth century as a response to social, cultural and territorial conflicts among national movements in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

The article explores how Wilno moved in Polish historical narrative from a former capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to part of the broader symbolic landscape of the Eastern Borderlands. It traces the long-term romantic and historiographical transformation of the city’s image.

The article analyzes the place of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the ceremonies and visual language of royal power under the Vasa dynasty. It shows how Lithuania’s symbolic role changed in relation to royal titles, political traditions and shifting status within the Commonwealth.

The article reviews competing concepts of the Belarusian nation proposed in the late Soviet period and contrasts the Soviet people framework with ethnocultural and republican-patriotic alternatives. It shows how these concepts structured the political horizon of the late 1980s.

The article studies how the historical past is mobilized in public speeches by Belarusian officials and how these references shape official narratives of authority, people and political belonging.

The article traces how intellectuals of the nineteenth-century Russian Empire constructed the image of Francisk Skaryna and explains why he was not turned into a Russian national hero despite sustained imperial interest.

The article explores how the heritage of Great Lithuania is reimagined in contemporary Lithuanian and Belarusian music through the archetypes of the warrior, the priest and the farmer. It highlights how music participates in alternative national identity formation.

The article analyzes the internal and foreign-policy activity of Jazep Varonka’s government of the Belarusian People’s Republic. It emphasizes both its achievements in culture and administration and its limits under German occupation and weak international recognition.

The article offers a polemical genealogy of the concept of tutejšyja and argues that it functioned primarily as a Polish intellectual construction and administrative tool, especially in the Wilno region and interwar Western Belarus.

The article examines the historical experience of religious tolerance on the Polish-Belarusian frontier and the interaction of confessions, elites and institutions. It argues that the Union of Brest, Counter-Reformation and wars undermined earlier models of confessional balance.

The review discusses a documentary collection on the idea and practice of Baltic states unity in the interwar period and frames it as a study in neglected regionalism.

The review considers Darius Staliunas’s book on Russification in Lithuania and Belarus after 1863 and highlights its value for understanding imperial national policy and its concrete practices.

The review presents a joint book by a Lithuanian and Russian historian on the projects of reverse union between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the Russian Empire.

The review examines a collection of articles on Lithuanian-Jewish political contacts in the early twentieth century and points to its transnational scholarly contribution.

The review discusses a book on sacred geography in Belarus and presents it as an important attempt to systematize landscape objects and archaeological monuments in the context of traditional and pre-Christian culture.