Abstract

SUMMARY:

The subject of Alexander Filjushkin’s research is the discourses of Russian Historiography and political studies about the place of Great Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) in Russian history. The author describes four discourses. First – “Russian lands were the victim of the Lithuanian occupation”. Second – “The absorption of lands of the Great Limitroph as Western project of the Russian empire”. Third – “The lands of the GDL from most ancient times were Russian lands, the hereditary possession of the Moscow princes. The author in detail studies the development of concept “Vseja Rusi” (“of All Russia”) and the genesis of its contents from the end of the 15th till the end of the 16th centuries. A separate subject of study is a role of Livonian war (1558–1583) in the development of the idea “Vseja Rusi”. Fourth discourse – “The GDL was the model of democratic alternative of the Authoritarian type of power in Russia”. In the conclusion the author describes the low level of modern investigations of GDL in Russian. Therefore he names the image of GDL in historiographies and political doctrines of East-European countries as “The Kingship of curve mirrors”: each of the countries sees the image GDL, which frequently is rather far from a reality, but depends from the political discourses of the 19th and 20th centuries.

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