Lituanistica

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2024-11-06T21:08:23+02:00

2024-11-07T15:50:50+02:00

The Ancestry of Gediminas: Between Legends and History

2024-11-07T14:31:59+02:00

Two versions of the origins of Gediminas developed in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries. According to the first one, Gediminas was a stableman of Vytenis and ascended to the throne after his death. The second version, which appeared in response to the first one, claimed that Gediminas was Vytenis’s son. These versions were not only the product of imagination of their authors; they may carry fragments of the authentic tale about the origins of the Gediminids and hence historical realities, which deserve a thorough scrutiny. In the nineteenth century, the Russian historian Alexander Nikitsky added a third version based on the letter of the citizens of Riga to Gediminas of 1322, in which Vytenis was referred to as ‘your brother and predecessor’ (frater vester et antecessor): respectively, he concluded that Gediminas was Vytenis’s brother. Therefore, it is worth taking a fresh look at each of these versions and the available data on the origins of Gediminas with a fresh look.
The prerequisite for such a revision is the oldest genealogy of the sons of Algirdas provided in the late fourteenth-century Russian literary tale Zadonshchina listing the successive line of their ancestors as Skalmantas – Gediminas – Algirdas – Andrew
and Dmitri (the protagonists of the said poem). Jerzy Ochmański noticed it already in 1974. Ochmański tried to accommodate this genealogy with Nikitsky’s theory, accepting that Vytenis’s father, namely, Pukuveras-Butvydas, was also the father of Gediminas and therefore assumed that Skalmantas must have been their grandfather. However, the genealogy in Zadonshchina directly implies that Skalmantas was Gediminas’s father. As Peter of Dusburg wrote in his chronicle, that the father of Vytenis was Pucuwerus (identified with Butvydas), Vytenis and Gediminas could not be full brothers; that the fact that Vytenis was called frater of Gediminas should be interpreted rather as a clue to a more distant relationship, namely, cousinhood.
Further analysis of the genealogy of Gediminas also demands a scrutiny of the terms ‘predecessor’ and ‘progenitor’, which are used in his own letters. The term ‘predecessor’ was applied in reference to earlier rulers of Lithuania (namely, Mindaugas and Vytenis); the term ‘progenitor’ means direct ancestors. Gediminas stated that his progenitores (ancestors) had tried to establish trade relations with Lübeck and other cites of the Hanseatic League. This implies that at least two direct ancestors of Gediminas ruled Lithuania and sought to establishing relationship with Lübeck.
Considering this, the most probable ancestors of Gediminas seem to be Traidenis (1268–1281) and his successor Daumantas (1281–1285). The article tries to prove that the most likely relationship between them and Gediminas was that both of them were his grandfathers: Traidenis on the maternal side and Daumantas on the paternal. Besides that, Daumantas and/or his family must have supported Vaišalgas, Mindaugas’s son and Traidenis’s rival. Traidenis could have married off his unknown elder daughter to Skalmantas, who must have been a son of Daumantas, in order to draw the supporters of his rival to his side.

New Data on Duke Vaidotas Kęstutaitis in 1363

2024-11-07T14:31:45+02:00

The paper analyses a problem related to Vaidotas Kęstutaitis (Kęstutid), who was a grandson of the Lithuanian ruler Gediminas. We know only two certain facts about Vaidotas Kęstutaitis: first, in 1362 he led the defence of Kaunas castle and was captured by the Teutonic Knights and, second, he had lands in Novogrudok. All other information about Vaidotas Kęstutaitis is hypothetical: he is not mentioned by name directly, so the question is if he ever returned to Lithuania from the captivity of the Teutonic Knights.
The addition of a source unknown in Lithuanian historiography to the scholarly circulation in Lithuania was very helpful in solving this question. The chronicle Eulogium historiarum sive temporis describes the visit of King Peter I of Cyprus (Pierre I de Lusignan) to the court of the King Edward III of England. It also mentions the King of Lithuania, who was in Peter I’s entourage. Nicolas Jorga identified this Lithuanian king as Vaidotas Kęstutaitis. After checking the sources, there is no other individual with whom this duke in Peter I’s entourage could be identified as no other relative or offspring of Gediminas was captured at the time.
In this context, the unusual Lithuanian form of the name ‘Lecto’, which recurs in the chronicle, attracted attention, as the chronicle also contains a description of Lithuania using the form ‘Lectonia’. Both the description of Lithuania and the form of the Lithuanian name are genetically related to the work of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, who uses the same form of the name of Lithuanian, and the description of Lithuania is almost identical to its description in the mid-thirteenth century.
The question arises as to where Vaidotas Kęstutaitis could have joined the campaign of Peter I of Cyprus for the proclamation of the crusade. The crusade itself was proclaimed at the papal curia in Avignon. There is a very good chance that this was where Vaidotas Kęstutaitis joined Peter I of Cyprus. The Teutonic Order may have sent the prisoner from Prussia further into Europe, and he may have ended up in the papal curia as a war trophy. It was in the Pope’s best interest to give the planned crusade the most important status possible, and he could have arranged for Vaidotas Kęstutaitis to find himself in the presence of the king of Cyprus. Unfortunately, no further information about Vaidotas Kęstutaitis has been found so far.
Related to this question is another question: did Vaidotas Kęstutaitis return to Lithuania? This question is complicated because we have a problem with the dating of the death of Gediminas’s son Karijotas and the division of his inheritance. After Gediminas’s death, Karijotas received the principality of Novogrudok, which he ruled himself, and later also his descendants, who were primarily associated with Novogrudok. However, Karijotas’s sons are mentioned in Volhynia from as early
as 1352, so they started to move out of the principality of Novogrudok that was becoming too small for them (which is not surprising, as Karijotas had at least seven sons). However, the dynasty’s elite stepped in to take over Karijotas’s legacy. The Duke of Trakai, Kęstutis, bequeathed Novogrudok to his sons Vaidotas and Tautvilas. The problem is that these acts are not dated, so we cannot contextualise them chronologically.
It is unlikely that Vaidotas Kęstutaitis could have received the lands before the death of Karijotas. However, the fact of Karijotas’s death itself is not dated. The last mention of him may refer to the conclusion of a treaty between Mazovian princes and Kęstutis and his brothers in 1358. In 1366 he is no longer mentioned, so it is assumed that he was already dead by then. Thus, the death of Karijotas should be dated between 1358 and 1366. The exact time is not clear, but it is likely that it was at this time that Vaidotas Kęstutaitis may have obtained lands in Novogrudok. This period also includes the years up to 1362, so the probability that Vaidotas Kęstutaitis received his lands before he was captured by the Teutonic Knights is quite high.
One more aspect must be emphasised. The dynastic tradition was formed in such a way that the lands of the members of the ruling dynasty did not necessarily have to be an uninterrupted territory. There are many examples of dukes ruling territories both in Lithuania and Ruthenia. Therefore, the presence of Vaidotas Kęstutaitis in Kaunas and the simultaneous possession of lands in the principality of Novogrudok do not fall out of this context. In this way, the assumption that Vaidotas Kęstutaitis returned to Lithuania from the captivity of the Teutonic Knights is not necessary at all.

Litigants’ Attorneys-at-Law at the Land Courts of Upytė District in the Early Seventeenth Century

2024-11-07T14:31:32+02:00

The article discusses litigants’ attorneys-at-law in the court books of Upytė district in the first two decades of the seventeenth century, whose names are found in the six surviving manuscript court books of that district. Since one book of that period contains only notarial records [1], the focus is on the records in five court books of Upytė district: records of one book of the castle court [2] and four books of the land court [3–6]. The size of the books varies greatly, from 22 [3] to 1353 pages. They contain 2278 records (not counting the aforementioned notary court book of the castle), of which 590 are judicial. The research covered approximately two first decades of the seventeenth century, from 1600 to 1622. Due to poor condition, two land court books from that period (1616–1618) were not available for the research. The extant court books do not cover all years as there are chronological gaps, but material from both castle and land court books cover the period of 1611–1613.
The litigants used to litigate through verbally authorised persons (if they arrived with the litigants) or persons authorised in writing (in the absence of the litigants). During this period, there were several dozen such permanent litigants’ attorneys-at-law in Upytė, but about twenty of them were constantly working in the courts at the same time, very rarely more. About eight to ten persons worked most intensively as attorneys-at-law, others appeared in the court books episodically, worked for a short time, or were from other regions of the state.
Unlike in Samogitia, both the residents of the neighbouring territories (Kaunas, Ukmergė, Trakai districts, Samogitia) and representatives of more distant districts – Lyda, Vilnius, Ašmena used to be litigants’ attorneys-at-law at the courts of Upytė district (see: Lituanistica, 2023, 69/4, 298).
All groups of landlords, from magnates to minor nobility, had attorneys-at-law. Merchants, the clergy, and townspeople often used their services as well, usually of the same persons as in ‘purely’ noble disputes. The interests of subjects were represented by their lord or his servant, who also had attorneys. Larger nobles or magnates had ‘staff’ attorneys who represented them. Jews and Karaites could litigate in these courts by summoning the same attorneys-at-law as the nobility, although such cases were rare.
The most active litigants’ attorneys-at-law represented a dozen cases in one session. It happened that the same pairs of attorneys defended different clients in several cases on the same day. The intensity of the work of the litigants’ representatives suggests that they must have had assistants who were supposed to help navigate the multitude of cases, but the lack of sources does not allow us to prove this statement so far.

Historiography on the Soviet Era in Lithuania

2024-11-07T14:31:19+02:00

The article provides an overview of Lithuanian historiography on the years of dependence (1940–1941 and 1944–1990) in relation to the most important trends in Western Sovietology. The new narrative of the history of Lithuania takes the exposure of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its geopolitical implications as its starting point. This narrative highlighted the crimes committed against Lithuania by the two totalitarian regimes and the aspirations for liberation. This ‘occupation paradigm’, established at the time, is still dominant in Lithuania’s public discourse and is similar to the historical narratives of the other two Baltic countries. Lithuania’s peculiarity is that its cultural memory places emphasis not only on the victims of Stalinist repressions but also on the fighters against totalitarianism: the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet armed underground. Despite this, the de-Sovietisation that began in Lithuania in 1990 took on certain specific features: unlike in other Baltic countries, lustration has not been completed here. The most important external and internal factors that contributed to the change in Lithuanian historiography during the transition period were the following: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relatively peaceful end of the Cold War; the interest of the public and the new political-academic-cultural elite in filling in the so-called ‘white spots’ of history, which manifested itself in the establishment of ideologically unengaged centres of historical research and studies; the sudden rise of the traumatic memory of repressions that had been frozen by the regime for decades and the emergence of the ‘communities of memory’ based on this memory (exiles, political prisoners, dissidents), which eventually became involved in the creation of the new grand historical narrative. These fundamental changes also led to the rewriting of autobiographies, including the publication of memoirs of Soviet figures at various levels and scales, and other documentary production (films, historical broadcasts, ceremonies of the transportation of the remains of Stalin’s victims from the locations of their exile in Siberia and reburial in Lithuania, memorial laws, public debates, museum exhibitions, etc.).
Given this broader socio-political context, the development of Lithuanian historiography on the Soviet era can be conditionally divided into two phases. From 1989 to around 2005, a stronger focus was placed on the processes and circumstances of ‘hard’ Sovietisation, starting from the efforts to fill in the ‘white spots’ of history (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the first Soviet occupation, the June Uprising) to the scale and consequences of Soviet repression. Research on the occupation, the annexation, and the Sovietisation of society was broadened and studies into the networks
alternative to the Soviet regime (the underground, the peaceful resistance of the Catholic Church, etc.) were conducted. During that period, much attention was devoted to the depiction of the ‘collective portrait of the nomenklatura’. Although from around 2005 onwards, in the second phase of research on ‘soft Sovietisation’, studies into the themes of the first phase were continued, greater interest was shown in analysing what lies between resistance and collaboration, i.e., adaptation to the Soviet system. Studies carried out in this area made it possible to draw clearer contours of the ‘collective portrait of the intelligentsia’ and to reconstruct the informal networks of the members of society whose activities had a significant impact on the world outlook and values of Lithuanians at the time. Significant progress was also made in exploring the state of national culture during the Soviet period
(literature, architecture, heritage conservation, cinematography, photography, historical politics, subcultures, etc.). In the recent decade, with the aim at shedding more light on the specificities of the ‘boredom society’ of the late Soviet period, the field of research has been increasingly broadened to include Soviet economy and the analysis of informal socio-economic relations and everyday life. Gradually, historical scholarship is moving towards comparative studies of deeper layers of social history, such as collectivisation, industrialisation, and urbanisation, Lithuania as a part of the Soviet ‘Little West’, etc.
In their recent texts, the Lithuanian historians avoid looking at Soviet society and culture as a single entity strictly controlled by the regime and ideology and easily divided into binary oppositions. At the same time, however, there is a danger of straying to the other extreme, when, imperceptibly, the totalitarian regime seems to be normalised and, or of maintaining the view that Soviet authorities had no influence on culture or people’s everyday lives. Although the topic of ‘internal’ or ‘unarmed’ resistance in the post-Stalin period is still quite popular in Lithuania, it is important not to lose sight of the processes through which the authorities consolidated their influence in various spheres of life, as well as the extent to which it regulated society, culture, and everyday life at different periods.
The brief discussion of the Lithuanian historiography on the Soviet period in this paper in terms of the path it has covered so far and its main trends suggests that it only partially coincides with the paradigms that are distinguished in classical Sovietology (totalitarianism, revisionism, post-revisionism, transitology). The differences observed are due to the specificity of Lithuania: a late start of politically disengaged research (with the exception of the interwar period at Vilnius University), as it emerged at a time when this discipline was facing serious reputational difficulties in the West and when it had to reorganise and adapt itself to the newly-evolving post-Cold War situation.
After the occupation of Crimea in 2014 and especially following the outbreak of the full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, the growing geopolitical threat posed by Russia to Lithuania and the whole post-Soviet region has once again sharpened the question of the assessment of the Soviet era. This led to the adoption, in 2023, of the Law on the Prohibition of the Promotion of Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes and their Ideologies and the formation of an expert commission for its implementation. It undertook the erasing of the remaining Soviet-era memorial signs (monuments, street names, names of institutions, etc.) from public spaces, which caused quite a controversy as the most important Soviet ideological and propaganda signs were removed still in the 1990s, and the Commission focused its attention on the memorial signs of the cultural figures who lived under the regime and served it. Here we seem to be witnessing a shift from the paradigm of ‘occupation’ to that of ‘collaboration’, when it is no longer the perpetrators of crimes and ‘our’ victims or heroes who are put first, but local traitors and collaborators of the imposed regime. At the same time, perhaps following the expanded concept of the Holocaust, the very notion of ‘collaboration’ has been broadened enormously and extends even to the post-war works of Lithuanian writers and poets who paid tribute to the ideological demands of the time. Thus, the narrative of liberation of the Baltic Chain period is moving towards the hunt for ‘one’s own guilty’, which divides and annoys the public. Still, the decolonising discourse prevalent among the Ukrainian and Belarusian opposition in the context of war has practically bypassed Lithuania: except for some intellectuals, there is no willingness to talk about the internal colonisation of societies during the Soviet period, the totalitarian consciousness, and the consequences of the implementation of the homo sovieticus project. This is quite paradoxical, because we have a homo sovieticus museum in Vilnius, which, however, remains on the sidelines of the exciting public debate.
The images of the Soviet era, entrenched in society and often grossly simplified and even vulgarised, are increasingly exploited in political struggle. In this uncertain situation and in order to maintain objectivity and impartiality, historians tend to avoid political engagement. Thus, their academic discoveries and internal discussions, which could significantly enrich and broaden our understanding of the years of dependency, remain poorly integrated in the current public debate, which is dominated by simplistic evaluations of the Soviet period that are not conducive to a better understanding of the Soviet era. This leads to a paradoxical situation: the paradigm of totalitarianism still prevails in the public space and in the politics of history, while revisionism or even post-revisionism is already taking root in the academic sphere. Unfortunately, these significant qualitative changes in our historiography have only a weak impact on the field of the public debate and an even lesser effect on the rise in its quality. As a result, historical journalism, discussions in social networks, or para-historical literature are trying to fill this gap. In conclusion, there is still a vast expanse of untouched territory in the reflection on the history of the Soviet era.

Expression of Scientific Authority in Article Headlines

2024-11-07T14:31:06+02:00

Straipsnyje analizuojama mokslinio autoriteto kaip argumento viešajame diskurse problematika. Mokslinio autoriteto funkcionavimo dėsningumą iliustruoja autoritetą žyminčių leksemų vartojimas internetinės žiniasklaidos straipsnių antraštėse. Tyrimas atskleidžia, kad apeliavimas į autoritetą – argumentum ad verecundiam – yra gyvybinga ir intensyviai antraštėse pasitelkiama retorinio paveikumo technika. Tekstyno analizės metodu atrinkus ir susisteminus duomenis atlikta retorinė diskurso analizė: atskleisti mokslinį autoritetą žyminčių dėmenų vartojimo polinkiai, nustatytos būdingosios autoriteto charakteristikos, veiklos sritys, aptartos retorinio paveikumo prielaidos.

Living in a Multicultural Environment: Leisure and Holidays Around Vilnius

2024-11-06T21:06:11+02:00