«Моя жизнь слилась с моею научною работою…»: профессор Иван Иванович Лаппо (1869–1944)

Abstract

In this article the life and career of the historian Ivan Ivanovich Lappo (1869–1944), a major specialist in the study of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, are analyzed. The stages of his academic and pedagogical career at St. Petersburg and Yuriev Universities are fully examined. At the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. I. I. Lappo suggested that after the conclusion of the Union of Lublin in 1569, Lithuania continued to maintain a large share of independence as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita). The Union was one of the reasons why the Commonwealth stopped in its state development, the interests of Poland and Lithuania were impossible to reconcile as part of one state. He will devote his whole scientific career to upholding this thesis. The period of I.I. Lappo’se work in Lithuania is specially outlined, his connections with the academic and political environment of this country are examined. The collapse of the Russian Empire became a personal tragedy for the professor, he was afraid of the growth of nationalism, especially Ukrainian, but he was sympathetic to the formation of independent Lithuania and therefore very negatively perceived Polish claims to Lithuanian territory and statehood. In the article the influence of I. I. Lappo on Lithuanian historiography is analyzes. On the one hand, he tried to dispel established historical myths. But, on the other hand, his scientific conclusions laid on the breeding ground of a new national myth-making. Thus, his attitude towards Prince Vytautas, whom he heroizes and opposes Jogaila, was imbued with a national romantic spirit. These views correlated well with the cult of Vytautas the Great, which was almost officially approved in interwar Lithuania. If in pre-revolutionary Russia the anti-Polish motives of I. I. Lappo’s work converged with the official imperial discourse, then it were strikingly in demand in independent Lithuania.