Unitų vienuolynai Lietuvos Didžiojoje Kunigaikštystėje ankstyvaisiais naujaisiais laikais

this special issue of Acta Orientalia Vilnensia is dedicated to the bicentenary of the commencement of asian studies in lithuania and particularly at Vilnius university, which was founded in 1579 and is the oldest academic institution in Lithuania. Two hundred years is a comparatively short period, but these years have a wealthy history, especially keeping in mind that Asian or Oriental studies, as it was called at the beginning of this period, was a newly emerging academic field that has grown from a purely comparative and philological approach to recently discovered non-European cultures due to of the increasing implications of colonial aims and the imperative to manage properly those subjugated Asian counties and nations. Certainly, an integral part of this interest in Asian learning was European romantic fascination with the cultural and intellectual otherness of that area. Lithuania was not excepted from this kind of intellectual involvement. The beginning of the 19th century was a politically complicated and turbulent period in Lithuanian history. After the third and last division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, between Tsarist Russia and Prussia in 1795, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became an eastern province of the Russian Empire and formally disappeared from the world map for a more than a century. Notwithstanding, some academic institutions, including the main one, Vilnius University, continued their activities, even though under the strict control and supervision of Russian officials. the intellectuals of Vilnius university clearly understood in those days the importance and future prospects of developing Asian studies. And due to the activities of non-formal student societies (the Filarets, Filomats, and Shubravcy) and members of freemasonic lodges, especially of the Zealous Lithuanian (Gorliwy litvin) lodge, the romantic fascination with the East developed into serious academic preoccupations.

The lifetime of the Kingdom of Poland – a state connected with the Russian Empire by a union – has not been unequivocally assessed in Polish historiography. On the one hand, the Kingdom had its own army, administration and a very liberal constitution, and had quickly achieved economic prosperity. On the other hand, within a few years of its creation, there occurred the fi rst violations of the Constitution and the persecutions of those who opposed these infringements. A significant event was the revolt of the Cadets of 29 November 1830, which turned into a uprising, today referred to as the November Uprising. This article is the analysis of the legal aspects of the Polish-Russian union created in 1815. It is then compared with the Union of Lublin and the drafts of planned unions between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries. The circumstances which led to the creation of the Kingdom of Poland and its union with the Russian Empire, as well as the earlier attempts to create one state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire, as well as the principles of a union of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are presented. The principles upon which these unions were to be based are subsequently compared and analysed. A particular emphasis has been placed on the issues related to the international legal status of the Kingdom of Poland. In this context questions such as: the treaty-making power and jus legationis have also been asked. Another important issue discussed in the paper is also the role of the king in matters concerning foreign policy and a possible role of Russia in these matters. The results of this analysis allow to formulate a more objective assessment of the period of the Kingdom of Poland, focusing on its legal status and position, and in particular on the relation with the Russian Empire.

The history of publishing in Lithuania begins with the early formation of the Lithuanian state in the 13th century. As the state was taking shape over many centuries, its name, government, and territory kept changing along with its culture and the prevailing language of writing and printing. Geographically spread across Central and Eastern Europe, the state was multinational, its multilayered culture shaped by the synthesis of the Latin and Greek civilizations. Furthermore, the state was multiconfessional: both Latin and Orthodox Christianity were evolving in its territory. These historical circumstances led to the emergence of a unique book culture at the end of the manuscript book period (the late 15th and the early 16th century). In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), writing centers were formed that later frequently became printing houses; books were written in Latin, Church Slavonic, and Ruthenian, with two writing systems (Latin and Cyrillic) coexisting, and their texts and artistic design reflected the interaction of Western and Eastern Christianity in the GDL. During the period of the printed book, the GDL, though remote from the most important Western European publishing centers, was affected by the general tendencies of the Renaissance, Reformation, Baroque, and Enlightenment culture through the Roman Catholic Church and integration processes. During the 16th–18th centuries, publications in Latin, Ruthenian, and Polish prevailed in the GDL. In the 16th–17th centuries, about half of the press production were Latin books that spread along with Renaissance ideas and the Europeanization of the state, while the Ruthenian written language (one of the official state languages) was developed. After the Union of Lublin was signed in 1569, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth promoted the integration processes in public life, manifested by the emergence of the Polish language and the spread of Polish books as well as the growth of publishing in the 18th century. In the 16th century, several Lithuanian writers emerged in Prussian Lithuania (or Lithuania Minor), the region of the Prussian state populated by Lithuanians. A unique tradition of writing and publishing had flourished there until the start of World War II. In 1795, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth disappeared from the map of Europe and a larger part of the GDL lands was annexed to the Russian Empire. However, Vilnius, a seat of old printing and book culture traditions, managed to survive as an important publishing center of the eastern periphery of Central Europe, and as a city fostering publishing in the Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish languages. In the early 19th century, the main forces of authors, publishers, book producers, and distributors of Lithuanian books began to concentrate in Lithuania. In 1918, after the restoration of an independent state of Lithuania, new conditions arose to benefit the development of book publishing. The Lithuanian tradition of publishing, owing to a renewed printing industry and the expansion of a publishing house and bookstore network, significantly strengthened. Between 1940 and 1990, the country suffered a half-century occupation (the occupation of the Nazi Germans in 1941–1945; the rest was the Soviet occupation) during which the Jewish national minority was destroyed, the Poles were evicted from the Vilnius region, the Germans were expelled from the Klaipėda region, and Sovietization and Russification were enforced in the sphere of civic thought. In Soviet Lithuania, although all the publishing houses belonged to the state and were ideologically controlled, a core of publishing professionals emerged who, after Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, readily joined the publishing industry developing under free market conditions.

Grodno as a city in the Republic of Belarus, with its rich and diverse culture, is almost 1000 years old. It arose as one of the political and administrative centers of ancient Rus. In the middle of the thirteenth century it stood at the beginning of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which formed in the Neman region. The Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas received the city from his father Kestutis and from that moment on Grodno became the residence of the great dukes of Lithuania, and later Polish kings. At the end of the eighteenth century, after the partition of Poland, Grodno was seized by the Russian authorities. As a provincial town of the Russian empire it suffered a violent Russification, which was continued in the times of the Soviet Union. On receiving independence in 1991, the Republic of Belarus began an independent political life. However, the election in 1994 of A. Lukashenko for President shattered the independent Belarusian state development trend and started a restoration of Soviet institutions of power and traditions. Instead of Belarusian national symbols in public life, Soviet symbols reappeared, which blurred the traces of the rich and varied history of the country. Grodno is perhaps the most interesting city of Belarus because of its multiculturalism.

In the middle of the second millennium AD, Crimea became an outpost of Islamic civilization in south-eastern Europe. Muslim values, Islamic law, morality and aesthetics were at the heart of medieval Crimea: in the system of government, military organization, business, art and culture. However, the relationship between Muslim Crimea and Christian Europe did not deteriorate into opposition, military conflict and religious confrontation. Crimea found allies in eastern and central Europe. These allies were primarily Lithuania and Poland (after the Union of Lublin, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland - Rzeczpospolita of both nations, otherwise known as, ‘the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’). The alliance of the Crimean Khanate with the Polish-Lithuanian state was motivated by the strategic objective of countering Moscovite expansion, which had been aggressively focused towards the east and west ever since the 16th century. This may be seen in the conquest of the Kazan and the Astrakhan Khanates by Ivan the Terrible, his foray into the Nogai prairie and Moscow’s participation in the Livonian War. These strategic objectives resulted in an alliance between Crimea and Turkey. Crimea’s status as a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire was the most important factor in safeguarding the Crimean Tatar state from the Moscovite threat. At the same time, the fact that the Crimean Khanate became a vassal of Porte (the Ottoman Empire) did not result in its losing its political independence and neither did it interfere with the authentic nature and development of Crimean Tatar culture.

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to explore the features of the evolution of legal custom in Ukrainian lands up to the 18th century. It also aims to define the scope and directions of its influence on the development of Ukrainian law during the specified period. Methodology. The article employs a modern methodology of historical-legal research, based on which sources and literature are analyzed. In particular, the following methods are used: historical-legal, formal-dogmatic, synergetic, system-structural, hermeneutic, among others. Results. The research confirms the leading role of custom in the formation of Ukrainian law up to the end of the 18th century. In the pre-state era, law on Ukrainian lands was formed as the customs of tribal and clan communities. Legislative acts of the princes of Kyivan Rus and the Halician-Volynian state supplemented and systematized the norms of the existing customary law. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania allowed the preservation of most of the local customary law and adopted a significant portion of it. In the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukrainian legal customs interacted and blended with Polish law as well as German, Vlach, Jewish, and other laws. The Cossack customs of the Zaporizhian Sich gave new impetus to the development of Ukrainian customary law, which continued its evolution under the Hetmanate. Originality. The article reveals the significance of legal custom in the pre-state society of the Eastern Slavs, Kyivan Rus, the Нalician-Volynian state, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Zaporizhian Sich, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Cossack-Hetman state. Archival sources were used for the analysis of this scholarly issue. Practical significance. The results of the research may be applied for academic and educational purposes and taken into account in the course of contemporary law-making and law enforcement.

The article deals with the collections of printed music dedicated to the distinguished nobles, statesmen and military commanders of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania, brothers Jan Karol and Aleksander Chodkiewicz. These collections were printed in Venice in the beginning of the 17th century and dedicated to the Lithuanian magnates by Italian composers Giovanni Valentini and Giulio Osculati. However, it was not in their home country where composers became acquainted with the above-mentioned noblemen who had studied and travelled extensively in Italy but in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In fact, both composers had served for certain periods of time as musicians in the Polish court chapel under Sigismund III Vasa. The said collections of motets are being examined here with an emphasis on publicity and international representation. The author notes that besides the reasonable expectations of both Italian composers to raise their public profiles, to publish and disseminate their work in Europe, these personal aspirations also resonated with the interests of other public figures. They both represent Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, as a generous patron and a leading social figure. The dedications were intended to glorify the Chodkiewicz and raise their profile within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and beyond. They account for the magnates’ victories in major military campaigns of the time, such as those achieved during the Polish–Swedish war of 1600–1611, as well as Chodkiewicz’s merits in defence of the state. Within the context of shifting confessional identities at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries (i.e. the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation movements) these notated sources should be considered as a reflection of the magnates’ confessional identity. The very genre of printed works – motets for Catholic church service – reflects Chodkiewicz’s firm self-determination as Roman Catholics.

In the early modern period, the relentless growth in the copies of printed books and the increasing competition between craftsmen meant that, since the invention of Gutenberg until the 19th century, European bookbinders were forced to look for cheaper and quicker binding techniques. Based on this assumption, the article focuses on some of the bindings of books printed from the middle of the 16th until the middle of the 17th century which belonged to the library of Vilnius Jesuit Academy. This study is part of a broader research on the bindings of the Vilnius Jesuit Academy Library, and the article is limited to two groups of sources: books printed in Italy and books printed in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth). The historical bindings are discussed by following the approach targeting the field of decorative arts and material culture studies, which is also well known as the ‘archaeology’ of the book or the bookbinding. It focuses not only on the decorative features of the cover of the book, but also on the structural features of the bindings which reveal comprehensively the work of the craftsmen of the past. This method of analysis is particularly useful for discussing not only decorated but also undecorated bindings which have so far received very limited attention in the research of the old Lithuanian book. As a result, the research revealed that the modest parchment bindings form nearly a half of all the examined bindings of the collection, and confirm the practical rather than the representational aspect of the Jesuit Library. According to the complexity of the technical execution and the number of operations involved in the process of binding, five binding techniques have been distinguished, ranging from the most complex to the simplest bindings, closely related with a retail bindings. What is more, a consistent number of parchment bindings are denoted by structural features, which is close to the Italian bookbinding tradition. The predominance of the latter in the group of Italian prints makes it possible to consider the possibility of already bound books entering the library of Vilnius Jesuit Academy. Moreover, the research has revealed certain binding features linked to the bookbinding traditions in Italy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Thirteen Years’ War between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1654-1667) was, in its immediate cause, the outcome of the Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1648. Yet in a broader historical perspective, the war can be traced back to the long-term structural integration of Polish and Lithuanian political authority, beginning in the late 14th century. The Union of Krewo (1385) established a dynastic alliance through the marriage between the Grand Duke of Lithuania and the Queen of Poland, introducing Catholicism to Lithuania and initiating a personal union. The Union of Horodło (1413) institutionalized legal parity between Polish and Lithuanian nobility. Later, the Union of Lublin (1569) transformed the two states into a single federal commonwealth with a jointly elected monarch and shared legislature. The Union of Brest (1596) further complicated this arrangement by incorporating parts of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and Belarus into communion with Rome, forming the Uniate Church, thereby intensifying confessional tensions within the Commonwealth. These successive layers of political and religious unification ultimately contributed to widespread resentment among the Cossacks and Orthodox population in Ukrainian territories under Polish-Lithuanian rule. This culminated in the 1648 uprising, during which Khmelnytsky’s Cossack forces rebelled against Polish aristocratic dominance and religious persecution, seeking autonomy and religious protection. In 1654, the Treaty of Pereyaslav was signed, under which Khmelnytsky pledged allegiance to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of Russia, bringing the Cossack Hetmanate under Moscow’s suzerainty. This marked the point at which the Polish-Russian conflict escalated into a full-scale war, setting the stage for thirteen years of continuous military and diplomatic confrontation. The Thirteen Years’ War between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1654-1667) was more than a mere territorial conflict; it fundamentally reshaped the political landscape of Eastern Europe. Through this war, Russia laid the foundations for its emergence as a major power, while Poland began its gradual descent into decline. Moreover, the war divided the historical trajectory of the Ukrainian lands, institutionalizing a geopolitical fracture that would fuel centuries of rivalry between Moscow and Warsaw. This legacy continues to resonate today, making the conflict a critical lens through which to understand both Ukraine’s modern history and its political identity.

Exile or free movement of Early-Modern Russian women abroad (first of all to Polish Crown and Grand Duchy of Lithuania) comes under scrutiny in the article, which is based on the manifold evidence from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Push-factors were decisions to leave the country with their husbands, children or other relatives, captivity, abduction and desertion in the frontier regions of the Russian state. The pull-factors were quite weak, and can be rarely proven by the evidence of sources evidence. Usually, the wives of the gentry (syny boiarskie) successfully integrated into the new society either with their husbands and sons or alone in the case of their death. These women of Muscovite origin often had a good grasp of the legal traditions of their home lands. They found familiar traits in the judicial practices of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Emigrees from the low classes emerged in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the normative “grey zone”, from which they could either rise to freedom, or remain in slavery owned by local gentry, magnates or town-dwellers. Special attention is paid to the sexual and family violence which could force the Muscovite women flee abroad, made them and their representatives bring lawsuits in the Commonwealth. Objectivation of women in Russia fed ethnical visions, but it did not stimulate stereotypes and phantasms typical for the Time of Enlightenment.

Political relations between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (further – GDL) and the Golden Horde, later with Crimean Khanate, are being investigated well enough. Priorities of the GDL’s foreign policy were addressed, on the one side, to the Central Europe, on the other side – to the East Europe. The relationship between Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth are being presented much more detail and broadly in the historiography, but too isolated from the political history of the GDL. Three important manuscript collections were preserved in Vilnius in the interwar period. One of these collections, which contained documents of the uttermost importance, which witnessed political and diplomatic relations between the Crimea, the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was preserved in the Manuscript Department of the Library of Vilnius University. Another collection of Oriental manuscripts, which belonged to the muftiate, was for the most part lost in 1944. The third collection, which consisted of the Karaim museum fund and library, was presented to the state in 1941 by Seraya Shapshal. Oriental sources – yarlyks of the khans and letters of Turkish border pashas, which are stored at the Manuscripts Department of the Library of Vilnius University, were presented in the article of Kılınç, Miškinienė (2014 = Oriental Materials in the Manuscripts Department of the Library of Vilnius University: Yarlyks of the Khans and Letters of Turkish Border Pashas). Article analyses and discusses the condition of the documents, as well as their palaeographic qualities, content and possibility of preservation. The jarlyk of Kaplan Giray written on the 4th of March 1734 to Jan Klemens Branicki, the Voivode of Krakow, is presented in the above mentioned article. This paper presents five documents from the Manuscripts Department of the Library of Vilnius University, funds F 3 and F 5. All five documents according to their structure and content could be assigned to the letters. Letters were written from Khotyn or to Khotyn and addressed to Branicki. There were not only sultans, viziers of the Ottoman Empire, commandants and treasurers of Khotyn and Bender between correspondents of Branicki. Crimean khans were correspondents of Branicki as well. The main purpose of this article is to continue the list of published documents, presenting the transliteration of the texts, the translation to English language and the comments. In this way, coauthors G. Miškinienė and A. Kılınç, continuing the publication of documents, wants to draw attention to the rather interesting sources, which sheds light on the relations of Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Traditions are very important element of mass conciousness, which should characterize both society and army. Until recently on the European continent military traditions were one of important and carefully cultivated. One of the elements in the multithreaded traditions functioning in Polish armed forces before 1939, was the ethos of former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and thus the memory of the relationship between the Crown and Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As well, building the consciousness of those traditions in the military was convergent with the official policy of Polish political elites. One of the ways in which in the years 1921–1939 the Polish armed forces operated in the ethos of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In addition to native Polish, and military traditions of the lands forming part of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania were cultivated. In the course of training some conscripts from this lands an educational content recommended by the chief military authorities was used. Important components of this tradition were the bosses and the names and branches of the Polish Army and elements of symbolism and even departmental banners or commemorative badges. Therefore, the author tried to present the history of all infantry formations of the Polish Army in the years 1918–1939, which were cultivating ethos of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As well described how these facts were externalized in symbolic representation of those formations: banners, own names and commemorative badges. In addition, author gives information how these facts were used in the process of training and education of soldiers serving in these regiments.

Despite the abundance of theological treatises in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the late 16th century, only five of the eighty-six known titles deal with the use of sacred images and reveal the opposing sides of Catholics and Protestants in such confessional debates. The Protestant perspective is represented by Andrzej Wolan’s 1583 treatise ‘An Attack on the Idolatry of the Loyolites of Vilnius’, which relies primarily on theological arguments to criticise the Catholic practice of using sacred images. Wolan’s critique, while rooted in theology, also touched on the Renaissance humanist perspective on aesthetics to question the sensual appeal of Catholic sacred art. In response, the Catholic theologian Andrzej Jurgiewicz defended the use of sacred images, emphasising their role as visual witnesses of Catholic tradition in a post-Tridentine aesthetic paradigm. This article analyses these theological and aesthetic arguments of Wolan and Jurgiewicz found in treatises representing Catholic and Protestant positions in the polemical debates on the use of sacred images in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 16th century.

SEER, 96, 4, OCTOBER 2018 778 leaves the proponents of the official consensus blinded to the prospects of growth and unity — the foremost aim of any functional society. UCL SSEES Ruta Skriptaite Kuczyńska, Marzanna (ed.). Między wschodem a zachodem. Prawosławie i unia. Kultura Pierwszej Rzeczypospolitej w diaogu z Europą, 11. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warsaw, 2017. 389 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. Zł45.00. The book under review is volume eleven of an ambitious twelve-volume project launched in 2015 by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies Artes Liberales at the University of Warsaw. Focusing on esthetics, literary culture, languages, political history and religions in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC), the project is aimed at exploring different civilizational patterns of this polity in both its internal and external relationships with other religions, cultures and peoples. Exploring Ruthenian culture in early modern Poland-Lithuania, this collectionconsistsoftwelvechaptersbyspecialistsinreligious,cultural,literary and ethnic studies. In her introductory chapter, editor Marzanna Kuczyńska substantiates the significance of Ruthenian culture in the history of the PLC (pp. 7–15) and outlines the four main areas it will cover: 1) different identity aspects, including religion and church, language, social status, origins; 2) the continuity and changes in Ruthenian culture (e.g. liturgy, patristics, theology, printing, translations, icons); 3) changes in the preparation of priests; and 4) the Uniate Congregation of St Basil and the integration of culture, schooling and printing (p. 8). In the first essay, Tomasz Kempa investigates the interrelations between the Orthodox and Uniate churches in the PLC, including the politics of both secular and religious hierarchies (pp. 17–55). He follows the process of gradual Polish acculturation of the Ruthenian gentry and commoners and the introduction of the Uniate rite by the leaders of the pro-Union coterie of Orthodox bishops in 1595–96. The controversy surrounding the Union of Brest provoked an unprecedented outburst of polemical writing and the ensuing support of the Cossacks of the consecration of a new Orthodoxy hierarchy in the early 1620s. Kempa concludes that, because of the internal politics of Polish kings, the Orthodoxy in the PLC ‘lost its native character’, while all other cultures in this polity also ‘suffered’ (p. 55). Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel’s essay is concerned with issues of the religious and ethnic identity of Ruthenians (pp. 56–80). While stressing the mosaic REVIEWS 779 of religions, identities and peoples living in early modern Poland-Lithuania, Chynczewska-Hennel offers a detailed picture of linguistic, religious and cultural transformations in the development of Ruthenian identity, first and foremost the Union of Brest of 1595–96. In particular, she discusses the vicissitudes of the Ruthenian language in the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the polemics around the dignities of the Ruthenian vernacular and Church Slavonic. Despite her exhaustive bibliography, she neglects Harvey Goldblatt’s study of the literary output of the Ruthenian monk Ivan Vyšens’kyj. More importantly, however, she outlines the transgression of Ruthenian self-identification from an ethnic-religious-cultural basis to the understanding of its social rights and privileges (pp. 78–79). Sergejus Temčinas concentrates on the languages of Ruthenian culture (pp. 81–120), elaborating on a typology of the respective languages on both a chronological and spatial foundation. He posits a period from 1385 (Union of Krevo) to 1569 (Union of Lublin) followed by a period from 1569 to 1795 when the PLC ceased to exist (pp. 81–82); during the aforementioned periods, different lands played the role of cultural centres, from Galicia-Volhynja to Wilno/Vil’no (Vilnius) to Kyiv. This is why, he argues, the linguistic aspect of Ruthenian identity is very complex, being comprised of Church Slavonic, Ruthenian, Polish and Latin (p. 89). Despite his detailed and exhaustive classification of languages, Temčinas proposes some dubious concepts. For instance, he claims that ‘the Ruthenian language [ruska mowa] is a largely Polonized western variety of Old Rusian [język staroruski]’ (p. 96). Not supported by a discussion of linguistic mechanisms proper, this thesis is poorly grounded; additionally, the geographical orientation in this definition does not reflect the dialectal grouping of Old Rusian (Old East Slavic) and presupposes the obsolete treatment of Old Rusian as...

Belarusian history is woven of a multitude of events and processes that defy unambiguous assessment. First of all, this refers to their political component: the Belarusian lands and population for more than a thousand years belonged to states that had nothing in common with the Belarusian ethnos in their names. However, it was this ethnic community that was a most important component of Ancient Rus, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire. It becomes clear that in the educational and scientific environment, as well as in the general intellectual sphere, the ancestors of Belarusians were somewhat outshadowed, which today motivates them to prove their priorities to their neighbors in the West and the East. It was only in the revolutionary upheavals of early 20th century that the Belarusian statehood began to form. And the most important factor in its approval was the first university – the Belarusian State University. The article is devoted to the consideration of its formation in the conditions of 1917–1921, the transformation of the original idea into a fully functioning educational and scientific organism. On the basis of archival material and little-known facts, an attempt is made to show that the university, as a state project, contributed to the strengthening of the Belarusian state, and its activities fully experienced all political and national demands and outlooks. In support of this, the article quotes examples of strict adherence of the BSU staff to all state guidelines, which primarily aimed at the continuous improvement of the educational process, at the training of professionals for the most important spheres of the national economy of the republic. The university strengthened its human potential, paying special attention to the development of fundamental and applied science (not only physics, mathematics, chemistry, and biology but also philosophy, history, and philology). In the 1920s, its scientists and students were in demand as disseminators of state plans among urban and rural population. A special place in the activities of the university was the policy of Belarusianization, which gave both an obvious positive effect and led to negative consequences. As a result, the author concludes that the two key words of the name of the university initially contained the ideas of its national, ethnic. and state affiliation and mission, which BSU strictly follows at the present time.