Литва - "защитник" русских земель: литовская история в зеркале отечественной медиевистики второй половины XIX - начала XX века

ENThe article considers the change in assessing the role of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the history of the Russian state in Russian historiography of the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. In historical works of the previous period researchers tended to ignore the history of the GDL as a self-sufficient subject of studies and referred to it only in the context of Russian-Lithuanian relations in the Middle Ages. At this stage medieval Lithuania was seen by historians mainly as a hostile state, which annexed the southwestern lands of the Old Rus’ that was going through a period of disintegration and the Mongol invasion. During the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century the reconsideration of the role of GDL in Russian history has been caused by influence of internal political situation in the Russian Empire, namely the Polish Insurrection of 1863, on historical science. The article concludes that the need to justify on the state level the regularity of presence of the Western Territory (Zapadnyi Krai) within the Russian Empire, which arose after the uprising, prompted historians to reconsider previous views. Lithuania began to be regarded as an alternative centre for the gathering of the Russian lands in the South-West to Moscow. From an enemy the GDL turned into a “protector” of the Russian lands – the “Other Rus’”, or the Lithuanian-Russian state, which after the annexation of the South-Western Russian principalities was under the strong influence of Russian culture. Thus, in the Russian historiography of the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century a positive image of the GDL in Russian history, created by N. G. Ustryalov in the first half of the 19th century, came to prevail. Keywords: Russian historiography, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Nikolai G. Ustryalov, Dmitrii I. Ilovaiskii, Matvei K. Lyubavskii, Nikolai P. Dashkevich, Mikchail O. Koyalovich.