Petro Klimo kultūros istorijos darbai

ENIn January 16 of 2014 coincides 45 years when famous Lithuanian diplomat and statesman Petras Klimas had passed away. On this occasion the aim of this article is to review the cultural works of this historian and diplomat. The part of them are in manuscripts where the concepts of Lithuanian cultural history clearly reveals. In appendix of this article are two excerpts from unpublished works “Antiquity of Lithuania” and “History of Lithuania” written by Petras Klimas. Writings are preserved in the Library of Lithuanian Science Academy and the Archives of Lithuanian Literature and Arts. P. Klimas considered himself to be Marxist not in dogmatic, but methodological sense. During the First World War in Vilnius P. Klimas started to write historical studies. Following the orders of the Society of Lithuanian Science he began to collect material about the territory which was inhabited by Lithuanian nation and had tried to define its boundaries. During short period of three years in 1918-1920 the most important works of P. Klimas had appeared, namely “The Features of Lithuanian Antiquity”, “The History of Ruling of Lithuanian Land (Until the Polish Times) and “The Times of Muraviev in the History of Lithuanian Land and Agricultural Workers”. Few of them are considered to be ones of very first of synthetic works from cultural history published in Lithuanian.P. Klimas skillfully used various sources and contemporary historiography in order to get original result. He described the ancient Lithuanian houses, market, habits, social structure, economic relations, anthropological types and etc. In appendix of this article chapter “The Empire of Charlemagne” from the third volume of unpublished book “History of Lithuania” is presented. P. Klimas writes about the Franks, Curonians, Vikings, Saxons, Slaves and Balts that lived in neighbourhood in IXth Century. The value of P. Klimas works is irreplaceable not only in question how to justify the boundaries of he modern Lithuanian state but also in creation of Lithuanian national narrative and historiography. Also is important to stress that P. Klimas paid attention not only to importance of Lithuanian language but to geographical factor of culture formation.