Lietuva rusų eurazininkų apmąstymuose

ENThe consideration of Lithuania appears in the discourse of the Eurasians in relation to two periods of Russia‘s history. The first period is the epoch of geopolitical competition between the state of Moscow and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (15th – 17th centuries). The second period is Soviet Russia (later Soviet Union) after the revolution of 1917 when the independent republic of Lithuania (together with Finland, Estonia and Latvia) “dropped out” of the political unity of the Russian Eurasia. In both cases the Eurasians reflected the relationship between Lithuania and Russia first of all by the lines of disjunction of the “Latin” (Catholic) and “Byzantium” (Orthodox) civilizations. In the first case Latinization was fateful for the final failure of Lithuania and Poland (and the success of Moscow) in the task of unifying the Orthodox lands. In the second case, the “Latinization” that marked Lithuania‘s belonging to the Western civilization (although, according to the Eurasian intellectuals, Lithuania and the other Baltic States that geographically crumbled off from Russia, did belong to Eurasia) “legitimized” Lithuania‘s secession from the political unity of the Russian Eurasia. However, the Eurasian intellectuals failed to reach a unifying opinion regarding the Western political border of the Russian Eurasia. They wanted to consider Eurasia as an organic system of unities consisting of different (geographic, political, economic and cultural) planes. Talking in the terms of Lev Karsavin, it would be “all-unity”. However, the area between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, especially the Eastern coast of the Baltic, was the place, where the geographic and cultural (first of all religious) principles of the Eurasian identity were creating a conflict, the consequence of which led to a different treatment of the desirable Western political boundary of the Russian Eurasia. [From the publication]