Judo Bučinys: valdovo išdavystės samprata Lietuvoje (XIII a. pabaiga - XVI a. vidurys)

Description

In historiography, the institution of the grand duke of Lithuania was for a long time researched in the context of personalities or political history. This kind of research approach was based on the fundamental condition that the activities of the grand duke represented the development of the state and its institutions. After the strengthening of ties with Poland, Lithuanian rulers paid increasingly more attention to Polish affairs rather than Lithuanian politics. Having been crowned kings of Poland, they rarely resided in Lithuania. The government vacuum that formed in Lithuania was filled with new political structures where the main actors were the nobility, whose internal bickering determined the state’s overall decline. This theoretical model was disproved by research conducted in the past few decades, especially in studies by Lidija Korczak, Rimvydas Petrauskas and Aliaksandr Hrusha. Research on the genesis of the Council of Lords, chancellery, the court of the grand duke, early public offices and the Seimas have revealed that the nobility did not take the reins away from the grand duke of Lithuania, but coexisted alongside them in symbiosis. By taking a more in-depth look at this political symbiosis, the researchers noticed that Lithuania’s rulers did not create state structures strictly in terms of subordinate links.