Poland or Rus'? Lithuania in the Russian Empire. 2nd edition. STALUNAS D.

The history of the formation of Russia as an empire and the dominance of nationalist discourse in it clearly reflected in the policy that the country pursued in relation to its “outskirts”. Among them are the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, named in the official nomenclature of the 19th century by the North-West Territory. The state ideology, which created the image of these territories as primordially Russians, drove itself into a “discursive trap”: the ethnocultural reality of the region was different.

The book of Darus Stalunas analyzes the national policy regarding each of the most numerous ethnic groups of this region - Belarusians, Lithuanians, Jews and Poles. His study shows that in Lithuania, most measures aimed at “Russification”, “correction”, “merging” or “rapprochement” of the non -Russian population turned out to be either unsuccessful, or led to not at all the consequences that the authorities hoped for. The reasons for these failures were primarily connected with the dominant ideological stereotypes that prevented the difficult configuration of social reality.

Darus Stalunas - leading researcher at the Institute of History of Lithuania.