Western Rus' in the struggle for faith and nationality. Malyshevsky I.I.

In the Middle Ages and up to the New Age, the self -identification of people depended in many respects on their religion. Vera determined the picture of the world, politics, and even partly the way. Religious views covered and explained economic interests and, accordingly, armed conflicts. The division of the Christian Church into East and Western has largely determined the history of Europe and continues to have a significant impact on modernity. The work of the authoritative historian of the Church of Professor I.I. Malyshevsky (1828–1897) considers and describes the events that starting from the period of fragmentation of Rus' unfolded in the Western Russian lands, which later became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and up to their accession to Russia.

The conflict of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the imposition of the Church Union to the Russian people and the following events were dramatic, and sometimes bloody.