Lietuvos istorijos metraštis /The Yearbook of Lithuanian History

Based on genealogical data, the article investigates the marriage policy of the Gorski family (Nałęcz coat of arms) from its establishment in Samogitia in the second half of the sixteenth century to its rise in the first half of the eighteenth century. First, a general portrait of the

The article deals with our research on the Ruthenian documents of Alexander Jagiellon and Sigismund the Old, the grand dukes of Lithuania, which cover the whole period of the reign of these rulers (1492–1544) and are kept in Vilnius. In the course of empirical research, we registered 142 such documents; the main data about them are represented in the annex to the article. Meanwhile, in the main part of the article we try to identify the scribes who were responsible for the preparation of the documents, to identify the documents that were written by the scribes who signed them, and to discuss the palaeographic features of all the documents.

The article focuses on the activities of the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners of the Anti-Nazi Resistance in Germany and the USA, an organisation that has not been studied in the historiography so far. It was founded in 1946 to care for the repressed participants of the

The article presents the political decisions affecting associations and the ideological attitudes underlying them in Lithuania during the 1930s. The 1936 Law on Associations narrowed the autonomy of voluntary associations creating a need for the government to argue for intervention in the affairs of associations. The leaders of the authoritarian regime relied on the idea of organised society based on close cooperation between associations and the state. The article explores the concept of organised society and its links with corporatism, and looks at the plans of the authorities to reform associations. The aim is to assess the extent to which political decisions affecting associations, the idea of organised society, and corporatism were against or in line with the ideals of civil society.

The article examines and discusses the diplomatic activities and accomplishments of Jurgis Baltrušaitis, the long-standing envoy of Lithuania to the Soviet Union. The study is focused on several problematic moments of the envoy’s work in Moscow, especially the unique environment in which Baltrušaitis’s geopolitical views took shape and which later seemed to have influenced his diplomatic activities. The archival materials used in the article (they include Baltrušaitis’s political reports and his diplomatic correspondence) reveal the Lithuanian envoy’s controversial position regarding relations with the USSR. The study also discusses Baltrušaitis’s tense relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the reasons for the constant conflicts with the leadership of Lithuania, analyses the algorithms of the envoy’s communications with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and provides an assessment of the results of the ‘geopolitical mission’ that Jurgis Baltrušaitis aspired to achieve.