Lietuvos istorijos metraštis

The Hospodar Tatars in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania constituted a distinct ethno-social group descended from the Golden Horde, who, due to various circumstances, joined the grand duke’s service. The settlement by the Tatars in the land of Lithuania was most intense from the late 14th to the early 16th century. Military service provided Lithuanian Tatars with a privileged status that was similar to the set of rights and freedoms of the Lithuanian-Ruthenian nobility.

The main aim of the article is to summarise, but also in some respects to extend, the existing research on the conversion to Catholicism of members of other Christian denominations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries. Although we already know a lot about the development of the Reformation and the reaction to it, in the form of the Counter-Reformation on the part of the Catholic Church in Poland and Lithuania, little has been written about the conversions themselves and their reasons. For example, specific conversions of famous people from magnate circles and the wealthy nobility are examined. The focus is mainly on converts from Protestantism, and less often on Orthodox believers. The article tries to apply a wide perspective, thus showing the specificity of the conversions taking place in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in comparison with other European countries.

In this article the author attempts to answer the question of what role was played by the volost' court, which was integrated into the peasant self-governance model, in the transformation of the post-serfdom village. The research was complicated by the scarce availability of volost' court documentation from before this court’s reform in 1889, which only began in the Northwest Provinces in 1903. Nonetheless, the surviving activity reviews of volost' administration and peace arbitrators, peasants’ complaints, the few remaining volost' court judgement and sentencing books from the chosen period, officials’ reports, correspondence, press publications and alike do allow identifying the problems that arose with the peasantry’s integration into the modernising society. Officials’ reports show that the government’s prime concern was whether volost' courts were abiding by procedural requirements and were not violating the boundaries of their competence. Following the vaguely understood customary law, the volost' court would tolerate self-government officials’ interference into its work and the bribing of judges. The peasantry soon grew accustomed to "its own" court, and would address it regarding complicated relations within the immediate and extended family or community, and seek the implementation of court judgements. However, the volost' court was intended for resolving limited infringements within the nomenclature, and given that it was a local institution it hardly contributed to the modernisation of the village, while the nature of the volost' court’s activities forced the government and society to raise questions about its reform or dissolution.

The article deals with the labour migration of peasants from Vilnius, Kaunas and Suwałki governorates across the Russian Empire before the First World War. Peasant migrants were issued with the necessary identity documents by the local peasant self-government institutions. The social portrait of a peasant migrant from the Lithuanian governorates is presented by processing the data from the passport registers of six districts using descriptive and deductive statistical methods. Data on the distribution of migrants by gender and age is analysed, and their literacy is assessed. The procedure for renewing personal documents posed many problems for the migrants but the surviving documents of their correspondence with the local officials give information about the directions of migration and specific aspects of the migrants' daily life. The Baltic and Byelorussian governorates together with Saint Petersburg dominated among the longterm migration directions. The choice depended not only on geographical distance, but also on personal connections, which encouraged chain migration.

The article discusses the peculiarities of soviet and party cadre policy in the Lithuanian SSR in 1944–1953. The Kremlin not only urged the Lithuanian leaders to ‚purge‘ the administrative apparatus of bourgeois cadres more quickly, but also criticised the republic's party leaders for "weakly promoting" Lithuanians loyal to the Soviet government to leadership positions. The Communist Party of Lithuania actively carried out both tasks: first of all, the central institutions of republic were "cleansed" of unreliable bourgeois cadres and Lithuanians were "promoted" to the Soviet administrative and economic apparatus in the provinces. Moscow was satisfied with the pace and nature of the "promotion" of Lithuanians into the administrative and bureaucratic apparatus. This personnel policy was in the interests of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania (Bolshevik) Antanas Sniečkaus – the Lithuanians were placed where they were most needed – in the local government. In the spring of 1953, taking advantage of the resolutions of the CPSU Central Committee, A. Sniečkus initiated the Lithuanisation of the Party-Soviet power elite of the republic. Lithuanian party figures were nominated to the leading posts of the party and government. The number of Lithuanians in the party apparatus at all levels increased.