The article discusses the evolution of research of the second half of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century in Western Europe and the USA into the material culture of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. It highlights the most characteristic stages in the development of the historiography on this topic and the most significant discussions. Attention is also paid to the research into material culture in Lithuania, because so far this topic has not received much attention from historians, although archaeologists and museologists have been working successfully in
The paper examines the impact of total land reclamation on the Soviet modernisation of agriculture and the countryside, analyses the political, economic, and social aspects of the Soviet reconstruction of the homestead settlement system, and attempts to assess the economic
effect of land reclamation and its impact on the countryside. The leadership of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party managed to use the implementation of the all-Union large-scale land reclamation programme quite effectively for Lithuania’s economic interest, industrial development, and modernisation of the agricultural sector. The destruction of the farmstead settlement structure during total land reclamation accelerated the internal and social urbanisation of the countryside, which contributed to the formation of a homogeneous Soviet society and eliminated socio-cultural and material-lifestyle disparities between the city and the country. The radical
Soviet reconstruction (modernisation) of the countryside, which continued for over two decades, was mainly coercive, revolutionary, and therefore painful for the rural society; it deformed the evolutionary processes in the countryside.
The article aims to explains why, among all the non-dominant ethnic groups, the imperial authorities in the so-called Western region allowed the existence of only the Lithuanian educational society ‘Saulė’ [The Sun]. The argument is made that this was due to the recognition of Kaunas governorate as a Lithuanian ‘national territory’ on the Russian mental map, the lack of assimilation potential (from the point of view of the officials), the admission that the Lithuanians were ethnically-culturally detached from the ethnic Russians, as well as the efforts of the governor of Kaunas, Piotr Verevkin, to prevent the closure of this society. Part of the article is devoted to a discussion of Verevkin’s motives.
The article deals with the activities of the Vilnius Magistrate’s Court between 1795 and 1813. It discusses the personal composition of the court, the working environment of the judges, and judicial and administrative practices that are relevant and offer an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the economic, financial, social, and familial problems of the urban residents and their relations with other estates and strata of the urban population.