Po co lituanistom <Kresy>
Are the Eastern Borderlands (“Kresy”) Necessary in the Research on Lithuania?

Summary/Abstract: Raising the issue of the Eastern Borderlands or “The Borderlands” ({Kresy} or “{Kresy}”), the questions about the scope of meaning of this term and its usefulness for theoretical applications, seems vital not only in the context of the international interdisciplinary research, which concerns the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Lithuania-Ruthenian lands of the Second Polish Republic, but also in the perspective of nowadays relations of Poland to the countries situated East to the borders. Do the successors of the realm, the multinational, multicultural, multi-language Commonwealth of Many Nations still need “The Borderlands” (“{Kresy}”)? Is it due to the pejorative connotations (the center and the outskirts, the supremacy and the subordination, the colonized lands and its colonizers), or is it rather a matter of terminological complexity hindering the assimilation of the term? May the notion that is ethnocentric by is nature, be suitable for Vilnius, Minsk, and Kiev as an objectived object of research? In this paper the author attempts to tackle these and other related questions.

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