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Archiver > HERBARZ > 2002-02 > 1013081468


From: "Geoff" <>
Subject: Re: Grand Duke of Lithuania
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 13:24:16 -0000
References: <008e01c1ae42$20cf0fc0$4b83c5d5@LocalHost> <005601c1ae82$6a024640$469d2581@george> <003b01c1af22$a064e440$2483c5d5@LocalHost> <000701c1af35$a4589200$210110ac@THINKPAD> <3c740afd.7569741@smtp.blueyonder.co.uk>


I think we can rightly fault the Lithuanian grand dukes for leaving behind a
very poor trail of artifacts and documents, making our, posterity's attempt
to trace them difficult at best. We know their opponents' take on things,
but the grand dukes themselves are silent for the most part. Yes, there are
the letters, there are the statutes, there is the spectacular cache of
treasure recently revealed in the walls of the Vilnius Archcathedral.
Perhaps the fault lies with the conqueror, who wiped away traces of a
glorious past to make the present conquest more facile. For the layman (no
pun intended) Yekaterina II has a real reputation, something akin to the
Indian city of Calcutta, while the grand Dukes are just grand old guys on
horseback doing something or other in the countryside, winning territory or
losing it, taking captives tehn giving them privileges.... Jogaila's memory
is somewhat better preserved in Poland, although he, until recently, was
widely reviled in Lithuania itself for selling the country out somehow to
the Pole. Nevertheless, there are seals of the grand dukes preserved,
claiming rule over Lithuania, Samogitia and Ruthenia. Was Moscow's claim to
the Ruthenian-Slavic lands any stronger than Lithuania's? That's an open
question, and the answer depends on where you stand, on the Polish,
Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian or Great Russian side of the fence. Still,
I object to David ZIncavage's use of the colorful phrase "oriental
despotism." It might have sounded good 100 or more years ago, but rings
hollow now, after Europeans have fully demonstrated a much greater capacity
for despotism than anything ever dreamed up in the Asian hinterland, to wit,
the Crusades, the subjugation and extermination of the Prussians, World War
I, the German Final Solution, Stalin's folly. We do consider Georgia part of
Europe, I assume, even if Stalin wanted badly to be a "real" Moscovite
Russian, and not the son of a Georgian shoemaker and second-rate journalist.

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