III. The European union, the past and the present: The cultural‐historical memory of the grand Duchy of Lithuania as an expression of national identity and as a cultural capital facilitating Integration into the European Union

Abstract

The object of the article is the duality of the cultural‐historical memory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania between the worlds of the Latin West and the Byzantine Slavic East, strongly affected the historical memory and mentality of the Lithuanian nation and shaped many of the forms of cultural and national self‐identification, forms which are historically changing and characteristic for a border culture. After concisely discussing various aspects of the cultural history of the GDL, that have strongly affected Lithuanian historical memory, it is possible to state that homogeneity was alien for Lithuanian culture, which had insinuated itself between the Latin West and the Byzantine East and which, from the first century of the appearance of the state, was distinguished by a heterogeneous cultural orientation with diverse directions.