12 The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus’, and Samogitia to 1569
At the same time during the 1340s that Poland was consolidating its rule over Galicia, the other half of that Rus’ kingdom, Volhynia, was conquered by Lithuania. Within the next two decades the Lithuanians went even further.
They successfully challenged the Golden Horde and incorporated most Ukrainian lands into their rapidly expanding grand duchy, not only the former principalities of Kievan Rus’ but also the steppelands beyond the Ros’ River, and reaching eventually to the shores of the Black Sea.The rise of Lithuania to the status of the dominant state in eastern Europe by the end of the fourteenth century began in the swamps and forests along the valleys of the Western Dvina (Daugava) and Neman rivers that were well inland from the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. There, sometime in the 1230s, a prince named Mindaugas (r. circa 12381263) succeeded in uniting several Lithuanian tribes together with the land called Samogitia to form the core of a new state structure. The main reason the Lithuanian tribes united was the threat posed to them by the Teutonic and Livonian Knights, who had surrounded Lithuania and Samogitia on its western and northern flanks. Mindaugas, therefore, looked eastward and southward, where his expansionist efforts brought him into conflict with Poland, the Rus’ principality of Polatsk, and Danylo of Galicia-Volhynia. Like Danylo, Mindaugas negotiated with the pope and went even further, converting (if only temporarily) to the Roman Catholic faith. In return he was crowned king by papal legates in 1254.
12.1 Grand Duke Gediminas (d. 1341) of Lithuania as depicted in a 16th-century engraving.
MAP 12 THE EXPANSION OF LITHUANIA
Despite several military campaigns, Mindaugas was unable to capture Volhynia.
Further Lithuanian expansionism was left to Mindaugas’s successors, in particular Gediminas (r. 1316-1341), who annexed the rest of Polatsk, Turaŭ-Pinsk, and much of Volhynia. Not only did this ruler establish a new dynasty, the Gediminids, he claimed that his state was the successor to Kievan Rus’, thereby designating himself king of Lithuania and Rus’ (Lethewinorum et Ruthenorum rex). Gediminas was also the first European ruler to encroach directly upon the Golden Horde’s sphere of influence. As early as the 1330s, a Lithuanian prince was ruling in Kiev, albeit under the supervision of a Tatar official.It was not Gediminas, however, but two of his sons, Algirdas (r. 1345-1377) and Kestutis (r. 1345-1382), who as joint rulers incorporated most of Ukrainian territory into what was officially known as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus’, and Samogitia. Within less then a decade (1355-1363), the Lithuanians acquired the Rus’ principalities of Chernihiv, novhorod-Sivers’kyi, Kiev, and Pereiaslav and pushed further south beyond the Ros’ River, annexing what came to be designated as Podolia. The symbolic moment that confirmed the new order in eastern Europe occurred in 1362 with the decisive victory by Lithuanian forces over the heretofore invincible Mongolo-Tatar Golden Horde at the Battle of Blue Waters in the heart of Ukrainian steppe.
12.2 Excerpt from the Lithuanian Statute, the grand duchy’s law code written in Ruthenian.
The rapid success of the Lithuanians was in large part due to their decision to maintain, at least initially, the political, administrative, and cultural structures in the Rus’ lands that they conquered. Initially, the old principalities were left intact and ruled by Orthodox princes who were descendants of the legendary ninth-century founder of Kievan Rus’, the Varangian warrior Riuryk. Beginning in the 1340s, however, the Lithuanian government abolished the Rus’ principalities (the last to be abolished was Kiev in 1471).
In their stead were created territorial entities (lands), each of which was headed by an official (voievoda) approved by the grand duchy’s Council of Lords, a group of advisors appointed by and responsible to the grand duke. Members of the council as well as the governors (voievodas) in the former lands of Rus’ could be either Lithuanian descendants of Gediminas or Orthodox Rus’ nobles of the Riuryk dynasty.As long as the Lithuanians remained pagan, they for the most part were tolerant toward the Orthodox Rus’. Many individual Lithuanian princes converted to Orthodoxy, and even after Lithuania formally converted to Roman Catholicism in 1387, its grand dukes continued in their efforts to enhance the jurisdictional status of the Orthodox Church within their realm. From as early as 1317 Gediminas was successful in convincing the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople to create an Orthodox metropolitan province specifically for Lithuania with a seat at Navahrudak; it was to exist (with interruptions) until 1419. Then, after 1458, the titular metropolitans of Kiev and All Rus’, recognized by the ecumenical patriarch, resided at Navahrudak with jurisdiction over Orthodox eparchies in the Rus’ inhabited territories of Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary (see Map 15).
The Lithuanians also left intact the social and legal structure they found in former Kievan Rus’. The Rus’Law/Pravda Russkaia continued to be used until 1468, and the grand duchy even adopted Ruthenian (basically a Belarusan version of Church Slavonic written in the Cyrillic alphabet) as the state’s official language. Subsequent Lithuanian law codes (also using Ruthenian), including one issued in 1566, specifying that holders of state offices must be either native Lithuanians or Rus’. In short, at least until the last decades of the fifteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus’, and Samogitia was in fact what it was in name—a hybrid Lithuanian-Rus’ state. This situation was to change only after the rise to influence over Lithuania of the newest power in the region, Poland.