Past of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the cultural memory of Lithuanians, Poles, Byelorussians and Ukrainians after 1990

[...] The ideas presented in the article are dominant in the cultural memories of the countries in the region irrespective of the fact that they often conflict with assessments made by historians. Historians also play an important role in shaping cultural memories, but their voice is rarely final. The main reason for that is the functions carried out by the cultural memory in the public. Naturally, it is closely related to national identities, which enables members of the public participate in discussions about the past. Both the expression of cultural memory in public spaces, and a political approval of elements of the past (as part of the cultural memory) are equally important. As a result of those characteristics of the cultural memory, the latter is always associated with the politics, and non-political cultural memory as such does not exist. This peculiar nature of the cultural memory requires separating the images of the past functioning in the society and affecting national identities from studies of historians. The two differ substantially as can be seen from the data provided in the article. Professional historians of Poland researching the Grand Duchy of Lithuania do not find it difficult to discern differences between the Kingdom of Poland and the State of Lithuania. In a similar manner, the Lithuanian historians do not demonise the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. On the contrary, they even see Poland as a very important factor contributing to making Lithuania more European. Certain conflict lines are also noticeable in Ukraine in assessments of the past of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. To begin with, the historians attributed to the constructivists with such leading figure as Natalia Yakovenko regard those states as a strong factor modernising the Ukrainian society. In this context, the Byelorussian historiography stands out since it basically contributes to shaping of the Byelorussian historical memory by performing direct instructions of the regime rather than acting as experts (with the exception of a few historians who are in the opposition to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko). Therefore, in Belarus the contrast between the cultural memory shaped in the state and its historiography is most negligent