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The article deals with the issues of the state archive of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Soviet historiography, in particular the approach to the terminology of the complex of original files of national importance. The author concludes that this problem in the USSR was not specifically investigated. It was raised indirectly in the context of another subject of research - the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania Metrica or the “Lithuanian Metrica”. The most significant contribution to the development of ideas about the complex of originals and their terminology was made by historians M.G. Berazhkoў, M.M. Ulashchyk, G.L. Harashkevіch, E.D. Banionis. In fact, by the mid-1980s, Soviet scholarship was dominated by the vision of a collection of original documents under the “Lithuanian Metrica”, and the latter as the actual state archive of the GDL. The GDL Metrica itself was mainly understood as an “archive”. The issue of the independence of the collection of original files in relation to the record in the Grand Duchy's system of documentary and archival holdings was not raised. This view corresponded to the basic assumptions of Russian pre-revolutionary historiography. From the mid-1980s, the ideas of Soviet scholars began to change. Originals of acts of national importance from the archive of the GDL as part of Soviet historical scholarship are gradually recognized as independent in the archival sense, part of the “state archive of the GDL” is separate from the collection of documents of the GDL Metrica, and the latter was denied the monopol of the state archive. In the second half of the 1980s, in the terminology of researchers with reference to the acts of the complex of originals, and in contrast to the GDL Metrica as copies, the word “original” is disseminated. It is synonymous with the term “real act” (Russian – “podlinnik”), which has been widespread in Russian scientific literature since pre-revolutionary times. These changes were influenced by the results of both Soviet research (the works of L.W. Czerepnin, A.A. Zimin, S.O. Szmidt) and foreign scientists (J. Jakubowski, I. Sulkowska-Kurasiowa, and also the American researcher P. Kennedy Grimsted).

The article analyzes the information about Lublin 1569 Union from the narrative and documentary sources that date back to the reign of the first monarchs of Vasa dynasty. The author defines main contexts of the term «union» use in the sejm constitutions and documentation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania congresses. The direct correlation between the estimates of the Union at different levels of state representative institutions of the Commonwealth is revealed. The Lublin Sejm of 1569 was a key event in the history of Eastern Europe, but in the historical works (chronicles and annals) of the second half of 16th – early 17th century information about it and its decisions are concise and general. At the end of 16th – the first half of 17th century the memory of Lublin Union was not mainly broadcast by narrative channels. In keeping the memory about 1569 events legal deeds and state institutions decisions were of considerable importance. The result of the state union with Poland was the approval of the public law standards that could not be ignored by any representative of the so-called political people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the following centuries. The author maintains that as a whole the Grand Duchy of Lithuania gentry did not question the correctness of the 1569 choice, took and defended «Lublin myth», as under those conditions it had more benefits than losses.

The Cossack wars in the Polish Commonwealth in the mid-17t h century have long been in the focus of historiographic disputes, and to write objectively about the events of those years was not an easy task for a historian. As we know, the Soviet historiographic tradition treated Khmelnitsky's Cossacks as the liberators of the Belarasians and Ukrainians 'oppressed by Polish feudal lords'. Since the latter half of the 1990s this old (Soviet!) version of treating Khmelnitsky's revolt as a national liberation war has returned directively in Belarusian historiography. The examination of the sources, however, may allow us to present it in a different way. The results of the study of documents, including the chancellery diary of the Lithuanian field hetman Janusz Radziwiłł for the years 1648-1651, demonstrate that the events in Belarus happened differently than they did in Ukrainę, and the attitude of the Belarusian population (especially in towns) towards the Cossack uprising differed greatly from the stance taken by the Ukrainian population. These fmdings do not allow us at all to speak about the 'national liberation' character of this war.