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Research objectives: The aim of the article is to trace the origins of the Old Russian text of Tokhtamish Khan’s 1393-dated yarliq-letter to King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland, as well as the place and time of its emergence. Research materials: The Turkic and the Old Russian texts of Tokhtamish Khan’s 1393 yarlıq-letter to King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland, as well as published and unpublished auxiliary materials. Results and novelty of the research: It is established that the Old Russian text of Tokhtamish Khan’s 1393 yarlıq-letter to Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland was written down in the royal chancery by the king’s Ruthenian scribe, Małochiej. This text was a record of the embassy of the khan’s envoys which explains its additional information when compared to the Turkic original.

The paper presents a missive from the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III declaring war to the Grand Duke of Lithuania Aleksander Jagiellończyk on June the 24th, 1500. The missive, so far unaccounted in scientific publications, survives in a Middle Low German translation kept in the archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck. The declaration of war is motivated by alleged injustices done to Ivan III, to his subjects and to his daughter Elena Ivanovna, who was Aleksander’s wife. Judging by the particular dialect of Low German, the translation was made in Lübeck. Its literality allows conclusions about the content of the original missive and the sources on which it was based. Analysis shows that the arguments included complaints formulated by Muscovite diplomats after the conclusion of the ‘eternal peace’ of 1494, beginning with the negotiations in 1495. Compared to indirect and short textual evidence available so far, this document gives a fuller picture of the events, including a more precise date of the beginning of the Muscovite-Lithuanian War of 1500–1503: brought together, all sources show that the declaration was made by Ivan III with considerable delay, months after warfare had begun. The document also demonstrates how the 15th-century Russian state used official documentation in its foreign policy and which role the emerging bureaucratic class played in it. The published document is accompanied by a Russian translation.

The article analyses achievements of contemporary historiography in the study of the role and significance of the Gorodel Union of 1413 in the formation of the gentry class of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The key subjects of scientific research of Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian historians are identified. It is emphasised that these subjects, as a rule, are not an independent historiographical problem and act as part of a broader research discussion about the causes and results of the Union of 1413 in the system of relations between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. In conclusion, it is noted that despite the differences in the interpretation of a number of specific issues, researchers generally agree in the statement that the acts of the Gorodel Union and the heraldic adoption, both in their content and in their consequences, are one of the key stages in the process of forming the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the historical ideas of Russians and Belarusians about the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The author comes to the conclusion that the historical views of the neighboring peoples were of a dual nature. In Russian historical culture, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania acted as one of the centers of gathering Russian lands, and, at the same time, was steadily associated with a foreign invasion from the West. The Belarusians began to form Belarusian identity within the principality, however, a spiritual split took place, and the border of civilizational confrontation did not pass between peoples, but between the nobility and the lower classes. Therefore, folk versions of history, not burdened with the accuracy of the chronicles and the imagery of Sarmatian ideology, largely reflected an alternative view, in which social sympathies and antipathies were refracted in a peculiar way. The article presents a mosaic of images and stable epithets associated with the historical conditions of the coexistence of Russians and Belarusians within the border states. The medieval worldview of the two peoples, who had a common ancient Russian and Orthodox heritage, and opposition to paganism, and subsequently to the Catholicism of Lithuania, brought them closer together. In Russian texts, the author revealed the reflection of dynastic and military-political ties between the Lithuanian and Russian states, the events of the Russian-Lithuanian wars, sympathy for individual allied Lithuanian princes, the consequences of the «Lithuanian ruin» and some characteristics of «cultural heroes» attributed to «Lithuania». In the Belarusian historical culture, the expanded image of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is found only in the written culture of the nobility, who found themselves in the orbit of another civilization and gradually lost their spiritual connection with their people, as well as among the urban population, who defended their status rights. The analysis of the texts made it possible to establish that the glorification of wars and princes is not characteristic of the folk ideas of the Belarusian peasants, historical details are not required, but the experiences of ordinary people, who were exposed to devastating invasions, captivity, and forced separation from their families, are important. Therefore, the content of the Belarusian ballads is largely identical to the Russian songs about the Tatar area. Attempts to «reconstruct» the Belarusian heroic epic in the spirit of fantasy chivalry, based on national mythological falsifications, have little in common with genuine works of folk art. Some Belarusian legends about Prince Vitovt either «ground» his origin, fit him into the expectations of the people’s ruler, or endow him with the role of a «cultural hero» transforming the local landscape. The latter finds analogies in Russian toponymic legends, however, on the other side of the border, the image of Vitovt the enemy, who personified the «Lithuanian ruin», was more important. Key words: folk historical representations, Russians, Belarusians, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, ethnic consciousness, folk memory, epos, traditions, legends, toponymy, historical culture, medieval consciousness.

Research objectives: This article offers an edition and a source study of the letters of the Crimean Khan Mengli Giray I to Jerzy Mikołajewicz Radziwiłł (Jurgis Radvila), the voivode of Kiev, written in 1512–1513. Research materials: The originals of the letters preserved in the Princes Czartoryski Library in Cracow and the collection of Ignacy Onacewicz at the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Pushkin House) in St. Petersburg, subsidiary materials, edited and unedited, from the archival and library collections of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Warsaw. Results and novelty of the research: It is established that two original letters of the Crimean Khan Mengli Giray I to Jerzy Mikołajewicz Radziwiłł (Jurgis Radvila), the voivode of Kiev (1511–1514), are preserved in the Czartoryski Library in Cracow (Ms. 2893) and Ignacy Onacewicz’s collection in the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (the Pushkin House) in St. Petersburg. It is demonstrated that they were written on March 14th, 1512, and September 21st, 1513, and their contents are connected with the international relations of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Both of them were kept in the Radziwiłł family archive until the nineteenth century. The texts of both letters are published for the first time, accompanied with detailed descriptions of the originals, a contextualization of them as sources, and provided with commentary.

The document from the Book of Inscriptions 270 of Lithuanian Metrica is published for the first time. This is King’s Sigismund II August instruction to the elected in the districts envoys to the Grand Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1572. The instruction contains the Kings’ «precept» to the envoys and also detailed description of the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian current international politics.

The paper deals with the question of authenticity of the judicial charter that was allegedly issued by Vytautas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, on the legal case between Švitrigaila and Andrey Vasilo, at the end of the 14th century. Analysis of the pseudo-original found in the Department of Written Sources of the State Historical Museum in Moscow allows to draw the conclusion that it is, indeed, a forgery, copied from a reproduction of an original Vytautas' charter published in the 1820s. The same is true of another recently published Vytautas' charter known from a 19th-century copy.