FROYANOV LEGACY AND THE MAIN TASKS OF STUDYING THE GREAT DUCHY OF LITHUANIA, RUSSIA AND OTHER EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Abstract

This article is a kind of scientific programme which the author suggests to his colleagues-historians. The aim of such programme is to show the ways to revise and rewrite the history in contemporary circumstances with the help of a conception developed by prominent Russian historian I. Ya. Froyanov. In the light of this conception one can find a much more adequate and completely new paradigm of historical knowledge about Russia, primarily of the Middle Ages. The author means the history of Kievan Rus, the history of the Great Duchy of Lithuania, the formation of Moscow State, the history of the Law, the history of the Lords of Novgorod and Pskov. However, Froyanov legacy gives us bright opportunity to go beyond Russia, to turn to the processes that took place in the Slavic (and non-Slavic) countries of Eastern and Southern Europe. The matter is that these countries had a common so called “Zemsky order” which was the foundation of this civilization.