Klaipėdos universitetas

Dogs are the earliest domesticated animals, which followed man for thousands of years. Their historical diversity and interaction with men is no less interesting than the problem of their origin. The present report covers the subject of canine diversity and interaction with men in Medieval Novgorod the Great (the tenth to the 14th centuries), one of the oldest and most important trading cities in Russia.

The article discusses the main factors which shaped the peculiarities and distinctions of political elites in East Prussia in the first half of the 19th c. Among them, it names the growth of self-sufficiency of provincial nobility during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the role of political elites in the liberal movement for constitutional reforms in Prussia, as well as the use of historical research and symbols of the past, increased in the first half of the 19th c. for the definition of distinction of both the province and its representatives. In the article, particular attention is paid to the examination of the factors of Russian neighbourhood and East Prussia’s position in the borderland between Prussia and Russia, showing their impact during crucial to Prussia events of 1813 and 1848. Due to the intertwining of all of those factors, in the first half of the 19th c., the consciousness of political elites in East Prussia ranged between regional provincial patriotism, Prussian patriotism (perceived through the relationship between the King and his subjects), and the growing sense of belonging to the German nation.

The article is devoted to the new historical investigations concerning the project of Anti-King Confederacy in Lithuania in 1788. The oligarchs opposing the King Stanisław August Poniatowski attempted to wreck his plan of making an alliance with Russia. Their plan was to establish in coordination with Prussia a confederacy outside the structures of Polish-Lithuanian Parliament. It is known that two Lithuanian oligarchs: Karol Radziwiłł (then the Voivode in Vilnius) and Michał Kazimierz Ogiński (the Commander-in-Chief of the Lithuanian Army) sketched a project of confederacy in Lithuania. Up until autumn 1788 both did not collaborate with the opposition and were very cautious in their political moves.

Being based on empirical material collected during field work in the Latvian–Russian border zone and theoretical border zone studies, this article analyzes the ways how the state, as well as transnational and global factors, influence the lives of border zone inhabitants. The focus is on the interaction between the state and global agents on the one hand and the local and individual agents on the other hand within the territory, which is also the external border of the European Union and the NATO. The case study permits several theoretical and empirical conclusions about the role of the state and transnational agents in the lives of individuals and the vision for the development of the border zone. In conclusion an author emphasizes the necessity for both practical and theoretical discussions about solidarity and the responsibility of global agents to local communities in the event that under globalization conditions places emerge that are more in the role of patients of globalization rather than beneficiaries from the process. From a periphery-centre viewpoint, the border zone may seem like the end of the Earth to people from the centre, but to those who live there it is the centre of the world.