Klaipėdos universitetas

The article is devoted to research on relations with the Scandinavian countries in 1918-1939 in Lithuania and Poland. It is based on analysis of publications edited in 1995-2005. Presented hereby research became a topic of our research because of three reasons: 1) to start tradition of analysis of publications in Lithuania which deals with relations between Lithuania and Scandinavian countries; 2) to ascertain, do the similar aspects and problems of the mentioned research in Lithuania and Poland exist; 3) to answer the question, if the dialog between Lithuanian and Polish researchers prevails. Objectives of the report are as follows: 1) to show the dynamic of research on relations with the Scandinavian countries in 1918-1940 in Lithuania in 1995-2005; 2) to present the issues of Polish historians written during the last decade on relations between Poland and the Scandinavian countries; 3) to make (quantitative and qualitative) analysis of issues of Polish and Lithuanian historians and compare the results.

In the last decades of the 19th century in several Warsaw journals were published (in reviews, chronicles and letters) critical opinions about lifestyle and hierarchy of values represented by rich Lithuanian gentry, spending winter months and carnival in the capital of the Kingdom of Poland. In the whole journal critics especially visible was argument concerning the absurdity of the system of value well-known by Lithuanian gentry. My article does not decide veracity and first of all facts concerning mocked and ridiculed by journalists style of behaviour of created by Lithuanian gentry system of value. Accepting however negative image as possible for some part of gentry, I raise a question (for the long time interesting for the social historians) about mechanisms of modernization of the social structures.