In the middle of the 13th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania arose on the lands of present-day Lithuania and Belarus, which, gradually increasing in size, occupied a vast territory from the Baltic to the Black Sea. For three centuries it was the main rival of the Russian state in the struggle for dominance in Eastern Europe. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania experienced all the new European trends: the Renaissance, the Reformation, guild production, Magdeburg Law. On its lands, the long-standing dream of Christians was realized: the union of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and then it itself peacefully united with Poland into a single state - the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the basis of which was a unique phenomenon - gentry democracy. But what from the heights of our time seems an undoubted advantage turned out to be death for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the liberties of the gentry led to the weakening of state power and the loss of control of the country. The neighbors of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took advantage of this and tore it to pieces. By 1815, the entire territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became part of the Russian Empire...