ABSTRACT
Belarus is intimately connected with the history of the Jagiellonian dynasty. Belarusian writers, activists and scholars who have sought to interpret the legacy of the Jagiellonian dynasty have necessarily faced choices on how to render the symbolic 'Lithuanianness' or 'Polishness' of the pre-modern rulers. The two major events that bookend Jagiellonian rule in Lithuania, the Kreva Union of 1385–86 and the Lublin Union of 1569, both have the dismantling of boundaries and binaries as defining features. The collapse of the Soviet Union introduced greater pluralism into the study of history in the country, and the early 1990s saw the 'revival' of Belarusian nationalist thought. The new histories sought to 'recover' interpretations of the past that had been previously suppressed, and as a result, they largely resembled the works of the early pioneers. Only in the second post-Soviet decade has a willingness to study Jogaila and his descendants emerged as a significant phenomenon in Belarus.
