Period of germs (up to 1907)
Nicholas Zharkikh
Period of germs (ie accumulation of raw material) has started from publishing the "Chronicles" M. Stryjkowski in 1582 and lasted until 1907, when S. Ptashitsky published the 17th volume of "Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles" with an almost complete collection of chronicles texts of the Great Duchy of Lithuania.
Therefore, scientists who have worked in this period, for objective reasons can not come to certain final conclusions – at their disposal has not been all the necessary material. Evaluate their efforts as a whole should be condescending, but erroneous propositions put forward by them do not cease to be wrong on this case.
The author of the theory that the Earth is shaped hat, of course, made a step forward compared with the theory that the Earth is shaped like a pancake, but the hat theory itself erroneous.
In the reporting period, as in every period of growth of anything, one can distinguish a "storm and stress period." So for the annals of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the 2nd half of the 19th century, when new copies were frequently discovered and published. This thread has become exhausted in the early 20th cent., and it was the base for edition the collection of chronicles, which became an edge of the new stage.
Conclusions
1. The objective obstacle that faced by researchers in this period, there was a small number of identified and published texts. All authors had rightly complained about this, all expressed the wish that the number of texts increased.
2. Speaking of the "Lithuanian chronicle," the authors mostly mean VitL, but nobody was able to say this definitely. About "Belarusian" (in my sense of the term) chronicles they wrote only in general, erroneous "sewing" them to the texts of VitL. This lack of clarity of the subject study caused dramatic impact on the conclusions of the authors.
3. All the authors failed to apply the correct division VitL into separate tales, and therefore could not figure out the dependence of VitL copies.
4. Authors under consideration immensely exaggerating the role of Smolensk and Metropolitan Gerasim in shaping chronicle.
5. A lot of attention was paid to Lit1L, but no one paid any attention to borrowing from Polish chronicles.
6. In general, despite the presence of a certain number of true observations, all the works of this period showes the primordial chaos, in which the correct positions are rare inclusions in a lot of false. There was very little hope that an evolutionary way, by rectifying works and discarding errors, one will be able to come to a more rational view.
A fairly detailed overview of the less significant literature of this period presented in the book F. Sushicki (1930), to which one should consult for further instructions.