HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

Robertas Petrauskas, Poltava (Poltava), Vilnius: Protų kovos, 2022, 511 pp.

These are the reflections of Robertas Petrauskas in the prologue to his latest history book, as if summing up the thoughts which sprung to the minds of many when, on 24 February, Russia launched its war against Ukraine, proving once again that great tyrants learn from history and tend to repeat it. However, this book by Petrauskas is not about the present, although one cannot avoid making such associations, especially since it tries to trace the imperial beginnings of Great Russia. It is the story of one of the most important battles of the Northern War (1700–1721), the Battle of Poltava (1709), in which the Russian army defeated the Swedish army and which was not only the turning point of the war in Russia’s favour, but also the beginning of long-lasting changes in the region: the Northern War hastened the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth’s economic and political decline, and also led to the liquidation of its statehood, with the significant consequence being that Lithuania became a part of the Russian Tsarist Empire. The author explains that this book is a decent introduction for those interested in 18th-century history, telling the story of Russia and its Tsar Peter the Great, and of Sweden and its King Charles XII. It is also the story of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and, of course, Ukraine and its history, without which it is impossible to understand Russia’s current war against Ukraine and the hollow concept of Russia’s greatness. Petrauskas’s study reminds us once again that “people 300 years ago were not so different from us. Or rather, we are not very different from them.”

Robertas Petrauskas – historian, journalist, writer, sports commentator, organizer and host of trivia quizzes. He has written four history books. The first three dealt with the Second World War in Europe. “Poltava” is his fourth historical-documentary book.