Rinktiniai Raštai II

Konstantinas Avižonis (1884–1969) was one of the leading Lithuanian historians of the twentieth century, whose scholarly career spanned the independent Lithuanian Republic and whose major works were completed before his death in exile. This second volume of his collected works preserves three foundational studies — on the Lithuanian Statutes of 1529, 1566, and 1588; on the history of serfdom in Lithuania; and on the agrarian history of the Grand Duchy — that represent the most rigorous historiography of Lithuanian legal and social institutions produced by the diaspora generation. The inclusion of English and German summaries reflects the Academy's deliberate effort to make Lithuanian scholarship legible to the international academic community at a time when Soviet-era Lithuanian historiography was subject to ideological constraint.

The volume stands as a monument to diaspora intellectual resilience: edited by the author's family and colleagues, funded through community donations and the Lietuvių Fondas, and printed in Umbria by a small Italian press, it exemplifies the transnational infrastructure that Lithuanian exiles built to keep independent scholarship alive across decades of occupation. For heritage learners and researchers alike, it offers primary access to Avižonis's methodology and findings on the legal foundations of the Lithuanian state — work that remained suppressed or unavailable inside Lithuania until after 1990.

Diaspora scholarly publication: a Lithuanian Catholic academic institution in Rome preserved and published major works of Lithuanian historical scholarship that could not be freely issued in Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Funding from diaspora organizations (Lietuvių Fondas) and individual donors enabled posthumous publication of works completed before the author's 1969 death.