| Abstract | In the paper, biography is treated in two ways: 1) as the accomodation of a certain period of a sub-civilization to the environment of civilization and 2) as the inscription of a prominent actor who has determined the changes of a (sub-)civilization into the historical memory of society. According to the author, both the first and the second cases interconnect and thus form the identity of us as parts of a historical society. There are analysed two historical periods of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) in transition: during the formation of Christian society and the integration of citizens' community into a special sub-civilization of the church union. The author highlights the figure of Vytautas the Great as the GDL biographer who inscribed Lithuanian society into the chronicle of Western civilization (spread of Christianity) and provided to it a special grade of Western civilization (the idea of the church union). Referring to the GDL case, the author criticizes Toynbee's theory of civilization as too aprioric and abstract. Three theses are developed: 1) a civilization emerges only as a creative whole hostile to other cultures; 2) paganism (in the broad sense as civilization and in the narrow sense as religion) in the centre of Europe had persisted as a political compromise, a special formula of political peace known as pax lithuanica; 3) the factor of the development of civilizations is their interconnection which erases differences among them and thus the distinctive features of a separate civilization. (English)
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