GENESIS AND NOBILITY OF MODERN BALTIC NATIONS FROM THE END OF 18TH CENTURY TO THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

This article applies a comparative method for studying the role of the nobility in the formation of modern Baltic nations in order to elucidate the factors, which determined role differences. Noble attitudes to ethnosocial changes, changes of ethnopolitical self-consciousness of nobility and the position of nobility in the emergence of national cultures are scrutinized. As it follows from the comparison, deconstruction of feudal social system in Lithuania made the nobility to turn their attention to the peasantry and to common interests and common origins, to find out ethnogenetical community. The lack of it in relations of the Baltic Germans with the Latvians was an obstacle in the ethnosocial harmonization. In the development of ethnopolitical self-consciousness of the Lithuanian nobility the main political concept was that of „nation–state“, while in Baltic Germans nobility case it was the concept of „estate–nation“. Baltic Germans clearly defined their national identity, even if with certain estate and historical prejudices and they never wanted to recognize Latvian culture as their own. Lithuanian nobility on the contrary showed some willingness to include people culture into common cultural perspective. It seems, that the major factor in determination of different Lithuanian and Baltic German nobility role in ethnonational processes was the ethnogenetical memory.