Acta of the Vilna Archeographic Commission

a collection of documents on the social, economic, and political history of Byelorussia and Lithuania from the 14th to the 19th century (vols. 1–39, Vilna, 1865–1915).

The documents were collected and classified according to formal criteria. Volumes 1–2, 9, 17–18, and 21–22 contain materials on provincial feudal courts and on courts of peasant communities and shed light on various aspects of the history of Lithuania from the 15th through the 18th century. There is also information on the condition of agriculture, the conditions of peasants, and their social stratification. This collection reprints valuable inventories of the village elders’ offices, of estates, of Polish farmsteads, and of villages in the 18th century (vols. 35 and 38). Volumes 3–8, 23–24, 26–28, 30, 32, and 36 include materials on the city courts and magistrates of Minsk, Grodno, Vilna, Brest and other cities, data on urban self-government, on the state of crafts and of trade, and so on. Some volumes deal with the church union (vol. 16), the war between Poland and Russia for the Ukraine, 1654–67 (vol. 34), the Patriotic War of 1812 (vol. 37), and other events. Acta of the Vilna Archeographic Commission forms a most valuable source on the history of Byelorussia and Lithuania.