After the coup d’état in 1926, Lithuania was ruled by the authoritarian regime led by President Antanas Smetona. In the late 1930s, complaints about the Smetona government was grew, especially among the opposition groups, such as Voldemarininkai, the Populists (liaudininkai) and the Christian Democrats, because they considered that Smetona government’s “neutral” foreign policies led to the ultimatum by Poland in 1938. Thus, they established a unified anti-Smetona movement “Lithuanian Activists Union” (LAS) in 1938 in Klaipėda (Memel) and criticized the authoritarian government as dictatorship. They aimed to establish a Fascism regime in Lithuania instead, as they believed that, under the Fascism regime, the whole Lithuanian nation could be involved in the policy decision making. They, nevertheless, considered the Jews and communists were “anti-national”, thus tried to exclude them. LAS pursued some democratic values, such as freedom of the press and free elections, but they criticized parliamentary democracy since they believed that it led to a split of the nation. They aimed at close relations with Nazi Germany and state-planned economy. They believed that such “Disciplined Authoritarian Democracy” should have replaced the Smetona-led authoritarian regime.

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The disintegration of the Soviet Union was inevitable, since those three elements which had served to integrate the approximately 120 nationalities into one artificial entity, i. e., the U. S. S. R., had recently severely weakened its cementing functions. These were the threat from outside, the Communist ideology, and the organs which had supervised the enforcement of that ideology, i. e., the CPSU, KGB, and the Soviet armed forces. The first two cements had for long reduced its centripetal functions, and the third ones lost it through their badly organized August 1991 abortive coup attempt. When the Soviet Union collapsed, three choices existed: its reorganization into a loose form of federation, for example, the Union of Federation advocated by Gorbachev; the complete interdependence of the 12 republics; and the formation of the CIS. The main reasons why the 11 former republics chose the CIS option seems to be the following: (1) the 11 former republics found themselves unable to become economically independent for the time being, at least in the period right after the demise of the USSR, partly due to the heresy they inherited, namely economic reliance upon each other, which was the result of the Stalin's skillful application of the “socialist principle of divided labor.” (2) Even if these republics had decided to become completely independent, the chances were that they would not have been recognized as independent states, and hence nor admitted to such international organizations as the UN, IMF, CECS, by the U. S. and other important Western countries, which were greatly concerned with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other undesirable consequences of the breakup of the USSR. (3) These former republics needed some sort of a mechanism or forum through which they could solve those mounting problems and issues which were left over with the sudden disintegration of the U. S. S. R.
What is the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)? No one so far seems to have provided a definitive, satisfactory, clear answer to this question. It is understandable for the following three reasons. (1) The CIS is not necessarily a concept with a positive substantive content but rather a counter concept against the USSR, the Center and its personal embodiment, Gorbachev. (2) The leaders of the CIS participating member states hurriedly decided to build the CIS, without having any agreed-upon concept of that institution. (3) They interpret differently the CIS scheme, according to their own ideas and even wishful thinkings.
As indicated above, the CIS thus contains, from the very beginning, the seeds of disagreements and even its own disintegration. Particularly, the following three constitute such a centrifugal element: (1) the sudden disappearance of the common enemy (the USSR, the center, Gorbachev), against which each constituent republic used to unite in the past; (2) different understanding or interpretation of the CIS scheme among CIS member states; (3) existence of potential and even actual seeds of contradictions, disagreements and cinflicts among CIS states with regard to their territorial boundaries, mother language tongue policies, and concern over the rise of Russian hegemonism.
What will be the CIS's future? Three scenarios are likely to take place. The first is what one may call “Yugoslavianization, ” i. e., the disintegration of the CIS and the starting of the civil war between and within some CIS member states. This dreadful scenario has in part begun. The second is what one may call “block building”, i. e., CIS member states build close ties, mostly economic, with neighboring countries within and without the CIS. The third is an effort to reorganize the CIS in a more tight or loose fashion. One may conclude that a combination of all these three scenarios are simultaneously occurring now.

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The purpose of this paper is to re-investigate the conflict between the grand prince of Moscow and Kiprian, the Metropolitan of Moscow, which happened over each other’s jurisdiction in the second half of the fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century in Russia. In general, two groups of researchers have disputed each other. One argues that the jurisdiction of the Russian church was limited in this era, while the other group works from the completely opposite perspective, that is the church recovered their former rights and privileges. The author of this paper thinks that the researchers’ discussions were insufficient, and reexamined the primary sources such as ‘Kormchaia kniga’, acts which have not be used enough. The author also reexamined the situations of the tumultuous period of the Church, and the following results are obtained: 1) Kiprian aimed to make the Russian Church return to the one of the time of Metropolitans Feognost or Aleksii, with not only have merits but demerits as well. 2) Kiprian and the Grand Prince Vasilii I did not aim to interfere with the jurisdiction of each other. The changes, which, for example, were written in the act of 1392, were their convenience. So we cannot conclude this period is characterized by a confrontation between the two powers. Both of them sufficiently valued each other.

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