Favouritism as an integration tool: Adam Kazanovsky in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania 1633-1648

The purpose of the paper is to summarize and analyze information about one episode of the expansion of the Polish gentry to the eastern lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The subject of the study was information concerning the possessions of the royal favorite Adam Kazanovsky in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) in the second quarter of the 17th century, as well as the means of expanding the geography of his family's political influence and personal role in attempts to integrate the police officer hierarchy of the Polish-Lithuanian state. The methodological basis of the study was the principles of historicism and objectivity, retrospective and historicalgenetic methods were used. The Polish magnate Kazanovsky family was in many ways a product of the territorial growth of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The main vector of the Kazanovskys' movement to the east passed through the Ukrainian lands, and since 1633 these magnates received wide access to the land fund of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Smolensk Voivodeship. The greatest success in this direction was achieved by the royal favorite Adam Kazanovsky, who established close ties with part of the Lithuanian aristocracy. These ties were cemented by marriage to a member of the Služek family. Thanks to his relationship with the king, Adam Kazanovsky became the holder of state property with the center in Borisov, where he pursued a policy of spreading Catholicism, and turned the income from the property into a luxurious lifestyle. Being a conductor of the monarch's policy, but proceeding from his own interests, Kazanovsky initiated another round of conflict over the powers of Polish and Lithuanian officials. In essence, it was an attempt at unification, which reflected the interests of Polish political circles in order to expand their influence and power in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.