Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Mikhail Kucherov
[REGNUM] The disappearance of the Polish state from the map of Europe for 123 years is somehow by default associated with the imperial ambitions of its neighbors - Russia, Prussia and Austria.
On February 17, 1772, a Russian-Prussian agreement was concluded in St. Petersburg, preceding the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
And as a result of the two subsequent ones, the last of which took place in 1795, it ceased to exist as such, returning to the political space only after the First World War.
Of course, in Poland the main culprit is called the Russian Empress Catherine II, and the experienced hand of propagandists easily draws a line of succession to the modern “aggressive aspirations of Russia.”
However, if we do not consciously turn history into politics, then every event has a whole complex of causes and consequences from incorrectly made decisions.
Thus, in the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Polish elites played a significant role, and the decision on this was a forced measure to ensure security in Eastern Europe.
As unpleasant as this may sound to experienced propagandists.
AGGRESSOR COUNTRY
As is well known, the state that emerged in 1569 as a result of the Union of Lublin, when the Crown of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania formed a federation, was one of the largest in Europe. Kings were elected, not inherited, and their powers were severely limited in favor of the noble elites - magnates and gentry.
For the time when absolutism reigned everywhere, the Polish system of decision-making at assemblies and sejms, when any free nobleman could block the discussion of issues, was not exactly advanced, but very unusual. At the same time, there was no democracy for the "national minorities".
In fact, only Catholics had all rights, including voting rights, and joining the system, for example, of city law for a conventional Russian (and no one knew the word "Ukrainians" at that time and the concept of nationality had not been formed in principle) or Armenian community meant the need to accept Catholicism. It was imposed forcibly, as a state religion.
"For twenty years now, at every Diet, at every Sejm, we have been begging with bitter tears, but we cannot beg for them to leave us with our rights and liberties. If even now our desire is not fulfilled, then we will be forced to cry out with the prophet: "Judge me, O God, and judge my case," - that is, judge the dispute with people who insult me, with my persecutors and enemies, as one of the Volyn Orthodox deputies wrote in 1620.
At the same time, Poland demonstrated an unquenchable desire for expansionism, showing aggression with the support of the Pope and Austria. The militant mood of the Polish gentry was so strong that at the beginning of the 17th century, Russia almost lost its sovereignty during the invasion of its neighbor's troops.
In 1610, at the height of the Time of Troubles, with the help of the "Semiboryashchyna" the Poles even entered Moscow, and the plans were far-reaching - King Sigismund III wanted to rule Russia. To do this, he sought to put his son Vladislav on the Russian throne.
Having frightened the boyars with the arrival of False Dmitry, the Polish troops received the right to "guard" Moscow and settled in the Kremlin. Crown Hetman Stanislav Zholkevsky soon left for Poland, allegedly for a conversation with the king, leaving Colonel Alexander Gosevsky in Moscow, who ruled the city in a very unceremonious manner of an occupier. How it all ended is well known - on November 4, 1612, the capital was liberated thanks to the militia of Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky.
More precisely, it did not end, since the difficult wars with Poland (whose border ran immediately beyond Velikiye Luki, and Smolensk was considered “originally Polish”) continued for many years after the Zaporozhian Host, despairing of finding a common language with the crown, went under the hand of the Moscow Tsar.
All this became known in history as the "national liberation war led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky ", in which the Russian state also had to participate. This continued until the change in the international situation and the conclusion of the Andrusovo Truce first, and then the "Eternal Peace" in 1686. Moscow received back "the place where the Russian land came from", Kiev, which was a long-awaited event.
Poland emerged from these wars weakened and in the status of an ally. Peter I hoped that Warsaw would help him in his fight against Sweden, but King Augustus II (the Strong) wavered between him and the Swedish King Charles II. Having entered into peace agreements for the sake of fighting common enemies, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth showed itself to be an unreliable comrade. And it was precisely during this period that inter-elite discord, which slowed down the country's development, firmly entered its domestic political life.
Royal power was losing ground.
Under Augustus II, 18 Sejms were held, 11 of which were disrupted and two more ended without significant results. The number of royal troops at that time was 12 thousand people with a population of 11 million: some magnates could have an army larger than the king.
The nobles were constantly fighting with each other - they organized robberies and plunder, forcibly took away serfs, and the oppression of the Orthodox continued.
In turn, Russian rulers repeatedly tried to stand up for them. In 1708, Peter I stood up for the Galicians before his Polish colleague. The issue was about the Lvov Brotherhood, a national-religious public organization of Orthodox townspeople, which was forcibly annexed to the Union.
The new king, Augustus III, announced at the Diets of 1734 and 1736 that he would take the request into account, but he was politically weak, and so the persecution did not go away.
After the king's death in 1763, one faction wanted to establish his heir as the successor to the Polish throne - in such a scenario, the country would have fallen under the influence of France and Austria.
Then, concerned about the constant unrest in her neighbors, Catherine II began to rapidly promote her favorite, Stanislav Poniatowski, who was also supported by Prussia, and the following year the Sejm voted in his favor.
And from this point on, a movement began towards decisions to get rid of Poland altogether as a powerful irritant and source of headaches, instead of trying to deal with its unsolvable problems.
"GOLDEN LIBERTIES"
The new king immediately took the simplest and most logical path, as any leader should: to implement reforms that would give him more authority in decision-making. And this categorically did not suit the gentry.
At the same time, another powerful irritant arose: the project of granting political rights to “dissidents,” non-Catholic religious denominations, supported by Protestant Prussia and Orthodox Russia.
It is important to note here that the demands were legal: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had already taken on obligations regarding freedom of religion for the Orthodox in the treaty of 1686, while also recognizing Russia’s right to represent their interests before the Polish government.
So these were a kind of “Minsk agreements” of the 17th century - they signed them, but had no intention of implementing them.
But now that Russia had come into power, it had already decided not to waste time and resources trying to out-scream the gentry with their precious "personal freedoms" at the Sejms and Sejmiks. The Russian envoy to Warsaw, Prince Nikolai Repnin, created an Orthodox and Protestant confederation by force.
On October 14, 1767, Russian soldiers even kidnapped Polish senators, including the Krakow bishop Kajetan Soltyk, who spoke out against religious freedoms of dissidents (and bishops were automatically included in the Senate).
On February 24, 1768, a treaty was signed on the "eternal friendship" of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia, turning Poland into a Russian protectorate. And two days later, the Orthodox and Protestants received freedom of worship, were freed from the jurisdiction of Catholic courts, and received partial equalization in civil rights. All this looked extremely offensive to the gentry.
Rejecting any reasonable compromises in the religious and cultural sphere for literally centuries, not wanting to share power with the king and maintain at least some kind of balance, she perceived coercion as a violation of noble dignity, which cannot be forgiven.
In response, on February 29, 1768, the Bar Confederation was organized in the city of Bar in today's Vinnytsia region. It advocated the preservation of previous rights and privileges, the repeal of the decisions of the February Sejm, and effectively declared "the last religious war," trying to enlist the support of France, Saxony, Austria, and Turkey. The latter was generously promised Podolia and Volyn for help.
And all this was clearly too much – as was the attempt to kidnap King Stanisław August in November 1771.
The fighting, in which Major General Alexander Suvorov, who stormed Krakow, and Major General Pyotr Golitsyn, who captured the Czestochowa fortress, took an active part, lasted for almost five years. Enough time to realize the need to solve the problem in a radical way.
So, in the summer of 1772, all contentious issues between Austria, Russia and Prussia were agreed upon, and on July 25, two secret conventions were signed in St. Petersburg: one between Russia and Prussia, the other between Russia and Austria.
As a result of the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Eastern Belarus and part of Livonia went to Russia, and the Bishopric of Warmia, the Pomeranian (excluding Danzig), Malbork, and Chełmin (excluding Torun) voivodeships, as well as part of the Inowrocław, Gniezno, and Poznan voivodeships went to Prussia.
Part of Lesser Poland (without Krakow) and Galicia went to Austria, where, however, the Austrians recognized Polish primacy, retaining the Polish language in the administrative system.
The European powers reacted to the partition with indifference, so in September the plenipotentiary delegation of the Sejm accepted the terms of the partition, and they were ratified.
But, contrary to popular belief, by 1795, as a result of three partitions of Poland, Russia had not received a single piece of the original Polish territories. It received lands inhabited by Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians and Latvians - that is, Orthodox and Protestants, in accordance with the stated claim.
And it is highly unlikely (if such a question were even raised) that modern national states populated by the aforementioned peoples would agree to a revision. In many ways, they emerged due to the fact that, in isolation from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, processes of national self-identification began to develop, and languages that the Poles considered despised dialects of villagers began to develop.
But in Polish elites and expert circles, of course, this is still perceived as a trauma and a loss of the chance to become an empire. They cannot admit defeat, as, for example, Sweden did.
Although history shows that the responsibility for the decline and disappearance of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth cannot be shifted to the actions of external players.
The furious desire to impose its “only true” vision of the world could not be endless and met with resistance – so strong that it left no trace of its former power.
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