The Three Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772, 1793, and 1795)
As a direct consequence of the three partitions of the Republic in 1772, 1793, and 1795, both the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have been erased from the political map of Europe by the three European great powers – Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy, and Prussia [...]
Historical Poland (in fact, the Polish-Lithuanian Republic of Two Nations) became divided during the three partitions in 1772, 1793, and 1795 between the Kingdom of Prussia, the Habsburg Monarchy (later Austrian Empire and Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy), and the Russian Empire. At that time, the rulers of all these three states which divided Poland-Lithuania (the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) have been by ethnic origin the Germans – Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Joseph II of Austria. It means that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (established in 1569 by the Union of Lublin), or the Republic of Two Nations was partitioned by the mutual agreement of the three ethnic German monarchs (one Roman Catholic, one Protestant and one originally Protestant, later Orthodox).
The Republic of Two Nations from the 1720s became extremely weakened from all points of view – political, military, social, geopolitical, and financial. As a direct result, the Republic’s inner political life became gradually dependent on the powerful neighboring Russian Empire. It became obvious during and after the 1733−1735 War of the Polish Succession when the last Republic’s rulers Augustus III (1734−1763) and Stanislaw Poniatowski (1764−1795) became substantially dependent on Russia. In order to gain more independence from St. Petersburg, it was organized the Confederation of Bar in 1768 followed by the Polish revolt which was soon suppressed by the direct intervention of the Russian army.
The First Partition (1772)
The First Partition of the Republic in 1772 was a direct outcome of the Russian geopolitical interests in the region of the time based on regaining Russian-populated territories occupied earlier for centuries by the Polish-Lithuanian state (the first Polish-Lithuanian state-political union was in 1385 – the Union of Krevė/Krewo). In 1772, it was the Russian victory over the Ottoman Empire as a consequence of the course of the Russo-Ottoman war 1768−1774 which alarmed the Habsburg Monarchy to such a degree that Vienna was even ready to go to war against Russia. As a mediator for the reason to avoid a new European military conflict between great powers, the Prussian king Frederick II (the Great) proposed to St. Petersburg and Vienna simply to annex parts of the Republic’s territory by their three countries in such a way that Russian territorial gain would not be objectionable to the Habsburg Monarchy. Nevertheless, as the result of the First Partition of the Republic in 1772, Russia annexed the easternmost regions of the Republic of Two Nations – Polish Livonia, Polatsk, Vitebsk, and Mohylew, having now the borders on Dnieper and Western Dvina (93.000 sq. kilometers with 1.300.000 inhabitants). The Kingdom of Prussia annexed 36.000 sq. kilometers with 580.000 people (West Prussia, Netze District, and Elbląg but not the city-port of Danzig/Gdańsk). Finally, the Habsburg Monarchy received 81.000 sq. kilometers with 2.650.000 inhabitants (Galicia-Lodomeria with Lemberg/Lwów, Belz, parts of Podolia, Sandomierz, and Cracow district but without the city of Cracow itself on the north bank of the Vistula River). The new land annexed by Vienna became officially named the Kingdom of Galicia-Lodomeria (without West Galicia). That was, basically, the Palatinate of Rus’. The new name was recalling the title in the old Hungarian crown (Hungary was ruled by the Habsburgs since 1526). Hungarian kings since the 12th century claimed this territory of the medieval Rus’ principalities of Galicia and Volhynia (Lodomeria).
The Second Partition (1793)
After the 1772 partition, Poland-Lithuania adopted a constitution on May 3rd, 1791 (the first constitution in Europe and the second in the world after the U.S. 1787 constitution) which was giving more political power to a hereditary monarchy in order to make the inner structure of the country stronger and viable to resist further partitions of the Republic. However, Polish opponents to such a design formed another military confederation drawn up in Russia – the Confederation of Targowica. This confederation was cooperating with the Russian tsarist authorities for the reason to restore pre-1791 constitutional democratic liberties of the feudal aristocracy against the potential absolute power of the ruler (king/grand duke). The result of the such situation was the military invasion by Russia in 1792 (supporting the legitimate claims by the confederation based on its formal invitation to intervene) that was followed by a Prussian military intervention which both of them ended with the Second Partition of the Republic in 1793. The Habsburg Monarchy did not participate in the second partition. On this occasion, the Russian Empire re-annexed parts of the territories of old Kieven Rus’ from the left bank of Western Dvina including Minsk, Pinsk, and Zelentsi to the mid-Southern Bug with Podolia up to the mid-Dnieper (the right bank). In fact, Russia included some 250.200 sq. kilometers populated by 3.000.000 people. Those lands belonged in the 15th century to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as occupied since the second half of the 13th century onward. Prussia from its side included 1793 around 57.100 sq. kilometers of territory from Poland-Lithuania populated by around one million people of South Prussia (Great Poland) and territory around Danzig. However, in addition, Russia was given the right to station its military troops in what was left at that time from Poland-Lithuania and to control its foreign relations. Actually, the remains of the Republic of Two Nations became since 1793 supervised by St. Petersburg.
The Third Partition (1795)
The Third Partition of the Republic in 1795 was an outcome of a last attempt to reverse the fortune of the Commonwealth which started in March 1794 with the beginning of the widespread uprising led by Tadeusz Kościuszko (a participant in the American War of Independence against the Great Britany). However, the Polish-Lithuanian rebels finally became defeated by Russia in 1795. Consequently, the remains of the Republic of Two Nations were partitions between victorious Russia and Prussia and the noncombatant Habsburg Monarchy for the sake to keep a geopolitical balance between these three European great powers. In order words, in 1795, Russia received the greatest portion of the Republic (120.000 sq. kilometers with 1.200.000 people) including Courland, Samogitia, Lithuania proper with Wilno/Vilnius and Troki/Trakai, and Volhynia. The Kingdom of Prussia annexed 48.000 sq. kilometers populated by 1.020.000 people (New East Prussia up to the Neman/Memel River including Mazovia and a small portion of land northwest of Cracow – New Silesia). The Habsburg Monarchy occupied West Galicia or the lands beyond the Vistula River up to the Western Bug with 1.500.000 inhabitants (18.200 square miles) including the rest of Cracow (on the right bank of Vistula).
Epilogue
As a direct consequence of the three partitions of the Republic in 1772, 1793, and 1795, both the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have been erased from the political map of Europe by the three European great powers – Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy, and Prussia. In sum, the total territorial acquisitions by all these three neighbors of the Republic from 1772 to 1795 have been as follows: the Russian Empire – 463.200 sq. kilometers (5.500.000 inhabitants); the Kingdom of Prussia – 141.400. sq. kilometers (2.600.000 inhabitants); and the Habsburg Monarchy – 128.900 sq. kilometers (4.150.000 inhabitants).
Finally, in such a way, the three great European powers resolved the Polish-Lithuanian question in East Europe at the end of the 18th century. Such a solution was alive in the practice until the end of WWI. In the interwar period, both Poland and Lithuania existed as separate national states quarreling over the Vilnius region. However, in 1939 the Fourth Partition of Poland occurred in which four Polish neighbors took participation: Germany, USSR, Slovakia, and Lithuania.
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
Ex-University Professor
Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies
Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
“Ethnic affiliation has never been forgotten in the territories of the former Yugoslavia. It did play a certain role, and it did influence decisions even during the Tito's era of strict ‘Brotherhood and Unity’”[Várady T., “Minorities, Majorities, Law and Ethnicity: Reflections of the Yugoslav Case”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 19, 1997, p. 42]People, nation and stateI agree that “in Yugoslavia, all political problems are intimately linked with the issue of nationalism”.[i] Indeed, the fixing of inner or administrative borders between Yugoslavia’s nations and nationalities became one of the main issues that forged nationalism after the Second World War onward and ...
The Democratic Party has moved from being what you might call a reluctant war party to an aggressive war party with its selection of Hillary Clinton as its presumptive presidential nominee. With minimal debate, this historic change brings full circle the arc of the party’s anti-war attitudes that began in 1968 and have now ended in 2016.Since the Vietnam War, the Democrats have been viewed as the more peaceful of the two major parties, with the Republicans often attacking Democratic candidates as “soft” regarding use of military force. But former Secretary of State Clinton has made it clear that she ...
Jomo Kenyatta (c. 1891 – 22 August 1978) was a Kenyan politician and the first President of Kenya. Kenyatta was the leader of Kenya from independence in 1963 to his death in 1978, serving first as Prime Minister (1963–64) and then as President (1964–78). He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation. Kenyatta was a well-educated intellectual who authored several books, and is remembered as a Pan-Africanist. He is also the father of Kenya's fourth and current President, Uhuru Kenyatta (Source: Wikipedia)Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate ...
In the sea of misinformation sloshing around the Western media during the Yugoslav civil wars, Serbs fared the worst. As a rule, they were accused even of atrocities that never happened, or were committed by others. The real truth would usually emerge several years later, from the mouths of international officials who at the time held important and responsible positions.American press and electronic media have “discovered” that the Serbs weren’t the “bad guys” to the extent the American reporters from the Balkans made them out to be. Even though Jack Kelly, a correspondent of USA Today, resigned years ago because ...
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was created by Pax Americana to provide a cover for CIA agents under the pretext of helping the 3rd World. US Imperialism has to do some good or its potential targets would not open their doors to intelligence agents posing as do gooders, so USAID was created.Today the USAID is headed by Gayle Smith, formerly the “Special Advisor” to President Barack Obama and Senior Director of the National Security Council. To put it simply, Gayle Smith is one of the top “spooks” in the USA, someone who told the CIA what to do.Today ...
Note: We are republishing this essay by S. Brian Willson describing the true history of genocide in the United States which stands in stark contrast to the myth of Thanksgiving because of its popularity with readers and its educational value.The Defining and Enabling Experience of Our “Civilization” As we again plan to celebrate what US “Americans”call Thanksgiving, let us pause for a moment of reflection. Let us recognize that accounts of the first Thanksgiving are mythological, and that the holiday is actually a grotesque celebration of our arrogant ethnocentrism built on genocide.Native Americans in the Caribbean greeted their 1492 European invaders ...
Well, once again, Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu astounds. One would think that there must be some limit to the bizarre statements that issue from his mouth, but no, we learn again and again that he is willing to push the bizarreness envelope to places where, like the crew of Star Trek’s Enterprise, no one has ever before ventured.His latest flight of fancy even seems to have astonished his worshipful U.S. government, which characterized his statements as ‘inappropriate and unhelpful’, harsh criticism indeed from that bastion of Israeli love. And what is it that Mr. Netanyahu has said? This writer ...
The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) which was the most influential party in Croatia at the time, rejected offers by the Nazi Germany to lead the new government. On 10 April the most senior home-based Ustaša, Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). The new Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by ...
Remember watching ancient Orthodox Christian monasteries in flames in Kosovo dozen times.Old, noble constructions, spiritual and historical testimonies of past times.I also remember that majority of Orthodox Christian monasteries, churches and relics has been attacked and destroyed after NATO forces (officially: KFOR) took full control of the Serbian province.It amazed me to see how Western soldiers, under full equipment and heavy armament, often didn’t make a single move to stop Albanian violence; over 200 000 Serbs had to flee, in order to save their bare lives, bearing whole their lives in few suitcases if they were lucky enough.It turned out ...
On Mar. 24, US president Barack Obama announced that all 9,800 US troops currently stationed in Afghanistan will remain until the end of 2015. This generated a fair amount of criticism: it was, after all, Obama’s promise that the last American troop would leave the country in 2014.How have Obama’s plans for pulling out of Afghanistan fared so far?Those expecting the US to leave Afghanistan, however, should take a minute to consider this: the US still hasn’t left Germany. In fact, there are quite a few places the US hasn’t left, and while certainly most of them don’t pose a threat to American soldiers, ...
As Europe’s longest ruler, it is a surprise that Milo Djukanovic is only 58. He has served as prime minister or president of various iterations of Montenegro since 1991 – spanning the collapse of Yugoslavia and across and beyond independence of the nation in 2006.What is the secret to Mr Djukanovic’s success? The answer is depressingly predictable: clientelism and the buying – or, depending on your perspective, stealing – of power.The beauty of Montenegro hides this ugly truth. Most know it as a tourist idyll with pristine beaches, crystal lakes and picturesque mountains. But holidaymakers rarely realize they enter less ...
Save SaveOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
‘Radni logor Jasenovac’ (‘Jasenovac Labour Camp’), the latest work by Croatian author Igor Vukic on the Croatian World War II concentration camp Jasenovac, published by Naklada Pavicic this year, seems like it is inspired by the publications of established Holocaust deniers.Instead of studying all the available archival records, testimonies and other publications, Vukic avoids confronting the totality of known information on the Jasenovac concentration camp system, and instead cherry-picks and publishes only carefully selected data which supports his ideologically-motivated agenda – the fabrication that Jasenovac was merely a labour camp where no mass murders took place.The argumentation and evidence cited ...
Ukraine is a virtual US colony – the way it’s been since the Obama regime’s February 2014 coup, replacing democratic governance with fascist tyranny in Europe’s heartland.Ukraine shares a near-1,500 mile land and sea border with the Russian Federation, the longest Western frontier with the country.The regime running things is a hotbed of militarized extremism, waging war on its own people, committing appalling human rights abuses – with full support and encouragement from Washington and key NATO countries.Stop NATO’s Rick Rozoff earlier explained that Ukraine is “the decisive linchpin in plans by the US and its NATO allies to effect ...
May 19, 1919 has different and even opposing meanings in Turkey and Greece, just as May 15, 1948, marks both the establishment of Israel and, for Palestinians, the start of the Nakba (“catastrophe”).In Turkey, this date marks the first step that led to the establishment of the Turkish Republic, while for descendants of Ottoman Greeks and Greece it marks the end of the centuries-long Pontic Greek presence on the shores of the Black Sea. Whereas Turks celebrate May 19, Greeks mourn it. Researcher Tamer Çilingir summarised the issue in a 2016 interview with the Turkish-Armenian daily Agos:“The Pontic Genocide is the ...
More than 20 years after the Srebrenica massacre, Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić was found guilty of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia this past November.Along with Mladić, the ICTY convicted the other so-called “Butcher of Bosnia”, the Bosnian Serb and former Republika Sprska leader Radovan Karadžić in 2016. Meanwhile, it fully exonerated the Bosnian Muslim army commander Naser Orić of similar charges which outraged the people of Serbia. Yet, it was the same court that posthumously exonerated former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević in 2016. If you weren’t aware of the latter, it’s because it ...
One of the most hyped “events” of American television, The Vietnam War, has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, “They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam war in an entirely new way”.In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the propaganda of its “exceptionalism”, Burns’ “entirely new” Vietnam war is presented as “epic, historic work”. Its lavish advertising campaign promotes its ...
What we are seeing today in the fight over birth control is a revival of a very old, and very dangerous kind of Catholicism. It is not one supported or practiced by most Rank and File Catholics. It is a kind of Catholicism which has done irreparable harm. It is a kind of Catholicism unfit for existence in the modern world.It was the underpinning of the regimes of Mussolini in Italy, The National Catholicism of Francisco Franco, in Spain; The Parti Rexiste in Belgium; The Irish Blueshirts; The Croatian Ustaše, the Nazi puppet government in Croatia, and ultimately, was the ...
The EU and NATO are evil institutions. These two institutions are mechanisms created by Washington in order to destroy the sovereignty of European peoples. These two institutions give Washington control over the Western world and serve both as cover and enabler of Washington’s aggression. Without the EU and NATO, Washington could not force Europe and the UK into conflict with Russia, and Washington could not have destroyed seven Muslim countries in 15 years without being isolated as a hated war criminal government, no member of whom could have travelled abroad without being arrested and put on trial.Clearly, the presstitute media ...
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
