On October 24, 1795, the Russian-Prussian-Austrian convention on the third partition of the Rzeczpospolita was signed.

Russia received territories inhabited by Eastern Slavs and Lithuanians.

The indigenous Polish lands were divided between Austria and Prussia.

From heyday to decay

Rzeczpospolita included three main ethnopolitical components: Poles, Lithuanians, and the East Slavic population of the captured principalities of Ancient Rus.

In the Middle Ages, the ancient Russian state was the largest in Eastern Europe, but the situation changed radically in the XII century due to a period of fragmentation.

Later, in the XIII century, most of the Russian lands were completely ruled by the Golden Horde.

The principalities of North-Eastern Russia in the XIV-XV centuries consolidated around Moscow, threw off the yoke and formed a powerful independent state.

At the same time, Lithuania and Poland outlined their claims to Western Russian lands.

The Galicia-Volyn principality held back their expansion for some time, but in the XIV century the Lithuanian and Polish feudal lords divided these territories among themselves.

In 1385, the ruling dynasties of Lithuania and Poland united as a result of the Krevo Union.

The Lithuanian prince Jagailo, having adopted the Catholic religion and married the Polish queen Jadwiga, became the Polish king.

At the same time, both states retained their sovereignty.

In the 16th century, the existence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was threatened by internal strife and conflicts with neighbors - in particular, with the Russian kingdom, which sought to restore the unity of the East Slavic lands.

On June 28, 1569, the Union of Lublin was signed, according to which Poland and Lithuania became a single state - the Commonwealth.

According to historians, this led to the civilizational subordination of Lithuania to Catholic Poland and attempts to impose Catholicism on the Orthodox population of the Western Russian lands that were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In 1596, the Brest Union was concluded, which implied the creation of a special Greek Catholic Church on the basis of the Orthodox parishes of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, subordinate to the Pope.

As experts emphasize, the Eastern Slavic Orthodox population was harshly oppressed by the Polish elites.  

“The Russian lands, which came under the rule of Poland, became, due to agricultural production, an important factor in the functioning of the“ parasitic ”economy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was based on the norms of serfdom.

The political thinking that took shape under these conditions increased the aggressiveness of the Polish elites and pushed them towards a new expansion to the east, "said German Artamonov, professor of the Department of Russian History at Moscow State Pedagogical University, in an interview with RT.

  • Orthodox Saint Athanasius of Brest blesses his killers

  • © ortodossiatorino.net

As the historian Dmitry Yavornitsky wrote, the Polish lords could afford to kill, torture and rob the representatives of the Orthodox population dependent on them with impunity.

Managers and tenants of the estates forced the peasants to work for the landlords six days a week.

“In the 17th century, Rzeczpospolita was a powerful state and could afford to“ divide ”neighboring countries by itself.

In particular, during the Time of Troubles, she tore away significant territories from Russia on the western borders, "historian and writer Dmitry Volodikhin said in a conversation with RT.

The Zaporozhye Cossacks, who repeatedly raised anti-Polish uprisings, tried to protect the interests of the Orthodox population of the Commonwealth.

The largest of them began in 1648.

It was headed by the Cossack centurion Bohdan Khmelnitsky, personally affected by the tyranny of the Polish gentry.

Despite a number of successes, the rebels understood that they would not be able to completely defeat the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and repeatedly appealed to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with a request to take the lands controlled by the Zaporozhye Army under their arm.

Russia was still recovering after the Time of Troubles, and the Russian sovereign was afraid to enter a new large-scale war.

However, the Russian authorities soon became convinced that, except by military means, the conflict could not be resolved.

In 1653, the Zemsky Sobor decided to provide assistance to the Orthodox inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth suffering from Polish oppression and to satisfy the request of the Cossacks to accept them into Russian citizenship.

In 1654, at the Pereyaslav Rada, the Zaporozhye Army swore allegiance to the Russian tsar.

  • Ivanov S. "Zemsky Cathedral (XVII century)"

The Russian-Polish war lasted from 1654 to 1667.

The Poles were defeated, but the Russian troops were also drained of blood by the prolonged hostilities, therefore, as a result of the conflict, the parties came to a compromise.

The left bank of the Dnieper and Kiev fell under the rule of the Russian tsar, and the right bank remained in the Commonwealth.

Divisions of the Commonwealth

In the 18th century, internal instability began to grow in the Rzeczpospolita.

“Unsuccessful wars, chaotic state structure, ethnic and religious heterogeneity have led to the fact that the state practically did not get out of turmoil and weakened,” Volodikhin says.

According to historians, the Polish Sejm often used the right of individual gentry to veto general decisions, which aggravated political instability.

Weakened militarily and economically, the Rzeczpospolita increasingly fell under the influence of powerful neighboring powers such as Russia, Austria and Prussia.

As German Artamonov noted, the loss of land on the left bank of the Dnieper had a negative impact on the economic situation of the Commonwealth, but the Polish elites did not want to change anything in the country.

The Orthodox peasantry was brutally exploited and had no rights; effective economic reforms were not carried out.

The Russian authorities, in turn, defended the interests of the Orthodox population of the Rzeczpospolita.

As Kirill Kochegarov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted, the international ambitions of official St. Petersburg grew, he strove to play a leading role in the affairs of Central and Eastern Europe.

“One of the manifestations of this process was the Warsaw Pact of 1768 on the guarantee of the political system of the gentry republic in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the rights of representatives of non-Catholic faiths, including Orthodox,” the expert noted.

According to Kochegarov, the growth of Russian influence in the Rzeczpospolita led to a serious crisis.

Russia entered the war with Turkey, dissatisfied with the strengthening of the position of St. Petersburg in Eastern Europe, and in Poland itself an uprising of the lordly confederates began, outraged by the granting of civil rights to non-Catholics.

Neighboring Austria and Prussia feared the excessive influence of St. Petersburg in the entire Rzeczpospolita.

  • The first partition of Poland.

    Old engraving

“Under pressure from the Berlin and Prussian courts, Petersburg, whose hands were tied by military operations against the Ottomans, had to agree to the first partition of Poland in 1772,” Kochegarov stressed.

Prussia lost land in the north and west of Poland, Austria - in the south, and Russia - areas in the territory of modern Belarus and the Baltic states.

The section was drawn up by a special international agreement.

However, the Polish gentry in 1792 provoked a new war with Russia, which ended in the defeat of Poland.

And in 1793, Russia and Prussia agreed on the second partition of the Commonwealth, according to which the East Slavic lands on the Right Bank of the Dnieper and in Belarus were transferred to St. Petersburg, and Danzig, Thorn, Great Poland, Kuyavia and Mazovia to Berlin.

In 1794, because of the dissatisfaction of the Polish gentry with the concessions of the authorities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the neighboring powers, an uprising began under the leadership of Tadeusz Kosciuszko.

It was suppressed by Russian troops.

After that, Russia and Austria agreed on the third, final division of the Rzeczpospolita.

This decision was explained by the fact that the Polish uprising threatened the peace of the neighboring states.

On October 24, 1795, the Russian-Prussian-Austrian convention was signed in St. Petersburg.

According to its terms, Russia received the East Slavic and Lithuanian territories that remained in the Commonwealth until that time.

And Austria and Poland shared lands inhabited by ethnic Poles.

Rzeczpospolita ceased to exist.

  • Atlas of the Russian Empire, 1793 №26 "Map of regions newly acquired from Poland by Russia in 1793"

During the Napoleonic Wars, the Duchy of Warsaw was formed with the support of Paris on part of the Polish lands that had previously been ceded to the Germans, which became the stronghold of France in the attack on Russia in 1812.

At the Congress of Vienna it was also divided among themselves by Russia, Austria and Prussia.

According to Kirill Kochegarov, the sections of the Commonwealth were perceived by Polish society as a national tragedy.

At the same time, German Artamonov emphasizes that favorable socio-economic conditions were created in the Polish territories, which came under the rule of the Russian Empire - political self-government, religious freedom were preserved here, there were opportunities for economic development.

“The divisions of the Commonwealth were caused by the desire of the neighbors to get rid of the eternal center of unrest and anxiety at their borders.

The economic situation of the Polish lands after the partitions turned out to be quite prosperous, factories worked there, the level of educational institutions was high.

Nevertheless, the Poles wanted independence and eventually got it, ”summed up Volodikhin.