Vanished Kingdoms
Page 34
Under August III, the central organs of the Rzeczpospolita ceased to function. The elector-king-grand duke resided in Dresden, and ruled through viceroys. Attempts to convene the Sejm, and hence to raise taxes, were repeatedly blocked by use of the liberum veto. For thirty years, the sejmiki, the regional noble assemblies, provided the sole source of co-ordinated administration. The magnates grew stronger than ever. They cultivated an outlook called ‘Sarmatism’, proclaiming – ostrich-like – that ‘Polish freedom’ was incomparably wonderful. Both the Prussians in northern Poland and the Russians in the grand duchy billeted their troops on the countryside for free, by charging the cost of their upkeep to the local population. Europe of the Enlightenment looked on, and complacently equated ‘Poland’ with ‘anarchy’.
Nothing better illustrates the political decadence of the Saxon era than the workings of the so-called ‘Familia’. A group of magnates headed by the Czartoryskis and Poniatowskis took advantage of the political vacuum, seeking to replace the authority of the absent monarch with their own. They came together in the 1730s, when a royal election was in prospect, and were active until the 1760s, when one of their number was the successful candidate in the next. Proposing a single centralized state, the abolition of the liberum veto, and a modernized financial system, they aroused the opposition of the Potocki faction in the kingdom and of the Radziwiłłs in the grand duchy. Among the Familia’s most active members among the older generation was General Stanisław Poniatowski (1676–1762), sometime adjutant to Charles XII and treasurer of the grand duchy, and in the younger generation, Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski (1734–1823), probably the most enlightened reformer of the age. Their flamboyant aristocratic lifestyles contrasted blatantly with that of the countless serfs who maintained it. One sees parallels with progressive elements among the French nobility of the ancien régime, and with the more enlightened slave-owners, who, a continent away, were preparing the American Revolution.
It would be unwise, however, to generalize too drastically about the peasantry. It is true that the society of the grand duchy was marked for centuries by serfdom, and the misery of the serfs could be dire. In 1743–4, in the starostvo (county) of Krychev in eastern White Ruthenia, a local war was fought between the Radziwiłł regiments and an ‘army’ of rebellious serfs. Petitions to the lords, known as supliki, begging for easement, were sometimes granted, sometimes ignored. Yet islands of hope could flourish amid the sea of poverty. Although about 30 per cent of the population was controlled by the magnatial estates, about 70 per cent was not. A class of free peasants held their own in the eastern palatinates, paying rent and prospering from the production of flax and timber. In the southern palatinates, flight to ‘Cossackdom’ or to estates in Ukraine, where colonists received favourable terms, was always an option for disaffected peasants.
Moreover, the later eighteenth century saw a considerable increase in the overall size of the economy, in agricultural improvements, and even in manufacturing. Efforts to rationalize river transport were crowned in 1785 by the opening of canal systems linking both the Nieman and the Dniepr and, via the Royal Canal, the Pripyat’ and the Bug. The grand duchy was well placed to export corn, timber and potash. The improvers aimed to direct trade both to the Vistula and to the Black Sea, in addition to the traditional exit via Riga. The great estates were equipped with flour mills, lumber machines and breweries. The first textile factory in the grand duchy began working in 1752 at Nieświez˙, and the Radziwiłłs thereafter constructed twenty-three further industrial works, producing everything from glass to paper, bricks to gunpowder.90
Stanisław-August Poniatowski (r. 1764–95), the last king-grand duke of Poland-Lithuania, was the Familia’s candidate for the throne and a former lover of the Russian empress, Catherine the Great. As a young diplomat employed in St Peterburg by both the British and the Saxon embassies, he had made a huge impression on the German-born future empress, who selected him for protracted romantic services. A decade later, he easily won her support in the royal election. As monarch, however, he saw his task as one of urgent reform, reanimating the vital organs of the moribund state, modernizing society, promoting culture and relaxing the stranglehold of the pro-Russian magnates elevated by his Saxon predecessors. The empress wished to maintain the status quo from which Russia greatly benefited. The two of them were on a collision course. Every time the beleaguered monarch showed signs of pulling his country from the quagmire, his patroness pushed it back in.91
The three decades of Stanisław-August’s reign witnessed a dramatic spectacle rarely seen in European history. One of the largest states in Europe fought for its life, while the wisecrackers of the Enlightenment, led by Voltaire, mocked its impotence. Stanisław-August and his circle desperately sought to restore the Rzeczpospolita to health and viability, while the so-called ‘Enlightened Despots’* sought not only to obstruct him, but to exploit their victim’s vulnerability and to dismantle the repairs. A maritime metaphor might be appropriate. The captain and crew strive valiantly to keep their stricken vessel afloat, while pirates moored alongside help themselves to the ship’s timbers chunk by chunk. The captain is then declared (by the pirates) to have been a poor seaman, and his ship a wreck that was not worth saving. The drama usually appears in the history books as the ‘Partitions of Poland’, but this, of course, is a misnomer. The state being dismantled was not ‘Poland’, but the dual ‘Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania’. Moreover, the catastrophe was less catastrophic in the long run for Poland than for the grand duchy. Though the kingdom was dismembered like the grand duchy, large parts of Poland were destined to be salvaged. The wreck of the grand duchy would sink for ever.
The First Partition, in 1773, was enacted as punishment for a decade of successful progress. It was conceived by Frederick II of Prussia, approved by Catherine the Great and then foisted on a supposedly reluctant empress of Austria, Maria Theresa. As the Prussian king explained: ‘She wept as she took, and the more she wept the more she took.’ Since the Rzeczpospolita was essentially defenceless, the international bandits were able to carve out large slices of territory for themselves, and then to persuade the victim to cede their plunder by formal treaty. The Prussians took a slice out of northern Poland. The Austrians were given a bigger slice in the south. The Russians annexed roughly one-quarter of the grand duchy, including the palatinates of Polatsk, Vitebsk and Mtislav. A chorus of Russian spokesmen and apologists explained that the noble empress was merely repossessing her own property.92
The following decades nonetheless saw the heyday of the Polish Enlightenment. The leading spirits of the movement, inspired by the king-grand duke himself and resigned to the futility of political activities, made great strides in education, agriculture, administration, history and the arts. Modern schools were opened, the latest farming methods introduced, a national history project launched, civil servants were trained, and writers and painters sponsored. The magnates played their part, some of them voluntarily emancipating their serfs. The banishment of the Jesuit Order in 1773 threatened to devastate schooling, but the National Education Commission that was tasked with addressing the crisis set up a far-flung school system, which functioned far into the nineteenth century. It would train several generations in the language, culture and heritage of the Rzeczpospolita. ‘If there are still people in two hundred years time who think of themselves as Poles,’ declared Stanisław-August, ‘my work will not have been in vain.’ The Commission’s first director was Jakub Massalski (1727–94), bishop of Vil’nya. The Korpus Kadetów, founded to train an administrative elite, was pioneered by Prince Michał Kazimierz ‘Rybeńko’ Radziwiłł; while his son, Prince Karol Stanisław, ‘Panie Kochanku’ (1734–90), though a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary, raised his palace at Nieświez˙ into a major centre of theatre, music and opera.93
The Second Partition was preceded by an intense period of political reform embodied in the Great Sejm of 1788–92. It was a race against time between the reformers, who sought to
regain the Rzeczpospolita’s independence, and the pro-Russian opposition, hampered by Russia’s preoccupation with an Ottoman war. If the Turks continued to pin the Russians down, the Polish-Lithuanian reformers might find the space to attain their goals. If not, a Russian expedition would march. At first, the reforms prospered: taxes were voted. A professional standing army was financed and put into training, and the core offices of a modern administration were established. Finally, on 3 May 1791, on the initiative of the king-grand duke, a fine written constitution was passed, the first in Europe and second in the world only to that of the United States of America.94
By this time, however, and tragically for the reformers, the international climate had fundamentally shifted. The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 had convinced Europe’s absolute rulers that moderate constitutionalists and flaming Jacobins were indistinguishable. The Polish-Lithuanian experiment was doomed. A Russo-Turkish truce cleared the ground, and in St Petersburg the empress collected a group of hand-picked Russophiles, all subjects of the Rzeczpospolita, who raised the flag of rebellion on the south-eastern frontier at Targowica. Then the Russian army marched in their support.
The Russo-Polish war of 1791–2 was not a foregone conclusion. The forces of the Rzeczpospolita, though outnumbered, slowed the progress of the advancing Russian columns. At two battles in Ukraine, at Zielénce and Dubienka, General Kościuszko proved to be a commander of unusual talent. But then the king-grand duke lost his nerve and capitulated, the constitution was declared invalid, and the traitorous victors were invited by their Russian paymasters to plunder and to persecute. Those treacherous ‘Targovicians’ included General Szymon Kossakowski, the grand duchy’s grand hetman, and his brother Josef Kossakowski, bishop of Livonia.
General Tadeusz Kościuszko (Tadevish Kastiushka, 1746–1817) was a professional soldier, the son of Polonized gentry from the Brest region of White Ruthenia. Educated in Warsaw and Paris, he had spent 1776–83 in the service of the infant United States, where he is remembered as a friend of Thomas Jefferson and a founder of the West Point military academy. His views on freedom and democracy were strengthened by his American experience. He was about to become the chief hero of the Rzeczpospolita’s demise.95
The details of the Second Partition were worked out in protracted negotiations. By a Russo-Prussian treaty of 23 January 1793, the Prussians were to take Danzig and the Russians were to absorb most of the grand duchy’s palatinates except for Vil’nya, Brest and Samogitia. This time the Austrians were left out. By a second treaty, signed at Hrodna on 25 September by representatives of Prussia and of the Sejm of Poland-Lithuania, the king-grand duke was obliged to accept the emasculation of his regal powers. The treaties were implemented later in the year.96
For two years, what was left of the Rzeczpospolita – a clutch of territories in central Poland and the rump of the grand duchy, including Warsaw, Lublin, Poznań, Kraków and Vil’nya – fought desperately to survive. Kościuszko raised his standard in March 1794, swearing the oath to king and country in the Great Square of Kraków. In one battle, at Racławice, the Russians were routed. In Vil’nya, a soldier of Jacobin leanings, Jakub Jasiński, expelled the Russian garrison. But at the Battle of Maciejowice, Kościuszko fell wounded from his horse; according to legend, his last words before capture were ‘Finis Poloniae’. In Warsaw, a true Jacobin-style rising broke out, and a number of clerics and nobles were strung up by the mob. Finally, as the Russian General Suvorov entered the capital, the whole population of the suburb of Praga were massacred. Suvorov’s laconic message to the empress read: ‘Hurrah. Praga. Suvorov.’ Her reply read, ‘Bravo Fieldmarshal, Catherine.’ After that, the Third Partition, an act of liquidation, could be imposed without any pretence of negotiation.97
During those two final years, the territory of the grand duchy was systematically overrun and pillaged. The Russians retook Vil’nya, and formally abolished the ancient state of which it was the capital. All nobles who had taken up arms lost their lands, and all the traditional civil and military offices were closed. Lithuania and Poland had been joined, for better and for worse, for 409 years. They were now extinguished together, and the link was severed.
The exact moment at which a body-politic dies is sometimes hard to determine. In legal terms, it could be defined by an act of abdication unaccompanied by an act of succession, or by the withdrawal of international recognition. In the kingdom-grand duchy, it arrived for practical purposes on the day when the last of the offices of state stopped functioning: 25 November 1795, symbolically St Catherine’s Day. By then, Warsaw had been handed over to the Prussians, who expelled all remaining foreign diplomats. The Austrians were organizing Galicia. The Russians were digesting the grand duchy whole.
One last scene was enacted. After the formal abdication of Stanisław-August on the morning of 25 November, he was escorted from Warsaw under guard, and condemned without trial to lifetime captivity in Russia. He was, as it were, acting out the fate of his ex-subjects. After crossing the border and stopping in Hrodna in ‘Black Ruthenia’, the military column attending his carriage wound its way through the wintry landscape from one end of the grand duchy to the other. His captors would have been told that they were crossing ‘western Russia’. Such was the formula that would henceforth be taught to the world at large. But Stanisław-August knew otherwise. He and his memories were bound for St Petersburg on a journey of no return.
III
The legacy left by the demise of a state is markedly more complex than that which follows the death of an individual. There is, to begin with, a large physical residue of land, cities, government buildings and other assorted assets that have to be reallocated by the new owners. There is a considerable collection of legal and financial issues – claims, titles, debts and outstanding cases – that must somehow be resolved. As likely as not, there is also a huge cultural deposit, the accumulated literature, music, art, legends, history, languages, laws and customs that live on even when their authors do not. Most importantly, there is a community of people, thousands or millions strong, the former citizens, subjects and servants of the defunct state, who will now be pressed to change their identities, their attitudes and their allegiances. Finally, there are, or there ought to be, the state archives: the collections of official files and government records, which attest to the functioning of the late body-politic, and which enable historians to trace its progress and to preserve its memory. In the case of the grand duchy, all these elements can be identified, and more besides.
After 1793 the lands and peoples which had for centuries formed part of the grand duchy passed in their entirety to the Russian Empire. They were supplied not only with a new administration, a new ruling class, a new official language and a new Russian-based educational system, but also with a new history. They were declared, quite falsely, to have been reunited with the ancient Russian homeland, from which, supposedly, they had once been torn away. The Empress Catherine celebrated her acquisitions in true Spartan manner by striking a notorious medal which read: ‘That which was torn away, I have recovered.’98 Wilno/Vil’nya, no longer a state capital, became the provincial city of Vilna. Hence, when Napoleon arrived on the Nieman only a dozen years later, the world was told he was about to invade ‘Russia’.
Everyone interested in international affairs knows that shorthand forms are widely used in place of cumbersome state titles. People say ‘America’ instead of ‘the United States of America’, ignoring the protests of the Canadians. They still say ‘England’ instead of ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, though ‘the UK’ is increasingly common. And throughout the twentieth century, they have invariably said ‘Russia’ when referring to ‘the Empire of all the Russias’, ‘the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’, or, since 1992, ‘the Russian Federation’. This practice is bearable so long as its users understand what the short forms are replacing. There is a very real danger, however, that by hearing nothing but the short forms endlessly repeat
ed, the unwary public may be misled. For it is all too easy – and completely erroneous – to believe that the UK is equivalent to ‘the land of the English’ or to assume that ‘Russia’ is inhabited exclusively by Russians.
The issue is particularly relevant to the fallout from the suppression of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The peoples of the former grand duchy disappeared from view in the late eighteenth century and, with a brief exception during the Russian Revolution, only resurfaced in the late twentieth. Suddenly in 1989–91, the world woke up to the news that the western regions of the Soviet Union had not really been Russian at all. New nation-states, such as Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine appeared as if from nowhere, and precious few commentators were able to explain where they came from.