privileges and freedom for the gentry, proved to be extremely attractive to Lithuanian landlords. Indeed, many western Russian landlords as well were Polonized, to complicate further the involved ethnic and cultural pattern of the area and contribute another element for future conflicts. Polish language and Polish customs and attitudes, stressing the independence and honor of the gentry, came gradually to dominate Lithuanian life. For example, in 1413 forty-seven Polish noble families established special relations with the same number of Lithuanian aristocratic families, each Polish family offering its coat of arms to its Lithuanian counterpart. It should also be emphasized that between 1386, that is, the marriage of Jagiello and Jadwiga and the beginning of a close relationship between Lithuania and Poland, and 1569, the year of the Union of Lublin, the Lithuanian upper classes underwent a considerable change: in general their evolution favored the development of a numerous gentry, similar to the Polish
Over a period of time, the principality of Lithuania came into the Polish cultural and political sphere and thus ceased to be a successor state to Kiev. The Union of Lublin, which bound Poland and Lithuania firmly together, represented, one can argue, a logical culmination of the historical evolution of the Lithuanian princedom. Still, its accomplishment required a major and persistent effort on the part of the Poles. In fact, in spite of
Polish pressure and a sympathetic attitude toward Poland on the part of their own petty gentry, the Lithuanian magnates managed to block an effective union even as late as the Lublin meeting itself in 1569. Only when Sigismund II, or Sigismund Augustus, of Poland proceeded to seize large Russian territories from Lithuania and incorporate them into his own kingdom, did the Lithuanians accept Polish proposals. The Union of Lublin provided for a merger of the two states: they were to have a common sovereign and a common diet, although they retained separate laws, administrations, treasuries, and even armies. Notwithstanding an explicit recognition of equality between Lithuania and Poland and a grant of vast autonomy to the Lithuanians, the new arrangement meant a decisive Polish victory. To begin with, Poland kept the Russian lands that it had just annexed from Lithuania and that constituted the entire southern section of the principality and over a third of its total territory, including some of the richest areas. Because each county sent two representatives to the common diet and because there were many more counties in Poland than in Lithuania, the Poles outnumbered the Lithuanians in the diet by a ratio of three to one. Perhaps still more important, under conditions of union Polish influences of almost every sort were bound to spread further in Lithuania, assuring for Poland the position of the senior partner in the new commonwealth.
Constituting as it does a crucial event in the histories of several peoples, the Union of Lublin has received sharply divergent evaluations and interpretations. Polish historians in general consider it very favorably, emphasizing the diffusion of high Polish culture as well as the political and other successes resulting from the Polish-Lithuanian association. Further, they stress that the large new political entity in eastern Europe resulted from agreement, not conquest, and occasionally they even suggest it as a model for the future. Lithuanian historians, by contrast, complain that their country did not receive a fair break from Poland, which used every means to dominate its neighbor. The Russians show special concern with the fate of the Russian population: Poland's seizure of the Kiev, Volynia, and other southern areas of the Lithuanian principality in 1569 meant that their Orthodox Russian people found themselves no longer in a state which continued their traditions and to which they had become accustomed, but under foreign rule, Polish and Catholic. Besides, whatever the Polish system promised to the gentry, it had nothing but oppression for the peasants. This note of tragedy is prominent in nationalist Ukrainian historiography. For the Ukrainians, the transfer of the bulk of their land to Polish rule - the Poles had obtained Galicia earlier - marked the beginning of a new chapter in the trials and tribulations of the Ukrainian people and also set the stage for a heroic struggle for independence. In any case, for good
or evil, the Union of Lublin terminated the independent history of the Lithuanian principality.
From the standpoint of Russian history, the Lithuanian, or Lithuanian-Russian, princedom presents particular interest as the great, unsuccessful rival of Moscow for the unification of the country. Liubavsky and other specialists have provided thoughtful explanations of why Vilna lost where Moscow won. A fundamental cause, in their opinion, was the contrast in the evolutions of central authority in the two states. Whereas princely absolutism developed in Moscow, the position of the Lithuanian rulers became progressively weaker rather than stronger. Limited by the interests of powerful boyars and largely self-governing towns, the grand princes of Lithuania turned into elected, constitutional monarchs who granted ever-increasing rights and privileges to their subjects: first they came to depend on the sanction of their aristocratic council; after the statutes of 1529 and 1566 they also needed the approval of the entire gentry gathered in a diet. Thus, as the Muscovite autocracy reached an unprecedented high in the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the authority of the Lithuanian grand princes sank to a new low. Whereas the Muscovite rulers strove, successfully on the whole, to build up a great central administration and to control the life of the country, those of Lithuania increasingly relied on, or resigned themselves to, the administration of local officials and the landlord class in general. In the showdown, the Muscovite system proved to be the stronger.
Important causes, of course, lay behind the contrasting evolutions of the two states. To refer to our earlier analysis, the princedom of Moscow arose in a relatively primitive and pioneer northeast, where rulers managed to acquire a dominant position in a fluid and expanding society. The Lithuanian principality, on the other hand, as it emerged from the Baltic forests, came to include primarily old and well-established Kievan lands. It encompassed much of the Russian southwest, and its economic, social, and political development reflected the southwestern pattern, which we discussed in a preceding chapter and which was characterized by the great power of the boyars as against the prince. Detailed studies indicate that in the princedom of Lithuania the same noble families frequently occupied the same land in the seventeenth as in the sixteenth or fifteenth centuries, that at times they were extremely rich, even granting loans to the state, and that the votchina landholding remained dominant, while the pomestie system played a secondary role. The rulers found this entrenched landed aristocracy, as well as, to a lesser degree, the old and prosperous towns,
too much to contend with and had to accept restrictions on princely power. The Lithuanian connection with Poland contributed to the same end. Poland served as a model of an elective monarchy with sweeping privileges for the gentry; in fact, it presented an entire gentry culture and way of life. While the social and political structure of Lithuania evolved out of its own past, Polish influences supported the rise of the gentry, supplying it with theoretical justifications and legal sanctions. Lithuania in contrast to monolithic Moscow, always had to deal with different peoples and cultures and formed a federal, not a unitary, state. In the end, as already indicated, it became a junior partner to Poland rather than a serious contender for the Kievan succession.
The Lithuanian-Russian princedom also attracts the attention of historians of Russia because of its role in the linguistic and ethnic division of the Russians into the Great Russians, often called simply Russians, the Ukrainians, and the White Russians or Belorussians, and its particular importance for the last two groups. While the roots of the differentiation extend far back, one can speculate that events would have taken a different shape if the Russians had preserved their political unity in the Kievan state. As it actually happened, the Great Russians came to be associated with the Muscovite realm, the Ukrainians and the White Russians with Lithuania and Poland. Political separation tended to promote cultural differences, although all started with the same Kievan heritage. Francis Skorina, a scholar from Polotsk, who, early in the sixteenth century, translated the Bible and also published other works in Prague and in Vilna, has frequently been cited as the founder of a distinct southwestern Russian literary language and, in particular, as a forerunner of Belorussian literature. The Russian Orthodox Church too, as we know, finally split administratively, with a separate metropolitan established in Kiev to head the Orthodox in the Lithuanian state. The division of the Russians into the Great Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Belorussians, reinforced by centuries of separation, became a major factor in subsequent Russian history.
Part IV: MUSCOVITE RUSSIA
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