A history of Russia

initiative in 1769 by seizing and 're-incorporating' certain Polish border areas - as well as to obtain for Prussia certain long-coveted Polish lands which separated Prussian dominions. By the first partition of Poland Russia obtained White Russian and Latvian Lithuania to the Dvina and the Dnieper rivers with some 1,300,000 inhabitants; Austria received so-called Galicia, consisting of Red Russia, with the city of Lemberg, or Lvov, of a part of western Podolia, and of southern Little Poland, with a total population of 2,650,000; Prussia took the so-called Royal, or Polish, Prussia, except Danzig and Thorn. Although moderate in size and containing only 580,000 people, the Prussian acquisition represented the most valuable gain of the three from the political, military, and financial points of view. In all, Poland lost about one-third of her territory and more than a third of her population.

This disaster spurred the Poles finally to enact basic reforms. Changes

began in 1773 and culminated in the activities of the celebrated Four Years' Diet of 1788-92 and in the constitution of May 3, 1791. The monarchy was to become hereditary, and the king obtained effective executive power; legislative authority was vested in a two-chamber diet with the lower chamber in a dominant position; the liberum veto disappeared in favor of majority rule; the diet included representatives of the middle class;

a cabinet of ministers, organized along modern lines, was created and made responsible to the diet. The Polish reform party profited from the benevolent attitude of Prussia, which hoped apparently to obtain further concessions from new Poland; Russia and Austria were again preoccupied with a Turkish war. But the May constitution brought matters to a head. While Prussia and Austria accepted it, Russia instigated the organization of the Confederation of Targowica in defense of the old order in May 1792. When the Russian army entered Poland on the invitation of the Confederaion, the Prussians reversed themselves and joined the invaders. The second partition of Poland followed in January 1793. This time Russia took more of Lithuania and most of the western Ukraine with a total of 3,000,00C inhabitants; Prussia seized Danzig, Thorn, and Great Poland with a combined population of 1,000,000; Austria did not participate. In addition, Russia obtained the right to move its troops into what remained of Poland and control its foreign policy.

The Poles responded in March 1794 with a great national uprising led by Thaddeus Kosciuszko. But, in spite of their courage, their fight was hopeless. The Poles were crushed by the Russians, commanded by Suvorov, and the Prussians. Austria rejoined her allies to carry out the third partition of Poland in October 1795. By its provisions, Russia acquired the remainder of Lithuania and Ukraine, with 1,200,000 inhabitants, as well as the Duchy of Courland, where Russian influence had predominated from the time of Empress Anne; Prussia took Mazovia, including Warsaw, with 1,000,000 people; Austria appropriated the rest of Little Poland, with Cracow, and another 1,500,000 inhabitants. Poland ceased to exist as an independent state.

The partitioning of Poland brought tragedy to the Poles. Its impact on the successful aggressors is more difficult to assess. As Lord and other historians have shown in detail, Prussia, Russia, and Austria scored a remarkable, virtually unprecedented, diplomatic and military coup. They dismembered and totally destroyed a large European state, eliminating an old enemy, rival, and source of conflicts, while at the same time adding greatly to their own lands, resources, and populations. Eastern Europe fell under their complete control, with France deprived of her old ally. Significantly, after the division of Poland, the three east European monarchies for a long time co- operated closely on the international scene - partners in crime, if you will. Yet, even some of the philosophes praised at least the first partition of Poland, calling it 'a triumph of rationality.' But the Poles thought differently and never accepted the dismemberment. As a result, Poland, Polish rights, and Polish boundaries remained an unresolved problem, or series of problems, for Europe and the world. For imperial Russia, the partitioning of Poland resulted in, among other things,

the Polish support of Napoleon in 1812 and the great rebellions of 1831 and 1863.

Russian scholars like to emphasize that the Russian case contrasted sharply with those of Prussia and Austria: in the three partitions of Poland Russia took old Russian lands, once part of the Kievan state, populated principally by Orthodox Ukrainians and White Russians, whereas the two German powers grabbed ethnically and historically Polish territory; the Russians, therefore, came as liberators, the Prussians and the Austrians as oppressors. If Catherine the Great deserved blame, it was not for her own acquisitions, but for allowing Prussia and Austria to expand at the expense of the Poles. Much can be said for this point of view, for it states the facts of the dismemberment correctly; yet at least two caveats seem in order. The brutal Russian policy toward Poland had to allow for the interests of other aggressors and indeed led to further repartitioning, with Warsaw and the very heart of the divided country linked to Russia in 1815. Also, Catherine the Great herself cared little about the faith or the ethnic origins of her new subjects. She thought simply in terms of power politics, position, and prestige - everything to the greater glory of Russia, and of course, to her own greater glory. After suppressing the Confederation of Bar, Russian troops also suppressed a desperate uprising of Ukrainian peasants against their Polish and Polonized landlords. These landlords continued to dominate and exploit the masses quite as effectively after the partitions as before them. In fact, some Ukrainian historians have complained that the oppression increased, because the strong Russian government maintained law and order more successfully than had the weak Polish authorities.

Foreign Policy: Certain Other Matters

Catherine the Great's foreign policy encompassed a wide range of activities and interests in addition to the relations with Turkey and Poland. Important developments included the Russian role in the League of Armed Neutrality, a war against Sweden, and the empress's reaction to the French Revolution. Russia advanced the doctrine of armed neutrality at sea in 1780 to protect the commerce of non-combatant states against arbitrary actions of the British who were engaged in a struggle with their American colonies. Several other European countries supported Russian proposals which eventually became part of international maritime law. Russia and her partners in the League insisted that neutral ships could pass freely from port to port and along the coast to combatants, that enemy goods in neutral ships, except contraband, were not subject to seizure, and that to be legal a blockade had to be enforced, rather than merely proclaimed.

Sweden, as already mentioned, attacked Russia in 1788, when the Russian armies were engaged in fighting Turkey. The Swedes repeatedly threatened St. Petersburg; however, the war proved inconclusive. The Treaty of Werala signed in August 1790, merely confirmed the pre-war boundary. Denmark, allied with Russia, participated in the hostilities against Sweden.

The French Revolution made a strong impression on Catherine the Great. At first she tried to minimize the import of the events in France and to dissociate them from the main course of European history and the Enlightenment. But, as the Revolution became more radical, the empress reacted with bitterness and hostility. At home she turned against critical intellectuals and indeed against much of the cultural climate that she herself had striven so hard to create. In respect to revolutionary France, she became more and more antagonistic and broke off relations in 1793 after the execution of Louis XVI. Of course, she also used the confusion and disarrangement produced in Europe by the French Revolution to carry out the second and third partitions of Poland without interference. Some historians believe that only the empress's sudden death prevented her from joining a military coalition against France.

Evaluations of Catherine the Great

Much has been written for and against Catherine the Great. The sovereign's admirers have included many intellectuals, from eighteenth-century philosophes led by Voltaire to Sidney Hook, who not long ago proclaimed her an outstanding example of the hero who makes history. The empress has received praise from numerous historians, in particular specialists in the cultural development, foreign relations, and expansion of Russia, including such judicious scholars as B. Nolde and Isabel de Madariaga. A few, for instance V. Leontovich, also commended her policy toward the gentry, in which they saw the indispensable first step in the direction of liberalism - rights, privileges, and advantages had to be acquired first by the top social group, and only after that could they percolate downward.

The critics of Catherine the Great, who have included many pre-revolutionary Russian historians as well as the Soviet scholars as a group, have concentrated overwhelmingly on the empress's social policy and the social conditions during her reign. Above all, they have castigated the reign as the zenith of serfdom in Russia. For this reason many of them would deny that Catherine II, in spite of her display and championing of culture, was an