Russian Involvement in Partitions of XVIIIth Century Poland

Recently I got interested in some parts of Polish history, which I think are quite relevant to what we've been seeing in the world in recent years.

In the XVIIIth century Poland by unfortunate decisions and aspirations of King Augustus II the Strong came under the influence of Russia. Almost all XVIIIth century Polish monarchs and influential aristocratic families were trying to reform the country, strengthen its weak political system and get out of dependence on Russian tsars. Unfortunately without success. The Polish kings weren't able to reform the financial system, nor did a military reform or change systemic weaknesses.

This led to three partitions of Poland in 1772, 1792 and 1793 after which the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania ceased to exist. Its territories were split into three neighbouring powers: Russia, Prussia and Austria.

At least until the beginning of 1990, the understanding of this period was partial, which is rather a mild statement. Historians had only access to Prussian, Austrian and Polish documents from the XVIIIth century, but the lack, as it turns out the most important part of the picture: the Russian side. At that time the only available Russian narrative was available from Sergey Solovyov. However he wasn't interested in answering the question of how the partition of Poland was achieved, he was creating a narrative to support the imperial interests of Russia. A narrative which pushed the responsibility for the Russian conspiration far away from its source.

Historian's understanding of that period dramatically changed when Russian archives in Moscow started to be available. It turned out that the first partition of Poland wasn't achieved through Prussian and Austrian domination, but through intricate diplomatic play, manipulation of Polish society and bribes done by Russian ambassadors. Russians played an active role and concluded that inviting Prussia and Austria to take part in it was a small and acceptable price to pay to keep Poland under its sphere of influence and project a powerful image to the Western countries of its domination in the region.

The secret documents show that Russian doctrine towards Poland was to keep the Polish crown in the hands of a weak, somebody who is devoted to the tsar, with no strong connections to European aristocratic families, preferably somebody of weak intellectual abilities. It didn't work that well, but certainly, Polish kings were heavily constrained. In 1974, Tsar Catharina II came up with yet another way of introducing her influence over the Polish political scene. She wanted to install a Russian party in disguise, which could be used to directly influence parliamentarian sessions. This party was supposed to be created by non-Catholics. For that, Russia requested that all non-Catholics would have equal political rights. Something unheard of in all European countries at that time. It's also worth noting that at that time Poland was one of the most friendly countries for many religions, although not without problems. It's also worth mentioning that Russia didn't bother with such rights and freedoms on its soil. However, it was also very useful for creating a narrative about how modern the young at the time Tsar Catharina II was.

Thanks to open Russian archives the process which led to the first partition in 1772 is known in great detail. Whenever a short-term strategy of influence was not working Russians changed their ambassador and adapted their strategy, sometimes leaving the ambassador open doors to improvise (something that Vlad Vexler explains quite well in his YouTube channel). Sometimes using bribery, playing various Polish institutions against each other. What was surprising for historians is that the biggest Russian threat was an exaggerated fear of French influence. Because of the strong statement of the Polish king Russians considered dethroning the king, but they feared the chaos of a free election (Polish Kings were elected by the noble class). This could lead to unpredictable consequences. Polish King at that time was able to negotiate hard since Russia was at war with Turkey. In the end tsar allowed Prussia and Austria to the table. In a secret letter, Cathrine II suggested that she was ready to abandon Russian guarantees of Polish borders. That was a clear signal for Prussia, as it was looking forward to territorial gains for a long time without much success.

The XVIIIth century contains many other very interesting moments, where Russia used all their playbook tricks: spreading fear and misinformation, bribery, army movements (e.g. moving out to release tension, just to come back shortly) or being very careful to not even show a shadow of weakness at the European geopolitical scene. For example, the biggest threat to the Polish noble class (the only class that had political rights), was the Polish King for historical reasons. Hence the liberum veto: a tool to break a parliamentarian session without making any progress. Until the XVIIIth century, it was only used to defend the rights of the noble class, who were more afraid of bad reforms than not making progress with good ones. But in the XVIIIth century that proved to be one of the primary weaknesses strongly defended by tsars and used against Poland.

There were other weaknesses of Poland at that time. One was the treasury system. The taxes were not high enough to reform the country, provide good administration and have a modern army. The noble class had fears that raised taxes would stay forever, more than the Russian or Prussian armies were stationed in the country, although eventually due to rapes and robberies, the climate slightly changed. Although at that time it was too late. The lack of needed reform caused the Polish king to borrow money under his name to fund the country, which made him personally vulnerable even more - which was used against him in the final round.

At that time Polish society wasn't yet prepared to recognise the real threats, nither how the Russians operated. That has been learned the hard way in XIXth and XXth centuries, through national uprisings, with tremendous costs (many people were sent to Siberia), many war crimes, or horrific crimes in the 50th of XXth century done by communist apparatus.

References

In Polish

In English