Category Archives: Russia

by | 29 September 2025 · 7:12 pm

Relieving Lwów in 1919

From Kosciuszko, We Are Here!: American Pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919-1921, by Janusz Cisek (McFarland, 2025), Kindle Loc. 361ff.

Despite his harrowing experiences and incomplete recovery, [Merian] Cooper had no intention of returning to the U.S., nor of indulging in a more than well-earned rest. He quickly discovered another passion, service in the American Food Administration, which had started its activities also in Poland. Its chairman Herbert Hoover, had already visited Polish territory in 1913 and in November 1915 sent Vernon Kellogg there. He was to evaluate the situation of those in Poland who had been affected by the war. The situation was tragic. Right until the end of the war, the country had been pillaged by the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian armies. According to Hoover’s findings, the front rolled across some parts of territories populated by Poles seven times, causing death and enormous destruction to the infrastructure. Agriculture was particularly badly hit and due to this fact the food situation deteriorated. Many areas had not been sown for several years, others had fallen into neglect because of the death of the owner, lack of machinery or an epidemic. The worst disasters affected the poorest layers of society and children. When Poland again roused herself to an independent existence she not only faced military threats from East and West, but was forced into battle against hunger and epidemics, which attacked her together with the Bolshevik armies advancing westward.

The prices of basic articles increased repeatedly several-fold. Even firewood was rationed due to lack of coal. The tragic food situation was reflected in the reports of the U.S. Military Attache to Warsaw. Herbert Hoover had already drawn attention to the suffering in Poland in his speech entitled “An Appeal to World Conscience,” enumerating it along with the suffering in Belgium, northern France, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, Armenia, and Russia.

At Hoover’s initiative on January 24, 1919, Congress passed an appropriation bill of $100,000,000 to finance appropriate aid. In a later period, the financial aid was significantly increased. Prior to this resolution, Hoover, in December 1918, before the official recognition of the Polish government by the U.S., sent Kellogg to Warsaw to ascertain Poland’s needs and to examine the possibilities of providing effective help. Kellogg together with Colonel William R. Grove and others arrived in Warsaw on January 3, 1919, almost at the same time as Paderewski. After a tour of most of the centers, Hoover’s envoys estimated that from a general population of 27 million who were under the control of the Warsaw government, at least four million were famine stricken, and another million were in need of additional nourishment. Shortly after, food distribution stations run by Americans appeared in many Polish towns. In May 1920, at the height of the operation, 1,315,490 Polish children were being fed on a daily basis. There was particular hardship in Lwów and the surrounding area. Much of central and western Poland had escaped military threat and the presence of foreign armies, but Lwów was the arena of an extremely complicated conflict. During the partitions, the town was one of the most shining centers of Polish culture and also home to Pilsudski’s strongest military centers. Lwów itself had a strong Polish majority; however, the villages of eastern Galicia remained Ukrainian. The only Polish element in the countryside was the intelligentsia and landowners. On November 1, 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was in a complete state of impotence, the population of Lwów was surprised by a proclamation of the establishment of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic and by a Ukrainian military action which aimed to occupy the city. For the next three weeks there waged a severe and bloody battle. Not until November 21, 1918, did volunteer and regular Polish units come to the relief of the occupied city.

The defense of Lwów passed into history as an example of heroism, patriotism and the determination to unite this territory with Poland. Unfortunately, it was not a conclusive victory. Lwów and the immediate city outskirts continued to come under fire from Ukrainian artillery. The only railway line linking Lwów with Poland was sabotaged, and trains derailed several times. Practically every transport going to the city had to fight its way by force. There was no electricity, water or food supplies in the city. It is not surprising that the U.S. Food Administration considered food-aid for Lwów as one of its tasks. Merian Cooper was placed in charge of the mission there.

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Filed under economics, food, nationalism, Poland, Russia, U.S., Ukraine, war

by | 28 September 2025 · 7:30 pm

Defending a New Poland, 1919-1921

From Kosciuszko, We Are Here!: American Pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919-1921, by Janusz Cisek (McFarland, 2025), Kindle Loc. 67ff.

The presence of American airmen in the Polish army was preceded by a series of efforts between the individual enlistment of officers, soldiers and citizens of the United States and the drafting of a separate American legion to fight in Poland. Endeavors in this field lasted as long as the Polish–Bolshevik war itself. Their one tangible result was the establishment of the Kościuszko Squadron, a military unit unique in being the sole representative of the Western Hemisphere in this war, since in 1920 the only regular military forces helping Poland were the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic under Ataman Semen Petlura and a small Belorussian Army under the command of General Stanisław Bułak Bałachowicz. Unlike the American volunteers, both of these formations fought primarily for the independence of their own nations.

The efforts of representatives of the Polish Republic were based on a variety of factors. The main one was the threat of German and Russian revolution and the continuation of the war in Eastern Europe. When Poland regained her independence in 1918, her borders were not yet defined. Her administration was based mainly on the dedication of civil servants of Polish descent, who remained on their jobs after the fall of the three occupying powers, Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. The Army comprised barely a few tens of thousands of veterans of the Polish Military Organization, the Polish Legions, and officers and soldiers who gradually flowed in from the armies of the partitioning powers. After four years of war, during which enemy armies plundered everything that could be of any use, there was nothing left in Poland. The infrastructure of roads, railways, bridges, water-supply systems and power-plants was almost completely destroyed. One must remember that the front rolled through some areas several times.

Józef Piłsudski, Commander-in-Chief and Head of the Polish State, and the entire nation faced an enormous challenge. Confronted by shortages, many Polish politicians turned towards the West. It was not only about delivering aid to a suffering population. It was also of primary importance to repel the Bolshevik armies approaching from the east and to prevent the communist revolution in Russia from uniting with the German “Spartakus” movement. However, the young Polish state did not possess enough military might.

Thus Pilsudski’s attention concentrated on bringing to Poland the 80,000 strong army of General Józef Haller, which included a significant number of Polish residents of the United States and which was still stationed in France after November 1918. In fact, it remained there until April 1919, and became the pivot of many plans both political and military within the Polish National Committee, and also in French, British, and American circles. Haller’s Army was officially chartered in France by a decree of the French president on June 4, 1917. Following insistent appeals by the famous pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski to President Woodrow Wilson, permission was given also to recruit Poles living in America. Up until the end of the war, 24,260 American Poles served in the army’s ranks. The rest were recruited from prisoners of war, Poles living in western Europe, and Polish volunteers from other countries. That superbly trained and equipped army was no mere bagatelle in November 1918, when Poland reappeared on the European map. For both the Americans and the Poles, it had already set a precedent—as reborn Poland’s first army recruited from beyond her national territory and as the first American contingent to fight beyond its own national boundries in the sole interests of a foreign state.

The hope given by the existence of this precedent was rekindled when some of the hundreds of thousands of demobilized soldiers and officers of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), who were mainly based in France, indicated their readiness to serve, even under a foreign flag. It did not only affect Poland.

Among the important factors, it is also worth mentioning that as a consequence of the partitions, a significant group of Polish officers served in the armies of other states, which obviously influenced organization of the Polish army after over a century of occupation. In November and December 1918, the cadre of officers, at first derived from the Polish Legions of Józef Piłsudski, began to fill with Poles who, lacking other opportunities, had trained and become officers in the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, or to a lesser extent German armies. One can assume that in the Polish Army there was a conducive atmosphere for the transfer of officers and soldiers from other armies. We already mentioned here the consistent threat to the Republic, prevalent from the very beginning of its independent existence. Polish politicians and the military thought that a foreign military contingent would have a restraining influence on the appetites of both her large and small neighbors. On the assumptions made above, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a few days after the signing of the armistice in November 1918, asked the American Secretary of War Newton D. Baker for permission to discharge all soldiers and officers of Polish extraction from the American Army to enable them to serve in the Polish Army. According to various estimates—independently of Haller’s army, which was not a part of the American Armed Forces—there were approximately 200,000–230,000 officers and soldiers “of Polish extraction” who were serving under the Star Spangled Banner. It needs to be stressed that in the aforementioned appeal to Baker, Paderewski was only concerned with Polish “resident aliens,” excluding American citizens. Baker, who had been considered a friend to Poland, refused, fearing that the officers and soldiers would serve a nationalistic cause, which he suspected Poland of propagating. This argument managed to convince Wilson, thanks to which the project failed.

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Filed under Austria, Germany, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, Russia, U.S., Ukraine, war

by | 3 August 2025 · 6:11 am

Poles in Japan vs. Russia, 1904

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 526-528:

In 1904 war broke out between Russia and Japan. As odd as it may seem, the clash with its tiny Asian neighbor proved troublesome for the Russians. The war effort led to problems at home and provided new opportunities, and new challenges, for the Poles of the Russian Empire.

The hostilities provided impetus for the Poles (always on the lookout for opportunity in the international arena) to plot. Both Piłsudski and Dmowski made their way to Tokyo, independently of each other, and each with a different agenda. Piłsudski offered the Japanese Polish military services; his men would fight the Russians on their home front, thus helping Japan win the war. Dmowski came to warn the Japanese against taking up Piłsudski’s offer; he expected that the war might compel the Russians to make concessions to the Poles. While the double visit might have been seen as a comedy of errors (the two men actually met while in Tokyo, discussed their respective views, and respectfully chose to differ), the fact that the bemused Japanese were willing to hear each side suggests the Poles were being treated as if they were genuine players in the international realm, and not subjects of Russia. And, although they declined to use the Poles to fight, the Japanese general staff did provide Piłsudski with some money and war materièl in the hopes he might gather intelligence for them.

The Revolution of 1904–1907

In the meantime the Russo-Japanese War continued, increasingly showing the weakness of the eventual loser, Russia. This weakness had repercussions for the Poles of the empire. The diplomatic efforts of Piłsudski and Dmowski notwithstanding, the events of 1904 and beyond would be more noteworthy for the upheaval and bloodshed they engendered. In the fall of that year, a working-class demonstration broke out in Warsaw’s Grzymułtowski Square in which Piłsudski’s PPS fighters (some sixty strong) defended the crowds against the Russian police and mounted Cossacks. A number of participants were injured, while over four hundred were arrested and six lost their lives—as did one Russian policeman. This was the first armed clash between Poles and Russians since 1863….

Back in the Polish lands, strikes in places such as Warsaw and Łódź raised the specter of revolution; martial law was declared. Poles were becoming radicalized, especially the Polish workers, many of whom lost their jobs as a result of the economic decline brought on by the war.

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by | 30 July 2025 · 3:24 pm

Life in Poland’s Partitions, 1795

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 421-424:

Life under the three empires took on distinctly different forms. If regionalism was a problem earlier, it now threatened to become even more intractable. Although the three partitioning powers prided themselves on being enlightened states, each approached the new territories and new subjects differently. Thus, a new layer of regionalism was superimposed on the old ones. The newly acquired population was incorporated into each of the partitioned territories in different ways. Each empire was further diversified and internationalized—perhaps in ways even the partitioning powers had not anticipated. Likewise recall that, although the final partition of Poland came only in 1795, already since 1772 certain parts of the country had come under foreign rule, which left the territories further differentiated.

Prussia became a much more heterogeneous entity, although it sought to dilute the concentration of Poles in the newly acquired territories. The Prussian state took over the Crown lands, which it sold to German landowners; German bureaucrats took the place of Polish officeholders. No municipal self-rule or noble assemblies were allowed under Prussian rule. A Protestant power, Prussia also took over properties belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. Religious issues complicated the picture. Prussia truly became a multiethnic and multidenominational state. It was faced with either dealing with, or doing away with, diversity.

Prussia eventually undermined the Polish nobles by taking away their privileges. The position of their peasants was strengthened. The position of Jews was changed beyond recognition, their corporate rights undone. Rather, Friedrich the Great delineated two types of Jews: those who were to assimilate and in the process receive civil rights and those who did not have these rights and would be expelled from the province. This facilitated a relatively rapid Germanization of the first group—certainly compared to the two other Central and East European empires.

The situation in Austria looked quite different. Under Maria Theresa and especially Joseph II, various reforms were implemented—reforms that could be considered enlightened. But under Francis I, scarred by the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic periods, reaction ensued. Seeking to centralize power, the Habsburgs took away various privileges of the Galician nobility. Indeed, many nobles suffered dreadfully under Austrian rule: if they were not able to provide proof of nobility—something that was difficult for many an old noble family fallen on hard times—they were reduced to the status of peasants. This déclassé nobility was clearly the worst off, although the burden of taxation reduced further nobles to penury. The peasants came to fare slightly better, as they were protected by legislation and the amount of time they spent working for the landlord was regulated. Jews were obliged to take German surnames and serve in the military (like members of all the estates), but their communities still had jurisdiction over religious matters. Although a staunchly Catholic power, Austria clearly did not trust its own population: witness the strong censorship of newspapers and other printed materials in the empire. The province would remain backward, socially as well as economically.

The territories that came under Russian rule—the most extensive of the lot—were the most ethnically diverse. The easternmost lands were inhabited by people we would now call Belarusians and Ukrainians (but which then were most likely termed Ruthenes or even Russians), Lithuanians, Tatars, and Jews. Poles were mainly noble landowners. It was Polish (Sarmatian) culture that had long radiated out through the entirety of the Commonwealth and that still carried weight.

Paradoxically, these lands witnessed little initially in the way of reforms. Even the old courts and laws were maintained. The nobles within the Russian Empire initially were not as inconvenienced as were nobles under Austrian and Prussian rule, except for the fact that Crown lands were taken over. By contrast, peasants found Russian rule more onerous: now classified as serfs, they were the chattel—that is, the personal property—of the landholders, who could do with them as they wished. Furthermore, they would eventually be subjected to Russia’s onerous military service: recruits were taken for a period of twenty-five years.

The biggest problem for the Russians related to religion. The imperial authorities would do away with the Uniate (Greek Catholic) religion in the 1830s, forcing Uniates to convert to Russian Orthodoxy. As the partitions provided Russia with her first real encounter with large Jewish populations, she decided to restrict them to a region that would become known as the Pale of Settlement; this swath of land was more or less coterminous with the boundaries of the former Commonwealth. Unlike their coreligionists elsewhere, Jews, thus, could not penetrate further into the heart of the empire, that is, into Russia proper.

Such was the starting point. It would not be the ending point. The arrangement ratified in 1795, and reaffirmed in 1797, proved less permanent than the partitioning powers might have imagined.

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by | 29 July 2025 · 5:59 am

Kościuszko in Poland

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 404-407:

The last third of the eighteenth century had initiated an increasingly painful spiral of action and reaction. Catherine’s trampling of Polish religious sensibilities led to the Confederation of Bar, which in turn resulted in the first partition. That shock propelled Poles to contemplate the series of reforms that culminated in the Constitution of May 3, 1791. The reaction to this was the Targowica Confederation and the second partition. Despite the Russian terror and intimidation, however, not all Poles were resigned to this fate.

One of these Poles was Tadeusz Kościuszko. Hailing from the region of Polesie (in the vicinity of today’s Belarus), Kościuszko was one of the poor but deserving young noblemen who received an education from the reform-minded Piarists, as well as at the Knights’ School in Warsaw. After a brief period spent in France (where he studied further) and elsewhere in western Europe, Kościuszko headed across the Atlantic in 1776. The Pole offered his services to George Washington and the Continental Congress. Kościuszko’s arrival was timely, and his services were both needed and appreciated by the Americans fighting for their independence. The Pole was given a commission and put to great use his skill as both a military engineer and a field commander. Among other things, Kościuszko fortified and defended places such as Philadelphia, Saratoga, and West Point, thus enabling these locations to withstand British attack. For his contributions to the American victory, the Polish nobleman was given United States citizenship and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Army before returning home in 1784.

Having secured a position in the Polish army as of 1789, he fought on the side of King Stanisław in August 1792. However, upon learning the summer of 1793 that the king had acceded to the Targowica Confederation, General Kościuszko resigned his commission and left the country. France awarded him honorary citizenship. While in emigration, he was prevailed upon to return to rump Poland to lead a national insurrection.

With his eye-opening experience in America as well as Poland, Kościuszko was the right person for the job. He was convinced that the Poles had to fight a new type of war, one in which the entire citizenry rose to defend their country. In other words, he sought to mobilize the entire population of Poland—all estates, all regions. The challenge of getting burghers and peasants as well as nobles to join the fight did not escape Kościuszko. He admitted himself, “we must awaken love of our country among those who hitherto have not even known that they have a country.”

Kościuszko, thus, was a man with a mission. Although given dictatorial powers to lead the national rising, the general was not one to abuse them. This is seen from the oath he gave in Kraków on March 24, 1794, when he took control of the rising that would bear his name. Kościuszko swore he would use the dictatorial powers invested in him “only for the defense of the integrity of the frontiers, the gaining of sovereignty for the nation, and the establishment of universal freedom.” He truly was an anti-magnate.

The all-powerful military commander set about gaining support from all sectors of society. An important source of manpower had to be the numerous peasantry. While in Kraków, Kościuszko conscripted local peasants, who—given their lack of other weapons—turned their scythes into bayonets and joined the battle for Polish freedom. (A lack of arms and ammunition was a big problem for the insurrectionists.) Fighting alongside what remained of the Polish army, such peasants—it was hoped—would be the mainstay of Kościuszko’s insurrectionary forces. Having over the course of several weeks assembled an army of some four thousand regular troops and two thousand peasant scythe men, Kościuszko set north to engage the Russians in battle.

The two forces met near the village of Racławice on April 4. The Russian army was in for a surprise. The first battle of the Kościuszko Insurrection would look like nothing the Russians had ever fought. The Polish military commander employed tactics inspired by his experience in America. While the regular troops engaged the Russians, the fearless peasant scythe men raced out from behind them and toward the Russian cannons. They captured a dozen cannon and caused disarray and dismay among the Russians, who hastily retreated—if not before taking heavy losses. The Russians also left behind much-needed ammunition and arms.

Kościuszko’s secret weapon—the Polish peasant—proved decisive at the battle of Racławice. After the battle, the military commander famously ennobled several peasant scythe men, the most notable of whom was Bartosz Głowacki, for their bravery. Kościuszko also donned the traditional peasant cloak as a sign of recognition of what this new and vital part of the nation had achieved. Still, for numerous reasons this did not result in an influx of peasant scythe men. The following month, Kościuszko would issue a proclamation at Połaniec that gave the peasants personal freedom and reduced their labor dues for the duration of the insurrection. Like the potent image of peasant scythe men defending their country, the picturesque symbolism of a nobleman in peasant garb was but a first step in breaking down the barriers that had separated the two estates.

Kościuszko embraced the peasant out of conviction, not out of convenience. This, after all, was the man who had freed his own peasants upon his return to Poland and later would bequeath the property and money he had in the United States to free as many American slaves as was possible, charging his friend Thomas Jefferson to execute this, his last will and testament. Not for nothing did Jefferson famously call Kościuszko “the purest son of liberty.”

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Filed under Britain, democracy, labor, military, nationalism, Poland, Russia, slavery, U.S., war

by | 18 July 2025 · 4:42 pm

Poland’s Last Royal Election, 1764

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 366-367:

[T]he outcome of Polish elections in the eighteenth century had hardly been a matter of domestic choice. The second Wettin himself owed his election to the heavy hand of the foreign coalition that saw fit to back him.

In this regard, the election of 1764 would be similar to the election of 1734. Russian troops would once again facilitate the promotion of the candidate favored by Tsarina Catherine II. The tsarina’s interference in Commonwealth affairs would come at a higher price this time, despite the fact that the other candidates put forward—the aged Hetman Branicki and an underage Wettin—were hardly attractive. Still, Catherine would have to finance the purchase of votes so as to overcome the opposition of the republicans. Taking no chances, August Czartoryski organized an armed confederation that, disallowing the use of the liberum veto, would guide the Convocation Seym to completion and even introduce some reforms. Ultimately these developments caused the leaders of the opposition, including Branicki, to flee the country.

Who was Catherine’s candidate? Like the candidate advanced by the magnate-led republicans, he was a Piast, if one with a rather unusual major qualification. Stanisław Poniatowski was the son and namesake of the recently deceased former leader of the Family. Yet his claim to fame was not solely—or even primarily—because he was related to the rich, powerful, and influential Czartoryski brothers, his uncles, who had allied themselves with Russia to secure the succession. Rather, Poniatowski attained the crown thanks to what turned out to be a happy accident: when he was in Saint Petersburg in the years 1756–1758, he had been the lover of the young wife of Grand Duke Peter—Catherine, herself.

Nearly a decade later, Catherine saw him as the perfect pawn in her game of controlling what happened in her increasingly impotent and unruly neighbor: any reforming to be done was to come at her instigation. She envisaged the Commonwealth of Both Nations [Poland and Lithuania] as a vassal state, a well-run vassal state. The tsarina’s selection of Poniatowski was supported by Friedrich II, who nonetheless preferred to keep the Commonwealth the way it was, weak and ineffectual. It was thought that Poniatowski, who incidentally had no wealth of his own (after his father’s death he was supported by his cousins) and who held only the amusing title of Lithuanian Master of the Pantry, would be a malleable and subservient Piast.

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by | 17 July 2025 · 12:52 pm

Poland’s Silver Age Ends

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 329-330:

The seventeenth century had proven a mixed bag for the Commonwealth. It began on a relatively high note, with the reign of Zygmunt III Vasa that ushered in the so-called Silver Age. Mid-century, however, the Commonwealth nearly imploded, wracked by devastating invasions, civil war, and the loss of left-bank Ukraine. The country’s recovery from the [Swedish] Deluge, although noteworthy, was only partial. The nobility clung ever more tightly to its cherished Golden Freedoms and rejected anything that smacked of political reform, particularly if it might lead to a strengthening of the monarch’s position within the country. Even the triumphant, world-historical victory of Sobieski and his forces at Vienna—the high point of the century—did more for Western Christendom than for the Commonwealth itself.

The final election of the seventeenth century did not lead to the confirmation of a new Piast (or native Sarmatian) dynasty. Despite his efforts, King Jan III Sobieski proved unable to secure for his sons the Polish succession. To the contrary, the election of 1697 would mark a reversal of recent policy, which since the Deluge had given preference to candidates of noble Piast heritage. From the vantage point of hindsight, an interesting pattern emerges. Consider the elections both preceding and following the triplet of Vasa reigns. The first two elections, limited to foreign candidates, put one regrettable (Valois) and one memorable (Batory) candidate on the Polish throne. The anti-foreign backlash following the abdication of Jan Kazimierz Vasa (which marked the end of the Polish Vasa dynasty) put two Piasts (native candidates) on the Polish throne: once again, one regrettable (Wiśniowiecki) and one memorable (Sobieski) candidate.

Despite the fact that Sobieski not only had significant military victories under his belt but also had fathered sons who could contend for the throne, the electoral pendulum swung once again—out of their reach….

This clear rejection of the Sobieski heir—and, by extension, all candidates of Polish/Sarmatian noble descent—opened the doors wide to foreign involvement. This time, the results of the election ended up demonstrating to what extent the Commonwealth elections could be used in the power struggle between the various major European players.

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by | 15 July 2025 · 1:05 pm

Poland-Lithuania Shrinks

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 302-304:

The population of the Grand Duchy [of Lithuania] had demonstrated its commitment to the Commonwealth, of which they considered themselves citizens. Perhaps a creative extension of citizenship was the answer to the Cossack debacle? Not relying on divine intercession, the nobles of the Commonwealth strove to put an end to the civil war with the Cossacks via diplomatic means. They entered into negotiations with the new leader of the Cossacks, Ivan Vyhovsky. Already earlier it had become clear that his predecessor Khmelnytsky was not entirely satisfied with the outcome of Pereiaslav. Centralizing and humiliating Russian rule proved very different from the genuine autonomy the Cossacks had expected. After all, not all Cossacks were uneducated; whether they had studied at the Mohyla Academy, elsewhere in the Commonwealth, or even in the West, they had been exposed to ideas at great odds with the autocracy they now encountered. Even the Orthodox clergy of the Cossack lands, especially Kyiv, were unhappy at being subordinated to Moscow. Among other things, this dissonance and the resulting dissatisfaction led Khmelnytsky to join the other potential partitioners of Poland—Sweden, Transylvania, and Brandenburg—at the end of 1656.

After Khmelnytsky’s death in 1657, Vyhovsky reached agreement with the Commonwealth. The two parties convened in a town of the Kyiv palatinate near the border with Russia. Although lying to the east of Pereiaslav, Hadiach (Polish: Hadziacz) notably marked a move westward. The Treaty of Hadiach established the terms of the Cossacks’ return to the Commonwealth—terms that were far better than the Cossacks had ever been offered before.

Signed in 1658, this treaty has been compared to the Union of Lublin, and for good reason. The Commonwealth of Two (Both) Nations would be transformed into a Commonwealth of Three Nations—the third being a newly established Duchy of Ruthenia. Consisting of the former palatinates of Kyiv, Bratslav, and Chernihiv, the Duchy of Ruthenia would be an autonomous entity, on par with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Under the leadership of the common king, the Duchy would share a common foreign policy and send its own citizens to the Seym. A certain number of Cossacks would be accepted into the Commonwealth nobility.

The new Duchy would also retain its distinctiveness: executive power would be wielded by the hetman of the Ruthenian army, some thirty thousand strong. The Uniate Church would be disallowed on the Duchy’s territory, where the Orthodox Church would be the favored religion, its higher clergy members of the Senate. The Mohyla Academy would be treated on par with other institutions of higher learning in the Commonwealth.

In short, the Cossacks appear to have successfully won the rights and privileges they had long sought. No longer to be looked down upon, they were to be treated as an equal partner. The Cossacks would be the third “nation” of the Commonwealth—a Ruthenian/Cossack/Orthodox one.

The Seym ratified the Treaty of Hadiach the following year, marking a sea change in the mentality of the Commonwealth’s citizenry, the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. For many Cossacks back in the hetmanate, however, it was too little, too late—at least a decade too late. To be sure, power politics within the hetmanate likely helped to determine the rejection of the proposal. Vyhovsky had been acting in the name of the underage son of Khmelnytsky, Yuri, who now displaced Vyhovsky at the top of the hetmanate. Yet, might the deal still go through—be pushed through? For a moment it looked as though the Poles, who now amassed the largest army in their history—a force of some seventy to eighty thousand, and one that had a string of victories over the Russian and Cossack armies in 1660—would be able to expel the Russians from the Grand Duchy and implement the new arrangement with the Cossacks.

Ultimately, this was not to be. As a result of internal political problems, the Commonwealth was not able to profit from this impressive surge. The terms reached between Russia and the Commonwealth in the armistice of 1667 at Andrusovo were by Commonwealth accounts devastating. The armistice confirmed the Commonwealth’s loss of both the Smolensk region in the north and the Cossack lands to the south, albeit in a novel configuration. The Cossack Hetmanate itself was partitioned between the two states—the dividing line being the Dnieper River. Territories on the right bank of the Dnieper (that is, in the west) were awarded to the Poles, while the left (east) bank came under Russian rule. The Russians also reserved to themselves control over Kyiv, on the right bank of the Dnieper, ostensibly for a two-year period …. The city would never again be part of the Commonwealth. As the famous mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz observed at the time (albeit from his comfortable vantage point in the west), the “barbaric East” was on the rise.

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by | 12 July 2025 · 5:55 am

Catholic vs. Orthodox Slavs

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 231-235:

The war with Muscovite Russia was hardly over. Despite the accomplishments of the valiant Transylvanian [Stefan Batory], Polish-Russian relations had yet to enter into their most interesting—indeed, most incredible—phase. In the interim, another development took place, one that would have important repercussions for the battle not only for territory but also for the hearts and minds of the borderland inhabitants.

More precisely, this new development represented a war for souls. At the same time that Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy were vying for control of the Rus’ principalities, questions of jurisdiction over the Orthodox population of Eastern Europe generated sparks. This was the world of the Greek Church, adherents of Christianity in its Byzantine (that is, Eastern) rite.

Byzantine Christianity differed from the Church of Rome in a number of ways, not all of them doctrinal. Whereas in Roman Catholicism the high church language was Latin, there was no one single high church language in the Greek world: the Slavic lands had been given their own church language by the earliest missionaries to the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius. This language came to be known as Old Church Slavonic. Distinct from the spoken vernaculars of the region, it was nonetheless for the most part comprehensible to the population.

The relationship of the church and state in the East was also different than in the West. Following the pattern of Byzantium, the Eastern Church pragmatically subordinated itself to the authority of the state in which it functioned. Another seemingly obvious distinction: the Eastern churches did not owe allegiance to the pope in Rome but, rather, acknowledged the patriarch of Constantinople. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the position of the Greek Church was much diminished. This allowed for some jockeying within Eastern Christendom, especially in the East Slavic lands, where the majority of the faithful resided and the religion flourished.

To be sure, even before the Ottomans moved into Byzantium, not all was well in the Eastern Greek world further north. This in part was the result of the fact that, from its inception, the head of the Greek Church in the Rus’ lands had been the metropolitan of Kyiv. The shift of state borders that resulted in the Greek faithful residing in different states complicated the ecclesiastical picture and led various clergymen to vie with each other for influence over the faithful of Eastern Europe. To give one example: the Bulgarian clergyman who was chosen as metropolitan of the Ruthenian lands in 1415 soon found himself excommunicated by the patriarch of Constantinople, whose mind had been poisoned by the metropolitan of Moscow, who wanted this position for himself. Not until 1458 was Poland-Lithuania able to establish an independent Kyivo-Halych metropolitanate for its Orthodox population.

…

Those in the Commonwealth realized that they needed to counteract such moves. Essentially there were two options. They could either establish an autocephalous Orthodox church for the country or bring about church union—here, union with what was still the biggest force in Christianity: the Church in Rome.

The latter option won out, in part because the Church of Rome had made similar efforts in the past. First attempted in Constance, union between the Roman and Greek Churches had been achieved at the Council of Florence (1439), although nothing ultimately came of it (it is this attempt at union, incidentally, that led to the formation of an autocephalous Orthodox church in Moscow). Yet another sign that union was the direction favored by the Vatican was that, as early as 1573, a Greek College was opened in Rome as well as a Congregation for Eastern Churches.

The Commonwealth, thus, was convinced to work toward union and capitalized on a desire among Commonwealth clergymen not to subordinate themselves to Muscovy—in particular, not to send their financial dues there. This became visible in the synods that took place in the town of Brest, along the internal Polish-Lithuanian border, at the end of the sixteenth century. The Greek clergy decided to support the idea of union—with qualifications. While they would recognize the authority of the pope in Rome, they were not ready to make many changes that would affect the look and feel of their religion. They were allowed to retain their distinctive Eastern rite: the liturgy in Church Slavonic, as well as other traditions, including the marriage of the clergy. A selling point for the Orthodox bishops was a further advantage specified in the act of union: they were to be admitted into the Senate of the Commonwealth, on par with the Roman Catholic bishops.

This Union of Brest, as the 1596 agreement was called, produced a new phenomenon in the Commonwealth: so-called Uniates. These were Eastern-rite Catholics, in official parlance members of the Greek-Catholic Confession of the Slavonic Rite. In other words, while they retained their traditional Eastern rite and practices, they were part of the Catholic Church.

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by | 28 June 2025 · 9:59 am

Poland Becomes Catholic, 966

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 28-31:

Mieszko seems to have led the Polanie as of about the year 960. The reason we know of him and his state is that, like the Moravians to the south, the Germans (that is, the Christian population to the west, which was part of post-Carolingian Europe, the eastern part of which was ruled by the German emperor) were beginning to pay attention to this emerging state centered around Gniezno [cf. gniazdo ‘nest’]. Early recorded mention of Mieszko’s doings has come down to us from a Jewish trader, Ibrahim Ibn Jakub, who, while on business in Magdeburg in 966, learned of the existence of a well-organized state that was conquering some of the Slavic tribes to its west. A Saxon monk noted the existence of the dynamically expanding state, which likewise caught the attention of Otto I. Titled Emperor of the Romans by the pope only in 962, the German Otto had pretentions to the same region. Before long, Mieszko’s realm came to be referred to as Poland, or the land of the Poles.

It is customary to date the beginnings of the history of Poland to 966. This choice of date reflects a momentous decision made that year. Until this point, the Polanie and the neighboring tribes in the vicinity of Central and Eastern Europe were for the most part pagans. This was not true of the Germans further west, who had already converted to Christianity in late antiquity or the early medieval period; nor was it true for the Moravians, who had witnessed the ninth-century ministry of Cyril and Methodius, the missionaries to the Slavs, although by this time—a century later—they were under German influence. (Note that Kyivan Rus’, lying further to the east, was baptized only as of 988, but its baptism came from Greek sources, that is, Constantinople.) In this part of the world, of world-historical significance was what religion these pagan rulers chose, and at whose hands they were baptized.

It is in 966 that the baptism of Mieszko—head of the Gniezno state, this nascent Polish polity—took place. It is both interesting and important that this was facilitated not by the Germans but by a Bohemian (Czech) connection. A Czech state had emerged around the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries; first baptized by Saint Methodius, the Czechs relatively quickly came under Bavarian influence, their church under the bishop of Regensburg. In 965 Mieszko strengthened the connection with this Slavic neighbor by marrying a Bohemian princess, the daughter of Boleslav I. This Dubravka, known variously also as Dąbrówka or Dobrava, was a Christian, and she likely brought some Christian clergy with her to Gniezno. The next year, Mieszko accepted baptism at their hands.

What is important for the future history of Poland is that this was Western, and not Eastern, Christianity—that is, Mieszko was baptized into the Church of Rome, as it was then known. No less important is that baptism came from Bohemia, not from the imperial power to the west. Mieszko furthermore took care to ensure that his state was placed under the care of missionaries. As missionary priests were directly subordinated to the papacy and not to a bishop within any given territory, this gave the nascent Polish church more flexibility because it was not placed under another sovereign state.

Thus began the Poles’ connection with Roman Catholicism, one that dates back a millennium. It is a connection that has stuck. Until very recently, many people around the world associated Poland above all with the man who, until not so long ago, was head of the Universal Church—Karol Wojtyła, better known as Pope John Paul II. During his first trip to Poland after he became pontiff, John Paul II famously declared to his countrymen that “it was impossible, without reference to Christ, to understand the history of the Polish nation, this great thousand-year-old community that so profoundly shapes my existence and that of each of us.” While clearly there is much to this statement, one cannot say that the Christianization of Poland or the Poles’ historic identification with Roman Catholicism were inevitable. Nor (as we shall see) is the belief that all “real” Poles have always been, or must be, Roman Catholics borne out by the country’s history, certainly not if one examines that history in its entirety. (Such Polish paradoxes await the patient reader.)

So what motivated Mieszko’s conversion? The baptism of “Poland” into the larger Roman Catholic family appears to have been, above all, a political decision and not simply (if such matters are ever simple!) a matter of spiritual conversion. It likely extended originally only to Mieszko’s court and entourage, who through the person of his wife and her entourage were pulled into the Christian orbit. Surely Mieszko realized that, by accepting Christianity, he would no longer be subject to incursions from the west—at least, the types of incursions from the eastern marches that doubtless had long been intended to turn these Slavic peoples from paganism to Christianity. By converting, he would deny the Holy Roman Empire the pretext to interfere with his state. The fact that the baptism came at the hands of a missionary who was under papal jurisdiction proved important. The Polish church thus would not be subordinated to the Holy Roman Empire or any other lay power. Moreover, as denizens of a Christian power the Poles could now seek to spread Christianity to other pagan tribes in the region (for example, the Pomeranians or the tribes further east), thus expanding their own influence.

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