IN 1795, Poland was Divided among three neighboring powers and disappeared from the political map of Europe for the next 123 years. It had been a peculiar state. Though a kingdom, it was called a republic because its kings were elected, and their power was severely limited by the Polish parliament, the Sejm, established in 1493. Poland was also a commonwealth of two nations, Polish and Lithuanian, bound together by the unions of Krewo (1385) and Lublin (1569). The commonwealth’s territory was inhabited by peoples of many languages, including Polish, Ukrainian (or Ruthenian, as it was then called), Byelorussian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Yiddish. The ruling class, the szlachta, all spoke Polish, whatever their original ethnic background. This reflected not only Polish cultural superiority but also the fact that their many privileges were an extension of those Poles had originally won. By European standards the szlachta was unusually large, forming something like ten percent of the whole population, and therefore several times larger proportionally than the gentry and nobility combined in England or France. Only the szlachta had political power, and the scope of this power was extensive. On the other hand, members of the szlachta were passionately attached to their liberties and prided themselves on never having tolerated autocracy: absolute monarchy was for Poles a thing unknown.

To defend his country and participate in its political affairs were considered duties of every member of the szlachta. At the same time, the szlachta was virtually the sole culturally active social class. Soldierly and chivalric values were dominant, and, at least theoretically, whoever pursued material gain had to do so more or less surreptitiously. The more enlightened members of this class also cherished the traditions of religious and racial tolerance for which Poland had been famous when wars of religion ravaged Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There was no lack of obscurantism and class selfishness among the szlachta, but the constitution, proclaimed by the Sejm in 1791, was impressively liberal, apart from being the first codified constitution in Europe since antiquity. This liberalism alarmed Poland’s autocratic neighbors and precipitated its partition in 1795.