Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

“ The union was at first very loose, depending only on the person of the sovereign, but it became constantly closer, until in 1569 the two states agreed to have a common Diet, sitting at Warsaw. Lithuania retained until the last, however, its separate officials, treasury, and army (compare pp. 171 and 310, and note 29) . A constant stream of colonisation flowed east from Poland (called the Crown or the Kingdom) into Lithuania (p. 168) , until the gentry of that country became Polish, while the peasantry remained either Lithuanian or Russian. ”

“ For the inhabitants of Lithuania have repeatedly protested against a fusion with Poland, regarding the Poles as their bitterest enemies. In 1916, for instance, the Lithuanian Socialists demanded independence, and declared against union with Poland: the Union of White Russian peasants in the following year (at a Congress they held at Minsk) issued a proclamation demanding union with Russia; in 1917 the Lithuanian Army Congress in Petrograd demanded that Lithuanians then included in Polish regiments should be allowed to transfer themselves to Russian regiments. ”

“ Though the mass of the Lithuanian population, in spite or several centuries of union with Poland, had never been assimilated to the dominant race, and remained in language and creed more nearly allied to the Russians than the Poles, the nobles formed an integral part of the Polish nation, and possessed sufficient power over their serfs to drive them into the field to fight for they knew not what. ”

“ Just as Russia will not, according to the view of the National Democrats, object to the loss of Lithuania, so Lithuania will not object to Poland’s gain. Educated opinion there sees as clearly as the National Democrats themselves that she cannot stand alone, for that would speedily mean that she would be penetrated by Germany, and her most natural affiliation is to Poland. By blood she is a non-Russian country, and though by blood she is not predominantly Polish either, yet the Poles form a not negligible percentage of her population, while her civilization is purely Polish. ”

“ A further step must be taken—the two independent countries must be transformed into a single state. The great obstacle in the way of this, the only true solution of the difficulty, was the opposition of the Lithuanian magnates, who feared to lose the absolute dominance they possessed in the grand-duchy if they were merged in the szlachta of the kingdom. But, at the last moment, the dread of another Muscovite invasion made them more pliable and, at a Polish diet held at Warsaw from November 1563 to June 1564, which the Lithuanians attended, the question of an absolute union was hotly debated. ”

“ Most of them seem to feel that those eastern territories of the old republic in which Polish culture is still predominant, and in which there is no indigenous nationalist movement, ought to return to Poland. Many Poles hope that the Lithuanians and possibly even the Ukrainians can be won over to voluntarily accepting a federal union with Poland. ”

“ For all this greediness and avariciousness of the Polish people I do not blame the good Polish citizens and patriots, because in our days in all nationalities there are a great many political parties, of which the governments are composed, the greater number of those compelling the entire nation to act against the good will of the citizens. On the other hand we Lithuanians cannot boast too much of our patriotism, as though we had no traitor, even among the Poles. ”

“ But German politicians were more far-sighted—they the enemy sowing tares—than Polish patriots, who on the complete explosion of Russia ran to the spot and picked up fragments of the disjected structure. Germany from time to time has seriously considered a scheme for the union of parts of Lithuania with Poland, and ideas have been mooted for the colonization of Lithuania and Courland, in the further distant future, by Poles. ”

“ The same day the Diet assembled at Warsaw proclaimed the re-establishment of the kingdom of Poland, and several members of the Senate hastened to Wilna, to announce officially to Napoleon the resurrection of their country. "The Poles have never been subjected by either peace or war," said they, "but by treason! They are therefore free de jure before God as well as before men, and to-day they can be so de facto; and their right becomes a duty. We demand the independence of our Lithuanian brothers, and their union to the centre of all the Polish family. ”

“ That advanced outpost of Western civilisation will have to hold its ground in the midst of hostile camps: always its historical fate.
Against the menace of such a specially dangerous situation the paper and ink of public Treaties cannot be an effective defence. Nothing but the actual, living, active participation of the two Western Powers in the establishment of the new Polish commonwealth, and in the first twenty years of its existence, will give the Poles a sufficient guarantee of security in the work of restoring their national life. ”

“ The institutions of Lithuania were assimilated in all respects to those of Poland; Polish culture became predominant from Kiev to Wilno, from Livonia to the Carpathians—in short, this composite and originally so heterogeneous state became essentially a Polish one. Thus, by statesmanship and tenacity, by the higher culture they could offer and the liberties they extended, the Polish race had peaceably conquered a great empire in the east, a realm twice the size of the modest Poland of the Piasts; and a vast field was opened up for colonization and the extension of Polish nationality. ”

“ Our new Poland would not comprise the ancient Lithuania—the districts of Wilno, Kovno, and Grodno—although Lithuania formerly was part of Poland and still has about one million Polish inhabitants who form the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Lithuania, which is really the region of the Niemen, is peopled by Letts, who have their own language, resembling neither Polish nor Russian, and they likewise hope to obtain some day a measure of autonomy in the Russian Empire, with the right to use their language in schools, churches, and civil proceedings. ”

“ Such a new reign of clemency awakened hope in Poland that it too might share these benefits. First it was a Constitution such as had been given to Hungary for which they prayed. Then, as Italy was emancipating herself, they grew bolder, and, incited by societies of Polish exiles, all over Europe, demanded more: that they be given independence. Again the hope of a Polo-Lithuanian alliance, and a recovery of the lost Polish provinces in the Ukraine, and the reestablishment of an independent kingdom of Poland, dared to assert itself, and to invite a more complete destruction. ”

“ He gave Lithuania an administration distinct from that of Poland. ... A last attempt to negotiate a peace had failed. ... Napoleon had proposed two unacceptable conditions—the abandonment of Lithuania, and the declaration of war against Great Britain. If Napoleon, instead of plunging into Russia, had contented himself with organising and defending the ancient principality of Lithuania, no power on earth could have prevented the reestablishment of the Polish-Lithuanian State within its former limits. The destinies of France and Europe would have been changed. ... ”

“ They argue that this cession of Lithuania to Poland is not in the least likely to cause friction between the Polish and Russian states since, according to their views, Russian politicians recognise that the country was wrongfully wrested from Poland by the partitions, and that though its inhabitants are not in the main of Polish blood they are just as little of Russian blood, but form a nationality of their own, too small to be constituted into a wholly independent state, and therefore to be attached with some considerable degree of self-government to a neighbouring state. ”

“ After repulsing the Bolshevik from the Dvinsk, they had a few weeks' rest and then marched to Kaunas.
At the time I was visiting Lithuania she was surrounded by enemies—on the north and east by the Bolsheviks, on the west by Kolchak and the insurgent Germans, and on the south by the Poles. The most stupendous fact is that at present the Poles are the most dangerous foes of the Lithuanians. The Poles, rejoicing in their own liberation from the yoke of oppression, are altogether unmindful that they are striving to place the Lithuanian nation under worse oppression. ”

“ Alexander's election cemented, indeed, once for all, the union between Poland and Lithuania, inasmuch as, on the eve of it (Oct. 3, 1501) the senates of both countries agreed that, in future, the king of Poland should always be grand-duke of Lithuania, but this was the sole benefit which the Republic derived from the reign of Alexander, under whom the Polish government has been well described as a rudderless ship in a stormy sea, with nothing but the grace of God between it and destruction. In Lithuania the increasing pressure of the Muscovite was the chief danger. ”

“ The last moment of Poland, her supreme cause, salvation or eternal ruin and shame, personal freedom and national independence, or a terrible slavery and the groaning of millions of men ... the destruction of the Polish name, or her glorious place in the ranks of nations: these are the considerations that must take hold of the Polish nation, of you, citizens of Lithuania. ... Poles, now is the moment for the amendment of eternal errors. ”

“ Poland as a genuinely independent commonwealth must receive back Austrian and Prussian Poland, as well as Russian Poland, and have her coast-line on the Baltic. Lithuania and Finland must be guaranteed their freedom and no part of the ancient Empire of Russia left under the German yoke. ”

“ Gradually, it is true, the Lithuanian nobles, who possessed all the land and held the peasantry in a state of serfage, adopted Polish nationality and culture, but this change did not secure homogeneity, because the masses clung obstinately to their old nationality and religion, and all the efforts of the Church of Rome to bring them under papal authority proved fruitless. ”

“ Two of them, Russia and Germany, have, as we have seen, made no pretence of granting the autonomy they promised to the people of the territories which they received, and up till the outbreak of the war, Lithuania and the kingdom of Poland have not enjoyed the autonomy that was guaranteed them more than have the Polish inhabitants of Posen or Royal Prussia. In both cases the policy of the annexing nations has been to absorb, to merge, to kill the consciousness of separate nationality. As far as legal disabilities, lingual suppression, religious bondage go, they have done their utmost. ”

“ The Jagellons, and their more powerful vassals, became Poles; many Lithuanian princes adopted the Russian religion, language, and nationality. By these means the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ceased to be Lithuanian; the nation proper found itself within its former boundaries, its speech ceased to be the language of the court and nobility, and was only preserved among the common people. Litwa presents the singular spectacle of a people which disappeared in the immensity of its conquests, as a brook sinks after an excessive overflow, and flows in a narrower bed than before. ”

“ Jagiello's signal for the attack at the battle of Grünewald, “Cracow and Vilna” (the respective capitals of Poland and Lithuania) had eloquently demonstrated the solidarity of the two states. This solidarity was still further strengthened by the Union of Horodlo (October 2, 1413) which enacted that henceforth Lithuania was to have the same order of dignitaries [3] as Poland, as well as a council of state, or senate, similar to the Polish senate. The power of the grand-duke was also greatly increased. ”

“ If the physical possibility of deliberate and unfettered choice can be established, it is of course for the peoples of Lithuania themselves to decide with which neighbouring political unit they prefer to be more intimately connected. But from the standpoint of political stability in Eastern Europe, which is{117} the consideration of greatest importance to the Allies, it would be more desirable to see Lithuania federated in some way with Russia, while giving certain economic privileges to Poland. ”

“ Henceforth the kingdom of Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania were to constitute one inseparable and indivisible body politic, under one sovereign, elected in common, with one diet and one currency. All dependencies and colonies, including Prussia and Livonia, were to belong to Poland and Lithuania in common. ”

“ By the union with Lithuania the Polish State was more than doubled in territory and in population. That population was Polish neither by race nor by civilisation. In the north of the newly acquired country lived the Lithuanians, recently converted from paganism and still semi-barbarous. The southern and larger part of it was inhabited by West-Russian Slavs (White and Little Russians) , Christians since the end of the tenth century, but belonging to the Eastern Church and to the Byzantine civilisation. ”

“ The two countries have a common religion, and economically she is far more closely{113} bound to Poland than to Russia, and for years her trade has gravitated to Warsaw and not to Petrograd or Moscow. Linguistically also, though the native language has as little to do with Polish as it has with Russian, no educated Lithuanian is ignorant of Polish, and it is impossible for an educated man to live there with interchange of ideas and civilized thought without speaking Polish. ”

“ Other sections of opinion there vote for independence, but the political objection to that is the smallness of a possible Lithuanian state, while its complete isolation implies a territory strategically indefensible among more powerful neighbours. ”