Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Research Articles

The ‘Useful Man’ in the Political System of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the Vasas – New Perspectives and Methodological Problems in Research into the Careers of Małopolska Noblemen

In the article I point to the need for conducting research into the political careers of activists from the lesser nobility, whose families were not part of the power elite. In contemporary historiography, lesser nobility activists have only attracted the attention of historians to a limited extent. Yet the development of research and the availability of sources have made it possible to carry out a broader analysis, encompassing activists from the lesser nobility who stood out by virtue of the level of their involvement in the country’s political life.

Legislative Initiatives in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the Late Sixteenth - Early Seventeenth Century as Strengthening the State Monopoly on Legitimate Violence

Legislative Initiatives in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the Late Sixteenth - Early Seventeenth Century as Strengthening the State Monopoly on Legitimate Violence

Between rhetoric and propaganda Jesuit and Piarist panegyrics in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Between rhetoric and propaganda Jesuit and Piarist panegyrics in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

News of the World The Role of Handwritten Newspapers in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Early 18th Century

News of the World The Role of Handwritten Newspapers in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Early 18th Century

The Defender of the Orthodoxy or the Pious Catholic?
 St. Sophia of Slutsk in the Narratives of 19th – early 20th Centuries

The paper is devoted to the history of the perception of St. Sophia of Slutsk by both Russian-language (Athanasius Vechorko, Gregory Kulzhinski, Feodor Sero-Solovievitch etc.) and Polish-language (Jozeph Krashevski, Josephine Osipovska, Vladislav Syrokomla, Teodor Korvin-Shimanovski) writers of the 19th – early 20th centuries. St. Sophia is canonized by the Orthodox Church. Despite
 that, in the early 21st century Belarusian historians debated her denomination.
 This article claims that the dispute related to the Saint’s denomination is based on two competing points of view which formed in the 19th century, although, at that time their proponents did not debate. Two traditions of perception of Sophia are distinguished. According to the first of these, Sophia was the defender of the Orthodoxy from the Catholics. Based on the second one, she was the Catholic of Roman or Greek rite who could hardly be related to the Orthodoxy. The link between the development of the Orthodox cult of Sophia at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries and the elaboration of the concept «Slutsk – the stronghold of the persecuted Orthodoxy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth» is investigated.

Morawskie echa elekcji Michała Korybuta Wiśniowieckiego (1669). Biskup ołomuniecki Karol z Lichtensteinów-Castelcornów i jego sieć informatorów

This article attempts to present Polish-Moravian relations in the context of the election of King Michał in 1669. The central figure of these contacts was Charles II von Liechtenstein- Kastelkorn, the Bishop of Olomouc, who had an extensive network of informants reporting to him on the developments in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Traditions of the Independence Day Celebrations in Poland and the Baltic States

The system of public holidays and rituals developed by people is an important indication of the transformation of the spiritual culture of each European nation. At the same time, they return to the origins – the historical past and declare the vectors of development for the future. The article is aimed at the investigation and analysis of the typology of the formation of state independence holidays in Poland and the Baltic states, correlating it with key, fateful moments in the history of each nation. Poland has rebuilt radically all spheres of material and spiritual life after the fall of the communist regime. The formation of society on new democratic essential principles reflects the calendar of festive and commemorative dates of the modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It includes major and minor holidays of the liturgical (Catholic) year and secular traditions of various origins. A notable attitude of the Poles is to celebrate officially both religious and important civil anniversaries on the same day. The special historical significance of the Polish Independence Day is given by the chronological reference to the date of the end of the First World War (November 11, 1918). The contemporary holiday culture of Poland is characterized by a symbiosis of ethnic and confessional elements. At the everyday level the state holiday of independence is combined harmoniously with folklore and ethnographic traditions of St. Martin’s Day. Along with Poland, the Baltic countries - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - whose history has a lot in common, have fought radically and consistently with the heritage of the communist past. Song holidays and festivals are of a great significance in preserving the national identity of the Baltic states. Today there are, in fact, two independence holidays in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The first is connected with 1918, when all these republics have gained statehood on the ruins of the Russian Empire, the second one - in honor of the events of 1990-1991, finished with the decay of the USSR. The conducted research has proved that the peoples of Poland and the Baltic states at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries have been able to free themselves from the heritage of the communist past and the totalitarian dictation of the aggressive Russian Federation, becoming full members of the European Union and NATO. The system of currently acting official holidays and rituals can serve as a clear evidence of the radical restructuring of ideology and culture in these countries.

Polish research on publishing in Poland between 1945 and 2015: Themes, legacy and implications for further research

The history of publishing in Poland encompasses many issues associated with the emergence and dissemination of printed books. Of fundamental significance to the study of these issues are the records of the publishing output: while we have nearly complete, though still underexamined, records of this output for the period from the 15th to the 18th century, documented in bibliographies and catalogues, the situation is worse when it comes to the 19th and 20th centuries, until the outbreak of the Second World War. In this respect, what we need is not only a continuation, but a radical intensification of bibliographic work. This concerns works published in the Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Greek scripts, as well as musical notation. Polish book scholars have devoted a lot of attention to the beginnings of printing in Poland. The historiography concerning various typographic workshops located in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is rich; however, it still requires further extensive studies. Scholars have also been interested in phenomena influ- encing the content structure of printed publications, such as publishing privileges (in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), censorship and restrictions imposed by the partitioning powers and later by Poland’s communist authorities, as a result of which Polish publications had to be printed abroad and an independent publishing movement emerged. The scholars’ research interests have also focused on books as products of printers and publishers and on the publication of written works. Scholars have examined both the various components of the book (title page, printer’s signet, stemmata, etc.) and its editorial composition as a whole. Their undoubted achievements in the studies of the history of publishing in Poland are significant, yet in many areas they need to be continued and expanded (one important task is the edition of sources for the study of the history of Polish publishing) and to investigate the phenomena that stem from developmental tendencies in modern book studies.

Absencja usprawiedliwiona? O kilku wątkach nieobecnych na wystawie Ukraina. Wzajemne spojrzenia

The aim of this article is to analyse the content of the exhibition Ukraine. A different angle on neighbourhood, presented in Cracow from September 2021 to January 2022, aimed at identifying exemplary themes that would have significantly enriched the educational and informational dimension of this exhibition, but for various reasons did not make it into it. Exemplary absences included the regional differentiation of Ukraine, the historical-independence status of Galicia, the demographic decline of Poland’s neighbours from across the river Bug, the importance of the Cossacks in the context of the 17th-century problems of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the place of the “Vistula” action in the consciousness of Poles. A separate point is devoted to the absence of the motif of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Volhynian massacre from the exhibition, indicating – also through references to the declarations of people involved in the creation of the exhibition – why this motif was to be expected, and proposing a way in which this motif could have been creatively presented. Although the essence of the considerations is to indicate points which would enrich the school knowledge of the primarily Polish audience of the exhibition in relation to the framework of Ukrainian identity (identities) and the Polish-Ukrainian neighbourhood, in its essence the article does not prejudge the necessity to take up the aforementioned motifs, nor does it constitute a closed list of topoi which would be crucial in determining such a framework.

The evolution of the latinization of the Uniate Church and its causes

The object of the study is the Uniate church, founded by the Brest Union in 1596. Then the Orthodox bishops of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth decided to unite with the Pope, provided that Eastern traditions were preserved. However, after the Brest Union, the practice of the Latin Church quickly began to blur the Eastern traditions of the Uniate Church, and the phenomenon of latinization appeared. The subject of the study is the processes and causes of latinization and Delatinization of the Uniate Church. The founding and development of the Uniate Church had strong political factors, since the article also considered its latinization from both religious and political aspects. The author pays special attention to the motives of the delatinization of the Uniate Church over the past 100 years, associated with the spread of the Catholic faith among Orthodox peoples. At the methodological level, the author combines the historical and political background to analyze the materials related to the research topic. The main conclusion of the study is that due to the contradiction between Roman Catholic teaching and Eastern traditions, the union with Rome is doomed to lead to the latinizaition of the Uniate Church. In addition, the latinization of the Uniate Church has a strong political influence. The author's special research contribution to the topic is that he noticed a contradiction in the Uniate Church. Russian Uniate Church is a tool used by the West to spread Catholicism in the Russian land and separate the people from the Russian Orthodox tradition. Latinization lead to the fact that the Uniate church lose its appeal to Orthodox people and affected its spread. However, without latinization, the Uniate Church would not be able to separate its believers from Orthodoxy and the Russian tradition, and would not be able to perform its political functions.

Zachęta do tłumaczenia na język polski dzieła polihistora Gabriela Rzączyńskiego pt. „Historia naturalis curiosa Regni Poloniæ, Magni Ducatus Lituaniæ, annexarumque provinciarum, in tractatus XX divisa” z 1721 roku

Gabriel Rzączyński’s Historia naturalis curiosa, composed of twenty treatises, published in 1721 in Sandomierz, has been a source of information about the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Res Publica Utriusque Nationis) for many years, and one of the most extensive attempts to characterize the natural environment of the country. It also contains information on historical events that involved the natural world and the state of knowledge and medical practice in Poland and Lithuania. Historia has also been the subject of many secondary studies and historiographical analyses, but has not yet been translated into its author’s native language. A concise description of its content and a discussion of its importance for academic reflection are intended as an encouragement to translate the opus into the languages of the nationalities that formed the state at that time.

The connection between Holy Mount Athos and the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century

The connection between Holy Mount Athos and the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century

Before Gustavus Adolphus captured Riga: Jan Siciński’s expedition to Estonia in 1618. A political and military case study

ABSTRACT This article examines Jan Siciński’s expedition to Estonia in 1618, which was the last battle before Gustavus Adolphus captured Riga in 1621. The expedition took place during the war between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden, one of the significant conflicts in the period from 1600 to 1660. The battles were fought on today’s Estonia and Latvia territories. This article answers several questions: What was the significance of the battles for the armistice talks in 1618? What place does the expedition play in the conflict between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden? Finally, were these encounters groundbreaking in this war?

Polish History up to 1795 in Polish Games and Game Studies

Situated within historical and regional (CEE) game studies, this article is an overview of games made in Poland after 1989 about Polish history up to the eighteenth century. It also outlines research made on those games, and it comments on changing cultural and political factors shaping the development of Polish history/heritage-themed games over the last three decades. We group the games in thematic-chronological categories: early medieval Slavic settings up to 1000, medieval to Renaissance Poland, and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1569–1795. Main findings: (a) Slavic fantasy became very popular with game developers after Witcher 3, but it has received little scholarly attention beside the witcher series. (b) Medieval Polish monarchies have barely caught the eye of game developers, which translates to the absence of related research. (c) The PLC period is well-represented in digital and nondigital games, and well-researched in historical games studies by Polish scholars in Polish and English.

The Northern Borderland and Eastern Kujawy – Parallels: The Construction of Narrative Identity in the Cycle of Stories “Konopnicka’s Desk” by Maria Danilewicz Zielińska

Maria Danilewicz Zielińska was a writer from the region of Kujawy, but she spent her entire adult life in exile. Her autobiographical stories collected in the volume entitled Biurko Konopnickiej [Konopnicka’s Desk] are an example of constructing a narrative identity based on people rooted in their homelands and related events. The first of the local homelands is Kujawy: the author was born in Aleksandrów Pograniczny (today: Aleksandrów Kujawski) and lived there for the first twenty-one years of her life; the second one is the northern Borderland (Kresy) of the former Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Danilewicz had close family ties with the latter, as well as a living memory of its poets and writers. The family, historical and literary parallels connecting but also separating both geographical and cultural areas form pairs. The first one is Kujawy with its towns, nature, inhabitants and their customs, and, on the other hand, the Vilnius and Navahrudak regions, their poets, such as Adam Mickiewicz and Władysław Syrokomla, and ordinary people with their dramatic fate of being displaced. The second pair are rivers and stories related to them: the Vistula and the Nemunas. All these components are places of memory which constitute a hybrid identity of the émigré author from a historical and cultural borderland, an identity constructed by autobiographical memory. Weaving these parallels, she endows them with familiarity, avoiding pathos and mythologisation. Nevertheless, the overwhelming longing for the lost homeland is coupled with its idealisation, especially apparent in the descriptions of nature.

Khortytsia Island is a Place Of Memory

In the article, using the example of Khortytska Sich, the evolution of views on the question of Sich genesis is considered in the context of the prevailing ideological conditions in different periods. The basis of research approaches is the theory of the place of memory of the French historian Pierre Nore, as well as the conclusions of the American philosopher Thomas Kuhn about the variability of scientific paradigms due to scientific revolutions and the impossibility of resolving their conflict with the help of evidence. At the everyday level of public consciousness, the concept of 'Khortytska Sich' was formed from the first half to the middle of the 17th century. It entered the scientific field in the second half of the 18th century. together with other centers of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks in the lower Dnieper. However, Khortytska Sich did not fit into the system of official scientific views. The justification of the empire's 'rights' to the so-called Western Russia (Lithuanian, Belarusian and Western Ukrainian lands) required consideration of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks as a pro-Moscow and anti-Polish force. Emphasis was placed on the era of wars against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which since the end of the 16th century. led by the Zaporozhians. Cossack centers that arose before this period did not fall under the sich status. As a result, in the 19th century a tradition arose, the echo of which exists in modern Ukrainian historiography, to call Khortytsia not the place of Sich, but 'the place of gathering', 'protosich', etc. For the same reasons, Khortytska Sich did not fit into the class model of social development. In this way, the history of Sich found itself in the context of Russian history, and the issues of the activities of the Ukrainian people in the development of the southern territories and the creation of centers of self-government back in the days of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania receded into the background. Only with the restoration of Ukrainian independence in 1991 did the conditions for understanding the phenomenon of Khortytska Sich emerge. The new scientific paradigm allows us to consider the Ukrainian-centric models of the first Sich, its role in the development of southern lands, resistance to Ottoman-Tatar aggression, and the formation of the Cossack state. This actualizes the direction of further research into the historical authenticity of Khortytska Sich as the basis of the notion of a place of memory of the Ukrainian people.

Production of Iron Weapons for Regiments and Hundreds of the Zaporizhzhian Host on the Land of Drevlians (17th–18th Century)

The article attempts to combine the research on iron production based on archival materials from the complex expedition of 1932 under the leadership of Oleksandr Ohloblin with the ways of providing weapons to hundreds and regiments of the Zaporizhzhian Host in the Land of Drevlians.The Ukrainian Cossack Hetmanate state of the 17th – 18th centuries, which was built on the ancient Ukrainian traditions of the tribal system, had its own administrative division into hundreds and regiments. The regiment and the hundred acted simultaneously as a military unit, a territorial unit, and a financial and judicial district. At the same time, the Zaporizhzhian Host had military and state-political autonomy, first as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (from the Treaty of Zboriv in 1649 to the Pereiaslav Agreement in 1654), and then as part of the Moscow state (realm and empire) from January 1654 (the Pereiaslav Agreement) and to the liquidation of the hundred-regiment administration of Left Bank Ukraine in September 1781 and the implementation of the division of this territory into governorships (provinces) in January 1782.In this study, we tried to identify ores that could provide the Cossacks' hundreds and regiments with weapons and other products during the Liberation War of the Ukrainian people led by Bohdan Khmelnytskyi.The issue of restoring the main industries in the land of Drevlians after the revolution of 1917–1918 arose during the reconstruction of Soviet Ukraine. At the beginning of 1922, the Volyn Miners Union proposed the revival of the iron and steel industry. In Soviet times, this was not done, but during the days of independence, the old branches of the Polissia industry on the territory of the Right Bank Polissia could be strengthened with the prospect of their further powerful development.

USE OF THE NAME "UKRAINE" IN THE OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE HETMAN I. MAZEPA AND HIS RESPONDENTS (1700–1709)

The purpose of the article is to highlight the use of the name "Ukraine" in the official epistolary of Hetman Ivan Mazepa in the context of his relations with the governments of the Moscow Kingdom, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Sweden, as well as in the context of internal political relations in the Zaporozhian Army. Methodological approaches consist in the study of these historical problems through the prism of conceptual history and are revealed by the author of the article using the diachronic semantic method in the direction of historical and linguistic analysis of lexemes with the words "Ukraine" and "Ukrainian" used in written discourse during 1700 – 1709. Scientific novelty. It is proved that, given the events of the Great Northern War of 1700 – 1721, the government of the Zaporozhian Army not only took an active part in it, but also conducted extensive correspondence with the warring parties. In this interesting diplomatic communication between Baturyn, Warsaw, Moscow, and Stockholm, the name "Ukraine" was repeatedly used. The conclusions of historians on the study of the texts of international and domestic political epistolaries of Hetman I. Mazepa are supplemented. Conclusions. It has been determined that in the texts of treaties and diplomacy of the Hetman's government with its foreign policy allies and enemies during the studied historical period, the polytonym "Ukraine" was repeatedly used as a synonymous conceptual name of the state of the Zaporozhian Army. This polytonym was used by the Hetman's government in the correspondence of the Zaporozhian Army with the Polish-Lithuanian Common-wealth, the Muscovy, and the Kingdom of Sweden to mark the territory that was under the rule of Hetman I. Mazepa during the second half of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and before that, his predecessors in the hetman's office. At the same time, in the royal chancelleries of Warsaw, Moscow and Stockholm, diplomatic acts used official conceptual phrases with the words "Ukraine" and "Ukrainian" agreed with the Hetman's government of the Zaporozhian Army, such as: "Ukrainian fortresses", "Ukrainian borders", "Ukrainian liberty", "defend Ukraine", "whole Ukraine", "present-day Ukraine", etc. Other semantic constructions that appeared with the words "Ukraine" and "Ukrainian" in the official discourse of Eastern and Northern Europe in 1700-1709 are also studied.

Law enforcement activities of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth courts in right-bank Ukraine in the XVІІІ century

The article is devoted to the law enforcement activities of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth courts in Right-Bank Ukraine during the XVIII century. The significance of judicial power in the life of the contemporary gentry corporation is investigated. The article describes the importance of Lithuanian charters for the reform of judicial institutions. The principles of formation, personnel and jurisdiction of the courts of first instance are outlined: land court, which considered civil proceedings; castle court dealt with criminal cases; sub-commerce court performed the function of establishing the boundaries of gentry land holdings. The principles of the work of the appellate institution, the Lublin tribunal, are presented. It is determined that in the XVIII century in the right-bank Ukraine there was a developed river-Polish judicial system, which provided protection of law by special bodies.  The peculiarity of the created Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth judicial power was not only its creation in the region by the local elite, but also that it functioned without state intervention and guaranteed the dominance of the gentry in everyday life. The legal culture of the noble community demanded that "justice" be achieved during the trial. In fact, the local nobility of the Right Bank, which was responsible for social stability both in its environment and in the region, was interested in fair legal proceedings and respect for the rule of law.

FACTORS OF RUSSIAN IRREDENTISM IN UKRAINE: HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

This article examines the Russian policy of irredentism, namely its manifestations in relation to Ukrainian territories. Threats from the Russian Federation to Ukraine's national and territorial security prompt the study of the genesis of Russian expansionist policies. The notion of irredentism is extremely complex and multifaceted, and has different interpretations. In particular, it is seen as the desire of an ethnic minority to secede from a multi-ethnic state in order to unite with a neighboring kin state. In the modern concept, irredentism is seen as a state policy aimed at annexing territories inhabited by ethnically related populations. Russian irredentism, defined as Russia's aggressive policy towards the territories of former post-Soviet countries, has much deeper roots, as the idea of the hegemony of the Moscow tsars over the entire Slavic Orthodox world dates back to the sixteenth century. and was actively pursued by the Russian imperial authorities, which from the mid-seventeenth century seized a significant part of Left-Bank Ukraine, and by the end of the seventeenth century, as a result of three divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian-Turkish wars, almost all Ukrainian lands. An in-depth historical analysis of the origins and manifestations of Russian aggressive policy has shown that irredentism plays a key role in Russian aggression and has a number of factors: historical, geopolitical, economic, and ideological. Keywords: irredentism, irredentist policy, "Novorossiya", "fifth column", ethnopolitics, kin-state.