Socioeconomic Developments

While Lithuanians still lived within the parameters of their traditional homeland along the Neman River valley and Baltic Sea coast, and before they were united into a political entity in the thirteenth century, their social structure was relatively simple.

Lithuania's social structure

While it is true that during the era of territorial expansion the Lithuanian grand dukes left intact much of the administrative and, in particular, Orthodox cultural and religious structure of Kievan Rus', they began to superimpose their control on this vast territory in two ways. First, they recognized the inherited right to the large landed estates of the princes (kniazi), both the princes descended from their own Gediminid dynasty and those of the Rus' dynasty of Riuryk.

Socioeconomic Developments 139 than the boyars, was of mixed origin and eventually came to be known as the gen­try. This group consisted of small landholders who received their property as a result of military service performed for the grand duke or, in some cases, for the powerful hereditary princes and boyars.

The vast majority of the inhabitants were peasants, the descendants, from Kievan Rus' times, of independent agriculturalists (liudi), cooperative landhold­ers (siabry), and state peasants (smerdy). The principal trend in the evolution of the peasantry was its members’ loss of rights to their land; accordingly, by the end of the fifteenth century most were tenant farmers either on the crown lands of Lithuania’s grand duke or on the estates of the nobility.

Among the smallest of Lithuania’s social strata was that of the townspeople. They consisted of two subgroups, the merchants and the artisans, each of which had its own guild system. Both subgroups included a significant number of for­eigners - Germans, Armenians, Jews - who had been invited by Lithuania’s grand dukes to settle in urban areas. In the sixteenth century, most cities in the Belaru- san and Ukrainian lands of Lithuania had a Rus' majority, but the Rus' inhabitants were frequently discriminated against in favor of Roman Catholics and foreigners.

Unlike in the Kievan period, during the Mongol era the cities of Lithuania declined in economic and political importance. And even though during the fif­teenth and sixteenth centuries most cities were granted municipal self-govern­ment (the Magdeburg Law), they were excluded from any participation in the central government.

Although Lithuania maintained only a tenuous political relationship with Poland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, its social structure was steadily brought closer to that of its neighbor to the west. This became particularly evident in a strengthening of the status of the nobility - both boyars and gentry - and a concomitant weakening of the peasantry. As early as 1387, within a year of Jagiello’s coronation as king, the Lithuanian boyars were granted the rights and privileges of the Polish nobility. Then, according to the agreement at Horodlo (1413), the Lithuanian boyars and Polish nobles were merged into a single estate responsible for deciding the relationship between the two countries as well as for electing the grand duke. It was also at this time that the term boyar was replaced by the Polish term pan (lord) to describe the group. The Lithuanian lords also had the right to maintain their own military regiments, and after 1447 they became exempt from paying taxes. In this way, Lithuania’s princes and boyars were gradually being fused into a single estate of hereditary lords. During the reign of Grand Duke Vytautas (1392-1430), such privileges were given only to boyars of the Roman Catholic faith, but in the 1430s they were extended to the Orthodox as well.

Lithuania's administrative structure

In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the former Rus' principalities were gradually replaced by palatinates (voievodstva), which in turn were divided into districts (povily). Unlike in Poland, where the nobility was the dominant political force at the palatinate level, in Lithuania the central government attempted to reduce the autonomy of the palatinates by replacing the local boyars with officials appointed by and directly responsible to the grand duke. These included (1) the governor of each palatinate, known as the voievoda, or palatine, who had adminis­trative, military, and judicial authority; (2) the head of each district, known as the starosta; and (3) the castellan, who was responsible for the maintenance of royal castles and other military fortifications as well as for summoning the local nobility to arms in times of danger.

While boyar influence may have been challenged at the local level by the centralizing administrative tendencies of the grand duke, in fact the driving force of Lithuania’s government - especially with regard to foreign affairs - was the Council of Lords (pans'ka rada). The council consisted of the Roman Catholic bishop of Vilnius and the Lithuanian and Rus' voievoda of each palatinate and star­osta of certain districts. The council’s power over the legal structure of the country was institutionalized in 1529 (the First Lithuanian Statute), after which the grand duke pledged to keep intact all former laws and not to make any new ones with­out the consent of the council.

The role of the gentry in Lithuanian sociopolitical life developed more slowly. It was not until the Union of Lublin (1569) that the Lithuanian and Rus' gentry were freed from military and other feudal obligations and merged with the boyars in one noble estate (szlachta), as in Poland. Gentry political influence came some­what earlier. As early as in the fifteenth century, the gentry in Lithuania had their own district assemblies (seimyky), and during the next century the delegates began to participate in a national chamber of deputies (izba poselska) in Vilnius. It was this chamber, together with the ‘upper house’ or Council of Lords, that by the second half of the sixteenth century constituted Lithuania’s bicameral Diet (Soim).

The grand duchy’s legal system was strongly influenced by that of former Kievan Rus'. The Rus' Law (Pravda Russkaia) alongside customary law governed Lithuanian society until 1468, when Lithuania issued its own code (Sudebnik).

Despite its strong links to the Kievan past, by the second half of the fifteenth century Lithuania was more and more adapting to the societal model of Poland, which since the death of its last Piast ruler in 1370 itself had set out on a path that was to transform the country into an aristocratic democracy headed by an elected king. This process was a long one, lasting two centuries.

Poland’s social and administrative structure

Poland’s social structure consisted of several estates (Polish: stany). These are fre­quently confused with socioeconomic classes. Unlike classes in the modern sense, the estates in Polish society were defined on the basis not of a relationship to the means of production or any other measure of wealth or economic status, but of an intended function within society as expressed by specific legal rights and privi­leges. Accordingly, one can speak of six estates in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Poland: the crown, the nobility, the clergy, the townspeople, the Jews, and the peasants.

The crown estate consisted of the king and his officials, whether senators, min­isters, territorial officers, or holders of royal monopolies. The role of the crown was to represent the unity of the realm, whether the Polish Kingdom alone or, through the person of the king, Poland in relationship with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After 1573, the king was the elected head of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The crown’s authority was progressively restricted by concessions to the Polish nobility and the grand dukes of Lithuania as outlined in varying agreements reached between the late fourteenth and late sixteenth centuries (Kosice, 1370; Krewo, 1385; Horodlo, 1413; Lublin, 1569; the Henrican articles, 1573; and thereafter a pacta conventa with each newly elected king). Nonetheless, the king remained a significant force in Polish society. His political influence was based on the right to distribute offices - those of senator, palatine, castellan, star- osta, and military leader (hetman) - and royal lands. Moreover, the king’s sym­bolic importance remained intact, since until the very end of Poland’s existence in the second half of the eighteenth century there was never any questioning of the need for a crown estate and for a hereditary or, later, elective king to function at the head of the social structure.

The most influential estate in Poland was the nobility, or szlachta (pronounced shlyakhtd). Although there was only one estate of the nobility, all of whose mem­bers were equal before the law, in practice there existed great discrepancies with regard to the wealth, social prestige, and political influence of Poland’s nobles. Both contemporary and subsequent analyses of Polish society therefore divide the nobility into at least two groups: (1) the magnates, or heads of great families who, because of their extensive wealth, practically ran the affairs of the state; and (2) the gentry, who had limited wealth - in some cases they did not even own land (the non-posses.sionati) - and who often served as clients of the great magnates. The gen­try is sometimes divided into middle gentry and petty gentry. The point is that, despite great disparities among the magnates, middle gentry, and petty gentry, all were recognized as part of one legal estate, the nobility or szlachta, and all shared equally the legal privileges of that estate. In a sense, the social history of Poland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is the story of how the nobility suc­ceeded in increasing its privileges vis-à-vis not only the crown, but also the church, the townspeople, and the peasants. The justification for the nobility’s privileges derived from its role as defenders of the realm against foreign invasion. In fact, the nobility did fill that role at least until the end of the sixteenth century, although thereafter the traditional call to arms in times of danger (pospolite ruszenie) was gradually replaced by a small permanent armed force supported by taxation.

Compared to that of other European countries at the time, the Polish nobility represented a relatively large proportion of the country’s population. Moreover, their absolute and relative numbers continued to grow. Whereas in 1569 there were about 500,000 nobles, representing 6.6 percent of the population, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, by 1648 the number had increased to one mil­lion, or 9 percent of the population. Of the nobles in 1648, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 were magnates, and the remaining 900,000 or more were gentry.

The administrative structure of the country also reflected the needs of the influential noble estate. Poland was divided into palatinates (Polish: wojewodztwa), headed by the king’s representative, the palatine (wojewoda). But politically more important were the noble assemblies, or dietines (sejmiki), which formed the basic unit of constitutional life in Poland. There was a long tradition of noble assem­blies, which originally were organized by the nobility for military purposes. The concept of permanent dietines was crystallized after 1454, when the king agreed neither to summon the army nor to raise taxes without consulting the nobility beforehand. Each palatinate had its own dietine, and from the dietines developed the idea of a single legislative institution, the central Diet (Sejm). Poland’s Diet met for the first time at 1493 iⁿ Piotrkow, and thereafter (mostly in Warsaw) every two years for six-week sessions.

The Polish Diet was made up of two houses: (1) the Senate, consisting of Roman Catholic (never Orthodox) bishops, palatines, castellans, and major func­tionaries of the central government and, later, Lithuanian ministers of state, all appointed by the king mostly from the ranks of the magnates; and (2) the Cham­ber of Deputies (generally middle gentry), consisting of delegates chosen by the local dietines. Hence, with the development of the permanent Diet, Poland acquired a governmental system marked by checks and balances among three interest groups - the king, the magnates, and the gentry. Until 1569, Poland and Lithuania each had its own Diet (Sejm/Soim), but after the agreements reached at Lublin, the nobles from both parts of the Commonwealth sat in one body.

In terms of procedure, the Diet, like the dietines, was conducted on the princi- pie of unanimity, a medieval practice that was never replaced by the more mod­ern principal of majority vote. As will become evident in later periods, this antiquated principle on occasion degenerated into the infamous practice of the liberum veto, whereby the negative vote of a single member could, and sometimes did, bring all business to a standstill. But as long as the system of aristocratic par­liamentarism worked, especially in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, Poland had a political structure characterized by a balance of power between three estates: the monarch, the magnates, and the gentry.

Peasants, nobles, and Jews

To ensure the continuance of their dominant role in the Polish socioeconomic structure, the nobility (magnates and gentry) encouraged changes in the legal sys­tem. They were particularly eager to regulate to their own advantage the status of the peasantry. The result was the implementation of what has come to be known as the second serfdom, or neo-serfdom. The initial stage of neo-serfdom saw a series of edicts approved by the Polish Diet (1495, 1501, 1506, 1511) which placed an increasing number of legal restrictions on the peasant’s ability to leave his or her manorial estate. Particularly advantageous to the nobility was a law passed in 1518, according to which the king decided not to accept in his royal courts the complaints of subjects on lands not owned by the crown. Thus, when duty-free periods expired, or when landlords began to introduce unilaterally the corvee (labor obligation), or when they simply seized peasant lands, the peasant on noble- or church-owned lands could no longer turn to the royal courts. He or she could resort to the local courts, but they were all controlled by nobles, who were unlikely to rule in favor of a peasant plaintiff.

The implementation of neo-serfdom in Poland culminated in 1573. After that date, peasants (men and women) were forbidden under any conditions to leave the manorial estates on which they resided. The corvee, whereby a serf was obliged to render unpaid labor, came to constitute the principal economic relation between noble landowners and peasants. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which included most Ukrainian territory until 1569, serfdom was similarly introduced during the second half of the sixteenth century. As a result of an agricultural reform implemented in 1557, peasants were deprived of property rights to land, and the Third Lithuanian Statute of 1588 confirmed full bondage by removing the so-called right of transfer, with the consequence that all peasants who had lived with one landowner for a period of ten years became thenceforth ‘immovable.’

There were some free peasants, rural laborers, and serfs on both church and crown lands, but by the sixteenth century the vast majority of peasants were serfs of the nobility. Serfdom was put into practice in areas that had particular eco­nomic significance, such as those adjacent to the Vistula River and its tributaries (including the upper Buh and San Rivers in Ukrainian-inhabited Galicia and west­ern Volhynia), as well as in all densely populated areas, where peasants had smaller and less economically viable holdings and were consequendy more likely to become indebted to the local landlord. By the second half of the sixteenth