25 The Partitions of Poland, 1772-1795

In 1768 the Russian Empire once again came to the rescue of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but this was for the last time. By the second half of the eighteenth century, Poland-Lithuania had become an anomaly.

After eliminating the Confederation of Bar and putting down the haidamak revolt in 1768, the Russian Empire maintained a standing army in Poland’s Right Bank region of Ukraine. In 1769 it even stationed a garrison as far west as L’viv, the capital of the Galicia-Rus’ palatinate. The latter move was not particularly surprising, since from the standpoint of Muscovite-Russian political ideology Galicia was a “Little Russian” territory that had been part of medieval Kievan Rus’ and, therefore, should again belong to Russia.

25.1 Allegorical depiction of Catherine II, Joseph II of Austria, Stanislaw II of Poland, and Frederick II of Prussia overseeing the First Partition of Poland in a 1773 etching by Johannes Esaias Nilson.

MAP 25 THE PARTITIONS OF POLAND

Frederick II of Prussia was concerned that Russia’s presence in Poland would lead to unilateral territorial aggrandizement.

The Ukrainian-inhabited lands within Poland were affected only by the award given to Austria. Ironically, Austria, which was only a passive participant in the partition scheme, in 1772 received the largest territory of the three powers, an area measuring 32,000 miles (82,000 square kilometers) that included most of the Polish palatinates of Galicia-Rus’, Belz, Podolia west of the Zbruch River, and those parts of the Sandomierz and Cracow palatinates that were south of the Vistula River. Of the approximately 2.6 million inhabitants in these lands, about half were Ukrainian and the other half Polish, along with a significant Jewish minority. Austria justified its unexpected territorial acquisition by claiming it was only “re-annexing” lands over which it had historic rights. Since Austria’s ruling dynasty, the Habsburgs, were simultaneously monarchs of Hungary, they were simply implementing the twelfth-century claim of Hungary’s kings to rule over Galicia-Volhynia (see above, Chapter 11). To emphasize the sense of historical continuity, Austria’s territorial acquisition of 1772 was formally named the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (the Latin name for Volhynia). Two years later, in 1774, Austria took advantage of the Ottoman Empire’s weakness following its defeat in the Russo-Turkish War and annexed from the Ottoman vassal state, Moldavia, its northernmost region of Bukovina.

25.2 One of the earliest maps (1775) of Habsburg Austria’s acquisition of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.

In the wake of the First Partition, Polish leaders tried in the 1790s to restructure their political system in order to resist further invasions by both Prussia and Austria.

25.3 The crest of the House of Habsburg with a text (in German)—The Imperial and Royal Border of the Kingdom of Galicia—found on markers along the Austrian side of its international boundary with the Russian Empire until 1914.