By 1580, the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth included Lithuania, Prussia, Ukraine and the semi-autonomous principality of Transylvania. The Commonwealth was prosperous, largely through grain exports, with a large landed aristocracy who diluted the power of the monarchy and fostered regional freedom (the ‘golden freedoms’). There was, however, a significant... More
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1618 was one of the largest, most populous countries in Europe. It had an elective monarchy and was run by nobility who avoided becoming embroiled in the destructive Thirty Years’ War, which ranged Protestants against Roman Catholics and was beginning to devastate the Holy Roman Empire... More
1648 marked the beginning of the ‘Deluge’ (c. 1648–60), a ruinous phase of uprisings and wars. It began with the Zaporogian Cossack independence struggle against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1648–55, supported by Tatars of the Crimean Khanate and disparate disaffected elements within the region, including the peasants. The rebellion resulted... More
After a weak Polish Commonwealth was partitioned by Prussia, Russia and Austria in 1772, it lost 30 per cent of its territories. Austria gained Galicia; Russia gained the northeastern border territories of Polotsk and Mohilev. The smaller northwestern territories assigned to Prussia cut Poland off from the sea, resulting in... More
Poland did not exist in 1914, having been carved up by Austria, Prussia and Russia during the partitions of the late 18th century. It was briefly resurrected during the Napoleonic Wars as the Duchy of Warsaw (1806–15), but after Napoleon’s defeat (1815) was absorbed into Russia and became Polish-Russia. The... More
Shortly after the 1918 armistice, the independent Second Polish Republic was created, with Józef Piłsudski its chief of state. Poland was granted access to the Baltic through the Danzig Corridor, which created the exclave of East Prussia, separated from mainland Germany. In 1919 an armed struggle ensued between Russian Bolsheviks... More
In 1989–91, the Soviet Union experienced a political reformation, known as Perestroika, and allowed its satellite, the People’s Republic of Poland, to engage in a democratic transition, leading to the creation of the Third Polish Republic. By 1995, as a result of the Balcerowicz Plan (implemented in the early 1990s)... More
Poland gained nominal status as a puppet state of Germany through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. But the renunciation of that Treaty in the Armistice of November 1918 threatened its existence. Soviet Russia invaded, looking to recoup the territories it had conceded at Brest-Litovsk, but the Poles crushed the invaders at... More
In 1672–76, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lost control of Podolia (in modern Ukraine) to the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1683, after the Ottomans seized Vienna in Austria, the Commonwealth joined forces with the Austrian-led Holy Roman Empire to form a ‘Christian Coalition’ against the Islamic ‘threat’. The Polish king, John III... More
Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, converted to Roman Catholicism in order to succeed to the Polish throne after King John III Sobieski’s death in 1696. His rival, François Louis, prince of Conti, procured more votes, so there was some question over the legality of Augustus’s title. Conti disappeared to France,... More
In 1938 the USSR had been unable to reach a collective security agreement with Britain and France and was facing the prospect of standing alone against Nazi expansion in eastern Europe. Against this background they opened negotiations with Germany and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed on 23 August 1939. Named... More
The joint German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939 resulted in World War II. During the following five years, 15 per cent of the Polish population perished and Poland was made to accommodate the mass extermination of the Jews in concentration camps. Germany immediately annexed western Poland, while... More