FINALLY: UKRAINE will replace "Russia" with "Muscovy"

I do not think that the Polish system was better than that one in it's western and eastern neighbors. Every system must be relevant to it's time. When we are talking about XVI-XVIII centuries, first of all we mean the epoch of absolute monarchy that prevailed in Europe of that time. This is the end of feudalism. Absolute monarchy helped to overcome the remnants of the medieval feudal fragmentation. Those countries that did not have a strong central government could not overcome the vestiges of feudalism and build a strong, centralized state. So from this point of view, the absolute monarchy of Polish neighbors was the more advanced system at that time. While Poland had only remnants of feudalism as it's political system, with it's excessive freedom for the ruling class with the full absence of any rights for the plebs. All of this has nothing to do with the real democracy. Poland was the anachronism at that time, which quite naturally led to the disappearance of this country from the map of Europe at the second half of XVIII century.

This may be true for Lithuania of XV early XVI centuries. Since the second half of XVI century, Russian language gradually was replaced from the state using, even in the territory of Lithuania. So the polonisation of Russian nobility was one of not written conditions to be a part of the elite. There is the typical example. According to the Truce of Deulino in 1619 Smolensk has become for a time a part of Lithuania. In 1654, Russians have won Smolensk again. Thus this city was a part of Lithuania's during 35 years only, but already the whole Russian nobility spoke Polish, wore Polish clothes and called themselves Shlachta. While all of the common people continued to speak Russian.

10% are a miserable minority, especially on the background of complete powerlessness of plebs. You idealize the Polish system as well as some Russian historians idealized medieval Novgorod calling it the republic. While it was the typical medieval oligarchy. But even Novgorod, with it's oligarchs was much closer to the real democracy than Poland with it's Shlachta's permissiveness.

 

Litwin It's true! The Map Association of the world is taking away the name Russia, and it's all because of Ukraine.

 

For the first: I'm glad to lead such an academic discussion with an competent and fair partner, although we have a quite different view aubout things happend ...

Well, the political system of the P-L Comonwealth indeed was not strong enough to survive. To bring it in short words (not mine, but I can't remember the originator): Prussian and Muscovyan despotism stroke polish anarchism (with the help of Austrian betrayal, I add). After Jan Sobieski (the best known and most thanked of Polish in southern Germany and Austria) the political system of the P-L Commonwealth produced week and foreign kings, especially the Saxons were Polands ruin. In this way you are right.
But is this a reason to call it "not advanced"? I would say no. Switzerland built its success on such a system - and transformed it from oligarchy to democracy step by step. Like Switzland the Commonwealth was an attempt to combine different religions and different peoples in one state to the advantage of all. Tell me one country besides the P-L Commonwealth in those times (the only one I know was Aragon) where Jews could live nearly free of discrimination?
So maybe we can agree on "weak" but not "bad". I also accept, that it was not up to date of those times. But not all developements of Europe since Roman empire really were improvements, so "advanced" may be a problematic description. (F.e. I don't see any improvements in the "advanced" political systems of the 8th century in comparism to the anacronistic of the 4th century.)

Was it by force or because polish laguage and culture was "state of the art" for upper class in those times like it was French in western Europe?

I don't know any country of those times feudal or absolute, where plebs had any power. Maybe Switzerland or the Hanse-towns (was Nowgorod one of them, I don't know?) or some micro-countries in Italy, but mostly the power there went from the noblemen to the moneybags without changing anything for the plebs. That developement really started in the second phase of the French Revolution ...

 

Sometimes I wish we could speak Russian here. Anyway none of the westerners have appeared here for quite a long time as long as these issues are not interesting for them.
1. Democracy is not the best structure of the society. Its values are not the most progressive and sensible. But when we speak of stable society for a peace time democracy certainly has its advances. And the ultimate one is that you don't have anyone but yourself to blame for all the bad that you have in life. Not a king, or political party, not jews, general secretary etc. Everyone has an illusion that he can affect all the sides of his life, which is a very good alternative to a revolutionary behaviour. The idea of the competition and market is certainly better for the development then admiration of any wise leadeship of a king or a philosophical idea. So the democracy is nothing but a frame for the inner chaos, boiling and producing new instances. Every kingdom, religion or political idea which takes the obligation of being perfect needs to make rules for everything that happens inside which is difficult if not impossible.
2. If we speak of different attempts to realize democracy we'll see that it is far from ideal. Early hellinistic states of ancient Greece, Senate of Rome and others existed on the shoulders of slaves. But still they are considered to be democracies. Tribal democracies with all of their disadvantages also have the democratic structure and elements. Some of early feudal states also had the elements of democracy (great earls were often elected inside a big family of smaller earls). Oligarchies as well. Any state system which exist not on paper but in real life represent a mixture of different principles depending on the history and people. We can't just say that democracy is the best for every nation. Just because some people would never agree with it. In particular we can't say that it is the best for muslim countries.
3. If we talk of Great duchy of Lithuania we will find a huge inequality between the people. Those who had somewhat a russian culture were hugely supressed by other nations. This is the only reason to build castles. When you make a castle you invest a lot of money and efforts to construct a fortress enclave, which is only sensible in an enemy territory. Having such a castle gives you time to defend until the army comes to any distant part of the state in order to fight with the uprising or an invader. The structure of polish-lithuanian state has elements of democracy and early feudalism (disintegrity). The numver of noblemen is bigger. The amount of their property is smaller. Every nobleman is relatevely strong (comparing to a citizen) and weak (comparing to major noblemen). This helps to maintain heavy cavalry but brings disintegrety and chaos into a society. In particular most part of future territory of modern Ukraine separated with the state after a conflict of few noblemen. This is impossible in a structure of an absolute monarchy. So the practice proved that in that certain period of time the structure of polish-lithuanian state was worse than the structure of Austria, Prussia and Russia. This is why it was stronger states who acquired the territory of a weaker state and not the other way around.
Speaking that a weaker system was better just because propaganda tells so is not smart at all. This is a method to control people and nothing else.

 

From time to time it may happen, that westeners discuss in a western Forum

Excuse me, but I don't share your faible for strength (although a suitable portion of self defense always is obligatory). My main ideal is to enable as much people as possible to find their personal part of luck and live in peace - nevertheless gender, race, faith or political confession. For that reason and knowing the blood trail, nationalism has left in history I'm a fan of non national (and non religious) entities like the P-L Commonwealth (not perfect, but better than its neighbours), the Austro-Hungarian Empire (not perfect, but better than its followers) and now the EU (not perfect, but better than its predecessors) .

 

The rise of national states happened in eastern Europe much later then the times of polish-lithuanian commonwealth... The usage of national question is still typical for modern policy. But if we discuss that very state it had no freedom for nations. There was just no policy and no rights for people who were not driven in overwhelming majority by a national feeling. The uprising of cossacs against the poles had several reasons. Firstly the money (ukrainian cossacs were not paid from the government like the poles). Then faith (the rebels were orthodox and poles tried to use religion as a mean of polinisation). But national states started in 17-18th centuries... Before that it was quite sensible to gather the military force of crimeans or northern tribes or knights of catholic monk states... together to fight for the interests of one or another group of people. Your likes and dislikes of the past states are greatly determined by modern policy but not on the actual history. This point of view has all the sense to exist as a modern political propaganda and state ideology. But it is drastically not enough to say that it was any better than any other state in history.

Better or worse estimations completely depend on success and ability to survive and develop. From this point of view we cannot say that Polish-Lighuanian Commonwealth or Austro-Hungary is any better than those states who actually won the competition, survived and developed. EU still exists and have a chance to be better. But if it dissolves (and there is a big chance for that at the moment) - it will also inevitably estimate its political structure as inefficient and 'bad'.

 

great post, man you can work as a history teacher in many countries, facts, methodology, past romantic - nationalism , etc

ps

As i Predicted 3 days ago, Ukrainian parliament is just beginning, with internet Muscovites (ulus Juchi) can´t fool the world anymore , even Muscovites know the truth ...

[video=youtube;kaSxGPjA4-g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaSxGPjA4-g[/video]


Now its just matter of time when Muscovy´d get its original/real name back

https://translate.google.com/transl...me_russia_to_moskovia% 2F&edit-text=&act=url

 

The high age of nationalism indeed started some 100 years after the end of the P-L Commonwealth. But Muscovy always defined itself as the country of the russian, orthodox people. The Commonwealth instead defined itself as the country of the people, who lived there. King Zygmunts title as listed in the privilege of 1569 sounds more like a ethnological description than a title, but "Ruski" is at third position behind Polski and Litewski. The Commonwealth had freedom for nations but not for nationalists. A concept, the world would have needed more of - everywhen.

Agreed, the treatment of the Ukrainians in the Lublin Union of 1569 was a birth mistake, the Union immediately paid for. Ukraine should have stayed Lithuanian, they needed the lithuanian Liberalism and were incompatible to the polish Constituionalism. And the Polish never found the respect with them, they had towards Lithuanians and Belorusians. More than 400 years of more or less intensive Polish-Ukrainian quarrels followed, including Wolyn and Operation Vistula until they reached one another a hand in the early 1990's.

So I accept (not agree) your points, but not without a last historical example: Spain 1936 - Was the winning system better? Or did the better opportunity loose?

 

There is a contradiction. There were no nations at that time. And no nationalists. Society of middle ages was divided differently. Thus people of one origin could easily use violence against each other. The history of Kievan Rus and history of medieval Europe is staffed with these examples. Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan and Napoleon (or even Hitler) cannot be called politicians free of nationalism just because there were people of different nations under their command in their empire and in their armies. It just turned so that people who lived in the territory of VKL were known as poles, lithuanians and russians.

This is a state ideology of monarchic Russia. It served to state propaganda until the times of communist revolution. But both russian people and orthodox people lived outside the power of Moscow Tzar.

The official title of russian Tzar was made in the same way. Tzar of Great, Small and White Russia, Great duchy of Finland, the ruler of Siberia etc... But I wouldn't say that russian Tzars were not making nationalist moves just because their title gives an opportunity to think otherwise.

Agree. There could be a different approach giving the people of different faith and origin opportunities and rights they deserved. If they were not given such opportunities they were doomed to look for them in a struggle. This is a very common mistake. It was made by russian Tzars in the end of 19th century. This is why a lot of jews, poles, fins, caucasians and others flooded the revolutionary movements. This is a mistake which is being made in post-soviet republics now against russians and their language. There are no good or bad nations. There are good and bad people. Every state which finds the way how to use the best qualities of different people - succeeds. It was so with Russia which achieved a lot in the 19th centuries by such russian citizens as Vitus Bering, Bagration etc. It worked in the USA which was made by immigrants but at the moment has a leading candidate who promises to perform a completely different policy... It's life.

If I need to answer it very narrowly I would be forced to say that republicans were better than fascists. But.
1. It was firstly not a fair competition inside spanish country. This war was largely made by intervention of foreign states. And at that moment fascist ideas in Europe were quite popular. A modern british queen rised her hand being a child not by chance. And the intervention of fascist Italy and Germany against a vague and non official support of the USSR with a decisive actions of major european nations who helped rather against the left ideas was just stronger.
2. Republicans failed to unite the nation with their policy. Anticlericalism, populism served them a bad job. So I can definetely say that they were less effective politicians comparing to Franco, who prefferred to stay out of WW2 at times when the total victory of fascism had its finest hours. So wether I like him or not - it's just a fact that he was a better politician.

 

I do not think that Poland could evolve towards a modern type of democracy with a freedom for all categories of the population. As we see the opposite direction it's development. Poland has practically turned into the gentry republic. The weak king and the strong nobility endowed with countless privileges. Shlachta made laws in the country, they moved the king and the lower strata of the population from the power. In the XV century they press down under themselves the peasant commune, having moved the peasant elders from power. Later they have excluded from the process of government decision-making the urban petty bourgeoisie. In other words, in the XVI century burghers still took part in the Polish Sejms at the end of the XVII century already there was no burghers in the decision-making of national importance. No wonder that in such circumstances, the authorities took the decisions that were favorable to the nobility only, sometimes to the detriment of the national interests. While in countries with absolute monarchy a king or a tsar was able to subdue a nobility, forcing them to work in the interests of the whole State.

We have to understand that giving a power to one part of society only, we'll have a situation when this class will force the entire state and all other classes to work for the interests of the ruling class. So an absolute monarch was something like Orbiter that balances the interests of the state and the interests of the privileged class. Monarch in this situation was the spokesman of interests of the state as something whole. Of course there was a risk of transformation of the monarchs from the defender of public interest into the despot. But at the moment of overcoming feudalism this system worked. As soon as the feudal fragmentation was overcome, the need to have monarch disappeared. So we see Revolutions: the civil war in England, French Revolution and so on.

Of course, no one beat them for refusing to accept the Polish language and culture. But there was the situation of choice: either you are becoming a Pole and you are the part of elite, or you continue to adhere to be Russian and you are nobody in this country. This choice can not be called voluntary. More than a half of the Commonwealth population spoke in Russian. It was possible to develop the Russian language and culture as well. What a problem? But there was the opposite situation. Since the end of XVI century Russian language is superseded out of state use. It is not correct to compare Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and France for example. Both the upper and lower classes spoke in the same language in France. While the Polish language is the language of elite, the Russian language is the language of the plebeians in the Commonwealth. If the Russian language would be the language of 5-10% of the population, the ousting of Russian language would be quite natural thing. But it was the language of the majority of the population. Here's the problem.

There were no many countries of that time where a plebs had much rights. But also there were no many countries where the nobility enjoyed with this level of permissiveness. The situation when anyone, even the most mangy nobleman using the veto could block any important state decisions, can not be called something promoting development of this country. This situation sooner or later leads to the self-destruction of any state.