The late fourteenth and early fifteenth century was a remarkable period in the history of the Lithuanian state. Within the decade from 1387 to 1396, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bessarabia accepted Lithuanian suzerainty. Vitovt's rule, which lasted from 1392 to 1430, witnessed the greatest extension of the Lithuanian domain, with still more alluring possibilities in sight, as Lithuania continued to challenge Moscow for supremacy on the great Russian plain. In addition, in 1410 Vitovt personally led his army in the crucial battle of Tannenberg, or Grunwald, where the joint forces of Poland and Lithuania crushed the Teutonic Knights, thus finally eliminating this deadly threat to both Slav and Lithuanian. The Lithuanian prince's great defeat came in 1399, when his major campaign against the Mongols met disaster at their hands. Some historians believe that had Vitovt won rather than lost on the banks of the Vorskla, he could then have asserted his will successfully against both Moscow and Poland and given a different direction to eastern European history.
Jagiello's marriage, in the last analysis, proved more important for Lithuania than Vitovt's wars. It marked the beginning of a Polonization of the country. Significantly, in order to marry Jadwiga, Jagiello forsook Orthodoxy for Roman Catholicism. Moreover, he had his pagan Lithuanians converted to Catholicism. The clergy, naturally, came to Lithuania from Poland, and the Church became a great stronghold of Polish influence. It has been noted, for instance, that three of the first four bishops of Vilnius were definitely Poles, and that the Poles constituted the majority in the Vilnius chapter even at the end of the fifteenth century. Education followed
religion: the first schools were either cathedral or monastic schools, and their teachers were mainly members of the clergy. To obtain higher education, unavailable at home, the Lithuanians went to the great Polish university at Cracow, which provided the much- needed training for the Lithuanian elite. Russian historians, who stress the cultural impact of the Russians on the Lithuanians, often fail to appreciate the powerful attraction of the glorious Polish culture of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Naturally the Lithuanians were dazzled by what Poland had to offer. Naturally too Polish specialists, ranging from architects and artists to diplomats, appeared in Lithuania. Even Polish colonists came. But, to return to the Church, its influence extended, of course, beyond religion proper, education, and culture, to society, economics, and politics. Church estates grew, and they remained exempt from general taxation. The bishops sat in the council of the grand prince, while many clerics, highly esteemed for their education, engaged in the conduct of state business.
Polonization was the most extensive at the court and among the upper classes. Poland, with its sweeping privileges and freedom for the gentry, proved to be extremely attractive to Lithuanian landlords. Indeed, many western Russian landlords as well were Polonized, to complicate further the involved ethnic and cultural pattern of the area and contribute another element for future conflicts. Polish language and Polish customs and attitudes, stressing the independence and honor of the gentry, came gradually to dominate Lithuanian life. For example, in 1413 forty-seven Polish noble families established special relations with the same number of Lithuanian aristocratic families, each Polish family offering its coat of arms to its Lithuanian counterpart. It should also be emphasized that between 1386, that is, the marriage of Jagiello and Jadwiga and the beginning of a close relationship between Lithuania and Poland, and 1569, the year of the Union of Lublin, the Lithuanian upper classes underwent a considerable change: in general their evolution favored the development of a numerous gentry, similar to the Polish szlachta, while the relative importance of the great landed magnates declined.
The Union of Lublin
Over a period of time, the principality of Lithuania came into the Polish cultural and political sphere and thus ceased to be a successor state to Kiev. The Union of Lublin, which bound Poland and Lithuania firmly together, represented, one can argue, a logical culmination of the historical evolution of the Lithuanian princedom. Still, its accomplishment required a major and persistent effort on the part of the Poles. In fact, in spite of
Polish pressure and a sympathetic attitude toward Poland on the part of their own petty gentry, the Lithuanian magnates managed to block an effective union even as late as the Lublin meeting itself in 1569. Only when Sigismund II, or Sigismund Augustus, of Poland proceeded to seize large Russian territories from Lithuania and incorporate them into his own kingdom, did the Lithuanians accept Polish proposals. The Union of Lublin provided for a merger of the two states: they were to have a common sovereign and a common diet, although they retained separate laws, administrations, treasuries, and even armies. Notwithstanding an explicit recognition of equality between Lithuania and Poland and a grant of vast autonomy to the Lithuanians, the new arrangement meant a decisive Polish victory. To begin with, Poland kept the Russian lands that it had just annexed from Lithuania and that constituted the entire southern section of the principality and over a third of its total territory, including some of the richest areas. Because each county sent two representatives to the common diet and because there were many more counties in Poland than in Lithuania, the Poles outnumbered the Lithuanians in the diet by a ratio of three to one. Perhaps still more important, under conditions of union Polish influences of almost every sort were bound to spread further in Lithuania, assuring for Poland the position of the senior partner in the new commonwealth.
Constituting as it does a crucial event in the histories of several peoples, the Union of Lublin has received sharply divergent evaluations and interpretations. Polish historians in general consider it very favorably, emphasizing the diffusion of high Polish culture as well as the political and other successes resulting from the Polish-Lithuanian association. Further, they stress that the large new political entity in eastern Europe resulted from agreement, not conquest, and occasionally they even suggest it as a model for the future. Lithuanian historians, by contrast, complain that their country did not receive a fair break from Poland, which used every means to dominate its neighbor. The Russians show special concern with the fate of the Russian population: Poland's seizure of the Kiev, Volynia, and other southern areas of the Lithuanian principality in 1569 meant that their Orthodox Russian people found themselves no longer in a state which continued their traditions and to which they had become accustomed, but under foreign rule, Polish and Catholic. Besides, whatever the Polish system promised to the gentry, it had nothing but oppression for the peasants. This note of tragedy is prominent in nationalist Ukrainian historiography. For the Ukrainians, the transfer of the bulk of their land to Polish rule - the Poles had obtained Galicia earlier - marked the beginning of a new chapter in the trials and tribulations of the Ukrainian people and also set the stage for a heroic struggle for independence. In any case, for good
or evil, the Union of Lublin terminated the independent history of the Lithuanian principality.
The Lithuanian State and Russian History