In the partitions of Poland, more Latvian and Baltic German areas—Inflanty/ Latgale and the Duchy of Courland—came into the Russian empire. Inflanty, with major city Dunaburg (Daugavpils/Dvinsk), came into Russian control in 1772 in the first partition and was added to the gubernia of Vitebsk. A rural southeast corner of Livonia, Inflanty had been administratively a part of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania since the sixteenth century; here a diverse Catholic (Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian) and Lutheran German nobility ruled over enserfed peasantry of Latvians (speaking Latgalian), Poles, and Lithuanians. This ruling class enjoyed Polish noble rights, parliamentary institutions, and Polish culture, which Russia maintained. The population was equally diverse— in 1784 estimated to be 62 percent Catholic, 31 percent Uniate, 4 percent Lutheran, 2 percent Jewish, and less than 1 percent each of Reform Protestants and Old Believers.
The Duchy of Courland, centered in the peninsula that forms the southern rim of the Gulf of Riga, on the other hand, was an autonomous Duchy created by Grand Master of Livonian Knights Gotthard Kettler in 1561 when he secularized the Order. The Duchy remained an autonomous part of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania thereafter. Ruled by the Kettler family, often in tension with Courland's German nobility, the Duchy flourished from shipbuilding, trade, and manufacturing; in the seventeenth century it even established short-lived colonies in Africa and the West Indies. Its primarily Latvian peasantry was enserfed. In the eighteenth century Courland, like the Commonwealth itself, fell increasingly under Russian control. Peter I married his niece Anna Ioannovna to the Duke of Courland in 1710; widowed in 1711, she governed Courland until she became Russia's Empress (ruled 1730-40), in both settings ruling with a coterie of Cour- land Germans. As Empress, Anna generously patronized the Duchy and when the Kettler line died out in 1737, she installed her favorite, Ernst Biron, as Duke. The Duchy's court at Mitau/Jelgava became a lively outpost of St. Petersburg culture, ornamented by Francesco Rastrelli's court architecture. The Duchy came into the Russian empire in 1795 when the last Duke abdicated in the face of the third partition; Russian administrative reforms and district divisions were immediately introduced, but local German nobles were appointed to regional offices, maintaining de facto much of the status quo for the short period until Paul I's reversal of Catherinian reforms in 1796. In 1801 Courland peasants were officially exempted from conscription, reflecting the wide variety of treatment of ethnic groups and borderland peasants across the empire.
PARTITIONS OF POLAND: POLES, LITHUANIANS, AND JEWS
Three partitions destroyed the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania as a sovereign state. Of the three partitioning powers (Russia, Austria, and Prussia), the Russian empire received the most land. More than 460,000 square kilometers and over 7.5 million Ukrainians, Belarus'ans, Lithuanians, Latvians, Poles, and Jews joined the Russian empire from 1772 to 1795, presenting tremendous challenges for imperial governance.
In 1772 in the first partition a vertical swath of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was taken, including the towns of Polotsk, Vitebsk, Mstislav, and Gomel', as well as Inflanty, a total of 1.3 million people, primarily Belarus'an-speaking peasants but also townsmen, some Jews, and Polish nobles. The poll tax and recruitment were imposed on Belarus'an peasants and townsmen and Jews immediately (1773), but much of the status quo for the upper classes was affirmed. Polish noble privileges, local noble assemblies (sejmiki), the Grand Duchy lawcode, urban self-government (often according to Magdeburg Law), and serfdom were affirmed. Noble privileges such as the right to distill and sell vodka were confirmed. These lands were integrated into the gubernii of Pskov (moved to Polotsk 1777), Vitebsk, and Mogilev, with district-level governors and local land courts for civil and land disputes, subordinate to a governor-general. At the gubernia level, Russian language and appeals and criminal courts were imposed, but on the local level litigation continued in Polish according to Polish law, as long as it did not contradict Russian law. The new administrative reforms introduced gubernia boards and fiscal, judicial, and police organs at gubernia and local levels in 1778. Polish noblemen remained dominant locally, taking the lead in the newly established noble assemblies after the Charter of Nobility (1785) was introduced. The law of May 3, 1783 applied here as well as in Left Bank and Sloboda Ukraine, giving all peasants a poll tax and ending peasant mobility.
The diversity and breadth of lands acquired in the second and third partitions (1793, 1795) made the imperial task more difficult; Russia's traditional approach of affirming regional customs had to be balanced with Catherine II's efforts since the 1770s to create an empire-wide administrative system. While Galicia went to the Habsburgs, the rest of the Rus' lands came into the empire. Right Bank and western Ukrainian lands were organized into the gubernii of Volhynia, Podolsk, and Bratslav. The rest of the Grand Duchy's lands became the gubernii of Vilnius, Minsk, and Slonim, subordinate to the governor-general of Livland and Estland. Polish and German courts were phased out gradually in favor of the 1775 Russian model of civil and criminal chambers at gubernia and district level. Thousands of Polish noblemen from these lands were accepted into the Russian nobility; poll tax and recruitment were imposed on their serfs. Forcible conversion of Uniates to Orthodoxy succeeded in the Right Bank, but Uniate bishoprics in the Grand Duchy areas resisted and forcible conversion was deferred until the 1830s. As noted, when the Duke of Courland abdicated in 1795, the institutions of the 1770s-80s gubernia reforms were introduced, but local German nobles maintained political dominance.
Ethnic Lithuanian lands joined the Russian empire in the third partition (1795), organized as the gubernii ofVilnius and Grodno. These were lands ofPolish culture and political institutions, having been in a dynastic relationship or confederation with the kingdom of Poland since 1387. Here Russia affirmed the status quo: the 1588 Lithuanian Statute remained in effect, the rights of the Polish and Lithuanian Catholic nobility were affirmed, but their institutions oflocal self-government were limited. These lands were classic areas of rural enserfment (the peasants were generally East Slavic Orthodox), but Vilnius and Kaunas constituted vibrant centers of ethnic and cultural diversity. An ancient medieval town, Vilnius flourished as a political center of the Grand Duchy, with a royal palace and University (1579) that was an early modern center of science, humanities, and Catholic theology. Self-governing under Magdeburg Law, Vilnius was home to Polish and Lithuanian (Catholic), German (Lutheran), Ruthenian (Orthodox), and Jewish communities, who interacted in trade, culture, and daily life across confessional boundaries, as David Frick has shown.
Vilnius was particularly a center of Jewish life, emblematic of the significant Jewish population in the Commonwealth as a whole. Jews had lived in the kingdom of Poland and later Grand Duchy of Lithuania since the thirteenth century, protected by royal charters that guaranteed institutional and religious autonomies. The Commonwealth's Jews governed themselves with a hierarchy of communal institutions paralleling the county and national levels of noble self- government of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. A local assembly or kahal governed all aspects of a community's internal life (public safety, education, courts, and justice) and interacted with local authorities; representatives met at regional levels and sent spokesmen to the biannual Polish Parliament (Sejm) to advocate for Jewish interests.
Protected by official policy, Jewish communities lived a stable, prosperous existence in Polish and Lithuanian lands. Colleges of higher learning (yeshiva) were founded in the 1500s and flourished into the mid-1600s (Lublin, Cracow, Poznan, Vilnius). Here Hebrew law, ethics, mystical contemplation, and Talmudic commentary were taught and researched, while the language ofpopular culture was Yiddish. The sixteenth century was a high point of Ashkenazic Talmudic learning: learned rabbis—Moses Isserles (1520-72), Solomon Luria (1510-73), and Mordecai Jaffe (d. 1612)—published codifications of Jewish law and legendary Talmudic analyses. Vilnius was called the "Jerusalem of the North" for its Jewish presses, schools, and community.