Polish gentry. Chapter II. Polish burghers and Polish gentry

Lovers historical novels Henryk Sienkiewicz was often met with such a concept as “gentry”. The meaning of this word, however, was not always clear from the context. Let's find out what this noun means, and also consider the history of the phenomenon called by this name.

What does the word "gentry" mean?

This term in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was used to refer to the noble class.

In fact, this noun can be considered a synonym for the terms “nobility”, “nobility”. At the same time, the gentry is a special phenomenon characteristic of Polish culture. In addition, it existed in neighboring Slovakia) and those whose lands in the past were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine).

Etymology

The Russian word "gentry" was derived from the Polish noun szlachta. It, in turn, most likely was formed from the German term Schlacht (battle, battle).

There is also a widespread version that the “progenitor” of the “gentry” was the old German word Slacht, meaning “breed, clan”.

Which of these theories is correct is unknown. Moreover, the first evidence of the etymology of the word in question appeared only in the 15th century. Moreover, the concept itself arose at least 4 centuries earlier.

Who is a nobleman

If the gentry is the general name for the aristocracy, then its individual representative was called “gentry” or “gentry” (if we were talking about a woman of noble birth).

Initially (during the existence of the Kingdom of Poland) receive nobility ordinary people could mainly for military merits (by the way, this is where the term originated). Therefore in early centuries were close in their role to European knights.

In later times, becoming a nobleman became much more difficult, even despite glorious exploits on the battlefield. Moreover, throughout almost the entire history of the existence of the gentry, its representatives were responsible for the defense of the country.

According to Polish historians, in the XVI-XVIII centuries. There were more than ten varieties of gentry. They were divided into different categories: by antiquity, by wealth, by the presence or absence of a coat of arms, lands or peasants, by origin, by place of residence, etc.

Despite the many varieties, the gentry is always the elite of society. Therefore, even the poorest landless nobleman had more rights and privileges than the wealthiest commoner.

Since many nobles of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were poor, the main wealth of each aristocrat was his honor i godnośc (honor and dignity). By defending them, even the poorest nobleman could challenge a noble rich man.

There is a misconception that all nobles were necessarily Catholics. This is a myth, although the issue of religion was very important for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; among its nobility there were representatives of various Christian denominations.

The history of the emergence of the gentry

Having considered what the word “gentry” means, it is worth paying attention to the history of this phenomenon.

The first noble knights appeared in the 11th century. As mentioned above, they received the noble title for military merit. It is interesting that in those days any person could receive a noble title for military achievements. Moreover, this rule even applied to slaves.

Thanks to this policy in the 11th century. A huge number of nobles appeared, but they did not have coats of arms and lands, being on state support.

Since the 12th century. gentry is a landowning class. From this period, the Polish nobles began to gradually take control of all spheres of state life. Thus, having received land, they practically enslaved the peasantry over several decades, depriving rural communities of self-government and introducing serfdom.

The situation with the urban population was no better. Since the townspeople were peaceful people who did not participate in constant military conflicts, the gentry deprived them of the right to own land. Also, the nobles constantly imposed taxes on city residents and rudely interfered in all their affairs. Because of this, the industry of the state practically did not develop.

Golden Liberty

Having figured out what “gentry” and “gentry” mean, it is worth learning about such a concept as “gentry democracy” or Złota Wolność (Golden Liberty).

The essence of this political system(which was formed in the Kingdom of Poland, and then spread to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) was that almost every nobleman took part in governing the state.

Although the country was officially headed by a king, he was the only one in Europe who was elected. And it was chosen by a group of the wealthiest nobles, whose structure resembles the modern Senate in the USA), and almost all wealthy nobles could apply for the place of king, regardless of the antiquity of the family.

He was elected for life, but the gentry had the legal right to raise an uprising (rokosh) against him and remove the unwanted person from his position. In addition, each member of the Sejm had the right of veto, so most laws in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were adopted not by the king, but by the gentry.

Despite its progressiveness, Golden Liberty also had negative sides. For example, constant civil strife and the struggle of the wealthiest nobles for power. For this reason, at the end of the 18th century. the country was so weakened that it was conquered by three neighboring states: the Russian Empire, Austria and Prussia.

Decline and disappearance of the gentry as a class

After the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist in the 18th century, a huge part of its lands came under the rule of the Russian Empire. The new authorities came to the need to equate the gentry with the Russian nobles. But it turned out that there were a lot of Polish nobility (approximately 7% of the total population of Poland, while in Russia - 1%).

To reduce its number, throughout the 19th century. In the empire, various restrictive laws were introduced, requiring the nobles to confirm their antiquity with some kind of documentary evidence. However, not all nobles could collect all the necessary information. Because of this, almost half of them were relegated to the category of commoners.

Such vile policies contributed to numerous uprisings, which only worsened the situation of the former gentry.

After the events of 1917, on the territory of the former Russian Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, there were attempts to restore the gentry as a class and return to them their former rights and freedoms. However, this was not achieved, and in 1921 the last privileges of the nobles in Poland, Ukraine and Western Belarus were abolished, as was the estate itself.

Published list of surnames gentry absorbed the knighthood of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - the inhabitants of the Brest, Vilna, Vitebsk, Volyn, Inflyatsky, Kyiv, Minsk, Mstislavsky, Novogrudok, Podolsky, Smolensky, Trotsky voivodeships and the Samogitian principality, as well as the fief ON- Principalities of Courland and Semigallia. It was based on the database of the “Association of the Belarusian Gentry”, which was processed in accordance with the task. The register included the surnames of only those families that were recognized as gentry, received nobilization, titles or indigenous status before 1795.

What is it Lithuanian gentry? And what is its difference from the Polish gentry? The answer to this question is given by itself gentry. Based on archival data, namely, self-identification of the origin of families proving their nobility in the provincial noble deputations, an approximate analysis of its composition was made. The largest group (about 40-45%) are Litvins (today's Belarusians), as well as Rusyns (one of the populations of today's Ukrainians). The second largest group is formed by ethnic Poles, about 25-30%. Next come the Germans (as a rule, immigrants from Courland and Prussia) and Samogitians (today’s “flyers”, analysis of the etymology of surnames - see. origin of the surname) - 10-15%. No more than 5% are representatives of all other ethnic groups combined: Tatars, Swedes, Danes, Dutch, Jews, French, Scots, Italians, etc.

To summarize, we note that Polish gentry(i.e., the gentry of the Polish Crown) differed from the Lithuanian only in terms of the proportion of its ethnic composition, mainly in the more pronounced percentage predominance of the Polish ethnic group (including the ethnic groups of Masurians, Kashubians, Gurals, etc.) over the Lithuanian-Rusyn.

A common feature for both privileged classes of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was multi-ethnicity, which was more clearly manifested among the inhabitants of Great Lithuania. This is explained, first of all, by the extermination and captivity of the population of its eastern provinces and the subsequent migration of the “crown”, and not only, inhabitants to these depopulated and devastated lands after historical events XVII century, described by Gennady Saganovich in the book “The Unknown War”.

Yu. Lychkovsky.

* A cross (†) indicates extinct genera.

** For more accurate grammatical transmission For the spelling of surnames, the letter “Ґ” was introduced, corresponding to the letter of the Latin alphabet “G”. The letter "G" corresponds to the letter of the Latin alphabet "H".

"Who are the gentry? - Knightly training of the gentry in the 16th-17th centuries."

<...>Jews were not known in historical (pre-imperial) Russia, since back in 1113, by a joint decision of the Russian princes, the lives and property of Jews were deprived of all protection, and they were forced to leave our land until the 18th century.

But the memory of them remains. Neither Peter the Great, nor Anna Ioannovna, nor Elizaveta Petrovna, caring for the interests of the nation as they understood them, did not allow Jews to settle or even do business in Russia, despite all the efforts of Jewish enterprise.

As for the new territories in the West acquired by Peter, the Jews there, on the contrary, were known quite well, and therefore they also took protective measures against them.

As informed V.S. points out. Mandel, “at that time, and much later, until the forties of the 19th century, the Riga-German burghers, who had a European appearance, fought to prevent the settlement of Jews in Riga and to allow Jews who came to Riga for a while to live “only in one visiting house" on the Moscow outskirts."

In the age of Catherine the Second, this prudent protective tradition was, however, violated due to the territorial acquisitions of the Russian crown.

It didn't happen right away. Catherine was not knowledgeable about the Jewish question and did not have an expert on it near the throne. When, shortly after the coup of 1762, they tried to persuade her to allow Jews to enter Russia, she said that “to begin the reign with a decree on the free entry of Jews would be a bad way to calm minds; It is impossible to recognize entry as harmful.

Then Senator Prince Odoevsky suggested looking at what Empress Elizabeth wrote in the margins of the same report. Catherine demanded a report and read: “I do not want selfish profit from the enemies of Christ.” Turning to the prosecutor general, she said: “I wish this case to be postponed.”

Elizabeth’s textbook phrase, steadfastly expressed in response to yet another round of exhortations (the commercial “benefits” of Jewish activity came to the fore, as usual), alas, did not serve for long as a beacon for Catherine. The conquest of New Russia and Poland put an end to her hesitation.

“Soon after her accession to the throne, Catherine II decided to invite colonists to Russia, especially for the southern provinces, in order to revive trade, industry and agriculture. For this purpose, by a personal decree of June 22, 1763, the “Office of Guardianship of Foreigners” was created, at the head of which the Empress put the person closest to her, Grigory Orlov. And so, in defiance of all the prejudices that existed in her time, she decided to include Jews among these “foreigners.” However, she was afraid to say it openly...

As a result, only much later, in November 1769, in a decree of the Kyiv General Voeikov, Jews were officially allowed to settle in the newly created Novorossiysk province for the first time. Moreover, this intention of the Empress to let Jews into Russia was expressed, so to speak, in a conspiracy between her and her close associates, reflected in correspondence with the Riga Governor General Brown, in which the whole matter was given a conspiratorial character.

The letter delivered to Brown by Major Rtishchev stated: when some foreign merchants of the Novorossiysk province are recommended by the guardianship office, they will be allowed to reside in Riga to carry out trade on the same basis as is allowed by law to merchants of other Russian provinces in Riga.

If, further, these merchants send their clerks, commissioners and workers to settle in Novorossiya, then issue them with the proper passports for a safe journey, “regardless of their religion,” and give them guides. If, finally, three or four people arrive from Mitava who wish to go to St. Petersburg due to demands on the treasury, then issue them passports, “without indicating their nationality and without making inquiries about their religion,” and indicate only their names in the passports. To verify their identity, these people will present a letter from the merchant Levin Wulf, who is located in St. Petersburg.

In this mysterious way the settlement of Jews in Russia began. Even the word “Jew” is carefully avoided in the letter. However, Brown obviously understood Catherine’s desire, or Rtishchev explained it to him in words. The latter was immediately sent to Mitava to the Russian envoy at the ducal court von Simolin on a secret mission and on May 7, 1764 returned from Simolin with seven Jews.”

Jewish baked Polish pie

The situation changed radically after the first and second partition of Poland and the annexation of ancient lands to Russia Kievan Rus, for a long time under the rule of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, fairly Polized and Catholicized and thoroughly infiltrated by Jews.

After the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, over 800 thousand Jews found themselves under Russian citizenship. Living en masse in Poland since 1098 (according to the Czech chronicles of Cozma of Prague), Jews managed to achieve many benefits and privileges for themselves. At one time they even minted their own coins, and in the end they achieved the right to acquire real estate on an equal basis with the Polish nobility.

In the lands that passed to Russia, Jewish power was established long ago; she kept mainly on farming, renting, usury and tavern.

The master was not as terrible for a farm laborer or serf as a Jew - a tenant, tax farmer, moneylender.

Gabriel Derzhavin, who inspected the annexed lands, wrote a lengthy note about this to the Tsar and the highest dignitaries (“Opinion about the aversion to the shortage of grain in Belarus by curbing the selfish trades of the Jews, about their transformation, etc.”).

He accused the Jews of being " they bring the villagers into poverty, and especially when they return the borrowed bread from them... of course they must pay it back twice: whoever fails to do this is punished... all the ways for the villagers to be prosperous and well-fed are taken away ».

Modern Jewish historian Israel Shahak describes the situation even more uncompromisingly: “Before 1939, the population of many Polish cities east of the Bug was at least 90% Jewish, and this was even more true in the areas ceded to Tsarist Russia during the division of Poland.

Outside the cities, many Jews throughout Poland, and especially in the east, served as direct overseers and oppressors of the serf peasantry. They managed entire estates (having full power of the landowners) or rented individual monopolies of feudal lords, such as a mill, a distillery, a tavern (with the right of armed searches of peasant houses in search of moonshiners), or a bakery.

They collected feudal payments of all kinds. In short, under the rule of magnates and feudal clergymen, who also descended from the nobility, Jews were both direct exploiters of the peasants and practically the only townspeople.”

In the specialized literature one can find the following estimate: on the eve of the first partition of Poland, over a third of Polish Jews were in one way or another connected with tenant farming. More than that. Since in the primordially Russian western lands the ruling stratum - the Poles - professed Catholicism, they, pursuing their own benefits, transferred to the Jews the right to collect even fees for church ceremonies - christenings, weddings, funerals, etc. from the forced Orthodox population (Little Russians, Belarusians). In connection with this, an expressive image of a Jewish tenant holding the keys to the church in his hand appeared in local folklore.

The special position of the Jews in Poland entailed very important consequences. As Mikhail Menshikov, who studied this issue, wrote: “ The Jews were only tenants, but since they were given the right to the land and to the people assigned to the land, they were the real nobility of Poland. While access to the nobility was closed to Christian subjects, a Jew had to be baptized in order to acquire gentry rights.

A single listing of Polish families descended from Jewish crosses takes up two whole volumes.

And since at the same time the Polish gentry married rich Jewish women, within five hundred years the Jews managed to significantly spoil the very race of the Polish nobility. Take a closer look at the common Polish people and the gentry - there are still two races, noticeably different.”

This conclusion is shared by Israel Shahak, who argues that Polish nobles of the 18th century continuously intermarried with baptized Jews. The abundant admixture of Jewish blood with Polish noble blood, just as it happened in Spain and Portugal under the rule of the Moors, is a fact long established by science.

So, it should be noted and emphasized that the position of Jews in the lands annexed to Russia during the partition of Poland, their actual influence and power over the local population is not the result of Russian orders established by the authorities. No, before us is only the order of things inherited by the Russian conquerors, established under the wing of the Polish White Eagle.

For Poland, the inclusion of Jews in ruling class, interbreeding with the Polish nobility and acquiring noble status had long been neither news nor a rarity at the time of its first partition.

When annexing new lands to Russia, Catherine the Second did not take such circumstances into account. It is not surprising that the old order was preserved in the new Russian territories. In Russia, the first legislative act regulating Jewish land ownership was the “Regulations on Jews” of 1804, which officially allowed Jews to purchase, own and inherit land. Without serfs, of course.

But as far as the ownership of serfs in Russia is concerned, the law was quite harsh and definite. The empress’s personal decree of February 22, 1784 imposed an unequivocal ban: “ No one in the empire, not being in Christian law, can enjoy the right to buy, acquire and own serfs" This provision cannot be interpreted in two ways.

It is known that Jews in Russia constantly tried to torpedo this law. They not only made efforts to legalize and strengthen Jewish land ownership, but also proposed to grant Jews the right to own serfs.

Let me emphasize: rich, influential Jews in the newly annexed territories tried to exploit at least someone, even their own fellow tribesmen at worst. Thus, the Minsk Kahal in 1804 sent his proposals on Jewish land ownership to the interministerial Jewish Committee, established by Alexander I to prepare new legislation on Jews. Kahal proposed “allowing enough Jewish merchants to buy land” and establish factories on them where poor Jews would work. It was assumed that when they “got used to work” and “improve their condition,” they could be transferred to agricultural work there.

In essence, as the researcher notes, “ in fact, a class of a kind of “Jewish nobles” is distinguished, while the status of the lower strata of Jewish society declines even more - to the point of possible enslavement ».

The Jews also tried to achieve the right to own serfs in general, regardless of nationality. Thus, in 1799, the merchant of the second guild Getzel Leizarovich from Belitsa, in petitions to the Senate and to the highest name, sought permission to purchase two hundred peasants to work in a tannery.

However, of all such attempts, no one succeeded, and the same Leizarovich was refused precisely on the basis of the above-mentioned decree of 1784.

The only exceptions were those mentioned by Miller (and after him by Solovyov and Sergeev) Nota Notkin (aka Nathan Shklover) and Joshua Tseytlin (aka Tsetlis), as well as a few more lucky ones, which are discussed below.

"Potemkin Jews"

What was the matter? Both named were Jews specifically from Shklov, representatives of the most Jewish of all Jewish loci on the lands of the Polish crown newly acquired by Russia. It was in in every sense words, a national Jewish center on Belarusian soil, with its own traditions and orders and with its own relationships with the Polish royal court. Even Georg Korb, secretary of the Austrian embassy at the court of Peter I, in a note dating back to 1699, noted that Shklov Jews constituted “the richest and most influential class in the city.”

Both Tseytlin and Notkin, wealthy merchants, received the rank of court councilor from the Polish king even before the partition of Poland. Then the Polish government changed to Russian, but the rank of these Jews, which formally gave Russian nobility and with it the right to acquire land, remained.

As the reader understands, for the peasants of the Mogilev province, annexed to Russia precisely during the reign of Catherine, no changes in the situation occurred. The traditional power and influence of Jews in this specific region, separated from all of Russia by the Pale of Settlement established by Catherine, did not change. She just changed the format a little.

Both Notkin and Tseytlin actually owned estates and peasants here, succeeding in this thanks, firstly, to their careers made in advance, and secondly, to a special relationship with His Serene Highness Prince Grigory Potemkin - Tauride. Such relations, however, did not apply to all the Jews Potemkin knew: both named businessmen remained almost the only exception both among the Russian nobles and among the newly acquired Jewish inhabitants of Russia.

What was this relationship? Both Notkin and Tseytlin were large contractors who became very rich from supplies to the army, from the laying out and construction of Kherson and the general development of Novorossiya. All this was under the direct control of Potemkin and contributed to the growth of his personal fortune, which explains his supernatural closeness from the very beginning.

Here is what the Jewish historian B. Klein writes in a text with the characteristic title “Potemkin Jews”: “A key role at the Potemkin court was played by a personality noted by researchers long ago, but whose significance, apparently, has yet to be fully assessed. Joshua Zeitlin, a prominent merchant and learned Hebraist, traveled with the prince, managed his estates, built cities, entered into loans to supply the army, and even managed a mint in the Crimea.

According to descriptions of contemporaries, he “walked with Potemkin as his brother and friend,” proudly maintaining traditional clothing, piety, and in front of others, he had conversations with rabbis. Sometimes His Serene Highness personally participated in Talmudic discussions. True, there were also a priest and a mullah with him. Such a spectacle was amazing not only for Russia, but also for Europe, which received reports from informants about what was happening around one of the most unpredictable rulers.”

The gentry are a special caste of Poles, which justified their uniqueness not only by status, appearance or manners, but also origin. There was no place for Slavic roots in the noble family tree.

Other Slavs

Events taking place recently in Ukraine have renewed lively discussions on the topic of inter-Slavic relations. Today, the ideas of Pan-Slavism, born in the 18th century and strengthened in the 19th century, have been devalued like never before. But even in the middle of the 19th century, the Czechs saw in the unification of the Slavs a powerful political force capable of resisting Germanism.

The Czech initiative was supported by Russia, but Poland reacted to it at least coolly. The union of the Slavs with the dominant role of the Russian Tsar meant the collapse of hopes for an independent Polish state. Religion also played a role in the Poles’ resistance to the ideas of Pan-Slavism: Catholic Poland traditionally acted as an antagonist to Orthodox Rus'.

The Kingdom of Poland, of course, had its Slavophiles. Prince Adam Czartoryski enthusiastically accepted the idea of ​​Slavic unification, and the Decembrist Julian Lubinski even headed the Society of United Slavs - the first organization that openly proclaimed the ideas of Pan-Slavism.

However, some of the Polish elite always had ideas about the special status of the Polish people, which in many ways made it difficult to find common ground with their Slavic neighbors. Ethnologist Stanislav Khatuntsev noted that in the course of their historical existence, the Poles largely lost many mental properties, components of the spiritual and material structure of that ancient tribe and instead acquired features of mental organization, material and spiritual culture, typical of the Celto-Roman and Germanic peoples.

The Polish historian Franciszek Piekosinski, for example, put forward a theory about the dynastic origins of the Polish gentry, linking this with the reproduction of old Scandinavian runes in Polish coats of arms, as well as with Scandinavian expressions found in the so-called “zavolani”. However, at one time the nobles themselves took a hand in proving the uniqueness of their pedigree.

We are Sarmatians

In the 15th – 17th centuries, when the final stage of the formation of European nations took place, interest in ancient literature was gaining strength in the Old World. In ancient books, early modern thinkers searched for the origins of their states and nations. The Romance countries saw their roots in the Roman Empire, the Germans - in the ancient Germanic tribes, and the Poles also found their ancestors in the far East.

One of the first to put forward the idea of ​​Sarmatism was the Polish historian Jan Dlugosz (1415-1480). He argued that ancient writers and historians called the territory of Poland European Sarmatia, and the Poles were called “Saramats”.

Later, this idea was consolidated by the astrologer Maciej Karpiga of Miechów (1457-1523) in his famous treatise “On the Two Sarmatias,” which went through 14 editions in the 16th century. In his work, the author substantiated the significant difference between the Poles, as descendants of the valiant Sarmatians, from the Muscovites, descended from barbarian tribe Scythians

Over the next few centuries, the idea of ​​Sarmatism was dominant among the Polish aristocracy, transforming from a fashionable, romanticized hobby into a conservative political ideal - a Gentry Republic, where broad democratic freedoms were available only to a select few.

The cornerstone of gentry Sarmatism was “golden liberty,” which was opposed to both servile despotic Asia and bourgeois businesslike Europe. However, this did not prevent the nobles from combining the Eastern love of luxury and purely European enterprise.

An echo of the ideology of Sarmatism was the so-called “Polish messianism”, which developed in the 17th-18th centuries, according to which the Poles, by virtue of their origin, should play a special role in the destinies of the world, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth should become “a stronghold of Christianity, a refuge of freedom and the breadbasket of Europe.”

Emphasizing uniqueness

The Sarmatian myth has always been an important ideological basis for Poland, acting as an unofficial national idea. Polish historians have done a lot to strengthen the idea that the Sarmatian tribes actually lived on the territory of Poland and laid the foundations of Polish statehood.

The Sarmatian past served as a kind of standard by which the image of the ideal nobleman was cut. He, like his Sarmatian ancestor, is a courageous warrior, merciless to his enemies, but at the same time a knight for whom honor and justice are not an empty phrase. Another incarnation of the nobleman is the Pole tycoon, the keeper of the traditions of patriarchal antiquity, who harmoniously fits into the bosom of the rural idyll.

An important feature of Polish Sarmatism is the cultivation of a chivalrous attitude towards women, one of the components of which was the gallant custom of kissing a woman’s hand. Supporters of the Sarmatian theory referred to the fact that the high position of women in society was unusual for other Slavic peoples. According to historians, the special status of women in gentry culture was influenced by the myth of the Sarmatian Amazons.

Over time, the image of the ideal nobleman became firmly embedded in the genome of Polish identity. "Fearlessness bordering on almost madness when man walking to certain death in a white uniform, in a confederate shirt proudly tilted to one side, with a rose in his teeth, he knows that he will be shot in a minute, but he does not allow himself for a minute to leave this image of the ideal Sarmatian knight - this is the reality of the Polish national character right up to the 20th century,” writes journalist Tamara Lyalenkova.

We must not forget about the other side of the gentry’s worldview - the irrepressible arrogance with which the arrogant gentry distanced himself from the Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians and even a significant part of the Poles living in the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a terminological sense, this looked like a contrast between the Sarmatian elite and the peasant “cattle” (Bydło - draft cattle), with which the Slavs were also associated.

Little in common

Sarmatism still exists in Polish culture today, although it is more of a form of ironic self-identification. Sometimes this word is used to emphasize the uniqueness of the Polish character, any differences from their Slavic neighbors.

These days there are divisions within Slavic family are obvious, and there are many socio-political and cultural reasons for this. One of them dates back to approximately the 6th century AD - it was then, according to researchers, that the Proto-Slavic language, common to all Slavs, began to fall out of use. As one thinker put it, “the Slavs used national languages, rather for division than for unification.”

However, the differences between the Slavs are explained not only through history or language. Polish anthropologist and bioarchaeologist Janusz Piontek writes that from a biological point of view the Slavs can be classified as different groups, which originally inhabited the Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, and they are noticeably different from each other.

“The Slavs and the Poles have a lot in common. Poles and Slavs - nothing. They are uncomfortable in their Slavic origins, uncomfortable to realize that they are from the same family as Ukrainians and Russians. The fact that we turned out to be Slavs is an accident,” states the Polish writer Mariusz Szczygiel.

The events of World War II and the consequences of the collapse of the USSR largely alienated the Poles not only from everything Soviet, but also, to some extent, from what is the basis of Slavic identity. The trend of recent decades, when the situation forces Polish citizens to look for work and better living conditions in the West, leads to the fact that Poles began to feel more in common with residents of Great Britain and Germany than with Belarusians or Ukrainians.

Journalist Krzysztof Wasilewski, in his article “Slavs against Slavs,” calls the post-Soviet period in the history of Poland years of transformation, when the Poles “tried at any cost to become like the West, dissociating themselves from everything that bore the imprint of the East.”

It is quite natural that Polish historians are looking for theories of common roots with anyone - with the Germans, Scandinavians, Sarmatians, treating with disgust the words of the author of the oldest Polish chronicle, Gallus Anonymous: “Poland is part of the Slavic world.”

Belarusian gentry

The gentry (from Old High German slahta - clan, or German Schlacht - battle) is a privileged military class in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as well as some other states. It played a large role in the political life of the country, over time it formed the concept of a “gentry nation” and asserted its right to an elective monarchy.

"The gentleman on the outskirts of the region of Vayawodze". Any nobleman elected as a deputy of the sejs or sejmik had the right of Liberum Veto. Liberum veto- the principle of the parliamentary structure in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which allowed any Sejm deputy to stop discussing the issue in the Sejm and the work of the Sejm in general by speaking out against it. It was adopted as mandatory in 1589, and in 1666 it was extended to voivodeship sejmiks.

Unlike neighboring countries, where the nobility made up ~3% of the population, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania the gentry made up 10-15% (in different voivodeships). According to the Gorodel Union of 1413, the boyars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania entered the Polish gentry coat of arms - the “Act of Adoption”. This time is taken as the starting point of modern Belarusian heraldry.

According to their property status, the gentry was divided into:
- tycoons
- possible gentry (ownership of one or more villages)
- farm gentry (ownership of one or more farms / estates /)
- behind-the-wall (back-of-the-wall, outlying) gentry (had their own farm, but did not have peasants)
- gentry-golota (landless)

The lower property layer of the szlachta blurred with the zemyans and armored boyars. The gentry, zemyans, armored and good boyars were a military class (godmothers were not called up for service). The name "List of the Lithuanian Army" of 1528-67 has been preserved to this day, where everyone can find familiar names.

Sarmatism

Gentry ideology, which dominated in the 16th - 19th centuries. Sarmatism elevated the gentry to the ancient Sarmatians, thereby separating itself from the mass of commoners. Sarmatism predetermined many features of the culture of the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its difference from the Western European aristocracy: the conventionally “eastern” style of ceremonial clothing (zupan, kontus, Slutsk belt, saber), special manners, Sarmatian portraits, etc.

On maps, Sarmatia was localized around the Wends and the Herodotus Sea (now Polesie).

This tradition - defining the gentry as a “separate ethnographic group” - is continued in the academic publication of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society"Russia. Complete geographical description" 1905.

Gente Lituane, natione Polonus

" - the majority of the local nobility knew about their Lithuanian or Belarusian ethnic origin, but perceived the linguistic and cultural Polonization of their ancestors as an act of their voluntary political and civilizational choice[analogue of national elites in the USSR] ." Juliusz Bardach, Doctor honoris causa, University of Warsaw, Vilnius University, University of Lodz

Since 1696 Polish became state in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It became the language of the townspeople (analogous to Russian today), along with Latin it was used in educational institutions(Vilna University, Polotsk Jesuit Academy, etc.).

[However, even in the 19th century, Polish-speaking philomaths called themselves not Poles, but Litvins, turned to images of “historical Lithuania” (VDL) in their literary works, introduced into their literary works elements of the "tuteishag" of the language ("Dziady" by Mickiewicz).

Typical representatives of the Tuteish gentry were Chodzko with the coat of arms "Kostesha", Skirmunty with the coat of arms "Oak", Voinilovichi - "The Voinilovichs came neither from the East nor from the West - they are indigenous, local, bone from bone, blood from blood of that people, who once buried his ancestors in these mounds (today in rural cemeteries) and plows his native Belarusian land with a plow.”"Memories", E. Voinilovich (founder of the construction of the Minsk Red Church)

Nobility & Russian Empire

After the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the annexation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Russian Empire, the gentry class, together with local government is rapidly being eliminated.

An interesting work of the Imperial Academy of Sciences is “Description of all peoples living in the Russian state” in 1793, compiled after the Second Section of the RP. Calls all residents of our region “Poles.” Describes the peasants and gentry of the “Polish people.” Typically, without lamentations about the “hard lot of the Belarusian peasant” - everything is still ahead.

Lists of gentry

Name lists of the gentry and gentry families - "Collection of names of the gentry", consolidated lists of participants in the uprising of 1830 and the uprising of 1863, other sources - can be viewed.

Gentry democracy

The gentry - a social stratum much more significant than the nobles of neighboring countries - gave birth to the term gentry democracy. Gentry democracy can be considered as a variant of representative democracy with the only difference that not the entire population, but only the gentry, was considered the people in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The final formation of “gentry democracy” was approved in 1573 by Henry’s Articles - the oath of the elected kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They not only limited the power of the king, but also gave the gentry the legal right to oppose him.

“If we (from which, God forbid!) fail to fulfill these articles or conditions, or do something contrary to them, laws and liberties, then we declare all residents of the kingdom and the grand duchy free from the obedience and loyalty due to us ".
§17 ...A ieslibysmy (czego Boze uchoway) co przeciw prawom, wolnosciom, artykulom, kondycyom wykroczyli, abo czego nie wypelnili: tedy obywatele Koronne oboyga narodu, od posluszenstwa y wiary Nam powinney, wolne czyniemy."

[200 years later, in 1776 similar words were included in the US Declaration of Independence:
“But when a long series of abuses and violences, invariably subordinated to the same purpose, testify to an insidious design to force the people to submit to unlimited despotism, the overthrow of such a government and the creation of new guarantees of security for the future becomes the right and duty of the people.” ]

The complex relationship between the monarchy and the szlachta, as well as the far-reaching privileges of the szlachta, became one of the main reasons for the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century.

http://www.gutenberg.czyz.org/word,60867
http://www.arche.by/by/page/science/6866