Ambassadors and envoys from Russia to Poland (1763–1794)

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Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as a protectorate of Russian Empire in 1772

Ambassadors and envoys from Russia to Poland–Lithuania in the years 1763–1794 were among the most important characters in the

Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski. Backed by the presence of the Russian army within the borders of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and leveraging the immense wealth of the Russian Empire, they were able to influence both the king and the Polish parliament, the Sejm. According to their demands, the king dispensed the Commonwealth offices among the Russian supporters, and the Sejm, bribed or threatened, voted as the Russians dictated. The agenda of the Permanent Council
(Polish government) was edited and approved by the Russian ambassador, and the members of the council were approved by him.

Their power also manifested itself in many aspects of daily life, especially in the Polish capital of

Constitution of May 3, 1791 and Kościuszko Uprising
, achieved its goal of expanding Russian control over most of the Commonwealth territory and population.

Background (before 1763)

Beginning in the second half of the 18th century, the unique

tyranny of the monarch, allowed any deputy to the Sejm to stop and annul the entire session. This was soon seen by the neighbouring powers - especially Prussia and Russia - as the perfect opportunity to disrupt the Commonwealth from inside, and soon many Sejms were dissolved by a deputy bribed by one of the foreign powers.[5][6]
With an impotent Sejm, the Commonwealth stagnated, as it was impossible to reform the government, raise taxes or increase the size of the army.

In 1717, Russia cemented its position as the dominant force in Poland, in the aftermath of the

Alliance of the Three Black Eagles (or Löwenwolde's Treaty), an agreement between Commonwealth's neighbours to preserve the dysfunctional state of affairs within it. Russian influence on Poland further increased during the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738), when Russian military intervention overturned the result of the royal election of Stanisław Leszczyński.[8]

Herman Karl von Keyserling (1763–1764)

Herman Karl von Keyserling

Russian influence would not become permanent until the death of the Polish king

Herman Karl von Keyserling. Among other things, to ensure Poniatowski's victory he bribed the interrex of Poland, Władysław Aleksander Łubieński, with a significant sum of about 100,000 Russian rubles.[10][11] The Russian army entered Poland[10][11] again under the pretext of protecting Polish citizens from civil war. With such support, Poniatowski was soon elected king.[10][11]

Nicholas Repnin (1764–1768)

Nicholas Repnin
.

Keyserling, who died in September, was soon replaced by

Karol Stanisław "Panie Kochanku" Radziwiłł).[12]

Before the Sejm of 1767, he ordered the capture and exile to Kaluga of some vocal opponents of his policies,[13] namely Józef Andrzej Załuski[14] and Wacław Rzewuski.

Through the Polish nobles in his employ (like

cardinal laws.[12]

Repnin's Sejm marked one of the important milestones in increasing Polish dependence on the Russian Empire, and its devolution into a protectorate. This dependent position was bluntly spelled out in

Nikita Ivanovich Panin's letter to King Poniatowski, in which he made it clear that Poland was now in the Russian sphere of influence.[13]

Nonetheless, the Russian intervention led to the

Confederation of Bar, which practically destroyed the ambassador's handiwork. The resulting civil war in Poland, involving Russia, lasted from 1768 to 1772.[13]

Mikhail Volkonsky (1769–1771)

Mikhail Volkonsky.

For his failure in preventing the formation of Bar Confederation, Repnin was dismissed. On 22 May 1769 he was replaced by the envoy and minister Prince Mikhail Volkonsky, a high-ranking officer in the Russian Army who had been stationed in Poland since 1761. Volkonsky's orders were even more direct; in 1770 he demanded that the Czartoryski family be exiled from the Commonwealth, and when King Poniatowski asked what authority the ambassador had to demand the punishment of foreign citizens, he threatened the king with the reporting of his opposition to the Russian court.[21]

Caspar von Saldern (1771–1772)

Caspar von Saldern.

Caspar

partition of Poland. Saldern's given task was to convince the king and the Czartoryski family to support militarily Russia's crushing of the confederates. They all refused.[23] He fell into disfavor with Catherine, and after he was excluded from the negotiations related to the first partition of Poland, he asked for his own dismissal.[24][25]

Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (1772–1790)

Otto Magnus von Stackelberg

After the treaty of the First Partition, signed in February, was made public on 5 August 1772,

ratify the treaty. The Partition Sejm, with many of its deputies bribed by the Russian embassy, indeed ratified the treaty (on 30 September 1773), and established the Permanent Council
– a small body that both promised to reform the inefficient Polish governance which, Stackelberg thought, could also be easily controlled by Russia.

In 1776, Stackelberg permitted King Poniatowski to carry out several minor reforms,

Andrzej Zamoyski which would have strengthened royal power, made all officials answerable to the Sejm, placed the clergy and their finances under state supervision, and deprived landless szlachta of many of their legal immunities. Russia did not want a completely governmentless Poland, as was seen in their support for the Permanent Council, yet the Zamoyski Codex, which offered a chance for the significant reform of the Polish governance, was also not friendly to Russia. Stackelberg also opposed most reforms proposed by Poniatowski from 1778 to 1786.[15]
: 271 

On 27 May 1787, he derailed yet another Polish policy which seemed threatening to Russia. With few major wars in the past decades, the

zlotys (representing most of the surplus), the Council bought the von Brühl's Palace
– and promptly donated it to 'Poland's ally', Russia, to serve as Russia's new embassy.

Nonetheless, von Stackelberg, and the entire Russian control over Poland, was soon to suffer a major defeat. With Russian attention being diverted to the

Four-Year Sejm" of 1788–1792, which opened on October 6, 1788, and from 1790—a new alliance between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Prussia seemed to provide even further security against Russian intervention,[27] the Polish reformers managed to carry out increasing numbers of reform despite Stackelberg's opposition.[28]

Yakov Bulgakov (1790–1792)

Yakov Bulgakov.

The

War in Defense of the Constitution. The Constitution was abolished, and the Second Partition of Poland
took place.

Jacob Sievers (1793)

Jacob Sievers
.

On 16 February 1793 Bulgakov was replaced by

Jacob Sievers, envoy and minister. His orders were to ensure the ratification of the treaty of the Second Partition. Russian representatives bribed some deputies and the Russian army's presence influenced the election of their favoured candidates at local sejmiks.[32]

At the Grodno Sejm, the last Sejm of the Commonwealth, any deputies who opposed the Russian presence or demands were threatened with beatings, arrests, sequestration or exile.[33] Many deputies were not allowed to speak, and the main issue on the agenda was the project of 'Eternal Alliance of Poland and Russia', sent to the Sejm by Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great, and presented to the Sejm as the 'request of Polish people' by the Polish supporters of Russia.[34] Eventually with all the deputies cowed into agreement by Russian soldiers present in the chamber, and with none willing to speak out against the treaty, the Second Partition was declared to have passed by unanimous vote.[35]

Iosif Igelström (1793–1794)

Iosif Igelström

In December 1793 Sievers was replaced by the last Russian envoy and ambassador,

Constitution of May 3, 1791 and the Kościuszko Uprising
had achieved its goal, expanding Russian control over most of the Commonwealth territory and population.

List of Russian ambassadors and envoys to Poland, 1763–1794

Notes

  • a
    Constitution of May 3, 1791) to the Polish defeat in the Polish–Russian War of 1792, and to a lesser extent, during the time of Kościuszko Uprising
    (1794).

References

  1. ^ Hamish M. Scott, The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 1756–1775, Cambridge University Press, 2001,
    ISBN 0-521-79269-X, [1]
    Google Print, p.249
  2. ^ Catherine Govion Broglio Solari (march.); Louis François J. Bausset (baron de.) (1827). Private anecdotes of foreign courts, by the author of 'Memoirs of the princesse de Lamballe'; to which are subjoined, memoirs extr. from the portefeuille of the baron de M---; with anecdotes of the French court by the prefect of the imperial palace [L.F.J., baron de Bausset]. pp. 111–. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  3. ISBN 963-9241-18-0, Google Print: p.3
  4. ISBN 0-521-80756-5 Google Print: p.54
  5. ISBN 1-4128-0490-6, Google Print, p.42-43
  6. ISBN 0-89526-292-4, Google Print, p.242
  7. ISBN 978-0-521-55917-1
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-820171-7
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  9. ISBN 978-0-19-820402-2
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  10. ^ a b c d Edward Henry Lewinski Corwin (1917). The political history of Poland. Polish Book Importing Co. p. 297. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  11. ^ a b c Ernest Flagg Henderson (1902). A short history of Germany. The Macmillan Company. pp. 207–. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  12. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-820701-6
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  13. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-79269-1
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  14. ISBN 978-0-14-043915-1
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  15. ^
    ISBN 978-0-295-98093-5
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  16. ^ Robert Nisbet Bain (1908). Slavonic Europe: a political history of Poland and Russia from 1447 to 1796. University press. p. 388. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  17. ISBN 978-0-520-02775-6
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  18. ISBN 978-0-8018-5666-2
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  19. ^ Poland the Confederation of Bar, 1768–1772
  20. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-822152-4
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  21. ISBN 978-83-7469-583-1
    .
  22. ISBN 978-83-7469-583-1
    .
  23. ISBN 978-83-7469-583-1
    .
  24. ISBN 978-0-8223-1621-3
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  25. ^ Otto Brandt, Caspar von Saldern und die nordeuropäische Politik im Zeitalter Katharinas II, Erlangen und Kiel 1932.
  26. ISBN 978-0-19-820701-6
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  27. ISBN 0-415-25491-4, Google Print, p.128
  28. ISBN 978-0-19-820654-5
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  29. ISBN 0-19-820654-2, Google print p.84
  30. ISBN 978-0-313-31878-8
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  31. ^ Carl L. Bucki, The Constitution of May 3, 1791 Archived December 5, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Text of a presentation made at the Polish Arts Club of Buffalo on the occasion of the celebrations of Poland's Constitution Day on May 3, 1996, last accessed on 20 March 2006
  32. ^ Henry Smith Williams (1904). The Historians' History of the World: Poland, The Balkans, Turkey, Minor Eastern States, China, Japan. The Outlook Company. p. 89. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  33. ISBN 978-0-06-097468-8
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  34. ISBN 978-0-415-16112-1
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  35. Charles V. Kraitsir (1837). The Poles in the United States of America, Preceded by the Earliest History of the Slavonians, and by the History of Poland
    . Kiderlen and Stollmeyer. p. 165. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  36. ^ (in Polish) Paweł Wroński, Gazeta Wyborcza, Rozmowa z prof. Tomaszem Nałęczem. Łapówka bywała cnotą.., 2003-12-15. Last accessed on July 7, 2006.
  37. ISBN 978-0-87113-665-7
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
  38. ISBN 978-0-8021-3744-9
    . Retrieved 10 July 2011.
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