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Were there any justifications for the partition of Poland?

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ap08 said:
The word "Duchy" is very confusing in this context. It implies the Western notion of an inheritable title to some piece of land. The "Dukes" and "Princes" of the Rurikovich dynasty did not, in general, claim a particular piece of land; they claimed common descent to Rurik and being part of the Rurikovich "extended family", which (the family, not the individual dukes and princes) had the claim to the entirety of Russian lands. The most senior prince in the dynasty would be thus, the ruler of "all Russias", all lands that belonged to the Rurikovichi.
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In that way, the question will be that if you have a claim to the lands that your distant relative owns over his children and other claims. When does claims to the property of your family members expire? Let´s say that a nobleman who is an outsider marries a daughter of the house of Rurikovich, does his children with this woman also inherit those claims? Did the Romanov family inherit those claims as well? Ultimately, that kind of system claims leads to the situation where might is right. If you have enough military force behind you then you can press your claims and force your relatives to submit to your power.
 
Finnish Dragon said:
In that way, the question will be that if you have a claim to the lands that your distant relative owns over his children and other claims. When does claims to the property of your family members expire? Let´s say that a nobleman who is an outsider marries a daughter of the house of Rurikovich, does his children with this woman also inherit those claims? Did the Romanov family inherit those claims as well? Ultimately, that kind of system claims leads to the situation where might is right. If you have enough military force behind you then you can press your claims and force your relatives to submit to your power.
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There was formally a system of seniority, but in practice it did lead to what you call "might is right", bitter infighting within the family and civil wars. What's more important is that there has always been a notion of Russian lands as a whole, not broken into separate duchies that could belong to random people, and that unity was not forgotten in the time of Ivan IV (or actually his grandfather Ivan III, who is maybe less famous but far more successful in the unification of Russian lands).

As for the Romanovs, they were elected to be new Tsars by the assembly of the entire Russian people, and the question if they inherit the Rurikovich claims has probably never been asked. Everyone in Russia felt the continuity without any need for justification.
 
ap08 said:
It is sad to see such attitude toward Russia. After the 1st partition Russia got Polotsk and Mogilev, lands that are currently part of Belarus (notice the ending "rus", they keep it in the country's name, despite being independent from Russia), and have been Russian since as early as 862. Only by an unfortunate turn of events - Mongol invasion, dark centuries of the Tatar yoke - Russia lost its western half to Lithuania and later Poland-Lithuania. What claim did PLC have to Polotsk, beside that of a conqueror?
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What claim did Russia have to the lands that were integral parts of Lithuanian state for 400 years? The justification that Russia was merely retaking old Russian lands didn't start to appear until the 19th century when nationalistic ideas began to take hold in Russia. Cosmopolitan ruler like Catherine II obviously didn't care about such nonsense.
 
That's utterly wrong. Russia(Moscow) laid claim to "the Russian lands" from the XVth century. Before that it was Lithuania that claimed overlordship over Russia - not just the parts that became Bielorussia and Ukraine but the land as a whole. There are documents, diplomatic agreements and propaganda works from the XVth century onwards that contain this claim.
 
Amallric said:
That's utterly wrong. Russia(Moscow) laid claim to "the Russian lands" from the XVth century. Before that it was Lithuania that claimed overlordship over Russia - not just the parts that became Bielorussia and Ukraine but the land as a whole. There are documents, diplomatic agreements and propaganda works from the XVth century onwards that contain this claim.
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Oh, those times every monarch overclaimed many lands just for bargain purposes :)
 
pithorr said:
Oh, those times every monarch overclaimed many lands just for bargain purposes :)
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Yeah, just look at the swedish kings claiming the wendish lands :p
 
Getting back to the original topic, wasnt the anarchy a justification? I vaguely remember it being mentioned, and it would fit the age of absolutism.
 
Arilou said:
Yeah, just look at the swedish kings claiming the wendish lands :p
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Or the Danish king claiming the Wendish lands and the Goth lands (that one was a subtle claim on Sweden IIRC). Though as far as I know those two claims were dropped when the queen ascended the throne in 1972.
 
DarthMaur said:
Getting back to the original topic, wasnt the anarchy a justification? I vaguely remember it being mentioned, and it would fit the age of absolutism.
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Yes, it was used as a propaganda figleaf for the partition, but it was nothing more than that. It had been Russia who had made sure since the reign of Peter the Great that Poland remained as internally weak and ungovernable as possible, as it made it far easier for Russia to keep treating the country as a vassal kingdom. When the Sejm reelected Stanislaw Lesczinscky as king in the 1730s, both Russia and Austria did not hesitate about lending their support to the rival party of August of Saxony, and both the Russian and Austrian armies intervened in Poland. But when the Confederation of Bar (which according to the same laws that the Russians had made sure to defend all those years, was a perfectly legal organization) opposed the Russian-backed king Stanislaw Poniatowski, then suddenly the Russians and Austrians decided that Poland was in anarchy and the Poles had to be saved from themselves.
 
Semper Victor said:
Yes, it was used as a propaganda figleaf for the partition, but it was nothing more than that.
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Eh, yes, but i was under the impression that is what this thread is about. I mean, its obvious that partitions were unjustified, so the justification in the title is about what excuses the partitioners/contemporary whoevers gave.
 
Noone of significance opposed - which is the meaning of justification. Because "unjustified" means that there is a major opposition to said political move in the world.

We really can't project the modern rules on this situation, although, if I had to guess, many areas of partition would want independence from everyone involved, including PLC.
 
timfi said:
It's an arbitrary topic, but definitely the Baltic nations, who really have no relation whatsoever to the Germans, Poles, or Russia.
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There was nothing like Baltic "nations" in the timeframe of partitions of the PLC... You may insist about Lithuania but in this case they would need independece from themselves :)
 
as far as the 4th partition goes, USSR effectively saved half of Poland from being swallowed by nazis and they also got a buffer zone which further stretched the German supply lines in 1941, thus helping save Moscow from being captured. It would have been very irresponsible, borderline suicidal, from USSR to just hand over the whole Eastern Europe to Germany. The chances of nazi victory would have been higher.

What USSR should have done differently was to attack Romania in September 1940, immediately after the fascist Iron guard coup. At the time, Germany could not prevent the loss of the Romanian oil fields and would have lacked resources for the 1941 campaign. This would have led to a much earlier collapse of nazism.

The previous partitions were done in the age when public opinion was not exactly important. Commonwealth failed to centralize, unlike its neighbours, and it ultimately led to the demise. Bohemia had somewhat similar problem when it was ruled by the Jagiellonians - the magnates grew very powerful and failed to agree on domestic absolutist ruler so they chose Habsburgs who eventually grew over their heads. The bad thing for Poland was that it was not taken over by a single absolutist power but divided between 3 of them.
 
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LodovicoAriosto said:
as far as the 4th partition goes, USSR effectively saved half of Poland from being swallowed by nazis and they also got a buffer zone which further stretched the German supply lines in 1941, thus helping save Moscow from being captured. It would have been very irresponsible, borderline suicidal, from USSR to just hand over the whole Eastern Europe to Germany. The chances of nazi victory would have been higher.
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Saved? They were the ones who enabled Germany to conquer half of Poland, and were the ones who continued to enable Germany to keep pillaging and murdering. All this in exchange for Germany also allowing the Soviets to engage in murderous annexations of their own.

If the Soviets had any altruistic intentions of its own, it would have declared war to Germany when it declared war to Poland. Then it had the whole of Poland as a buffer zone to contain Germany and stretch their supply lines instead of just half. But we all know that means no annexation of parts of Poland and the Baltics and of Finland and of Romania and of Czechoslovakia.
 
Jolt said:
If the Soviets had any altruistic intentions of its own, it would have declared war to Germany when it declared war to Poland. Then it had the whole of Poland as a buffer zone to contain Germany and stretch their supply lines instead of just half. But we all know that means no annexation of parts of Poland and the Baltics and of Finland and of Romania and of Czechoslovakia.
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The Soviet just wanted to get back the lost territories of Belarus and Ukraine from 1919-21. They didn't want to save someone or war with Germany, just recover the lost.
Poland did start the war against them back in 1919.
 
Cavalry said:
The Soviet just wanted to get back the lost territories of Belarus and Ukraine from 1919-21. They didn't want to save someone or war with Germany, just recover the lost.
Poland did start the war against them back in 1919.
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What "lost" territories of the Soviet Union? Congress Poland? Galicia?
And Poland didn't start that war. The hostilities strated mutually when Poland and the SU tried to expand against each other.
 
Finnish Dragon said:
The Czardom of Russia was created by Ivan IV in 1547. Before that the nation which we now know as Russia was actually the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. That Russia made a claim to be the heir of Kievan Rus because it was all about prestige and claims to the Kievan lands. At that time the entire Belarus belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
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Previous Muscovite rulers were recognized as ruler of all Rus' by the Poles, though. And Russia is closest thing there is to a successor state to the Kievan Rus. It united all Rus' principalties that were independent after the tartar yoke was lifted, while Lithuania had invaded the Western ones. Their claim wasn't just for prestige.

Just to say that the Russian claim to all old Kievan territories didn't come out of nowhere.
 
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