Deconfessionalization? The Policy of the Polish Revolution towards Ruthenia, 1788–1792

Although the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was initially resistant to the process of ‘confessionalization’, by the early eighteenth century it had acquired many characteristics of an early modern ‘confessional state’. However, only just over half the population belonged to the Latin rite of the Roman Catholic Church. The Ruthene population of the Commonwealth’s eastern territories was fluidly if unevenly divided between the Uniate Church, which acknowledged papal supremacy, and the Orthodox Church. The latter was increasingly subordinated to the Most Holy Synod in St Petersburg as Russian political hegemony in the Commonwealth strengthened in the course of the eighteenth century. The ‘Polish Revolution’ of 1788–92 allowed the Sejm (Diet) to exercise untrammelled sovereignty for the first time in decades. The Commonwealth’s political élite could therefore reflect upon the dangers of the confessional situation in Ruthenia and formulate a policy to secure the loyalty of the Ruthene populace. They were prompted to do so by a scare, early in 1789, that the Ruthene peasants were set to revolt against their Polish lords. The Sejm cut the links of the Orthodox Church in Poland-Lithuania with Russia, raised the status of the Uniate episcopate and finally granted the Orthodox an ‘autocephalous’ hierarchy. The Polish Revolution retreated from the axioms of the confessional state, although Catholicism remained the Commonwealth’s ‘dominant faith’. Most politicians found the basis for loyalty to the Commonwealth in civil liberty and religious toleration, but the Polish language was also seen as a vehicle for national cohesion. The article ends with counterfactual reflections on the long-term consequences of the Polish Revolution’s Ruthenian policy, had its implementation not been prevented by the Russian invasion of 1792 and the partitions of 1793 and 1795.