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Poland The Eastern Regions of the Realm
The population of Poland-Lithuania was not
overwhelmingly
Catholic or Slavic. This circumstance resulted from the
federation with Lithuania, where ethnic Poles were a
distinct
minority. In those days, to be Polish was much less an
indication
of ethnicity than of rank; it was a designation largely
reserved
for the landed noble class, which included members of
Polish and
non-Polish origin alike. Generally speaking, the
ethnically nonPolish noble families of Lithuania adopted the Polish
language
and culture. As a result, in the eastern territories of
the
kingdom a Polish or Polonized aristocracy dominated a
peasantry
whose great majority was neither Polish nor Catholic. This
bred
resentment that later grew into separate Lithuanian,
Belorussian,
and Ukrainian nationalist movements.
In the mid-sixteenth century, Poland-Lithuania sought
ways to
maintain control of the diverse kingdom in spite of two
threatening circumstances. First, since the late 1400s a
series
of ambitious tsars of the house of Rurik had led Russia in
competing with Poland-Lithuania for influence over the
Slavic
territories located between the two states. Second,
Sigismund II
Augustus (1548-72) had no male heir. The Jagiellon
Dynasty, the
strongest link between the halves of the state, would end
after
his reign. Accordingly, the Union of Lublin of 1569
transformed
the loose federation and personal union of the
Jagiellonian epoch
into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, deepening and
formalizing the bonds between Poland and Lithuania
(see
fig. 4).
Data as of October 1992
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