The Russian Empire 1450–1801

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disputes, subordinate to a governor-general. At the gubernia level, Russian language
and appeals and criminal courts were imposed, but on the local level litigation
continued in Polish according to Polish law, as long as it did not contradict Russian
law. The new administrative reforms introduced gubernia boards andfiscal, judi-
cial, and police organs at gubernia and local levels in 1778. Polish noblemen
remained dominant locally, taking the lead in the newly established noble assem-
blies after the Charter of Nobility (1785) was introduced. The law of May 3, 1783
applied here as well as in Left Bank and Sloboda Ukraine, giving all peasants a poll
tax and ending peasant mobility.
The diversity and breadth of lands acquired in the second and third partitions
(1793, 1795) made the imperial task more difficult; Russia’s traditional approach of
affirming regional customs had to be balanced with Catherine II’s efforts since the
1770s to create an empire-wide administrative system. While Galicia went to the
Habsburgs, the rest of the Rus’lands came into the empire. Right Bank and western
Ukrainian lands were organized into the gubernii of Volhynia, Podolsk, and
Bratslav. The rest of the Grand Duchy’s lands became the gubernii of Vilnius,
Minsk, and Slonim, subordinate to the governor-general of Livland and Estland.
Polish and German courts were phased out gradually in favor of the 1775 Russian
model of civil and criminal chambers at gubernia and district level. Thousands of
Polish noblemen from these lands were accepted into the Russian nobility; poll tax
and recruitment were imposed on their serfs. Forcible conversion of Uniates to
Orthodoxy succeeded in the Right Bank, but Uniate bishoprics in the Grand
Duchy areas resisted and forcible conversion was deferred until the 1830s. As
noted, when the Duke of Courland abdicated in 1795, the institutions of the
1770s–80s gubernia reforms were introduced, but local German nobles maintained
political dominance.
Ethnic Lithuanian lands joined the Russian empire in the third partition (1795),
organized as the gubernii of Vilnius and Grodno. These were lands of Polish culture
and political institutions, having been in a dynastic relationship or confederation
with the kingdom of Poland since 1387. Here Russia affirmed the status quo: the
1588 Lithuanian Statute remained in effect, the rights of the Polish and Lithuanian
Catholic nobility were affirmed, but their institutions of local self-government were
limited. These lands were classic areas of rural enserfment (the peasants were
generally East Slavic Orthodox), but Vilnius and Kaunas constituted vibrant
centers of ethnic and cultural diversity. An ancient medieval town, Vilniusflour-
ished as a political center of the Grand Duchy, with a royal palace and University
(1579) that was an early modern center of science, humanities, and Catholic
theology. Self-governing under Magdeburg Law, Vilnius was home to Polish and
Lithuanian (Catholic), German (Lutheran), Ruthenian (Orthodox), and Jewish
communities, who interacted in trade, culture, and daily life across confessional
boundaries, as David Frick has shown.
Vilnius was particularly a center of Jewish life, emblematic of the significant
Jewish population in the Commonwealth as a whole. Jews had lived in the
kingdom of Poland and later Grand Duchy of Lithuania since the thirteenth
century, protected by royal charters that guaranteed institutional and religious


122 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801

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