Historian Every Saturday: Vitaliy Myhailovsky. 'Poland fell — and crushed you too!' The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century (05.04.2025)

A lecture by historian Vitaliy Myhailovsky (the “Historian Every Saturday” series) on the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its partitions. Key points: Right-Bank Ukraine was part of the Commonwealth, not of Russia, and came under the Russian Empire through the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795); the neighboring powers justified the partitions with mythical arguments (Russia by the “Kyivan inheritance”); the weakness of the Sejm (its “breaking”) brought decline despite the Constitution of 3 May 1791. A source for the article on the Partitions of Poland.