The Greatest Mistake of the Commonwealth?

Zygmunt II August, knowing that he was dying without an heir, sought to unite Poland and Lithuania in order not to succumb to stronger players on the stage. During the Sejm in Lublin (January-March 1569), the Lithuanian Magnates rejected the proposals for unification. On the night of 28 February, they left Lublin.

Zygmunt August, fearing that a weakened Lithuania would succumb to invasions from the east, made a decision that carried within it the seed of collapse. He exploited the fact that the Lithuanian magnates and the nobility from the Ukrainian lands were at odds-with the latter striving towards Polish noble privileges-and annexed vast Ukrainian territories directly into the Polish Crown.

Forced by the situation, the Lithuanians returned to Lublin, and on 1 July 1569, an agreement was signed. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was brought to life…

This led to internal tensions, shifted from Lithuania to Poland. The Cossack Brotherhood, feeling sidelined, led to the breaking away of these lands from the Crown in the following century. A civil war in the 17th century led to the slaughter of the nobility and retaliation. A river of blood flowed…

Ukraine aligned itself with Moscow. Their privileges were restricted, which led to failed rebellions.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed in the following century. It was not until the 20th century that Poland and Lithuania regained their independence. In April 1920, Józef Piłsudski signed an alliance with Ataman Symon Petlura, the leader of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, regarding a joint defense against the Bolsheviks.

However, the internal political division of the young Polish state led to the Peace of Riga in 1921. Joint acts of courage on the battlefield by Poles and Ukrainians were thrown into the trash. The puppet Ukrainian SSR was admitted to the negotiation table. The lands of Ukraine were divided between Warsaw and Moscow…

By virtue of the treaty, Ukrainian soldiers-former allies-were disarmed and confined in internment camps. In May 1921, Józef Piłsudski visited the Ukrainian soldiers in the camps. He uttered the famous words: „I apologize to you, gentlemen, I am very sorry, it was not supposed to be like this.”

But what use were empty words to them…

In the 1920s, radicalism was growing in the territories of today’s Western Ukraine, which lay within the borders of the Second Polish Republic. Ukrainians, feeling cheated, joined the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, who began a sabotage and terror campaign against the Polish state. Polish estates were set on fire, railway tracks were destroyed, and assassinations were carried out against state officials.

This led to Piłsudski’s decision to conduct a military-police operation, which left another wound in Polish-Ukrainian relations. Two Slavic nations, at odds with each other, allowed another Slavic nation to grow in strength. Moscow, bearing the scar of the Mongol invasions and the era of Tsar Ivan IV, showed its true face.

On the eastern side of Ukraine, in the lands annexed to the empire of Moscow, a Great Famine took hold artificially induced by Moscow to break the will of the nation, leading to the deaths of many millions of people. At the same time, millions of tons of Ukrainian grain were exported abroad.

The seed sown in 1569 in Lublin had once again borne its fruit…

The Volhynian Slaughter in 1943 once again left a scar on the relations of these two Slavic nations.

Would the Slavic world look different if a Commonwealth of Three Nations had been born in 1569?

That we will never know…