Mykolas Kleopas Oginskis - Vilniaus miestietis

ENCircumstances of ratification of the May 3rd Constitution and public views about it in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are rather widely discussed topics in historiography. Attitudes of Sword-bearer of Lithuania Michał Kleofas Ogiński (1765-1833) towards the Constitution also merited some attention of researchers. However, until now historiography limited itself mostly to establishing the fact of M. K. Ogiński becoming a citizen of Vilnius, without wider analysis of circumstances of this fact and not trying to answer the question: Who were those other individuals, swearing oath to the city law along with M. K. Ogiński in the spring of 1792? This article, after discussing the context of M. K. Ogiński entering records of Vilnius citizenry, attempts to identify individuals that on 16 April 1792 swore allegiance to the city law, and also to answer the question what kind of connections linked them to M. K. Ogiński. The article reaches conclusions that M. K. Oginski's act of becoming a citizen of Vilnius in April of 1792 cannot be interpreted unequivocally. On the one hand, it was an act of political activism, linked to the aims of the King Stanisław August to promoted reforms of the Four-Year Sejm in wider public. By accepting this challenge to promote the May 3rd Constitution, Sword-bearer of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania M. K. Ogiński sought to regain favour of the monarch and the faction of reformists-patriots, which he damaged when leaving for White Russia (Belarus) and the rumours of his critique of the May 3rd Constitution, allegedly expressed to Portuguese minister, had reached Warsaw.On the other hand, this step revealed attitudes of an individual from the Enlightenment era on a caste based society: a representative of the privileged estate and a magnate accepted "lower" city law by formally becoming its citizen. His example encouraged a significant group of nobility to also become citizens. Analysis of the list of individuals that took oath next to M. K. Ogiński shows, that majority of them were representatives of the local political elite, with strong support of nobility in voivodeships of Vilnius, Minsk, Polock and the Duchy of Samogitia. Even five new citizens of Vilnius were members of the Four-Year Sejm and part of the Patriot-reformist group. Another five of the sworn individuals were representatives of the army officers' corps of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. M. K. Ogiński was related to only one person, the under-Elder of Braslau district court Tadeusz Ogiński. Another group of individuals was politically inactive nobility who had client-patron relationship with M. K. Ogiński. Entering of citizenship by the lower nobility could have been prompted not only by client's subordination to the patron, but also aims to ensure certain public space and social status, since after implementation of the Four-Year Sejm reforms land-less nobility was to be eliminated from political life. [From the publication]