The Burghers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the war of 1654-1667: resiliency and cohesion in the face of Muscovite annexation

ENTsar Aleksei Mikhailovich made it unequivocably clear upon entering the eastern borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1654 that Muscovy would not tolerate Catholics, Uniates or Jews. As he led his armies into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the tsar made it known that subjects were to serve the ruler, and that the only true subjects were Greek Orthodox believers. These two declarations struck at the very core of the heterogeneous and republican Commonwealth of the post-Union of Lublin era. This dissertation examines the political and social repercussions of the clash between the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodow (Commonwealth of Two Nations) and the Muscovite Orthodox autocracy. Specifically, it focuses on the role of towns and burghers in this conflict. Polish historiography has generally viewed the burghers of the towns of the Grand Duchy as having been an impotent estate, without unity and constantly on the defensive against hostile nobles, Jews and foreigners. While Muscovy did annex some lands of the Grand Duchy after the treaty of Andruszowo in 1667, resistance to Muscovite aggression among the population of the towns was substantial and, in the long-run, effective. The burghers and other residents of the towns of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania enjoyed a way of life sanctioned by the Third Lithuanian Statute, the Union of Lublin and Magdeburg law. By the mid-seventeenth century, the burghers, both artisans and merchants, of the Grand Duchy were free citizens of prosperous towns who participated in the selfrule and representative institutions of their civil society. If absorbed into the lands of Muscovy ruled by the tsar, they stood to lose their liberties and privileges, becoming, like most of their counterparts in Muscovy, tiaglye liudi, servitors born into a caste society for the purpose of being, as Richard Hellie stated so vividly, squeezed by the state.