Women in family politics: the Radziwill family of Zdzieciol in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733-1763

ENThis dissertation evaluates the possibility for women to exercise political influence in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth of the eighteenth century. The documents of the Radziwill family, one of the Lithuanian magnate families, provide a unique resource to assess noblewomen's roles in the Commonwealth through a variety of prisms: political activity, the magnate court, cultural life, and in legal affairs. In the process of presenting the various aspects of women's life within the Radziwill family, the dissertation offers interpretations of their family identity and self-image as Lithuanian nobles, on relations between noble families in the Commonwealth and their orientation towards Russia. The study concludes that women were able to exert great influence within the family factions that controlled the Commonwealth in the eighteenth century.