Third Partition of Poland

The Third Partition of Poland was the final division of Poland among Austria, Prussia, and Russia, ending the country’s existence as a political entity for more than a century. In the historical account that frames Władysław Reymont’s work, it is both a territorial seizure and the culmination of a deliberate effort to erase the Polish state from political life.

Background and Partition

The partition followed earlier acts in 1772 and 1793. Russia and Prussia had formed an alliance with a secret plan of military cooperation dating from 1764, while Polish aristocrats supported their territorial claims during parliamentary deliberations. The three empires’ successive partitions were carried out with the participation of Polish politicians described in the account as corrupt.

Resistance continued as the divisions advanced. In 1794, an uprising led by Tadeusz Kościuszko sought to save the country from Russian power and Polish collaborators. Its defeat cleared the way for the final partition the following year.

The 1795 Settlement

Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to the third and complete partition in 1795. The treaty confirming the erasure of the Polish body politic was signed in St Petersburg in 1797. Its terms committed the powers to exclude the name and designation of the Kingdom of Poland from their courts’ titles, making the suppression of the state an explicit political undertaking as well as a territorial reality.

Consequences and Legacy

After the partition, the lands of the former kingdom were ruled by different monarchies. Their inhabitants consequently lived under different languages, cultures, administrations, and dominant religions. Poland ceased to exist as a political entity until 1918, when it regained independence; the account also notes that the old partition boundaries remain legible in the distribution of votes in Polish elections in the early twenty-first century.

Place in Reymont’s Work

Reymont dedicated The Year 1794, published as a trilogy from 1913 to 1918, to the events surrounding the uprising and the final partition. The event therefore supplies the political history behind that novel: an attempted national rescue, its failure, and the division that kept Poland off the political map until 1918.