HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

170 FRANK E. SYSYNground for the Union of Lublin had been well prepared. Thereafterthe nobilities of both realms regarded themselves as the citizens of onenobiliary republic.During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, events in theCommonwealth frequently revealed the weak links in the unity of thestate, as well as in the unity of the nobility. A small royal court and anagrarian economy ensured that most nobles would remain on theirlanded estates and that their life would revolve around provincialinstitutions. Defects in the central Diet favored devolution of governmentto palatinates and local dietines. Differences in the social orderin the lands of the Commonwealth — above all, the existence of greatmagnates in the eastern lands — hindered the functioning of administrationand political concepts according to the late sixteenth-centurymodel. Breakdowns in public order resulted in the magnates' assemblinglocal armies and followers, a process that has been called delayedfeudalization. 7On occasion magnates and local elites accepted foreignsuzerains and entertained plans to partition the Commonwealth. Yet,despite the Commonwealth's defeats and near anarchy, loyalty to thecommon Fatherland and its noble nation endured.The study of regionalism, then, is essential to understand both theCommonwealth's disfunctioning and its resilience. Of the variousregionalisms in the Commonwealth, that of the Grand Duchy ofLithuania has been most studied, for a number of reasons. 8 The GrandDuchy, a separate state until 1569, retained a separate administration,army, legal language, and law code. Although the right to ownershipof land was guaranteed to all nobles of the Commonwealth, offices inthe Grand Duchy were limited to those nobles actually owning land inthe Duchy. Even though the union was formally a federation of twoequal parts, it was clear from the first that the Kingdom of Poland andits nobility were the dominant element. Hence "separatist" tendencies7See Manteuffel, "On Polish Feudalism."8For a bibliography, see Leo Okinshevych, The Law of the Grand Duchy ofLithuania: Background and Bibliography (New York, 1953) (Research Program ofthe USSSR, Mimeo Series, 32), and Juliusz Bardach and Jerzy Ochmański, withthe cooperation of Oswald Backus, Lituanie (Brussels, 1969) (Introduction bibliographiqueà l'histoire du droit et à l'ethnologie juridique, D 14). For adiscussion of Lithuanian sentiments, see Henryk Wisner, Najjaśniejsza Rzeczpospolita:Szkice z dziejów Polski szlacheckiej XVI-XVII wieku (Warsaw, 1978),pp. 13-42. Also see the discussion by Oswald Backus, Oskar Halecki, and JosephJakstas, "The Problem of Unity in the Polish-Lithuanian State," Slavic Review 22,no. 3 (1963): 411-55.