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SUMMARY
1789–1792 TOWNS MOVEMENT OF THE GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA
The Four-Year (or Great) Sejm, the parliamentary body, introduced changes into
the social history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by codifying social strata
statuses into one document in 1791 – the May 3 rd Constitution. The Four-Year
Sejm reforms unified townspeople, because the same laws were now applicable to
all towns in common. A movement of townspeople for rights and freedom, which
began during the Four-Year Sejm period, united the large towns that already had
municipal rights with the smaller towns that were requesting patents of selfgovernance
rights based on the new laws. Such unification covering most of the
towns and townships in the Grand Duchy had never before existed, in the entire
history of Lithuania.
The primary focus of this monograph is the scope of the Grand Duchy’s
Towns Movement and its growth. It is an endeavor to characterize this movement,
to describe the features of the municipal dispersion of towns and to explain the
nuances involved in the granting of town rights during 1791–1792. Further this
work means to reveal how the other reforms of the Four-Year Sejm cultivated the
situation of the towns within the country as well as to determine the changes
within the towns themselves that were conditional to the reforms.
The concept of town used herein does not refer to the size of an urban area
or to its economic potential but rather to the legal category of a town. In other
words, the self-governing of a town describes that town. In this sense, a town
consists of a community of free people along with its territory of residence and
governance as well as the town law guiding its governance. Prior to the Four-
Year Sejm, Magdeburg Law was synonymous with municipal self-governance;
however, during the 1791–1792 town reforms, the situation changed. By this
principle, small townships were granted patents of ruler rights during the Four-
Year Sejm reforms or, based on the new law, newly established and operational
self-governance meant that a small township became an actual town.
Grand Duchy towns differed from the towns in Poland by their specificity,
legal subordination and freedoms. These differences were especially highlighted by
the legal decrees passed in the 1770s, which permitted Grand Duchy townspeople
to own land holdings. Meanwhile the elderships governing the towns with selfgovernance
were not as controlled as they were in Poland. On the other hand, due
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