Untitled - Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas
Untitled - Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas
Untitled - Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas
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to the specificity of the Grand Duchy, there was an abundance of small townships<br />
that were subordinate to Duchy dignitaries, who determined the subsequent<br />
fates of such towns and townships. After the 1772 partition, on eve of the Four-<br />
Year Sejm, there were up to six hundred towns and townships within Grand<br />
Duchy territory. Of these some 59 % were privately-owned towns, some 12 % –<br />
church towns and some 29 % – national and estate-owned, the royal towns and<br />
townships. Of these, some one hundred towns had had self-governance rights and<br />
had periodically exercised them in the past.<br />
The traits of the boyar strata’s viewpoint on townspeople influenced the<br />
1764–1788 Town Reforms, thereby, as of yet, there was no intention to change<br />
the conditions of the townspeople in society, even though the focus was on<br />
towns. Reform initiators raised demands: instill law and order in towns, supervise<br />
constructions, audit and regulate the revenues and expenditures of towns and<br />
form conditions for the development of the arts and crafts and trade to raise<br />
the economic states of towns. The boyars were meant to manage these reforms,<br />
but the execution of the reform program came too late in Lithuania. The first<br />
Great Law and Order Commission was not established until 1776, in Grodno.<br />
Meanwhile the decrees of Lithuania’s central government especially rarely reached<br />
the townspeople. The reforms in Poland started ten years earlier and proceeded<br />
more successfully. One difference with Poland was that Magdeburg Rights for<br />
small townships in the Grand Duchy were abolished in 1776. Based on this legal<br />
criterion, after 1776, the settlement areas in the Grand Duchy that retained selfgovernance<br />
in one form or another, it could be said, numbered no more than<br />
thirty. The towns of Lithuania were small, had predominately wooden buildings<br />
and lacked law and order. The fundamental businesses of these towns – crafts and<br />
trade – suffered recessions.<br />
Warsaw townspeople invited Grand Duchy towns to get involved in the Four-<br />
Year Sejm reforms. They organized congresses of town delegates from the Republic<br />
of Two Nations and formulated their assignments as well as the first program for<br />
those who wanted to stimulate parliamentary discussions in the Sejm on town<br />
matters. Previously Grand Duchy townspeople had only united on different<br />
issues, but no common demands were made that could unite all Grand Duchy<br />
towns. Grand Duchy town delegates met in Warsaw in April-May of 1789 and,<br />
following the initiative of the Warsaw delegates, formulated demands to the Sejm,<br />
separate from those made by Poland’s town delegates, for reforms addressing the<br />
common problems of Grand Duchy towns. The delegates of the Grand Duchy’s<br />
royal towns concurred with the initiatives made by Warsaw’s townspeople<br />
and actively participated in other 1789 town congresses. The deputation that<br />
had formed in the Sejm had to prepare a draft of town reforms. Grand Duchy<br />
townspeople received its instructions and began sending the patents of rights from<br />
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