The partitions of Poland
Russia, Prussia and Austria divide the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in three stages, and the largest Jewry in the world becomes the subject of three empires.
In 1772, 1793 and 1795 Russia, Prussia and Austria wipe the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth off the map in three partitions: the Kosciuszko rising of 1794 is crushed, the last king abdicates. The state in which Jews had lived since the twelfth century under their own self-government is no more. The greater part of its Jewry—hundreds of thousands—passes to Russia, where there had been almost no Jews before; in 1791 Catherine II confines their residence to the western provinces, and so begins the Pale of Settlement, which lasts until 1917. Galicia goes to Austria, Poznan to Prussia. From these three partitions the Jewish history of Eastern Europe divides for a century and a half into three fates.
Sources
Documents of the period
- the acts of partition of 1772, 1793 and 1795 — the three partitions and the abdication of the last king
- the 1791 decree of Catherine II on the places of Jewish residence — the beginning of the Pale of Settlement
Scholarship
- studies of the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe — how the partitions divided the Jewry into three fates
Basis: documents and evidence.