In the 16th and 17th centuries there were important powers in East Central Europe, such as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Swedish Baltic Empire. It is a chapter of European history that has been forgotten in western Europe and that unfolded new power in the course of the Ukraine war.
With far superior military power, the Muscovites break into the Baltic States. The resistance of the regional troops collapses quickly. Asian warriors in the service of Moscow devastate towns and villages, and many Balts are taken into captivity. Poland-Lithuania and Sweden intervened to prevent Moscow from advancing to the Baltic Sea. In decades of fighting, they succeed in defeating the Muscovites. The Baltic States are divided. Estonia and northern Latvia fall to Sweden, the rest of Latvia either goes directly to Poland or is organized as a Polish vassal state.
This is not a NATO scenario for a possible Russian attack on the Baltic States. Rather, it is a chapter of European history forgotten in Western Europe, the attack of Ivan the Terrible on Livonia in 1558, the beginning of Russia’s push west. But it is also about the role of the long-largest territorial state in Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the importance of the Swedish Baltic Sea kingdom, which is also hardly known in our latitudes. If Poland, the Baltic States, Sweden and Finland are now emphatically supporting the threatened Ukraine, then this also has something to do with historical undercurrents.
Power struggle with Moscow
When the Mongols destroyed Kievan Rus’ in 1240, two states fought for the inheritance of this medieval state for centuries: in the east, the Grand Duke of Moscow, an obedient vassal of the Mongol Khans; in the west the Grand Duke of Lithuania, who was outside the Mongolian world empire.
In the 14th century, Lithuania gained large parts of today’s Ukraine with Kyiv and all of Belarus. It developed into an empire with many ethnic groups and denominations. In 1386 the previously pagan Lithuanian upper class converted to the Catholic faith, and the Lithuanian prince Jogaila became Polish king and founder of the Jagiellonian dynasty. However, the majority of the population, ancestors of today’s Ukrainians and Belarusians, was East Slavic and Orthodox.
The security of East-Central Europe depends on containing Russia’s westward drive. Today the key lies in Ukraine.
In the dispute with Moscow, Lithuania needed more and more help from neighboring Poland, with which it gradually merged until 1569 to form a common state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. At the end of the 16th century, this state had a religious tolerance that was unusual for Europe. Lithuania had offered refuge to many Jewish refugees from the German Empire in the 14th century. By the end of the 16th century, half of the nobility in Lithuania had embraced the Reformed faith, and in Poland too, Protestants were well represented in the elite.
At the beginning of the 17th century, it looked as if Poland-Lithuania would win the power struggle with Moscow. In the turmoil following the end of Moscow’s Rurikid dynasty, Commonwealth troops invaded the Kremlin and occupied it from 1610 to 1612. The coronation of the Polish-Lithuanian king as tsar or the establishment of a secundogeniture, i.e. the installation of a crown prince as tsar in Moscow, was considered. In Russia, this threatened takeover by Poland-Lithuania is still seen as a low point in their own history, and the expulsion of the Polish occupation from the Kremlin as a historic victory.
The Polish-Lithuanian Empire faltered in 1648 when the Cossacks revolted in its eastern provinces, modern-day Ukraine. As much as the empire cultivated religious diversity, it struggled to integrate the large orthodox population in the east. An ecclesiastical union (Brest, 1596) was intended to win the Orthodox for the Pope, but provoked a division of the Orthodox into Greek-Catholic and Orthodox Christians, which has persisted to this day.
Moscow deliberately exploited the integration problems of its western neighbor. In 1654, the Cossacks signed a contract with the tsar in Perejaslav, which in Russia today is interpreted as a union of East Slavic brothers. But the Cossacks, disappointed in Moscow, shortly afterwards negotiated with Poland-Lithuania about a reorganization of the Commonwealth: an orthodox part of the empire was to be set up as a third partner. The Polish nobility prevented this. European history would probably have taken a different course if a Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian imperial association had come about in 1658.
A giant country disappears
In 1667 the Commonwealth and Moscow divided Ukraine along the Dnipro. Gradually, Russia then pushed the Commonwealth westward, undermined it domestically by fomenting conflicts and promoting a pro-Russian party, and between 1772 and 1795, together with the German powers Prussia and Austria, proceeded to partition Poland-Lithuania. With that, a huge European state disappeared from the map.
Along with Poland-Lithuania, Sweden was a leading power in Eastern Europe. Hardly any other country waged more wars against Russia. From the middle of the 16th century Sweden was able to bring large parts of the Baltic coast under its control.
The intervention in Livonia proved decisive. This old European state, whose complicated constitution is reminiscent of the Old Confederation, has been ruled by German knights, nobles and citizens since the early 13th century. Constitutionally and culturally, Livonia (which corresponds to present-day Estonia and Latvia) faced west.
It was a European constitutional state with its own state parliament and city councils, which took over the Reformation early on. This highly cultivated political system bordered on the Moscow tsardom, which was shaped by the traditions of the Mongolian period. Moscow pushed west to the Baltic Sea. In 1502 Livonia managed to defeat the Muscovites on their own. The victorious master of the order, Wolter von Plettenberg, belongs to the unjustly forgotten historical heritage of the Baltic States.
But when Ivan the Terrible unleashed his war of annihilation against Livonia in 1558, only neighboring Poland and Sweden were able to save the Baltic States. From now on it was a matter of state for Sweden to keep Moscow away from the Baltic Sea. Gustav Adolf, Sweden’s greatest monarch in the 17th century, achieved a fundamental victory in 1617 with the Peace of Stolbowo. He created a land bridge between Swedish Finland and Swedish Livonia via Karelia and the mouth of the Neva, today’s Greater St. Petersburg region. However, Sweden was not content with being on the defensive, but wanted to divert Eurasian trade to its ports in the Baltic States in competition with England.
Poland-Lithuania and Sweden were not only neighbors, but also bitter competitors. The fact that from 1587 the same dynasty, the Swedish Vasa, held the royal dignity in Stockholm (1521–1654) and Warsaw (1587–1668) did not create good neighborly relations; rather, the two branches, one Protestant, the other Catholic, were deeply hostile. Sweden intervened in the state crisis in Poland (1655–1660), which aroused strong anti-Protestant resentment there and explains Poland’s massive Catholicization. The Swedish supremacy appeared so great that in 1700 Poland and Russia joined forces against Stockholm.
The Great Northern War (1700-1721) permanently changed the power structure in Europe. The Swedish King Charles XII. penetrated deep into Ukraine and allied with the anti-Russian Cossack opposition under Hetman Ivan Masepa. In Russia, Masepa is now regarded as the archetype of the Ukrainian «traitor». In fact, if Sweden were successful, Masepa could have made Russian-occupied Ukraine a state (1709).
In 1721, Russia emerged victorious from the war and won the Swedish Baltic States in the Peace of Nystad. With St. Petersburg as the new capital, Russia now became an important and soon threatening part of the European power concert. Sweden failed in 1741-1743 and 1788-1790 in attempts to contain the Tsarist Empire. As in Poland, Russia supported pro-Russian forces in Sweden. When Sweden had to cede its eastern part of the empire, Finland, to Russia in 1809, the end of Sweden’s Baltic Empire was sealed.
battle of the systems
It would not go far enough if one wanted to understand these disputes only as power politics. Rather, fundamentally different political systems were opposed to each other. The Livonian Confederation before 1558, Poland-Lithuania and Sweden were old European legal states. In the 17th century, Poland-Lithuania developed into a noble republic whose extensive rights made it easier for foreign powers to form groups of influence and paralyze the Commonwealth. The Swedish Riksdag is also one of the old European estate institutions with which the power of the monarch was limited.
All this was unknown in Russia, where the tsar was surrounded by informal groups of influence, similar to today’s oligarchs and siloviki (members of the security apparatus), but did not face a self-confident noble parliament. There were multiple opportunities to bind Ukraine as a separate state either to Poland-Lithuania or to Sweden. The failure of these attempts resulted in a further advance of Russia to the west.
Russia’s position of power in Eastern Europe is essentially based on the displacement of Poland and Sweden. The security of East-Central Europe today again depends on containing the Russian drive to the west. And today, too, the key lies in Ukraine.
Oliver Jens Schmitt is Professor of Eastern European History at the University of Vienna.