The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the future of Europe

I try to resist the siren call of “someone is wrong on the Internet,” and also try not to comment on topics where I have no personal knowledge or haven’t done much research. I’m going to break those two rules a bit today.

In reading about the Russo-Ukraine war, I’ve noticed a strain of commentary to the effect that everything would have been fine if NATO had not expanded eastward (or, alternatively, been invited to expand eastward) in the 1990s and 2000s. Counterfactuals are always tricky, and I don’t have any special knowledge that would make my opinion an informed one, so I’ll make no comment on that claim.

Another comment I’ve seen (and I’m kicking myself because I can’t find the source now) is that it is in the natural order of things, and a foreordained matter of geography, that Germany and Russia between themselves will control and exercise influence over the lands between Europe and Asia.

Is it possible that this will be the case in the future? Of course. Is it probable that this will be the case? I don’t know enough to judge this. Is it an absolute certainty that this will be the case? Almost certainly not, because within the last few hundred years there was an existence proof to the contrary, namely the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

I must confess that until recently I had never heard of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth — an indication that the education of Americans like me neglected the history of Eastern Europe relative to that of Western Europe. (It’s not even a question of “Eurocentrism”; I recall my history classes having much more material on, say, China, India, and Japan than they did on Eastern Europe.)

You can read the Wikipedia article for yourself, but the basic idea is that up until the time of the American and French revolutions there was a polity (technically, a union of two polities) that at its maximum extent encompassed all or significant portions of the current nations of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, and even Russia. (See the left map above.)

The Commonwealth at its height had a territory of almost 1 million square kilometers and a population of about 12 million. (As a comparison, the population of England and then the United Kingdom did not exceed 10 million people until around 1800.) It had a relatively modern political system for its time, in which monarchs were elected by the aristocracy, with a legislature — also controlled by the aristocracy — that served as a check on the monarch. (Again, compare this to the political structure of England at the same time.)

Over time the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth dwindled in power, until in the late 18th century its territory was partitioned between the Kingdom of Prussia (the core of what eventually became Germany), the Russian Empire (precursor to the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation), and the Hapsburg Empire (which gave rise to present-day Austria and Hungary). (See the right map above.)

But before that there was a time when the people and lands between Europe and Asia were not under the sway of Germany and Russia, but pursued their own course. Could this be the case again in future? Again, I have no special expertise to bring to this question, but there are two suggestive factors.

The first is the extensive military and other support provided to Ukraine by Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia; together these comprise all of the countries whose territories made up the former Commonwealth, except for Belarus and (of course) Russia. Commentators have spoken of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states, along with the Scandanavian countries of Finland, Sweden, and Norway, as potentially forming a new center of gravity within Europe, comparable to the historical grouping of France, Germany, and their Western European neighbors.

The second factor is more speculative. The ecologist-turned-historian Peter Turchin has claimed that the dynamics of the historical evolution of societies favor the creation of new empires on what he calls “metaethnic frontiers” or “metaethnic fault lines”: “A small group near such a boundary will be confronted by very different others, dwarfing in their ‘otherness’ neighboring groups that are on the same side of the metaethnic line.”¹ Turchin’s hypothesis is that conflicts are more likely at such boundaries, especially if they also coincide with political boundaries, and that such conflicts will cause co-ethnics to band together (or be forced together), intensify their common identification and cooperation with each other, and eventually found new and dominant polities.

Traditionally metaethnic formations were determined by such factors as common descent, common languages, and common religions. However one can also conceive of such formations as based on commonly-held political, economic, and cultural beliefs and tendencies — hence the idea that there is a “Europe” characterized by liberal democracy as the preferred form of government (however imperfectly implemented it may be at times), the free market system plus social insurance as the preferred form of the economy, and a fair degree of cultural toleration and even experimentation.

Today’s hypothesized metaethnic frontier would then consist of those countries that exist in the frontier zone between “Europe” in this sense and “not-Europe,” i.e., the countries that are not characterized by the beliefs and tendencies listed above. If Turchin’s theory is correct, one would expect to see the rise in power and influence of those countries over time if and as conflicts across that metaethnic boundary persist — the current war being one such.

Will the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth rise again from the ashes like a phoenix? Almost certainly not, at least in that form. But might we see new alignments arise that remind us of it? It‘s certainly a possibility, and I suspect more of a possibility than the geopolitical realities of 19th and 20th century Europe persisting through the 21st.