Authors

Anastasiia Lystsova¹;  ¹ Princeton University, United States

Discussion

This presentation is a condensed version of the main argument of my current project, titled Empire and Sovereignty: Russian Expansion and European Order in the Eighteenth Century.  In my research, I argue that the constitutional changes in the forms of government in neighbouring countries and political entities partly drove Russian imperial expansion. The case studies I analyse in my research are the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, and the Crimean Khanate. In the presentation, I will focus on the political reforms and changes in government in the Commonwealth and Sweden, as well as the Russian reaction to them.

I show that, prior to direct military involvement, Catherine II sought to establish indirect sovereignty there through various means, including creating personal bonds with monarchs. The Polish king, Stanisław Augustus, had been her lover when she was still Grand Duchess in the 1750s, and the Swedish king, Gustav III, was her cousin. I will structure my narrative around the Polish king’s election in 1764 and the introduction of the Polish Constitution in 1791, as well as Gustav’s coup in 1772 and the Russo-Swedish War of 1788-1791. Through a close examination of Catherine’s extensive correspondence with both monarchs, alongside analyses of legal documents and constitutional changes, I argue that although the fate of the Commonwealth, culminating in the final Partitions of 1793 and 1795, was very different from that of Sweden, Russian elites regarded changes in the forms of government in both cases with similar caution. Over the course of these events, they sought to influence domestic politics in both countries with the goal of preventing such changes from taking place.