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Current version
Before the 1576 Polish–Lithuanian royal election a congress of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania's nobles was held on 20 April 1576 in Grodno which adopted an Universal, signed by the participating Lithuanian nobles, which announced that if the delegates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania will feel pressure from the Poles in the Election sejm, the Lithuanians will not be obliged by an oath of the Union of Lublin and will have the right to select a separate monarch. On 29 May 1580, a ceremony was held in the Vilnius Cathedral during which bishop Merkelis Giedraitis presented Stephen Báthory (King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania since 1 May 1576) a luxuriously decorated sword and a hat adorned with pearls (both were sanctified by Pope Gregory XIII himself), while this ceremony manifested the sovereignty of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and had the meaning of elevation of the new Grand Duke of Lithuania, this way ignoring the stipulations of the Union of Lublin. The Báthory's ceremony of 29 May 1580 coincided with the nobles of Lithuania (e.g. Mikołaj "the Red" Radziwiłł, Eustachy Wołłowicz, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, Konstanty Ostrogski) initial demands before the Union of Lublin to have a separate declaration act of the Grand Duke of Lithuania in Vilnius.

Proposed version
The double election of 1575 was held in the presence of a small number of Lithuanian lords, who additionally supported the Habsburg candidate Emperor Maximilian II, however, the race for the crown was won by Stephen Báthory, crowned on May 1, 1576. The Lithuanian lords, at a convention in Grodno on April 8-20, 1576, protested this choice, threatening to break the union and giving themselves the right to choose a separate ruler. However, the king managed to rally the Lithuanian delegation by promising to preserve their rights and freedoms. On May 29, 1580, in Vilnius Cathedral, King and Grand Duke Stephen Báthory received from the hand of the bishop of Samogitia Merkelis Giedraitis a blessed sword and hat, given by Pope Gregory XIII through the envoy Paweł Uchański. This was a recognition by the Pope of the ruler's successes in the struggle against the infidels. In Lithuania, this ceremony was treated as the celebration of the elevation of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, during which Lithuania's sovereignty was manifested. Báthory's reign was marked with successful Livonian campaign against tsar Ivan the Terrible's military forces, which resulted in the reintegration of Polotsk to Lithuania and the restoration of control of the Duchy of Livonia.

Comment
Sentence: ''The Báthory's ceremony of 29 May 1580 coincided with the nobles of Lithuania (e.g. Mikołaj "the Red" Radziwiłł, Eustachy Wołłowicz, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, Konstanty Ostrogski) initial demands before the Union of Lublin to have a separate declaration act of the Grand Duke of Lithuania in Vilnius. '' Should be moved higher, before the Union of Lublin

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International
Camp sejm was the long awaited opportunity for an ordinary nobility to present their demands before the grand duke. Although sejm was already well-established insitution in Grand Duchy, unlike in Poland delegates weren’t elected on local nobles gatherings (sejmiks), but appointed by local dignitary. So the military campaign was one of the few moments when lower and middle nobility had a direct access to the grand dule. Led by Jan Chodkiewicz nobles demanded at first dispersal of the army and calling up of the actual sejm to discuss the defence of the realm. When it was refused, nobles demands increased highly, they now demanded from the king to call a common sejm togehter with Polish lords, to form the closest union possible, in order to choose a common ruler and enact common law Frost 2015, p. 448. . Earlier that year, in May, Sigismund reacted positvely on the petition from Małoplska nobility to gather a sejm of both nations to consider the future of both countries after his possible childless death. Although initially he agreed only to disperse army gathered in Vitebsk, his next actions suggest that the support of lower Lithuanian nobility was all he needed to pursue the project of a real union.

On the upcoming Polish Sejm in Piotrków in late 1562 marked the triumphal period of the executionist movement, king joined the lower nobility and reduced the role of the senat. It was symbolised by the change of a character of king’s and his court’s woredrobe, up to this point king was dressing according to Italian fashion, but now he and his courters started to wear tradional clothes of Polish nobility (‘’kontusz’’). During this one and the next sejms the deep program of reforms was introduced, main achievement was the revindication of royal domain, organisation of a standing army, separation of offices and many others. Nobles also called for a closer union with Lithuanian and the full incorporation of Royal Prussia and duchies of Zator and Oświęcim. During the sejm news about the fall of Połock reached Piotrków, the reaction of the nobles was an offer of military aid under condtion of calling up the common sejm which would bring the union into fruition.

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The takeover of the Vilnius region by Lithuania from the USSR in October 1939 was regarded by many Poles as "complicity in the partition of Poland". Poles became the object of a widespread Lithuanianization campaign undertaken by the Lithuanian state. The Lithuanian state took the position that the Polish minority was merely "polonized Lithuanians," so that depolonization was merely the restoration of the natural order. This included the removal of Polish state symbols, removing Polish inscriptions from public spaces, changing street names to Lithuanian, closing Polish schools and dismissing teachers. The greatest blow was the closure of the Polish Stefan Batory University in Vilnius in December 1939. Most repressive of all was the Citizenship Law, which excluded a significant portion of the Polish population as stateless aliens.

In the summer 1940 Lithuania lost its independence to USSR and were incorporated into USSR, as Lithuanian SSR. The situation of the Polish population got even worse. Its upper strata - the intelligentsia and the landed gentry - became class enemies. The Soviets also took the position that the Lithuanians were the rightful owners of the territories "illegally" seized by Poland in 1920. This entailed the reduction of the Poles to second-class citizens.

The German invasion was greeted by the persecuted Lithuanian population as liberation from Soviet occupation. The Lithuanians hoped for the rebirth of their state under German protection. Therefore they started an uprising and formed collaborationist police and army units. The lower levels of government were also staffed by Lithuanians. The situation of the Polish population was different, for them the coming of the Germans was another occupation. This led to conflicts between the two communities, as the Germans used Lithuanian collaborators for anti-Polish actions.

Even during the first Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, a Polish underground state was formed. In 1943 the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) was strengthened in the Vilnius region and began partisan operations. The chief commander of the Wilno Area of the Home Army was Aleksander Krzyżanowski. In early 1944, only the main transportation routes and Vilnius were in Nazi hands.

Attempts to reach agreement with Lithuanian organizations and Soviet partisans were unsuccessful. Since 1943 Polish partisans had been fighting against the Germans as well as Soviet partisans. In February 1944 the Germans formed volunteer military units to fight the Polish partisans. From late spring, open fighting between the AK and LVR units continued, culminating in a Polish victory at the Battle of Murowana Oshmyanka on May 13-14, 1944.

German persecution was accompanied by persecution carried out by Lithuanian collaborators. They acted as part of different units, but were called "szaulisi" (from šauliai - riflemen, after interwar Lithuanian Riflemen's Union) by the Polish population. Especially significant was the participation of the Lithuanian Security Police, known as Saugumas. It was established in 1941 by the Lithuanian provisional government and operated until 1944. Its officers informed German structures about the activities of international organizations and the Polish and Soviet resistance movements. The Polish underground treated them on a par with the Gestapo. Members of the Lithuanian Special Forces - Ypatingasis būrys, who took part in the murder of the Polish and Jewish population in the Ponary massacre, were also infamous.

Ukrainians
In 1936, the government-funded Eastern Territories Development Society formed the Petty Nobility Committee (Komitet ds. Szlachty Zagrodowej). The aim of this organisation was 'revindication' for the former Polish nobility who had lost their Polish identity under Austrian and Russian rule. The activists of the committee believed that there were about 500,000 members of the former homesteaded gentry living in the south-eastern territories, and that only 20% of them declared themselves to be Polish. In 1938, on the initiative of the government, the Committee became one of the creators of Polish ethnic policy. The Committee did not fully develop its activities before the outbreak of war. Ukrainians who joined the Union of Petty Nobility were boycotted by the rest of Ukrainian society. The Union of Petty Nobility had about 22,000 members in 1938.

Belarus
The founders of the Belarusian national movement saw the historical continuity between the principality of Polotsk and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, they considered them to be part of the Belarusian national tradition. Therefore, when creating the national symbolism, they reached for the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This symbol grew into the local heraldic tradition and was used in the coats of arms of Belarusian towns and administrative districts, even during Russian rule. The Belarusian coat of arms, named Pahonia ('the chase'), was similar to the coat of arms adopted by the Republic of Lithuania, depicting an armed white horseman on a red background. Belarusian national activists claimed that Pahonia had Ruthenian roots and that it had already been used by the Polotsk prince Narymunt-Gleb.

In 1917, the Belarusian national movement adopted the red-white flag as its national banner. The author of the flag was Klavdiy Duzh-Dushevsky, who designed it after the February Revolution in Russia at the request of the Belarusian diaspora in Petrograd, the author explained the colours on the flag as symbols of the sweat, blood and tears of the Belarusian people.

Pahonia was chosen by the founders in the short-lived Belarusian People's Republic as the state emblem. In the period 1918-1923, it was used by the military units of the Belarusian People's Republic, as well as those formed within the Lithuanian and Polish armies. Subsequently, it was used in this role by Belarusians residing in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and other countries in the interwar period.

During the Second World War, under German occupation, the chairman of the Belarusian People's Self-Help (BNS) Ivan Yermachenka in 1942 asked Wilhelm Kube, head of the General District of Belarus, for the right to use Belarusian national symbols including the Pahonia. The German authorities never gave permission for the display of Belarusian national symbols. Nevertheless, the Belarusians displayed them. They were also used by the Belarusian Central Council. During the Soviet period, the Pahonia coat of arms was banned and its possession was punishable by imprisonment. Soviet propaganda defamed Belarusian national symbols as being used by "Nazi collaborators". However, the coat of arms was used freely by Belarusian organisations in the West.