On 3 May 1791 the parliament of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the sejm, passed the first written constitution in Europe. The Polish constitution preceded the French constitution by four months, and came two years after the ratification of the constitution of the United States of America. It balanced the principle of the sovereignty of the nation (understood much more widely than hitherto) with that of the separation and balance of the legislative, executive and judicial powers.
During the fifteen months the constitution was in force, it enabled fundamental reforms which, argues Professor BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI, made the Commonwealth fit to face the challenges of the nineteenth century. The constitution was overthrown by a Russian invasion in 1792, which installed a counter-revolutionary regime, known as the confederacy of Targowica. Between 1793 and 1795 the second and third partitions destroyed the Commonwealth, leaving its lands divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria until 1918. Targowica has ever since been much employed as a synonym for ‘treason’ in Polish political discourse.
In connection with this continuing use of this slogan in political controversies, Professor BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI was interviewed for the television station TVN 24 (broadcast on 28 April 2016). Then on 3 May 2016, he spoke about the content, potential and meaning of the constitution in a broadcast for Polskie Radio 24. In his view the Constitution of 3 May 1791 showed the ‘enlightened’ world the falsity of stereotypes about the ‘eternally anarchic’ Polish nation – Poles were perfectly capable of enjoying ‘orderly freedom’, once free of Russian hegemony.
In the evening of 5 May 2016, Professor BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI took part in a televised debate on the Constitution and its legacy for the station TVP Historia.
In addition, Professor BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI’s book, The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788-1792 (English edition: Oxford: OUP, 2012, Polish edition: Kraków: Arcana, 2012) was discussed on the programme Trzeci punkt widzenia (a third point of view) on TVP Kultura on 1 May 2016. The discussants pointed to the lasting significance of a Polish Revolution and a Polish Enlightenment that were more moderate than the analogous phenomena in France.