photo - PAP/Tomasz Gzell
The Constitution of the Third of May 1791 was a response to the increasingly perilous situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Only 150 years earlier a European power, in 1772 it had one-third of its territory annexed by Russia, Prussia and Austria in what was the First Partition.
Despite this, Poland’s last king, Stanislaw August proceeded with cautious reforms. The National Education Commission, which was Europe’s first ministry of education, was set up.
The army was reorganized and the Parliament, dominated by men of great intellectual calibre, adopted in 1791 the Constitution which is unanimously described by historians as one of the proudest achievements in Polish history.
The provisions of the 1791 Constitution – if applied – would have changed the course of the nation’s history. The institution of the ‘liberum’ veto or ‘free vote’ - which in principle permitted any parliamentary deputy to nullify all the legislation - was to be abolished.
The throne was to be made hereditary rather than elective.
These were just some of the reforms which, as Neal Ascherson wrote in his The Struggles for Poland, ‘would have given the state real authority to last’.
The trouble was that the idea of reforms in Poland was viewed with growing suspicion in neighbouring countries.
In effect, the Constitution of May the Third remained in force for only a year before being overthrown. In 1793, the Second Partition of Poland – this time by Russia and Prussia - took place and what was left of the Commonwealth was a small buffer state with a puppet king and a Russian army.
The celebration of May the Third as a state holiday was banned during the period of Partitions.
After Poland regained its independence, it was declared a holiday, to be banned again during World War Two.
During the communist period, in 1951, it lost its legal standing as a holiday in January 1951 but for the Polish nation it never ceased to be a source of hope and inspiration.
During the Solidarity revolution, the Third of May was a day of anti-government and anti-communist protests. After the collapse of communism in 1989, it was restored as a state holiday. (pg/mk)