SkyscraperCity - Lublin

It was also a place of union of Lublin!

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The Union of Lublin (Lithuanian: Liublino unija; Belarusian: Лю́блінская ву́нія; Polish: Unia lubelska) was a political act, signed July 1, 1569, in Lublin, Poland, which united the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a single state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (in Polish, Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów — Republic of the Two Nations). The Commonwealth was ruled by a single elected monarch who carried on the duties of Polish King and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and governed with a common Senate and parliament (the Sejm). The Union was an evolutionary stage in the Polish-Lithuanian alliance and personal union, necessitated by Lithuania's dangerous position in wars with Russia.

There were long discussions before signing the treaty, as Lithuanian magnates were afraid of losing much of their powers, since the union would make their status equal in the eyes of law with that of the much more numerous lower nobility. When Polish nobles (the szlachta) saw that the Lithuanians might not sign the union, Poland occupied the southern Lithuanian-controlled lands of Podlachia, Volhynia, Podolia and the Kyiv regions (these lands makes up more than half of modern day Ukraine, and were at that time a significant part of Lithuanian territory).

The Lithuanian nobles then signed the treaty, since Lithuania faced the threat of total defeat in the Livonian war against Russia and incorporation into the Russian Empire. Poland provided military aid in that war after the union of the two entities, but did not return the previously annexed territories. Lithuania had to recognise its incorporation into Poland. After the Union, Lithuanian nobles had the same rights as Polish to exploit the territories of the Commonwealth.

The drafters of the Union of Lublin expected that the countries of Lithuania and Poland should be linked together more closely than they actually were, because the Second statute of Lithuania ([[of 1566) had not lost its power, and some of its provisions substantially differed from the acts of Union of Lublin. Eventually the Third statute of Lithuania was adopted in 1588, which however still contradicted the Union of Lublin on many points.

The Polish nobility therefore viewed the statutes of Lithuania as unconstitutional, because at the signing of Union of Lublin it was said that no law could conflict with the law of Union. The Statutes, however, declared the laws of the Union that conflicted with them to be unconstitutional. Statutes of Lithuania were also used in territories of Lithuania annexed by Poland shortly before Union of Lublin. These conflicts between statutory schemes in Lithuania and Poland persisted for many years.

Attempts to limit the power of Lithuanian magnates (especially the Sapiehas' family) and unify the laws of the Commonwealth led to the koekwacja praw movement, culminating in the koekwacja reforms of the election sejm of 1697 (May-June), confirmed in the general sejm of 1698 (April) in the document Porządek sądzenia spraw w Trybunale Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskego.[1]

In culture and language, however, Polish eventually became a dominant one for all of nobility, including the nobility of Ruthenia and Lithuania, replacing the previous Ruthenian. However farmers, town dwellers and other people continued to speak in their own languages, which eventually created a significant rift between the lower social classes of people and the nobility in the Lithuanian and Ruthenian areas of the Commonwealth.

The Union of Lublin was superseded by the Constitution of the Third May from 1791, when the federative Commonwealth was to be transformed into a unitary state by King Stanisław August Poniatowski. However the constitution was not fully implemented, as the Partitions of Poland (and Lithuania) by Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary in 1795 destroyed the Commonwealth. The Union of Lublin was also temporary not active while Union of Kėdainiai was working.

The Union of Lublin created the largest state in Europe's history (if counting only states which are fully in Europe, i.e. not counting the Russian or Roman empires), before the arrival of the European Union in the 20th century. Many historians also consider the Union of Lublin to have created a similar state to the present-day European Union, thus considering the Union (along with the Kalmar Union, the several Acts of Union in the British Isles and other similar treaties) to be kind of a predecessor of the Maastricht treaty. The former, however, created a state of countries more deeply linked than the present-day EU.