ABSTRACT
Russia's wars with Sweden and Turkey between 1788 and 1792 seemed to hold out the Rzeczpospolita's last opportunity to assert its sovereignty. Something else, more basic but at least as important, happened during this period – a painful appreciation that politics might consist of more than an unruly scrum over places and preferments. The envoys and senators assembled for the Sejm in October 1788 had to try to teach themselves what government really meant. It was enough to furnish Poland with a new Constitution in May 1791; it was not enough to save it from destruction.
