The First (and Only) Year of the May 3 Constitution

Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, a young deputy elected to parliament in 1788, dashed off his political comedy, Deputy's Return for the 1790 Fall election campaign. The compromise nature of the May 3 constitution has often been obscured in Polish popular rhetoric since the constitution offered a valuable symbol for developing patriotic and democratic traditions throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century’s. Analysis of the May 3, 1791 Constitution occupies a central place within Polish political and historical consciousness, together with the causes of the Polish Partitions in general, as the French Revolution plays a central place in French consciousness. The May 3 Constitution abolished the antiquated Golden Liberties of liberum veto and the elective kingship that had condemned the Polish government to impotence throughout most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and enacted more integrated system of government. But the May 3 constitution not only produced constitutional and ideological compromises, it also produced the governing coalition that made the system work

Constitution · Political science · European Political History Analysis · Historical and Cultural Studies of Poland · Law · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies

• Canadian Publications on the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for 1993

  Nevenka Koscevic, Connie Wawruck-Hemmet•Canadian Slavonic Papers•1994

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