The Russian diplomacy in protecting the rights of the orthodox Christians in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna (1741-1761)

From the first months of the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna the Russian royal court ordered diplomats in Dresden and Warsaw to make statements in defense of the rights of Orthodox Christians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Their rights were violated by the forcible seizure of churches and the conversion of Orthodox Christians to Uniatism, as well as the oppression of Orthodox Christians by Catholic magnates, noblemen and priests. By the 1740s, of the four Orthodox dioceses in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which the Polish authorities pledged to protect in 1686, only one remained, the Belarusian diocese. The royal court of Augustus III issued disposals on the basis of Russian complaints, but due to the republican structure of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the king did not have the right to order the Polish noblemen. The Polish Sejm, the main authority of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, could make decisions binding on all subjects, but its work in the 18th century was paralyzed by the internal conflicts of the magnates. An attempt to form a special commission to consider the complaints of Orthodox Christians according to the Polish laws was not successful. The Russian government could only convince every offender of the Orthodox Christians of the undesirability of such actions, but these measures also did not bring results. The only success of the Russian diplomacy was preventing the transition of the Orthodox Belarusian diocese to the Uniate Church since Dresden and Warsaw needed Russian protection from possible Prussian aggression in 1742 and 1756. In the same time, the Orthodox population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was increasingly dissatisfied with both their own disenfranchised position and the futility of diplomatic methods of their protection on the part of the Russian royal court.