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170-482: Kostopil was the property of Prince Władysław Dominik Zasławski and is mentioned in 1648-58 registers. It was originally a village based on a local iron mine, but in 1792 the local landowner, Leonard Wortzel, obtained town privileges for his estate including the right for an annual fair from Stanisław August Poniatowski , the last King of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . At this time Wortzel changed

340-607: A body "formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes." All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible. Its role being the defense "of the Soviet authority, the creation of a basis for the transformation of the standing army into a force deriving its strength from a nation in arms, and, furthermore, the creation of a basis for the support of the coming Socialist Revolution in Europe." Enlistment

510-467: A book to a discussion of Poniatowski, The Dispute over Stanisław August ( Spór o Stanisława Augusta , Warsaw, 1988). He notes that the discourse concerning Poniatowski is significantly coloured by the fact that he was the last King of Poland – the King who failed to save the country. This failure, and his prominent position, rendered him a convenient scapegoat for many. Zahorski argues that Poniatowski made

680-469: A brick factory operating in Kostopol. In nearby Janowa Dolina , there were granite and basalt quarries, with railway links to Kostopol station. The Polish government built a housing projects for the quarry workers. A local newspaper is published here since 1939. The Germans occupied Kostopol on 1 July 1941 and immediately there was a pogrom against the local Jews. The Germans progressively degraded

850-498: A collective committee of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko , Pavel Dybenko , and Nikolai Krylenko . At the same time, Nikolay Dukhonin was acting as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief after Alexander Kerensky fled from Russia. On 12 November 1917 the Soviet government appointed Krylenko as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and because of an "accident" during the forceful displacement of the commander-in-chief, Dukhonin

1020-637: A commissioner. He spent most of January 1752 at the Austrian court in Vienna . Later that year, after serving at the Radom Tribunal and meeting King Augustus III of Poland , he was elected deputy of the Sejm (Polish parliament). While there his father secured for him the title of Starosta of Przemyśl . In March 1753, he travelled to Hungary and Vienna, where he again met with Williams. He returned to

1190-565: A common border between Japanese controlled areas and the Soviet Far East and Mongolia . The Soviets and Japanese, including their respective client states of the Mongolian People's Republic and Manchukuo , disputed the boundaries and accused the other side of border violations. This resulted in a series of escalating border skirmishes and punitive expeditions , including the 1938 Battle of Lake Khasan , and culminated in

1360-633: A conspiracy and a threat to their absolute monarchies. Prussian statesman Ewald von Hertzberg expressed the fears of European conservatives: "The Poles have given the coup de grâce to the Prussian monarchy by voting in a constitution", elaborating that a strong Commonwealth would likely demand the return of the lands Prussia acquired in the First Partition; a similar sentiment was later expressed by Prussian Foreign Minister, Count Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg-Kehnert . Russia's wars with

1530-430: A contemporary who knew them both, this rumour only spread after the death of Poniatowski, was generally disbelieved, and moreover, was circulated by Elżbieta herself, so the marriage is considered by most to be unlikely. He had several notable lovers, including Elżbieta Branicka , who acted as his political adviser and financier, and had children with two of them. With Magdalena Agnieszka Sapieżyna (1739–1780), he became

1700-470: A coup as long as King Augustus was alive. Upon the death of Poland's King Augustus III in October 1763, lobbying began for the election of the new king . Catherine threw her support behind Poniatowski. The Russians spent about 2.5m rubles in aid of his election. Poniatowski's supporters and opponents engaged in some military posturing and even minor clashes. In the end, the Russian army was deployed only

1870-543: A few kilometres from the election sejm , which met at Wola near Warsaw. In the event, there were no other serious contenders, and during the convocation sejm on 7 September 1764 , 32-year-old Poniatowski was elected king, with 5,584 votes. He swore the pacta conventa on 13 November, and a formal coronation took place in Warsaw on 25 November. The new king's "uncles" in the Familia would have preferred another nephew on

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2040-702: A fondness for books which continued throughout his life. He went on his first foreign trip in 1748, with elements of the Imperial Russian army as it advanced into the Rhineland to aid Maria Theresia 's troops during the War of the Austrian Succession which ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) . This enabled Poniatowski both to visit the city, also known as Aachen , and to venture into

2210-418: A further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million men, including 7.7 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million prisoners of war (POW) dead (out of 5.2 million total POWs), plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. Officials at

2380-503: A hundred times as many tanks . The Red Army, however, had been hindered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge of 1937, reducing the army's morale and efficiency shortly before the outbreak of the fighting. With over 30,000 of its army officers executed or imprisoned, most of whom were from the highest ranks, the Red Army in 1939 had many inexperienced senior officers. Because of these factors, and high commitment and morale in

2550-580: A large gallery of paintings in Warsaw was disrupted by the dismemberment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . Most of the paintings that he had ordered for it can now be seen in London's Dulwich Picture Gallery . Poniatowski also planned to found an Academy of Fine Arts , but this finally came about only after his abdication and departure from Warsaw. Poniatowski accomplished much in the realm of education and literature. He established

2720-454: A major reshuffling took place in the Soviet military administration. On 13 March 1918, the Soviet government accepted the official resignation of Krylenko and the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief was liquidated. On 14 March 1918, Leon Trotsky replaced Podvoisky as the Narkom of War Affairs. On 16 March 1918, Pavel Dybenko was relieved from the office of Narkom of Marine Affairs. On 8 May 1918,

2890-479: A nearby village, and exterminated upon arrival. A few managed to escape but they were caught and returned to the Germans and murdered. In July 1942 the remaining Jews from Rivne (perhaps 7,000 people) were brought by train to Kostopol and were murdered by German police in a quarry near woods outside the town. On 24 August, in Kostopol's forced labour camp, 700 Jewish labourers, led by Gedalia Braier, revolted during

3060-530: A new order, the Order of Virtuti Militari , to reward Poles for exceptional military leadership and courage in combat. Despite Polish requests, Prussia refused to honour its alliance obligations. In the end, the numerical superiority of the Russians was too great, and defeat looked inevitable. Poniatowski's attempts at negotiations with Russia proved futile. In July 1792, when Warsaw was threatened with siege by

3230-582: A pension granted to him by Catherine. Despite financial troubles, he still supported some of his former allies, and continued to try to represent the Polish cause at the Russian court. He also worked on his memoirs. Poniatowski died of a stroke on 12 February 1798. Paul I sponsored a royal state funeral, and on 3 March he was buried at the Catholic Church of St. Catherine in St. Petersburg. In 1938, when

3400-470: A policy of religious tolerance , the Familia was opposed to it. The growing rift between Poniatowski and the Familia was exploited by the Russians, who used the issue as a pretext to intervene in the Commonwealth's internal politics and to destabilize the country. Catherine had no wish to see Poniatowski's reform succeed. She had supported his ascent to the throne to ensure the Commonwealth remained

3570-456: A railway station was opened on the Rovno — Vilna line in the late 1890s. The railway promoted the establishment of new industries such as flour mills, oil pressing, spinning mill, sawmill, and a match factory. Development was interrupted in 1906 when a fire destroyed most of the town's buildings. Afterwards, most new construction used bricks. The town had become a centre for Jewish settlement in

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3740-545: A stable nucleus. By 1925, this system provided 46 of the 77 infantry divisions and one of the eleven cavalry divisions. The remainder consisted of regular officers and enlisted personnel serving two-year terms. The territorial system was finally abolished, with all remaining formations converted to the other cadre divisions, in 1937–1938. The Soviet military received ample funding and was innovative in its technology. An American journalist wrote in 1941: Even in American terms

3910-521: A surrender the following day although some Japanese units continued to fight for several more days. A proposed Soviet invasion of Hokkaido , the second largest Japanese island, was originally planned to be part of the territory to be taken but it was cancelled. Military administration after the October Revolution was taken over by the People's Commissariat of War and Marine affairs headed by

4080-570: A toddler, on the orders of Józef Potocki , Governor of Kiev , as a reprisal for his father's support for King Augustus III and held for some months in Kamieniec-Podolski . He was returned to his parents in Gdańsk. Later he moved with his family to Warsaw . He was initially educated by his mother, then by private tutors, including Russian ambassador Herman Karl von Keyserling . He had few friends in his teenage years and instead developed

4250-528: A traitor. He is criticized primarily for his failure to resolutely stand against opposing forces and prevent the partitions , which led to the destruction of the Polish state. On the other hand, he is remembered as a great patron of arts and sciences who laid the foundation for the Commission of National Education , the first institution of its kind in the world, the Great Sejm of 1788–1792, which led to

4420-479: A virtual puppet state under Russian control, so his attempts to reform the Commonwealth's ailing government structures were a threat to the status quo . Matters came to a head in 1766. During the Sejm in October of that year, Poniatowski attempted to push through a radical reform, restricting the disastrous liberum veto provision. He was opposed by conservatives such as Michał Wielhorski , who were supported by

4590-583: A work by De Daugnon, an anecdote is quoted that happened to his mother, Constance, in 1732. An Italian named Antonio Formica appears before her, who was assumed to be an astrologer. Seeing the child born on 17 January of that year, he predicted that he would be king of the Poles. The prediction came true many years later, and fortunately there are records of the existence of a Sicilian physician Dr. Antonio Formica, who lived in Poland during those years, closely linked to

4760-592: Is discussed in Luise Mühlbach 's novel Joseph II and His Court , and appears in Jane Porter 's 1803 novel, Thaddeus of Warsaw . On screen he has been played by Wieńczysław Gliński in the 1976 3 Maja directed by Grzegorz Królikiewicz. He appears in a Russian TV series . Poniatowski is depicted in numerous portraits, medals and coins. He is prominent in Jan Matejko 's work, especially in

4930-551: The Polish Biographical Dictionary . However, Marek Jerzy Minakowski 's website on descendants of Great Sejm participants lists neither Kazimierz Grabowski nor Konstancja Grabowska as Poniatowski's children; and for Elżbieta Szydłowska, it lists only Kazimierz Grabowski as Jan Jerzy Grabowski 's child. Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army , often shortened to the Red Army ,

5100-663: The Cardinal Laws . Although it had abandoned the cause of Poniatowski's reforms, the Familia did not receive the support it expected from the Russians who continued to press for the conservatives' rights. Meanwhile, other factions now rallied under the banner of the Bar Confederation , aimed against the conservatives, Poniatowski and the Russians. After an unsuccessful attempt to raise allies in Western Europe, France, Britain and Austria, Poniatowski and

5270-648: The Constitution of 3 May 1791 and as a sponsor of many architectural landmarks. Historians tend to agree that, taking the circumstances into account, he was a skillful statesman, pointing out that passing the Constitution was a sign of bravery, although his unwillingness to organize a proper nationwide uprising afterward is seen as cowardice and the key reason for the Second Partition and the subsequent downfall of Poland. Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski

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5440-654: The Familia had no choice but to rely more heavily on the Russian Empire, which treated Poland as a protectorate . In the War of the Bar Confederation (1768–1772), Poniatowski supported the Russian army's repression of the Bar Confederation. In 1770, the Council of the Bar Confederation proclaimed him dethroned. The following year, he was kidnapped by Bar Confederates and was briefly held prisoner outside of Warsaw, but he managed to escape. In view of

5610-543: The Gulag . During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conscripted 29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) (most captured). Of the 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and

5780-958: The Imperial Japanese Army ), the doctrine was not used. Only in the Second World War did deep operations come into play. The Red Army was involved in armed conflicts in the Republic of China during the Sino-Soviet conflict (1929) , the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang (1934), when it was assisted by White Russian forces, and the Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang (1937) in Northwestern China . The Red Army achieved its objectives; it maintained effective control over

5950-470: The Monitor . Writers and poets who received his patronage included, Stanisław Trembecki , Franciszek Salezy Jezierski , Franciszek Bohomolec and Franciszek Zabłocki . He also supported publishers including, Piotr Świtkowski, and library owners such as Józef Lex. He supported the development of the sciences, particularly cartography ; he hired a personal cartographer, Karol de Perthees, even before he

6120-658: The Netherlands . On his return journey he stopped in Dresden . The following year Poniatowski was apprenticed to the office of Michał Fryderyk Czartoryski , the then Deputy Chancellor of Lithuania . In 1750, he travelled to Berlin where he met a British diplomat, Charles Hanbury Williams , who became his mentor and friend. In 1751, Poniatowski was elected to the Treasury Tribunal in Radom , where he served as

6290-561: The Partition Sejm of 1773–1775, in which Russia was represented by ambassador Otto von Stackelberg , with no allied assistance forthcoming from abroad and with the armies of the partitioning powers occupying Warsaw to compel the Sejm by force of arms, no alternative was available save submission to their will. Eventually Poniatowski and the Sejm acceded to the "partition treaty". At the same time, several other reforms were passed. The Cardinal Laws were confirmed and guaranteed by

6460-624: The Polnisches Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 202 was stationed, protecting Polish population from attacks by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army . Kostopol was liberated by the Red Army on 31 January 1944. Only about 270 Kostopol Jews had survived the German occupation, including those who had escaped eastwards before the mass killings. In 1952, a medical college was opened here. In January 1989

6630-492: The Rhineland-Palatinate during the War of the Austrian Succession . His younger brothers were, Andrzej Poniatowski (1734–1773), an Austrian Feldmarschall , Michał Jerzy Poniatowski (1736–94) who became Primate of Poland . His two older and married sisters were Ludwika Zamoyska (1728–1804) and Izabella Branicka (1730–1808). Among his nephews was Prince Józef Poniatowski (1763–1813), son of Andrzej. He

6800-680: The Russian Constituent Assembly (5–6 January 1918) and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), removing Russia from the First World War. Freed from international obligations, the Red Army confronted an internecine war against a variety of opposing anti-Bolshevik forces, including the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno , the anti-White and anti-Red Green armies , efforts to restore

6970-625: The School of Chivalry , also called the "Cadet Corps", which functioned from 1765 to 1794 and whose alumni included Tadeusz Kościuszko . He supported the creation of the Commission of National Education , considered to be the world's first Ministry of Education. In 1765 he helped found the Monitor , one of the first Polish newspapers and the leading periodical of the Polish Enlightenment. He sponsored many articles that appeared in

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7140-782: The Soviet Navy ) was renamed the " Soviet Army " – which in turn became the Russian Army on 7 May 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II , and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan . During its operations on the Eastern Front , it accounted for 75–80% of

7310-778: The Soviet Union planned to demolish the Church, his remains were transferred to the Second Polish Republic and interred in a church at Wołczyn , his birthplace. This was done in secret and caused controversy in Poland when the matter became known. In 1990, due to the poor state of the Wołczyn church (then in the Byelorussian SSR ), his body was once more exhumed and was brought to Poland, to St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw, where on 3 May 1791 he had celebrated

7480-610: The Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August 1945 (three days after the first atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the same day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki , while also being exact three months after the surrender of Germany). It was the largest campaign of the Soviet–Japanese War , which resumed hostilities between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace following

7650-824: The Targowica Confederation to overthrow the Constitution, which they saw as a threat to the traditional freedoms and privileges they enjoyed. The confederates aligned themselves with Russia's Catherine the Great, and the Russian army entered Poland, marking the start of the Polish–Russian War of 1792 , also known as the War in Defence of the Constitution. The Sejm voted to increase the Polish Army to 100,000 men, but due to insufficient time and funds this number

7820-797: The United States . In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $ 11 billion in materials ($ 180 billion in the 2020 money value): over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386 of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans ); 14,015 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras , 2,908 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,400 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras ) and 1.75 million tons of food. Soviet soldiers committed mass rapes in occupied territories, especially in Germany . The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence. According to historian Antony Beevor , whose books were banned in 2015 from some Russian schools and colleges, NKVD (Soviet secret police) files have revealed that

7990-449: The Wehrmacht in combat. The Axis's numeric superiority rendered the combatants' divisional strength approximately equal. A generation of Soviet commanders (notably Georgy Zhukov ) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow , at Stalingrad , Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive. In 1941, the Soviet government raised the bloodied Red Army's esprit de corps with propaganda stressing

8160-502: The Wehrmacht was especially harsh. Per a 1941 Stalin directive , Red Army officers and soldiers were to "fight to the last" rather than surrender; Stalin stated: "There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors". During and after World War II freed POWs went to special " filtration camps ". Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions . In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by

8330-517: The brigade and regimental levels. The commissars also had the task of spying on commanders for political incorrectness . In August 1918, Trotsky authorized General Mikhail Tukhachevsky to place blocking units behind politically unreliable Red Army units, to shoot anyone who retreated without permission. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) Joseph Stalin reintroduced the blocking policy and penal battalions with Order 227 . The Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919 occurred at

8500-532: The death penalty . Simultaneously, Trotsky carried out a mass recruitment of officers from the old Imperial Russian Army , who were employed as military advisors ( voenspetsy ). The Bolsheviks occasionally enforced the loyalty of such recruits by holding their families as hostages. As a result of this initiative, in 1918 75% of the officers were former tsarists . By mid-August 1920 the Red Army's former tsarist personnel included 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 non-commissioned officers . When

8670-590: The interwar Poland and this continued until World War II , when about 40% (about 4,000) of the population were Jewish. Kostopol became the local administrative centre of Kostopol County in 1925. The town had been joined with Poland after the end of First World War . By the end of the 1920s, there were three timber yards (two of them Jewish owned, one government owned), three plywood factories (Jewish owned), two furniture factories, two glass factories, two agriculture machinery works, three flour mills (two Jewish owned), two oil presses, four tar and turpentine factories and

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8840-407: The triumphantly advancing enemy. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies. We have no power to stay the enemy; only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction." The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) can be divided into three periods: At the start of the civil war, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments . The civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved

9010-497: The "Second Soviet-Finnish War") which was a conflict fought by Finland and Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944. In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939. On 30 November, the Red Army also attacked Finland, in the Winter War of 1939–1940. By autumn 1940, after conquering its portion of Poland, Nazi Germany shared an extensive border with

9180-499: The "Stanisław August style" by Polish art historian Władysław Tatarkiewicz . His chief architects included Domenico Merlini and Jan Kammsetzer . He was also patron to numerous painters. They included Poles such as his protégée, Anna Rajecka and Franciszek Smuglewicz , Jan Bogumił Plersch, son of Jan Jerzy Plersch , Józef Wall, and Zygmunt Vogel , as well as foreign painters including, Marcello Bacciarelli , Bernardo Bellotto , Jean Pillement , Ludwik Marteau , and Per Krafft

9350-423: The "Stanisław Augustus Code") was among the proposals. Poniatowski also planned a reform to improve the situation of Polish Jews . In foreign policy, spurned by Russia, Poland turned to another potential ally, the Triple Alliance , represented on the Polish diplomatic scene primarily by the Kingdom of Prussia , which led to the formation of the ultimately futile Polish–Prussian alliance . The pro-Prussian shift

9520-486: The "years of hope." The Familia , which was interested in strengthening its own power base, was dissatisfied with his conciliatory attitude as he reached out to many former opponents of their policies. This uneasy alliance between Poniatowski and the Familia continued for most of the first decade of his rule. One of the points of contention between Poniatowski and the Familia concerned the rights of religious minorities in Poland. Whereas Poniatowski reluctantly supported

9690-458: The 1776 reforms, and to prevent Poniatowski from growing too powerful, it supported the opposition during the Sejm of 1778. This marked the end of Poniatowski's reforms, as he found himself without sufficient support to carry them through. In the 1780s, Catherine appeared to favour Poniatowski marginally over the opposition, but she did not support any of his plans for significant reform. Despite repeated attempts, Poniatowski failed to confederate

9860-519: The 1891 painting, Constitution of 3 May 1791 and in another large canvas, Rejtan , and in his series of portraits of Polish monarchs. A bust of Poniatowski was unveiled in Łazienki Palace in 1992. A number of cities in Poland have streets named after him, including Kraków and Warsaw . Poniatowski never married. In his youth, he had loved his cousin Elżbieta Czartoryska , but her father August Aleksander Czartoryski disapproved because he did not think him influential or rich enough. When this

10030-417: The 1929 Field Regulations and became codified in the 1936 Provisional Field Regulations (PU-36). The Great Purge of 1937–1939 and the 1941 Red Army Purge removed many leading officers from the Red Army, including Tukhachevsky himself and many of his followers, and the doctrine was abandoned. Thus, at the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 and in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 ( major border conflicts with

10200-411: The 1932–1939 Soviet–Japanese border conflicts . The Red Army, with support from Mongolian forces, overwhelmed the Japanese Kwantung Army and local Chinese forces supporting them. The Soviets advanced on the continent into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo , Mengjiang (the northeast section of present-day Inner Mongolia which was part of another puppet state) and via an amphibious operation

10370-408: The All-Russian Chief Headquarters was created, headed by Nikolai Stogov and later Alexander Svechin . On 2 September 1918, the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) was established as the main military administration under Leon Trotsky, the Narkom of War Affairs. On 6 September 1918 alongside the chief headquarters, the Field Headquarters of RMC was created, initially headed by Nikolai Rattel . On

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10540-430: The Army. The Council of People's Commissars appointed itself the supreme head of the Red Army, delegating command and administration of the army to the Commissariat for Military Affairs and the Special All-Russian College within this commissariat. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy. Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko , commissar for

10710-455: The Bolshevik Revolution took place there were few machines in Russia. Marx said Communism must come in a highly industrialized society. The Bolsheviks identified their dreams of socialist happiness with machines which would multiply production and reduce hours of labour until everyone would have everything he needed and would work only as much as he wished. Somehow this has not come about, but the Russians still worship machines, and this helped make

10880-412: The Constitution, despite its liberal provisions, "fell somewhere below the French , above the Canadian , and left the General State Laws for the Prussian States (in German: Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preußischen Staaten ) far behind", but was "no match for the American Constitution ". George Sanford notes that the Constitution gave Poland "a constitutional monarchy close to the British model of

11050-543: The Dungan Cavalry Regiment commanded by the Dungan Magaza Masanchi . It also co-operated with armed Bolshevik Party-oriented volunteer units, the Forces of Special Purpose from 1919 to 1925. The slogan "exhortation, organization, and reprisals" expressed the discipline and motivation which helped ensure the Red Army's tactical and strategic success. On campaign, the attached Cheka special punitive brigades conducted summary field court-martial and executions of deserters and slackers. Under Commissar Yan Karlovich Berzin ,

11220-451: The Eastern Front consisted of an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA within the 1937 borders plus 900,000 ethnic Germans and Austrians outside the 1937 border (included in these numbers are men listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war) and 3,576,300 men reported captured (total 8,081,100); the losses of the German satellites on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 9,549,245,

11390-427: The Elder . His retinue of sculptors, headed by André-Jean Lebrun , included Giacomo Monaldi, Franz Pinck, and Tommaso Righi . Jan Filip Holzhaeusser was his court engraver and the designer of many commemorative medals. According to a 1795 inventory, Stanisław August's art collection, spread among numerous buildings, contained 2,889 pieces, including works by Rembrandt , Rubens , and van Dyck . His plan to create

11560-408: The Finnish forces, Finland was able to resist the Soviet invasion for much longer than the Soviets expected. Finnish forces inflicted stunning losses on the Red Army for the first three months of the war while suffering very few losses themselves. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty . Finland ceded 9% of its pre-war territory and 30% of its economic assets to

11730-432: The Great Sejm, including the Constitution. Faced with his powerlessness, Poniatowski once again considered abdication; in the meantime he tried to salvage whatever reforms he could. Poniatowski's plans had been ruined by the Kościuszko Uprising . The King had not encouraged it, but once it began he supported it, seeing no other honourable option. Its defeat marked the end of the Commonwealth. Poniatowski tried to govern

11900-422: The Jews' position and condition, by enforcing the wearing of yellow stars, imposing forced labour and confiscating Jewish property. On 16 August 1941, the Germans rounded up 470 of the most influential Jews in the community and transported them out of Kostopol, where they were all executed. Another 1,400 Jews related to those who had been executed, were arrested on 1 October and also taken away and killed. A ghetto

12070-451: The King, who planned to build their careers on service to him. Few were privy to his plans for reforms, which were kept hidden from the conservative opposition and Russia. Poniatowski scored a political victory during the Sejm of 1776, which further strengthened the council. Chancellor Andrzej Zamoyski was tasked with the codification of the Polish law, a project that became known as the Zamoyski Code . Russia supported some, but not all, of

12240-545: The Manchurian Chinese Eastern Railway , and successfully installed a pro-Soviet regime in Xinjiang . The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts , also known as the "Soviet–Japanese Border War" or the first "Soviet–Japanese War", was a series of minor and major conflicts fought between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan from 1932 to 1939. Japan's expansion into Northeast China created

12410-520: The NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated POWs, and other displaced persons , which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to

12580-522: The Netherlands, where he met many key members of that country's political and economic sphere. By late August, he had arrived in Paris , where he moved among the elites. In February 1754, he travelled on to Britain , where he spent some months. There, he was befriended by Charles Yorke , the future Lord Chancellor of Great Britain . He returned to the Commonwealth later that year, however he eschewed

12750-733: The Ottoman Empire by both the Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire , Poniatowski tried to draw Poland into the Austro-Russian alliance , seeing a war with the Ottomans as an opportunity to strengthen the Commonwealth. Catherine gave permission for the next Sejm to be called, as she considered some form of limited military alliance with Poland against the Ottomans might be useful. The Polish-Russian alliance

12920-425: The Ottomans and Sweden having ended, Catherine was furious over the adoption of the Constitution, which threatened Russian influence in Poland. One of Russia's chief foreign policy authors, Alexander Bezborodko , upon learning of the Constitution, commented that "the worst possible news have arrived from Warsaw: the Polish king has become almost sovereign." Shortly thereafter, conservative Polish nobility formed

13090-496: The Polish aristocracy. Curiously enough, it is said that it could be the same person. When elected to the throne, he was seen by many as simply an "instrument for displacing the somnolent Saxons from the throne of Poland", yet as the British historian, Norman Davies notes, " he turned out to be an ardent patriot, and a convinced reformer. " Still, according to many, his reforms did not go far enough, leading to accusations that he

13260-559: The Polish text of the 1791 Constitution gives his title as Stanisław August, by the grace of God and the will of the people, King of Poland , Grand Duke of Lithuania and Duke of Ruthenia , Prussia , Masovia , Samogitia , Kiev , Volhynia , Podolia , Podlasie , Livonia , Smolensk , Severia and Chernihiv . a Sources vary as to whether Konstancja Grabowska and Kazimierz Grabowski were Poniatowski's children. They are listed as such by several sources, including Jerzy Michalski 's article on Stanisław August Poniatowski in

13430-411: The Polish throne, but asking him to stay away from St. Petersburg. Nevertheless, Poniatowski hoped that Catherine would consider his offer of marriage, an idea seen as plausible by some international observers. He participated in the failed plot by the Familia to stage a coup d'état against King Augustus III . In August 1763, however, Catherine advised him and the Familia that she would not support

13600-622: The Prussian and Russian ambassadors and who threatened war if the reform was passed. The dissidents, supported by the Russians, formed the Radom Confederation . Abandoned by the Familia , Poniatowski's reforms failed to pass at the Repnin Sejm , named after Russian ambassador Nicholas Repnin , who promised to guarantee with all the might of the Russian Empire the Golden Liberties of the Polish nobility, enshrined in

13770-693: The Red Army finally achieving a Soviet-Mongolian victory over Japan and Manchukuo at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in September 1939. The Soviet Union and Japan agreed to a ceasefire. Later the two sides signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact on 13 April 1941, which resolved the dispute and returned the borders to status quo ante bellum . The Winter War ( Finnish : talvisota , Swedish : finska vinterkriget , Russian: Зи́мняя война́ )

13940-607: The Red Army numbered some 6.5 million men, many of whom the Army had difficulty supporting, around 581,000 in the two operational fronts, western and southwestern. Around 2.5 million men and women were mobilized in the interior as part of reserve armies. The XI Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP (b)) adopted a resolution on the strengthening of the Red Army. It decided to establish strictly organized military, educational and economic conditions in

14110-404: The Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations and assistance with farm work. Some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army; men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away, they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages. In some cases, the money they earned would go towards tanks for

14280-628: The Red Army with an initial Red Guard organization and a core soldiery of Red Guard militiamen and the Cheka secret police. Conscription began in June 1918, and opposition to it was violently suppressed. To control the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Red Army soldiery, the Cheka operated special punitive brigades which suppressed anti-communists , deserters , and " enemies of the state ". The Red Army used special regiments for ethnic minorities, such as

14450-590: The Red Army's defeat of Pyotr Wrangel in the south in 1920 allowed the foundation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922. Historian John Erickson sees 1 February 1924, when Mikhail Frunze became head of the Red Army staff, as marking the ascent of the general staff , which came to dominate Soviet military planning and operations. By 1 October 1924 the Red Army's strength had diminished to 530,000. The list of Soviet divisions 1917–1945 details

14620-411: The Red Army's strength was 401 divisions. The Soviet forces were apparently unprepared despite numerous warnings from a variety of sources. They suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, and an incomplete reorganization. The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored

14790-572: The Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). As many as 8 million of the 34 million mobilized were non-Slavic minority soldiers, and around 45 divisions formed from national minorities served from 1941 to 1943. The German losses on

14960-418: The Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, and that is to create a people's militia and to fuse it with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the entire people)." At

15130-462: The Russian capital on 14 August 1758. Poniatowski attended the Sejms of 1758, 1760, and 1762. He continued his involvement with the Familia , and supported a pro-Russian and anti-Prussian stance in Polish politics. His father died in 1762, leaving him a modest inheritance. In 1762, when Catherine ascended the Russian throne, she sent him several letters professing her support for his own ascension to

15300-658: The Russians, as he had done in the past. Poniatowski had not saved the Commonwealth, however. He and the reformers had lost much of their influence, both within the country and with Catherine. Neither were the Targowica Confederates victorious. To their surprise, there ensued the Second Partition of Poland . With the new deputies bribed or intimidated by the Russian troops, the Grodno Sejm took place. On 23 November 1793, it annulled all acts of

15470-737: The Russians, the king came to believe that surrender was the only alternative to total defeat. Having received assurances from Russian ambassador Yakov Bulgakov that no territorial changes would occur, a cabinet of ministers called the Guard of Laws (or Guardians of Law, Polish : Straż Praw ) voted eight to four in favor of surrender. On 24 July 1792, Poniatowski joined the Targowica Confederation. The Polish Army disintegrated. Many reform leaders, believing their cause lost, went into self-exile, although they hoped that Poniatowski would be able to negotiate an acceptable compromise with

15640-547: The Sejm, as his parents wanted to keep him out of the political furore surrounding the Ostrogski family 's land inheritance (see: fee tail – Ordynacja Ostrogska ). The following year he received the title of Stolnik of Lithuania. Poniatowski owed his rise and influence to his family connections with the powerful Czartoryski family and their political faction, known as the Familia , with whom he had grown close. It

15810-696: The Soviet Union made Red Army logistical support difficult because many depots (and most of the USSR's industrial manufacturing base) lay in the country's invaded western areas, obliging their re-establishment east of the Ural Mountains. Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps from the United States began appearing in large numbers in 1942. Until then, the Red Army was often required to improvise or go without weapons, vehicles, and other equipment. The 1941 decision to physically move their manufacturing capacity east of

15980-535: The Soviet Union. Soviet losses on the front were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. The Soviet forces did not accomplish their objective of the total conquest of Finland but did receive territory in Karelia , Petsamo , and Salla . The Finns retained their sovereignty and improved their international reputation, which bolstered their morale in the Continuation War (also known as

16150-436: The Soviet defence budget was large. In 1940 it was the equivalent of $ 11,000,000,000, and represented one-third of the national expenditure. Measure this against the fact that the infinitely richer United States will approximate the expenditure of that much yearly only in 1942 after two years of its greatest defence effort. Most of the money spent on the Red Army and Air Force went for machines of war. Twenty-three years ago when

16320-545: The Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,976,645. Regarding POWs, both sides captured large numbers and had many die in captivity – one recent British figure says 3.6 of 6 million Soviet POWs died in German camps, while 300,000 of 3 million German POWs died in Soviet hands. In 1941, the rapid progress of the initial German air and land attacks into

16490-675: The USSR, with whom it remained neutrally bound by their non-aggression pact and trade agreements . Another consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina , carried out by the Southern Front in June–July 1940 and Soviet occupation of the Baltic states . These conquests also added to the border the Soviet Union shared with Nazi-controlled areas. For Adolf Hitler ,

16660-422: The Ural Mountains kept the main Soviet support system out of German reach. In the later stages of the war, the Red Army fielded some excellent weaponry, especially artillery and tanks. The Red Army's heavy KV-1 and medium T-34 tanks outclassed most Wehrmacht armor, but in 1941 most Soviet tank units used older and inferior models. The Red Army was financially and materially assisted in its wartime effort by

16830-424: The abdication: they feared that his refusal would lead to a Russian confiscation of their properties and their ruin. Catherine died on 17 November 1796, succeeded by her son, Paul I of Russia . On 15 February 1797, Poniatowski left for Saint Petersburg. He had hoped to be allowed to travel abroad, but was unable to secure permission to do so. A virtual prisoner in St. Petersburg's Marble Palace , he subsisted on

17000-569: The adoption of the Constitution that he had coauthored. A third funeral ceremony was held on 14 February 1995. Stanisław August Poniatowski has been called the Polish Enlightenment 's most important patron of the arts. His cultural projects were attuned to his socio-political aims of overthrowing the myth of the Golden Freedoms and the traditional ideology of Sarmatism . His weekly " Thursday Dinners " were considered

17170-636: The army. However, it was recognized that an army of 1,600,000 would be burdensome. By the end of 1922, after the Congress, the Party Central Committee decided to reduce the Red Army to 800,000. This reduction necessitated the reorganization of the Red Army's structure. The supreme military unit became corps of two or three divisions. Divisions consisted of three regiments. Brigades as independent units were abolished. The formation of departments' rifle corps began. After four years of warfare,

17340-417: The arts and sciences was a major drain on the royal treasury. He also supported numerous public initiatives, and attempted to use the royal treasury to cover the state's expenses when tax revenues were insufficient. The Sejm promised several times to compensate his treasury to little practical effect. Nonetheless contemporary critics frequently accused him of being a spendthrift. Andrzej Zahorski dedicated

17510-642: The arts and sciences, Poniatowski was awarded in 1766 a royal Fellowship of the Royal Society , where he became the first royal Fellow outside British royalty. In 1778 he was awarded fellowship of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences , and in 1791 of the Berlin Academy of Sciences . He also supported the development of industry and manufacturing, areas in which the Commonwealth lagged behind most of Western Europe. Among

17680-629: The beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree on 29 May 1918 imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional military commissariats ( voyennyy komissariat , abbr. voyenkomat ), which as of 2023 still exist in Russia in this function and under this name. Military commissariats, however, should not be confused with

17850-480: The brigades took hostages from the villages of deserters to compel their surrender; one in ten of those returning was executed. The same tactic also suppressed peasant rebellions in areas controlled by the Red Army, the biggest of these being the Tambov Rebellion . The Soviets enforced the loyalty of the various political, ethnic, and national groups in the Red Army through political commissars attached at

18020-532: The casualties that the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS suffered during the war, and ultimately captured the German capital, Berlin . Up to 34 million soldiers served in the Red Army during World War II, 8 million of which were non-Slavic minorities. Officially, the Red Army lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) ( mostly captured ). The majority of

18190-682: The circumstance was no dilemma, because the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") policy secretly remained in force, culminating on 18 December 1940 with Directive No. 21, Operation Barbarossa , approved on 3 February 1941, and scheduled for mid-May 1941. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (5.5 million soldiers) including 166 divisions and brigades (2.6 million) garrisoned in

18360-420: The civil war ended in 1922, ex-tsarists constituted 83% of the Red Army's divisional and corps commanders. In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's draconian measures. According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of

18530-464: The combined influence of Catherine, of Russian empress Elizabeth and of chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin , Poniatowski was able to rejoin the Russian court now as ambassador of Saxony the following January. Still in St Petersburg, he appears to have been a source of intrigue between various European governments, some supporting his appointment, others demanding his withdrawal. He eventually left

18700-617: The continuing weakness of the Polish-Lithuanian state, Austria, Russia, and Prussia collaborated to threaten military intervention in exchange for substantial territorial concessions from the Commonwealth – a decision they made without consulting Poniatowski or any other Polish parties. Although Poniatowski protested against the First Partition of the Commonwealth (1772), he was powerless to do anything about it. He considered abdication , but decided against it. During

18870-417: The council to be easier to control than the unruly Sejms, and indeed it remained under the influence of the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, it was a significant improvement on the earlier Commonwealth governance. The new legislation was guaranteed by the Russian Empire, giving it licence to interfere in Commonwealth politics when legislation it favoured was threatened. The aftermath of the Partition Sejm saw

19040-792: The country in the brief period after the fall of the Uprising, but on 2 December 1794, Catherine demanded he leave Warsaw, a request to which he acceded on 7 January 1795, leaving the capital under Russian military escort and settling briefly in Grodno . On 24 October 1795, the Act of the final, Third Partition of Poland was signed. One month and one day later, on 25 November, Poniatowski signed his abdication. Reportedly, his sister, Ludwika Maria Zamoyska and her daughter also his favourite niece, Urszula Zamoyska , who had been threatened with confiscation of their property, had contributed to persuading him to sign

19210-412: The country's second order of chivalry , to reward Poles and others for noteworthy service to the King. Together with the Familia he tried to reform the ineffective system of government, by reducing the powers of the hetmans (Commonwealth's top military commanders) and treasurers, moving them to commissions elected by the Sejm and accountable to the King. In his memoirs, Poniatowski called this period

19380-507: The daily roll call ( Appell ). When Brajer shouted " Hura! ", he started a mass escape attempt. Some reached the nearby forest, but most of them were caught and killed. Some survived with the help of local villagers and joined Soviet partisan units. Less than ten survived the war. Since March 1943, Kostopol was one of locations where Polish civilian population of Volhynia fled from the Ukrainian nationalists (see Volhynian Genocide ). Here,

19550-485: The death of Augustus III . Contrary to expectations, Poniatowski attempted to reform and strengthen the large but ailing Commonwealth. His efforts were met with external opposition from neighbouring Prussia , Russia and Austria , all committed to keeping the Commonwealth weak. From within he was opposed by conservative interests, which saw the reforms as a threat to their traditional liberties and privileges granted centuries earlier. The defining crisis of his early reign

19720-750: The defeated Provisional Government, monarchists, but mainly the White Movement of several different anti-socialist military confederations. "Red Army Day", 23 February 1918, has a two-fold historical significance: it was the first day of conscription (in Petrograd and Moscow), and the first day of combat against the occupying Imperial German Army . The Red Army controlled by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic also against independence movements, invading and annexing newly independent states of

19890-549: The defense of Motherland and nation, employing historic exemplars of Russian courage and bravery against foreign aggressors. The anti-Nazi Great Patriotic War was conflated with the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon , and historical Russian military heroes, such as Alexander Nevsky and Mikhail Kutuzov , appeared. Repression of the Russian Orthodox Church temporarily ceased, and priests revived

20060-499: The depth of the enemy's ground forces, inducing catastrophic defensive failure. The deep-battle doctrine relies upon aviation and armor advances with the expectation that maneuver warfare offers quick, efficient, and decisive victory. Marshal Tukhachevsky said that aerial warfare must be "employed against targets beyond the range of infantry , artillery , and other arms. For maximum tactical effect aircraft should be employed en masse , concentrated in time and space, against targets of

20230-882: The endeavours in which he invested were the manufacture of cannons and firearms and the mining industry. Poniatowski himself left several literary works: his memoirs, some political brochures and recorded speeches from the Sejm. He was considered a great orator and a skilled conversationalist. King Stanisław Augustus remains a controversial figure. In Polish historiography and in popular works, he has been criticized or marginalized by authors such as, Szymon Askenazy , Joachim Lelewel , Jerzy Łojek (whom Andrzej Zahorski describes as Poniatowski's most vocal critic among modern historians), Tadeusz Korzon , Karol Zyszewski and Krystyna Zienkowska; whereas more neutral or positive views have been expressed by Paweł Jasienica , Walerian Kalinka , Władysław Konopczyński , Stanisław Mackiewicz , Emanuel Rostworowski and Stanisław Wasylewski. In

20400-415: The error of joining the Targowica Confederation. Although he wanted to preserve the integrity of the Polish state, it was far too late for that – he succeeded instead in cementing the damage to his own reputation for succeeding centuries. Poniatowski has been the subject of numerous biographies and many works of art. Voltaire , who saw Poniatowski as a model reformist, based his character, King Teucer in

20570-463: The father of Konstancja Żwanowa (1768–1810) and Michał Cichocki (1770–1828). With Elżbieta Szydłowska (1748–1810), he became the father of Stanisław Konopnicy-Grabowski (1780–1845), Michał Grabowski (1773–1812), Kazimierz Grabowski (1770–?), Konstancja Grabowska and Izabela Grabowska (1776–1858). In a work by De Daugnon, an anecdote is quoted that happened to his mother, Constance, in 1732. An Italian named Antonio Formica appears before her, who

20740-599: The final and Third Partition of Poland (1795), marking the end of the Commonwealth. Stripped of all meaningful power, Poniatowski abdicated in November 1795 and spent the last years of his life as a captive in Saint Petersburg's Marble Palace . A controversial figure in Poland's history , he is viewed with ambivalence as a brave and skillful statesman by some and as an overly hesitant coward by others, and even as

20910-516: The fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as people's commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars. At a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked: "We have no army. The demoralized soldiers are fleeing, panic-stricken, as soon as they see a German helmet appear on the horizon, abandoning their artillery, convoys and all war material to

21080-569: The formations of the Red Army in that time. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, Soviet military theoreticians – led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky – developed the deep operation doctrine, a direct consequence of their experiences in the Polish–Soviet War and in the Russian Civil War. To achieve victory, deep operations envisage simultaneous corps - and army-size unit maneuvers of simultaneous parallel attacks throughout

21250-574: The former Russian Empire. This included three military campaigns against the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic , in January–February 1918, January–February 1919, and May–October 1920. Conquered nations were subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union. In June 1918, Leon Trotsky abolished workers' control over the Red Army, replacing the election of officers with traditional army hierarchies and criminalizing dissent with

21420-456: The highest tactical importance." "To the Red army, Stalin has dealt a fearful blow. As a result of the latest judicial frameup, it has fallen several cubits in stature. The interests of the Soviet defense have been sacrificed in the interests of the self-preservation of the ruling clique." Trotsky on the Red Army purges of 1937. Red Army deep operations found their first formal expression in

21590-612: The hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million. While the Soviets considered the surrender of Germany to be the end of the "Great Patriotic War", at the earlier Yalta Conference the Soviet Union agreed to enter the Pacific Theater portion of World War II within three months of the end of the war in Europe . This promise was reaffirmed at the Potsdam Conference held in July 1945. The Red Army began

21760-426: The institution of military political commissars . In the mid-1920s, the territorial principle of manning the Red Army was introduced. In each region, able-bodied men were called up for a limited period of active duty in territorial units, which constituted about half the army's strength, each year, for five years. The first call-up period was for three months, with one month a year thereafter. A regular cadre provided

21930-532: The last monarch of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . Born into wealthy Polish aristocracy , Poniatowski arrived as a diplomat at the Russian imperial court in Saint Petersburg in 1755 at the age of 22 and became intimately involved with the future empress Catherine the Great . With her aid, he was elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania by the Sejm in September 1764 following

22100-417: The leadership knew what was happening, but did little to stop it. It was often rear echelon units who committed the rapes. According to professor Oleg Rzheshevsky, "4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were punished for committing atrocities". The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in

22270-423: The life of any soldier and (almost any) officer of the unit to which he was attached. In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of gulag inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera. Given the dangers, the maximum sentence was three months. Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by

22440-440: The losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). Of the 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. The official grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million. Officials at

22610-520: The most scintillating social functions in the Polish capital. He founded Warsaw's National Theatre , Poland's first public theatre, and sponsored an associated Ballet schoolsballet school. He remodeled Ujazdów Palace and the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and erected the elegant Łazienki (Royal Baths) Palace in Warsaw's Łazienki, Park . He involved himself deeply in the detail of his architectural projects, and his eclectic style has been dubbed

22780-710: The northern portion of Korea . Other Red Army operations included the Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin , which was the Japanese portion of Sakhalin Island (and Russia had lost to Japan in 1905 in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War ), and the invasion of the Kuril Islands . Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on 15 August. The commanding general of the Kwantung Army ordered

22950-512: The partitioning powers. Royal prerogative was restricted, so that the King lost the power to confer titular roles, and military promotions, to appoint ministers and senators. Starostwo territories, and Crown lands would be awarded by auction. The Sejm also created two notable institutions: the Permanent Council , a government body in continuous operation, and the Commission of National Education . The partitioning powers intended

23120-463: The play Les Lois de Minos (1772) on Poniatowski. At least 58 contemporary poems were dedicated to him or praised him. Since then, he has been a major character in many works of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski , in the Rok 1794 trilogy by Władysław Stanisław Reymont , in the novels of Tadeusz Łopalewski , and in the dramas of Ignacy Grabowski, Tadeusz Miciński , Roman Brandstaetter and Bogdan Śmigielski. He

23290-408: The population was 31 610 people. Stanis%C5%82aw August Poniatowski Stanisław II August (born Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski; 17 January 1732 – 12 February 1798), known also by his regnal Latin name Stanislaus II Augustus , and as Stanisław August Poniatowski ( Lithuanian : Stanislovas Augustas Poniatovskis ), was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1764 to 1795, and

23460-482: The rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges also noted that the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000–132,000 deserters to the army. In September 1918, the Bolshevik militias consolidated under

23630-572: The remaining troops as numbering 10 million. While the Imperial Russian Army was being taken apart, "it became apparent that the rag-tag Red Guard units and elements of the imperial army who had gone over the side of the Bolsheviks were quite inadequate to the task of defending the new government against external foes." Therefore, the Council of People's Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918. They envisioned

23800-543: The rise of a conservative faction opposed to the Permanent Council, seeing it as a threat to their Golden Freedoms. This faction was supported by the Czartoryski family, but not by Poniatowski, who proved to be quite adept at making the Council follow his wishes. This marked the formation of new anti-royal and pro-royal factions in Polish politics. The royal faction was made up primarily of people indebted to

23970-439: The same day the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was created, and initially assigned to Jukums Vācietis (and from July 1919 to Sergey Kamenev ). The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces existed until April 1924, the end of Russian Civil War . In November 1923, after the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Narkom of War Affairs was transformed into the Soviet Narkom of War and Marine Affairs. At

24140-412: The same time as the general Soviet move into the areas abandoned by the Ober Ost garrisons that were being withdrawn to Germany in the aftermath of World War I . This merged into the 1919–1921 Polish–Soviet War , in which the Red Army invaded Poland, reaching the central part of the country in 1920, but then suffered a resounding defeat in Warsaw , which put an end to the war. During the Polish Campaign

24310-399: The sejms , which would have made them immune to the liberum veto . Thus, although he had a majority in the Sejms, Poniatowski was unable to pass even the smallest reform. The Zamoyski Code was rejected by the Sejm of 1780, and opposition attacks on the King dominated the Sejms of 1782 and 1786. Reforms became possible again in the late 1780s. In the context of the wars being waged against

24480-516: The supreme command of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic ( Russian : Революционный Военный Совет , romanized :  Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet (Revvoyensoviet) ). The first chairman was Trotsky, and the first commander-in-chief was Jukums Vācietis of the Latvian Riflemen ; in July 1919 he was replaced by Sergey Kamenev . Soon afterwards Trotsky established the GRU (military intelligence) to provide political and military intelligence to Red Army commanders. Trotsky founded

24650-417: The throne he attempted to introduce a number of reforms. He founded the Knights School , and began to form a diplomatic service, with semi-permanent diplomatic representatives throughout Europe, Russia and the Ottoman Empire . On 7 May 1765, Poniatowski established the Order of the Knights of Saint Stanislaus , in honour of Saint Stanislaus of Krakow , Bishop and Martyr, Poland's and his own patron saint, as

24820-456: The throne, Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski , characterized by one of his contemporaries as " débauché, si non dévoyé " (French: "debauched if not depraved"), but Czartoryski had declined to seek office. "Stanisław August", as he now styled himself combining the names of his two immediate royal predecessors, began his rule with only mixed support within the nation. It was mainly the small nobility who favoured his election. In his first years on

24990-499: The time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. Approximately 23% (about 19 million) of the male population of the Russian Empire were mobilized; however, most of them were not equipped with any weapons and had support roles such as maintaining the lines of communication and the base areas. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters, 1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners. He estimated

25160-418: The time." According to a contemporary account, Poniatowski himself described it, as "founded principally on those of England and the United States of America, but avoiding the faults and errors of both, and adapted as much as possible to the local and particular circumstances of the country." The Constitution of 3 May remained to the end a work in progress. A new civil and criminal code (provisionally called

25330-412: The town's name to Kostopol. During the Partitions of Poland under new policies of the Russian Empire many Germans migrated from occupied Polish lands to Volhynia because repossessed land by Russian military was available there for purchase. The region between Anielowka and Kostopol contained many German villages. Settlement in the town was encouraged by the imperial authorities but it stagnated until

25500-475: The tradition of blessing arms before battle. To encourage the initiative of Red Army commanders, the CPSU temporarily abolished political commissars , reintroduced formal military ranks and decorations, and introduced the Guards unit concept. Exceptionally heroic or high-performing units earned the Guards title (for example 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps , 6th Guards Tank Army ), an elite designation denoting superior training, materiel, and pay. Punishment also

25670-568: The western military districts. The Axis forces deployed on the Eastern Front consisted of 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3 million soldiers). Three Fronts, the Northwestern , Western , and Southwestern conducted the defense of the western borders of the USSR. In the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War (as it is known in Russia), the Wehrmacht defeated many Red Army units. The Red Army lost millions of men as prisoners and lost much of its pre-war matériel. Stalin increased mobilization, and by 1 August 1941, despite 46 divisions lost in combat,

25840-418: Was a great-grandson of poet and courtier Jan Andrzej Morsztyn and of Lady Catherine Gordon, lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga ; thus descended from the Marquesses of Huntly and the Scottish nobility. The Poniatowski family had achieved high status among the Polish nobility ( szlachta ) of the time. He spent the first few years of his childhood in Gdańsk . He was temporarily kidnapped as

26010-434: Was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland . It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland . The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939. The Soviet forces led by Semyon Timoshenko had three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and

26180-481: Was accused by others of weakness and subservience, even of treason, especially in the years following the Second Partition . During the Kościuszko Uprising , there were rumours that Polish Jacobins had been planning a coup d'état and Poniatowski's assassination. Another line of criticism alleged poor financial management on his part. Poniatowski actually had little personal wealth. Most of his income came from Crown Estates and monopolies. His lavish patronage of

26350-442: Was assumed to be an astrologer. Seeing the child born on 17 January of that year, he predicted that he would be king of the Poles. The prediction came true many years later, and fortunately there are records of the existence of a Sicilian doctor Dr. Antonio Formica, who lived in Poland during those years, closely linked to the Polish aristocracy. Curiously enough, it is said that it could be the same person. The English translation of

26520-406: Was being overly cautious, even indecisive, a fault to which he himself admitted. His decision to rely on Russia has been often criticized. Poniatowski saw Russia as a "lesser evil" – willing to support the notional "independence" of a weak Poland within the Russian sphere of influence. However, in the event Russia imposed the Partitions of Poland rather than choose to support internal reform. He

26690-537: Was born on 17 January 1732 in Wołczyn (then in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and now Vowchyn, Belarus ). He was one of eight surviving children, and the fourth son, of Princess Konstancja Czartoryska and of Count Stanisław Poniatowski , Ciołek coat of arms , Castellan of Kraków . His older brothers were Kazimierz Poniatowski (1721–1800), a Podkomorzy at Court, Franciszek Poniatowski (1723–1749), Canon of Wawel Cathedral who suffered from epilepsy and Aleksander Poniatowski (1725–1744), an officer killed in

26860-412: Was conditional upon "guarantees being given by a military or civil committee functioning within the territory of the Soviet Power, or by party or trade union committees or, in extreme cases, by two persons belonging to one of the above organizations." In the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a "collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary." Because

27030-541: Was elected king. A plan he initiated to map the entire territory of the Commonwealth, however, was never finished. At the Royal Castle in Warsaw , he organized an astronomical observatory and supported astronomers Jan Śniadecki and Marcin Odlanicki Poczobutt . He also sponsored historical studies, including the collection, cataloging and copying of historical manuscripts. He encouraged publications of biographies of famous Polish historical figures, and sponsored paintings and sculptures of them. For his contributions to

27200-401: Was established in Kostopol on 5 October 1941. Despite the great over-crowding, there were no epidemics. One hundred Jews, Judenrat members, Jewish Police and key professionals, were exempt and were allowed to live outside the ghetto. The ghetto was liquidated on 25 August 1942. German police surrounded the ghetto. The ghetto was emptied and the remaining inhabitants were transported to Khotinka,

27370-419: Was killed on 20 November 1917. Nikolai Podvoisky was appointed as the Narkom of War Affairs, leaving Dybenko in charge of the Narkom of Marine Affairs and Ovseyenko – the expeditionary forces to the Southern Russia on 28 November 1917. The Bolsheviks also sent out their own representatives to replace front commanders of the Russian Imperial Army . After the signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918,

27540-410: Was never achieved. Poniatowski and the reformers could field only a 37,000-man army, many of them untested recruits. This army, under the command of the King's nephew Józef Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kościuszko , managed to defeat the Russians or fight them to a draw on several occasions. Following the victorious Battle of Zieleńce , in which Polish forces were commanded by his nephew, the King founded

27710-618: Was no longer an issue, she was already married. His pacta conventa specified that he should marry a Polish noblewoman, although he himself always hoped to marry into some royal family . Upon his accession to the throne, he had hopes of marrying Catherine II , writing to her on 2 November 1763 in a moment of doubt, "If I desired the throne, it was because I saw you on it." When she made it clear through his envoy Rzewuski that she would not marry him, there were hopes of an Austrian archduchess, Archduchess Maria Elisabeth of Austria (1743–1808) . A marriage to Princess Sophia Albertina of Sweden

27880-463: Was not implemented, as in the end the only acceptable compromise proved unattractive to both sides. However, in the ensuing Four-Year Sejm of 1788–92 (known as the Great Sejm ), Poniatowski threw his lot in with the reformers associated with the Patriotic Party of Stanisław Małachowski , Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj , and co-authored the Constitution of 3 May 1791 . The Constitution introduced sweeping reforms. According to Jacek Jędruch ,

28050-426: Was not supported by Poniatowski, who nevertheless acceded to the decision of the majority of Sejm deputies. The passing of the Constitution of 3 May, although officially applauded by Frederick William II of Prussia , who sent a congratulatory note to Warsaw, caused further worry in Prussia. The contacts of Polish reformers with the revolutionary French National Assembly were seen by Poland's neighbours as evidence of

28220-427: Was suggested despite the religious differences, but this match was opposed by his sisters, Ludwika Maria Poniatowska and Izabella Poniatowska , and nothing came of it. The ceremonial role of queen and hostess of his court was played by his favourite niece, Urszula Zamoyska . A few historians believe that he later contracted a secret marriage with Elżbieta Szydłowska . However, according to Wirydianna Fiszerowa ,

28390-567: Was the Familia who sent him in 1755 to Saint Petersburg in the service of Williams, who had been nominated British ambassador to Russia. In Saint Petersburg, Williams introduced Poniatowski to the 26-year-old Catherine Alexeievna , the future empress Catherine the Great. The two became lovers. Whatever his feelings for Catherine, it is likely Poniatowski also saw an opportunity to use the relationship for his own benefit, using her influence to bolster his career. Poniatowski had to leave St. Petersburg in July 1756 due to court intrigue. Through

28560-421: Was the War of the Bar Confederation (1768–1772) that led to the First Partition of Poland (1772). The later part of his reign saw reforms wrought by the Diet (1788–1792) and the Constitution of 3 May 1791 . These reforms were overthrown by the 1792 Targowica Confederation and by the Polish–Russian War of 1792 , leading directly to the Second Partition of Poland (1793), the Kościuszko Uprising (1794) and

28730-424: Was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union . The army was established in January 1918 by Leon Trotsky to oppose the military forces of the new nation's adversaries during the Russian Civil War , especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army . In February 1946, the Red Army (which embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces alongside

28900-402: Was used; slackers, malingerers, those avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable/dangerous duties, and summary execution by NKVD punitive detachments. At the same time, the osobist (NKVD military counter-intelligence officers) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare

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