AMID THE RAPID AND COMPLEX political transformations of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in its final years, Polish political elites vigorously debated projects for social and state reform. Of the many questions that generated discussion during this period, the issue generally referred to as ‘the reform of the Jews’, but meaning the reform of the sociooccupational structure of Jewish society, was regarded as one of the most pressing, along with reforms in the status of the peasantry and town dwellers.

In 1772 the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth lost 37 per cent of its population and 29 per cent of its territory to Russia, Austria, and Prussia in what came to be known as the First Partition. The king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, who had been on the throne since 1764, was already aware of the need for modernization, but this sudden shock brought home the need for profound change. The Sejm debated proposed reforms several times after 1772 and introduced certain changes, but the most comprehensive, and, as it turned out, the last attempt at reform was the Four Year or Great Sejm of 1788–92.

In the favourable international climate of these years—favourable in the sense that Russia was involved in its own wars at this time—reform-minded political circles in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth succeeded in getting the Sejm to debate radical reforms of the state, the military, and public finances, as well as many areas of social and economic life. Wide-ranging changes were introduced, of which the most important, even spectacular, was the constitution of 3 May 1791—the first in Europe, and preceded internationally only by that of the United States.

But the achievements were short-lived. In 1792 the neighbouring powers, supported by internal opponents of reform, intervened militarily to cripple the Sejm, and the Second Partition, of 1793, by Prussia and Russia alone, doomed the Commonwealth altogether. The insurrection of 1794, led by Tadeusz Kościuszko, tried to oust the occupying forces and undo the 1793 partition, but by the end of the year the insurrectionary forces were forced to surrender. In 1795 the three powers divided the lands between them, bringing the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to an end.