Kaip tvarkėsi Lietuvos mažieji miestai po 1776 m. įstatymo

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: 1776 m. įstatymas; Abiejų Tautų Respublika (ATR; Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów; Žečpospolita; Sandrauga; Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth); Magdeburgo teisės; Mažieji miestai Lietuvoje po 1776 m. įstatymo; Miestas; Miestelis; Miestietis; Miesto savivalda; Miestų istorija Lietuvoje; Įstatymas; City; City autonomy; City dweller; Law; Magdeburg writes; Small city; Smaller cities in Lithuania after the Law of 1776; The Law of 1776; The history of cities in Lithuania.

ENThe conditions in cities started to undergo reforms carried out by the seimas (parliament) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its ruler, Stanisław Augustus Poniatowski from 1764. Until the beginning of the Four Year Seimas, the reforms had contradicting effects, they did not benefit the city dwellers, and often strengthened the influence of the nobles in cities. One such contradictory example was the GDL Tax Law of 1776, especially Article 2 regarding city affairs. This article analyses the provisions in the law of 1776 regarding autonomous cities and tries to explain how the law could have affected conditions in cities once the law came into effect, until the law titled Our Royal Free Cities... passed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth seimas on 18 April 1791, which again fundamentally changed the legal status of cities. This law foresaw that the granting the privilege of autonomy to cities was often counter-productive, and only 11 of the larger cities retained this status. The autonomy of other, smaller cities was abolished. The Lithuanian treasury commission ensured that property and duty checks would be conducted on those cities, so that city dwellers would not have to pay taxes exceeding the set limits into the state treasury and to elders. Also, elders received the right to judge city dwellers in minor court cases. The estate city courts had to cease functioning in Lithuania’s smaller state cities. The legal powers of elders who presided over city-dwellers within their elderships increased. Thus, the estate-based legal immunity that city dwellers had enjoyed was contravened, and autonomy was essentially removed. City dweller communities lost the right to manage their city’s finances. The law did not outline how cities who had lost their autonomous status had to handle everyday affairs within the community, or the city’s public life, or maintain order.The presented material shows that smaller city communities did not disintegrate and were able to handle their affairs. Examples include city dwellers court cases with elders in the Lithuanian. Court of Assessors, city dwellers’ signatures on acts from the Congress of Cities of the Polish-Lithuanan Commonwealth held in late 1789, and that burgomasters and advisers continued to be acknowledged in city dweller communities. Smaller cities on the Lithuanian Treasury Commission’s list of cities and towns from 1788 were still considered to hold Magdeburg rights. It appears that the tax law of 1775 was still in force too, which had determined the taxation of autonomous cities, as well as the law of 1776 that removed autonomy from many of these cities. While the provisions of the law of 1776, which removed autonomy, were abided by, uncertainties do remain about smaller cities. It is clear that their communities had to be restructured, but they did not disintegrate altogether. City dwellers managed to join forces in order to defend their rights in Lithuanian courts and in other government offices. It is likely that the autonomy of city dwellers was replaced by self-organisation. This weakened the powers of the city dwellers’ community, but the fact that their community self-awareness lived on is what determined their involvement in the early stages of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s city dwellers’ movement in 1789. [From the publication]

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