The third partition of the Commonwealth: liquidation of the state and the fate of Ukrainian lands in the language of documents and facts

The purpose of the study is to analyze the international legal acts which declared and recorded the process of implementation and results of the third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Russia, Prussia and Austria and its destruction as a state, and to emphasize their impact on the further development of Ukrainian lands. Research methodology. The article uses an anthropological approach which ensures an unbiased and independent view of the events of 230 years ago aimed at dividing, dismembering and destroying the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a state. To study and analyze the international legal acts reflecting the process of the third territorial division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its liquidation as a state, the author used the methods of intellectual history and “history of concepts” aimed at a detailed reconstruction of the information contained therein. The application of the method of critical analysis allowed to identify and isolate in their texts the objective essential and semantic aspects and dynamics of the behavior of Russia, Austria and Prussia in the process of preparing and conducting the third partition and thus ensure reliability in the interpretation of its consequences. The author also uses specific historical methods, such as historical-genetic, historical-chronological, comparative historical and historical-analytical methods. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time in the national historical literature, important international legal acts reflecting the circumstances, factors, causes, and procedure of the third partition and final liquidation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the consequences of which affected the future of the Ukrainian lands, are analyzed. Conclusions. The critical analysis of documentary sources has created objective grounds for a convincing conclusion that, thanks to political alliances and especially successful military actions in the geopolitical situation caused by the French Revolution, Russia took a leading position in European politics, which allowed it to carry out, together with Prussia and Austria, the third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in its own interests, to dismember and destroy it as a state.