Between the traditions and innovations: Upytė pavietas nobility at the end of the XVIIIth century

The article discusses Upytė pavietas (district) nobility's attitudes towards the most important events in the state's life at the end of the XVIIIth century - the Four-Year Seimas and the culmination of its work - the Constitution of May 3rd, 1791; the Confederation of the years 1792-1793; and the Second Partition. It also reveals the nobility's attitudes on the eve of the fall of the Republic of Two Nations. The article explains who formed Upytė pavietas' political elite; which families dominated it; and which of two aristocrats and nobles' political groups that dominated the Republic of Two Nations - patriots-reformists, or the conservatives - they represented. The analysis of pavietas land-ownership structure and pavietas officials' lists lead to conclusion that at the times of the Four-Year Seimas Upytė pavietas was dominated by the patriots-reformists' supporters related to the King Stanislovas Augustas Poniatkovskis' Court group. The Kosakovskiai - the land-owners from this pavietas and the developers of their own client system between the local nobles, - also possessed considerable power in this pavietas. This article also discusses the implementation of the administra- tional and court system reform by the Four-Year Seimas in the Upytės pavietas; the development of the new local self-government institutions; and the influence all these reforms made on the composition of the pavietas political elite. The personal composition of the new self-governing and court institutions is established. The analysis of the reforms-opposing confederations' formation in the Upytės pavietas, as well as the scale of the nobility's participation in the counter-Seimas campaign of 1793 is based on the Upytė pavietas land acts that are kept in Lithuanian State History Archive, and the transcripts of the Upytė Confederation documents found in the Warsaw National Repository for Documents Produced Prior to 1945. All this leads to the conclusion that the majority of pavietas nobles supported reforms and their preservation; as for conservative nobles, they failed to win over the nobility to their side. The Upytė pavietas nobility understood the necessity to strengthen the Republic of Two Nations by reforming it, and it was mature enough to accept and implement the innovations their times brought