Another great irony of both Russian and European history is that the Partitions of Poland and the French Revolution were contemporary and which was more important is yet to be answered.
This story is often forgotten from the history lessons about Europe. The fall of the once-powerful Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania.
The Three Partitions of Poland in the 1790s were the greatest single Russian land-grab in the history of the Tsarist state. They were the most triumphant example of Catherine the Great's brand of imperialism and together with the victories in Ukraine were why she earned the title The Great.
They created an order that became a fixed point on the European map up until the aftermath of WWI, when it collapsed and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and briefly Ukraine, all flared into existence or were reborn after the war. One of the big reasons that the Russian elite shrugged and went 'meh' at the onset of the French Revolution was that they were busy erasing an entire country off the map, a feat that lasted for over a century without any ability of the Poles to redress the issue.
The Partitions also created the geopolitical system that ultimately ensured the lines of WWI were drawn as they were. The three Great Powers of Central and Northern Europe shared land borders and a common interest in keeping the Poles down....but if they had to have a war the easiest targets in Europe also happened to be each other.
