A country of millions vanished from the map, and stayed gone for 123 years.

On October 24, 1795, Russia, Prussia and Austria reached the agreement that divided what was left of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It followed the defeat of Tadeusz Kościuszko's uprising in 1794. Russia took Lithuanian lands and Courland, Prussia took Warsaw, and Austria took the area from Kraków to the Bug River.

No Polish representative had a say. The Third Partition ended independent Polish and Lithuanian statehood, and Poland only reappeared as an independent country on November 11, 1918.

Why it still matters: a language, culture and national identity survived more than a century without a state, which helps explain why independence is celebrated so strongly in Poland today.

Can a nation survive without a country of its own?

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