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The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is a Russified version of the Polish name Rzecz Pospolita, which comes from the Latin Res Publica – “Common Cause”. How could a kingdom be a republic? Why did the noble democracy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ultimately fail? Is it true that the Constitution of May 3rd was the first in the world to equalize all residents of the state before the law, overcoming class privileges? Why were there more nobles in Poland than in the rest of Europe, and where did the word “familiarity” come from? We will discuss this and much more with historians and Polonists Alexey Vasiliev (Higher School of Economics) and Kirill Kochegarov (Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences).