The Belarusian history within the Russian Empire is associated with the history of Belarus from the Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to the October Revolution when the present-day Belarus' lands were made part of the Russian Empire. Territorial growth The First Partition of Poland (1772) awarded only some parts of the Belarusian lands, northern part of the Polotsk Voivodeship, entire Mstsislaw Voivodeship and Vitebsk Voivodeship, and southeastern part of the Minsk Voivodeship, which became parts of the Pskov and the Mogilev guberniyas (governorates). In 1776, the Polotsk Governorate was created after separating from the original Russian lands of the Pskov Governorate. The second partition (1793) added more (the remaining part of Minsk Voivodeship, Bracław Voivodeship and Vilnius Voivodeship and Brest Litovsk Voivodeship). After the third partition virtually all Belarusian lands were within the Russian Empire, and the Belarusian guberniyas eventually constituted part of the Northwestern Krai. Russo-Polish power struggle Initially, most of the Polish feudal system was retained in Belarusian lands, the polonized Litvin Catholic Szlachta dominated the territories, whilst most of the Ruthenian population was peasantry. Unlike the strong nationalist drive seen in Right-bank Ukraine, a legacy of the Cossacks following the partitions, most of the Belarusian lands remained inert in terms of changes. Polish nationalism sparked the rise of Belarusian self-identity. In 1830, the szlachta, began the November Uprising and after its failure, Nicholas I began a systematic policy of cracking down on Polish influence in the lands of modern Belarus that were claimed by Russian tsars as White Russia. First the ruling class was removed, and the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church, at the Synod of Polotsk reverted to Eastern Orthodoxy under the leadership of Joseph Semashko in 1839. Meanwhile, since the mid-1830s, ethnographic works about Belarus began to appear, the tentative attempts to study the language were taken up (e.g., Belarusian grammar by Shpilevskiy). The Belarusian literary tradition began to re-form, basing on the folk language instead of the written Ruthenian, initiated by the works of Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich, Jan Czeczot, Jan Barszczewski and others. Still, a large part of the literature had to hide itself behind the labels of "Polish" or sometimes even "Bulgarian", because Russian censorship did not tolerate the Belarusian national movement up until the Revolution of 1905. In the beginning of the 1860s, both pro-Russian and pro-Polish parties in the Belarusian lands had begun to realise that the decisive role in the upcoming conflicts