I'm no expert so feel free to dismiss whatever I say but the Commonwealth was a shithole if you were the average serf, way worse than western European states. The state was never able to centralize and curb the nobles power like other states (one of the reasons for this is that the black death not being as impactful resulted in society not getting reshaped as much and the peasants not being able to gain more power and freedoms like in western European states, preserving the power of the nobility). It had super oppressive laws turning the peasants into slaves as outlined in the OP's image.
Over time, the nobility and magnates acquired more and more power to oppress the serfs and limit the monarchs power, they went from being legally obligated to work 1 day a week on the ruling Lords estates, to 2, then to even more, with the amount of obligated work for the lord being calculated based off of how much land the serf had to work on and the most extreme cases according to Wikipedia it got up to 12 days a week of mandatory labor for 1/3 of a Łan (The measurement varied but around 23 to 28 hectares = 1 Łan) so a serf would have to bring his family members to work the fields with him.
Rights and privilege acquired over time gave the nobility more power and wealth, and eventually led to the state's destruction. The 1496
Piotrków Statues limited the number of peasants able to move annually to 1 per village, granted tax reliefs and exclusivity to positions of power. The
Nihil Novi act in 1505 prevented the monarch from enacting laws in most cases without the nobles consent. In 1520 the
Toruń Privilege instituted a weekly mandatory day of labor for the serfs whereas previously it was just a couple of days a year and weakened the power of municipal courts over nobles if they committed a crime. They also had additional forms of mandatory labor on top of all of that such as the
Powaba and
Darmocha, where a noble could call peasants to work for however long they were needed.
The nobles didn't really give a shit, they got super rich off of exporting agricultural products to the rest of Europe while the State wasn't able to compete against its neighbours. The nobles and magnates had Folwarks, massive agricultural estates which they employed the serfs on. The Commonwealth was a breadbasket but the State didn't profit much off of that. Getting BTFO'd by the Swedes (killing a massive chunk of the population) and eventually getting partitioned was an unfortunate but unsurprising outcome. I remember reading a twitter thread covering how the eastern parts of the commonwealth outside of Poland and Lithuania weren't very profitable and that most of the State's revenue came from Mazovia, where the nobility was the weakest and poorest. The institution of the
Liberum Veto to gain the nobles support during a war prevented any efforts to reform the state by allowing legislation to be vetoed by a single vote, additionally a
Konfederacja which could not be vetoed could be formed in the Sejm to force through reforms, which was used by the surrounding powers to weaken the state and pass their own agendas, but eventually was used to pass the 1791 May Constitution.
Nie mówię o przeszłej Polszcze i Polakach. Znikło już i to państwo i to imię, jak znikło tyle innych w dziejach świata. Każdy z przeszłych Polaków ojczyznę sobie obrać powinien. Ja już jestem Rosjaninem na zawsze.
"I am not speaking of the past Poland and Poles. That state and that name have already vanished, just as so many others have vanished in the history of the world. Every one of the former Poles should choose a fatherland for himself. I am already a Russian forever."
- Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki. A
Polish real and raw Russian noble in 1796, a year after the final partition. In 1791 he formed the Russian-backed Targowica Confederation which revolted against the King's efforts to unfuck the nation by reforming it and creating a constitution. It led to a war with Russia in 1792, which led to the 2nd and 3rd partitions and the end of the Commonwealth.
A good article covering all of these issues is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Liberty
tl;dr Fuck the nobility
