Paulava Republic was a small self-governing peasant community founded in 1769 by the Catholic priest Paweł Ksawery Brzostowski. The republic ceased to exist in 1795 when, due to the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Brzostowski exchanged the manor with Fryderyk Józef Moszyński for properties in Saxony and Dresden.

Moszyński in turn sold the manor to Count de Choiseul-Gouffier in 1799. The new owners tolerated some of the freedoms until Brzostowski's death in 1827. The last freedoms were lost when peasants joined the failed November Uprising in 1830.