The title of this page requires a bow to Donovan and his song "There is a Mountain".
Boundaries in the LODE project help determine the places where the LODE cargo was made in 1992, and where future cargo can be made.
The boundaries of physical geography are not so fixed when examined in the context of geological time, as Donovan reminds his audience in this song. However, in historical time, and in the context of political geography, the boundaries of Poland offer us a spectacular example of how nations are not identical to physical geography, to lands or territories.
Just look at this map!
The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth was, in its time (1569 in the boundary represented in the map above), the most extensive political and state entity in Europe. The political structure of the Commonwealth was, in itself, a highly sophisticated version of a constitutional and democratic and elected monarchy with the Golden Liberty. The Commonwealth secured freedoms for all in their religious observance that was, in its day, unprecedented. How cool was that!That's just the way it was, but not forever . . .A "Deluge of Wars" and the decline of the CommonwealthDuring the reign of John II Casimir Vasa (r. 1648–1668), the third and last king of his dynasty, the nobles' democracy fell into decline as a result of foreign invasions and domestic disorder. These calamities multiplied rather suddenly and marked the end of the Polish Golden Age. Their effect was to render the once powerful Commonwealth increasingly vulnerable to foreign intervention.
The Cossack Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–1657 engulfed the south-eastern regions of the Polish crown; its long-term effects were disastrous for the Commonwealth. The first liberum veto (a parliamentary device that allowed any member of the Sejm to dissolve a current session immediately) was exercised by a deputy in 1652. This practice would eventually weaken Poland's central government critically.
In the Treaty of Pereyaslav (1654), the Ukrainian rebels declared themselves subjects of the Tsar of Russia.
The Second Northern War raged through the core Polish lands in 1655–1660; it included a brutal and devastating invasion of Poland referred to as the Swedish Deluge. The war ended in 1660 with the Treaty of Oliva, which resulted in the loss of some of Poland's northern possessions.
The loss of lands to Russia in the 1667 Truce of Andrusovo (dark green) forever changed the balance of power in Eastern Europe
The Commonwealth forces did well in the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667), but the end result was the permanent division of Ukraine between Poland and Russia, as agreed to in the Truce of Andrusovo (1667). Towards the end of the war, the Lubomirski's rebellion, a major magnate revolt against the king, destabilized and weakened the country.
The Commonwealth, subjected to almost constant warfare until 1720, suffered enormous population losses and massive damage to its economy and social structure. The government became ineffective in the wake of large-scale internal conflicts, corrupted legislative processes and manipulation by foreign interests. The nobility fell under the control of a handful of feuding magnate families with established territorial domains. The urban population and infrastructure fell into ruin, together with most peasant farms, whose inhabitants were subjected to increasingly extreme forms of serfdom. The development of science, culture and education came to a halt or regressed.
The royal election of 1697 brought a ruler of the Saxon House of Wettin to the Polish throne: Augustus II the Strong (r. 1697–1733), who was able to assume the throne only by agreeing to convert to Roman Catholicism. He was succeeded by his son Augustus III (r. 1734–1763). The reigns of the Saxon kings (who were both simultaneously prince-electors of Saxony) were disrupted by competing candidates for the throne and witnessed further disintegration of the Commonwealth.
The Great Northern War of 1700–1721, a period seen by the contemporaries as a temporary eclipse, may have been the fatal blow that brought down the Polish political system. Stanisław Leszczyński was installed as king in 1704 under Swedish protection, but lasted only a few years.
The Silent Sejm of 1717 marked the beginning of the Commonwealth's existence as a Russian protectorate: the Tsardom would guarantee the reform-impeding Golden Liberty of the nobility from that time on in order to cement the Commonwealth's weak central authority and a state of perpetual political impotence. In a resounding break with traditions of religious tolerance, Protestants were executed during the Tumult of Thorn in 1724. In 1732, Russia, Austria and Prussia, Poland's three increasingly powerful and scheming neighbors, entered into the secret Treaty of the Three Black Eagles with the intention of controlling the future royal succession in the Commonwealth.
The War of the Polish Succession was fought in 1733–1735 to assist Leszczyński in assuming the throne of Poland for a second time. Amidst considerable foreign involvement, his efforts were unsuccessful. The Kingdom of Prussia became a strong regional power and succeeded in wresting the historically Polish province of Silesia from the Habsburg Monarchy in the Silesian Wars; it thus constituted an ever-greater threat to Poland's security. The personal union between the Commonwealth and the Electorate of Saxony did give rise to the emergence of a reform movement in the Commonwealth and the beginnings of the Polish Enlightenment culture, the major positive developments of this era.
During the later part of the 18th century, fundamental internal reforms were attempted in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as it slid into extinction. The reform activity, initially promoted by the magnate Czartoryski family faction known as the Familia, provoked a hostile reaction and military response from neighboring powers, but it did create conditions that fostered economic improvement. The most populous urban center, the capital city of Warsaw, replaced Danzig (Gdańsk) as the leading trade center, and the importance of the more prosperous urban social classes increased. The last decades of the independent Commonwealth's existence were characterized by aggressive reform movements and far-reaching progress in the areas of education, intellectual life, art and the evolution of the social and political system.
The royal election of 1764 resulted in the elevation of Stanisław August Poniatowski, a refined and worldly aristocrat connected to the Czartoryski family, but hand-picked and imposed by Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, who expected him to be her obedient follower. Stanisław August ruled the Polish–Lithuanian state until its dissolution in 1795. The king spent his reign torn between his desire to implement reforms necessary to save the failing state and the perceived necessity of remaining in a subordinate relationship to his Russian sponsors.
The Bar Confederation (1768–1772) was a rebellion of nobles directed against Russia's influence in general and Stanisław August, who was seen as its representative, in particular. It was fought to preserve Poland's independence and the nobility's traditional interests. After several years, it was brought under control by forces loyal to the king and those of the Russian Empire.
The Partition of 1773
Following the suppression of the Bar Confederation, parts of the Commonwealth were divided up among Prussia, Austria and Russia in 1772 at the instigation of Frederick the Great of Prussia, an action that became known as the First Partition of Poland: the outer provinces of the Commonwealth were seized by agreement among the country's three powerful neighbors and only a rump state remained. In 1773, the "Partition Sejm" ratified the partition under duress as a fait accompli. However, it also established the Commission of National Education, a pioneering in Europe education authority often called the world's first ministry of education.
Abuse of the Golden Freedoms (Golden Liberty)
By the early 18th century, the magnates of Poland and Lithuania controlled the state – or rather, they managed to ensure that no reforms would be carried out that might weaken their privileged status (the "Golden Freedoms"). Through the abuse of the liberum veto rule which enabled any deputy to paralyze the Sejm (Commonwealth's parliament) proceedings, deputies bribed by magnates or foreign powers or those simply content to believe they were living in an unprecedented "Golden Age", paralysed the Commonwealth's government for over a century.
The idea of reforming the Commonwealth gained traction since the mid-17th century; it was however viewed with suspicion not only by its magnates but also by neighbouring countries, which had been content with the deterioration of the Commonwealth and abhorred the thought of a resurgent and democratic power on their borders. With the Commonwealth Army reduced to around 16,000, it was easy for its neighbors to intervene directly with the Imperial Russian Army numbering 300,000 along with the 200,000 troops of the Prussian Army and the Imperial Austrian Army standing with another 200,000.
The Great Sejm of 1788–1791 and the Constitution of 3 May 1791
The Great Sejm adopted the Constitution of 3 May 1791 at the Royal Castle, Warsaw
The long-lasting session of parliament convened by King Stanisław August is known as the Great Sejm or Four-Year Sejm; it first met in 1788. Its landmark achievement was the passing of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first singular pronouncement of a supreme law of the state in modern Europe.
A moderately reformist document condemned by detractors as sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution, it soon generated strong opposition from the conservative circles of the Commonwealth's upper nobility and from Empress Catherine of Russia, who was determined to prevent the rebirth of a strong Commonwealth.
The nobility's Targowica Confederation, formed in the Russian imperial capital of Saint Petersburg, appealed to Catherine for help, and in May 1792, the Russian army entered the territory of the Commonwealth. With the wars between Turkey and Russia and Sweden and Russia having ended, Empress Catherine was furious over the adoption of the Constitution, which she believed threatened Russian influence in Poland. Russia had viewed Poland as a de facto protectorate.
"The worst possible news have arrived from Warsaw: the Polish king has become almost sovereign" was the reaction of one of Russia's chief foreign policy authors, Alexander Bezborodko, when he learned of the new constitution.
Prussia was also strongly opposed to the new Polish constitution, and Polish diplomats received a note that the new constitution changed Polish state so much that Prussia did not consider its previous obligations to Poland binding. Just like Russia, Prussia was concerned that the newly strengthened Polish state could become a threat and Prussian Foreign Minister, Friedrich Wilhelm von Schulenburg-Kehnert, clearly and with rare candour told Poles that Prussia did not support the constitution and refused to help the Commonwealth in any form, even as a mediator, as it was not in Prussia's state interest to see the Commonwealth strengthened so that it could threaten Prussia at some future date. The Prussian statesman Ewald von Hertzberg expressed the fears of European conservatives: "The Poles have given the coup de grâce to the Prussian monarchy by voting a constitution", and emphasising that a strong Commonwealth would likely demand the return of the lands Prussia acquired in the First Partition.
The Constitution was not adopted without dissent in the Commonwealth itself, either. Magnates who had opposed the constitution draft from the start, namely Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki, Seweryn Rzewuski, and Szymon and Józef Kossakowski, asked Tsaritsa Catherine to intervene and restore their privileges such as the Russian-guaranteed Cardinal Laws abolished under the new statute. To that end these magnates formed the Targowica Confederation. The Confederation's proclamation, prepared in St. Petersburg in January 1792, criticized the constitution for contributing to, in their own words, a "contagion of democratic ideas" following "the fatal examples set in Paris". It asserted that "The parliament ... has broken all fundamental laws, swept away all liberties of the gentry and on the third of May 1791 turned into a revolution and a conspiracy." The Confederates declared an intention to overcome this revolution. We "can do nothing but turn trustingly to Tsarina Catherine, a distinguished and fair empress, our neighboring friend and ally", who "respects the nation's need for well-being and always offers it a helping hand", they wrote. The Confederates aligned with Catherine and asked her for military intervention. On 18 May 1792 Russian ambassador to Poland, Yakov Bulgakov, delivered a declaration of war to the Polish Foreign Minister Joachim Chreptowicz. Russian armies entered Poland and Lithuania on the same day, starting the Polish–Russian War of 1792. The war ended without any decisive battles, with a capitulation signed by Polish King Stanisław August Poniatowski, who hoped that a diplomatic compromise could be worked out.
King Poniatowski's hopes that the capitulation would allow an acceptable diplomatic solution to be worked out were soon dashed. With new deputies bribed or intimidated by the Russian troops, a new session of parliament, known as the Grodno Sejm, took place, in the autumn of 1793. On 23 November 1793, it concluded its deliberations under duress, annulling the constitution and acceding to the Second Partition.
The Partition of 1793
Russia took 250,000 square kilometres (97,000 sq mi), while Prussia took 58,000 square kilometres (22,000 sq mi) of the Commonwealth's territory. This event reduced Poland's population to only one-third of what it was before the partitions began in 1772. The rump state was garrisoned by Russian troops and its independence was strongly curtailed. Such an outcome was a giant blow for the members of Targowica Confederation who saw their actions as a defense of centuries-old privileges of the magnates, but now were regarded by the majority of the Polish population as traitors.
So, the Polish–Russian War of 1792, a defensive war fought by the forces of the Commonwealth against Russian invaders, ended when the Polish king, convinced of the futility of resistance, capitulated by joining the Targowica Confederation. The Russian-allied confederation took over the government, but Russia and Prussia in 1793 arranged for the Second Partition of Poland anyway. The partition left the country with a critically reduced territory that rendered it essentially incapable of an independent existence. The Commonwealth's Grodno Sejm of 1793, the last Sejm of the state's existence, was compelled to confirm the new partition.
The Kościuszko Uprising of 1794 and the end of Polish–Lithuanian state
The Kościuszko Uprising was an uprising against Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Prussia led by Tadeusz Kościuszko in the Commonwealth of Poland and the Prussian partition in 1794. It ended up being a failed attempt to liberate the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from Russian influence after the Second Partition of Poland (1793) and the creation of the Targowica Confederation.
Radicalized by recent events, Polish reformers (whether in exile or still resident in the reduced area remaining to the Commonwealth) were soon working on preparations for a national insurrection. Tadeusz Kościuszko, a popular general and a veteran of the American Revolution, was chosen as its leader. He returned from abroad and issued Kościuszko's proclamation in Kraków on March 24, 1794. It called for a national uprising under his supreme command. Kościuszko emancipated many peasants in order to enroll them as kosynierzy in his army, but the hard-fought insurrection, despite widespread national support, proved incapable of generating the foreign assistance necessary for its success.
Tadeusz Kościuszko's call for a national uprising, Kraków 1794
On 24 March 1794, Tadeusz Kościuszko in the Kraków town square, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, announced the general uprising and assumed the powers of the Commander in Chief of all of the Polish forces. He also vowed;
not to use these powers to oppress any person, but to defend the integrity of the borders of Poland, regain the independence of the nation, and to strengthen universal liberties.
In order to strengthen the Polish forces, Kościuszko issued an act of mobilisation, requiring that every 5th household in Lesser Poland delegate at least one able male soldier equipped with carbine, pike, or an axe.
Kościuszko's Commission for Order in Kraków recruited all males between 18 and 28 years of age and passed an income tax. The difficulties with providing enough armament for the mobilised troops made Kościuszko form large units composed of peasants armed with scythes, called the "scythemen".
To destroy the still weak opposition, Russian Empress Catherine the Great ordered the corps of Major General Fiodor Denisov to attack Kraków. On 4 April both armies met near the village of Racławice. In what became known as the Battle of Racławice Kościuszko's forces defeated the numerically and technically superior opponent. After the bloody battle the Russian forces withdrew from the battlefield.
Despite the promise of reforms and quick recruitment of new forces, the strategic situation of the Polish forces was critical, although they consisted of 6,000 peasants, cavalry, and 9,000 soldiers. On 10 May the forces of Prussia, 17,500 soldiers under General Francis Favrat, crossed the Polish borders and joined the 9,000 Russian soldiers operating in northern Poland.
On 6 June Kościuszko was defeated in the Battle of Szczekociny by a joint Russo-Prussian force and on 8 June General Józef Zajączek was defeated in the Battle of Chełm. Polish forces withdrew towards Warsaw and started to fortify the city under directions from Kosciuszko and his 16,000 soldiers, 18,000 peasants and 15,000 burghers.
On 15 June the Prussian army captured Kraków unopposed. Warsaw was besieged by 41,000 Russians under General Ivan Fersen and 25,000 Prussians under king Frederick William II of Prussia on 13 July. On 20 August, an uprising in Greater Poland started and the Prussians were forced to withdraw their forces from Warsaw. The siege was lifted by 6 September when the Prussians and Russians had both withdrawn their troops.
Although the opposition in Lithuania was crushed by Russian forces (Vilnius was besieged and capitulated on 12 August), the uprising in Greater Poland achieved some success. A Polish corps under Jan Henryk Dąbrowski captured Bydgoszcz (2 October) and entered Pomerania almost unopposed. Thanks to the mobility of his forces, General Dąbrowski evaded being encircled by a much less mobile Prussian army and disrupted the Prussian lines, forcing the Prussians to withdraw most of their forces from central Poland. However, the Poles did not stay long in Prussian territories, and soon retreated to Central Poland.
Meanwhile, the Russians equipped a new corps commanded by General Aleksandr Suvorov and ordered it to join up with the corps under Ivan Fersen near Warsaw. After the Battle of Krupczyce (17 September) and the Battle of Terespol (19 September), the new army started its march towards Warsaw. Trying to prevent both Russian armies from joining up, Kościuszko mobilised two regiments from Warsaw and with General Sierakowski's 5,000 soldiers, engaged Fersen's force of 14,000 on 10 October in the Battle of Maciejowice. Kościuszko was wounded in the battle and was captured by the Russians, who sent him to Saint Petersburg.
The new commander of the uprising, Tomasz Wawrzecki, could not control the spreading internal struggles for power and ultimately became only the commander of weakened military forces, while the political power was held by General Józef Zajączek, who in turn had to struggle with both the leftist liberal Polish Jacobins and the rightist and monarchical nobility.
On 4 November the joint Russian forces started the Battle of Praga, the right-bank suburb of Warsaw. After 4 hours of long hand-to-hand struggle, the 22,000 men strong Russian forces broke through the Polish defences and Suvorov allowed his Cossacks to loot and burn Warsaw. Approximately 20,000 were murdered in the Praga massacre. Zajaczek fled wounded, abandoning the Polish army.
Warsaw uprising 1794 On 16 November, near Radoszyce, Wawrzecki surrendered. This marked the end of the uprising. The power of Poland was broken and the following year the third partition of Poland happened, after which Austria, Russia and Prussia annexed the remainder of the country. In the end, the Polish resistence was suppressed by the combined forces of Russia and Prussia, with Warsaw captured in November 1794 in the aftermath of the Battle of Praga.
After the failure of the Kościuszko Uprising, the country ceased to exist for 123 years, and all of its institutions were gradually banned by the partitioning powers. However, the uprising also marked the start of modern political thought in Poland and Central Europe. Kościuszko's Proclamation of Połaniec and the radical leftist Jacobins started the Polish leftist movement. Many prominent Polish politicians who were active during the uprising became the backbone of Polish politics, both home and abroad, in the 19th century.
The Partition of 1795
In 1795, a Third Partition of Poland was undertaken by Russia, Prussia and Austria as a final division of territory that resulted in the effective dissolution of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. King Stanisław August Poniatowski was escorted to Grodno, forced to abdicate, and retired to Saint Petersburg. Tadeusz Kościuszko, initially imprisoned, was allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1796.
The three Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772, 1793, and 1795)
The response of the Polish leadership to the last partition is a matter of historical debate. Literary scholars found that the dominant emotion of the first decade was despair that produced a moral desert ruled by violence and treason. On the other hand, historians have looked for signs of resistance to foreign rule. Apart from those who went into exile, the nobility took oaths of loyalty to their new rulers and served as officers in their armies.
The non-existence of the state of Poland
After the failure of the Kościuszko Uprising, as mentioned above, the country ceased to exist for 123 years.
In the lands of partitioned Poland, the failure of the uprising meant economic catastrophe, as centuries-old economic markets became divided and separated from each other, resulting in the collapse of trade. Several banks fell and some of the few manufacturing centres established in the Commonwealth were closed. Reforms made by the reformers and Kosciuszko, aimed at easing serfdom, were revoked. All the partitioning powers heavily taxed their newly acquired lands, filling their treasuries at the expense of the local population.
The schooling system was also degraded as the schools in those territories were given low priority. The Commission of National Education, the world's first Ministry of Education, was abolished, because the absolutist governments of the partitioning powers saw no gain in investing in education in the territories inhabited by restless Polish minorities. The creation of educational institutions in the partitions became very difficult. For example, an attempt to create a university in Warsaw was opposed by the Prussian authorities. Further, in the German and Russian partitions, all remaining centers of learning were subject to Germanisation and Russification; only in territories acquired by Austria was there relatively little governmental intervention in the curriculum. According to S. I. Nikołajew, from the cultural point of view the partitions may have given a step forward towards the development of national Polish literature and arts, since the inhabitants of partitioned lands could acquire the cultural developments of German and Russian Enlightenment.
The conditions for the former Polish elite were particularly harsh in the Russian partition. Thousands of Polish szlachta families who supported Kościuszo's uprising were stripped of their possessions and estates, which were awarded to Russian generals and favourites of the St. Petersburg court. It is estimated that 650,000 former Polish serfs were transferred to Russian officials in this manner. Some among the nobility, especially in Lithuanian and Ruthenian regions of the former Commonwealth, were expelled to southern Russia, where they were subject to Russification. Other nobles were denied their nobility status by Russian authorities, which meant loss of legal privileges and social status, significantly limiting any possibility of a career in administration or the military - the traditional career paths of Polish nobles. It also meant that they could not own any land, another blow to their former noble status. But for Orthodox Christian peasants of Western Ukraine and Belarus, the partition may have brought the decline of religious oppression by their formal lords, followers of Roman Catholicism.
However, Orthodox Christians were only a small minority in Eastern Belarus at that time; the prevailing majority of the country's population was Eastern rite Catholics. Peasants were flogged just for mentioning the name of Kościuszko and his idea of abolishing serfdom. Platon Zubov, who was awarded estates in Lithuania, was especially infamous, as he personally tortured to death many peasants who complained about worsening conditions. Besides this, the Russian authorities conducted heavy recruiting for the Russian army among the population, which meant a practically lifelong service. Since the conditions of serfdom in former Poland due to the exploitation by nobility and arendators were already severe, discussion exists on how partitions influenced the life of common people.
Although no sovereign Polish state existed between 1795 and 1918, the idea of Polish independence was kept alive throughout the 19th century. There were a number of uprisings and other armed undertakings waged against the partitioning powers.
Military efforts after the partitions were first based on the alliances of Polish émigrés with post-revolutionary France. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski's Polish Legions fought in French campaigns outside of Poland between 1797 and 1802 in hopes that their involvement and contribution would be rewarded with the liberation of their Polish homeland. The Polish national anthem, "Poland Is Not Yet Lost", or "Dąbrowski's Mazurka", was written in praise of his actions by Józef Wybicki in 1797.
The Duchy of Warsaw, a small, semi-independent Polish state, was created in 1807 by Napoleon in the wake of his defeat of Prussia and the signing of the Treaties of Tilsit with Emperor Alexander I of Russia. The Army of the Duchy of Warsaw, led by Józef Poniatowski, participated in numerous campaigns in alliance with France, including the successful Austro-Polish War of 1809, which, combined with the outcomes of other theaters of the War of the Fifth Coalition, resulted in an enlargement of the duchy's territory. The French invasion of Russia in 1812 and the German Campaign of 1813 saw the duchy's last military engagements. The Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw abolished serfdom as a reflection of the ideals of the French Revolution, but it did not promote land reform.
The Congress of Vienna
After Napoleon's defeat, a new European order was established at the Congress of Vienna, which met in the years 1814 and 1815. Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, a former close associate of Emperor Alexander I, became the leading advocate for the Polish national cause. The Congress implemented a new partition scheme, which took into account some of the gains realized by the Poles during the Napoleonic period.
The Duchy of Warsaw was replaced in 1815 with a new Kingdom of Poland, unofficially known as Congress Poland. The residual Polish kingdom was joined to the Russian Empire in a personal union under the Russian tsar and it was allowed its own constitution and military.
East of the kingdom, large areas of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth remained directly incorporated into the Russian Empire as the Western Krai, an unofficial name of the westernmost parts of the Russian Empire, excluding the territory of Congress Poland. The term embodies lands annexed by the Russian Empire during subsequent partitions of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century, in 1772, 1793 and 1795. This area is known in Poland as Ziemie Zabrane (Taken Lands, Stolen Lands) but most often they are referred to in Polish historiography and in common talk as part of Zabór Rosyjski (literally Russian Seizure).
Taken Lands (yellow)
These territories, along with Congress Poland, are generally considered to form the Russian Partition.
The Russian, Prussian, and Austrian "partitions" are informal names for the lands of the former Commonwealth, not actual units of administrative division of Polish–Lithuanian territories after partitions.
The Prussian Partition included a portion separated as the Grand Duchy of Posen. Peasants under the Prussian administration were gradually enfranchised under the reforms of 1811 and 1823.
The limited legal reforms in the Austrian Partition were overshadowed by its rural poverty. The Free City of Cracow was a tiny republic created by the Congress of Vienna under the joint supervision of the three partitioning powers.
Polish resistance
The increasingly repressive policies of the partitioning powers led to resistance movements in partitioned Poland, and in 1830 Polish patriots staged the November Uprising (see below). This revolt developed into a full-scale war with Russia, but the leadership was taken over by Polish conservatives who were reluctant to challenge the empire and hostile to broadening the independence movement's social base through measures such as land reform.
Despite the significant resources mobilized, a series of errors by several successive chief commanders appointed by the insurgent Polish National Government led to the defeat of its forces by the Russian army in 1831. Congress Poland lost its constitution and military, but formally remained a separate administrative unit within the Russian Empire.
After the defeat of the November Uprising, thousands of former Polish combatants and other activists emigrated to Western Europe.
This phenomenon, known as the Great Emigration (see below), soon dominated Polish political and intellectual life. Together with the leaders of the independence movement, the Polish community abroad included the greatest Polish literary and artistic minds, including the Romantic poets Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Cyprian Norwid, and the composer Frédéric Chopin.
In occupied and repressed Poland, some sought progress through nonviolent activism focused on education and economy, known as organic work, a term adopted from Herbert Spencer by the 19th century Polish positivists, denoting an ideology demanding that the vital powers of the nation be spent on labour (i.e. work at the foundations) rather than fruitless national uprisings against the overwhelming military presence of the neighbouring empires.
The basic principles of the organic work included education of the masses and increase of the economical potential of the Poles. This was to turn the ordinary citizens into a modern nation and put a stop to the successes of Germanization and Russification, pursued by the occupiers of partitioned Poland.
Others, however, in cooperation with the emigrant circles, organized conspiracies and prepared for the next armed insurrection.
Germanization
The Prussian hold on Polish areas was somewhat weakened after 1807 when parts of its partition were restored to the Duchy of Warsaw. The power status of Prussia was dependent on hindering any form of Polish statehood, due to the fact of the crucial position of Greater Poland, Silesia and Pomerania as territories inhabited either by a Polish majority or substantial Polish population.
Prussia didn't support Polish attempts at restoration of Poland during Congress of Vienna, when Prussia had tried to gain the Duchy of Warsaw or at least its western provinces. In 1815 the Prussian monarchy made several guarantees to the Poles living in the newly formed Grand Duchy of Posen (created out of territories of the Duchy of Warsaw) in respect of the protection of both the Polish language and cultural institutions. In order to ensure loyalty of the newly re-conquered territories the Prussians engaged in several propaganda gestures hoping they would be enough to gain support from land-owners and the aristocracy.
The strategic base support of Prussian rule was reliant on the influx of German colonists, officials and tradesmen. This was from 1815 a planned systemic action by the Prussian government, in spite of the knowledge that they possessed that Polish aspirations for independence were widespread. Two different methods were considered in the to subduing of inevitable Polish resistance, one involved ruthless Germanization of the Polish provinces, the other pursued by Chancellor Hardenberg, was to gain support from among the Polish gentry and aristocracy, while turning them away from the rule of the Russian Tsar Alexander I.
Initially the position of the Chancellor prevailed. At the same time Prussians and Russians, through their secret police, worked together against Polish movements that would seek independence from either Russia or Prussia. The Prussian representative in Warsaw helped to create a political climate that would abolish the constitutional freedoms in the so-called Congress Poland.
Tensions in the Polish areas of Prussia were calmed after a series of proclamations assuring the Polish population of rights to their education, religion and cultural traditions. However, in the end, these Polish rights were defined very narrowly, and Prussia quickly began to abolish the Polish language in administration, schooling, and the courts. In 1819 the gradual elimination of the use of Polish language in schools began, with German being introduced in its place. This procedure was briefly stopped in 1822 but restarted in 1824.
In 1825 August Jacob, a politician hostile to Poles, gained power over newly created Provincial Educational Collegium in Poznan. Across the Polish territories Polish teachers were being removed from work, German educational programs were being introduced, and a Polish primary schooling system was being replaced by a German one that aimed at the creation of loyal Prussian citizens. Already, by 1816, the Polish gymnasium in Bydgoszcz was turned into a German school and the use of Polish language removed from all classes. In 1825 the Teacher’s Seminary in Bydgoszcz was Germanized as well.
While in 1824 a Provincial Parliament was established in Greater Poland, the representation was based on a elections where the vote was limited to those with substantial property and wealth, so that the outcome was that political power ended up in the hands of a German minority in this territory. Even when Poles managed to issue calls asking for enforcing of the guarantees formulated in the treaties of the Congress of Vienna and the proclamations by the Prussian King in 1815, they were rejected wholesale by Prussia. Thus neither the attempt to create a Polish University in Poznań, or a Polish Society of Friends of Agriculture, Industry and Education were accepted by the Prussian authorities. Nevertheless, Poles continued to ask for Polish representation in the administration of Greater Poland, representing the separate character of the Duchy, and keeping the Polish character of schools.
From 1825 the increase of anti-Polish policies became more visible and intense. Prussian political circles demanded end to tolerance of Polishness. Among the Poles two groups emerged, one still hoping for respect of separate status of the Duchy and insisting on working with Prussian authorities hoping that in time they would grant some freedoms. The other faction still hoped for independence of Poland. As a consequence many Polish activists were imprisoned.
A joint operation of Russian and Prussian secret police managed to discover Polish organizations working in Breslau and Berlin, whose members were arrested and detained in Prussian jails.
The November Uprising of 1830
Soon after the Congress of Vienna resolutions were signed, Russia ceased to respect them. In 1819 Alexander I abandoned liberty of the press in Congress Kingdom and introduced censorship. Russian secret police commanded by Nikolay Nikolayevich Novosiltsev started infiltration and persecution of Polish clandestine organizations, and in 1821 the Tsar ordered the abolition of freemasonry. As a result, after 1825 sessions of Polish Sejm were conducted in secret. Nicholas I of Russia formally crowned himself as King of Poland on 24 May 1829 in Warsaw.
Despite numerous protests by various Polish politicians who actively supported the "personal union", Grand Duke Constantine had no intention of respecting the Polish constitution, one of the most progressive in Europe at that time. He abolished Polish social and patriotic organizations, the liberal opposition of the Kaliszanie faction, and replaced Poles with Russians in important administrative positions. Although married to a Pole (Joanna Grudzińska), he was commonly considered as an enemy of the Polish nation. Also, his command over the Polish Army led to serious conflicts within the officer corps. These frictions led to various conspiracies throughout the country, most notably within the army.
The armed struggle began when a group of conspirators led by a young cadet from the Warsaw officers' school, Piotr Wysocki, took arms from their garrison on 29 November 1830 and attacked the Belweder Palace, the main seat of the Grand Duke. The final spark that ignited Warsaw was a Russian plan to use the Polish Army to suppress France's July Revolution and the Belgian Revolution, in clear violation of the Polish constitution. The rebels managed to enter the Belweder, but Grand Duke Constantine had escaped in women's clothing. The rebels then turned to the main city arsenal, capturing it after a brief struggle. The following day, armed Polish civilians forced the Russian troops to withdraw north of Warsaw. This incident is sometimes called the Warsaw Uprising or the November Night. (Polish: Noc listopadowa).
Fighting between Polish insurgents and the Russian cuirassiers on the bridge in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. In the background, an equestrian statue of King John III Sobieski. Painting by Wojciech Kossak, 1898
Taken by surprise by the rapid unfolding of events during the night of 29 November, the local Polish government (Administrative Council) assembled immediately to take control and to decide on a course of action. Unpopular ministers were removed and men like Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, the historian Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and General Józef Chłopicki took their places. Loyalists led by Prince Czartoryski initially tried to negotiate with Grand Duke Constantine and to settle matters peacefully. However, when Czartoryski told the Council that Constantine was ready to forgive the offenders and that the matter would be amicably settled, Maurycy Mochnacki and other radicals angrily objected and demanded a national uprising. Fearing an immediate break with Russia, the Government agreed to let Constantine depart with his troops.
To legalize its actions the Provisional Government ordered the convocation of the Sejm and on 5 December 1830 proclaimed Chłopicki as Dictator of the Uprising. Chłopicki considered the uprising an act of madness, but bowed to pressure and consented to take command temporarily, in the hope that it would be unnecessary to take the field. An able and highly decorated soldier, he had retired from the army because of the chicanery of Constantine. He overestimated the power of Russia and underestimated the strength and fervor of the Polish revolutionary movement. By temperament and conviction he was opposed to a war with Russia, not believing in a successful outcome. He accepted the dictatorship essentially in order to maintain internal peace and to save the Constitution.
Believing that Tsar Nicholas was unaware of Grand Duke Constantine's (the Tsar's brother) actions and that the uprising could be ended if the Russian authorities accepted the Constitution, Chłopicki's first move was to send Prince Franciszek Ksawery Drucki-Lubecki to Saint Petersburg to negotiate. Chłopicki refrained from strengthening the Polish army and refused to initiate armed hostilities by expelling Russian forces from Lithuania. However, the radicals in Warsaw pressed for war and the complete liberation of Poland. On 13 December, the Sejm pronounced the National Uprising against Russia, and on 7 January 1831 Prince Drucki-Lubecki returned from Russia with no concessions. The Tsar demanded the complete and unconditional surrender of Poland and announced that the Poles should surrender to the grace of their Emperor. His plans foiled, Chłopicki resigned the following day.
Power in Poland was now in the hands of the radicals united in the Towarzystwo Patriotyczne (Patriotic Society) directed by Joachim Lelewel. On 25 January 1831, the Sejm passed the Act of Dethronization of Nicholas I, which ended the Polish-Russian personal union and was equivalent to a declaration of war on Russia. The proclamation declared that "the Polish nation is an independent people and has a right to offer the Polish crown to him whom it may consider worthy, from whom it might with certainty expect faith to his oath and wholehearted respect to the sworn guarantees of civic freedom."
On 29 January, the National Government of Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was established, and Michał Gedeon Radziwiłł was chosen as successor to Chłopicki. Chłopicki was persuaded to accept active command of the army.
Russo-Polish War
It was too late to move the theatre of hostilities to Lithuania. On 4 February, a 115,000 strong Russian army under Field Marshal Hans Karl von Diebitsch crossed the Polish borders. The first major battle took place on 14 February 1831, close to the village of Stoczek near Łuków. In the Battle of Stoczek, Polish cavalry under Brigadier Józef Dwernicki defeated the Russian division of Teodor Geismar. However, the victory had mostly psychological value and could not stop the Russian advance towards Warsaw. The subsequent battles of Dobre, Wawer and Białołęka were inconclusive.
The Polish forces then assembled on the right bank of the Vistula to defend the capital. On 25 February, a Polish contingent of approximately 40,000 met a Russian force of 60,000 east of Warsaw, in the Battle of Olszynka Grochowska. Both armies withdrew after almost two days of heavy fighting and with considerable losses on both sides. Over 7,000 Poles fell on that field, and the number of killed in the Russian army was slightly larger. Diebitsch was forced to retreat to Siedlce and Warsaw was saved.
Chłopicki, whose soldierly qualities reasserted themselves by military activity, was wounded in action and his place taken by General Jan Skrzynecki who, like his predecessor, had won distinction under Napoleon for personal courage. Disliked by Grand Duke Constantine, he had retired from service. He shared with Chłopicki the conviction that war with Russia was futile, but with the opening of hostilities took command of a corps and fought creditably at Grochov. When the weak and indecisive Michał Radziwiłł surrendered the dictatorship, Skrzynecki was chosen to succeed him. He endeavored to end the war by negotiations with the Russian field commanders and hoped for benign foreign intervention.
Sympathetic echoes of the Polish aspirations reverberated throughout Europe. Enthusiastic meetings had been held in Paris under Lafayette's chairmanship, and money for the Polish cause was collected in the United States. The governments of France and Britain, however, did not share the feelings of some of their people. King Louis-Philippe of France thought mainly of securing for himself recognition on the part of all European governments, and Lord Palmerston was intent on maintaining friendly relations with Russia. England regarded with alarm the reawakening of the French national spirit and did not wish to weaken Russia, "as Europe might soon again require her services in the cause of order, and to prevent Poland, whom it regarded as a national ally of France, from becoming a French province of the Vistula." Austria and Prussia adopted a position of benevolent neutrality towards Russia. They closed the Polish frontiers and prevented the transportation of munitions of war or supplies of any kind.
Under these circumstances the war with Russia began to take on a somber and disquieting aspect. The Poles fought desperately and attempts were made to rouse Volhynia, Podolia, Samogitia and Lithuania.
Emilia Plater leading scythemen 1831
With the exception of the Lithuanian uprising, in which the youthful Countess Emilia Plater and several other women distinguished themselves, the guerilla warfare carried on in the frontier provinces was of minor importance and served only to give Russia an opportunity to crush local risings.
Notorious was the slaughter of the inhabitants of the small town of Ashmiany in Belarus. During the November Uprising it was liberated by a local priest Jasiński and Colonel Count Karol Przeździecki with help of the town population. However, in April 1831 they were forced to withdraw to the Naliboki forest in the face of a Russian offensive.
After a minor skirmish with a Polish–Lithuanian rearguard under Stelnicki, the Russian punitive expeditionary force of some 1500 officers and soldiers entered the town and proceeded to burn the town and massacre the civilian population. Some 500 people, women, children and elderly seeking refuge in the Dominican Catholic Church were massacred there. Even the local priest was murdered. Nothing is known about the fate of the Jewish citizens.
Battle of Ostrołęka. Painting by Juliusz Kossak
Meanwhile, new Russian forces under Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich of Russia arrived in Poland but met with many defeats. Constant warfare, however, and bloody battles such as that at Ostroleka in which 8,000 Poles lost their lives, considerably depleted the Polish forces. Mistakes on the part of the commanders, constant changes and numerous resignations, and the inactivity of the commanders, who continued to hope for foreign intervention, added to the feeling of despair.
The more radical elements severely criticized the government not only for its inactivity, but also for its lack of land reform and its failure to recognize the peasants’ rights to the soil they tilled, but the Sejm, fearing that the governments of Europe might regard the war with Russia as social revolution, procrastinated and haggled over concessions. The initial enthusiasm of the peasantry waned, and the ineptitude of the government became more apparent.
In the meantime, the Russian forces, commanded after the death of Diebitsch by General Paskevich, were moving to encircle Warsaw. Skrzynecki failed to prevent the Russian forces from joining, and the Sejm responded to popular clamor for his deposition by appointing General Dembinski to temporary command. The atmosphere was highly charged. Severe rioting took place and the government became completely disorganized. Count Jan Krukowiecki was made President of the Ruling Council. He had little faith in the success of the military campaign, but believed that when passions had subsided he could end the war on, what seemed to him, advantageous terms.
Despite desperate defense by General Józef Sowiński, Warsaw's suburb of Wola fell to Paskevich's forces on 6 September. The next day saw the second line of the capital's defensive works attacked by the Russians. During the night of 7 September Krukowiecki capitulated, although the city still held out. He was immediately deposed by the Polish government and replaced by Bonawentura Niemojowski. The army and the government withdrew to the Modlin fortress, on the Vistula, subsequently renamed Novo-Georgievsk by the Russians, and then to Płock. New plans had been adopted when the news arrived that the Polish crack corps under Ramorino, unable to join the main army, had laid down its arms after crossing the Austrian frontier into Galicia. It became evident that the war could be carried on no longer.
On 5 October 1831, the remainder of the Polish army of over 20,000 men crossed the Prussian frontier and laid down their arms at Brodnica in preference to submission to Russia. Only one man, a colonel by the name of Stryjenski, gained the peculiar distinction of giving himself up to Russia.
Lessons learned
Adam Czartoryski remarked that the war with Russia, precipitated by the rising of young patriots in November 1830, came either too early or too late. Puzyrewski argued, that the rising should have been initiated in 1828 when Russia was experiencing reverses in Turkey and was least able to spare substantial forces for war with Poland (Lewinski-Corwin, 1917).
Military critics, among them Russian pundit, General Puzyrevsky, maintained that in spite of the inequality of resources of the two countries, Poland had had every chance of holding her own against Russia, had the campaign been managed skillfully. Russia sent over 180,000 well trained men against Poland's 70,000; 30% of whom were fresh recruits who entered the service at the opening of hostilities. "In view of this, one would think that not only was the result of the struggle undoubted, but its course should have been a triumphant march for the infinitely stronger party. Instead, the war lasted eight months, with often doubtful success. At times the balance seemed to tip decidedly to the side of the weaker adversary who dealt not only blows, but even ventured daring offensives."
It had long been argued (wrote Edward Lewinski-Corwin in 1917) that "anarchy and a lack of concord" among people were the causes of Poland's national downfall. Thus, when the rising finally began, the insurgents demanded absolute power for their leaders and tolerated no criticism, afraid that discord would again prove ruinous for all. However, the men chosen to lead – because of their past achievements – proved unable to perform the great task expected of them. Moreover, many apparently had little faith that their joint effort could succeed.
Militarily, Poland might have succeeded if the line of battle had been established in Lithuania (wrote Lewinski-Corwin) and if the Russian forces arriving in Poland progressively, had been dealt with separately and decisively, one-unit-after-another.
After the end of the November Uprising, Polish women wore black ribands and jewellery as a symbol of mourning for their lost homeland.
Such images can be seen in the first scenes of the movie Pan Tadeusz, filmed by Andrzej Wajda in 1999, based on the Polish national epic. A 1937 German film Ride to Freedom was partly shot on location in Poland.
The Scottish poet Thomas Campbell, who had championed the cause of the Poles in The Pleasures of Hope, was affected by the news of the capture of Warsaw by the Russians in 1831 as if it had been the deepest of personal calamities. "Poland preys on my heart night and day", he wrote in one of his letters, and his sympathy found a practical expression in the foundation in London of the Association of the Friends of Poland. The November Uprising was also supported in the United States. Edgar Allan Poe was sympathetic to the Polish cause and volunteered to fight the Russians during the November Uprising (Bobr-Tylingo 1982,).
Despite Poland's deep connection to Catholicism and the fact that many participants in the rebellion were Catholic, the rebellion was condemned by the Church. Pope Gregory XVI issued an encyclical in the following year of 1832 on the subject of civil disobedience that was entitled Cum Primum, and which stated:
When the first report of the calamities, which so seriously devastated your flourishing kingdom reached our ears, We learned simultaneously that they had been caused by some fabricators of deceit and lies. Under the pretext of religion, and revolting against the legitimate authority of the princes, they filled their fatherland, which they loosed from due obedience to authority, with mourning. We shed abundant tears at the feet of God, grieving over the harsh evil with which some of our flock was afflicted. Afterward We humbly prayed that God would enable your provinces, agitated by so many and so serious dissensions, to be restored to peace and to the rule of legitimate authority.
The Great Emigration
The Great Emigration (Polish: Wielka Emigracja) involved the emigration of thousands of Poles, particularly from the political and cultural elites, from 1831 to 1870, after the failure of the November Uprising and of the following other uprisings of 1846, and 1863. However, the name is somewhat misleading, as the number of political exiles did not exceed more than 6,000 during this time. The exiles included soldiers and officers of the uprising, the Sejm of Congress Poland of 1830–31, and several prisoners-of-war who escaped captivity.
Because of this emigration of political elites, much of the political and ideological activity of the Polish intelligentsia during the 18th and 19th centuries took place outside of the lands of partitioned Poland. Most of the political émigrés based themselves in France.
The most important wave of emigration came after the November Uprising of 1830–1831. These Poles later fought and provided valuable support during the 1846 and 1848 revolutions in Poland. Their resistance was not limited to Polish revolutionary activity, as they also participated in various lands during the Revolutions of 1848, including France, the small principalities of Germany and Italy, Austria, Hungary, and the Danubian principalities Wallachia and Moldavia, the South American countries Argentina and Uruguay (participating in the "Guerra Grande" of 1839-1852) and later in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. Additional waves of émigrés left the Polish lands after the failures of the attempted 1848 revolution and the January Uprising of 1863–1864.
Intensive "Germanization"
Intensification of anti-Polish policies started from 1830 onwards. As the November Uprising in Russian-held Congress Poland had begun, Prussians closely worked with Russia in efforts to prevent any movement towards Polish independence.
A state of emergency was introduced in the Duchy, police surveillance started on a large scale and 80,000 soldiers were moved into the area.
The Prussian Foreign Minister openly declared that Prussia would oppose independence of Poland as it would mean territories taken in the Partitions of Poland could be claimed by it. Russian soldiers fighting Poles received food supplies, equipment, and intelligence from Prussia. While Prussian generals even wanted to march into Congress Poland, the threat of French intervention stopped those plans.
The administrator of the region became Eduard Heinrich Flotwell, a self-declared enemy of Poles, who openly called for Germanization and superiority of German culture over Polish people.
Supported by Karl Grolman, a Prussian general, a program was presented that envisioned removing Poles from all offices, courts, judiciary system, and local administration, controlling the clergy, and making peasants loyal through enforced military service. Schools were to be Germanized as well.
Those plans were supported by such prominent public figures such as Clauswitz, Gneisenau, Theodor von Schon, and Wilhelm von Humbold.
By 1830 the right to use Polish in courts and institutions was no longer respected. While the Poles constituted the majority of population in the area, they held only 4 out of 21 official posts of higher level. From 1832 they could no longer hold higher posts at the local administrative level (Landrat).
At the same time the Prussian government and Prussian King pursued Germanization of administration and judicial system, while local officials enforced Germanization of the educational system and tried to undermine the economic position of the Polish gentry and nobility.
In Bydgoszcz the mayors were all Germans. In Poznań, out of 700 officials, only 30 were Poles. Flotwell also initiated programs of German colonization and tried to reduce Polish landownership in favor of Germans. In the time period of 1832-1842 the number of Polish holdings was reduced from 1020 to 950 and the German ones increased from 280 to 400.
The Jewish minority in this territory, being viewed, as it was, as being essentially a Province, was deliberately exploited by Prussians to gain support for government policies, through the granting to Jews of new rights and abolishing old limitations. In doing this the Prussians hoped they could integrate the Jewish population into German society, and thereby gain a counterweight to the majority Polish population. As a result, many in the Jewish diaspora saw in Prussia a free, liberal state and became increasingly disposed to the Prussian attitude of a militant opposition to any Polish independence movement.
When Frederick William IV ascended the Prussian throne in 1840, it appeared that certain concessions were again being granted, and the German colonization halted. Some schools were able to teach using the Polish language again, and promises were made to create departments of Polish language in the universities in Breslau and Berlin. There were also vague promises about the creation of a University in Poznań. But, this was all that Poles were granted. The reality was that only the methods for the Germanization of Poland had changed, while the overall goal remained the same, but this time with lighter methods, and by concessions that the Prussians hoped would help to assure the identification of Poles with the Prussian state and thereby set in motion a cultural shift leading to an eventual change of identity for the entire population. These concessions were also part of a political shift in the Prussian view of future relations between Prussia and the Russian Empire, with Prussian politicians hoping that there was a possibility that Poles could be used to fight Russia on Prussia’s behalf.
At this time the majority of Poles were not yet engaged in political activity. At most only the landowners, the intelligentsia and the upper urban and middle-classes possessed a developed national consciousness. The peasantry and the working class had yet to experience their own "Polish national awakening".
As German colonization grew in strength and policies against Polish religion and traditions were introduced hostility towards Prussia and the German presence intensified among the Polish population. Economic factors also began to influence Polish-German relations, as the colonization process provoked a sense of insecurity and a fear of the possible impact of German competition on livelihoods. But the greatest difference between a Germanized population and the Polish population was the clear religious divide between Protestantism and Catholicism. In general, though, relations of local Germans with the majority Polish population were, in retrospect, surprisingly good.
By the end of the 1840s about 60 percent of the population of the Duchy were Polish, 34 percent German and 6 percent Jewish. Across the administrative districts of the territory the Polish population had a majority in 18 while the Germans had a majority in 6, with 4 in the western part of the territory and 2 in the northern part.
Attack of the Krakusi on Russians in Proszowice during the 1846 uprising. Painting by Juliusz Kossak.
The Greater Poland Uprising of 1846
The first concerted attempt to change the situation in the Duchy was made in the Greater Poland Uprising of 1846, after which 254 Polish activists were imprisoned upon charges of conspiracy. The trial ended on 2 December 1847, when 134 of the defendants were acquitted and returned to the Duchy. However, eight defendants, including Ludwik Mierosławski, were sentenced to death, whilst the rest were sent to prison in the Berlin-Moabit prison.
The death sentences were not carried, as many government functions were dramatically interrupted by the start of a Revolution in Prussia, and with the implementation of an amnesty by the Prussian King granted to these political prisoners as part of a series of concessions to revolutionaries, in the attempt to regain some degree of political stability across the Prussian territories.
A planned national uprising failed to materialize because the authorities in the partitions were informed about the secret preparations.
This resulted in the Greater Poland uprising ending in a fiasco in early 1846. In the Kraków uprising of February 1846, patriotic action was combined with revolutionary demands, but the result was the incorporation of the Free City of Cracow into the Austrian Partition.
The Austrian officials took advantage of peasant discontent and incited villagers against the noble-dominated insurgent units. This resulted in the Galician slaughter of 1846, a large-scale rebellion of serfs seeking relief from their post-feudal condition of mandatory labour as practiced in folwarks.
This insurgence was also known as the Peasant Uprising, or the Szela uprising, a two-month uprising of Galician peasants that led to the suppression of the szlachta uprising (Kraków Uprising) and the massacre of szlachta in Galicia in the Austrian partition. The uprising, which lasted from February to March, primarily affected the lands around the town of Tarnów.
Peasants were paid by the Austrian authorities in money and salt for the heads of nobles
It was a revolt against serfdom, directed against manorial property and oppression (for example, the manorial prisons); Galician peasants killed about 1,000 noblemen and destroyed about 500 manors. The Austrian government used the uprising to decimate nationalist Polish nobles.
It was the largest peasant uprising on Polish lands in the 19th century. It has also been called "the last jacquerie or peasant uprising in European history."
The uprising freed many from bondage and hastened decisions that led to the abolition of Polish serfdom in the Austrian Empire in 1848.
Revolts during the era of the "Spring of Nations"
A new wave of Polish national aspiration emerged in revolutionary actions that took place in the partitions and in other parts of Europe in the context of the Spring of Nations, also known as The Revolutions of 1848.
The 1848 German revolutions precipitated the Greater Poland uprising of 1848, in which peasants in the Prussian Partition, who were by then largely enfranchised, played a prominent role.
On 19 March 1848, after the Revolution in Berlin, and as already mentioned, King Frederick William IV of Prussia amnestied the Polish prisoners, who then joined the Berlin Home Guard on the evening of 20 March 1848, founding the “Polish Legion” in the Berliner Schloss, armed with weapons from the Royal Prussian Arsenal.
Ludwik Mierosławski waved the Black-Red-Gold flag of the German Revolution while the prisoners were cheered by the public. Speeches during the demonstration were made about the joint fight against the Russian Empire, and for a free and united Germany and an independent Poland.
The Polish Legion left Berlin and arrived in Poznań on 28 March 1848, where Mierosławski took over military command. Volunteers from Berlin tried to join this legion and support the Polish struggle for liberty on the understanding that the Legion would fight against the Russian rule in Congress Poland. But these volunteers were rejected. Polish emigrants to France, like Adam Czartoryski, returned to join the legion, helped by French politicians who hoped to remove the presence of the Polish cause from France, fearing possible revolutionary repercussions. More provocatively, the French incited Poles to begin an uprising, as they desperately needed a diversionary crisis to avoid the likelihood of the Holy Alliance turning its forces against France.
The uprising in Poznań had already begun on 20 March 1848, inspired by the events in Berlin. Following a demonstration in Poznań the authorities agreed to creation of delegation to bring proposals from this Polish national independence movement to Berlin and to the Prussian King. A Polish National Committee was created in Poznań, but the delegates, when arriving in Berlin decided to water down their demands to a call for “national reorganization”, removal of the Prussian military and returning the governmental administration to the Poles. These demands were approved by the Berlin Revolutionary Committee as it needed the Poles as a force to fight Russia, and the political demands of the Polish National Committee in Poznan were for effective autonomy, not for independence, and so was doubly acceptable.
The Polish National Committee was essentially liberal-democratic, and among its members, mostly land-owners and intellectuals, it included just one Polish peasant Jan Palacz. On March 21, the National Committee released a proclamation calling for a common struggle seeking understanding with the Germans, and a day later recognized the rights of Jews.
On 22 March the German-controlled Poznań city council voted to support the positions of the National Committee in Berlin. Meanwhile, as the Poles were avoiding confrontation on the question of independence the Germans then called for separation of the Duchy from Prussia.
Nationalistic, ethnic and exclusionary impulses shaped the actions of the Polish Committee, and that restricted its membership to Poles, rejecting demands from Germans and Jews to be represented on the Polish Committee. Jedrzej Moraczewski, a member of the Polish Committee, warned that: “One should make every effort not to alarm the Germans in order to avoid a strong reaction from their side. On the other hand it is necessary to maintain supremacy over them."
From cooperation to confrontation
It was all going to end badly. The atmosphere among the Germans and a portion of the Jewish population began to change dramatically and a German National Committee was founded on 23 March, a second one on 27 March, now largely influenced by German public officials loyal to the Prussian King. A few days later when the Polish independence movement spread out to involve Polish citizens across the whole Greater Poland region, peasants and townspeople spontaneously turned against Prussian officials. Next, the Polish nobility and peasantry took up arms, preparing for confrontation with the Prussian Army. Prussian symbols were torn down, and fighting broke out with German colonists in a few places across the region
In West Prussia, Toruń, Chełmno, Bory Tucholskie the Polish population took inspiration from events in Greater Poland and openly turned against Prussian officials, led by Natalis Sulerzyski and Seweryn Elżanowski. In Chełmno a Temporary National Committee of Polish Prussia was formed. But the way events turned out, by the end of March local Germans had turned against the Poles and together with the Prussian military had harshly pacified the uprising, and had imprisoned most of the Polish leaders.
On 23 March the Prussian King granted an audience to a Polish delegation and verbally declared his agreement to their proposals for autonomy; at the same time in confidential conversations with Prussian military commanders he ordered them to prepare an invasion of Polish territories to crush the Polish movement.
The events of the failed Uprising resulted in a revised political strategy for those involved. The stubborn idealism of the uprising's leaders emphasized individual liberty and separate national identity rather than the establishment of a unified republic—a significant change of political philosophy from earlier movements.
The Uprising showed the Polish inhabitants of Greater Poland that there was no possibility of successfully negotiating with the Germans regarding a future Polish statehood. The so-called “Polen-Debatte” in the Frankfurt Parliament of July 1848 showed the attitude of German politicians regarding this. They opposed the idea of there being an autonomous Poland and any other concessions to Poles in Poznań were off limits. Those politicians who in the past had claimed to be friendly towards the Polish population, reneged on all of their former declarations and referred to them as "mistakes" and the idea of a restored Poland as an “insanity”. At the same time as they were resisting Polish demands the German representatives were not only directing their efforts against Poland, they also wanted a war with Denmark, opposed autonomy for Italians in South Tyrol, called Alsace-Lorraine German, and talked about German interests in Baltic provinces of Russia.
A crucial point was that unlike in Galicia or Congress Poland the peasantry had taken an active and decisive part on behalf of a Polish resistance. The Polish peasants had seen in German colonization a primary threat to their national and social interests. The post-uprising repression’s resulted in hardening of attitudes towards the Prussian authorities and led to a more more complex way of resolving these political aspirations within the Polish society that we can see is a form of what we would describe today as identity politics. Some of the Polish activists, mostly members of the landed gentry and the intelligentsia, abandoned armed insurrection and began to propagate a doctrine of organic work by strengthening the economic potential and levels of educational provision in the Polish territories. Others favored an armed struggle for independence and formed the Poznan Committee (Kormitet Poznanski), which represented the democratically oriented landowners and intelligentsia, or the socialist Society of Plebeians (Zwiazek Plebejuszy). Both of these organizations worked for an uprising that would recover, encompass and unite all three parts of the partitioned Poland in a newly restored state.
"Polonia (Poland), 1863", by Jan Matejko, 1864National Museum, Kraków. Pictured is the aftermath of the failed January 1863 Uprising. Captives await transportation to Siberia. Russian officers and soldiers supervise a blacksmith placing shackles on a woman, Polonia. The blonde girl next to her represents Lithuania.
The January Uprising of 1863
The January Uprising (Polish: powstanie styczniowe, Lithuanian: 1863 m. sukilimas, Belarusian: Паўстанне 1863-1864 гадоў, Ukrainian: Польське повстання) was an uprising against the Russian Empire. It began on 22 January 1863 and lasted until the last insurgents were captured in 1864.
After the Russian Empire lost the Crimean war and was weakened economically and politically, unrest started in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In Vilna alone 116 demonstrations were held in 1861. In August 1861, protests in Vilna ended in clashes with the Imperial Russian Army. In spite of Russian police and Cossack interference, a symbolic meeting of hymn-singing Poles and Lithuanians took place on the bridge across the Niemen River.
Another mass gathering took place in Horodło, where the Union of Horodło had been signed in 1413. The crowds sang Boże, broń Polskę (God protect Poland) in Lithuanian and Belarusian.
In the autumn of 1861 Russians had introduced a state of emergency in Vilna Governorate, Kovno Governorate and Grodno Governorate.
After a series of patriotic riots, the Russian Namestnik (regent) of Tsar Alexander II, General Karl Lambert, introduced martial law in Poland on 14 October 1861. Public gatherings were banned and some public leaders were declared outlaws.
The future leaders of the uprising gathered secretly in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Vilna, Paris and London. After this series of meetings two major factions emerged. The Reds represented united peasants, workers, and some clergy, while The Whites represented liberal minded landlords and intelligentsia of the time.
The "Reds" (Polish: Czerwoni) were radical democratic activists who supported the outbreak of the uprising from the outset, advocated an end to serfdom in Congress and future independent Poland, without compensation to the landlords, land reform and other substantial social reforms. This contrasted them with the "White" faction, which only came to support the Uprising after it was already under way, and which, while also strongly supporting an end to serfdom wanted to compensate the landowners.
In general, the Reds represented liberal intellectuals while the Whites based their support on progressive landlords. The Reds were based in Warsaw and concentrated around the Warsaw Medical Academy, while the Whites' base of support was in Kraków. The Central National Committee (Komitet Centralny Narodowy) formed the leadership basis of the faction.
The "Whites" (Polish: Biali) were a faction among Polish insurrectionists before and during the January Uprising in early 1860s. They consisted mostly of progressive-minded landowners and industrialists, the middle class, and some intellectuals of Russian controlled Congress Poland. The faction had its origins in the Towarzystwo Rolnicze (Agricultural Society) started by Count Andrzej Artur Zamoyski in 1858. While the Whites supported ending serfdom, unlike the "Red" faction, they advocated for some kind of compensation to be made to the landlords. Also unlike the Reds, the Whites generally opposed the idea of an armed insurrection against Russia, seeing it as doomed to failure. Instead, they tried to use diplomacy and the support of other European powers to win greater autonomy, a separate administration, and a native Polish army for Congress Poland. They also tried to influence the Tsar to engage in the recovery of former Polish lands, which had been taken by partitioning powers Austria and Prussia. However, once the January Uprising broke out, most Whites supported it both politically and militarily.
The uprising began as a spontaneous protest by young Poles against conscription into the Imperial Russian Army. It was soon joined by high-ranking Polish-Lithuanian officers and various politicians. The insurrectionists, severely outnumbered and lacking serious outside support, were forced to resort to guerrilla warfare tactics.
The uprising broke out at a moment when general quiet prevailed in Europe, and though there was a public outcry in support of the Poles, powers such as France, Britain and Austria were unwilling to disturb the calm. The potential revolutionary leaders did not have sufficient means to arm and equip the groups of young men who were hiding in forests to escape Alexander Wielopolski's order of conscription into the Russian army. Altogether about 10,000 men rallied around the revolutionary banner; they were recruited chiefly from the ranks of the city working classes and minor clerks, although there was also a considerable admixture of the younger sons of the poor szlachta (land-owning nobility) and a number of priests of lower rank.
To deal with these ill-armed units the Russian government had at its disposal an army of 90,000 men in Poland. It looked as if the rebellion would be crushed quickly.
However, the provisional government applied itself to this great task with fervour, issuing a manifesto in which it pronounced "all sons of Poland are free and equal citizens without distinction of creed, condition and rank." It declared that land cultivated by the peasants, whether on the basis of rent or service, henceforth should become their unconditional property, and compensation for it would be given to the landlords out of the general funds of the State.
The revolutionary government did its very best to supply with provisions the unarmed and scattered guerrillas who, during the month of February, confronted the Russians in eighty bloody encounters.
Meanwhile, it issued an appeal to the nations of western Europe, which was widely received with a genuine and heartfelt response, from Norway to Portugal. Pope Pius IX ordered a special prayer for the success of the Catholic Polish in their defence against the Orthodox Russians, arousing sympathy for the Polish rebels.
In Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, northern Ukraine and western Russia the uprising started on February 1, 1863. A coalition government of the Reds and the Whites was formed. It was led by Zygmunt Sierakowski, Antanas Mackevičius and Konstanty Kalinowski. They fully supported their counterparts in Poland and adhered to the same policy.
Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian insurgents had up to 30,000 men at the peak of uprising and were a little better armed, but there were 135,000 Russian troops and 6,000 Cossacks in Lithuania and another 45,000 Russian troops in Volhynia.
In every major military engagement of the uprising insurgents were outnumbered at least 10 to 1.
Insurgents of szlachta background constituted 60% percent of the uprising's participants (in Lithuania and Belarus around 50%, in Ukraine some 75%). The percentage of Catholics among the insurgents in Lithuania was 95%.
However, the insurgence was NOT supported by the majority of the Orthodox Belarusian peasantry who considered the Catholics to be their historical oppressors.
During the first 24 hours of the uprising armories across the country were looted and many Russian officials were summarily executed on sight.
On the 2 February 1863 the first major military engagement of the uprising between Lithuanian peasants (mostly armed with scythes) and a squadron of Russian hussars occurred at Čysta Būda, near Marijampolė. Tragically, this conflict ended with a massacre of the unprepared peasants.
Hoping it was going to be a short war insurgent groups merged into bigger groupings and set about recruiting new participants.
On 7 April Zygmunt Sierakowski, who was able to recruit and arm 2500 men for the cause, was elected to be the military commander in chief of the reborn Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Under his command the peasant army was able to achieve several difficult victories near Raguva on 21 April, Biržai on 2 May, and at Medeikiai on 7 May. However, exhausted from their long marches and combat, the insurgent army suffered a defeat on 8 May near Gudiškis.
A political gamble?
The provisional government counted on a revolutionary outbreak in Russia, where the discontent with the autocratic regime seemed at the time to be widely prevalent.
It also counted on the active support of Napoleon III, particularly after Prussia, foreseeing an inevitable armed conflict with France, made friendly overtures to Russia in the Alvensleben Convention and offered assistance in suppressing the Polish uprising.
On the 14th day of February arrangements had already been completed, and the British Ambassador in Berlin was able to inform his government that a Prussian military envoy "has concluded a military convention with the Russian Government, according to which the two governments will reciprocally afford facilities to each other for the suppression of the insurrectionary movements which have lately taken place in Poland and Lithuania. The Prussian railways are also to be placed at the disposal of the Russian military authorities for the transportation of troops through Prussian territory from one part of the former Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth to another."
This step of Bismarck led to protests on the part of several governments and roused the nations of the Commonwealth. The result was the transformation of the insignificant uprising into another national war against Russia.
Encouraged by the promises made by Napoleon III, all nations, acting upon the advice of Władysław Czartoryski, the son of Prince Adam, took to arms.
Indicating their solidarity, all Commonwealth citizens holding office under the Russian Government, including the Archbishop of Warsaw, resigned their positions and submitted to the newly constituted Government, which was composed of the five most prominent representatives of the Whites.
Apart from the efforts of Sweden, diplomatic intervention of foreign powers on behalf of Poland did more harm than good due to drawing focus on Polish national unity versus social inequality. It alienated Austria, which hitherto had maintained a friendly neutrality with reference to Poland and had not interfered with Polish activities in Galicia. It prejudiced public opinion among the radical groups in Russia who, until that time, had been friendly because they regarded the uprising as of a social rather than a national character and it stirred the Russian Government to more energetic endeavors toward the speedy suppression of hostilities which were growing in strength and determination.
In addition to the thousands who fell in battle, 128 men were hanged personally by Mikhail Muravyov ('Muravyov the Hangman').
Farewell to Europe, by Aleksander A Sochaczewski
9,423 men and women were exiled to Siberia (2,500 men according to low Russian data estimates, Norman Davies gives the number of 80,000 noting it was the single largest deportation in Russian history).
Whole villages and towns were burned down; all activities were suspended and the szlachta was ruined by confiscation and exorbitant taxes.
Russian soldiers looting a Polish manor
Such was the brutality of the Russian troops that their actions were condemned throughout Europe, and even in Russia itself Muravyov became ostracized. Count Fyodor Berg, the newly appointed Namestnik of Poland, followed in Muravyov's footsteps, employing inhumanly harsh measures against the country.
The Reds criticized the Polish National Government for being reactionary in its policy to provide incentive to Polish peasants to fight in the uprising. The Government defended its inaction with hopes of foreign military aid promised by Napoleon III.
It was only after Polish general Romuald Traugutt took matters in his own hands to unite the classes under a national cause that the situation became brighter.
On 27 December 1863 he enacted the decree of the former provisional government by granting peasants the land they worked on. This land was to be provided by compensating the owners through state funds at the successful conclusion of the uprising. Traugutt called upon all Polish classes to rise against Russian oppression for the creation of the new Polish state.
The response was generous but not universal since the policy was adopted too late.
The Russian Government had already been working among the peasants giving liberal parcels of land for the mere asking. The peasants that were bought off did not interfere with the Polish revolutionaries to any great extent but they also did not provide support.
Fighting continued intermittently for several months. Among the generals, Count Józef Hauke-Bosak distinguished himself most as a commander of the revolutionary forces and took several cities from the vastly superior Russian army. When Traugutt and the four other members of the Polish Government were apprehended by Russian troops and executed at the Warsaw citadel, the war in the course of which 650 battles and skirmishes were fought and twenty-five thousand Polish killed, came to a speedy end in the latter half of 1864, having lasted for eighteen months.
It is of interest to note that it persisted in Samogitia and Podlaskie, where the Greek-Catholic population, outraged and persecuted for their religious convictions, clung longest to the revolutionary banner.
The uprising was finally crushed by Russia in 1864.
Consequences of the failed uprising of 1863
As before, in the aftermath of the previous failed uprisings, one of the consequences of the 1863 failed uprising was a strengthening of the movement of Positivism in Poland.
Following the failed 1831 uprising and the so-called Great Migration, some of those who had been involved believed that working with enabling the growth of cultural activities would address the question of national aspiration. They called this activity Organic work (Polish: praca organiczna), a term adopted from Herbert Spencer by a group that came to be known as the 19th century Polish positivists.
This was an ideology demanding that the vital powers of the nation be spent on labour (i.e. work at the foundations) rather than fruitless national uprisings against the overwhelming military presence of the neighbouring empires.
The basic principles of the organic work included education of the masses and increase of the economical potential of the Poles. The intention was was to transform the Polish peasantry and the proto-industrial and urban classes into a modern nation and put a stop to the successes of Germanization and Russification, pursued by the German and Russian occupiers of a partitioned Poland.
This was essentially a socio-cultural movement, defining progressive thought in literature and social sciences of a partitioned Poland, and that was further and energetically developed following the suppression of the 1863 January Uprising against the occupying army of Imperial Russia.
The increasing oppression at Russian hands after the failed national uprisings of 1831 and 1863 (the January Uprising and the November Uprising) finally convinced some Polish leaders that the insurrection was premature at best and perhaps fundamentally misguided and counterproductive. During the decades that followed, those convinced of the long term results of this policy postponed the goal of immediate independence and turned instead to building up the nation through the subtler means of education, economic development, and modernization.
This approach took the name Organic Work for its philosophy of strengthening Polish society at the grass roots, influenced by positivism. For some, the adoption of Organic Work meant permanent resignation to foreign rule, but many advocates recommended it as a strategy to combat repression while awaiting an eventual opportunity to achieve self-government.
At a practical and pragmatic level the international balance of forces did not favour the recovery of Polish statehood at this time, given that both Russia and Germany appeared bent on the eventual eradication of Polish national identity.
The German Empire, established in 1871 as an expanded version of the Prussian state, aimed at the assimilation of its eastern provinces inhabited by Poles.
At the same time, St. Petersburg attempted to russify the former Congress Kingdom, joining Berlin in levying restrictions against use of the Polish language and cultural expression.
Anti-Catholic caricature in the Munich Leuchtkugeln, 1848. A warning not to rejoice yet. The Catholic cleric as a fox and blind passenger on the wagon of progress, in order to later reverse the course of history.
Poles under Russian and German rule also endured official campaigns against the Roman Catholic Church that were conducted in the so-called Cultural Struggle (Kulturkampf) of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to bring the Roman Catholic Church under state control and the Russian campaign to replace Catholicism by extending Orthodoxy throughout the empire.
What have the working classes to do with Poland?
The First International, was an international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class and class struggle. It was founded in 1864 in a workmen's meeting held in St Martin's Hall, London. Its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva.
In Europe, a period of harsh reaction followed the widespread Revolutions of 1848. The next major phase of revolutionary activity began almost twenty years later with the founding of the IWA in 1864. At its peak, the IWA reported having 8 million members, while police reported 5 million.
Following the January Uprising in Poland in 1863, French and British workers started to discuss developing a closer working relationship. Henri Tolain, Perrachon, and Limousin visited London in July 1863, attending a meeting held in St. James's Hall in honour of the Polish uprising. Here there was discussion of the need for an international organization, which would, amongst other things, prevent the import of foreign workers to break strikes.
This "internationalizing" of industrial workers across Europe and arguing for a degree of common political purpose across national boundaries is reflected in a number of articles by Frederick Engels between the end of January and April 6, 1866 and first published in The Commonwealth, Nos. 159, 160 and 165, March 24, 31 and May 5, 1866. This is the beginning of the first of these articles:
What have the working classes to do with Poland?Sir – Wherever the working classes have taken a part of their own in political movements, there, from the very beginning, their foreign policy was expressed in the few words – Restoration of Poland. This was the case with the Chartist movement so long as it existed, this was the case with the French working men long before 1848, as well as during that memorable year, when on the 15th of May they marched on to the National Assembly to the cry of “dive la Pologne!” – Poland for ever! This was the case in Germany, when, in 1848 and ’49, the organs of the working class demanded war with Russia for the restoration of Poland. It is the case even now; – with one exception – of which more anon – the working men of Europe unanimously proclaim the restoration of Poland as a part and parcel of their political programme, as the most comprehensive expression of their foreign policy. The middle-class, too, have had, and have still, “sympathies” with the Poles, which sympathies have not prevented them from leaving the Poles in the lurch in 1831, in 1846, in 1863, nay, have not even prevented them from leaving the worst enemies of Poland, such as Lord Palmerston, to manage matters so as to actually assist Russia while they talked in favour of Poland. But with the working classes it is different. They mean intervention, not non-intervention, they mean war with Russia while Russia meddles with Poland, and they have proved it every time the Poles rose against their oppressors. And recently, the International Working Men’s Association has given a fuller expression to this universal instinctive feeling of the body it claims to represent, by inscribing on its banner, "Resistance to Russian encroachments upon Europe – Restoration of Poland.”
Engels wrote this article at Marx’s request after controversy developed at the 1865 London conference of the International concerning including a demand for Poland’s independence in the upcoming Geneva Congress.
In order to substantiate the position of the Central Committee on the “nationalities question,” it was necessary to deal with;
- the Proudhonists who contended politics and national liberation movements have nothing to do with the working class, indeed, detracted from real working class issues, and;
- reveal the demagogic essence of the so-called “principle of nationalities” that helped the Bonapartists make use of national movements for their own political ends.
In summary . . . .
The internationalization of the Polish situation following the failure of the January Uprising in Poland, and the fact that it had caused a major psychological trauma, this moment became an historic watershed for Polish identity; indeed, it sparked the development of modern Polish nationalism.
The Poles, subjected within the territories under the Russian and Prussian administrations to still stricter controls and increased persecution, sought to preserve their identity in non-violent ways.
After the uprising, Congress Poland was downgraded in official usage from the "Kingdom of Poland" to the "Vistula Land" and was more fully integrated into Russia proper, but not entirely obliterated.
The Russian and German languages were imposed in all public communication, and the Catholic Church was not spared severe repression.
Public education was increasingly subjected to Russification and Germanisation measures. Illiteracy was reduced, most effectively in the Prussian partition, but education in the Polish language was preserved mostly through unofficial efforts. The Prussian government pursued German colonization, including the purchase of Polish-owned land.
On the other hand, the region of Galicia in western Ukraine and southern Poland, experienced a gradual relaxation of authoritarian policies and even a Polish cultural revival. Economically and socially backward, it was under the milder rule of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and from 1867 was increasingly allowed limited autonomy. Stańczycy, a conservative Polish pro-Austrian faction led by great land owners, dominated the Galician government. The Polish Academy of Learning (an academy of sciences) was founded in Kraków in 1872. Positivism replaced Romanticism as the leading intellectual, social and literary trend.
Social activities termed "organic work" consisted of self-help organizations that promoted economic advancement and work on improving the competitiveness of Polish-owned businesses, industrial, agricultural or other. New commercial methods of generating higher productivity were discussed and implemented through trade associations and special interest groups, while Polish banking and cooperative financial institutions made the necessary business loans available. The other major area of effort in organic work was educational and intellectual development of the common people. Many libraries and reading rooms were established in small towns and villages, and numerous printed periodicals reflected the growing interest in popular education. Scientific and educational societies were active in a number of cities. Such activities were most pronounced in the Prussian Partition.
Economic development and social change
Under the partitioning powers, economic diversification and progress, including large-scale industrialisation, were introduced in the traditionally agrarian Polish lands, but this development turned out to be very uneven.
Advanced agriculture was practiced in the Prussian Partition, except for Upper Silesia, where the coal-mining industry created a large labour force.
The railway network development in the Polish lands in the nineteenth century
The densest network of railroads was built in German-ruled western Poland.
In Russian Congress Poland, a striking growth of industry, railways and towns took place, all against the background of an extensive, but less productive agriculture. Warsaw (a metallurgical center) and Łódź (a textiles center) grew rapidly, as did the total proportion of urban population, making the region the most economically advanced in the Russian Empire (industrial production exceeded agricultural production there by 1909). The coming of the railways spurred some industrial growth even in the vast Russian Partition territories outside of Congress Poland. The Austrian Partition was rural and poor, except for the industrialized Cieszyn Silesia area. Galician economic expansion after 1890 included oil extraction and resulted in the growth of Lemberg (Lwów, Lviv) and Kraków.
Economic and social changes involving land reform and industrialization, combined with the effects of foreign domination, altered the centuries-old social structure of Polish society. Among the newly emergent strata were wealthy industrialists and financiers, distinct from the traditional, but still critically important landed aristocracy. The intelligentsia, an educated, professional or business middle class, often originated from lower gentry, landless or alienated from their rural possessions, and from urban people. Many smaller agricultural enterprises based on serfdom did not survive the land reforms.
The industrial proletariat, a new underprivileged class, was composed mainly of poor peasants or townspeople forced by deteriorating conditions to migrate and search for work in urban centers in their countries of origin or abroad. Millions of residents of the former Commonwealth of various ethnic groups worked or settled in Europe and in North and South America.
Social and economic changes were partial and gradual. The degree of industrialisation, relatively fast-paced in some areas, lagged behind the advanced regions of Western Europe.
Separate economic development
The three partitions developed different economies and were more economically integrated with their mother states than with each other. In the Prussian Partition, for example, agricultural production depended heavily on the German market, whereas the industrial sector of Congress Poland relied more on the Russian market.
Nationalism, socialism and other movements
In the 1870s–1890s, large-scale socialist, nationalist, agrarian and other political movements of great ideological fervor became established in partitioned Poland and Lithuania, along with corresponding political parties to promote them. Of the major parties, the socialist First Proletariat was founded in 1882, the Polish League (precursor of National Democracy) in 1887, the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia in 1890, the Polish Socialist Party in 1892, the Marxist SDKPiL in 1893, the agrarian People's Party of Galicia in 1895 and the Jewish socialist Bund in 1897. Christian democracy regional associations allied with the Catholic Church were also active; they united into the Polish Christian Democratic Party in 1919.
The main minority ethnic groups of the former Commonwealth, including Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Jews, were getting involved in their own national movements and plans, which met with disapproval on the part of those Polish independence activists who counted on an eventual rebirth of the Commonwealth or the rise of a Commonwealth-inspired federal structure (a political movement referred to as Prometheism).
Around the start of the 20th century, the Young Poland cultural movement, centered in Austrian Galicia, took advantage of a milieu conducive to liberal expression in that region and was the source of Poland's finest artistic and literary productions.
The Revolution of 1905
The Revolution of 1905–1907 in Russian Poland, the result of many years of pent-up political frustrations and stifled national ambitions, was marked by political maneuvering, strikes and rebellion. The revolt was part of much broader disturbances throughout the Russian Empire associated with the general Revolution of 1905. In Poland, the principal revolutionary figures were Roman Dmowski and Józef Piłsudski.
Roman Dmowski's National Democracy ideology proved highly influential in Polish politics. He favored the dominance of Polish-speaking Catholics in civic life without concern for the rights of ethnic minorities, in particular the Jews, whose emigration he advocated.
Dmowski was associated with the right-wing nationalist movement National Democracy, whereas Piłsudski was associated with the Polish Socialist Party.
Piłsudski in 1899
In the autumn of 1904, Piłsudski formed a paramilitary unit (the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party, or bojówki) aiming to create an armed resistance movement against the Russian authorities. The Polish Socialist Party (PPS) organized an increasing numbers of demonstrations, mainly in Warsaw; on 28 October 1904, Russian Cossack cavalry attacked a demonstration, and in reprisal, during a demonstration on 13 November Piłsudski's paramilitary opened fire on Russian police and military.
Initially concentrating their attention on spies and informers, in March 1905 the paramilitary began using bombs to assassinate selected Russian police officers.
During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Piłsudski played a leading role in events in Congress Poland. In early 1905 he ordered the PPS to launch a general strike there; it involved some 400,000 workers and lasted two months until it was broken by the Russian authorities. In June 1905, Piłsudski sent paramilitary aid to an uprising in Łódź. During the "June Days", as the Łódź uprising came to be known, armed clashes broke out between Piłsudski's paramilitaries and gunmen loyal to Dmowski and his National Democrats. On 22 December 1905, Piłsudski called for all Polish workers to rise up, but the call went largely unheeded.
Unlike the National Democrats, Piłsudski instructed the PPS to boycott the elections to the First Duma. This decision, and his resolve to try to win Polish independence through uprisings, caused tensions within the PPS, and in November 1906, the party fractured over Piłsudski's leadership.
His faction came to be called the "Old Faction" or "Revolutionary Faction" ("Starzy" or "Frakcja Rewolucyjna"), while their opponents were known as the "Young Faction", "Moderate Faction" or "Left Wing" ("Młodzi", "Frakcja Umiarkowana", "Lewica").
The "Young" sympathized with the Social Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and believed that priority should be given to co-operation with Russian revolutionaries in toppling the tsarist regime and creating a socialist utopia that would facilitate negotiations for independence.
Piłsudski and his supporters in the Revolutionary Faction continued to plot a revolution against Tsarist Russia that would secure Polish independence. By 1909, his faction would again be the majority in the PPS, and Piłsudski would remain one of the most important PPS leaders until the outbreak of the First World War.
As the authorities re-established control within the Russian Empire, the revolt in Congress Poland, placed under martial law, withered as well, partially as a result of tsarist concessions in the areas of national and workers' rights, including Polish representation in the newly created Russian Duma.
The collapse of the revolt in the Russian Partition, coupled with intensified Germanization in the Prussian Partition, left Austrian Galicia as the territory most amenable to patriotic action.
In the Austrian Partition, Polish culture was openly cultivated, and in the Prussian Partition, there were high levels of education and living standards, but the Russian Partition remained of primary importance for the Polish nation and its aspirations as about 15.5 million Polish-speakers lived in those territories that were most densely populated by Poles i.e. the western part of the Russian Partition, the Prussian Partition and the western Austrian Partition.
Polish paramilitary organizations oriented toward independence, such as the Union of Active Struggle, were formed in 1908–1914, mainly in Galicia.
However, the Poles were divided and their political parties fragmented on the eve of World War I, with Dmowski's National Democracy (pro-Entente) and Piłsudski's faction assuming opposing positions.
Piłsudski anticipated a coming European war and the need to organize the nucleus of a future Polish Army, which could help win Poland's independence from the three empires that had partitioned it out of political existence in the late 18th century.
In 1906 Piłsudski, with the connivance of the Austrian authorities, founded a military school in Kraków for the training of paramilitary units. In 1906 alone, the 800-strong paramilitaries, operating in five-man teams in Congress Poland, killed 336 Russian officials; in subsequent years, the number of their casualties declined, and the paramilitaries' numbers increased to some 2,000 in 1908.
The paramilitaries also held up Russian currency transports that were leaving Polish territories. On the night of 26/27 September 1908, they robbed a Russian mail train that was carrying tax revenues from Warsaw to Saint Petersburg.
Piłsudski, who took part in this Bezdany raid near Vilnius, used the funds thus "expropriated" to finance his secret military organization. The take from that single raid (200,812 rubles) was a fortune for the time and equaled the paramilitaries' entire takes of the two preceding years.
Train robbers become Prime Ministers
Józef Piłsudski was accompanied in this expropriation by Walery Sławek, Aleksander Prystor and Tomasz Arciszewski. All of them in the future became prime ministers of the revived Poland. For this reason this event is often referred to as the “the operation of four prime ministers”.
In 1908, Piłsudski transformed his paramilitary units into an "Association for Active Struggle" (Związek Walki Czynnej, or ZWC), headed by three of his associates, Władysław Sikorski, Marian Kukiel and Kazimierz Sosnkowski. One of the ZWC's main purposes was to train officers and noncommissioned officers for a future Polish Army.
In 1910, two legal paramilitary organizations were created in the Austrian zone of Poland, one in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) and one in Kraków, to conduct training in military science. With the permission of the Austrian authorities, Piłsudski founded a series of "sporting clubs", then the Riflemen's Association, which served as cover to train a Polish military force. In 1912 Piłsudski (using the nom de guerre, "Mieczysław") became commander-in-chief of a Riflemen's Association (Związek Strzelecki) that grew by 1914 to 12,000 men. In 1914, Piłsudski declared, "Only the sword now carries any weight in the balance for the destiny of a nation."
The outbreak of World War I in the Polish lands offered Poles unexpected hopes for achieving independence as a result of the turbulence that engulfed the empires of the partitioning powers. All three of the monarchies that had benefited from the partition of Polish territories (Germany, Austria and Russia) were dissolved by the end of the war, and many of their territories were dispersed into new political units. At the start of the war, the Poles found themselves conscripted into the armies of the partitioning powers in a war that was not theirs. Furthermore, they were frequently forced to fight each other, since the armies of Germany and Austria were allied against Russia. Piłsudski's paramilitary units stationed in Galicia were turned into the Polish Legions in 1914, and as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Army, they fought on the Russian front until 1917, when the formation was disbanded.
Piłsudski, who refused demands that his men fight under German command, was arrested and imprisoned by the Germans and became a heroic symbol of Polish nationalism.
Due to a series of German victories on the Eastern Front, the area of Congress Poland became occupied by the Central Powers of Germany and Austria; Warsaw was captured by the Germans on 5 August 1915.
There is no nation, then there is . . .
In the Act of 5th November 1916, a fresh incarnation of the Kingdom of Poland (Królestwo Regencyjne) was created by Germany and Austria on formerly Russian-controlled territories, within the German Mitteleuropa scheme.
The term Mitteleuropa was formally introduced by Karl Ludwig von Bruck and Lorenz von Stein, a first theorization of the term attempted in 1848, with the aim of a series interlocking economic confederations. However, plans advocated by the Austrian minister-president, Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, foundered on the resistance of the German states.
After the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Prussian-led unification of Germany under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1871, Austria had to abandon its claim to leadership and thereafter used Mitteleuropa to refer to the lands of Austria-Hungary in the Danube basin.
In Austria, the Mitteleuropa concept evolved as an alternative to the German question, equivalent to an amalgamation of the states of the German Confederation and the multiethnic Austrian Empire under the firm leadership of the Habsburg dynasty.
States of Mitteleuropa (blue) and the larger cultural sphere (outlined)
The Prussian Mitteleuropa Plan
The Mitteleuropa plan was to achieve an economic and cultural hegemony over Central Europe by the German Empire and subsequent economic and financial exploitation of this region combined with direct annexations, settlement of German colonists, expulsion of non-Germans from annexed areas, and eventual Germanization of puppet states created as a buffer between Germany and Russia.
The issue of Central Europe was taken by German thinker Friedrich Naumann in 1915 in his work Mitteleuropa. According to his thought, this part of Europe was to become a politically and economically integrated block subjected to German rule. In his program, Naumann also supported programs of Germanization and Hungarization as well. In his book, Naumann used imperialist rhetoric combined with praises to nature, and imperial condescension towards non-German people, while advising politicians to show some "flexibility" towards non-German languages to achieve "harmony". Naumann wrote that it would stabilize the whole Central-European region. Some parts of the planning included designs on creating a German colony in Crimea and colonization of the Baltic states.
The ruling political elites of Germany accepted the Mitteleuropa plan during World War I while drawing out German war aims and plans for the new order of Europe. Mitteleuropa was to be created by establishing a series of puppet states whose political, economic and military aspects would be under the control of the German Reich. The entire region was to serve as an economic backyard of Germany, whose exploitation would enable the German colonial empire to better compete against strategic rivals like Britain, the United States and Japan. Political, military and economic organization was to be based on German domination, with commercial treaties imposed on countries like Poland and Ukraine.
It was believed that the German working classes could be appeased by German politicians through the economic benefits of territorial annexation, settlement of Germans in Central and Eastern Europe and exploitation of conquered countries for the material benefit of Germany. Partial realization of these plans was reflected in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where guarantees of economic and military domination over Ukraine by Germany were laid out.
This Treaty was a peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between the new Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ended Russia's participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at Brest-Litovsk (Polish: Brześć Litewski; since 1945 Brest), after two months of negotiations. The treaty was agreed upon by the Bolshevik government to stop further advances by German and Austro-Hungarian forces. According to the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russia's commitments to the Triple Entente alliance.
In the treaty, Bolshevik Russia ceded the Baltic States to Germany; they were meant to become German vassal states under German princelings. Russia also ceded its province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire and recognized the independence of Ukraine.
According to Spencer Tucker, a historian of World War I, "The German General Staff had formulated extraordinarily harsh terms that shocked even the German negotiator."
Congress Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, as Germans refused to recognize the existence of any Polish representatives, which in turn led to Polish protests.
When Germans later complained that the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 was too harsh on them, the Allies (and historians favorable to the Allies) responded that it was more benign than Brest-Litovsk.
The treaty was effectively terminated in November 1918, when Germany surrendered to the Allies. However, in the meantime, it did provide some relief to the Bolsheviks, already fighting the Russian Civil War, by the renunciation of Russia's claims on modern-day Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine and Lithuania.As regards the new puppet Kingdom of Poland the sponsor states were never able to agree on a candidate to assume the throne, instead, it was governed in turn by German and Austrian governor-generals, a Provisional Council of State, and a Regency Council.
This increasingly autonomous puppet state existed until November 1918, when it was replaced by the newly established Republic of Poland. The existence of this "kingdom" and its planned Polish army had a positive effect on the Polish national efforts on the Allied side. But the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918 between Germany and defeated Russia ignored Polish interests.
The independence of Poland had been campaigned for in Russia and in the West by Dmowski and in the West by Ignacy Jan Paderewski.
Paderewski was a Polish pianist and composer, politician, statesman and spokesman for Polish independence. He was a favourite of concert audiences around the world. His musical fame opened access to an international platform of diplomacy.
In 1910, he funded the erection of the Battle of Grunwald Monument in Kraków, in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the event. Unveiling of the monument became the occasion of a great patriotic demonstration.
Paderewski spoke to the gathered masses and proved to be as adept at capturing their hearts and minds with his oratory for a political cause as he was with his music.
He was a great speechmaker with a passionate delivery and no recourse to notes. The fact that he was an artist and a philanthropist and not a member of any of the Polish political factions fighting for influence over the movement, was one of his greatest assets; he rose above the quarrels, he could legitimately appeal to higher ideals of unity, sacrifice, charity, and work for common goals.
This monument to the Battle of Grunwald was destroyed during World War II by the Germans and rebuilt in 1976.
Battle of Grunwald by Jan Matejko (1878)
History and nationalist propaganda
The Battle of Grunwald, First Battle of Tannenberg or Battle of Žalgiris, was fought on 15 July 1410 during the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War. The alliance of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, led respectively by Grand Duke Vytautas and King Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila), decisively defeated the German–Prussian Teutonic Knights, led by Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen.
Most of the Teutonic Knights' leadership were killed or taken prisoner. Although defeated, the Teutonic Knights withstood the siege of their fortress in Marienburg (Malbork) and suffered minimal territorial losses at the Peace of Thorn (1411) (Toruń), with other territorial disputes continuing until the Peace of Melno in 1422.
The knights, however, would never recover their former power, and the financial burden of war reparations caused internal conflicts and an economic downturn in the lands under their control.
The battle shifted the balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe and marked the rise of the Polish–Lithuanian union as the dominant political and military force in the region.
The battle was one of the largest in Medieval Europe and is regarded as the most important victory in the histories of Poland and Lithuania, and is also widely celebrated in Belarus. It has been used as a source of romantic legends and national pride, becoming a larger symbol of struggle against foreign invaders.
During the 20th century the battle was used in Nazi and Soviet propaganda campaigns. Only in recent decades have historians moved towards a dispassionate, scholarly assessment of the battle, reconciling the previous narratives, which differed widely by nation.
Paderewski and the Polish National Committee
During World War I, Paderewski became an active member of the Polish National Committee in Paris, which was soon accepted by the Entente as the representative of the forces trying to create the state of Poland. He became a spokesman of that organization, and soon also formed other social and political organizations, among them the Polish Relief Fund, in London. It was then that he met the English composer Edward Elgar, who used a theme from Paderewski's Fantasie Polonaise in his work Polonia written for the Polish Relief Fund concert in London on 6 July 1916 (the title no doubt recognizing Paderewski's Symphony in B minor).
The turning of the tide . . .
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and then the leaders of the February Revolution and the October Revolution of 1917, installed governments who declared in turn their support for Polish independence. In 1917, France formed the Blue Army (placed under Józef Haller) that comprised about 70,000 Poles by the end of the war, including men captured from German and Austrian units and 20,000 volunteers from the United States. There was also a 30,000-men strong Polish anti-German army in Russia.
Dmowski, operating from Paris as head of the Polish National Committee (KNP), became the spokesman for Polish nationalism in the Allied camp. On the initiative of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, Polish independence was officially endorsed by the Allies in June 1918.
Paderewski played an important role in meeting with President Woodrow Wilson and obtaining the explicit inclusion of independent Poland as point 13 in Wilson's peace terms in 1918, in the Fourteen Points.
Paderewski agitated among immigrants to join the Polish armed forces in France, and he pressed elbows with all the dignitaries and influential men whose salons he could enter. He spoke to Americans directly in public speeches and on the radio, appealing to them to remember the fate of his nation. He kept such a demanding schedule of public appearances, fundraisers and meetings that he stopped touring altogether for a few years dedicating himself to diplomatic activity exclusively.
On the eve of the U.S. entry into the war, in January 1917, President Woodrow Wilson’s advisor, Colonel House, turned to Paderewski to prepare a memorandum on the Polish issue. Two weeks later, Wilson spoke before Congress and issued a challenge to the status quo, “I take it for granted,” he said, “that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, autonomous Poland."
The establishment of "New Poland" had now become one of Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points that became the shaping principles of peace negotiations to end World War I.
In April 1918, he met in New York City with leaders of the American Jewish Committee in an unsuccessful attempt to broker a deal whereby organized Jewish groups would support Polish territorial ambitions in exchange for support for equal rights.
However, it soon became clear that no plan would satisfy both Jewish leaders and Roman Dmowski, head of the Polish National Committee, who was strongly anti-semitic.
At the end of the war, with the fate of the city of Poznań and the whole region of Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) still undecided, Paderewski visited Poznań. With his public speech on 27 December 1918, the Polish inhabitants of Poznań began a military uprising against Germany, called the Greater Poland Uprising.
The final push for the independence of Poland took place on the ground in October–November 1918. Near the end of the war, Austro-Hungarian and German units were being disarmed, and the Austrian army's collapse freed Cieszyn and Kraków at the end of October. Lviv was then contested in the Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918–1919.
Ignacy Daszyński headed the first short-lived independent Polish government in Lublin from 7 November, the leftist Provisional People's Government of the Republic of Poland, which was proclaimed as a democracy.
Germany, now defeated, was forced by the Allies to stand down its large military forces in Poland. Overtaken by the German Revolution of 1918–1919 at home, the Germans released Piłsudski from prison. He arrived in Warsaw on November 10 and was granted extensive authority by the Polish kingdom's Regency Council, which was also recognized by the Lublin government. On November 22 Piłsudski became the temporary head of state. He was held by many in high regard, but was resented by the right-wing National Democrats.
The emerging Polish state was internally divided, heavily war-damaged and economically dysfunctional.
First there is a nation, then there is no nation, then there is . . .
After more than a century of foreign rule, Poland regained its independence at the end of World War I as one of the outcomes of the negotiations that took place at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The Treaty of Versailles that emerged from the conference set up an independent Polish nation with an outlet to the sea, but left some of its boundaries to be decided by plebiscites. The largely German-inhabited Free City of Danzig was granted a separate status that guaranteed its use as a port by Poland. In the end, the settlement of the German-Polish border turned out to be a prolonged and convoluted process. The dispute helped engender the Greater Poland Uprising of 1918–1919, the three Silesian uprisings of 1919–1921, the East Prussian plebiscite of 1920, the Upper Silesia plebiscite of 1921 and the 1922 Silesian Convention in Geneva.
Other boundaries were settled by war and subsequent treaties. A total of six border wars were fought in 1918–1921, including the Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts over Cieszyn Silesia in January 1919.
As distressing as these border conflicts were, the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921 was the most important series of military actions of the era. Piłsudski had entertained far-reaching anti-Russian cooperative designs in Eastern Europe, and in 1919 the Polish forces pushed eastward into Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine by taking advantage of the Russian preoccupation with a civil war, but they were soon confronted with the Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919. Western Ukraine was already a theater of the Polish–Ukrainian War, which eliminated the proclaimed West Ukrainian People's Republic in July 1919. In the autumn of 1919, Piłsudski rejected urgent pleas from the former Entente powers to support Anton Denikin's White movement in its advance on Moscow.
The Polish–Soviet War proper began with the Polish Kiev Offensive in April 1920. Allied with the Directorate of Ukraine of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Polish armies had advanced past Vilnius, Minsk and Kiev by June. At that time, a massive Soviet counter-offensive pushed the Poles out of most of Ukraine. On the northern front, the Soviet army reached the outskirts of Warsaw in early August. A Soviet triumph and the quick end of Poland seemed inevitable. However, the Poles scored a stunning victory at the Battle of Warsaw (1920). Afterwards, more Polish military successes followed, and the Soviets had to pull back. They left swathes of territory populated largely by Belarusians or Ukrainians to Polish rule. The new eastern boundary was finalized by the Peace of Riga in March 1921.
Central and Eastern Europe after the Polish-Soviet Treaty of Riga
World War I removed former imperial borders across Europe. In 1918, after the Russian Revolution had renounced Tsarist claims to Poland in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the war had ended with Germany's surrender, Poland was able to re-establish its independence after a century of foreign rule.
The Russian Civil War presented an opportunity for Poland under the leadership of Józef Piłsudski to regain parts of the tsarist territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which had been incorporated into the Russian Empire during the Partitions of Poland.
Meanwhile, many in the Soviet leadership desired to respond to Piłsudski's moves into the Ukraine by using military force against Poland, which was seen by the Soviets as a land bridge to Western Europe, and thus to extend the revolution westwards.
The Polish-Soviet War ensued, culminating in the Polish victory in the Battle of Warsaw (1920), after which both sides became receptive to ending the conflict. Further military setbacks following their defeat near Warsaw made the Soviets eager to begin peace treaty negotiations, and the Poles, pressured by the League of Nations, were also willing to negotiate after the Polish army had annexed most of the disputed territories in the war, but was nearing exhaustion.
Peace talks began in Minsk on 17 August 1920, but as the Polish counter-offensive drew near, the talks were moved to Riga, and resumed on 21 September. The Soviets proposed two solutions, the first on 21 September and the second on the 28th. The Polish delegation made a counter-offer on 2 October. Three days later the Soviets offered amendments to the Polish offer, which Poland accepted.
An armistice was signed on 12 October and went into effect on 18 October 1920. The chief negotiators were Jan Dąbski for Poland and Adolph Joffe for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The Soviet side insisted, successfully, on excluding non-communist Ukrainian representatives from the negotiations.
Due to their military setbacks, the Soviet delegation offered Poland substantial territorial concessions in the contested border areas. However, to many observers, it looked like the Polish side was conducting the Riga talks as if Poland had lost the war.
The Polish delegation was dominated by members of the National Democrat movement, who were Piłsudski's political opponents. The National Democrats did not want non-Polish minorities in the reborn Polish state to constitute more than one third of the overall population, and were therefore prepared to accept a Polish-Soviet border which was substantially to the west of what was being offered by the Soviet side, even though this would leave hundreds of thousands of people who were ethnically Polish on the Soviet side of the border.
This decision was also motivated by political objectives. The National Democrats' base of public support was among Poles in central and western Poland. In the east of the country and in the disputed borderlands, support for the National Democrats was greatly outweighed by support for Piłsudski (and in the countryside outside of the cities, Poles were outnumbered by Ukrainians or Belarusians in these areas). So a border too far to the east was not just against the National Democrats' ideological objective of minimising the minority population of Poland, but would also be an electoral disadvantage to them. War-weary public opinion in Poland also favoured an end to the negotiations and both sides remained under pressure from the League of Nations to reach a deal.
A special parliamentary delegation consisting of six members of the Polish Sejm held a vote on whether to accept the Soviets' far-reaching concessions, which would leave Minsk on the Polish side of the border. Pressured by the National Democrat ideologue, Stanisław Grabski, the 100 km of extra territory was rejected, a victory for the nationalist doctrine and a stark defeat for Piłsudski's federalism.
Regardless, the peace negotiations dragged on for months due to Soviet reluctance to sign. However, the matter became more urgent for the Soviet leadership as it had to deal with increased internal unrest towards the end of 1920, which led to the Tambov Rebellion and later the Kronstadt rebellion against the Soviet authorities. As a result of this situation, Lenin ordered the Soviet plenipotentiaries to finalise the peace treaty with Poland. The Peace of Riga was signed on 18 March 1921, partitioning the disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and the RSFSR, and ending the conflict.
Back to the map . . .
First, there IS a nation around the year 1000!
A commonwealth in the year 1569!
Then, there is NO nation from 1795 until . . .
. . . there IS a nation, again, in 1918!
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