A BRIEF HISTORY OF POLAND

Copyright 1994 - AngloPol Corporation -- Distributed by the Polonia Media Network

Part 9

The 19th Century--
Polish Wars and Uprisings

Since the time of the partitions until World War I (during 123 years of captivity) successive generations of Poles launched attempts to regain independence, but it was hard to rely upon rebuilding Poland without a favorable international situation. Russia, Prussia and Austria pursued a common policy aimed at retaining the spoils of war and tried to avoid conflicts among themselves.

It was impossible to defeat the three powers at the same time. The three partitioning monarchies were absolute states and their political systems stood in complete contradiction to the Polish tradition of democracy, self-government and civil freedoms of the gentry. Those traditions were cultivated not only by Polish landowners, clergy and the enlightened part of the bourgeoisie, but also by intelligentsia tracing their descent to the gentry. The Polish struggle for freedom amounted to the struggle against violence and absolutism. That is why the Polish cause was related to the European freedom and democratic movements. That was reflected in the participation of Poles in European uprisings and revolutions in the 19th century, as well as the participation of foreigners in Polish uprisings.

The slogan "For your freedom and ours" ["Z nasza i wasza wolnosc"] became the symbol of the Polish contribution to the democratization of the European political systems.

At the turn the 19th century, Napoleon's France was Poland's ally. The Polish legions were set up in Italy in 1797 to support Napoleon in his war on Austria. In the years 1806-1807 Napoleon defeated Austria, Prussia and Russia. Under the Treaty of Tilsit the Duchy of Warsaw was established on part of the lands of Prussian-annexed Poland. The Duchy was granted a Constitution by Napoleon, a Polish government was formed, the Napoleonic Code was introduced and peasants were given personal freedoms.

Poland's future was sealed by Napoleon's abortive expedition against Russia in 1812 and the battle of nations lost by France at Leipzig (1813), during which Prince Jozef Poniatowski, the Commander-in-Chief of the Duchy's Army, died a heroic death.

The Congress of Vienna in 1815 relinquished part of the Duchy, together with Poznan, over to Prussia. The remaining lands were turned into the Kingdom of Poland, tied with Russia. Tsar Alexander I became King. Its own Constitution, government, Sejm and the army were those factors which made up the Kingdom's identity. However, it proved impossible to reconcile the constitutional regime of the Kingdom with the despotic regime in Russia. The incessant violations of the Constitution and setbacks suffered by opposition led Polish youth to join conspiratorial organizations preparing for an uprising. This coincided with the persecution of everything that represented Polishness in the eastern territories of the former Republic, the destruction of the flourishing University of Wilno [now called Vilnius] and the rebellion of the Decembrists in Russia (1825). The signal for revolt was given by the July Revolution in France, the uprising in Belgium and the Russian plans to intervene militarily, providing for the use of the Kingdom's army to put down the freedom movements.

The uprising broke out in Warsaw on November 29, 1830. An independent government was called into being, with the Sejm dethroning the Tsar. The Polish-Russian war followed. The well-trained and armed Polish army held out till September, 1831, but was not able to win that war in view of the enormous human and economic resources of Russia.

The fall of the uprising brought on the annulment of the Constitution, the liquidation of the Kingdom's army, the closing of Warsaw University and the construction of the citadel in Warsaw. Everything Polish was doggedly hunted down in Lithuania, Byelorussia [now Bielarus] and Ukraine. Deportations and confiscations of property came in the wake of the crushed revolt. The University of Wilno was closed. Poles were also persecuted by the Prussian authorities in the Poznan province and by the Austrians in Galicia.

The defeat sent some 10,000 uprising leaders and participants into exile. They went, primarily, to France. Poets Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Slowacki settled in Paris, where they continued their writing. Composer Frederyk Chopin and historian Joachim Lelewel also went to Paris.

Discussions on the causes of the uprising's defeat were held by the Polish Democratic Society, which also conducted preparations for further armed struggle. Diplomatic efforts to keep the Polish issue alive were carried on by Prince Adam Czartoryski. The essential part of those discussions on the defeat focused on the situation of the Polish peasantry, which was the main social problem until 1863. Peasants did not own farmland and had to pay rents to the gentry for its use. Enfranchisement and the granting of land to peasants were regarded as indispensable conditions for modernizing the economic structure and attracting the peasant masses to the Polish independence movement.

The first to enfranchise peasants were the Prussian authorities, which action later became the foundation for the propitious economic development of that part of Poland annexed by Prussia. The Austrians enfranchised peasants during the Spring of Nations, which also swept through Prussian-annexed Poland.

The peasant problem remained unresolved, however, in the Polish Kingdom. Much hope was pinned on the person of Tsar Alexander II in the belief that he would stop reprisals. Nonetheless the scope of concessions made by him was insignificant. The Tsar expressed that by his well-known saying: "Point de reveries Messieurs" ("no daydreaming, gentlemen.") A wave of religious and national demonstrations swept the Kingdom; conspirators were preparing an uprising. It broke out in January, 1863, and was waged in the Kingdom, Lithuania, Byelorussia, and Volhynia for a year and a half. It was a guerrilla war.

The clandestine National Government and the decrees issued under its seal were respected voluntarily. The foundation of an underground state in Europe was something entirely unique in the 19th century. The government collected taxes, organized the supplies of weapons and published newspapers. One of its first decisions was to enfranchise the peasants, but calculations based on a massive enrollment in the fighting failed. Only the gentry, priests, rural clerks, burghers and intelligentsia fought. It is estimated that some 200,000 men went through the ranks of the guerrilla units during eighteen months of struggle, with some 30,000 guerrillas fighting at one time.

The Russian Army, thwarting the uprising, numbered 340,000 soldiers at its peak. The last "dictator" of the uprising, Romuald Traugutt, was arrested and hanged, together with four of his aides, on August 5, 1864, amid the prayers of the despairing people of Warsaw. A similar fate befell other leaders and guerrillas. The uprising collapsed, reprisals followed and the state of war lingered on until the outbreak of World War I. The Tsar scrapped the remnants of the administrative autonomy of the Kingdom. Administration, judicature and education were Russified. The rights of the Church were trimmed. The suffering and moral crisis of the people were further deepened by the loss of hope for winning independence.

On March 2, 1864, the Tsar issued a decree to enfranchise peasants, patterned after the decree of the National Government. Its aim was to attract the peasantry to the Tsardom, but in the long term its outcome turned out to be quite the contrary from what had been intended. Having been freed of the feudal burdens, peasants gradually became conscious members of the national community.

The demand of the enormous Russian market and the influx of capital into the Kingdom from foreign investors, who were interested in that market and in cheap labor, led to a quick development of industry. At the beginning of the 20th century, Warsaw numbered about one million residents; Lodz, the center of the textile industry, had a population of about 500,000. The economy of Prussian-annexed Poland was also developing favorably, whereas the economy of the Austrian-occupied Poland remained backward. All the three sectors, though, recorded a high rate of natural increase.

In 1910, the Polish Kingdom, Galicia and the Grand Duchy of Poland were inhabited by about 22.5 million people, with Poles making up some 75% of the population.

In the face of the loss of the statehood and the defeat of successive uprisings, an enormous role in maintaining Polish identity was played by culture. That culture created two patterns in the 19th century that keep on influencing Poland and Poles even today: Romanticism and Positivism.

Romantic literature promoted the image of a heroic fighter for freedom who alone opposed violence with the power of his spirit: "Reach where your vision does not reach, break up what mind cannot break," was the call by romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz. The other literary giant of the time, Juliusz Slowacki, wrote about heroes as "like stones thrown by God on a rampart." In music Frederic Chopin used Polish folk and national motifs.

After the November Uprising, Paris became the center of Polish romantic art and literature. Some of the exiles went farther. Ignacy Domeyko, one of the founders of modern science in Chile, was a graduate of the University of Wilno. Poles also made great contributions to the ethnographic, geographic and biological studies in Siberia, to which they had been deported.

Positivism promoted well-organized work, education and economic development. In raising national issues, it invoked the historical costume in novels by Henryk Sienkiewicz, who won the Nobel Prize in 1905 for his novel "Quo Vadis," in paintings by Jan Matejko, and in operas by Stanislaw Moniuszko. The greatest Polish novel of the 19th century, "Lalka" [The Doll] by Boleslaw Prus, depicted the tragic conflict between the two attitudes--the main character, a former insurgent, then a rich businessman, is killed by his love of a mediocre aristocratic lady.

The turn of the 20th century saw a revival of romantic feeling and trends in poetry, drama (Stanislaw Wyspianski) and painting.

The emigration of artists and scientists continued throughout the entire period of bondage. In France, Maria Sklodowska-Curie found opportunities for her pioneering work in physics, taking the Nobel Prize together with her husband in 1905 and individually in 1910. In the United States the talents of Helena Modrzejewska and Ignacy Paderewski came to full bloom.

The post-uprising period saw an intensification of Russification pressure in the Russian partition, and of Germanization and a cultural struggle [Kulturkampf] against the Church in the Prussian partition. Those pressures resulted in a growth of national awareness and religious moods, but preparations for new uprisings were given up. The Austrian partition, Galicia, particularly after it was granted homerule, became the center of Polish culture. There were two universities there, in Krakow and Lwow, as well as the Polish Academy of Letters and numerous associations. In the Prussian partition, Poles could use the institutions of the law-abiding state for their defense. They could claim their rights at courts of law, set up scientific societies and economic-financial organizations.

Modern political parties--peasant, worker, national--developed at the turn of the 20th century. The problems of workers grew in conjunction with the development of industries and towns. This found expression in the revolution of 1905, which "embraced" Russia and the Kingdom.

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