Polish National Movement

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POLISH NATIONAL MOVEMENT

the uprisings
the emergence of modern nationalism
bibliography

The state formally known as "The Republic of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania" (sometimes labeled the "Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth" in English-language texts) was once one of the largest countries in Europe, but by the eighteenth century its decentralized political system was unable to resist the expansionist ambitions of its more absolutist neighbors. The polity's decline culminated in a series of diplomatic and military disasters known as the Partitions of Poland: three treaties (1772, 1793, and 1795) that carved up the country between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. After the third partition there was no longer a Polish state on the map, but in its place there had emerged a committed core of patriotic activists who were devoted to the restoration of independence.

Hardly had the post-partition boundaries been established when the Napoleonic Wars threw the entire international order into chaos. Many Polish national activists were enthusiastic about the transformative potential of the French Revolution, and a Polish legion was formed alongside the French army in 1797. Because of this, when Napoleon defeated Prussia in 1806 many hoped that he would sponsor a Polish restoration. This is not quite what happened. In 1807 he created a small, dependent puppet state called the Duchy of Warsaw, which encompassed only a fraction of the former republic's territory. For all its limitations, the Duchy did revitalize Polish political life, and made it difficult to return to the status quo ante after Napoleon's fall.

the uprisings

The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) once again drew a space for Poland on the map, elevating its status to that of a "kingdom" with its own parliament, legal system, administrative autonomy, and army. But there was one stipulation: the Russian tsar would be ex officio king of Poland. This would ensure that Polish autonomy would be more nominal than real, and that the national movement would continue to grow. Under Alexander I (r. 1801–1825), the Polish kingdom did indeed enjoy some meaningful self-governance, but this quickly eroded under the more authoritarian Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855). Opposition to his efforts to curtail Polish autonomy exploded in 1830 with the so-called November Uprising. The Polish parliament dethroned Nicholas and a brief war ensued, but the Poles stood little chance of success. After the suppression of the uprising, martial law was declared and Polish self-rule was effectively ended.

The defeat of the November Uprising forced thousands of Polish national activists to flee abroad in what came to be labeled the Great Emigration. Most of these exiles settled in France, where they continued to conspire against the partitioning powers. Many of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century Polish culture (nearly all of which were imbued with patriotic content) emerged from this context: the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849), and Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859), and the music of Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849), just to name a few. In the hothouse atmosphere of the Great Emigration, an idealistic brand of Polish patriotism emerged, committed not only to another insurrection but also to the subsequent creation of a new, more perfect Poland in which the mundane injustices of nineteenth-century Europe would be resolved. A number of ephemeral conspiracies were organized by these émigrés in the 1830s and 1840s, and one significant revolt was attempted in Cracow (Kraków) in 1846, but all of these efforts failed. During the European-wide revolutionary year of 1848 the Russians managed to keep any unrest from breaking out in their partition, and although there were violent conflicts between Poles and Germans in the Prussian partition, nothing was accomplished to advance the Polish cause.

The culminating moment of conspiratorial Polish nationalism came with the January Uprising of 1863. After the reform-minded Alexander II became emperor in 1855, the restoration of some sort of Polish autonomy seemed possible. A handful of Polish aristocrats attempted to cooperate with the Russian authorities toward this end, but the pent-up ambitions and frustrations of the past decades soon exploded in a series of mass demonstrations. These were violently broken up by the Russians, which only further radicalized the Polish activists and spurred the development of an extensive patriotic conspiracy. On 22 January 1863 the leaders of this underground group launched a national uprising, and for more than a year a guerilla war raged throughout the Polish territories of the Russian Empire. Eventually this revolt failed as well, but not before thirty thousand rebels had been killed and thirty-eight thousand exiled to Siberia.

the emergence of modern nationalism

In the aftermath of the January Uprising the tsarist authorities abolished all remnants of Polish autonomy and launched a campaign of Russification. A similar program was attempted in the newly created German Empire starting in the 1870s. Poles who advocated independence had long been targeted for repression in all three partitions, but there had been no real attempt to culturally transform the Poles into Germans or Russians. For the last third of the century, however, the Polish language was almost entirely pushed out of the educational system and the administrative structures of the German and Russian states. Only in Austria did the situation for the Poles improve: when the Habsburg Empire was reorganized with the Ausgleich (compromise) of 1867, the Poles gained nearly full autonomy within the province of Galicia.

After the crushing defeat of 1863 most Polish activists turned to what they called "organic work": a program of economic and cultural development combined with an explicit repudiation of political conspiracies. Only in the 1880s did a few small nationalist organizations begin to take shape once again. At the time few Polish activists saw any contradiction between socialism and nationalism, but gradually the two paths started to diverge. Some nationalists argued that social justice had to be subordinated to the need for national solidarity, and while few socialists actually repudiated the cause of independence they did insist that it had to be accompanied by a radically new social order. These divisions were solidified with the creation of two rival organizations, the Polish Socialist Party (founded in 1892) and the National Democratic Movement (or Endecja, founded in 1893). Both groups emerged as mass movements at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905, and by then their hostility toward each other was almost as intense as their opposition to the partitions.

When World War I broke out in 1914, the "Polish question" was as much a factor in European politics as ever. The Polish national movement had met with repeated failures during that long century, and the cost in lives and material destruction was great. On the other hand, the very persistence of the movement inspired all sides during World War I to attempt to win Polish support with promises of autonomy and eventually independence. There were many debates among the Poles about which side to join during the war, but in the end it did not matter: all three of the partitioning powers were destroyed by the conflict, and Polish independence was proclaimed on the very day of the armistice: 11 November 1918.

See alsoEndecja; Mickiewicz, Adam; Poland; Nationalism.