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Lecture 8
The Polish Question 1831-1863
(Part II. From 1848 to the January Uprising)
I. Russian Poland from 1832 to 1856
1. Consequences of 1830 Uprising.
Repression severe in Eastern provinces of Poland. Persons who had taken part in the rebellion held to be guilty of treason. Campaign against Polish influences in education and cultural life. Many Polish families deported to other parts of empire.
In Congress Kingdom, policies milder. On 26 February 1832, Tsar signs Organic
Statute. This bears some resemblance to constitution of 1815. Council of State remains, with
Administration Council subordinate to it. This has three Commissions in place of five as previously, Finance, Justice, Interior. Statute provided for elected assemblies of the nobility at district and provincial levels, but these were never created. Sejm however abolished.
Middle and lower ranks of civil service staffed by Poles. Senior posts held by Russians.
Polish army ceases to exist. Ivan Paskievich becomes viceroy. His rule strict, but in some ways benevolent. Close friendship with Emperor helped Poles
2. Social changes
On the surface, little seems to be happening between end of revolt and accession of - 2 -
Alexander II in 1856. The Viceroy, Paskievich rules country with an iron hand and scant regard for wishes to szlachta. Polish political class expected to give unquestioning obedience to commands of administration.
Yet these were years of far-reaching transformation of social conditions in Congress
Kingdom. Population grows fairly fast, from 3.2 million in 1815 to 4.76 million in 1859
Of these 3.1 million Poles, 600,000 Jews, 250,000 Germans and 250,000 Lithuanians. By the mid-century, the urban population about 1.16 million, of whom 653,000 were Christians and
511,000 Jews
Old structure of Polish society now starting to break up. Expansion of trade and industry beginning to produce more modern conditions. Economic developments in these years. One aspect of the evolution of the Kingdom of Poland which made it very different from the other areas of partitioned Poland was that in the nineteenth century it underwent something like an industrial revolution. By 1914, the two provinces of Warsaw and Piotrków were largely urban and among the more industrialized parts of Europe. Given the sharp discontinuities which characterize the political history of the area in the nineteenth century, it is not surprising that the development here of industry and the transformation of the agricultural system should have been characterized by a series of false starts and periods of stagnation. Under Prussian rule, the area’s agricultural character had been maintained, although the boom conditions caused by the Napoleonic wars benefited the landowners.
Under the Duchy of Warsaw, the heavy Napoleonic exactions and the problems caused by the
Continental System undermined the prosperity of agriculture. At the same time the period saw the emergence of a largely-Jewish group of army suppliers and the emergence of the finance - 3 - houses, under the control of such families as the Fraenkls, Epsteins, Laskis and Kronenbergs, which were to form the basis of Warsaw’s banking community.
In the period between 1815 and 1830, the Minister of Finance in the government of the Kingdom of Poland attempted to foster the industrialization of the Kingdom, as has been described by Jerzy Jedlicki in an important book Nieudana próba kapitalistycznej industrializacji. It was he who encouraged the settlement of German weavers in the central part of the Kingdom, above all in the town of Łódź, which laid the foundation for the subsequent development of the textile industry. He also attempted to foster a metallurgical industry in Będzin, in that part of the Silesian industrial belt which lay within the Kingdom.
The period also saw a further development of the Warsaw banking community, which was now involved also in supplying the bloated army of the Kingdom and which absorbed almost half the budget of the small state. In the words of the author of the main study of this problem:
The greater part of this income [from the supply of the army] was scooped up by the great Warsaw trading bourgeoisie: Jakubowicz, the Sonnenbergs, Loebensteins, Epsteins, Trzcińskis and Bansmeróws; next came the capital’s financiers, such as the Epsteins, Samuel Leizor Kronenberg, Samuel Antoni Fraenkel.1
The crushing of the 1830 insurrection was followed by a period of economic stagnation. In order to punish the Poles for their rebelliousness, a high tariff barrier was now introduced between the Kingdom and the rest of the Tsarist Empire. As we have seen, nothing much was done to resolve the problem of unfree cultivation, although in June 1846 the
Russian Viceroy of the Kingdom, Paskievich did modify the conditions under which peasants were obliged to perform labour tribute.
From the early 1840s, the economy of the kingdom began to recover, stimulated by the beginnings of railway building, the opening of the Russian market through the abolition of - 4 - the tariff barrier in 1858 and the abolition of unfree cultivation in the Kingdom of Poland in
1864. The first major railway line to reach Warsaw was that from Vienna and Kraków, which was constructed between 1845 and 1848 and was financed by the bankers Antoni Fraenkel and Herman Epstein. It was followed by the completion in 1867 of a line from Warsaw to
Saint Petersburg, via Białystok and Vilna. By now the two principal railway entrepreneurs in the Kingdom were Leopold Kronenberg, the model for the character Wallenberg in Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s novel The Manor, who took control of the Vienna-Warsaw railway in 1862 and Jan Bogumil Bloch, who was married to Kronenberg’s niece. This relationship did not prevent the two men from becoming involved in a bitter commercial struggle over the building of the railway to Kiev and Odessa which was constructed between 1871 and 1873.
These changes led to important social developments. One of these was the increasing pressure from the Jewish elite for civil rights. Polish attitudes on this issue varied from mild distrust to active dislike, but were beginning to change. The steady, though still not sensational, growth of industry and of urban population made the ‘Jewish Problem’ more acute. In Warsaw, for instance, 43,000 of the population of 161,000 were Jews. In smaller towns, the percentage was even higher – in Lublin 10,4000 of 18,300 and in Suwałki 7,500 of
11,900
The first indication of a changing attitude to the question of Jewish integration came in the uprising of 1830-31. This had seen the first significant involvement of Jews in Polish politics. The Warsaw bourgeoisie had been rather suspicious of the rebellion, sparked off by discontented cadets and students and marked as it was in its first days by looting and rioting.
As in France at this time, they attempted to control popular violence by setting up a ‘National
1 Polonsky, 10, 159 - 5 -
Guard’; this was to be made up of wealthier citizens, who would bear themselves the cost of their uniforms and equipment and who would maintain order in the capital. Among the more acculturated Jews, there was a fair number who wanted to join this body, both to demonstrate their solidarity with Polish patriots, and, by fulfilling their civil obligations, to justify their claim for civil rights. They included financiers, such as Samuel Kronenberg, Jakub Epstein and two Toeplitzes, the bookseller Merzbrand, a number of doctors and Antoni Eisenbaum, soon to be principal of the Rabbinic School. General Józef Chłopicki, commander-in-chief of the revolutionary forces, agreed, initially to their recruitment, although he was prepared to admit only those who were exempted from the exclusion of Jews from the residential restrictions in Warsaw and elsewhere. Governor Antoni Ostrowski, commander of the
National Guard, was prepared to take a more liberal position, but he encountered resistance form the Christian members of the Guard. As a result, he agreed to a rather unsatisfactory compromise. Jews could enlist provided they shaved off their beards. Most of the Jews who wished to enlist were not prepared to take this step. Some were, and by the summer of 1831 betwee 300 and 400 had been enrolled in the National Guard. The remainder , numbering nearly 1000, were allowed to form a ‘Civil Guard’, in the words of Ostrowski, the commander of the National Guard, ‘preparatory and transitory, less honorific than the National Guard itself, but close to it.
The revolutionary government did not introduce any changes in the status of the Jews.
Nevertheless, the experience of serving in the National and Civil Guards greatly bouyed the confidence of those who underwent this experience. The impact of serving in these formations is characteristically described by the assimilitionist Jewish historian, Hilary Nussbaum:
Having put on short jackets [instead of the long kapote of the Orthodox] although military ones, and having shaved off their beards and side curls, once their service in - 6 -
the Guards was over they did not go back to wearing their former long coats, but detached themselves from their backward tribe. Dressed in the European fashion, they moved freely along all the main streets of the city, entered public gardens confidently, and, whether out for a stroll, at at meeting, or in any public place, they were not attacked by the Christian mob.
The defeat of the uprising was followed by a generation of repression and the centre of
Polish political life now moved into emigration, primarily in France. In the bitter debates over the reasons for the failure of the revolt, the left-wing of the Emigration criticized the conservatism of the revolutionary government and its failure to introduce measures which could have attracted the support of politically and socially disadvantaged groups like peasants and Jews. This in November1837, one of the leading figures in the emigration, the historian
Joachim Lelewel issued a declaration which exhorted Polish Jews to participate in the struggle for independence and in this way to obtain civil rights. The declaration, which was in fact written by a Jew, Ludwik Lubliner, argued that the Jews in Belguim and France, who already enjoyed the rights of citizenship, were regarded as Belgians or Frenchmen, and that the grievances of Polish Jews could only be assuaged ‘when you obtain citizenship and unite with the Polish nation.’ Then Poles by citizenship and Jews by religion, they would be equal in all areas of life. This could only occur in a liberated Poland ‘when every inhabitant of the country, Jew, Christian and non-believer, people of all beliefs and sects will be able to exercise the civil and political rights of citizens. 2
As Eisenbach has shown the democratic conspiratorial movement in Galicia, above all the ‘Association of the Polish People’ and the ‘Confederation of the Polish Nation’ had a significant impact on Jewish youth in Galicia.3 Certainly, one of the first acts of the
2 Eisenbach, 353, 108 3 Eisenbach, 353,107 - 7 - revolutionary government in Kraków in February 1846 was to proclaim the equality of the
Jews.
Publicists in the Emigration repeated such calls in 1848. Thus Leon Hollaenderski an
émigré activist issued two appeals in Paris. The first was published on 2 April 1848 and was entitled ‘The Voice of an Israelite to Brother-Poles’, the second appeared four days later and was directed to the Jews. In the first pamphlet, Hollaenderski expressed his profound conviction that the revolutionary upheaval would lead to the ‘rebirth of an independent, free, unfettered and happy Poland’. This rebirth was dependent on the unification of all social forces, irrespective of estate, religion, trade or profession. The Poles should exert pressure on the clergy so that it would adopt a new attitude to the Jews. ‘[F]ollowing in the footsteps of
Christ, your Lord, and acting in the spirit of the law of humanity’, they should stretch out a friendly hand to the Jews’. The should ‘accept them with love and open-heartedness’. If this occurred, the Jews would respond ‘with the strength of their spirit and thought’. The Poles needed to act in harmony with the spirit of the time and follow the example of the reviving nations of Europe and adopt as their slogans equality, liberty and fraternity. In these conditions, the Polish motherland would become the mother of all its inhabitants.
In his second appeal, Hollaenderski called on the Jews to join the burgeoning revolutionary struggle in Europe. He appealed to Jewish teachers and rabbis to remind Jews of their duties to the motherland and in the name of these ideals to spare no effort to liberate
Poland and assure her freedom. 4
At this time, the conservative part of the Emigration, the Hotel Lambert, with Adam
Czartoryski at its head also came out for a conditional emancipation of the Jews. Full civil
4 Eisenbach, 349,96 - 8 - rights for the Jews were also supported by the Polish revolutionaries in the Grand Duchy of
Posen and in Galicia and were enacted by the revolutionary parliaments in both Prussia and
Galicia.
Calls for the establishment of Jewish political equality had rather less resonance in the repressive and reactionary atmosphere of the Kingdom of Poland under Nicholas I and
Paskievich. Bitterness was provoked here by the close links of some of the leading Jewish industrialists and financiers with the Tsarist government. Those who profited from this connection – whether through leasing monopolies and credits from the Bank of Poland or through building railways – were bitterly resented. The greatest hostility was aroused by
Jewish bankers. Zygmunt Krasiński, one of the leading figures of Polish romanticism and the author of Nieboska komedia (The Undivine Comedy), a vision of proletarian revolution led by
Jewish converts, wrote in 1836:
It is not until you get there [Warsaw] that you will hear and understand what Poland is today, how fawning everyone is, how corruptible, how it is ten times worse to have Poles in office than the Muscovite; how the last shreds of honour are collapsing around the nation’s ears, how the Jews and Germans are profiting from poverty and disgrace, how the Jews settle on the ruins of our palaces, how everywhere it is Jews and Jews only who have influence, power, means.
Polish-Jewish relations began to improve in the later years of Nicholas’s reign. Like the Poles, the Jews, both the elite and the mass had every reason to resent Nicholas’s repressive and interventionist regime. Within the Jewish community the influence grew of those who believed that civil rights would only be obtained when a degree of acculturation to the Polish environment had been achieved. Here a significant role was played by the graduates of the Rabbinic School and of Eisenbaum himself. The Russian defeat in the
Crimean war and the accession of the more liberal Alexander II in 1855 strengthened the view that major political and social changes were in the offing. - 9 -
The Jews hoped that the new Tsar would significantly relax the restrictions under which they still laboured in the Kingdom of Poland. The brutal rejection by the Tsar of a petition from the Warsaw Jewish Council calling for changes of this type brought the Jews closer to the Poles, among whom agitation for the restoration of Polish rights was increasing.
Relations between Poles and Jews were also, paradoxically, improved by the controversy in the Warsaw press in 1859 which subsequently became known as the ‘Jewish war’. This was sparked of by an article in the main daily newspaper in Warsaw, Gazeta Warszawska, in which the editor, Antoni Lesznowski, attacked the Warsw Jewish elite for a ‘lack of patriotism’ because of their failure to attend a concert in December 1855. In the face of
Jewish protests, Lesznowski sought the support of the Russian director of the Commission for
Internal Affairs in the Kingdom of Poland, Pavel Chekhanov, who used the censorship to prevent criticism of Lesznowski’s vies. This discredited the editor in the eyes of Polish patriotic opinion and led those circles to take a much more favourable view of the assimilated
Jews who had been attacked by him. Their leader, Leopold Kronenberg, who had been bapitzed in 1845, but who still took an active interest in Jewish affairs, was even able to buy the main rival to Gazeta Warszawska, Gazeta Codzienna, which under its editor, the prolific author Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, became a firm advocate of Polish-Jewish understanding.
The ‘peasant problem’ was also becoming acute. This had a double character. what should be done with peasants’ labour services and how should manor and peasant land be disentangled? The old system, which involved compulsary labour service on the landlord’s estate was breaking down more and more as links with outside world increased and pressure was also intensified by the fact that problem had already been resolved in Galicia and
Prussian Poland. - 10 -
Two alternative solutions being canvassed for land question: either all existing labour services should be converted to money rents or the peasants should be enabled to acquire freedom of the land they cultivated by paying to landowners the price of the land over a period of years. The landowners preferred the first alternative. The most eminent of their spokesmen, Count Andrzej Zamoyski had carried out the conversion to rents on his own estates on terms comparatively favorable to the peasants.
But if policy of conversion to freehold adopted, to be expected that landowners would insist on stiffest terms of payment they could get. Under the Code Napoleon, in force in
Poland since 1809, landowners were indeed entitled to evict tenants. This right was modified in June 1846, when, under pressure of Galician events Paskievich issued a decree granting fixity of tenure to all tenants of more than 3 acres, provided they fulfilled their obligations to their landlords. This decree had largely been evaded because of control of local administration by landlords.
In 1859, there were 325,000 peasant farmers in the Congress Kingdom, 64% on private estates and 36% on state lands. Of those on private estates, who numbered 209,000,
53,000 paid money rents, 33,000 paid mixed rents and 125,000 paid labour rents. On state estates, the process of conversion to rents had gone further, but still not very developed.
Perhaps fifty per cent of peasants pay rent.
3. Political changes 1831-1855
After November revolt, process began of whittling away all institutions which gave kingdom of Poland a Polish character. The separate Polish army, the Polish university in - 11 -
Warsaw and the Constitution of 1815 were all abolished. The Constitution was replaced by the Organic Statute of 1832. This made provision for local diets but these never met.
Congress Kingdom in fact run by military administration under Paskievich.
Attempts increasingly made to bring an end to separate administration existence of
Congress Kingdom. In December 1839, the educational system placed under administration of curator of Warsaw Educational Region. This in turn dependent on St. Petersburg for orders.
In December 1841 Polish zloty replaced by Russian ruble, though Polish money continues to circulate and in the same year, the Council of State was abolished – its functions taken on by ninth and tenth Departments of the Russian Senate which was given the task of framing laws for the king and controlling Polish judiciary. In 1842 the administrative system reformed and two years later the eight provinces (województwa) into which the Kingdom was divided and which already in 1837 were referred to as ‘gubernie’ were reduced in number to five so that their size was more like that of the gubernie in the Empire. The only concession made by
Nicholas to Polish opinion was that in 1851 a Marshal of the Nobility created in each
Gubermia with right to present petitions.
II. Breakdown of Paskievich system
The situation in the Kingdom of Poland was altered completely by the defeat of Russia - 12 - in the Crimean War and the deaths of Paskievich and Nicholas I. Reform needed in Russia.
Meant that a less aggressive policy towards the rest of Europe had to be pursued. Uneasy entente with France of March 1859 further compels changes in Polish policy. In addition, if reforms to be implemented in Russia, Poland had to be kept quiet.
This new atmosphere was only to be found in Russian Poland. The disappointments of
1848 had been deeply felt in Poznania and Galicia. and the same lessons drawn. Defeatism pervaded the educated classes here and new forms of collaborationist politics became the order of the day. But in the Tsarist Empire absence of personal experience of defeat and after
1856 belief that Tsarist authority could be forced to release its hold upon Poland encourages growth of revolutionary feeling.
April 1856 new viceroy appointed. He was Prince Michael Gorchakov, former commander-in-chief at Sevastopol. Tsar Alexander himself comes to Warsaw in May 1856 and makes speech to marshals of nobility. General spirit conciliatory, though he warns listeners against political illusions. (Point de reveries, messieurs)
Gorchakov began his rule with important concessions In November 1856, a new archbishop of Warsaw was appointed and in June 1857 a Medical school of university status was established in Warsaw. In November of that year the government agreed to foundation of an Agricultural Society. This largely concerned with technical and economic problems of agriculture, but it also provided an institution in which members of Polish landowning class could meet and discuss wider problems of a social or political nature.
The Polish political elite was divided into two main groups: The moderates were concentrated in the Agricultural Society and their effective leader was its President, Andrzej
Zamojski. His character: ‘I smell Poland in the air.’ ‘Aimons-nous;’ ‘Oui; chacun chez soi.’ - 13 -
His policy was to cooperate with the Russian government to obtain social and economic reforms and to keep nationalist demands back for the time being.
The second group were the Radicals, whose main strength to be found in towns, particularly Warsaw. They were not content to wait and wanted anted social and economic reforms more radical than those desired by Zamoyski. Above all, they were Polish nationalists
– would be content with nothing less than the recognition of Polish independence. In 1859 there were a number of radical groups, whose main strength among the intelligentsia, including the university students and the young army officers.
The different groups were in touch with each other and by beginning of 1860 there was an embryonic radical leadership whose aim was to prevent a reconciliation between the
Russian government and the Polish moderates and to compromise official reform programme by instigating public disorder. The radicals even had some support in the Agricultural
Society.
III. Development of Situation to January 1863
In February 1861, there were two big demonstrations in Warsaw, the first in commemoration of Battle of Grochów of 1831 and the second in memory of two Polish revolutionaries executed in 1833 and 1839. On the second occasion violence erupted and five people were killed. (This was the famous occasion on which a young Jew, Adam Lande, picked up the large cross which was being carried at the head of the procession when the man carrying it was shot and was himself killed). Public indignation forced Agricultural Society to sponsor an address to Tsar containing political demands. This handed to Gorchakov on 28 - 14 -
February by Zamoyski and the Archbishop of Warsaw.
The Tsar rejected the address, but let it be known that he was considering a programme of reforms. These were revealed in March, when Marquis Alexander Wielopolski appointed to a newly created post of Head of a Commission of Religion and Education.
Wielopolski’s character. Educated outside Poland. Believed that it was useless to struggle for Polish independence. Had no use for empty patriotic gestures. Accepted fact of Russian rule. Aimed at making it more tolerable.
His policy was firstly to set up Polish governmental institutions somewhat similar to those of former Organic Statute of 1832, to ensure full equality for Jews and to adopt a land policy based on conversion to money rents. He had the support in this policy of Gorchakov and Alexander II.
But the Polish landowning class refused him their cooperation. Policy would have suited their class interests. But most devoted patriots among them objected to any cooperation with the Russians unless at least Lithuania brought under same system as
Congress Kingdom. In addition the moderates, whatever their true beliefs as to what was politically possible, were too frightened of the indignation of the radicals to commit themselves
Zamoyski the outstanding case. ‘He was against nationalist agitation, but he was also unwilling to besmirch his reputation as a Polish patriot by helping Wielopolski.’(Leslie) His passive attitude contributed largely to the tragedy which followed. This is well described in
Stefan Kieniewicz’s, Między ugodą a revolucją.
Wielopolski’s land policy was conversion to money rents. The Agricultural Society, under pressure from radicals now commits itself, if with little enthusiasm to conversion to - 15 - freeholds.
As the political situation became more tense, on 6 April 1861, Wielopolski decided to dissolve the society. On the following two days, the radicals organized large street demonstrations in Warsaw ostensibly to honour Zamoyski and the society. On second day, crowds misunderstood or ignored instructions to disperse. Russian troops fired. Number of dead, officially reported at 10, estimated by some observers as nearly 200.
Wielopolski pressed ahead with programme. On 4 May 1861 a Decree provided for conversion to money rents at rates which his advisory committee of landlords considered too favourable to peasants. Implementation left to rural district councils, to be elected on a qualified franchise. In practice of total rural population of 13.5 million, electorate to be about
25,000.
Elections held in September. Radicals urged voters to boycott, but Zamoyski favoured voting. 4/5ths of those qualified vote. Of 615 rural district seats, 457 go to landlords, only 7 to peasants.
Wielopolski also set up new political institutions. A system of self-government to be established at rural city and province levels. A central Council of State to be the highest authority under the Viceroy. Consisted of members of Administration Council together with persons nominated by viceroy, bishops, provincial councils and the Land Credit Society.
In May, Gorchakov died and was replaced after an interval by Count Charles
Lambert.
In October, the Catholic Archbishop of Warsaw died. His funeral was made the occasion for a demonstration. This was followed five days later by a provocative demonstration in favour of the reunion of Lithuania and Poland On 15 October another - 16 - demonstration was held, this time in commemoration of death of Kościuszko. On this occasion, church services turned into something like sit-in strike with congregations singing
Polish patriotic hymns and refusing to leave the buildings . Eventually Russian troops forcibly cleared the churches and a state of siege declared in Warsaw.
Administration of Diocese of Warsaw now declares that all churches would remain closed until government gave satisfaction for its sacrilegious action. Thus not only radicals, but also Catholic Church were in direct conflict with Wielopolski, who was now recalled to
St. Petersburg for consultations. In the meantime, General Sukhozanet ruled Poland by martial law.
During the following months, Polish moderates established a political organization with a directory of six persons. They became known as the ‘Whites.’ Most efficient member was businessman Leopold Kronenberg, a convert from the Jewish to the Catholic faith, who could at least place funds at their disposal.
Radicals also set up a central command known as the City Committee (Komitet
Miejski) Effective leader was Jarosław Dąbrowski, an officer trained and serving in Russian
Army who was posted at Warsaw in February 1862
After months of indecision, Tsar decides to make another attempt to win Polish support. On 19 May 1862 Agrees to new programme proposed by Wielopolski. Strongly supported by Tsar’s liberal-minded brother, Grand Duke Constantine, who was appointed viceroy.
The radicals were now determined to prevent any reforms and any Polish-Russian reconciliation. On 3 June, a workman named Jaroszyński makes an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Grand Duke. Two attempts were also made on the life of Wielopolski and on - 17 - that of the Grand Duke on 7 and 15 August.
Constantine decided that reforms should go ahead. He made a rather good impression on public. But Wielopolski, believing that severity was essential, insisted that would-be assassins should be executed. This caused population indignation which was exploited by he radicals. For his part, Zamoyski remained studiously aloof refusing to provide any public encouragement to government
Wielopolski now introduced two important reforms, a law on public education, which provided a more extensive system of Polish schools and a University (Szkoła Glowna) in
Warsaw and a law conferring full equality to the Jews of the Kingdom. The Jews were, in fact,the beneficiaries of a three-way struggle for their support. While the Polish opposition aimed to enlist them for the anti-tsarist insurrection they were planning, Wielopolski sought to make use of them in the restructuring of Polish society which he envisaged. They could form a significant part of the middle class in the more healthy Polish society he aimed to foster, in which rural society would also be transformed on the English or Prussian model. This version of ‘organic work’ would create a society much more able, even without political independence, of maintaining itself and defending its interests. The Russian central government in Saint Petersburg was alarmed by the growing fraternization between Poles and
Jews and sought to win over the Jews (as it was later to attempt with the peasantry) in order to weaken the hold of the Polish revolutionaries on the Kingdom of Poland.
This fraternatization was certainly a feature of the years immediately preceding the
Polish insurrection of January 1863. Jews participated in many anti-Russian protests of those years. Following the demonstrations of 25 and 27 February 1861, which led to the deaths of five protesters, two of them Jews, a city delegation was elected of twelve leading citizens of - 18 -
Warsaw. It included the Chief Rabbi Dov Ber Meisels, who had also participated in the 1848 revolution in Krakow. The next day Meisels went to the palace of the leading Polish reformer,
Count Andrzej Zamoyski, to sign an address to the Tsar calling for the restoration of the
‘rights of the Polish nation’. Zamoyski spoke of the ‘Old Testament Believers’ (a Polish nineteenth century term for Jews) as ‘our countrymen and brothers, the children of one land’, while Meisels replied, ‘And we too feel that we are Poles and we love the Polish land as you do’ (chapter 7, p. 000). Both Meisels and Rabbi Jastrow of the Nalewki synagogue also took part in the funeral of the five victims, which became another major political demonstration.
Meisels himself issued an appeal to the Jews of Poland. He reminded them of the persecution they had experienced in the Kingdom at the hand of the Viceroy, Mukhanov, whom he compared to Haman. The Poles, he claimed, had made clear their desire to grant the Jews equal rights; it was the duty of the Jews to support the Polish national movement. Władysław
Mickiewicz, the son of the poet, wrote of the Jews of Warsaw in a letter on 2 July 1861:
The Jews here are the best in all of Poland. They sing national anthems in the synagogues. The sermons that are delivered there concerning love of the fatherland unite Poles and Jews in a single emotion, and the thought that Poland will arise awakens in the Jews the hope that their exile is coming to an end. A certain rabbi when asked what he wanted for his coreligionists answered: that they should be forbidden to buy land, as they should hold themselves in readiness for the return to Jerusalem.’
This was the background to the acceptance by the Tsarist government of
Wielopolski’s views on the ‘Jewish question. As a consequence, on 4 June 1862, the viceroy abolished all the main restrictions on Jewish activity, in effect establishing the Jews as equal citizens. The new status of the Jews was confirmed by the underground National Government created after the outbreak of the insurrection in January 1863. In a proclamation of 22 June - 19 -
1863 addressed to ‘Brother Poles of the Mosaic Faith’, affirmed in somewhat archaic language:
You and your children will enjoy all civil rights without exceptions and restrictions, while the National Government will ask, not about faith or descent, but about place of birth; Are you a Pole? And they will say about Poland… ‘that this man was born there, Selah’ (psalm 87:6).
The changes introduced by Wielopolski did not win over his opponents and as a result he decided to take strong action. In order to force the moderates to cooperate, he banished
Zamoyski abroad. In addition, he declared his intention of conscripting young Poles into army, in order to deprive radicals of young men.
The conscription decree brought the Polish crisis to its climax. In the autumn months, large number of young men, knowing that they would be called up, went into hiding.
Radicals now generally know as the ‘Reds’ set up provincial commands for armed rebellion.
The town committee in Warsaw turned itself into a central committee to plan the insurrection.
It suffered a severe loss when Dąbrowski arrested at end of August 1862, but went ahead with plans. Date pushed forward by governments decision to speed up as conscription measure. Rebellion breaks out on 22 January.
IV. The January Insurrection and its Consequences
1. The Insurrection
The rebellion lasted more than a year. In contrast to war of 1831, no large-scale battles between armies took place. Poles held no large cities. In various parts of country, insurgent bands were active. Landowners usually supported them, from a mixture of patriotic enthusiasm and fear of being thought unpatriotic. Peasants’ reaction was variable. Land - 20 - reform proposals of leading of rebellion which involved substantial compensation to landholders for land converted to peasant freeholds made little impression on them. In some places, peasants gave insurgents active support, in others, helped Russians against them.
There were easier of terrorization and even of execution of peasants by Insurgent commanders. Attitude of the Jews similar to that of peasants.
Outside the Congress Kingdom, rebellion received some support in Lithuania, but virtually none in Kiev region. Polish provinces of Austria and Prussia remain quiet, although there was great sympathy for Polish cause. The sympathy expressed for Poles in France and
England probably on balance harmed the Poles, for it allowed the Polish exiles to hope that the Western powers would go to war against Russia on their behalf. Optimistic messages for the exiles probably caused rebellion to last longer than it need, and increased total amount of suffering.
The political leadership of rebellion not impressive. True that conditions of struggle were difficult and that the maintenance of communication between conspiratorial groups never easy. Even so, rivalries and intrigues between Whites and Reds and in each of these groups form an unedifying story. Redeemed by courage of countless individuals, including the last leader of the rebellion, Romuald Traugutt who was executed on 5 August 1864
Could rebellion have succeeded?
2. Aftermath of rebellion
Rebellion repressed with special severity in Lithuania. Here, of course, legal position different in that the area was an integral part of Russia. Thus any inhabitants who rose were guilty of treason. May 1863 Count Nikolai Muraviev appointed Governor-General in - 21 -
Lithuania. Grand-Duke Constantine continued to plead for leniency in Congress Kingdom.
Tsar inclined the other way and Constantine, whose health was poor, withdrew from Polish affairs.
New commander-in-chief in Warsaw General Fyodor (or Theodor) Berg began moderately but after an unsuccessful attempt on his life in September 1863 he was more severe. Executions and confiscation of property.
Russian government also settles land question. August 1863 Nikolai Milyutin appointed head of a commission to carry out land reform. Took with him his old friends from emancipation period, Yuri Samarin and Prince Cherkasky.
Samarin a pan-Slav. His views on the ‘Polish Question’. According to him, Poland was a traitor to the Slavic family, because she had become ‘Westernized’ and ‘Latinized.’ He wrote: ‘Poland is a sharp wedge which Romanism has thrust into the very heart of the Slavic world with the aim of shattering it into bits.’ Samarin elaborated a detailed program of how to deal with Poland. He distinguished three elements in the ‘Polish Question’: the Polish people as a national concept, the Polish state as a political concept, and ‘Polonism’ as a cultural concept. He attributed the strength of the Poles to a fusion of those three elements and advised
Russia to separate them. While the right to a national life should not be denied the Poles, a separate Polish state could not be tolerated, and ‘Polonism,’ as a Latin culture, foreign to the
Slavic spirit, should be destroyed. The Pan-Slavists – Samarin, Aksakov, Pogodin – further distinguished two components within ‘Polonism’,: ‘the people’ and ‘society.’ For them, the only true Slavs in Poland were the peasants, while ‘society,’ composed of the gentry, the
Catholic clergy, the Westernized intelligentsia, and the urban middle class, should be suppressed by every possible means as a true enemy. - 22 -
March 1864 settlement decided on. About 700,000 Polish peasant families obtain freeholds while maintaining their right to use forests and pasture land. Paid no redemption dues. Government paid compensation to landowners on much less favourable terms than
Russian landowners had received in 1861. Whole cost covered in land tax levied on owners of land. About 130,000 holdings also created out of state lands for landless peasants.
Reorganization of local administration which followed land reform differed from that of 1861 in Russia. Unit of government the rural commune (gmina) Included all inhabitants, landowners, as well as peasants. No legal separation of peasants from other inhabitants as under Russian volost system.
Aim of government to win over peasants and destroy power of Polish nationalism.
True that peasants got better terms than under Wielopolski’s reforms and even the ‘land decree’ of insurrection of 1 March 1863. But peasants not won over. Russification begins.
‘The victory of 1864 was in the long run of empty advantage for the Russian government. It destroyed the one justification that might have been advanced that the Russian bureaucracy protected. Polish peasants from the manor. In future, the peasants would seek relief from the pressure of Polish officialism…’ (Leslie) The inevitable consequence was that the only way by which a Russian government could transform a Pole into a loyal citizen was to convert him into a Russian. From 1864 the process of Russification began.