Russification of Poland

Created on the basis of agreements reached at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 , the kingdom of Poland enjoyed wide autonomy under the supreme authority of the Russian emperor . It had its own constitution , which was one of the most liberal in Europe, which provided for, inter alia, freedom of speech and religious tolerance , as well as a bicameral parliament ( Sejm ). The Kingdom of Poland had its own legislation, administrative and judicial system, armed forces, monetary unit and customs territory. The head of state was the Russian emperor, who had the title of king (king) of Poland. The Kingdom of Poland was actually in personal union with the Russian Empire.

However, as early as the 1820s , during the period when the commander-in-chief of the Polish army and the de facto governor of Poland was the commander-in-chief of Poland, the process of restricting the country's autonomy began. Konstantin Pavlovich’s conflicts with the Polish Sejm ^[1] , his disregard for the constitution, repressions against Polish liberals, and the substitution of Russians in the highest administration for Russians caused widespread outrage and growing discontent with the Russian authorities in Poland ^[2] . This resulted in the spontaneous November Uprising of 1830 , which in 1831 was defeated by the Russian army. After the suppression of the uprising, in 1832 , instead of the abolished Constitution ^[3] , the Organic Statute of the Polish Kingdom ^{[4 ]} was issued, which sharply limited Poland’s independence: the Polish Sejm and individual Polish armed forces were abolished, and the Polish Kingdom was declared an integral part of the Russian Empire ^{[ 5]} . The process of eliminating the national characteristics of the judicial and administrative system has begun. In 1837 , the provincial structure was introduced instead of the Polish voivodships ^[6] , then the Russian monetary system and the system of weights and measures were extended to Poland. In 1839 , a separate department for education and education was abolished, the University of Warsaw ^{[7] [8]} and the Society of Friends of Science were closed, the number of gymnasiums was reduced ^[9] . Censorship sharply increased, the books of Adam Mickiewicz , Juliusz Slowacki and a number of other Polish poets and writers were banned ^[10] . Many leaders of the national movement and culture were forced to emigrate from Poland (“The Great Emigration ” ^[11] ).

With the accession of Alexander II, the policy of the Russian Empire in Poland was substantially liberalized. The martial law was abolished, censorship was relaxed, the activities of cultural, educational and economic societies were permitted. Among the Poles, a movement began to develop for cooperation with Russia, especially in solving social and economic problems. The Agricultural Society of Andrzej Zamoysky ^[12] , who worked on reforming agrarian relations and technology and rejected political demands, gained great influence. The liquidation in 1851 of the customs border between the Kingdom of Poland and Russia ^[13] gave a strong impetus to the development of Polish industry.

The radical opposition was concentrated mainly in emigration and among students. From 1861 , the Central National Committee of Yaroslav Dombrovsky ^[14] , who established wide connections both in the kingdom of Poland and in Europe and Russia, became the head of the radical camp. The growth of the national movement and unrest among Polish peasants in connection with the peasant reform in Russia forced the Russian government to make certain concessions: in 1861 the State Council of the Kingdom of Poland was restored, a special commission for education and religion was created, headed by one of the leaders Polish Conservatives Alexander Velepolsky , who in 1862 was even appointed head of the civil administration of Poland. On February 25, 1861 , a decree was issued on replacing corvee with the monetary chinna ^[15] , which caused discontent of the Polish nobility. Also, Jews were equalized in civil rights and provided opportunities to expand the study of the Polish language and culture in schools. At the same time, on April 6, 1861 , the Agricultural Society was closed, and a demonstration in Warsaw, organized by the radicals, was shot by the troops. A number of secret revolutionary societies were crushed, and Dombrowski was arrested. Nevertheless, the ferment continued, the viceroy of Poland, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich and Velepolsky were assassinated ^{[16] [17]} . In response, it was decided to recruit Polish youth by special lists. This triggered an uprising on January 22, 1863 , which quickly spread throughout Poland.

The January Uprising of 1863-1864 It was the last armed action of the Poles against the Russian authorities in the XIX century. Despite the fact that wide sections of the Polish nobility and intellectuals participated in it, the peasantry as a whole remained passive. Clashes with the Russian army had the character of a partisan war , and by September 1864 the insurgency was completely suppressed ^[18] . More than 18 thousand people were exiled to Siberia , about 400 were executed. In total, about 70 thousand people were deported from Poland to other regions of the empire. At the disposal of the treasury was a huge amount of confiscated land and other property of the participants in the uprising. At the same time, the Russian government was forced to go for a fundamental reform of agrarian relations ^[19] : according to the law of February 19, 1864 , Polish peasants received personal freedom, the right to own their plots without redemption, and the rights to use pastures and forests were preserved.

The suppression of the January Uprising gave impetus to the development of a policy of eliminating the autonomy of the kingdom of Poland and the closer integration of Poland into the Russian Empire. Since the basis of the Polish opposition was the nobility, the first step of the government was to remove the nobility from influence at the local and central level. In 1864 , a reform of local government was carried out, sharply reducing the proportion of nobility in local government. In the western provinces of Russia, where Polish nobility dominated, an intensive russification program began under the leadership of M. N. Muravyov , governor of the North-Western Territory: church books were banned from using the Polish language in schools, administration, commercial correspondence and public places. in Polish, the Poles were ousted from public institutions ^[20] . At the same time, the spread of Orthodoxy was encouraged and the Catholic Church was infringed, in particular, Catholics were forbidden to hold public office ^[21] . A well-known (distorted) quotation by Ivan Petrovich Kornilov regarding the national self-consciousness of the Polish nobility and the Polish language: “ What the Russian bayonet did not finish — the Russian official, the Russian school and the Russian pop will finish ” ^{[22] [23]} .

In the lands of the Polish kingdom, Russification was more cautious. A contribution was made to landowners in the amount of 10% of the income of their land, which contributed to the decline of the economic power of the Polish nobility. A special role was played by the policy of unifying the system of government of the kingdom of Poland with the rest of the Russian Empire. In 1867 , the Provision on the provincial and district administration was approved, in accordance with which the number of provinces in the country was increased from 5 to 10. In 1866 - 1871 . Poland’s unified government bodies — the State Council, the Administrative Council, government commissions, and the Executive Committee — were abolished. In 1874, the institute of governorship was abolished, and all power was transferred to the Warsaw Governor-General . The Kingdom of Poland as an autonomous state unit actually ceased to exist, and it became customary to call Polish territories "provinces of the Kingdom of Poland."
Similar measures were taken in the sphere of legislation: in 1866 the Russian criminal code was extended to Poland, in 1875 the legal proceedings were translated into Russian.

In the late 1860s . Russification from administrative law has spread to the field of education. In 1869 , the Main Warsaw School was closed, on the basis of which the Imperial University of Warsaw was established ^[24] , the teaching was now conducted in Russian. Teaching in all other state institutions of higher and secondary education in Poland was also translated into Russian. Only in the lower school preserved learning in Polish. At the same time, an attack on Catholicism was going on: the teaching of Catholic dogma in schools was forbidden, in 1875 the Greek Catholic Church was liquidated, the Uniates were forced to convert to Orthodoxy . The position of the Catholic Church in Poland improved somewhat after the beginning of the pontificate of Leo XIII , a supporter of rapprochement with the Russian emperor, and the conclusion in 1884 of an agreement between Russia and the Vatican .

In Poland, office work was finally translated into Russian by 1875 , although Polish was still used in schools for religious teaching, as well as throughout oral communication and private correspondence.

The policy of Russification in Poland in the short term brought some success: the radical opposition was defeated, the majority of Polish society came to realize the impossibility of gaining independence in the near future and the need to cooperate with the Russian authorities. The current problems of education and modernization of the economy came to the fore. As a result, at the end of the 19th century , the ideas of positivism , political realism and " organic work " for the benefit of the country gained dominant influence in the Polish national movement. But already in the second half of the 1880s, the national movement began to acquire political overtones: the new generation of Polish youth was not satisfied with the ideas of "organic work" and again raised demands for the restoration of the independence of the Polish kingdom. This change was largely due to the deepening of the Russification of the Polish education system and carried out in the Western Polish lands, which were part of Prussia , the policy of " cultural culture ". By the time the return to political struggle coincided with the publication of the historical trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz (1884–1888), which gave a new impulse to Polish patriotism. The basic principles and goals of the Polish radicals were formulated in 1887 in the pamphlet of Zygmunt Milkovsky , who in the same year founded the Polish League in emigration, designed to coordinate the struggle of the patriots of all parts of Poland in order to convince the governments of Russia and Germany to restore autonomy to the Polish lands.

At the same time, in fact, the martial law remained in the Kingdom of Poland; the military authorities had special powers that allowed them to interfere in the civilian life of the Polish provinces. Under Alexander III , the persecution of Polish culture intensified, censorship was tightened, and the Polish language was expelled from the administration, court, and school areas. Since the end of the 1880s, the most used names for Russian Poland have become the names “Privislinsky Krai”, “Privislinsky gubernias” and “provinces of Privislinsky krai”. School programs on history were compiled in a pro-Russian spirit, and DI Ilovaisky’s textbooks, which falsify the history of Poland, caused particular indignation of the patriots. In 1885, the language of instruction in public schools was declared the Russian language. At the same time, the number of educational institutions was reduced, with the result that by the end of the 19th century, Poland was one of the most recent places in the Russian Empire in terms of literacy.

To fight against Russification in the late 1880s - 1890s, secret educational institutions began to be established, which taught the Polish language, history and culture. The network of secret schools quickly covered the whole of Poland, and even the secret Flying University in Warsaw was created, constantly changing the classroom where leading Polish scholars taught history, science, philosophy, philology and other disciplines. By 1901, the secret education system covered almost 1/3 of the country's population. At the same time, the influence of secret groups and organizations, primarily the Zet youth movement, which, in addition to enlightening and printing underground literature, were engaged in the preparation of an armed uprising, intensified. In 1894, after a mass demonstration of Polish patriots in Warsaw, a large police action was carried out, as a result of which many members of secret societies were arrested, but already in 1898 the Zet was restored under the leadership of the League of the People , led by Roman Dmovsky .

The accession to the Russian throne of Nicholas II revived hopes for the liberalization of Russia's policy towards Poland. In 1897, the emperor visited Warsaw, where he consented to the establishment of the Polytechnic University and the installation of a monument to Mickiewicz ^[25] . Although the government refused to further deepen the policy of Russification, real shifts towards liberalization of the situation in the country also did not happen ^[26] .

At the same time, the Polish national movement continued to radicalize. In 1897, the National Democratic Party of Poland was created on the basis of the “League of the People”, although its strategic goal was to restore Poland’s independence, fought primarily against the Russification laws and for the restoration of Polish autonomy. The National Democratic Party soon became the leading political force in the Polish kingdom and took part in the activities of the Russian State Duma ( Polish Kolo faction ^[27] ). On the other hand, the Polish Socialist Party of Jozef Pilsudski , which organized a whole series of strikes and strikes at industrial enterprises of the Polish kingdom, gained increasing influence. During the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905 . Pilsudski visited Japan ^[28] , where he tried to finance the uprising in Poland and the organization of the Polish legions to participate in the war against Russia. This was opposed by the National Democrats of Roman Dmovsky. Nevertheless, Pilsudski managed to enlist the support of Japan in the purchase of weapons, and in 1904 he created the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party, which over the following years carried out dozens of terrorist attacks and attacks on Russian institutions and organizations, of which the Bezdane robbery is most known 1908 Only in 1906 , 336 Russian officials and servicemen were killed by Pilsudsky’s militants.

We did not avoid mistakes and with inept Russification of Poland.

- N.P. Durnovo: In Poland. In Lithuania // Russian Panslavist policy in the Orthodox East and in Russia ^[29]

Russification of Poland as a whole was more successful than the Russification of Finland , which was partly explained by the close affinity of the Russian and Polish peoples, as well as the closeness and clarity of Russian culture. Moreover, the Russian language in Finland, even at the time of the most intensive Russification, could not press the Swedish language that had spread in Finland in the 12th — 13th centuries.

The tsarist government managed to achieve depolonization of a number of previously polonized regions ( Lithuania , Belarus , Ukraine ), but in the provinces (voivodships), which were actually Privisly krai (with the exception of the region of Chelm , where a significant number of Ukrainians lived, and which was removed from its structure in 1912 .) The demographic majority of Poles remained unshakable and the number of Russians there was never any significant. So even local Jews better spoke Polish, despite the fact that all had Russian citizenship.

For comparison, the position of the Poles in the subordinate Prussia Grand Duchy of Poznan was much more precarious and worsened every year. Prussia ignored all the conditions of the Duchy’s autonomy and launched a policy of merciless Germanization from the beginning of the 1830s. At the same time, the proportion of Poles in the duchy decreased from 73% in 1815 to 64% in 1910 , while the share of Germans increased from 25% to 31%, Jews from 2 to 5%. The German language supplanted the Polish Duchy from all spheres of life, with the exception of everyday communication. Assimilation pressure was very high.

The most fortunate fate of the divided Poles is formed in Galicia, which was part of Austria-Hungary. Because of their relative small size, the Austrian Germans were unable to Germanize Galicia and Krakow ( Lesser Poland ), so the Poles as a nation received huge privileges here after 1880. Polish became in fact the main language of education even in the regions of compact residence of Ukrainians .

Some circles in the Russian government in 1910 became aware of the need to liberalize the administrative system in Poland and soften the Russification policy. The Russian Foreign Minister, S. D. Sazonov, made a proposal to reform the management system in Privislinsky Krai and expand local government. Since the beginning of the First World War, the Polish question has become acute. Both Russia, and Germany , and Austria-Hungary wanted to use the Poles in their own interests and sought to attract them to their side. The National Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland immediately after the start of the war declared its support for Russia. Jozef Pilsudski and his supporters took the side of Germany and began the formation of the Polish legions , who later fought against the Russian army on the side of the opponents of Russia.

On August 9, 1914 , the manifesto of Nicholas II was issued, in which the emperor promised to unite all Polish lands under the scepter of the Romanovs and the granting of independence to Poland. However, by the end of 1915 , Russian troops retreated from the territory of Poland, Poland was occupied by Germany and Austria-Hungary. To attract the Poles to their side, on August 5, 1916 , Germany issued a declaration according to which the Kingdom of Poland was created under the protectorate of Germany within the borders of the former Kingdom of Poland. Despite the promises of independence and the restoration of the Polish government, the new public education did not receive the general support of the Poles, much of which continued to focus on the Entente states. At the same time, the Provisional Government that came to power in Russia after the February Revolution on March 29, 1917 granted Poland full independence. In 1918 , Germany and Austria-Hungary were defeated, revolutionary actions began in both states. In October 1918 , the authorities of the Kingdom of Poland established control over Galicia , an uprising in Wielkopolska led to the overthrow of German power in this territory, and on November 11, 1918 , the Regent Council transferred full authority to Jozef Pilsudski . Poland’s independence has been restored.

• Russian language in Poland
• Polonization
• History of Poland
• Germanization of Poles in Prussia
• Germanization of Poland
• Russophobia in Poland
• Polish Constitution of 1815
• Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1921

• Constitutional Charter of the Kingdom of Poland in 1815 .
• The Manifesto of 1832 on the new order of government of the Kingdom of Poland
• Regulation of 1866 on the provincial and district administration in the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland

• History of Poland. - M., 1954.
• Tymovskiy M., Kenevich J., Holzer E. History of Poland. - M., 2004. ISBN 5-7777-0294-5 .
• The World History. New time
• Melkov A.S. The influence of Russian Orthodoxy on the policy of Russification of Kholm region in the XIX - early XX centuries. // Studia Humanitatis. 2016. № 1. URL: http://st-hum.ru/node/389 .