The reign of the new tsar Alexander II. began with certain concessions to Poland in the political and educational field. Exiles were allowed to re turn, administrative pressure was lightened, the Church was pro pitiated, an "Agricultural Society" was allowed to be formed and to discuss important affairs of the community, a medical faculty, and later on, a complete university, was re-established in Warsaw. Finally even, a Polish council of State and a Polish administrative apparatus for the kingdom began to be organized. In their later stages, these reforms were the work of count Alexander Wielo polski, who was installed in high office, and stood for a national policy of loyal union with Russia. But his autocratic temper lost him the sympathies of the moderate elements of the gentry; whilst, on the ardent minds of the young, Wielopolski's methods acted like fuel heaped on fire. Religious ceremonies were used as the occasion for demonstrative political processions, there were collisions with the Russian troops, and victims fell in the streets of Warsaw. Wielopolski had the unhappy idea of causing the revolutionary youth of the cities to be recruited en masse for the Russian Army; the plan became known, numbers of the young people fled into the forests, and a Revolutionary committee, on Jan. 22, 1863, started an ill-prepared insurrection.
The struggle of the ill-equipped and ill-organized insurgent bands against the Russian garrisons in the country dragged on in the form of guerrilla warfare throughout the country for nearly two years. A secret National Government was set up in Warsaw, the movement spread successfully into Lithuania, and the insur rection occupied the diplomatic attention of Western Europe. But the assistance promised by Napoleon III. never became effective; the rising was crushed; wholesale executions, confisca tions and deportations followed its suppression, and Poland was now definitely turned into a Russian province.
After the insurrection of 1831, no remnant of Poland's inde pendent political existence had been left except the minute city republic of Cracow, created by the Congress of Vienna. For 3o years, this miniature state led a flourishing existence. When the fermeAt of the approaching European revolution of 1848 was stirring most continental countries to their depths, there were active preparations for another rising both in Austrian and Prussian Poland. For Austria the menace was diverted by a huge peasant revolt in Galicia, which led to a massacre of thousands of landowners by the peasantry. At the same time, Austria availed herself of the unrest among her Poles to obtain the consent of Russia and Prussia to the suppression of the city republic of Cracow. But it was only in 1848, amidst the thunders of the "springtide of nations," that Cracow was finally occupied by Austria and incorporated into Galicia.
After the disaster of 1863, the Poles of Prussian, Austrian and Russian Poland developed along such widely different lines that there is, for the next 6o years, little unity left in Poland's national history. Certain features, however, are common to the life of the three sections of the nation during this period. The gentry, shat tered by the insurrectionary disasters, ceases to be the dominant class in the community ; the professional intelligentsia of the towns swelled by influxes from the ruined gentry assumes that part ; and gradually, towards the end of the 19th century, the peasant masses, now fully enfranchised, rise into importance.
The regime in Prussian Poland during the first 15 years after the Congress of Vienna had been endurable. A Polish nobleman related by marriage to the Prussian dynasty— Prince Radziwill—was appointed lieutenant-governor of the prov ince; there was a provincial assembly and local representative bodies both urban and rural. The landowners were allowed to or
ganize for economic purposes, and the peasants were fully en franchised in 1823. After the insurrection of 1830, a period of more oppressive government by a German provincial president, Flottwell, set in ; he revived Frederick the Great's method of Ger man colonization of the Polish province; and he began to Ger manize the administration and the si.hool system. A period of new concessions to the Poles, under Frederick William IV., was inter rupted by the revolution of 1846-48. The constitution with which Prussia emerged from the revolution put an end to the self government of Prussian Poland. Another interval of relaxation, in the first years of William I., was soon succeeded by the period of Bismarck's and Billow's resolutely anti-Polish policy—char acterized by the Kulturkampf, the "Colonizing Committee," the Wrzegnia scandal, the schools' strike, the Expropriation bill and the like, for an account of which see POZNAN. The result of the Prussian methods was to create a sturdy class of peasants and small bourgeoisie, disciplined and economically and culturally advanced; and a fellow-feeling arose between the peasants and the 4andowning gentry, such as was hardly known in other parts of Poland.
Austria, under the old autocratic regime, had oppressed its Polish province politically and exploited it economically in the most ruthless fashion, till the revolution of 1848 brought a change. But not until the defeat of Austria, by Prussia in 1866 was it realized at Vienna that only a more lib eral policy could hold the tottering, mixed monarchy together. The relation with Hungary having been placed on a federal foot ing, concessions had to he granted to the strong Polish element in Austria. The Poles became a dominant nationality in the Aus trian empire. The numerical strength of the group of Polish deputies in the Vienna parliament was such that no Austrian Gov vernment could be formed without it. Galicia (as Austrian Poland was officially called), containing a large Ruthenian element in its Eastern half, was granted a special minister to represent its inter ests in the Vienna cabinet. It also got a provincial legislative as sembly and a governor, who was invariably appointed from the ranks of the Polish aristocracy. With purely Polish administra tion schools and courts of law, Galicia became indeed almost an independent Polish State within Austria, and successfully defied the centralizing efforts of the Vienna bureaucracy. The Polish landowning class, who practically governed the country for the next few decades, managed its affairs in a onesidedly agrarian spirit : the interests of the towns were not properly considered, hardly any attention was given to the development of industries, and Galicia remained economically backward. Even its oilfields were largely developed by foreign capital. On the other hand, political and cultural activities had more scope than in the two other parts of Poland : Galicia became the "Piedmont" of the Polish national movement, and Cracow, with its old university and new Academy of Sciences, an intellectual, artistic and literary centre for the whole nation. With the growth of a new educated class, and the introduction of universal suffrage in Austria (1896) the social structure of the country began to change, its politics were strongly democratized, new economic tendencies got the upper hand, and Galicia was at last on the road of material ad vance when the World War began.