The Napoleonic Period and After

The Poles in Russia.

All self-government in Congress Po land was suppressed in 1863 ; all education was Russified in 1869, justice in 1873. On the other hand, the abolition in 1851 of the customs frontier between Russia and Poland had laid the founda tion for an extraordinary industrial expansion : Russian Poland became the chief industrial region for all Russia. Its vast market in agricultural Russia was protected against Western competition by high tariffs; the Russian Government took every possible measure (such as the introduction of specially favourable rail way tariffs) to assist this expansion. The Poles, being excluded from State service in their own country, busied themselves with productive occupations, and the upper and middle classes achieved a well-being far superior to anything enjoyed by their cousins in Galicia. A second result of this expansion was the growth in Congress Poland of a large and radical proletariat which made common cause with the Russian Social Democratic movement. In the country districts, the agrarian policy of the Russian Gov ernment was e71pressly calculated to stir up ill-feeling between the Polish peasants, whom the Government demonstratively took under their protection, and the country gentry, whom it was determined to punish in every way for the leading part they had played in the insurrections. The peasant of Russian Poland offi cially got his freedom from the tsar in 1864. Each peasant, what ever his tenure had been, and the mass of the landless proletariat, became freeholders. The landlords received compensation in the form of Russian Treasury bonds, which stood far below par, and the peasants got the right to use the landlords' pastures and woods.

In the sphere of education, the most thoroughgoing system of Russification set in after 1863. All the revived Polish schools of the Wielopolski period were made Russian again, including the University of Warsaw, and no effort was spared to produce in the minds of youth a distorted image of Poland's past. Secret patriotic education, however, counteracted this policy successfully both in town and country; and private Polish schools, struggling against great difficulties, kept the great Polish cultural tradition alive.

The civil government of Russian Poland was reorganized strictly on the model of the rest of the Russian empire, the Poles being debarred, however, from certain liberal institutions which the Russians by that time possessed, such as municipal self-govern ment and trial by jury. The Russian language was made com pulsory in all official relations, and at a later time even in the records of private institutions. A corrupt Russian bureaucracy filled all Government offices, a severe censorship strangled every free utterance of the nation in the press and in literature, and a drastic police regime kept the prisons filled with political offenders.

After Russia's defeat in the Japanese war of 1904, the out break of a revolution in 1905 kindled all Polish hopes once more. A constitution was granted to Russia, and 36 Polish deputies sat in the first Russian parliament. A certain measure of freedom in the educational field was obtained and eagerly used for the f ounda tion of new schools by a Warsaw society called "the Mother of Schools" (Macierz Szkolna). The peasants of Russian Poland spontaneously introduced the Polish language in their self-govern ing bodies. In the Duma itself, the Liberals were not averse to granting Poland a large measure of autonomy within Russia. At the same time, persecution in Prussian Poland increased under Billow, while the Ukrainian national movement, developing in Austrian Poland especially since the grant of universal suffrage in 1907, was unwelcome both to Poles and Russians. Under these circumstances, Russian propaganda, reviving the Pan-Slav ideals of 3o years ago, could count on some success even among the Poles. There were gestures of reconciliation at two Slav congresses, in 1908 and 191o, the Czechs willingly acting as mediators. The idea of uniting all Poles with autonomy within the Russian empire was widely preached : it became the programme of the national Democratic, or all-Polish, party, led by Roman Dmowski, the head of the Polish representation in the Duma.

Opposite to Dmowski and the followers whom he found even among Austrian Poles, there stood the irreconcilable revolution aries, led by Joseph Pilsudski. Both the insurrectionary move ments started by Pilsudski in 19o5, and the Constitutional en deavours of Dmowski and his friends in the Duma, were soon stifled by the Russian reaction of the Stolypin period. Pilsudski was obliged to flee to Galicia, and began to organize active resis tance to Russia from that base. In the Duma, the Polish repre sentation was lowered from 36 to io deputies. In the country, all the liberties gained after 1905 soon disappeared. The Govern ment's purchase of the railway line from Warsaw to the Austrian frontier resulted in the removal of all Polish railway-men from the service and was a great blow to the Polish element. In 1912 the separation of the district of Cheim, in the south-east of Russian Poland, from the body of the province and its incorporation in Russia proper was received with indignant protests by Polish opinion as a new division of Poland.