THE HISTORY OF POLAND SINCE 1863

SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES
Editorial Board
J O H N BARBER, A R C H I E BROWN, K. DAWISHA, M. KASER,
DAVID LANE, MARY MCAULEY, A. NOVE, A. PRAVDA,
G. H. N. SETON-WATSON

The National Association for Soviet and East European
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SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES
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A. Boltho Foreign Trade Criteria in Socialist Economies
Sheila Fitzpatrick The Commissariat of Enlightenment
P. Wiles, ed. The Prediction of Communist Economic Performance
Galia Golan The Czechoslovak Reform Movement
Naum Jasny Soviet Economists of the Twenties
Asha L. Datar India s Economic Relations with the USSR and Eastern Europe, 19 J3-1969
T. M. Podolski Socialist Banking and Monetary Control
Rudolf Bicanic Economic Policy in Socialist Yugoslavia
G. Hosking The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Government and Duma 1907—14
A. Teichova An Economic Background to Munich

J. Ciechanowski The Warsaw Rising of1944
Edward A. Hewett Foreign Trade Prices in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
Daniel F. Calhoun The United Front: the TUC and the Russians 1923-28
Galia Golan Yom Kippur and After: the Soviet Union and the Middle East Crisis
Maureen Perrie The Agrarian Policy of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party from its origins
through the revolution of 190j-1907
Gabriel Gorodetsky The Precarious Truce: Anglo-Soviet Relations 1924—2/
Paul Vysny Neo-Slavism and the Czechs 1S9S-1914
James Riordan Sport in Soviet Society: Development of Sport and Physical Education in Russia
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Gregory Walker Soviet Book Publishing Policy
Felicity Ann O'Dell Socialisation through Children's Literature: The Soviet Example
Stella Alexander Church and State in Yugoslavia since 194;
Sheila Fitzpatrick Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921—1934
T. H. Rigby Lenin's Government: Sovnarkom 1917-1922
M. Cave Computers and Economic Planning: The Soviet Experience
Jozef M. van Brabant Socialist Economic Integration: Aspects of Contemporary Economic
Problems in Eastern Europe
R. F. Leslie, ed. The History of Poland since 1863
M. R. Myant Socialism and Democracy in Chechoslovakia, 194j—1948
Blair A. Ruble Soviet Trade Unions: Their Development in the 1970s
Angela Stent From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German-Soviet
Relations 19JJ-1980
Jean Woodall The Socialist Corporation and Technocratic Power: The Polish United Workers'
Party, Industrial Organisation and Workforce Control, 19J8—80
William J. Conyngham The Modernisation of Soviet Industrial Management: Socioeconomic
Development and the Search for Viability


The History of Poland

since 1863
R. F. LESLIE
ANTONY POLONSKY
JAN M. CIECHANOWSKI
Z. A. PELCZYNSKI
EDITED BY R. F. LESLIE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
LONDON

NEW YORK
MELBOURNE

NEW ROCHELLE
SYDNEY


Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP
32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA
296 Beaconsfield Parade, Middle Park, Melbourne 3206, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1980
First published 1980
First paperback edition, with epilogue, 1983
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry title:
The History of Poland since 1863.
(Soviet and East European studies)

Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Poland - History - 20th century. 2. Poland History - 1864-1918. I. Leslie, R. F. II. Series.
DK4382.H57 943.8 78-73246
ISBN o 521 22645 7 hard covers
ISBN o 521 27501 6 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2004


Contents

List of maps

vi

Preface to the paperback edition

vii

Abbreviations
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

ix

Triloyalism and the national revival
Poland and the crisis of 1900—7
Poland on the eve of the First World War
The emergence of an independent Polish state
The breakdown of parliamentary government
Pilsudski in power, 1926-35
Poland without Pilsudski
Poland in defeat, September 1939-July 1941
The ill-fated alliance, August 1941-April 1943
The years of Tempest, May 1943-December 1944
Post-war Poland
The rise and ebb of Stalinism
The October turning point
'The little stabilization'
The decline of Gomulka
Poland under Gierek
Polish society, 1945-75
Epilogue: The rise and fall of Solidarity


i
65
97
112
139
159
186
209
227
246
280
299
344
367
384
407
444
458

Notes

463

Select bibliography

485

Index

488



Maps

1
2
3
4
5
6

Poland in the nineteenth century
The Kingdom of Poland 1815-1914
Poland in 1939
The Oder-Neisse Line and East Prussia
Population changes attendant on Polish occupation in 1945
Modern Poland

Thanks are due to the London School of Economics who drew the
maps.

xii
36
208
256
286
300


Preface to the paperback edition


This history of Poland starts with the disastrous aftermath of insurrection
of 1863 which constituted a major watershed in Polish evolution, marking
the end of the political and social supremacy of the nobility and the
emergence of new forces which made possible the creation of a modern
nation. Like history itself it has no end, but an attempt has been made
to analyse events up to the present day. Though it is a joint work, the
authors take responsibility for their own individual chapters which have
been subject to minimal editorship only. R. F. Leslie (Chapters 1-3),
Antony Polonsky (Chapters 4-7), Jan M. Ciechanowski (Chapters 8-11)
and Z. A. Pelczynski (Chapters 12-17) express opinions which are entirely
their own. Nevertheless, all the authors share certain views about the
Polish past. They believe that Polish history has too often been written
as if it took place in a social and economic vacuum and they have thus
stressed the importance of these factors in assessing political developments.
They recognize too the merits of both of the principal approaches to the
political dilemma in which Poland finds itself and do not therefore align
themselves with either the realist/positivist or the romantic/insurrectionary
view of the Polish past.
Polish history is full of striking paradoxes. It oscillates between periods
of great victories and achievements and abject defeats, between periods
of concerted striving for freedom, justice and liberty and periods of
humiliating and partly self-engendered decline. The authors have tried to
strike a balance between a too optimistic and a too defeatist interpretation
of Poland's development. This paperback edition appears at a difficult and
grave moment in Polish history when a peaceful popular revolt against
the mismanagement, corruption and injustice of the Communist system
in the 1970s appears to have failed though not without inflicting a
tremendous shock on the Communist Party, which perhaps will prove
salutary. Its authors hope that, as before, the resilience, faith and courage

of the Polish people will enable them to overcome the defeat and to create,
within the stern limits of geopolitics, a future in which, in the words of
the Gdansk shipyard workers' song, 'Poland will be truly itself.



Abbreviations

AK
AL
BBWR
CBKP
CKN
CPSU
CRZZ
FRG
FSZMP
GDR
GL
KOR
KPP
KPRP
KRN
KSR
KW

KZ
NKN
NKVD


Armia Krajowa (Home Army)
Armia Ludowa (People's Army)
Bezpartyjny Blok Wspoipracy z Rzadem (Non-Party Bloc for
Co-operation with the Government)
Centralne Biuro Komunistow Polskich (Central Bureau of
Polish Communists)
Centralny Komitet Narodowy (National Central Committee)
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Centralna Rada Zwiazkow Zawodowych (Central Council of
Trade Unions)
Federal Republic of Germany
Federacja Socialistycznych Zwiazkow Mlodziezy Polskiej
(Federation of Socialist Unions of Polish Youth)
German Democratic Republic
Gwardia Ludowa (People's Guard)
Komitet Obrony Robotnikow (Workers' Defence
Committee)
Komunistyczna Partia Polski (Polish Communist Party)
Komunistyczna Partia Robotnicza Polski (Communist
Workers' Party of Poland)
Krajowa Rada Narodowa (National Council of the
Homeland)
Konferencja Samorzadu Robotniczego (Conference of the
Workers' Self-Government)
Komitet Wykonawczy [Centralnego Komitetu Robotniczego] (Executive Committee of the Central Workers' Committee)
Komitet Zagraniczny [Centralnego Komitetu Robotniczego]
(Foreign Committee of the Central Workers' Committee)
Naczelny Komite Narodowy (Supreme National Committee)
Narodnaya Kommissiya Vevnutrikh Dyel (People's Commission of Internal Affairs)
IX



X

NSR
NSZ
NZCh
NZR
ONR
ORMO
OUN
OWP
OZON
PAX
PKP
PKPG
PKWN
PON
POW
PPR
PPS
PPSDGiS
PPSzP
PSL
PZL
PZPR
RJN
RN
SD
SDKP

SDKPiL
SL

ABBREVIATIONS

Narodowe Stronnictwo Robotnicze (National Workers'
Party)
Narodowe Sily Zbrojne (National Armed Forces)
Narodowy Zwiazek Chlopski (National Peasant Union)
Narodowy Zwiazek Robotniczy (National Workers' Union)
Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny (National Radical Camp)
Ochotnicza Reserwa Milicji Obywatelskiej (Volunteer
Reserve of the Citizens' Militia)
Organizacja Ukraiiiskich Nacjonalistow (Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists)
Oboz Wielkiej Polski (Camp for a Greater Poland)
Oboz Zjednoczenia Narodowego (Camp of National
Unity)
Stowarzyszenie PAX (Catholic social movement)
Polityczny Komitet Porozumiewawczy (Political Consultative
Committee)
Paristwowa Komisja Planowania Gospodarczego (State
Commission for Economic Planning)
Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Polish Committee
of National Liberation)
Polska
Organizacja
Narodowa
(Polish
National

Organization)
Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (Polish Military Organization)
Polska Partia Robotnicza (Polish Workers' Party)
Polska Partia Socialistyczna (Polish Socialist Party)
Polska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna Galicji i Slaska
(Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia)
Polska Partia Socjalistyczna zaboru Pruskiego (Polish Socialist
Party of the Prussian Partition)
Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish Peasant Party)
Polski Zwiazek Ludowy (Polish Peasant Union)
Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (Polish United
Workers' Party)
Rada Jednosci Narodowej (Council of National Unity)
Rada Narodowa (National Council)
Stronnictwo Demokratyczne (Democratic Party)
Socialdernokracja Krolestwa Polskiego (Social Democracy of
the Kingdom of Poland)
Socialdemokracja Krolestwa Polskiego i Litwy (Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania)
Stronnictwo Ludowe (Peasant Party)


ABBREVIATIONS

SN-D
SP
SZP
TKSSN

UB
UNDO

WIN
WOG
ZBoWiD
Zet
ZHP
ZISPO
ZLP
ZMP
ZMS
ZMW
ZPP
ZRP
ZSL
ZSP
ZWZ

XI

Stronnictwo Narodowo—Demokratyczne (National Democratic Party)
Stronnictwo Pracy (Party of Labour)
Shizba Zwyci^stwu Polski (Service for the Victory of Poland)
Tymczasowa Komisja Skonfederowanych Stronnictw Niepodleglosciowych (Temporary Commission of Confederated
Independence Parties)
Urzad Bezpieczeristwa (Security Office)
Ukrainskie
Natsionalno—Demokratychne
Objednianie
(Ukrainian National Democratic Union)
[Zrzeszenie] Wolnosc i Niezawislosc (Freedom and Independence Group)
Wielkie Organizacje Gospodarcze (Great Economic

Organizations)
Zwiazek Bojownikow o Wolnosc i Demokracje (Union of
Fighters for Freedom and Democracy)
Zwiazek Mlodziezy Polskiej - ZMP (Union of Polish Youth)
Zwiazek Harcerstwa Polskiego (Union of Polish Scouts)
Zaklady Imieniem Stalina, Poznari (Poznari Stalin Works)
Zwiazek Literatow Polskich (Writers' Union)
Zwiazek Miodziezy Polskiej (Union of Polish Youth)
Zwiazek Mlodziezy Socjalistycznej (Union of Socialist
Youth)
Zwiazek Mlodziezy Wiejskiej (Union of Rural Youth)
Zwiazek Patriotow Polskich (Union of Polish Patriots)
Zwiazek Robotnikow Polskich (Union of Polish Workers)
Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe (United Peasant Party)
Zwiazek Studentow Polskich (Union of Polish Students)
Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej (Association of Armed Struggle)


77

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Map i

Poland in the nineteenth century

Stryj


Triloyalism and the national revival

Poland in the 1860's

The Poland of today owes its frontiers to the discussions between the
leaders of the USSR, Great Britain and the United States of America. The
shape of the new state was proposed at Tehran in 1943 by Winston
Churchill in order to bring an end to the long conflict between Russia and
Poland:
It was agreed in the principle that the hearth of the Polish state and people must
be situated between the so-called Curzon line and the line of the Oder River,
including Eastern Prussia and the Oppeln Province as part of Poland. But the
final drawing of the boundary requires thorough study and possible resettlement
in some points.1
Stalin modified this proposal in order to assign to the Soviet Union the
ports of Konigsberg and Memel. At Potsdam in 1945 the three powers
decided that the western frontier should await the final peace settlement:
The three heads of government agree that, pending the final determination of

Poland's western frontier, the former German territories east of a line running
from the Baltic Sea immediately west of Swinemiinde and thence along the Oder
River to the confluence of the Western Neisse River to the Czechoslovak
frontier. . .shall be under the administration of the Polish state. . . 2
The new Poland differed substantially from the Polish Commonwealth as
it stood before the First Partition of 1772, and from the Polish Republic
on the eve of the Second World War in 1939. In compensation for loss
of territory to the Soviet Union, Poland took possession of substantial
German territories in the west. The irony of the present solution is that
it was brought about by diplomacy. In the past Poles thought that
diplomacy would produce a solution of their own choosing. This was a
solution within the frontiers of 1772. The ultimate reconstruction of
Poland cannot be conceived in terms in which the Poles themselves sought
their freedom from foreign rule.
It might perhaps seem that the position of Poland in Europe was


2

TRILOYALISM AND THE NATIONAL REVIVAL

exceptional. With the unification of the world in the twentieth century the
division of Poland by the partitions of the eighteenth century may be
regarded as part of the normal experiences of mankind. Many territories
in the period of imperialism were occupied by European powers and
integrated with the metropolitan economies. What makes Poland exceptional is the fact that the Poles had a developed literature and recorded
history of their own. Their experience is therefore illustrative of the
outlook of other peoples who have suffered foreign domination, but
recorded in greater detail. The Polish Question as it recedes into the
background is worthy of study for the examples and insight which it gives

us for the understanding of the world beyond Europe. History is not
dependent upon the written word. Oral tradition in Africa and elsewhere
keeps alive knowledge of the past. In the case of Poland we can understand
oppression through the medium of the written word, which is the medium
which we in Britain and America understand best. The study of Poland
in the modern epoch is not an investigation into developments within a
community of second magnitude. It is a study of a problem which is central
to a situation which is actual in the world today.
The social structure of Poland up to 1939 was established by the
evolution of the Polish Republic before the partitions of 1772, 1793, and
1795. In modern Polish historical writings it is customary to refer to the
Feudal Epoch, but this is not a helpful description because it leads to
comparisons with the systems which existed in France and England. As
Poland emerged as a powerful state in the sixteenth century upon the
expansion of the grain trade, the lords of the manor and the great
proprietors drew upon the labour of the peasants for cultivation of the
demesnes. The nobility looked to the market beyond Poland, while the
peasants engaged in a subsistence economy, apart from the minor sales
which they might make in local markets, the income from which was
absorbed by the manor, which had the exclusive right to brew and distil.
The sixteenth century was the Golden Age of Poland. The expansion
of arable farming under the stimulus of rising prices was accompanied by
a flourishing of Polish culture. The seventeenth century was by contrast
a period of diaster. Prices fell and wars brought destruction. To compensate
for their loss of income the estate owners sought to take more of the arable
land of the peasants into their demesnes. In the devastation attendant upon
war the medium gentry suffered more than the magnates. The magnates
could reconstruct one ruined estate from the resources of another outside
the theatre of operations, and on occasion they could obtain favourable
treatment from invaders on grounds of their potential political importance.

The medium gentry were forced either to borrow from the magnates to


POLAND IN THE l86o's

3

reconstruct their estates, or even to sell their lands to them and become
their tenants. For the petty gentry life was scarcely better than that of the
peasants. The real rulers of the state were the magnates and the gentry
were reduced to clientage.3 The period of revival in the second half of the
eighteenth century was cut short by the partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1795.
Polish society was not allowed to evolve as a normal community. Thus the
problem of independence was interwoven with the question of how Poland
was to emerge into the world of capitalism, a world in which the law of
supply and demand replaced an organic society based upon the rendering
of obligations. The Polish struggle between 1815 and 1863 was not only
to determine who should rule at home, when independence had been won,
but also to decide how Poland should be organized for the future. The
magnates had been discredited by the Confederation of Targowica of 1792,
which led to the Second Partition of 1793. The insurrection of 1794
brought into existence a radical element which owed nothing to the
magnates. The peasants viewed the future with a hostility to the landlords
which was of long standing.
The Polish Question was complicated, moreover, by the absence of
homogeneity among the population. In the western areas Protestant
Germans were intermingled with the Polish population. In the north and
east Lithuanians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians were to develop a sense
of their own nationality, distinct from that of the Poles who had formerly
been their masters. Even more complicated was the Jewish Question.

Within the territories of the former Republic the Jews constituted about
10 per cent of the population, but, since they were for the most part
excluded from agriculture, they constituted a substantial proportion of the
townspeople, and in the smaller market towns in fact were often in a
majority. Because they could not work on the Sabbath, they were unable
to work side by side with Christians in industries demanding work for six
days a week from Monday to Saturday. Thus they were for religious
reasons confined to the handicrafts and the retail trades. They were
presented in the nineteenth century with many problems. They were
required to decide whether they should continue to identify themselves
with their own religion and their Yiddish speech, or to blend with the
Christian community. In the latter case, they had a choice between Polish
and Russian society, but there were those who were not prepared to regard
Eastern Europe as their Heimat but rather sought to create a Hebraic
society of their own beyond Europe, where they would not be deprived
of political rights.
To these national complications must be added the problem of the
population of Polish speech settled beyond the frontiers of 1772. Most of


4

TRILOYALISM AND THE NATIONAL REVIVAL

the Polish principalities of Silesia ceased to have a connection with the
Polish crown in the fourteenth century, but, though the Slavonic aristocracy was germanized and the bourgeoisie of the towns German, a
substantial Polish population continued to exist in Upper Silesia, which
provided a large proportion of the working class in the expansion of
industry in the nineteenth century. Even outside Upper Silesia there were
pockets of Poles along the right bank of the River Oder. To the south lay

the Duchy of Teschen (Cieszyn), the remnant of Silesia which the
Habsburgs had retained and to which the Czechs laid claims as part of the
Crown of St Wenceslas. To the north in East Prussia in the Masurian
districts there was a Polish-speaking population which had lost its
connection with Poland in 1657 when the Hohenzollerns obtained the
abolition of Polish sovereignty over the area. Clearly, a Poland reconstructed upon the ethnic principle of giving her areas in which the Poles
constituted a majority might appear different from a Poland restored upon
historic principles within the frontiers of 1772.
The struggle for independence was rendered more difficult by the
determination of the partitioning powers to maintain their control without
giving the Poles equality of treatment. External control denied to the Poles
the right to promote the well-being of their country in response to the
normal impulses of civil patriotism. Poland for practical purposes consisted
of three frontier regions of three great states, which were often reluctant
to develop them. For strategic reasons, for example, the Russian general
staff in the nineteenth century was opposed to the connection of Warsaw
and Poznari by a railway. The absurd situation arose that the Poles, who
thought of themselves as a nation, were treated as troublesome minorities
in three empires. The political systems which were to evolve in the
Habsburg empire and in the new Germany were no training ground for
Polish statesmanship. The maintenance of the autocracy in tsarist Russia
meant that neither Russians nor Poles had any schooling in the politics
of government by consent. For this reason the Poles cannot be judged by
the sober conventions of the British parliament and the rules of the British
cabinet. Fundamental to Polish thinking were the bitterness and
humiliation inspired by defeat and partition, which necessarily on occasion
erupted in violence. Violence was crushed by superior violence and
engendered the desire for revenge. Fear of Polish unrest led to the
tightening of controls. In such a society normal political evolution was
impossible. The abnormality of this situation made a solution imperative.

The solution adopted in the first half of the nineteenth century was one
of open challenge. The Duchy of Warsaw, created by France in 1807 from
Prussian territory and enlarged at the expense of Austria in 1809, did not


POLAND IN THE l86o's

5

survive the defeat of Napoleon I. Nevertheless, the semi-autonomous
Kingdom of Poland, attached to Russia by the Treaty of Vienna of 1815,
offered the possibility of a national renaissance. In 1830 the Poles stumbled
into a revolt against the Russian connection and were crushed in the defeat
of 18 31.4 In 1846 an uprising in the Free City of Cracow and in the western
districts of Austrian Galicia met with defeat at the hands of the Austrian
army and its allies, the Polish peasants (see below p. 8). In 1848 disturbances offered a fleeting glimpse of autonomy in the Grand Duchy
of Posen, but the Prussian military authorities were determined not to
permit the movement to gain ground and accordingly disarmed the Polish
levies.5 In Galicia the Austrian army maintained a firm control both in
Cracow and Lwow, intimidating the Poles by bombardment, just as it
bombarded Prague. The insurrection in Russian Poland during 1863 and
1864 equally was crushed, though with great difficulty.6 While the
humiliation of subjection and resentment at defeat remained, many and
varied lessons were drawn from disaster.
The period of the Napoleonic Wars when Legions were raised in the
service of France left a tradition of militarism of an amateurish kind. Those
Poles who were likely to obtain advancement in the armies of the
partitioning powers, more especially the Austrian and Russian armies, were
to be promoted for their professionalism, of which loyalty to the regime
and correspondingly political conservatism were important constituent

parts. Though some Poles, who served in the Russian army in the 1850's
and 1860's, did pass over to the side of the revolution,7 it was unlikely
after 1863 that the Poles would be able to raise abroad any force capable
of influencing the course of events at home. The effori to raise a force in
the Ottoman empire during the Crimean War did not enjoy conspicuous
success. There was a flutter of Polish military activity in France during
the crisis of 18 70-1. Jaroslaw Dabrowski died on Montmartre as a general
of the Paris Commune. The partisans of a solution by diplomacy, led by
Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and after his death by his son, Wladyslaw
Czartoryski, maintained from the Hotel Lambert in Paris a long activity
designed to give currency to the concept that Poland might once again
come into existence as a state, though one of unimpeachable conservative
respectability.8 The Eastern Crisis of 1875-8 and the Congress of Berlin
revealed beyond doubt that it was impossible for Poland to be restored
within the foreseeable future as a result of international factors. The Poles
in emigration grew older and died. France under the Third Republic could
not make even a pretence of favouring the restoration of an independent
Poland. While Austria, Germany and Russia were detemined to avoid
armed conflict even when they were in disagreement, the Polish Question


6

TRILOYALISM AND THE NATIONAL REVIVAL

did not exist. Nevertheless, the future of Poland was to be shaped by forces
at work at home.
The most powerful attempt at drawing upon the resources of the Polish
people as a whole was inspired by the Manifesto of the Polish Democratic
Society in 1836.° It was proposed that the peasants should be brought into

partnership by a donation of the freeholds of their farms. It was believed
that this act would win their loyalty to the national cause and secure for
it a mass support which hitherto it had lacked. Though this policy was
commendable for its desire to make the peasant an equal citizen, it was
not populism in the sense that it sought to base the organization of the
state upon the peasant community. The peasants were cast in the role of
auxiliaries in the struggle for independence. A fundamental error,
moreover, was the supposition that partitioning powers had no initiative
in the peasant question. In 1848 the Austrian administration cut the ground
from under the Polish leaders by granting the peasants their freeholds by
imperial decree. In March 1864 the Russian government followed suit by
a solution of the agrarian problem on terms more generous than those
proposed by the Polish insurgents themselves (see below p. 41). The
peasants could thus accept without effort to themselves a solution of the
problem which the insurgents invited them to obtain by active participation
in the armed struggle. From 1864 a summons to the people at large offered
no immediate chance of success. The revolution was in effect put on ice.
In step with the conspiratorial struggle after 1815 there were Polish
leaders in all three partitioned areas who argued that the proper course
to adopt was open activity designed to strengthen the economic position
of Poland, extend the network of communications, improve the quality
of agriculture, raise the standard of education and create the conditions
essential to the transition from the old society to the new industrial and
commercial world which had come into existence in Britain and Western
Europe. It was argued that revolutionary activity could bring in its train
only further repression and would defeat what ought to be the aim of all
Poles, the strengthening of Polish society in order to enable it to speak
with greater authority to the partitioning powers. This was a concept
which could appeal to powerful elements in the Polish community. The
magnates had lost their political power and with it their ability to delay

the repayment of debts or even to repudiate them, as they had done under
the Republic. For them the urgent necessity of conversion to a new system
of farming required conditions of tranquillity. The medium gentry, hard
hit by the decline of agricultural prices after 1815, could equally fall into
line with such a policy. No landowner had had much sympathy for the
left-wing programme of granting freeholds as an essential part of insurgent


POLAND IN THE l86o's

7

strategy. The few Polish industrial entrepreneurs, seeking to raise themselves to the level of their foreign counterparts, thought in terms of capital
investment for which political stability was vital. Commercial and industrial
expansion would provide increased opportunity of employment for the
educated classes and men of the professions. A similar point of view may
be detected in Hungary and Italy before and after 1848. In Poland the
movement went by the name of Organic Work. An early example of this
point of view may be seen in the activity of Prince Drucki-Lubecki, who,
as minister of finance in the Kingdom of Poland between 1821 and 1830,
encouraged trade and industry under a general policy of strengthening
Polish resources within a connection with Russia.10
To persons outside the machinery of government, and therefore not
incurring the accusation of being collaborators with the occupying powers,
Organic Work was an attractive alternative to insurrection and revolution.
Organic Work invited them to increase their incomes in the name of Polish
patriotism. Tomasz Lubieriski in the Kingdom of Poland succeeded in
co-operating in the foundation of the Land Credit Society and the Bank
of Poland, serving as general in the Polish army against Russia in 1831,
and afterwards as the managing director of his family firm. His brother

and principal partner, Henryk, who was active in promoting sugar
production and founding factories in Zyrardow, was vice-president of the
Bank of Poland until 1842, but was detected in malfeasance and sent to
Russia. In Prussian Poland Dr Karol Marcinkowski founded in 1841 the
Society for Educational Assistance in order to provide secondary and
higher education for children of petty bourgeois families. His main
commercial enterprise was the establishment in Poznari in 1838 of ' The
Bazaar', a building housing a hotel, civic amenities and shops, which
provided a centre for the larger landlords and substantial middle class.11
In Galicia Prince Leon Sapieha was active in promoting a Land Credit
Society and in constructing railways. Probably the most complex figure
of all was Leopold Kronenberg, the Warsaw financier, who in 1863
combined his business activities with an intimate relationship with the
insurgent National Government, which he tried to direct along lines of
moderation.12 These were the men who, with their successors, emerged
in the 1860's, after the disaster of the insurrection in the Kingdom of
Poland, as the most important element in Polish society. They had kept
within the bonds of legality and escaped the penalty of enforced emigration
or exile. They accepted the fact of partition and were best prepared
mentally to reconcile themselves to the impossibility of winning independence. For the majority of the people of Poland the benefits of Organic
Work were less obvious. Upon them fell the crushing burden of poverty


8

TRILOYALISM AND THE NATIONAL REVIVAL

which there existed no Polish government to attack. Triloyalism, the
acceptance of subjection to Austria, Prussia and Russia, was no solution
of Poland's problems. Only unification and independence could bring real

relief.
Austrian

Poland in the second half of the nineteenth century

Austrian Poland consisted of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria,
enlarged in 1846 by addition of Cracow, together with parts of the Duchy
of Teschen (Cieszyn) inhabited by a Polish proletariat. The long period
of Austrian rule in Galicia from 1772 was marked by economic stagnation
and the exclusion of Poles from public office. The government under
Joseph II had done something to limit the exploitation of the peasants by
the landlords, but agriculture remained backward, being dependent upon
labour services. In 1846 the hostility of the peasants took on a savage form.
When the gentry of the western regions rose in revolt against the imperial
government, the peasants turned upon them and killed about 2,000
persons. The imperial government thought it wise to lay claim to the
peasants' loyalties by abolishing through the patent of 13 April 1846 the
supplementary duties of carting and the provision of extra days' labour
which the peasants owed to the manor. 13 The enforcement of labour
services on the arable lands of the demesnes, which the peasants wished
to see abolished, was achieved only by a massive military operation in
which 55,763 troops with 36 guns took part. 14 So dangerous was the
situation in Galicia, aggravated by a famine in 1846 of such severity that
instances of cannibalism were reported, and by cholera and typhus in 1847,
that the gentry and middle classes succumbed to a political paralysis. Up
to the Second World War the peasants would taunt visitors from the towns
with the song:
Do you remember, sir, the year of eighteen forty six
How on Shrove Tuesday the peasants beat you with their sticks?15
The massacre, increased mortality and the subsequent pacification in fact

had more serious consequences for the peasants than for the upper classes.
In 1847 380,000 persons died in contrast to the previous annual average
of 15 3,000. Nevertheless, the new governor of Galicia,Franz von Stadion,
preferred to conciliate the peasantry rather than the gentry. In the troubled
year of 1848, on 22 April, he ordered on his own initiative that the peasants
should receive their freeholds and the gentry obtain compensation from
the state funds. The decree received retrospective approval and was
backdated to 17 April. 16 A supplementary law of 7 September 1848
guaranteed the peasants' rights of access to woods, meadows and pastures,


AUSTRIAN POLAND

9

known in Polish by the term serwituty}1 Disputes relating to the common
use of lands technically owned by the manor continued after 1848 to serve
as a cause of discontent between the gentry and the peasants. The game
laws, which gave the landlord the exclusive right to hunting, shooting and
fishing, were another source of annoyance for the peasants, whose crops
were damaged by the wild animals reserved for the sport of the gentry.
The exclusive right of brewing and distilling (propinacja) was not only a
source of income for the manors but also a cause of peasant hostility. It
was not until 1889 that this privilege was abolished in Galicia. Though
the government tried to favour the peasants at the expense of the gentry,
the landlords emerged from the crisis of 1846-8 as strong as they had been
before. The overpopulation of Galicia ensured that there was always a
reserve of rural labour upon which the landlords could draw. It was not
until the i88o's that some improvement in the conditions of the wagelabourers began to appear as a result of seasonal migration or departure
to the New World. In general, it is true to say that the lot of the peasant

in Galicia was not easy. Indebtedness, land hunger, illiteracy and
backwardness were features of the province.
The Austrian government emerged apparently triumphant in 1849-50
from the troubles of the great European crisis. The constitution of 4 March
1849 never came into operation and was formally suspended by the
proclamation of 31 December 1851. Thus the Polish upper classes in
Galicia had to see the transition from the old economy to the new money
economy in a political situation in which they were not masters in their
own society. They were torn between two desires, the yearning for
national unification within a Polish state and the wish to have control over
their own community within the Austrian empire. Within Polish society
in Galicia there was equally a conflict between the gentry and the
bourgeoisie to decide which party should have primacy in legislation. The
government in such a situation could enjoy certain advantages. It could
favour the peasants against the gentry, as it did do in disputes concerning
rights to woods and pastures, or conversely at the end of the 1850's favour
the gentry against the peasants.
During the Crimean War the Ukrainians of the eastern regions looked
to Russia, a factor which drew the Poles closer to Austria. The Cracow
conservatives favoured an association within a federal Austrian empire.
Count Agenor Gohichowski, who became viceroy in 1849, sought to build
up confidence in Vienna by establishing a reputation for absolute
trustworthiness. Prince Leon Sapieha and his son Adam continued the
policy which had emerged everywhere in Poland before 1848 under the
title of Organic Work. This in effect meant the abandonment of political


IO

TRILOYALISM A N D THE N A T I O N A L

REVIVAL

struggle in favour of capital investment in enterprises calculated to
promote the economic well-being of the province. Thus the Galician
Savings Bank, the Land Credit Society and the Agricultural School were
designed to assist the Polish gentry in the task of converting the economy
to a more modern system. Leon Sapieha was active in promoting the
construction of a railway from Cracow to Lwow between 1856 and 1861.
In 1865 it reached Czernowitz in Bukovina and the line was extended to
Brody on the Russian frontier in 1869.18 Useful though railway construction
was, there was little investment in industry. The gentry used the
compensation which they obtained for the loss of their manorial rights to
maintain their own standard of living. The province was dominated by
foreign capital, especially the Kreditanstalt. The industries of Bohemia,
Moravia and Austria were too advanced for Polish enterprise to compete
with them. For this reason there was no development of a middle class
strong enough to be an independent force in the politics of the province.
Franciszek Smolka and Florian Ziemialkowski were moderate democrats
of the Lwow middle class who believed in equality of opportunity and
constitutional government, but they lacked a mass following and could
not exert much influence in a fundamentally agrarian province.
The Poles had little opportunity to assert their claims until the
international crisis of 1859, when failure in Italy discredited the regime
of Bach. The Austrian government was confronted with two choices.
Either it could ally itself with the local aristocracies, or it could admit the
German bourgeoisie to a share in political power. The latter alternative
had the advantage of offering some hope at least of saving the system of
centralism, but it was Agenor Goluchowski who was first called to power.
On 20 October i860 a patent was issued promising a system of local diets

and a central Reichsrat, which however might have no voice in military
or foreign affairs. When these proposals met with the opposition of the
Hungarians, Goluchowski was dismissed and replaced by the centralist,
Schmerling. In the patent of 26 February 1861 Schmerling emphasized the
power of the central government, but, like other areas, Galicia and the
Grand Duchy of Cracow were granted a local assembly. The curial system
adopted varied from province to province. In Galicia the diet was to
consist of the archbishops and bishops, together with the rectors of the
Universities of Cracow and Lwow; 44 representatives of the larger
landlords; 22 representatives of the towns; and 74 deputies from the rural
communes.19 The administration was placed in charge of a Regional
Commission (Wyd^ial Krajowy) presided over by the marshal of the diet
assisted by six of its members. Persons without property were excluded
from the franchise, but, whereas in the other provinces of the empire the


AUSTRIAN POLAND

II

government favoured the landlords and the Germans, in Galicia preference
was initially given to the peasants, who were to obtain 50 per cent of the
representation. The provincial constitution, which was to remain in force
until 1918, caused despair among the educated classes. The gentry were
at loggerheads with the peasants as a result of the woods and pastures
question, and could foresee no hope of reconciliation. The peasants,
moreover, were not only Poles, but also Ukrainians, the latter not sharing
the national aspirations of the Poles. The educated and upper classes in
Galicia were thus forced to accept the constitution and seek within it to
gain control over the local administration by manipulating the political

difficulties of the Austrian government to their advantage.
The troubles in the Kingdom of Poland and the uprising in January
1863 gave visions of Polish independence, but the Galician leaders, with
the possible exception of Adam Sapieha, limited themselves to expressions
of solidarity and sympathy, and were not prepared to offer much practical
assistance. Neither the magnates nor the bourgeoisie wished the struggle
to extend itself to Austrian Poland. In 1862 the Warsaw Reds did make
some headway in establishing their influence in Cracow among the
university students and the craftsmen, but in Lwow the committee of
Smolka, Ziemiatkowski, Adam Sapieha and Dzieduszycki constituted an
alliance of the magnates and the bourgeoisie which offered a centre of
opposition to the 'Galician Supreme Council' set up by the Reds. Only
a few ineffective expeditions against the Russians were launched from
Galicia. The Galician Whites tended to flirt with the Reds with the aim
of keeping control over the local situation for themselves. Thus some
supplies were given to the movement in the Kingdom of Poland. As a
result of the Austrian government's taking into custody leaders of the
Whites the direction of the national movement fell into the hands of the
Reds, who began to make preparations for a more active participation in
the struggle in Russian Poland. The agrarian policy of the Reds in the
Kingdom of Poland was sufficiently radical to have an appeal for the
Galician peasantry. The leaders of the propertied classes therefore exerted
pressure upon the Austrian authorities for preventive measures. On 27
February 1864 the governor, Mensdorff-Pouilly, declared a state of siege
and brought the province under martial law.
The Galician reaction to events in the Kingdom of Poland was one of
despair. The crushing of the rising proved to the leaders of Polish society
that there was in fact no hope of establishing independence and that the
only course open to them was to seek a compromise with the Austrian
government. In Cracow Pawel Popiel condemned the uprising, while Jozef

Szujski began to sound the alarm against the Ukrainian movement in the


12

TRILOYALISM AND THE NATIONAL REVIVAL

eastern regions. The conviction grew that the Poles ought to devote their
energies to the defence of their national interests within the Austrian
empire. In July 1865 the government of Schmerling was replaced by that
of Belcredi, himself a Pole, who began the task of conciliating the
Hungarians and the establishment of a federal system within the empire.
In such a situation the Poles could hope to extract some advantage for
themselves. The aims of the Polish leaders are apparent from the meeting
of the provincial diet. Autonomy for them meant control over the district
councils in order to prevent them from becoming the instruments of the
will of the peasantry. With regard to the organization of the communes
there was some difference of opinion, but the aim of all parties was
identical. The Cracow conservatives wished to have a single communal
council, but the Podolian party sought to establish a commune for each
village, which should be separate from the manor, lest the manor be forced
to make contributions for purposes which served the interests of the
peasants. It was the Podolian view which triumphed. With the Reds
insignificant as a political factor after the failure of 1863-4, the gentry
emerged to seek an organization of Galicia in their own interest.
With the onset of the crisis which led to the Austro-Prussian war in
1866 the chances grew that the non-German nationalities would obtain
concessions from the Austrian government. The Hungarians could speak
from a position of strength which was only increased by the Austrian defeat
at Sadowa. It was worthwhile buying the Hungarians off in order that

Austria might concentrate upon the task of restoring her power in Central
Europe. Beust, who replaced Belcredi in February 1867, quickly concluded
the agreement known as the Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867. The Poles
in Galicia thought that they would obtain an equal measure of autonomy.
Symptomatic of the new situation was the reappointment of the ultraloyalist Gohichowski to the post of viceroy in September 1866. On 10
December 1866 the Galician diet drew up an address to the emperor,
approved by 84 votes against the 40 votes of the Polish and Ukrainian
peasants, demanding autonomy within a federal Austria. It was represented
to the emperor that concessions to the Poles would strengthen the
monarchy and that they for their part would support Austria:
With no misgivings of departure from our national concepts, with faith in the
mission of Austria and with faith in the determination upon changes, which Your
Majesty's words have pronounced as your resolved intention, from the bottom
of our hearts we declare that we stand with Your Majesty and wish to stand with
you.20
This declaration of loyalty met with only a cold response in Vienna. The
negotiations with the Hungarians meant that the Poles were only a minor