Continuity and Change in Contemporary Europe by Clive H. Church & Gisela Hendriks

Author:Clive H. Church & Gisela Hendriks [Church, Clive H. & Hendriks, Gisela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Economics, General, History, Europe
ISBN: 9781858984148
Google: QVZ8QgAACAAJ
Amazon: 1858984149
Goodreads: 14927426
Publisher: Edward Elgar
Published: 1995-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9 Poland: A Limited War of Liberation

Many Poles might have felt that their problem was that, although they had not merely a constitution but also a quite well-developed political system, they did not have a ruler who was willing to implement the former, let alone to allow adaptations in the latter. Their clash with Tsarist Russia was often explained as a reaction to the way their grievances were ignored and they were denied the constitutional privileges which were rightfully theirs. In fact it seems that they rather misinterpreted the nature and purpose of the constitutional Charter enunciated by Alexander I in 1815. The reason that they did so lay in their deep-rooted and fiercely held patriotism, which made them insistent on what they believed to be their rights. If maladministration had been the cause of revolt in the far east of Europe, it should surely have led to one in Russia which, at the time, was much less generously treated than Poland.

So, although the sense of grievance was sincerely felt by the Poles, there can be little doubt but that the events of 1830-1 really represented an assertion of national pride. The Polish revolution was a classic war of liberation, albeit a limited one. It was limited in that the whole of Polish society was not involved in the struggle, so that the latter was dogged by internal friction and uncertainty. And, at the same time, it was limited by the way the Poles had to contend with an equally assertive nation with a claim to some of the lands involved in the uprising. These limitations on the Polish effort at liberation need to be remembered, even though the military conflicts were on a far larger scale than anything else in 1830.

The creation of a quasi-separate Kingdom of Poland in 1815 had been largely forced on Russia and the Allies by Napoleon’s handling of the Polish question. For, although his Grand Duchy of Warsaw had not always been wholly accepted by the Poles, the fact that for the first time since the Third Partition in 1795 had extinguished the Old Polish Commonwealth there was at least a focus for nationhood had encouraged patriotic hopes of re-creating the old national boundaries which, as can be seen from Map 7, were vast. This threatened the partitioning powers and, in the expectation of avoiding further upheavals by a discontented population, they grudgingly acquiesced in the creation of a kind of halfway house between an independent Poland and one wholly incorporated in Russia. Enough territories were released to create a small kingdom, with the Tsar as its hereditary ruler, whose linguistic and religious rights were recognised. There was also talk of free trade between it and the other parts of the Commonwealth which remained in foreign hands. Similarly there was a simulacrum of representative government with a bi-cameral parliament, or Sejm, composed solely of nobles. The realities of power lay with the Viceroy, the Tsar’s commissioner, the army commander – who was the Grand Duke Constantine, Alexander’s younger brother – and the Polish Secretariat in St Petersburg.

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