To-day there are twenty million Poles. Although they owe allegiance to three different sovereigns, they are more united than ever in their history. For their national feeling has developed in just the same way that the national feeling of Germans and Russians has developed, by education primarily, and by that remarkable tendency of industrialism, which has grouped people in cities, and brought them into closer association. This influence of city life upon the destinies of Poland comes to us with peculiar force when we realize that since the last map of Europe was made Warsaw has grown from forty thousand to eight hundred thousand, Lodz from one thousand to four hundred thousand, Posen from a few hundreds to one hundred and fifty thousand, Lemberg and Cracow from less than ten thousand to two hundred thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand respectively. These great cities (except Lodz, which Russia foolishly allowed to become an outpost of Pan-Germanism in the heart of a Slavic population) are the foyers of Polish nationalism.
The second and third dismemberments of Poland (1793 and 1795) were soon annulled by the Napoleonic upheaval. The larger portion of Poland was revived in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The Congress of Vienna, just one hundred years ago, made what the representatives of the partitioning Powers hoped would be a definite redistribution of the unwelcome ghost stirred up by Napoleon. Poznania was returned to Prussia, and in the western end of Galicia a Republic of Cracow was created. The greater portion of Poland reverted to Russia, not as conquered territory, but as a separate state, of which the Czar assumed the kingship and swore to preserve the liberties. The unhappiness, the unrest, the agitation, among the Poles of the Muscovite Empire, just as among the Finns, came from the breaking of the promises by Russia to Europe when these subjects of alien races were allotted to her.
The story of modern Poland is not different from that of any other nationalistic movement. A sense of nationality and a desire for racial political unity are not the phenomena which have been the underlying causes of the evolution of Europe since the Congress of Vienna. In Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Alsace-Lorraine, in Finland, among the various races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkan Peninsula, as well as in Turkey and Persia, the underlying cause of political agitation, of rebellions and of revolutions has been the desire to secure freedom from absolutism. Nationalism is simply the tangible outward manifestation of the growth of democracy. There are few national movements where separatism could not have been avoided by granting local self-government. Mixed populations can live together under the same government without friction, if the lesser races are granted social, economic, and political equality. But nations that have achieved their own unity and independence through devotion to a nationalistic movement have shown no mercy or wisdom with smaller and less fortunate races under their domination. The very methods that European statesmen have fondly believed were necessary for assimilation have proved fatal to it.
The Polish question, as we understand it to-day, has little connection with the Polish revolutions of 1830 and of 1863. These movements against the Russian Government were conducted by the same elements of protest against autocracy that were at work in the larger cities and universities throughout Europe during the middle of the nineteenth century. Nationalism was the reason given rather than the cause that prompted. The revolutions were unsuccessful because they were not supported by the nation. The mass of the people were indifferent to the cause, just as in other countries similar revolutions against despotism failed for lack of real support. The apathy of the masses has always been the bulwark of defence for autocracy and reactionary policies. Popular rights do not come to people until the masses demand them. Education alone brings self-government. This is the history of the evolution of modern Europe.
The Poles as a nation began to worry their partitioners in the decade following the last unsuccessful revolution against Russia. To understand the contemporary phases of the Polish question, it is necessary for us to follow first its three-fold development, as a question of internal policy in Russia, Germany, and Austria. Only then is its significance as an international question clear.
THE POLES SINCE 1864 IN RUSSIA
The troubles of Russia in her relationship to the Poles have come largely from the fact that the distinction between Poland proper, inhabited by Poles, and the provinces which the Jagellons conquered but never assimilated, was not grasped by the statesmen who had to deal with the aftermath of the revolution. What was possible in one was thought to be possible in the other. What was vital in one was believed to be vital in the other. In the kingdom of Poland, as it was bestowed upon the Russian Czar by the Congress of Vienna, there were massed ten million Poles who could be neither exterminated nor exiled. Nor was there a sound motive for attempting to destroy their national life. The kingdom of Poland was not an essential portion of the Russian Empire, and was not vitally bound to the fortunes of the Empire. So unessential has the kingdom of Poland been to Russia, and so fraught with the possibilities of weakness to its owner, that patriotic and far-sighted Russian publicists have advocated its complete autonomy, its independence or its cession to Germany. Because it was limitrophe to the territories occupied by the Poles of the other partitioners, there was constantly danger of weakening the defences of the empire and of international complications. Through failing to treat these Poles in such a way that they would be a loyal bulwark against her enemies, Russia has done irreparable harm to herself as well as to them.
The Polish question in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine was a totally different matter. These provinces had been added to Russia in her logical development towards the west and the south-west. Their possession was absolutely essential to the existence of the Empire. Their population was not Polish, but Lithuanian, Ruthenian, and Russian. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the acquisition of these territories made possible the entrance of Russia into the concert of European nations. They had been conquered by Poland during the period of her greatness, and had naturally been lost by her when she became weak. In these portions of Greater Poland, the Poles were limited to the landowning class, and to the more prosperous artisans in the cities and villages. They were the residue of an earlier conquering race that had never assimilated the country. They had abused their power, and were heartily disliked. These provinces were vital to Russia, and she was able to carry out the policy of uprooting the Poles. Their villages were burned, their fortunes and their lands confiscated, the landed proprietors deported to Siberia, and others so cruelly persecuted that, when their churches and schools were closed and they found themselves forbidden to speak their language outside of their own homes, they emigrated. In Lithuania, the Lithuanian language was also proscribed. The Russians had no intention of blotting out a Polish question in order to make place for a Lithuanian one.
Where the Poles were few in number, these measures, which were exactly the same as the Poles had employed themselves in the same territories several centuries before, were successful. The peasants were glad to see their traditional persecutors get a taste of their own medicine. It was not difficult to make these provinces Russian. They have gradually been assimilated into the Empire. In all fairness, one can hardly condemn the Russian point of view, as regards the Poles in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine. Only youthful Polish irredentists still dream of the restoration of the Empire of the Jagellons.