It is customary to associate the Kholmsk question with the name of Stolypin. However, the very idea of consolidating a significant part of the former Polish territories in the Romanov empire in case the Kingdom fell away arose much earlier, after the first Russian-Polish war of 1830-1831. And according to the old Russian tradition, it was primarily a question of national Russian land ownership prevailing in the Kholmsk region.
However, in reality, it began to take shape there only after the suppression of the 1863 uprising, and mainly in the form of entitlements - the empire was preparing to secure the land in the Vistula valley for a long time. However, in parallel with the agrarian reform, which had a distinctly "collective" character, in the east of Poland the commune administration with elective warriors, shopkeepers, soltys remained, and local courts had much broader rights than in the central provinces of Russia (1).
Ordered to cross
The ruling class and landlords in the territory of the Kholmshchyna were mainly Poles, while the Russians were mainly peasants; at the same time, they spoke Russian and retained a Russian identity. According to modern research, Poles in the Kholmsk region constituted only 4% of the population at the beginning of the 20th century, but due to the fact that almost all the large landowners and nobles in these provinces were Poles, only they passed the property and estate qualification to the Duma and the State Council. Researchers rightly point out that "the estate-property attribute was in conflict with national realities."
P. Stolypin wrote in this regard: “For democratic Russia, the Poles are not in the least afraid, but Russia, which is ruled by the land nobility and bureaucracy, must defend itself from the Poles by artificial measures, enclosures of“national curia”. Official nationalism is forced to resort to these methods in a country where there is an undoubted Russian majority, because noble and bureaucratic Russia cannot touch the ground and draw strength from Russian peasant democracy”(2).
The Polish question was one of the main ones already in the work of the committee on reforms created by Emperor Alexander II. And at the very first meeting, where the Polish topic was considered, Prince Cherkassky and N. A. Milyutin was offered to separate the Kholmshchyna from the Kingdom of Poland, relieving her of her craving for Lublin and Sedlec.
However, the main ideologist of the "spin off", Milyutin, was not only too busy with other reforms, but also seriously feared new political complications in order to force this issue.
Noting that "in Russia, Russians can enjoy all the rights of independence from administrative units," he admitted that in the event of an immediate dissociation of Kholm, even the Russian population of the Catholic faith "will definitely move to the Poles." Therefore, the reunification of the Uniates with Orthodoxy in 1875 can be considered the first radical step towards the creation of the Russian Kholmsk province. At the same time, the Uniates were allowed liberties, unthinkable under the omnipotence of the Russian Church.
Nevertheless, in fact, it was a question of an outright prohibition of Uniatism, since all Greek Catholic priests and believers were ordered … to convert to Orthodoxy. Military force was used against those who resisted, which provoked a response directly opposite to the expectations of the Russian authorities. Formally, most of the Uniates adopted Orthodoxy, remaining in their hearts as supporters of their special confession. And if the Greek Catholic Church was liquidated, many had no choice but to become secret Roman Catholics.
However, several tens of thousands of Uniates were able to convert to Catholicism quite openly. On the whole, straightforward Russification backfired - many residents of Kholmshchyna and Podlasie felt much more acutely their generally dubious unity with the rest of the population of the Kingdom of Poland. The ksiondzy immediately began to use the fact of "new baptism" to form the Polish national identity among the newly converted. The data of the well-known pre-revolutionary researcher of the Kholm problem V. A. Frantsev, who relied on quite official Russian statistics.
For all its bias, we note that after the tsar's decree of April 17, 1905, which proclaimed freedom of religion, but did not allow the Greek Catholic Church in Russia, a mass exodus of "Orthodox" to Catholicism began in the Lublin and Sedletsk provinces. In three years, 170 thousand people converted to Catholicism, mainly residents of Kholmshchyna and Podlasie (3). The conversion to another faith, although not so massive, continued later, and the total number of inhabitants of Kholmshchyna and Podlasie who converted to Catholicism, according to some historians, approached 200 thousand people.
Nevertheless, in a significant part of the Kholmshchyna, especially in the east and in the central part of the region, the population remained Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking. He had his own, fundamentally different from the Polish, self-consciousness. Even if someone converted to Catholicism, moreover, often only because the church in which all generations of the family prayed became Catholic. They prayed, not really thinking about what rite this is done.
The project on the separation of Kholmshchyna into a separate province, - recalled Metropolitan Evlogiy, - “which was put forward two or three times by Russian patriots, systematically buried government offices in Warsaw, then (under Pobedonostsev) in St. Petersburg. Nobody wanted to understand the meaning of the project. For the government authorities, it was simply a matter of modifying a feature on the geographic map of Russia. Meanwhile, the project met the most pressing needs of the Kholm people, it protected the Russian population interspersed in the administrative district of Poland from Polonization, and took away the right to consider Kholmshchyna as part of the Polish region. Russian patriots understood that the separation of Kholmshchyna into a separate province would be an administrative reform of enormous psychological significance”(4).
The Polish question in miniature
The realization that the Kholmsk question is a miniature Polish question came very quickly. After the completion of the Great Reforms, the Kholmsk project was repeatedly rejected in the bud, but at the same time certain measures were taken to Russify the region - an active, sometimes even impudent advancement of Orthodoxy was carried out through schools. But at the same time, they almost did not touch on the main thing - the economic structure. Here the stake was unequivocally placed on the fact that, first of all, the landowners should become Russians, and the laborers "will get used to it."
However, “re-christening” the Uniates turned out to be quite difficult. By the end of the 19th century, according to the official statistics of the Synod alone, among those who were formally transferred to Orthodox Christians, there were 83 thousand “obstinate”, and they had about 50 thousand more unbaptized children. And according to unofficial data, only in the Sedletsk province there were 120 thousand "persistent" (5). But already at this time even the conservatives, headed by K. P. Pobedonostsev insisted on an exceptionally "firm" policy in the Kholmsh region, up to court verdicts against the Uniates who did not want to be baptized in Russian (6).
This position was based on the decision of the Special Conference, created by Alexander III immediately upon accession - its members simply decided to "consider the stubborn Orthodox". It was then that the thesis that “the farm laborers will get used to it” was first voiced, and Pobedonostsev repeatedly raised the issue more broadly - right up to the creation of the Kholmsk province. The authority of the well-known conservative under the tsar-peacemaker was so great that from the Special Meeting a corresponding request was immediately sent to the Governor-General of the Privislinsky Territory I. V. Gurko.
But he quite unexpectedly came out sharply against, believing that "thereby Russia will push the rest of the Poles into the arms of the Germans." The legendary field marshal, who was not noticed in liberalism, believed that "this (the separation of the Kholmsk province) will only complicate the police measures to combat the Uniates." A useful measure in itself, given the haste of execution, "deprived the Governor-General of the opportunity to follow the threads of propaganda." In addition, Gurko made a strategic argument: the division of the unified in the economic and political sense of the Polish lands, "would prevent the successful management of the tasks of military defense in this most important border area" (7).
After the death of Alexander III, Field Marshal Gurko, in Warsaw, was replaced by Count P. A. Shuvalov, better known for his bright diplomatic career. Much to the surprise of those who knew him as a conservative patriot and Slavophile, sometimes inclined to compromise with Europe, Shuvalov immediately declared himself an ardent supporter of the creation of the Kholmsk province.
“It is necessary to unite the stubborn population into one whole and put a solid barrier between it and the cities of Lublin and Siedlec - these true centers of Polish-Jesuit propaganda,” the count wrote in a note addressed to the young tsar. Nicholas II, who had just ascended the throne, already by virtue of the traditions that had been implanted during the reign of his father, managed to be saturated with the "Great Russian spirit" and immediately wrote on Shuvalov's note: "I fully approve."
It is not in vain that the liberals called Shuvalov "a colorless figure in this post" (Warsaw governor-general), recalling that he had lived in Berlin for a long time and had clearly fallen under Prussian influence. There were also those who reminded the former "hero" of the Berlin Congress of a prolonged illness, which resulted, among other things, in the lack of freedom from foreign influence, first of all, German - in the Polish question.
The historian Shimon Ashkenazi noted that it was this that affected Shuvalov's attitude to the separation of Kholmshchyna, rather self-confidently calling the governor-general's point of view an exception (8). Shuvalov, however, was no exception in something else - like all Warsaw governors, the supporters of the separation of Kholmshchyna accused him of conniving at the Poles, and the liberals, on the contrary, of a rude anti-Polish policy. Nevertheless, Shuvalov was soon replaced by Prince A. K. Imereti, who immediately rushed to remind the emperor that a hasty solution to the Kholmsk question "would have made a depressing impression on the most" plausible "Pole" (9).
The aforementioned statistics, perhaps deliberately exaggerated in order to push the solution of the Kholm problem, unexpectedly played exactly the role that was expected of them. In addition, they were promptly "seasoned" with messages about the visits of the Catholic bishop Yachevsky to the Kholmsk diocese, accompanied by a retinue in historical costumes with banners and Polish national flags, and about the activities of the Opieki nad uniatami and Bracia unici societies.
Notes (edit)
1. A. Pogodin, History of the Polish people in the 19th century, M. 1915, p. 208
2. P. Struve, Two Nationalisms. On Sat. Struve P. B., Russia. Homeland. Chuzhbina, St. Petersburg, 2000, p. 93
3. Olyynik P. Likholittya of Kholmshchyna and Pidlyashya // Shlyakh of the cultural and national rozvoy of Kholmshiny and Pidlyashya in the XIX and XX centuries. Prague, 1941, p. 66.
4. Metropolitan Evlogy Georgievsky, The Path of My Life, M. 1994, p. 152
5. Government Gazette, 1900, no. 10, The situation of the Orthodox on the outskirts
6. AF Koni, From the notes and memoirs of a judicial figure, "Russian antiquity", 1909, No. 2, p. 249
7. TSGIAL, fund of the Council of Ministers, d.76, inventory 2, sheet 32-33.
8. Szymon Askenazego, Galerdia Chelmska, Biblioteka Warszawska, 1909, vol. 1, part 2, p. 228
9. TsGIAL, Fund of the Council of Ministers, d.76, inventory 2, sheet 34.
