“From the German point of view, it was impossible to resolve the Polish question well: there could only be a more or less bad solution” (1). These words of the German Chancellor T. Bethmann-Hollweg can well characterize the attitude towards Poland and the Poles not only in Germany, but also in Austria and Russia. In the Russian and Austrian empires, those in power, no worse than the Germans, understood that a cardinal solution to the Polish question would hardly endow them with a new ally - just instead of an internal political problem, they would get a new headache at the border.
Let's give the floor to another "retired" Chancellor - the Prussian, Bernhard von Bülow: “We have artificially created and raised a mortal enemy on our eastern border, who has taken away from us vast and rich areas that have belonged to Germany for more than a century, plunders and rapes the Germans and, as a mercenary of France, ready to strangle us”(2).
Yes, von Bülow wrote this after the war and after the creation of the puppet Kingdom of Poland - about the Polish "projects" of the 1916 model, the author of which was T. Bethmann-Hollweg. However, his words fully reflect the then positions of the Prussian, as well as Russian and Austrian conservative circles on the Polish question.
It was Poland, with all its human and material losses, that became one of the winners of the world war. She won the main thing - independence. Although the Poles themselves, if it comes to "for Vyzvolene", would rather recall the "miracle on the Vistula" - a victory in the fight against Red Russia, than an unexpected political combination following the results of a four-year confrontation between the great powers.
And they are unlikely to clarify that, not least of all, it was realized with the filing of the President of the North American States (USA) Woodrow Wilson, who was fascinated by the ideas of "national self-determination." In the view of this outstanding politician, they were inextricably linked with concepts such as "trust in each other, universality of law", capable of becoming the backbone of the world order (3).
Of course, Wilson was by no means the first to declare that the Poles, more than other "young" European peoples, had the right to consider themselves a nation, but it was with his suggestion that the Entente diplomats actually brought the "Polish question" to the international level. Impressed by the extreme ferocity of the war, the head of the White House was ready to both destroy despotic empires and create new democratic powers.
However, even with such romanticism, Wilson is first of all a pragmatist, and an American pragmatist - he looked at Europe at that time approximately the way the Russian grand dukes looked at Germany - it is better to keep it fragmented, and let the local monarchs continue to play with their toy kingdoms.
As you can see, it is no coincidence that the epigraph to the archives of Colonel E. M. House, which exhaustively reveals the behind-the-scenes mechanisms of American politics of that era, is such a characteristic admission: "If any of the old diplomats had heard us, he would have fainted." (4).
The United States, of course, is not France, and there is no direct need for them to drive a "Polish" wedge between Russia and Germany. But why not weaken, of course, in the future, the two potentially most powerful European powers? By the way, the grand-ducal appeal, with which the Russians actually laid the foundation for the real resolution of the Polish question, became a sensation not only in Europe, but also in the States. But at that time, ordinary Americans were frankly indifferent to European affairs.
On the eve of the European war, the maximum that the most daring Polish politicians could count on was relative autonomy, and for each of the three parts, and some territorial increments. Of course, the radicals could only be satisfied with a united Poland "from sea to sea", but even the frantic Józef Pilsudski was not ready to demand "everything at once."
Jozef Pilsudski and his legionnaires in the Austrian trenches on the Russian front
The creators of his legend are happy to quote the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionaries Viktor Chernov, according to whom Pilsudski predicted the defeat in the world war, first of the Russian and then of the German Empire (5). Pilsudski, indeed, counted on just such a consistency in the outcome of the war, soberly assessing the economic and political resources of the opponents.
However, there was no shortage of the most paradoxical forecasts on the eve of the world massacre. And let’s not forget that the author of the memoirs, as well as the author of the forecast, are great masters of political bluffing, besides, when Chernov wrote his memoirs, he was almost “one hundred percent”, albeit not materially, dependent on “the head of the Polish state.
Of course, an honest revolutionary like Chernov should by no means be accused of trying to rewrite his memoirs in complimentary tones towards a former political opponent. And yet, the main thing is that the leader of the Polish radicals made his forecast with one single goal - in fact, to call on the Poles under the banner of the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns to fight the Russian Empire, that is, with the enemy whom he considered the main one for the independent Rzeczpospolita.
However, during all four years of the war, most Poles had to fight not for Poland, but only for the interests of those powers that they rightfully considered their enslavers. It is no coincidence that as part of the national armed forces that were being formed towards the end of the war in France, Polish soldiers showed real patriotism and much more heroism than in the armies of the three empires.
Even the conscription of Poles into the Russian and Austrian armies was carried out according to "reduced quotas", which, by the way, ensured the success of the first draft, which surprised the mobilization commissions so much. In Germany, the initial conscription on Polish lands also went without complications, but, starting in the summer of 1915, they tried not to send the Poles to the western front, knowing full well of their sympathies for the French.
And already at the end of 1916, the Austro-German project for an additional conscription in the occupied Polish lands failed miserably. The widely promoted proclamation of an independent kingdom in the territories that were part of the Russian Empire before the war did not save the case - in our time it could be called virtual. Had the slightest opportunity, 800 thousand Polish volunteers, on whom General Ludendorff so counted, would immediately find themselves in the ranks of the Polish Army, especially since it was formed in France.
However, republican France, in the patriotic impulse of August 1914, did not dare to demand a united Poland with the same fervor as it demanded the return of Alsace and Lorraine. Let us repeat, at first for Poland it was not even about broad autonomy, let alone real independence.
In fact, the Polish question, as one of the sore issues of Europe, is what is called "ripe", even if only latently. And not only in Russia, but also in Germany and Austria-Hungary. Oddly enough, it was Russian diplomacy, which was not distinguished by special efficiency, and, moreover, tied by the tsar's bureaucracy, who managed to play "ahead of the curve" in the Polish question.
It was at the suggestion of diplomats that the famous Grand Duke's "Appeal to the Poles" came out. At the same time, the task was to extract the maximum immediate benefit due to the propaganda effect, of course, for the Russian army, and by no means for the Poles and not for Poland. The rest had to be dealt with later - after the victory. The reasons for the fact that dividends from the "Appeal" were never obtained - only and exclusively in the unsuccessful outcome of the war for Russia.
Poland, if we talk about all three of its parts, in 1914, in terms of economic development, political culture, and national identity, was in no way inferior to, for example, Romania, Serbia or Bulgaria. But they were already independent, although, admittedly, they did not have a historical experience of their own statehood, such as that of Poland.
In addition, Poland had much more chances of international recognition even before the outbreak of the world war than any other "new" state that could have been formed on the "wreckage of empires."
We must not forget that if the Central Powers on the eve of the war did not consider any projects of creating new independent countries (even from Russian lands or in the Balkans) at all, then in the Entente countries a large-scale European redistribution in case of victory was taken for granted. In Russia, by the way, too, and in Poland, with such a redistribution, a place was assigned to a certain Western Slavic outpost.
After the legendary "Uprising" of 1863, the Polish question on the territory of empires - participants in three sections, seemed to be frozen for a long time. But another severe blow to national identity turned out to be a kind of stimulus for the Polish renaissance.
The great reforms in Russia, the transformations in the two-pronged Danube empire, albeit forced after the defeat in the war of 1866, the industrial upsurge in the united Germany - all these factors together simply could not but affect, one way or another, the position of Poland. Recovery, and then economic growth, logically accompany the cultural renaissance that surprised the world in the Polish lands of the three empires. The names of Henrik Sienkiewicz, Boleslav Prus and Jan Ignacy Paderewski were not only known to the whole world - he admired them.
At the beginning of the 20th century, in St. Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna, both hypothetically and practically, numerous combinations were considered for a revived Poland. And at least three of them could be realized if the world war ended with the victory of the Central Powers, or Russia did not fall out of the Entente.
So, the Romanovs, for the sake of decency, would have put one of the great dukes on the Polish throne. The Habsburgs simply, instead of two thrones, would try to sit on three at once, without experiencing any shortage of archdukes in this case. And the Prussian Hohenzollerns - they were ready to make happy their Polish subjects some of the "younger" colleagues in the German Empire - the Bavarian Wittelsbachs or the Saxon Wettins.
A huge role in the fact that the position and perception of the country divided by three and its people in the world was rapidly changing, was played by the historical ties of Poland with France. The interest of the French in Poland, of course, was by no means disinterested, moreover, Paris was attracted by the prospect of creating a democratic (how could it be otherwise?) Gasket between the three empires.
Yes, at that time Russia was an ally of France, but the concept of a "buffer state", albeit in a less crude form as later, was already in use among the diplomats of the early twentieth century. The Republican politicians of the Third Republic cannot but be given credit for their ability to maneuver between the "new monarchist ally" and "old revolutionary friends."
In favor of the restoration of independent Poland was the rapid strengthening of the position of the North American United States. After the Americans cut Spain to pieces and then intelligently mediated in the reconciliation of Russia and Japan, both the Entente and the Central Powers tried to win them over to their side. However, even in 1914, no sane politician could have imagined that instead of the coronation in Krakow or Warsaw of one of the European princes, it was from the White House that the conditions for the re-establishment of Poland would be dictated.
The main impetus to Polish independence, according to the good European tradition, was the revolution - in Russia, and then in Germany. The Russian "February bureaucracy" at least managed to save face, having endowed the Polish brothers with autonomy, the Prussians were not allowed even that - they were simply presented with the "Poznan bill" at Versailles.
And at the same time they "polished" the primordially free Danzig to Gdansk, and slaughtered a small part of East Prussia to the new patrimony of Pan Pilsudski. After that, the appetites of the head of the Polish state immediately grew, and he went to war against Lithuania, Belarus and Red Russia. Even the quiet Czechs with the Slovaks, from whom the Poles wanted to take Tyoshin Silesia, got it. But all this is a completely different stage in European history.
Notes.
1. T. Bethmann-Hollweg, Reflections on War, Beachtungen zum Weltkriege, Bd. II, S. 91
2. B. von Bülow, Memoirs, M., 1935, p. 488
3. Quoted. by Clements K. The presidency of Woodrow Wilson, Kansas, 1992, p.73
4. Ibid, p. 28
5. VM Chernov, Before the storm. Memories, memoirs. Minsk, 2004, pp. 294-295.
