In Poland, their national revival is customarily associated with the final defeat in the First World War of Imperial Germany and the patchwork empire of the Habsburgs. But the first real steps towards the restoration of the historical statehood of Poland were made by Russia.
Not France and not the United States, and even more so, not the Central Powers, which established a bastard "regency kingdom" in the east of the Polish lands. The troops of the two emperors with German roots remained on Polish soil until the revolutionary events of November 1918.
In the fall of 1914, the imperial Russian army went to fight "against the German", which did not become the second "domestic", generally having a bad idea of what it would have to fight for. Officially, it was believed that, among other things, for the restoration of "whole" Poland. Even if this was supposed to be done "under the scepter of the Romanovs."
At the end of 1916, Nicholas II, by his order on the army, recognized the need to re-create an independent Poland, and already the Provisional Government declared Polish independence "de-jure". And, finally, the government of the people's commissars did it "de-facto", consolidating its decision a little later in the articles of the Brest Peace.
"We have nothing to share with the Germans, except … Poland and the Baltic states." After the bad memory of the Berlin Congress, this cruel joke was very popular in the secular salons of both Russian capitals. The authorship was attributed both to the renowned generals Skobelev and Dragomirov, and to the witty writer of the Petersburg Sketches, Peter Dolgorukov, who, without any hesitation, called the tsar's courtyard "bastard."
Later, on the eve of the world massacre, retired Prime Minister Sergei Yulievich Witte and the Minister of Internal Affairs in his office, Senator Pyotr Nikolaevich Durnovo, as well as a number of other opponents of the war with Germany, spoke in absolutely the same spirit.
But history, as you know, is full of paradoxes … and irony. Over the course of a century and a half, both in Russia and in Germany "above" the desire to deal with Poland only by force gained the upper hand over and over again. The same "forceful" methods of the Russian Empire that under the tsar, that under the communists adhered to in relation to the small Baltic countries, since the Germans could really "reach" them only in wartime.
In the end, the Balts and Poles entered the third millennium proud of their independence, and both empires - Germany, again gaining strength and the new "democratic" Russia - were considerably curtailed. We cannot but recognize the current European status-quo. However, it is very difficult not to agree with the supporters of a tough national policy - the modern frontiers of both great powers do not correspond in any way to their "natural" historical boundaries.
Russia and Poland have historically played the role of borderlands in the millennial civilizational confrontation between East and West. Through the efforts of the Muscovite kingdom, the tough, pragmatic West for centuries removed the wild and poorly structured East as far as possible from itself. But at the same time, many European powers, with Poland in the vanguard, over the centuries did not stop trying to move at the same time the "watershed of civilizations" - of course, at the expense of Russia.
However, Poland, which Europe "endowed" with the Latin alphabet and the Catholic religion, itself experienced considerable pressure from the West. However, perhaps, only once in its history - at the beginning of the 15th century, Poland, in response to this, went to direct cooperation with the Russians.
But this also happened only at the moment when the country itself with the name Rzeczpospolita, or rather the Polish Rzeczpospolita, was by no means a Polish national state. It was a kind of, let's call it so, "semi-Slavic" conglomerate of Lithuania and the western branch of the crumbling Golden Horde.
Despite the notorious kinship, the similarity of cultures and languages, it is difficult to expect peaceful coexistence from the two powers, which had practically no choice in determining the main vector of their policies. The only example of joint confrontation with the West - Grunwald, unfortunately, remained the exception that only confirmed the rule.
However, Stalin's "Polish Army" is probably another exception, of course, different, both in essence and in spirit. And the fact that the Polish kings claimed the Russian throne was not an adventure at all, but only a logical continuation of the desire to "push back" the East.
The Muscovites reciprocated the Poles and were also not averse to climbing the Polish throne. Either themselves, and Ivan the Terrible - here is not an exception, but the most real contender, or by putting his protege on him.
If the Polish white eagle, regardless of the historical conjuncture, always looked to the West, then for the Russians only two centuries after the Mongol yoke, no matter how Lev Gumilyov or the "alternative" Fomenko and Nosovich characterized him, it was time to turn their gaze in that direction. Previously, they did not allow, first of all, internal unrest.
In practice, Russia had to complete its deeply "costly" and focused only on the distant future Eastern expansion in order to acquire the right to such a "European" sovereign like Peter the Great. By that time, the winged horsemen of Jan Sobieski had already accomplished their last feat to the glory of Europe, defeating thousands of Turkish army under the walls of Vienna.
Rzeczpospolita, torn apart by the arrogant gentry from within, was actually just waiting for its sad fate. It is no coincidence that Charles XII marched with such ease from Pomerania to the walls of Poltava, and Menshikov's dragoons galloped across Polish lands as far as Holstein.
The Russians throughout the 18th century used the territory of Mazovia and Greater Poland as a semi-vassal springboard for their European exercises. Europe, having waved its hand at the Poles, tried to move to the East only a couple of times. But even the Prussians, under the restless Frederick the Great and his brilliant General Seydlitz, the leader of the magnificent hussars, were afraid to go deeper beyond Poznan.
Soon, when fermentation on Polish lands threatened to turn into something like "Pugachevism", the energetic rulers of Russia and Prussia - Catherine II and Frederick, also the Second, very vividly "responded" to the calls of the Polish gentry to restore order in Warsaw and Krakow. They quickly turned two sections of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
It was not for nothing that Catherine and Frederick received the right to be called the Greats under their contemporaries. However, the Russian empress only returned the Russian lands under her crown. "Rejected Returns!" - with these words, she decided the fate of Belarus, and the original Poland to Russia was slaughtered by Alexander I, and even then only because she was too tough for the Prussians.
The third partition of Poland was only the end of the first two, but it was he who caused the popular uprising of Tadeusz Kosciuszko - a popular one, but this only made it even more bloody. Historians have repeatedly refuted the false stories about the brutality of the brilliant Suvorov, but making the Poles give up their dislike for him and his Cossacks is about the same as instilling in the Russians a love for Pilsudski.
Nevertheless, not immediately after the three partitions of Poland, the final divorce of the two Slavic peoples acquired the significance of one of the key problems of European politics. The fact that the Poles and the Russians should not be together became finally clear exactly 200 years ago - since Napoleon made an attempt to recreate Poland. However, the emperor of the French, demonstratively, so as not to irritate Austria and Russia, called it the Duchy of Warsaw and placed the Saxon king on the throne.
Since then, all attempts to "write" the Poles into the Russian ran into harsh rejection. Well, the noble nobility, having lost the age-old confrontation with the eastern neighbor, completely forgot about the idea of reigning in Moscow. By the way, the Muscovites themselves sometimes had nothing against the nobleman on the Moscow throne - it was they who called the first of the False Dmitrys to the Mother See.
It would seem that the Polesie bogs and the Carpathians are suitable for the role of "natural borders" between Poland and Russia, no worse than the Alps or the Rhine for France. But the peoples who settled on both sides of these borders turned out to be too Slavic energetic and enterprising.
The "Slavic dispute" more than once seemed to be completed almost forever, but, in the end, when the German powers intervened unceremoniously and greedily, it turned into three tragic divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Then it turned into one of the most "painful" issues in Europe - the Polish one.
The hope that flashed under Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and then under Napoleon, remained hope for the Poles. Subsequently, the hope turned into a beautiful legend, into a dream, in the opinion of many, hardly realizable.
In the age of great empires, "weak" (according to Stolypin) nations did not even get the right to dream. Only the world war brought about the era of nationalities to replace the era of empires, and in it the Poles, one way or another, managed to win their place in the new Europe.
In many ways, the green light for the revival of Poland was given by two Russian revolutions. But without the preemptive participation of the Russian Empire, which for more than a hundred years included most of the Polish lands, the matter still did not work out.
The tsarist bureaucracy in many ways created a "Polish problem" for itself, gradually destroying even those limited freedoms that were granted to Poland by Emperor Alexander I the Blessed. The "organic status" of his successor on the throne, Nikolai Pavlovich, was as if written in blood following the results of the fratricidal war of 1830-31, but retained for the Poles many rights that the Great Russians could not even dream of at that time.
After that, the reborn gentry did not support the revolutionary impulse of 1848, but rebelled later - when not only Polish, but also Russian peasants received freedom from the tsar-liberator. The organizers of the adventurous "Rebellion-1863" left Alexander II no other choice but to deprive the Kingdom of the last hints of autonomy.
It is no coincidence that even Polish historians, who are inclined to idealize the struggle for independence, differ so radically in their assessment of the events of 1863. By the end of the 19th century, in enlightened houses, for example, in the Pilsudski family, the "uprising" was categorically considered a mistake, moreover, a crime.
A great success for the Russian imperial power was the passivity of the Poles in 1905, when only Lodz and Silesia really supported the revolutionaries of Moscow and St. Petersburg. But, entering the World War, it was almost impossible for Russia to leave the "Polish question" unresolved. Without tackling it "from above", one could expect only one solution - "from below".
The threat that the Germans or the Austrians would "sort out" the Poles frightened Nicholas II and his ministers much less than the prospect of another revolution. After all, the "nationals" are unlikely to remain neutral in it, and they will certainly never side with the authorities.
And yet, the Poles themselves in those years were waiting for the solution of "their" question, primarily from Russia. A little later, having experienced disappointment in the efforts of the tsarist bureaucracy, most of them relied on their allies, first on the French, as if according to the principle "old love does not rust," then on the Americans.
The Austrian combinations with the triune monarchy of the Poles almost did not bother - the weakness of the Habsburg empire was clear to them without explanation. And they did not have to rely on the Germans at all - for decades, following the precepts of the iron chancellor Bismarck, they tried to Germanize the Poles. And, by the way, not always unsuccessfully - even after all the troubles of the 20th century, traces of German traditions can still be traced in the lifestyle of the absolutely Polish population of Silesia, as well as Pomerania and the lands of the former Poznan Duchy.
Paying tribute to the purely German ability to organize life, we note that it was precisely by this - the stubborn desire to promote everything "truly German" in the conquered lands, the Hohenzollerns, by the way, were strikingly different from the Romanovs. The calls of the latter to strengthen Slavic unity are, you see, by no means synonymous with primitive Russification.
However, among the tsar's subjects there were also enough masters and those who wanted to re-baptize the "Pole into a hare". Just the creeping, really not sanctioned from above, the desire of large and small bureaucrats, among which there were many Poles by nationality, to root "everything Russian", at least on the disputed lands, came back to haunt the Russian harsh rejection of "everything Russian."
The world war sharply exacerbated the "ripe" Polish question, which explains the amazing efficiency with which the first public act was adopted, addressed directly to the Poles - the famous grand ducal appeal. After that, the Polish question was by no means "pushed" on the back burner, as some researchers think.
Despite the desire to "postpone" the Polish question, which constantly prevailed against Nicholas II, when he openly waited for the issue to be resolved as if by itself and the "Appeal" would be quite enough for this, it was repeatedly considered in the State Duma, and in the Government, and in the State Council … But a specially created commission of Russian and Polish representatives, assembled to determine the "principles" of Polish autonomy, did not formally decide anything, limiting itself to recommendations of a rather general nature.
At the same time, even formal recommendations were enough for Nicholas II to answer informally to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Poland by the Germans and Austrians … exclusively on the lands of the Russian Empire.
In the well-known order on the army, which was personally marked by the sovereign on December 25 (12th according to the old style - the day of St. Spyridon-turn), it was clearly indicated that
The Supreme Commander-in-Chief admitted that it should come as no surprise that in many Polish houses, despite the Austro-German occupation, this order of Nicholas II was hung in the festive framework next to the icons.
The Provisional Government, which replaced the Romanov bureaucracy, and after it the Bolsheviks, surprisingly decisively dissociated themselves from their western "colony" - Poland. But even then, most likely, only because they had enough headache without it. Although it should be noted that all the documentation on Polish autonomy was prepared by the Russian Foreign Ministry (even the choice of an imperial department is typical - the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but of Foreign Affairs) even before February 1917, which helped the new Minister of Foreign Affairs Milyukov so "easily" to resolve the difficult Polish question.
But as soon as Russia gained strength, imperial thinking took over again, and in its most aggressive guise. And if such "great powers" as Denikin and Wrangel lost more from this than they gained, then Stalin "and his comrades", without hesitation, returned Poland to the sphere of influence of Russia.
And even though this Russia was already Soviet, it made it no less "great and indivisible." However, condemning the Russian "imperials" in any of their political clothes, one cannot but admit that the European powers, and the Poles themselves, for centuries have left Russia no chance to take a different path on the Polish issue. But this, you see, is a completely separate topic.
And yet the civilized, and, apparently, final, divorce of the two largest Slavic states took place - towards the end of the 20th century. We plan to tell about the first steps towards this, which were taken between August 1914 and October 1917, in a series of subsequent essays on the "Polish question". How long such a series will last depends only on our readers.
We admit right away that the analysis of the “question” will be deliberately subjective, that is, from the standpoint of a Russian researcher. The author is fully aware that only well-known people, at best, reporters of leading Russian and European newspapers, managed to "give the floor" in it.
The voice of peoples, without which it is difficult to truly objectively assess national relations, the author is forced to leave "behind the scenes" for now. This, too, is the subject of special fundamental research, which only a team of professionals can do.
The current neighborhood of Russia and Poland, even with the presence of the Belarusian "buffer", no matter how the head of the Union Republic resists, "pro-Russian" by definition, can most easily be described as a "cold world". Peace is always better than war, and it is undoubtedly based, among other things, on what the best representatives of Russia and Poland were able to achieve at the beginning of the last century.
Now Poland has once again swung towards Germany. But even this does not allow one to forget that the "Western scenario", be it German, French, American or the current European Union, has never guaranteed Poland a position "on an equal footing" with the leading powers of the old continent.
And Russia, even after the victory over Napoleon took most of Poland "for itself", provided the Poles with much more than the Russians themselves could count on in the empire. In the same that almost everything that Alexander the Blessed "gave" them, the Poles have lost, they are to blame no less than the Russians.
From Stalin in 1945, Poland, oddly enough, in the state plan received much more than its new leaders could count on. And the Polish population did inherit such a German inheritance, which after the Great Victory none of the Soviet people could even count on.
Even taking into account the new era of Poland's frank flirting with the West, taking into account the fact that we now do not even have a common border, the Russian factor will always be present in the Polish consciousness, and therefore in Polish politics and economy, as perhaps the most important one. For Russia, however, the "Polish question" only in the critical years - 1830, 1863 or 1920, acquired paramount importance, and it will probably be better for both our country and Poland, so that it never becomes the main thing again. …
