Where Is Poland?

Chapter 2

Warsaw

Georg Brandes leaves the border and finally reaches the destination of his journey: Warsaw. The former capital of Poland – now the capital city of ‘VistulaLand’ – lies on the western frontiers of the Russian Empire. His stay coincides with the darkest times of the policy of Russification.

Warsaw, Nowy Świat Street, 1873. Photo: Konrad Brandel. Source: National Museum in Warsaw

Warsaw - A Strange City

Although Warsaw is the third largest city of the Russian Empire (after Moscow and St. Petersburg), it seems to be but a shadow of its former self. After two unsuccessful uprisings, the city is ruled with an iron fist by Governor-Generals sent from Russia, who now reside in the former castle of the old Polish kings. Establishing any kind of association or organising any cultural event requires permission from the police commissioner. All of public administration is in Russian hands – at the end of the nineteenth century, only 1% of all officials were Polish.

As Brandes noted in his book:

Warsaw is the capital of a country whose existence the government does not recognise, and is a city whose pride the government wishes to humble in every way. We must remember that Warsaw has no 'home rule', no city council, nothing at all of that sort. Rather, Russian Poland is a country where no one at all is elected.

Vistula Land and Erasing ‘Poland’

After the failure of the 1863 insurrection, the Russian administration began erasing all kinds of vestigial traces of Poland’s former existence, including even terminology. The former Polish territories incorporated into the Empire were previously called the ‘Kingdom of Poland’. Ten years after the insurrection, however, this name, associated with the former period of autonomy, was officially replaced by the term ‘Vistula Land’ (Russian Привислинский край). The new name – based on the name of the Vistula River – was intended to additionally underscore the former Kingdom’s further integration into the fabric of the Russian Empire, and thus symbolically aid the Russian administration’s main goal – the Russification of Polish society.

Yet according to law, since the revolt there have been no Poles; they are all Russians. Even the Kingdom of Poland is called officially Vistula Land.

Georg Brandes, Poland, 1888

Russification, or How to turn Poles into good Russian citizens?

The tsarist authorities make every effort to transform the territories inhabited by the Poles and make them as similar to the rest of the Russian Empire as possible. At school, from early age, children are taught in Russian, the use of the language is obligatory in public administration and it opens up many career paths, whereas using Polish, the native language of the residents, is strictly prohibited in public places. The policy of Russification is also visible in higher education: in 1869 the ‘Warsaw Main School’, which had been Polish-speaking, was replaced by the Imperial University, with Russian as the language of instruction.

The public space is yet another battlefield. Although Russians (mainly military staff and officials) constitute just 4% of the city's population, the authorities are doing their best to make Warsaw akin to other Russian cities in every aspect. Shop signs written in Cyrillic, the domes of Catholic churches converted into bulbous Orthodox ones and monuments erected to commemorate hated imperial governors are visible symbols of Russian domination. Watching over the city is a Citadel, and the soldiers manning it have strict orders to prevent another Polish rebellion.

Polish writer and columnist Bolesław Prus wrote:

Into what has the bureaucracy turned the respectable Russian language? Into shackles and a whip against school pupils, against lawyers and their clients, against peasants in the countryside, against priests, against all citizens of the country, on every more official or less official occasion. And into what has it turned the Orthodox religion, the sanctity of a hundred million people? Hasn’t such conduct undermined the dignity of the language? Has it not diminished the solemnity of the religion professed by Russia?