Germanization, Polonization, and Russification in the partitioned lands of Poland-Lithuania

Abstract

Two main myths constitute the founding basis of popular Polish ethnic nationalism: first, that Poland-Lithuania was an early Poland, and second, that the partitioning powers at all times unwaveringly pursued policies of Germanization and Russification. In the former case, the myth appropriates a common past today shared by Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine. In the latter case, Polonization is written out of the picture entirely, as also are variations and changes in the polices of Germanization and Russification. Taken together, the two myths to a large degree obscure (and even falsify) the past, making comprehension of it difficult, if not impossible. This article seeks to disentangle the knots of anachronisms that underlie the Polish national master narrative, in order to present a clearer picture of the interplay between the policies of Germanization, Polonization, and Russification as they unfolded in the lands of the partitioned Poland-Lithuania during the long nineteenth century.

Keywords:

• Germanization
• nationalism
• partitioned lands of Poland-Lithuania
• Poland-Lithuania
• Polonization
• Russification

Acknowledgements

I thank Anna Cienciała, Cezary Obracht-Prondzyński, Jerzy Tomaszewski, and especially Michael O. Gorman for their suggestions and corrections. Obviously, I alone remain responsible for any infelicities.

Notes

For the article's needs I define the phenomenon of Polonization as the official introduction of Polish as the sole or dominating language of administration and education in a region predominantly populated by ethnically and linguistically non-Polish inhabitants. Certainly, in the absence of a Polish polity, this introduction of Polish in these functions in the partitioned lands of Poland-Lithuania was executed by a respective partitioning power.

On the persistence of the use of the conceptual framework of nation for writing and analyzing the non-national past in Europe, see Berger (2005).

All these terms stem from the phonetic rendering of the Polish, Rzeczpospolita. (Obviously, most were not in use during the existence of Poland-Lithuania, because the languages did not exist in their standard or official forms then, with the exception of Polish and Russian.) In turn, the official Polish name of Poland-Lithuania is a literal translation of the Latin word respublica, for “republic” (literally “public thing”); that is why Rzeczpospolita is most commonly translated into English as “Commonwealth.” Today, the term “republic” is rendered in the Latinate manner as republika in Polish, while the antiquated usage of rzeczpospolita survives only in modern-day Poland's official name, Rzeczpospolita Polska, translated into English as “Republic of Poland.”

The Polish text of the Union of Lublin, see Unia Lubelska (2010).

In 1622, Poland-Lithuania lost Livonia (today, eastern Latvia and southern Estonia) to Sweden.

They arrived in Israel in several distinctive ways: firstly, between the two world wars, from Europe to the British mandate of Palestine; secondly, as Holocaust survivors from Europe after World War II; thirdly, as expellees from the Soviet bloc countries in the 1950s and 1960s; fourthly, as settlers from Western Europe and Northern America; and lastly, from Russia and other post-Soviet countries after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

Cf. Rozbiory Polski (2010); Teilungen Polens (2010); Partitions of Poland (2010); Partitions de la Pologne (2010).

Cf. Abiejų Tautų Respublikos padalijimai (2010); Padzely Rečy Paspałitaj (2010); Podily Rechi Pospolytoi (2010); Razdely Rechi Pospolitoi (2010).

In Polish, Ustawa Rządowa.

In Muscovy, Ruthenian was dubbed Litovskii, or “Lithuanian,” which by no means meant the present-day non-Slavic language of Lithuanian, Lithuania's official language (Ališauskas et al. 2006, 645).

Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Norwegian, Prussian Lithuanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Sorbian, or Swedish.

To avoid anachronism, I use place-names in linguistic forms that were official at the time to which a given passage refers and provide modern-day forms in parentheses.

The Romanceophone population (Walachians, who became today's Romanians and Moldovans) of Hungary's Transylvania and the Danubian principalities of Walachia and Moldavia employed Church Slavonic for religious and official purposes until the turn of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, Church Cyrillic was preserved for writing Romanian until the mid-nineteenth century. Interestingly, Moldovan was written and printed in modern Cyrillic (Grazhdanka) until 1989, and this situation continues to the present day in the unrecognized polity of Transnistria.

Latin remained the official language of the Kingdom of Hungary (or, in modern terms, in Austria's Burgenland, northern and western Croatia, Hungary, northwestern Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine's Transcarpathia) until 1846, and was to a degree reinstated there in this role during the period 1850–1866.

The concept of gentem lingua facit (languages create peoples) originated in the sixteenth century but remained at the margin of mainstream European politics and thought until the late eighteenth century (Althoen 2000, Ch. 3).

The Polish original of Pan Tadeusz was published in Paris in 1834.

The Uniate Church survived until 1875 in Russia's Congress Kingdom of Poland, which did not constitute part of the original Russian partition zone of Poland-Lithuania.

In 1804, during the Napoleonic Wars, fearing the dismantling of the Holy Roman Empire (which did happen in 1806), the Habsburgs reorganized their hereditary lands into an Austrian Empire.

Despite the official abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861, elements of the system continued until the Bolshevik Revolution (Švankmajer et al. 2010, 257–260; Zubov, 68–71).

The tsar reigned in the Congress Kingdom as the Polish king, so institutions established by him there were termed “royal,” in contrast to “imperial” ones in Russia proper.

In Polish terminology this event is usually dubbed the “November Uprising,” because it broke out during this month in 1830.

In Polish literature it is known as the “January Uprising,” because it broke out in this month of 1863.

In the Russian Empire, Lithuanian and Samogitian were construed as two similar but separate Baltic languages. Samogitia, as a distinctive region, survived in the Russian partition zone in the form of the guberniia of Kovno (today, Kaunas in Lithuania). After Lithuania regained independence in 1991, Samogitian revived as a language in its own right.

The educational system in Prussia (and then in the German Empire) was organized along confessional lines. The Catholic Church controlled its section of the system in areas populated by Catholics, and the Lutheran-Calvinist Evangelical-Christian Church of the Prussian Union of 1817 controlled that of the Protestant regions.

Danish, French, Lithuanian, Polish, and Serbian.

The wish was granted, but in a manner not foreseen by any of the nationalists. It was Stalin and Hitler who split Galicia along such ethnolinguistic lines in the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The division was renewed when the postwar Soviet–Polish border was established in 1945. Today, in part, it serves as the Ukrainian–Polish frontier, since Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

In the case of the 1920 division of Austrian Silesia between Czechoslovakia and Poland, it was the former polity that obtained the entirety of Austria-Hungary's largest coal and metallurgical basin, located in the crownland.