Latest / The Story of Poland: A Nation That Refused to Disappear — Fexingo History / The Curse of the Partitions: How Poles Preserved a Nation
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about the big armed uprisings—1830, 1846, 1848, and especially the January Uprising of 1863. And after that last one failed, things changed. The Russians decided they weren't going to give Poles another chance to rebel. So they launched a brutal campaign to erase Polish identity entirely. Lucas: This is the period that follows—roughly from 1864 up to the early 1900s—when Poland didn't exist on any map, and the only way to be Polish was to resist quietly, often in secret. It's a story of schools in apartments, of economists who wanted to build strength from the bottom up, and of a new generation of political thinkers who dreamed of independence, but through very different paths. Luna: So after the January Uprising, the tsar was basically done with Polish insurrections? Lucas: Exactly. Tsar Alexander II—who had actually been relatively liberal earlier—took a hard turn. His government implemented what they called 'Russification.' The idea was to make Poles into Russians: Russian language in schools, Russian administration, even Russian Orthodox religion replacing Catholicism. And the most symbolic target was the Uniate Church. Luna: The Uniate Church—that's the Eastern Catholic Church that kept Byzantine rites but recognized the pope, right? Lucas: Right. It was a huge part of Polish and Ukrainian identity in the eastern borderlands. The tsar banned it in 1875 and forcibly converted its members to Russian Orthodoxy. Entire villages were pressured, sometimes violently. But many Uniates continued to practice in secret, passing down their faith through generations. Lucas: And the Polish language itself became an act of rebellion. In Congress Poland, Russian became the official language. Polish was forbidden in public offices, and even in schools, children were taught in Russian. But Poles found ways around it. They started teaching their children at home. And they created what became known as the Flying University. Luna: Wait, the Flying University? That sounds like something from a fantasy novel. Lucas: It does, doesn't it? But it was real. In Polish, it was called the Uniwersytet Latający. It was a secret university that moved from location to location—private apartments, hidden rooms. Professors, often fired from official universities, would lecture on Polish literature, history, and science. Women were especially active. In fact, one of its most famous students was Maria Skłodowska, before she became Marie Curie. Luna: Marie Curie studied at a secret university in Warsaw? Lucas: She did. She couldn't attend the official University of Warsaw because she was a woman—and because the university was Russified anyway. So she joined the Flying University, where she got a real Polish education. Later she went to Paris, but that start in secret classrooms shaped her. The Flying University operated from the 1880s right up until independence in 1918. Lucas: But resistance wasn't just about education. There was also a movement called Organic Work—praca organiczna. The idea was that instead of fighting doomed battles, Poles should focus on building their economic and cultural strength. Improve agriculture, start businesses, support Polish crafts. Think of it like a national body: if every organ is healthy, the whole will survive. Luna: So it was kind of like slow-burn nationalism—improve from within rather than take on the empire directly? Lucas: Exactly. It grew out of the Positivist philosophy popular across Europe at the time. Polish Positivists like Bolesław Prus, the novelist, argued for 'work at the foundations.' They were realistic: Poland couldn't win a war against Russia, Austria, or Prussia. But Poles could out-educate, out-earn, and out-organize their oppressors. And in many ways, it worked. Polish industry grew, especially in the Prussian partition, where the German government also tried Germanization. But Organic Work helped preserve a Polish middle class. Lucas: However, by the 1890s, a new generation of Poles started to reject both armed uprising and patient organic work. They wanted modern politics: mass movements, parties, and a clear vision for an independent Poland. Two figures defined this era: Roman Dmowski and Józef Piłsudski. Luna: And they had very different ideas about how to get Poland back, didn't they? Lucas: Completely different. Dmowski founded the National Democracy movement, or Endecja. He was a modern nationalist. He argued that Poles had to be a cohesive ethnic nation, and that the main enemy was Germany, not Russia. In fact, he thought Poland could gain independence by cooperating with Russia against Germany. He was also anti-Semitic, unfortunately, which stains his legacy. Luna: And Piłsudski? Lucas: Piłsudski was the opposite. He came from the old revolutionary tradition. He was a socialist early on, and he believed that independence could only come through armed struggle—but not the romantic kind of 1863. He wanted a disciplined, modern army. And he saw Russia, not Germany, as the primary enemy. He even raised funds by robbing Russian mail trains—literally, bank robberies for the cause. Luna: Wait, the future leader of Poland was a train robber? Lucas: He was! In 1904, he helped organize a raid on a Russian postal train near Bezdany in Lithuania. They got away with over 200,000 rubles—a huge sum. The money funded his Polish Socialist Party, the PPS, and its paramilitary units. Piłsudski wasn't a conventional politician; he was a conspirator, a man who lived in the underground. Lucas: So by the early 1900s, you had these two competing visions: Dmowski's nationalist, pro-Russian, anti-German path, and Piłsudski's socialist, anti-Russian, independence-through-struggle path. Both were preparing for a moment when the empires that partitioned Poland would collapse. They just disagreed on how to get there. Luna: And then World War I happened—that was the collapse they were waiting for. Lucas: Exactly. But that's a story for next time. For now, it's important to see that between 1864 and 1914, Poland wasn't just 'waiting.' It was building. Secret universities, organic work, political parties, even train robberies—all of it kept the nation alive. As the Polish saying goes, 'Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, póki my żyjemy'—Poland is not lost as long as we live. Luna: And they held onto that for 123 years. Lucas: They did. And that refusal to disappear is what makes this story so remarkable. Next time, we'll see how World War I finally gave them their opening.