(Cambridge Concise Histories) Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki - A Concise History of Poland-Cambridge University Press (2006)

regions with a different status, the western gubernii of the Russian Empire and an integral part thereof, and now the new autonomous Congress Kingdom of Poland. Little did the Polish patriots appreciate that, unlike the short-lived arrangements of 1795, the international frontiers established across Poland in 1815 were to last for a century, with the minor exception of Krakow.

Alexander must take most credit for salvaging a Polish state out of the ashes of Napoleonic Europe, yet his Polish kingdom owed much to its Napoleonic origins in terms of its si/.e, its institutions and its legal system; Alexander retained the Napoleonic Code. Exhausted and war-weary, the Polish leaders accepted the new order and slipped easily into positions of authority under their new ruler. Indeed, all that Alexander had told them in 1814-15 led them to expect further acts of generosity from their tsar-king in whose exclusive gift remained both the new kingdom’s constitution and its envisaged eastward extension. Intellectuals such as Stanislaw Staszic and politicians like Czartoryski and the former radical Horodyski saw in Russia a defender of Polish national interests, and openly espoused sentiments of Slavonic solidarity. For all its limitations the settlement of 1815 was a marked improvement on that of t~95. In respect of their national rights, the Polish elite under Russian domination wxme to enjoy more favourable conditions between 1 815 and 1850 than at any other time of the long partition period. No amount of Romantic nostalgia for the Napoleonic era could obscure the fact that the duchy of Warsaw, groaning under military exactions, stood on rhe shifting and ultimately perilous sands of the Napoleonic order. In 1815 the Great Powers explicitly recognized the Polish nationality throughout the area of the former Commonwealth, and took a number of steps to give an institutional expression of these rights not only in Alexander's share of Poland but also in Prussia’s duchy of Posen, and even, although heavily watered down, in Austrian Galicia. In many areas Polish education was maintained, and scholarship and cultural life in general flourished. The decade and a half after 18 1 5 also witnessed some economic development.

In 1 8 г 5 Tsar Alexander was still the darling of many liberals and patriots. In November he granted to his Polish kingdom what appeared in the context of Restoration Europe an advanced liberal

24 Emperor Alexander I and the foundation of the university of Warsaw in 7816, bvan unknown painter Ir8yo). Alexander I presents the foundation charter of the university to its first rector W. A. Szxveykowski. With the exception of his father Tsar Paul I, Alexander I was the only Russian ruler in the modern period who permitted the development of Polish-language education in the western guhcrnii of the Russian Empire, and encouraged it after 1815 in the ‘Congress’ Kingdom of Poland. In 1804 he contributed 500 ducats to the publication of Linde’s dictionary of the Polish language. The university of Warsaw was closed in 183 т and re-opened in 1862-9, after which it functioned as a Russian institution until 1914. The proposal to erect a monument in Warsaw in Alexander’s honour, endorsed by the Polish Seim in June 1 830, was never implemented.

constitution. With its elected Sejm, wide franchise and extensive civil rights, the Congress Kingdom represented a stark contrast with the autocracy of the Russian Empire to which the Kingdom was' united Tor ever’. Yet the deficiencies of the new constitutional order reflected well Alexander’s narrow interpretation of ‘liberalism’. The Sejm was denied all control over the budget and over the army, which became a major drain on state finances, and rarely met in the 1820s. Other mechanisms for the supervision and control of Alexander’s Polish kingdom were created. The post of viceroy went to the obedient cx-Napoleonic general Jozef Zajączek and not to the independent-minded Czartoryski; the erstwhile liberal and now cynical toady Nikolai Novosiltsev became the tsar’s personal extra-constitutional overseer of the Kingdom, while Alexander’s ill-tempered and brutal brother Grand Duke Constantine was given command of the Polish army and of the large Russian force stationed in the Kingdom. In 1819 preventive censorship was introduced. Disappointing also were Alexander’s tantalizing but ultimately unfulfilled earlier promises to attach the western gubernii to the Congress Kingdom, one of the main attractions for the Polish elite of the Russian connection. Likewise, the treaty provisions for a free trade zone across the Polish lands proved unworkable; a customs barrier was established between Russia and the Kingdom, which also had to contend with high Prussian and Austrian tariffs.