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

Of the three eastern powers it was Austria which made the fewest concessions to Polish nationality after the Congress of Vienna. Corresponding in size to three-fifths of the Congress Kingdom and with an almost identical population of 4.25 million (in 1830), Austrian Galicia continued to be administered by an imperial governor in Lwow (Lemberg) and a German-speaking bureaucracy. Austrian law continued to operate, while a strict censorship and a loyalist church hierarchy further reinforced the political status quo. Wealthy landowners dominated the largely ineffectual provincial assembly. The province was both economically underdeveloped and financially exploited by the imperial government. It was only Austria’s concern with Russian successes against the Turks in 1828 and 1829 that prompted Vienna to woo Galicia’s nobles with a series of linguistic and cultural concessions. And despite a degree of government protection, the serfs of Galicia, whether Roman Catholic Polish-speakers in the west or Uniate Ukrainian-speakers in the east, saw no further improvement in their condition.

It would be too one-sided to regard developments in Russia’s share of Poland from 1815 to 1830 solely in terms of violations of Polish rights and a drift towards unavoidable conflict. Despite its many defects and lack of sovereignty, a Polish state in the form of the Congress Kingdom was able to function in relative stability for fifteen years, twice as long as the Napoleonic duchy of Warsaw. Warsaw’s status as a capital was enhanced by the construction of several imposing neo-classical buildings, such as the Great Theatre and the Bank of Poland, and of new palaces, churches, squares and avenues. The unveiling of Thordwaldsen’s statue of Copernicus in T830 served as a reminder of Poland’s contribution to science and universal civilization. Three Polish universities functioned in this period: in Wilno, in Warsaw (founded by Alexander I in 1 8г6) and in Krakow. Warsaw also acquired an Institute of Music (1821), a Polytechnical Institute (Г828) and other specialist centres of professional training. Despite various restrictions imposed in the elementary sector in the 1820s, the Polish-language schools of the Congress Kingdom and of the Wilno educational district remained an impressive phenomenon by the standards of eastern Europe. In the realm of literary and philosophical ideas there was also much cross-fertilization across the borders, despite the irritating interference of censors.

At the same time the intellectual ferment generated by the influence of western Romanticism and of German idealistic philosophy encouraged the younger generation in the Kingdom and in the western guhermi to challenge the essentially rationalist political and ethical values of the old Polish elite. The appeal to heroic action and defiance against all odds, so vividly expressed in Mickiewicz’s ‘Ode to Youth’ (1820), was given a further subversive twist in his poetic drama Konrad Wallenrod (1 828), set in medieval Lithuania during the wars with the Teutonic Knights, in which duplicity was justified in the name of patriotism. The Romantic concept of the nation as a moral community yearning towards its self-fulfilment was advocated by the radical literary critic Maurycy Mochnacki. Democratic ideas too were fomented at the university of Warsaw by the popular history lecturer Joachim Lelewel, who had been expelled from Wilno in .1:824 for his radicalism. The myth of Napoleonic military glory and the advent of Romantic nationalism made the vision of a reunited Poland even more painfully at variance with the narrow confines of the post-1815 settlement. Thoughts soon turned into action.

On 29 November 1830 in Warsaw a conspiratorial group of junior officers, fired by Romantic dreams of Polish independence and inspired by the political upheavals of that year in western Europe, launched an armed insurrection against Russian domination. It was a reckless and inept affair. The attempted assassination of Grand Duke Constantine was bungled and only some units joined the rebels. However, the seizure of the arsenal and the distribution of 30,000 rifles among the city’s population transformed the situation. All Poles in positions of higher authority in Warsaw condemned the revolt, while Lubecki and Czartoryski,

25 Portrait of Poland’s greatest Romantic and poet, Adam Mickiewiez (1^98-1855), painted in 1828 by Walenty Wankowicz (1799-1842).