Poland

F

Second and Third Partitions

Shortly afterwards the leaders of the disgruntled nobility and Catherine II reached a secret agreement providing for the restoration of the old order. The Polish conspirators organized the Confederacy of Targowica in May 1792. Supported by Russian troops, this organization immediately began military operations against Poland. The Polish army, led by Prince Józef Poniatowski, resisted for more than three months, but the government, abandoned by Prussia and confronted by overwhelming odds, soon capitulated. Russian armies then occupied all of eastern Poland, and shortly thereafter, early in 1793, the Prussians occupied the western portion of the country. These territorial seizures, which further reduced the area of Poland by two thirds, were formally sanctioned in a second territorial partition, ratified in September 1793.

In 1794 the Poles embarked on a revolutionary war for the recovery of their lost territories. Under the leadership of Thaddeus Kosciusko, who had fought in the American War of Independence and who assumed dictatorial powers, the hastily formed Polish armies won a series of victories over the Russians. By the summer of 1794 large sections of Russian-occupied Poland had been liberated and the Russians had suffered a humiliating defeat at Warsaw. A variety of factors, however, including dissension among the Polish high command, overwhelming numerical superiority of the Russians, and Prussian and Austrian intervention, rendered the Polish cause hopeless. In October 1794 the Russians won a decisive victory at Maciejowice. Russian forces under Field Marshal Aleksandr Suvorov entered Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, in November and massacred much of the population. Warsaw then surrendered, and the remnants of the revolutionary armies capitulated within a few weeks. After settling sharp differences on division of the spoils, the victorious powers concluded treaties between 1795 and 1797 on the third partition of Poland. By the terms of the treaties, the Russian Empire received about half of the remaining Polish territory, and Prussia and Austria each received about a quarter. With these events, the Polish state disappeared from the map of Europe.

G

Poland Under Foreign Rule

The Polish people remained under the yoke of foreign masters for nearly 125 years after the third partition. During the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon, who had promised to re-establish Poland, obtained substantial help from the Poles, thousands of whom served in his armies. In 1807, by the provisions of the Treaty of Tilsit, he created the Duchy of Warsaw, consisting originally of the territory taken by Prussia in 1793 and 1795. Two years later Napoleon forced Austria to cede Western Galicia to the duchy. Aside from granting the state a liberal constitution, Napoleon did little else for the Poles, despite their support for his 1812 campaign against Russia.

In 1815 the Congress of Vienna, which drafted the general European peace settlement after Napoleon’s downfall, created a Kingdom of Poland, consisting of about three quarters of the territory of the former Duchy of Warsaw, with the Russian Emperor as King; established Kraków as a city republic; and distributed the remainder of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, granted the new kingdom a liberal constitution in 1815, but Polish nationalists soon initiated a powerful movement for independence. On November 29, 1830, this movement culminated in the outbreak of armed insurrection. The Poles expelled the imperial authorities and in January 1831 proclaimed their independence. In the ensuing war, the Poles kept the Russians at bay for several months. The Russians won an important victory at Ostroléka on May 26, 1831, however, and they took Warsaw on September 8.

The constitution, the Sejm, and the Polish army were abolished in Poland in the aftermath of the rebellion. The Poles were deprived of civil liberties, their country was robbed of literary and art treasures, and severe measures were taken to Russianize public institutions and administration. Other abortive insurrections and nationalist demonstrations occurred in various parts of Poland in 1846, 1848, 1861, and most notably in 1863. After the insurrection of 1863 the Russian Empire, intensifying its programme for the Russification of the Polish lands under its rule, introduced the Russian language in schools, restricted the use of the Polish language, and interfered with the activities of the Roman Catholic Church. Culturally, politically, and economically, the parts of Poland under Russian rule were transformed into mere provinces of the Russian Empire, losing almost all vestiges of their former autonomy. The Poles in Prussian Poland were subjected to a policy of Germanization (although not as severe as in the Russian zone); Poles in Austrian Poland were treated more liberally, and developed their own leaders and political life.

H

Independence

Conscripted into the armies of Russia and the Central Powers, Poles fought against Poles in World War I. After the downfall of the Russian Empire, in March 1917, the provisional government of Russia recognized Poland’s right to self-determination. A provisional Polish government was subsequently formed at Paris. In September 1917 the Germans, then in complete control of the country, created a regency council as the supreme governmental authority of the so-called Polish Kingdom.

On the collapse of the Central Powers in the autumn of 1918, the Poles moved swiftly towards statehood. The Republic of Poland was proclaimed in November, and an independent government was installed in January 1919.

I

Post-World War I Period

The Treaty of Versailles (June 1919) granted Poland a narrow belt of territory (the so-called Polish corridor) extending along the River Wisła to the Baltic Sea, and large sections of Posen (Poznań) and West Prussia. The treaty also awarded Poland important economic rights in the free city of Danzig. After a war with Soviet Russia in 1921, Poland annexed parts of Belorussia (see Belarus) and Ukraine. In the west, the Poles acquired sections of Upper Silesia in 1921 and 1922, following a plebiscite. In the two decades following the war, the foreign policy of Poland was largely determined by fear of Germany and the USSR. A defensive alliance with France was arranged in February 1921, and alliances were subsequently signed with Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. In 1932 Poland concluded a non-aggression pact with the USSR. A similar agreement, effective for ten years, was concluded with Germany in 1934. Both these treaties guaranteed Poland’s borders.

In the realm of domestic politics, developments in Poland, after the adoption of a permanent constitution in March 1921, were marked by incessant strife between the conservative and leftist political factions. Failure of the new state to protect the economic and political rights of the Jews, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Germans, and other minorities included in its population also caused constant friction and turmoil. Some concessions to the demands of certain of the minorities were legislated in 1924. In December 1925 a measure was enacted providing for the distribution to the peasantry of 20,234 hectares (50,000 acres) of land annually.

J

Dictatorship and the German Threat

Meanwhile, Poland had been in the throes of an almost continuous financial crisis. The general instability and confusion led to frequent changes of Cabinet. Following a coup led by Józef Piłsudski in 1926, Ignacy Moscicki was installed as president; Piłsudski, as minister of war, gradually acquired dictatorial control over the government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1935 a new constitution was adopted formalizing his authoritarian regime. Piłsudski survived the inauguration of the new system by less than a month, and was succeeded by General Edward Smigły-Rydz.

The triumph of National Socialism in Germany and the expansionist policy of Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s posed grave dangers to Polish security. After the Munich Pact and the ensuing destruction of the Czechoslovakian state (March 1939), Poland, which had received about 1,036 sq km (400 sq mi) of Czech territory in the Munich settlement, became the next major German target. This development took the form of German demands, delivered late in March, that Poland consent to the cession of Danzig to Germany and yield important rights in the Polish corridor. Polish rejection of these demands was followed, on March 31, by an Anglo-French pledge of aid to Poland in the event of German aggression. On April 28, Hitler renounced the German-Polish non-aggression treaty. On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland, an act that marked the outbreak of World War II.