The “Polishness” of Production: Factory Politics and the Reinvention of Working-Class National and Political Identities in Russian Poland's Textile Industry, 1880-1910

Abstract

While the development of nineteenth-century Polish nationalism has received considerable scholarly attention, it has almost always focused on how the intelligentsia became the standard-bearers of Polish national consciousness. As a result, we know very little about how other members of Polish society constructed national identities. This is particularly perplexing when it comes to studying Russian Poland's workers, for there was no dearth of Polish nationalist activity among these workers. National demands articulated by Łodź's Polish workers during strikes in 1892, for example, inspired a group of social democrats to abandon internationalism and instead create the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). During the revolution of 1905, nationalism once again assumed an important place in both working-class protest and organization. Workers played a prominent role in the Polish school strikes. They also supported and sustained a uniquely Polish phenomena—a nationalist working-class political party, the National Union of Workers (NZR). Although the NZR and its constituent trade unions could be found within every industry within Russian Poland, the organization gained its greatest foothold within the textile industry. Moreover, it was within the textile industry in 1906 where bitter debates between nationalist and socialist workers erupted in violence after a disgruntled weaver from the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) concluded a political argument with an NZR coworker by gunning him down in the street.