Polish Insurrection Research Articles

Austrian Bureaucrats and Polish Revolutionaries as Allies? Czartoryski, Galicia, and Plans for a Future Polish Uprising 1831-1846

ABSTRACT This article investigates the debates of the Hôtel Lambert, the constitutional monarchist wing of the Great Polish Emigration, led by Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, about the Austrian rule in Galicia, with a specific focus on the question of the position of Austrian bureaucracy in plans for the future Polish uprising. From the Hôtel Lambert’s point of view, Galicia was an integral part of a restored independent Polish state. Discussions about its strategic position and the role of its inhabitants were a critical part of plans for the future uprising. The local Austrian bureaucracy was also among those groups who were, therefore, debated. The article concludes that although Czartoryski shared the generally accepted negative image of the bureaucracy in his pre-emigration writings, once in Paris all plans for the uprising emphasized the importance of maintaining the functioning administration. Consequently, according to the Hôtel Lambert’s plans, bureaucrats in Galicia (and in the Prussian and Russian partitions as well) would play one of the crucial roles during the Polish insurrection. Either voluntarily, receiving benefits like promotion, or by force, under the direct supervision of insurgents. In that case, they would be later released from the service and expelled from the country. 1 1 Several of the arguments presented in this article had been previously discussed in the author’s study, “Z kolonizátorov asimilovaní, z nepriateľov spojenci: Germanizácia Haliče z pohl’adu Adama Jerzyho Czartoryského a Hôtel Lambert 1830 – 1846 [From Colonizers to those who Were Assimilated, from Enemies to Allies: Germanization of Galicia through the Eyes of Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and Hôtel Lambert 1830 –1846]. In Dlhá cesta od monarchie k republike : zmeny režimov, myslenia a životného štšlu na Slovensku a v strednej Eurôpe od polovice 19. do polovice 20. storočia. Jubileum Dušana Kováča. - Bratislava : HistorickÝ ústav SAV : Veda, vydavate’stvo SAV, 2021, p. 65-82. ISBN 978-80-224-1921-5.

On the Question of the Views of A.S. Pushkin on the Insurrection in Poland in 1830-1831

The article deals with the political ideas expressed by A.S. Pushkin, first of all, in the poem "To the Slanderers of Russia", as well as in personal correspondence and notes from the period of the Polish insurrection of 1830-1831. An overview of the prehistory and prerequisites for the insurrection is given, the historical context is shown, which determined the formation of the poet's views on the "Polish question". Pushkin's worldview was influenced by the "History of the Russian State" by N.M. Karamzin and, in particular, the story about the occupation of Moscow by Polish troops in 1610-1612. In addition, the poet, like his contemporaries, retained direct impressions of the Patriotic War of 1812, in which the Poles participated on the side of Napoleon. The ode to "Slanderers of Russia" was Pushkin's answer to members of the French Parliament, who raised the issue of supporting the Poles. For the French liberals, the events in Poland were of international significance and were characterized as the struggle of one of the emerging European nations for rights and freedoms. For Pushkin, the Polish rebellion was exclusively an internal affair of Russia, an encroachment on its integrity. The article presents the statements of some representatives of Russian culture who were part of Pushkin's circle of friends, among whom were both supporters and opponents of the state-patriotic position of the poet.

De Simone , Peter T. The Old Believers in Imperial Russia: Oppression, Opportunism and Religious Identity in Tsarist Moscow (review)

SEER, 98, 1, JANUARY 2020 176 De Simone, Peter T. The Old Believers in Imperial Russia: Oppression, Opportunism and Religious Identity in Tsarist Moscow. The Library of Modern Russia. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2018. xvi + 263 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £69.00: $95.00. Peter T. De Simone’s study of the Rogozhskoe Cemetery community is a welcome addition to the literature on Old Belief in tsarist Russia. Founded on the outskirts of Moscow as a burial site for the city’s ‘priested’ Old Believers (popovtsy) during the outbreak of plague in 1771, Rogozhskoe became an important centre of Old Belief in the empire as a whole, partly because of the wealth of the Old Believer merchants who provided generous funding for the community’s sacred spaces and charitable institutions. De Simone traces the history of the community through four chronological periods. In its first decades, Rogozhskoe benefited from Catherine II’s relatively tolerant policy towards Old Belief, and its prestige was enhanced in the aftermath of the Napoleonic occupation of Moscow in 1812, when the community’s merchants made important contributions to the rebuilding of the city. With the appointment of the ultra-Orthodox Filaret (Drozdov) as Metropolitan of Moscow in 1821, however, pressure came to be exerted on the Rogozhskoe Old Believers to convert either to official Orthodoxy or to Edinoverie (‘Unity of Faith’), the state-sponsored movement which preserved the old rite while recognizing the authority of the Holy Synod. Legislation from 1822 onwards restricted the ability of Old Believers to recruit priests from the official Orthodox Church, and this encouraged the Rogozhskoe community to support the establishment in 1846 of an Old Believer hierarchy at Belaia Krinitsa, in Austrian Ukraine, that could ordain priests and bishops for the popovtsy in Russia. The timing, however, turned out to be unfortunate. The outbreak of the European revolutions in 1848, followed by the Crimean War and the Polish insurrection of 1863, understandably raised the Russian government’s suspicion of a religious movement whose hierarchy was based abroad. It also weakened the Old Believers’ claim to represent a true Russian identity; and since Old Belief had arisen in the seventeenth century largely as a protest against Greek influence on Russian Orthodoxy, it was particularly ironic that their new Metropolitan, Amvrosii, was Greek. After 1846 Rogozhskoe claimed to be a central institution of Old Belief as a whole, although not even all of the priested Old Believers recognized the legitimacy of the Belokrinitskaia hierarchy. Perhaps surprisingly, the accession of Alexander II in 1855 and the introduction of his ‘Great Reforms’ brought relatively few benefits to the Old Believers. In 1856 the Rogozhskoe community was falsely denounced for having illegally celebrated the Divine Liturgy (the Eucharist). This led to the sealing REVIEWS 177 off of the altars of its Nativity and Intercession cathedrals, preventing their use for religious services. It was only at Easter 1905, against the background of the developing revolution, that the altars were re-opened, on the eve of Nicholas II’s decree on religious toleration. De Simone’s account of the history of the Rogozhskoe community provides a detailed and illuminating picture of many aspects of the lives of the Moscow popovtsy, including the architecture of their cathedrals, the activities of their charitable and educational institutions and the growth of merchant dynasties such as the Morozovs and the Riabushinskiis. The author has made good use of archival materials, although his attitude towards his sources is somewhat uncritical, producing a highly sympathetic picture which sometimes verges on the hagiographical. De Simone focuses on the relationship of the Rogozhskoe community to the state and the official Orthodox Church, while largely ignoring its position in the broader spectrum of Old Belief. He says little about the attitude of the Rogozhskoe priested community to its priestless counterpart, the Moscow Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery community, nor to other priestless and priested communities throughout the Empire. Many of the more radical groups considered the Moscow popovtsy to be hopelessly compromised, not least by their swearing of the oath of loyalty to Alexander III after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. It is not too surprising, therefore, that the authorities were mistrustful...

ЕМІГРАЦІЙНА ПРОБЛЕМАТИКА У НАРАТИВНОМУ ДИСКУРСІ ЮЗЕФА ІГНАЦІЯ КРАШЕВСЬКОГО

The article devotes to the immigration problematics in the creative work of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski – the leading spiritual and intellectual leader of Polish immigration after the January uprising. The contribution of a writer to the development of the cultural life of the Polish immigration of the 19-th century in the field of fiction, literary criticism, journalism, publishing and public activities were characterized as the theme of the January uprising determined the direction and problematics of the journalistic and public activities of the writer of the Dresden period of life and work. Peculiarities of creative rethinking of consequences of the Polish Insurrection of 1863 in the large-scale artistic heritage of Josef Ignacy Kraszewski, in particular, in the cycle of novels on political issues that were published under the pseudonym Bogdan Boleslavit “The Child of the Old City” (1863), “We and They” (1865), “Moscal” (1865), “The Jew” (1866), “Travelers “(1968-1970),” In a Strange Land “(1871). In the Dresden period the creativity of Josef Ignacy Kraszewski acquired new features – profound analytic and critical judiciousness of judgements. It should be noted the richness of the problematics and genre variety of the creative work of Kraszewski in this period. The novel “In a Strange Land” contains abundance of social realities, emotional images of conflicts and characters of the work. The narrative strategy of the novel is determined by the emotionality, sensuality and high degree of the presence of the narrator in the work through the indirect representation of his personal feelings, ideas and the declaration of a personal social position On the material of the novel “In a Strange Land” the motive of expulsion, martyrdom, involuntary journey, travel-escape is analyzed both in the literature of the mentioned period and in the narrative discourse of Josef Ignacy Kraszewski. The writer demonstrates the intersection of Polish and foreign culture from his own position of emigrant. The article analyzes the intricate mechanism of saving national identity in such political situation after January uprising

Slobodan Jovanovic and Serbian-Russian relations in the context of international public law

Without a doubt, Slobodan Jovanovic was one of the greatest Serbian jurists, and in the period between the two World Wars, he was probably the most influential Serbian jurist. In this context, his views on the Serbian-Russian relations have exerted an influence on the formation of the dominant discourse, but also on many generations that came after his time (his bust in front of the Faculty of Law in Belgrade symbolically shows how highly he is valued in today?s legal circles, more than 60 years after his death). In his voluminous opus Jovanovic suggests that the Peace of Bucharest, the Akkerman Convention and the Peace of Edirne were bilateral agreements between Russia and Turkey, with provisions that went in favour of the third party (pactum in favorem tretii), i.e. Serbia. He also gave a positive assessment of the Russian diplomacy during the 19th century. In that sense, Jovanovic criticizes the Serbian historians who claimed the opposite, and even Milos Obrenovic himself. Finally, as a jurist, he also rejects the ideological division according to which only reactionary influences came from Russia, and only freedom and enlightenment from the West. In his analysis of the Serbian-Russian relations Jovanovic points out that it was Russia which insisted on the formation of a National Council in Serbia which was to ?limit? the absolute power of Milos Obrenovic. Such an attitude has retained its validity even in the 21st century because the dogma about the so-called Russian reactionary policy is still very much alive. As a jurist, Jovanovic also shows understanding of the conflict of Russian and Serbian interests, or the interests of a small country and those of an empire. He remains midway between the uncritical idealization of Russia and even more intolerant Russophobia. He cites and compares numerous examples. He pointed out that, for instance, a Polish insurrection broke out in 1830, at the very same time when Russia was in negotiations with the Ottoman Porte over the Serbian issue. However, despite these (undeniable) facts, Jovanovic does not draw Russophobic conclusions, which were so prevalent in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He remains midway between the non-critical idealization of Russia and even more intolerant Russophobia. Such opinions of a jurist, who was ideologically an anglophile, are still very important in 2018, when Russophobia present in the West, but also in a part of the Serbian elite, reaches the Cold War level.

Kyiv’s Intellectual Environment on the Eve of the Valuev Directive

The article discusses the conditions which galvanized the intellectual community in Kyiv prior to the 1863 January Uprising (aka Polish Insurrection of 1863-64). It analyzes local press coverage of the language debate, and delves into the worldviews of its participants, including Mykhailo Maksymovych, Mykhailo Iuzefovych, Mykola Kostomarov, Ksenofont Hovors'kyi, and others. It identifies how and why the results of this debate influenced the issuance of the 1863 Valuev Directive, which banned the use of the Ukrainian language in print.

On Faith and Fanaticism: Converts from Judaism and the Limits of Toleration in Late Imperial Russia

On Faith and FanaticismConverts from Judaism and the Limits of Toleration in Late Imperial Russia Ellie R. Schainker (bio) She was a convert from Judaism in the imperial Russian provinces assailed by her family and friends for communal betrayal. Brought to life in the Ukrainian artist Nikolai Kornilovich Pimonenko’s painting Zhertva fanatizma (Victim of Fanaticism; 1899), this converted Jewess was inspired by an actual female convert in a shtetl (Yiddish: small town) in the Pale of Jewish Settlement in late imperial Russia who converted to marry her Christian lover and was then tormented by her former coreligionists. Although contemporary Jews decried Pimonenko’s art as antisemitic for casting the former Jewess as an innocent victim of Jewish wrath and aggression, they also appropriated the sketch and another like it for circulation on postcards with the accompanying Hebrew words ha-meshumedet (the Apostate) and ha-bogedet (the Traitoress), thus renarrating the events to cast moral blame on the neophyte and legitimize the collective ire of the Jewish community.1 More than a controversial episode in the artistic representation of Jews, Pimonenko’s illustration is the product of a long history of storytelling about conversion as a conflictual boundary crossing. It gives figural rendering to a wide-ranging conversation over the course of the 19th century about Jewish violence in the face of conversion. The popular press and jurists alike mediated this conversation in the late imperial period to mark Jews as both religious and social “fanatics,” whose violent intolerance toward apostate kin rendered them undeserving of imperial toleration. In particular, conservative voices in the late imperial press linked stories of conversion-inspired violence to the medieval ritual murder accusation to generate a new blood libel myth in which Jews ritually sacrificed their converted family members. [End Page 753] Click for larger view View full resolution Postcard of Nikolai Kornilovich Pimonenko’s 1899 painting Victim of Fanaticism, printed by a Jewish publisher active in Berlin and retitled in Hebrew ha-meshumedet (The Apostate). Similarly, the German title reads Baptized Jewess in Native Village. Credit: Collection of Prof. Shalom Sabar, Jerusalem. Violence as a concept long framed the relation of the state and imperial subjects to conversion as a boundary crossing during the long 19th century. Many Jews narrated conversion as Christian violence against vulnerable Jewish children; and conversions for many converts and their clerical and administrative allies were often understood as endangered by the violence of Jewish families and communities who sought to physically repress deviant behavior. Violence in these stories not only consisted in the infliction of physical pain but also inhered in the language of dispute over the violation of confessional and communal boundaries. Claims of physical harm referred either to direct or to structural violence—at times religious coercion and at times perceived assaults on religious truth, thus causing despair and humiliation.2 The stories of aggression told about Jews expanded the scope of violence in the Russian Empire to everyday forms of conflict, suggesting that minority groups like the Jews were usurping the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Beginning in the mid-1860s and the era of reform, conservative voices in the Russian press, in line with some jurists, harnessed these stories of violence to create a narrative of gendered violence in which Jews were designated as [End Page 754] inherently fanatical. This discrediting discourse came on the heels of the 1863 Polish insurrection and ensuing Russification campaigns in the northwestern region. In addition, the 1864 judicial reforms provided public, civil channels for cantonist converts from Judaism to challenge their coerced baptisms in the pre-reform army and for prosecutors to indict relapsed converts and their alleged Jewish enablers on charges of leading neophytes astray or of “seduction” (sovrashchenie).3 In this late imperial discourse of Jewish violence, the female convert as victim was used to construct an ethnoconfessional political order that set “fanatical” minorities apart from the rational, tolerant, and civilized imperial order. The female victim symbolized the vulnerability of religious truth to heterodoxy, especially because women were identified as vessels of religion across faith communities. In addition, exclusion and humiliation often breed intimate and domestic violence. Thus gendered violence served...

A Republican in a Changing World: The Political Position and Attitudes of Tadeusz Kościuszko, 1798–1817

Abstract One evening in April 1814, in a Paris occupied by Russian and Prussian forces, a strange scene took place that could have annoyed some observers. During a solemn party organized by the Polish princess Teodora Jabłonowska for Russia’s ruler, Tsar Alexander I, and his brother, Grand Duke Constantine, a modestly dressed old man appeared in the doorway. When the tsar saw him, he and his brother took the man by the arms and led him through the crowd calling, “A place! A place for a great man!” The man treated with such respect by the most powerful European ruler of the day was Tadeusz Kościuszko. The sixty-eight-year-old hero of the American War of Independence and the leader of the Polish insurrection of 1794 had accepted the invitation of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, the tsar’s friend and advisor, and traveled to Paris to declare his support for rebuilding Poland under the protection of Alexander I.

International reactions to the Russian suppression of the Polish insurrection (November 1830)

The outburst of the Polish insurrection and its evolution attracted the attention of the European Powers, due to the international political context in which it started, that of the liberal-bourgeois revolutions in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and of the implications that were expected to occur due to power balance on the continent and in the Eastern Question. Russia’s position in the political systems mentioned above depended on how the Polish Question would be solved. By subordinating all the Kingdom of Poland, whose political individuality, in the Russian political and institutional system, in which the decisions of the „Final Act” of the Peace Congress in Vienna (June 9th 1815) placed it, was about to be abolished by the Tsar, opened to the Russian Empire the path towards the consolidation of its positions in the Baltic region, strategically, political an economical, thus upsetting the other Powers in the European political system, on one hand. And secondly, because it would have relieved it of the necessity to divide its forces to oversee the evolution of the embarrassing Polish Question and would have been capable to focus its attention on a solution to the other problem, the Eastern one. This perspective was likely to happen, especially in the conditions of the peace Treaty that Russia had imposed to Turkey, at Adrianople, on September 14th 1829, which ensured the latter’s „passivity” towards the Oriental policy of its victor. These perspectives affected, in particular, Great Britain and France, the secular rivals of Russia in that area, so they tried, using only diplomatic means because of the very complicated international situation at the beginning of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, to determine Russia to adopt a more conciliatory attitude towards the Polish insurgents. The rivalries that aggravated the Franco-British relations, especially in Western Europe, prevented the two Powers to adopt a unitary position towards Russia, a fact that allowed the latter to dictate the law in the Kingdom of Poland. A position, in some way singular, towards the Polish Question was adopted by another state, with direct interests in the Baltic sea area and with more specific ones in the Eastern Question. It is the United Kingdom of Sweden and Norway, created in the letter and the spirit of the Swedish-Norwegian Convention from Moss, on August 14th 1814. Sweden’s internal and external political circumstances in which, in 1810, the famous marshal of Napoleon I, Jean Baptiste Sebastien Bernadotte, prince of Pontecorvo, was proclaimed crown prince under the name Karl Johan, King Karl XIV Johan, from 1818, as the creation of the Swedish-Norwegian personal Union, determined the Swedish-Norwegian diplomacy favor the Russian interests in the Polish Question as well as in the Eastern Question. In the Polish Question, the one under our analysis, this was also because the insurrection of November 1830 started in the international conditions mentioned above and due to the fact that the liberal internal opposition to the conservative and absolutist monarchical policy of King Karl XIV Johan was becoming more active and could have constituted a reason for the Norwegians to evade the personal Union, which they did not favor and against which they fought, first through arms then by institutional means. The forms in which Great Britain, France and Sweden took position in regard to the reprisal of the Polish insurrection of November 1830, very well documented by the diplomatic reports of the British diplomats in St. Petersburg and of the Swedish ones, accredited in Petersburg and in London, which we had the opportunity to consult in the funds of manuscripts of British Library, in London, and those of the National Archives of Sweden, in Stockholm, constitute, in our opinion, a contribution to the knowledge of the history of European diplomacy, on one hand, and to the research of the international relations in the first half of the nineteenth century, on another. This is the reason why we intend to approach them in this study. All the documents selected from Sveriges Riksarkivet, in Stockholm and cited in these pages are included in the volume X, part I, of the Collection “Europe and the Porte”, which is still in manuscript, for this reason we indicated the archive quotations.

Places Commemorating the January Uprising in the Krzeszowice Region

The article is devoted to the places commemorating the Krzeszowice participants of Polish insurrection activities during the January Uprising (1863-1864). To observe the 150th anniversary of the January Uprising outbreak, the present article attempts to collect the information concerning traces of the Uprising in the Krzeszowice region. Although there was no military activity in the region, weapons were collected, volunteers set out from here, and this is where wounded participants of the fights were treated. Krzeszowice and the adjoining areas were the places where the participants of the Uprising and the exiles to Siberia spent the final years of their lives. The article indicates places of remembrance and the insurgents’ tombs. Many of the tombs no longer exist; some of the inscriptions are indecipherable. War tombs in the region are inventoried, yet until now there have been no records of tombs holding the remains of Insurrections participants deceased after the military activities. In Krzeszowice, the insurgents’ tombs are the most visible testimony to independence-seeking activities.On account of the Potocki family’s activities, St. Rafal Jozef Kalinowski and priest Wincenty Smoczynski, the Krzeszowice region became one of the places supporting the participants of the Uprising – first the wounded, later Siberia returnees, for example priest Jozef Owsiany, or those returning from emigration, for example priest Seweryn Paszkowski.Insurrection participants from the Krzeszowice region left documents and keepsakes – tokens of gratitude offered to the Potocki family by the insurgents, a collection of items commemorating St. Rafal Jozef Kalinowski’s insurrection activity (a patron of the exiled to Siberia, who entered the Barefoot Carmelites), the tokens of memory placed in the Monastery of Barefoot Carmelites in Czerna by the family of Joanna Podluska – a veteran of the Uprising, and items left by Florian Buzdygan, a local Uprising leader, currently in the collection of The Krzeszowice Region Society [Stowarzyszenie Miłośników Ziemi Krzeszowickiej].

Data pertaining to the outbreak of the Lithuanian insurrection (25 March 1831), retrieved from Swedish diplomatic sources

Similarly to the Polish insurrection of November 1830, the Lithuanian one, occurring in March 1831, retained the attention of the Swedish diplomacy from the very beginning. This was made possible, in the first place, by the fact that the events were connected by a strong link of causality, in the sense that they aimed at severing Poland and Lithuania from the political-institutional system of the Russian Empire and at reconstituting the old one, i.e. the Polish-Lithuanian Union. But the latter’s victory would have first resulted in the radical upheaval of the ratio of forces in North-Eastern Europe, which could have also affected the Swedish-Norwegian political-institutional system, since it was assumed that the Norwegians would not have spared any time in following the Lithuanian and Polish example by denouncing the personal union with Sweden. Moreover, the revolutionary wave sweeping over Europe in 1830 was not one to avoid Sweden. Unlike other areas, the Swedes that opposed King Karol XIV Jan’s government went no further than to criticise it, despite the fact that both the criticism and the programme of the opposition kept increasing in boldness. The Swedish diplomacy therefore approached the issue of the Polish and Lithuanian insurrections from the same perspective, taking particular care to observe their evolution, placing itself in a position of reserveless condemnation of such behaviour. The documents transcribed in the following pages are the diplomatic reports of N. Fr. Palmstjerna, the chargé d’affaires of Sweden in Petersburg, and were selected from the Sveriges Riksarkivet, Kabinettet/UD Huvudarkivet, E2D, 702, the Petersburg fund, 1821, Jan.-iuni. They sometimes contain very detailed information pertaining to the early phase of the Lithuanian insurrection. By introducing them to the academic circuit, we express our hope that they will contribute to the expansion of the research horizon of the history of North-Eastern Europe from the first half of the 19th century.

Les francs-maçons polonais émigrés en France et l'émancipation juive en Pologne au XIXe siècle

Freemasonry appeared in Poland under the Nobel Republic during the second half of the 18th century. Although Jews were not allowed to join the Brotherhood, to those who believed in the values of the Enlightenment, in the Emancipation and the accession to the civil rights, it nevertheless represented a great hope. Following the legal advances due to the first Polish insurrection and the Napoleonic period, a few Polish Jewish immigrants in France joined Parisian lodges where they were able to resume their fight for equality. They encounter, however, strong opposition from Polish émigrés who wished for Poland to be liberated only by Polish Christians, and little support from French democrats who did not support daring revolutionary and internationalist actions. When the Jews in Poland finally obtained their civil rights in 1863, Jewish Freemason émigrés became clearly involved in the fight for Polish Independence.

<i>Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic</i> (review)

ADAM MICKIEWICZ: THE LIFE OF A ROMANTIC. By Roman Koropeckyj. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. ISBN 978 0 8014 4471 5. Pp. xvii + 549. £22.95. Adam Mickiewicz is Poland's greatest poet, taught in schools as a matter of routine. He bears roughly the same relationship to Polish culture that Pushkin - whom he knew - bears to Russian culture. He was also a great admirer of Byron. On the first page of this excellent new biography, Roman Koropeckyj relates how, in 1968, the Polish communist government, which had hitherto praised Mickiewicz as the country's first patriotic poet, banned a production of his drama Forefathers' Eve on the grounds that its anti-Russian sentiments made them nervous. Reading this, I wondered whether, had a group of English Chartists in 1848 proposed a production of Marino Faliero, the English government would have banned that. After all, Mickiewicz is, in cliche, 'the Polish Byron', the man who is supposed to have united creativity on the page with activity on the street. But the unreality of the proposition was at once clear: Faliero is no patriotic call to action, even though Byron thought Murray would be afraid of its politics, whereas Part III of Forefathers' Eve (the part which, I surmise, the communists banned) is one long depiction of the way Russia was attempting to wipe Poland and Polish culture from the face of the earth. Action is the only possibility left when you leave the theatre, and the communists were, from their own perspective, correct to ban it. In other words, Mickiewicz is not 'the Polish Byron', but neither is Byron 'the Polish Mickiewicz': the analogy is false. Byron was all in favour of revolutions abroad, but a revolution at home might cause a fall in the value of his holdings in government funds. He could have gone back home from exile any time he wanted. Mickiewicz had already been exiled from Poland once, before the failed Polish insurrection of 1831 - to the comforts, however, of St Petersburg, Odessa and Moscow. Had he tried to return to Poland post-1831, he would have been at the very least sent to Siberia. Yet, as Koropeckyj writes, 'Byron came to share the same space in Mickiewicz's pantheon as Napoleon'. In a letter from 1822 Mickiewicz announces: I read only Byron, and cast aside books if written in a different spirit, since I don't like lies; if there's a description of happiness, family life, this rouses my indignation as much as the sight of married couples and children; this is my only aversion. Such a claim puts an interesting, if sad, gloss on his interpretation both of 'lies' and of Byron's version of 'happiness' - this last has indeed very little to do with marriage or children. Byron was a bad husband and an indifferent father; Mickiewicz, as Koropeckyj shows, outgrew the adolescent distaste for breeding shown in the letter, married, and had six children, towards whom he was affectionate in the normal way. He became, indeed, 'the Byron of his country, but a moral and Christian Byron' - if that is not too glaring a contradiction in terms. When Mickiewicz translated The Giaour, it became accepted as a virtual Polish poem in its own right because he changed the Giaour's deathbed sneers at Christian consolation into a pious acceptance of the same. Koropeckyj gives much space to Mickiewicz's time exiled in Russia, which was, paradoxically, 'more hospitable and invigorating [] than even Poland itself'. In Russia, liberals were more confidently vocal - at least at the time of Mickiewicz's sojourn. This section of the biography is extremely well-researched, and is especially good on Mickiewicz's relationship with Pushkin. Pushkin, along with most of his non-Polish-speaking friends, sensed Mickiewicz's greatness without being able to appreciate it on the page; the conservative Mickiewicz, who knew Russian and could thus read and appreciate Pushkin (though see below), was offended by the coarseness of Pushkin's talk at table, or in his cups. …

Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. s> Binyon (review)

326 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 the appropriationof non-reproductivesexualityby the 'decadent' artists,and is followed by Graham Roberts's discussion of 'male angst' in the work of Kharms, which is heavily indebted to Kristeva's theory of the abject. While Roberts's closing remarkson the modern horror film seem out of place in a discussion of Kharms, they nevertheless prefigure the concluding section's emphasison post-Soviet society, which begins with BirgitBeumer'sdiscussion of the use of homosexuality, camp and transvestismin the theatreof the I990S as a metaphoric indicator of the dethroning of oppression. Catherine Parnell on Nina Sadur and Galina Rylkova's closing article on Viktor Erofeev make interestingcompanion pieces, dealing as each does with figuresfrom the postSoviet literary world who are notorious for the violence of their gendered aesthetics. Such discussions highlight an important consideration raised by the volume as a whole: a recognition of the diverse and potentially powerimplicated uses to which mattersof gender and sexualitycontinue to be put in Russian culture,and of the need for furtherresearchin thisfield. Department ofRussian CAROL ADLAM University ofExeter Binyon, T. J. Pushkin. A Biography.HarperCollins, London, 2003. xxix + 731 PP. Maps. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography. Index. 1io.oo (paperback). WHEN a British Slavistwins a prestigious and valuable literaryaward, and is interviewed on the Todayprogramme, no less, the job of reviewing the paperback edition of the prize-winning book seems already half-done. T. J. Binyon's biography of Pushkinsucceeds those by David Magarshack,Ernest Simmons and Henri Troyat as essential reading for the English-speaking Pushkinist.Interestingly,none of theseworksismentioned in thebibliography, an indication perhaps that Binyon wished to go back to Russian sources and to begin his investigation into Pushkin'slife denovo.In so doing he refuses to gloss over the darkside of Pushkin'scharacter,stillless to give any credence to the reverential hagiographies characteristic of Pushkin scholarship in the Soviet era. Indeed, the author has admitted that he did not find Pushkin a particularly pleasant person and, in highlighting the poet's snobbery and extreme touchiness, not to mention his ineptness in mattersfinancial and low opinion of women's intellectualcapabilities,he paints a vivid picture of a man who was often difficultand, at times, downrightdangerousto know. Perhaps the most remarkablefeature of this book is the amount of detail. The conventional cliche for this wealth of detail -is, for once, wholly accurate. There is detail in the text, in the footnotes, in the endnotes and in the extensive and comprehensive index. The reader will learn, for example, the names of all the firstintake at the lycee, and the differentuniformswhich they and their successorswere requiredto wear, as well as the exact layout of Boldino and the ground plan of the flat on the Moika where Pushkin died. Binyon is particularlygood at evoking the atmosphereand topography of the numerouspushkinskie mesta. Forsome of his detail Binyon has relied, inevitably, on the authoritative work by L. A. Chereiskii, Pushkini ego okruzhenie REVIEWS 327 (Leningrad, I988). Where Chereiskii does not record a date, Binyon too is silent. Some of the very few gaps can now be filledvia www.google.ru, which reveals the birthdates of all three of Natal'ia Goncharova's children by Petr Lanskoi, and the death dates of two of them, as well as the dates of I. A. Krylov'sfatherand those of a numberof more marginalfigures.There remain some tantalizinggaps. As might be expected, the birth and death dates of the humble poor, such as the Pushkins'various servants,remain for the most part unknown, and probablyunknowable. Perhaps,however, it is not too much to hope that the death date of Pushkin'sniece Nadezhda, born to his sisterOlga in i837, will one day emerge fromthe archives. Binyon does not, however, use detail for detail'ssakein an attemptto mask ideologically controversialaspects of Pushkin'slife such as the vexed question of his relationship with Nicholas I. He makes it quite clear that in general Pushkinapprovedof the Tsar, both personally(hiscourage in visitingcholerastricken areas) and politically (his suppression of the Polish insurrection of I830). Indeed, Nicholas, farfrombeing the unpersonof Soviethistoriography, emergeswith some credit, his treatmentof Pushkinand his familycontrasting sharplywith that meted out to turbulentpoets in Soviet times. Binyon drawsour attention to, and comments on...

The Nihilist Imagination: Dmitrii Pisarev and the Cultural Origins of Russian Radicalism (1860-1868) by Peter C. s> Pozefsky (review)

REVIEWS 327 (Leningrad, I988). Where Chereiskii does not record a date, Binyon too is silent. Some of the very few gaps can now be filledvia www.google.ru, which reveals the birthdates of all three of Natal'ia Goncharova's children by Petr Lanskoi, and the death dates of two of them, as well as the dates of I. A. Krylov'sfatherand those of a numberof more marginalfigures.There remain some tantalizinggaps. As might be expected, the birth and death dates of the humble poor, such as the Pushkins'various servants,remain for the most part unknown, and probablyunknowable. Perhaps,however, it is not too much to hope that the death date of Pushkin'sniece Nadezhda, born to his sisterOlga in i837, will one day emerge fromthe archives. Binyon does not, however, use detail for detail'ssakein an attemptto mask ideologically controversialaspects of Pushkin'slife such as the vexed question of his relationship with Nicholas I. He makes it quite clear that in general Pushkinapprovedof the Tsar, both personally(hiscourage in visitingcholerastricken areas) and politically (his suppression of the Polish insurrection of I830). Indeed, Nicholas, farfrombeing the unpersonof Soviethistoriography, emergeswith some credit, his treatmentof Pushkinand his familycontrasting sharplywith that meted out to turbulentpoets in Soviet times. Binyon drawsour attention to, and comments on, otherunsolved mysteries of Pushkin'slife. Did he fight a duel in I820, and if so, was his opponent the poet and future Decembrist Kondratii Ryleev? Which of the numerous Golitsynaswas the one whom Pushkinvisited in I830, thus exciting his future wife'sjealousy? Was he the fatherof ElizavetaVorontsova'ssecond child?As for the most famous mystery of them all, who wrote the fateful anonymous letter, Binyon's surveyof the suspectsis as masterlyas one would expect from an authorwhose otherspecializationis crimefiction.Binyon'sexpertisein this area is also shown to good effect in his incisive psychological insights. For instance, Pushkin's behaviour in I828 is convincingly described as 'manicdepressive ' (p. 28I), while that of D'Anthes in I836 as 'a classic case of the "stalker"syndrome' (p. 556). Although Binyon expresslyleaves the businessof literarycriticismto others, he cannot avoid it completely. Forthiswe mustbe thankful,as his accounts of EvgeniiOnegin, Mednyivsadnik and Pikovaia damaare as concise and precise as the most exacting critic could wish and, like the whole of this book, are preeminently readable. Maidenhead MICHAEL PURSGLOVE Pozefsky,Peter C. TheNihilistImagination: DmitriiPisarev andtheCultural Origins of RussianRadicalism (i86o-i868). Middlebury Studies in Russian Language and Literature, 27. Peter Lang, New York and Oxford, 2003. xi + 272 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $70.95: C48.oo. THE abrupt dismantling of the Soviet literary canon has cast numerous Russian literaryfiguresand groups into the criticalwilderness,but the recent neglect of nineteenth-century radical criticsand authors, adopted enmasse by the Bolsheviksas ideological precursors,is a particularlyunfortunate case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. The publication of Peter 328 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 C. Pozefsky'swell-researchedmonograph on Dmitrii Pisarevis thereforeto be warmlywelcomed. The firstchapter of the studydiscussesthe place of Pisarevin the context of Russian radicalismand the development of nihilism. In chapterstwo to four, Pozefskyfocuses on the development of Pisarev'sphilosophy and writings in relation to the radicals'interestin the physiological dimension of psychology. Chapter two discusses the scientific approach and the place of the body in Pisarev's essays. In chapter three, this theme is continued with a lengthy discussionof Pisarev'sfamousessay'Bazarov'(i 862) and otherliterary-critical worksof the period, while chapterfourexamines Pisarev'sattitudeto love and sexual relationships in his literary criticism. The following three chapters address contemporary responses to nihilism and radical literature. Chapter five is an illuminating exploration of official attitudes to nihilism, which introduces some particularlyinterestingsourcesto demonstratethe similarity of representationsof the 'spectre'of nihilismin, for example, police reports,in terms of their preoccupation with matters such as the body and modes of dress,to those of the nihiliststhemselves,in theirown literatureand criticism. In chaptersix, Pozefskyfindsan equalpreoccupationwith the body in literary attacks on nihilism by its opponents, in particular Dostoevskii and, more unexpectedly, Gertsen, as they adopt the nihilists'termsof referencefor their own contributionsto the debate. Chapter seven examines Pisarev'slegacy for subsequent generations of radicals but, aside from one brief comment, does not look beyond the Revolution to discuss official...

Russification and the Lithuanians, 1863–1905

In the half-century after the Polish insurrection of 1863, the Russian government applied many restrictive measures to Lithuanian culture, including the prohibition against printing Lithuanian except in Cyrillic letters. Some have argued that St. Petersburg aimed to wipe out the culture and language of Lithuanians in this period. A close look at the archival sources shows, however, that the Russian authorities were very little concerned with the Lithuanians per se and far more worried about Polish influences in the region. In the end, the Russian government saw Lithuanians only as a pawn in the “age-old struggle” between Poles and Russians. The failure of official Russians to take Lithuanian nationalism seriously meant that the Russian empire was quite unprepared to deal with this popular movement in the early twentieth century.

Making Hegel Into a Better Hegelian: August von Cieszkowski

Making Hegel Into a Better Hegelian: August von Cieszkowski LAWRENCE S. STEPELEVICH AMONG STUDENTS OF the so-called "Young Hegelians," it is usual to name David F. Strauss (18o8-1874) as the first to develop Hegelianism after Hegel? He did not, however, see his role as anything more than being a disciple of what he understood to be orthodox Hegelianism. In merely applying what he conscientiously took to be the authentic principles of the master to a hitherto unexamined field, i.e., biblical criticism, Strauss joined himself to the older school of orthodox and conservative Hegelians. These "Epigonen" were not displeased to consider themselves as but the satraps of a vanished philosophical Alexander who had been left with only the uncreative task of dividing and cultivating an already conquered Geisterreich/ In short, Strauss was not the first critic of Hegel, but merely the first Hegelian critic. The honor, if that is the correct term, of being the first Hegelian to criticize Hegel and thereby to create a "neo-Hegelianism" belongs to August von Cieszkowski (x814-1894 ). This paper has two main intentions: first, to determine the nature of Cieszkowski's radical critique of Hegel's philosophy of history, along with the reasons Cieszkowski employed to justify his critique, and second, to submit a possible objection that Hegel might have taken in regard to the corrective surgery that Cieszkowksi performed upon the corpus of his philosophy. There were indeed a number of critical studies directed against Hegel's philosophywell before Strauss's work appeared as well as a number of sympathetic studies (e.g., G6schel's Aphorismenof 18~9),but whereas the former took a stance against Hegel and the latter more or less repeated Hegel, Strauss was the first to attempt to apply Hegelianism,and in this sense he can be properly said to have "developed" it. See Karl Rosenkranz's G.W.F.HegelsLeben(1844; reprinted, Berlin: 1944),42~ff. [263] z64 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:2 APRIL 1987 Cieszkowski was the heir of a wealthy and aristocratic Polish family, who would in time receive the title of Count. In 183o, as a consequence of his involvement in the Polish insurrection and the subsequent Russian occupation , he was compelled to leave Warsaw. In the following year, he attended the University of Krakow, where he studied some philosophy, but it seems he was not introduced to Hegelianism until he entered the University of Berlin in 183~.~ There, within the course of five semesters of study, he became acquainted with some of the most devoted and liberal of the Berlin Hegelians such as Eduard Gans, Leopold von Henning, Heinrich G. Hotho, and Johann E. Erdmann. Among these younger academics, many of whom were then but untenured Privatdozenten,was Karl F. Werder, who was probably the main personal link between Cieszkowski and young Karl Marx. 4 But of all of his new acquaintances, none became a closer friend to Cieszkowski than one of his teachers, the lecturer Carl F. Michelet (: 80 a- 1893).5Michelet exercised a powerful and encouraging influence upon his new student and friend, not only planning for the publication of Cieszkowski's projected critique of Hegel's philosophy of history, but finding in that critique an echo of his own views on the matter of the future of philosophy. 6 In Berlin in 1833 to study philosophy meant to study Hegel, for then, as Rudolf Haym recalled, "One was either a Hegelian or a barbarian, idiot, laggard and hateful empiricist. ''7 But within two years of Cieszkowski's arrival , in t835, Strauss' heretical LebenJesuwas published. To the dismay of the Hegelian academics enjoying official sanction, Strauss declared himself to be a true follower of Hegel. Their subsequent failure to produce a definitive Hegelian refutation of Strauss was sufficient justification for an ideological coup d'etatby the many orthodox Lutheran clerics who had gathered about the throne of the aging King Friedrich Wilhelm III. With both conservative See Walter Kiihne's Graf August Cieszkowski: ein Schiiler Hegels und des deutschen Geistes (Leipzig; reprinted: Nendeln, Kraus Reprint, 1968) for a biography of Cieszkowski. 4 See author's "August von Cieszkowski: From Theory to Practice," History and Theory 13...

Notes, Bibliographies, and Documents

Austria and the Polish Insurrection of 1863: Documents from the Austrian State Archives

Victorian Provincial Businessmen and Foreign Affairs: The Case of the Polish Insurrection, 1863–1864

MODERN SCHOLARS have begun to draw back the curtains on Victorian business history and to spotlight studies of individual entrepreneurs, corporations, and international business. Yet Victorian businessmen in relationship to foreign affairs remain hidden backstage or appear sketchily as backdrops. No comprehensive, systematic examination of capitalists and external affairs has yet appeared. Indeed, studies of Victorian public reactions to foreign conflicts pay slight attention to businessmen, particularly provincial entrepreneurs, many of whom were heavily involved in international trade and tended to be quite active politically. 1 While capitalists often of course focused on prices and profits, a number expressed views and acted upon contemporary foreign matters. An examination of their responses to one issue, the Polish insurrection of 1863-64, can reveal much about the relationship of businessmen and international concerns in Victorian England. To bring these provincial men more to centre stage, and to help explain their reactions to foreign affairs, particularly as contrasted to those of their London compeers, I have examined the social backgrounds, politics, views, and activities of fifty-four businessmen from thirteen provincial, largely northern, municipalities. While relatively few, their significance outweighs simple numbers; often prominent members of local elites, they held various social and political offices which made them spokesmen for different constituencies. Very busy, hard-driving men with multiple responsibilities, they left warm firesides and families at night to participate in demonstrations because it meant something to them.

Jewish Emancipation and the Polish Insurrection of 1863: Jan Czynski's Letter of 1862 to Ludwik Krolikowski

Traduction d'une lettre du patriote polonais JanCzynski (1801-1867), qui lutta toute sa vie pour l'emancipation des Juifs, a Ludwik Krolikowski (1799-1879), socialiste chretien favorable aux Juifs. Lettre datee du 29sept.1862. Deux parties: les preparatifs secrets de l'Insurrection| renseignements sur l'Alliance polonaise de toutes les croyances religieuses, fondee a Paris (liste des 31membres). Original polonais en appendice.