For Russia, at the beginning of the 19th century, the Polish issue should be viewed primarily as a foreign policy issue, an analyst of the news agency Vestnik Kavkaza, Matvey Katkov said during a live broadcast of the National Question program on Vesti FM.
National Question is a weekly program of Vesti.FM, during which the hosts, Georgy Saralidze and Vladimir Averin, discuss various aspects of the national relations, primarily in Russia. Today's broadcast was dedicated to the Polish issue in the history of Russia.
Matvey Katkov explained that the significant changes in the political map of Europe after the Napoleonic wars, including the entry of Poland into the Russian Empire, affected the interests of the great powers that participated in the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century - Austria and Prussia. ”In the framework of the domestic political situation, the Polish issue was a part of the global policy to expand the western borders of the state, organically combining, in particular, with the accession of Finland. Recall, that in the first quarter of the 19th century, the territory of Russia as a whole expanded greatly, it included Georgia, the great part of Azerbaijan and the territory of modern Moldavia, " he noted.
Russia pursued a liberal policy toward the Kingdom of Poland, which, however, did not save it from revolts. ”Both the gentry and the Russian liberal bureaucrats of the Alexandrov era counted very much on the liberalism of St. Petersburg. The Constitution, which consolidated the powers of the Sejm and the rights of the Polish gentry, was introduced in the Kingdom of Poland in 1815. Of course, a part of the gentry sought to gain national independence, as a friend of childhood of Alexander I, Adam Czartoryski did, and these aspirations poured into insurrections, continuing the course, begun by Tadeusz Kosciuszko at the end of the 18th century, "the analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza said.
At the same time, these insurrections inevitably failed. "The ideas of the gentry almost never penetrated the mass consciousness of Polish peasants, whose exploitation was often much tougher than serfdom in Russia. Therefore, the noble ideas of gentry about freedom and national independence were extremely rarely popular among the peasants. The cause of the defeat of the Polish uprisings is absence of a reliable support among the majority of the population, " Matvey Katkov pointed out.
"The slogan of the 1830-1831 Polish Revolt was - For Your and Our freedom. The insurrection, which had a clear national character, used this slogan. There was discontent with the governor Konstantin Pavlovich, the brother of the Russian emperor, and the political conjuncture, however there was no enmity with Russian people, on the contrary, to some extent, the insurrection was submitted as benefiting Russian people themselves, for its freedom, too. In my opinion, it was very uncharacteristic for the national uprisings, and very indicative as well,’’ the analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza stressed out.
At the end of his speech, Matvey Katkov pointed out that in the future, the Polish question was often used by the foreign powers for their political purposes. "In particular, such an attempt, albeit unsuccessful, was undertaken in the years of the Crimean War. The revolt of 1863-1864 was influenced by the external forces, " he concluded.
