1. Introduction – The Historical Background

The situation of the Polish state in the later eighteenth century was a difficult one. Legislative impotence and constitutional chaos had prompted intervention in Polish domestic affairs by neighbouring powers. Attempts at reform by the last Polish king, Stanislaw Augustus Poniatowski (1764–95) was resisted by discontented nobles, a conflict that ended in 1772. This was the year of the first partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia and Austria, a partition in which Poland lost a third of its population and territory. Between 1788 and 1792, while Russia was in conflict with Turkey and Sweden, the Four Years Seym sought to introduce radical constitutional reform. A relatively republican Constitution of 3 May 1791 passed by the Seym provoked Russian armed intervention, and consequently the second partition of 1793 (this time without Austrian participation), annulling the short-lived Constitution. The defeat of the Kościuszko insurrection of 1794, and the third partition of 1795, brought about the political extinction of the Commonwealth. For 123 years, until 1918, Poland disappeared from the map as an independent state. The Polish people lived on the borders of Russia, Prussia and the Austrian empire, with little autonomy.

Following the Napoleonic wars the Vienna Congress of 1815 established the so-called Polish (or Congress) Kingdom, with a Russian tsar as king. It included part of central Poland together with Warsaw; after the Third Partition Lithuania had been annexed by Russia. From 1815 to 1846 Cracow was a free city, later included in the Austrian territories. After the unsuccessful November uprising of 1830–1 the autonomy of the Congress Kingdom was further restricted. The Kingdom was entirely abolished after the defeat of the next anti-Russian uprising, of January 1863–4. In 1874 the Tsar appointed governors general for the Vistula Country. The Austrian territory, Galicia, gained limited autonomy in 1861. The Prussian part of Poland was systematically germanised.

Political conditions in Poland, after three partitions, were not favourable to economic and scientific development. Two unsuccessful anti-Russian uprisings had led to the death of many leading Poles, the remaining insurgents going into emigration.