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Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish people state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established when the French ceded a part of Polish territory to the Russian Empire following France's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1915, during World War I, it was replaced by the German Empire-controlled nominal Regency Kingdom until Poland regained independence in 1918.
Following the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland ceased to exist as an independent nation for 123 years. The territory, with its native population, was split among the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire. After 1804, an equivalent to Congress Poland within the Austrian Empire was the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also commonly referred to as "Austrian Poland". The area incorporated into Prussia initially also held autonomy as the Grand Duchy of Posen outside of German Confederation, but later was demoted to merely a Prussian province (the Province of Posen), and was subsequently annexed in 1866 into the North German Confederation, the predecessor of the German Empire.
The Congress Kingdom of Poland was theoretically granted considerable political autonomy by the liberal constitution. However, its rulers, the Russian emperors, generally disregarded any restrictions on their power. It was, therefore, little more than a puppet state in a personal union with the Russian Empire. The autonomy was severely curtailed following uprisings in 1830–31 and January Uprising, as the country became governed by viceroys, and later divided into guberniya (provinces). Thus, from the start, Polish autonomy remained little more than fiction.Agnieszka Barbara Nance, Nation without a State: Imagining Poland in the Nineteenth Century, dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin, pp. 169-88
The capital was located in Warsaw, which towards the beginning of the 20th century became the Russian Empire's third-largest city after St. Petersburg and Moscow. The moderately multicultural population of Congress Poland was estimated at 9,402,253 inhabitants in 1897. It was mostly composed of Poles, Polish Jews, ethnic Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and a small Russian minority. The predominant religion was Roman Catholicism and the official language used within the state was Polish language until the failed January Uprising (1863) when Russian language became co-official as a consequence. Yiddish and German were widely spoken by their native speakers.
The territory of Congress Poland roughly corresponds to modern-day Kalisz Region and the Lublin, Łódź, Masovian, Podlaskie and Holy Cross Voivodeships of Poland as well as southwestern Lithuania and a small part of the Grodno District of Belarus.
The Kingdom of Poland effectively came to an end with the Great Retreat of Russian forces in 1915 and was succeeded by the Government General of Warsaw, established by the Germans. In 1917, part of this was renamed as the short-lived Kingdom of Poland, a client state of the Central Powers, which had a Regency Council instead of a king.
Following the Congress, Russia gained a larger share of Poland (with Warsaw) and, after crushing an insurrection in 1831, the Congress Kingdom's autonomy was abolished. Poles faced confiscation of property, deportation, forced military service, and the closure of their own universities.W. Caban, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Ideas of Polish Roads to Independence’, Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe, 2018, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 105-127. The Congress was important enough in the creation of the state to cause the new country to be informally named for it. The kingdom lost its status as a sovereignty state in 1831 and the administrative divisions were reorganized. It was sufficiently distinct that its name remained in official Russian use, although in the later years of Russian rule it was replaced with the "Vistula Land" (Russian: Привислинский Край). Following the defeat of the November Uprising its separate institutions and administrative arrangements were abolished as part of increased Russification to be more closely integrated with the Russian Empire. However, even after this formalized annexation, the territory retained some degree of distinctiveness and continued to be referred to informally as Congress Poland until the Russian rule there ended as a result of the advance by the armies of the Central Powers in 1915 during World War I.
The kingdom was 128,500 km2 in area and originally had a population of approximately 3.3 million. The new state would be one of the smallest Polish states ever, smaller than the preceding Duchy of Warsaw and much smaller than the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth which had a population of over 10 million and an area of 1 million km2. Its population reached 6.1 million by 1870 and 10 million by 1900. The majority of ethnic Polish people within the Russian Empire lived in the Congress Kingdom, although some areas outside its borders were also inhabited by strong Polish and Roman Catholic minorities.
The Kingdom of Poland largely re-emerged as a result of the efforts of Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, a Pole who aimed to resurrect the Polish state in alliance with Russia. The Kingdom of Poland was one of the few contemporary constitutional monarchies in Europe, with the emperor of Russia serving as the self-proclaimed king of Poland.
The rule of Nicholas also meant the end of political traditions in Poland; democratic institutions were removed, an appointed—rather than elected—centralized administration was put in place, and efforts were made to change the relations between the state and the individual. All of this led to discontent and resistance among the Polish population. In January 1831, the Sejm deposed Nicholas I as King of Poland in response to his repeated curtailing of its constitutional rights. Nicholas reacted by sending Russian troops into Poland, resulting in the November Uprising.
Following an 11-month military campaign, the Kingdom of Poland lost its semi-independent status and was integrated much more closely with the Russian Empire. This was formalized through the issuing of the Organic Statute of the Kingdom of Poland by the Emperor in 1832, which abolished the constitution, army and legislative assembly. Over the next 30 years, a series of measures bound Congress Poland ever more closely to Russia. In 1863 the January Uprising broke out but lasted only two years before being crushed. As a direct result, any remaining separate status of the kingdom was removed and the political entity was directly incorporated into the Russian Empire. The unofficial name Privislinsky Krai (), i.e., 'Vistula Land', replaced 'Kingdom of Poland' as the area's official name and the area became a namestnichestvo under the control of a namiestnik until 1875, when it became a Guberniya.
In theory, Congress Poland possessed one of the most liberal governments of the time in Europe, but in practice, the area was a puppet state of the Russian Empire. The liberal provisions of the constitution, and the scope of the autonomy, were often disregarded by the Russian officials.
Polish remained an official language until the mid-1860s when it was replaced by Russian. This resulted in bilingual street signs and documents, however, the full implementation of Cyrillic script into the Polish language failed.
The office of "namiestnik" or viceroy was never abolished; however, the last "namiestnik" was Friedrich Wilhelm Rembert von Berg, who served from 1863 to his death in 1874. No "namiestnik" was named to replace him;Hugo Stumm, Russia's Advance Eastward, 1874, p. 140, note 1. Google Print however, the role of "namestnik"—viceroy of the former kingdom passed to the governor-general of WarsawThomas Mitchell, Handbook for Travellers in Russia, Poland, and Finland, 1888, p. 460. Google Print [2]—or, to be more specific, of the Warsaw Military District (, ).
The governor-general answered directly to the emperor and exercised much broader powers than had the "namiestnik". In particular, he controlled all the military forces in the region and oversaw the judicial systems (he could impose without trial). He could also issue "declarations with the force of law," which could alter existing laws.
Immediately after its creation in 1815, the Kingdom of Poland was divided into departments, a relic from the times of the French-dominated Duchy of Warsaw.
On 16 January 1816 the administrative division was reformed, with the departments being replaced with more traditionally Polish (of which there were eight), obwóds and . On 7 March 1837, in the aftermath of the November Uprising earlier that decade, the administrative division was reformed again, bringing Congress Poland closer to the structure of the Russian Empire, with the introduction of (governorate, Polish spelling gubernia). In 1842 the were renamed okręgs, and the obwóds were renamed powiats. In 1844 several governorates were merged with others, and some others were renamed; five governorates remained.
In 1867, following the failure of the January Uprising, further reforms were instituted which were designed to bring the administrative structure of Poland closer to that of the Russian Empire. It divided larger governorates into smaller ones, introduced the gmina (a new lower-level entity), and restructured the existing five governorates into 10. The 1912 reform created a new governorate – Kholm Governorate – from parts of the Sedlets and Lublin Governorates. It was made part of the Southwestern Krai of the Russian Empire.Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland, Columbia University Press, 2005, , Print, p. 278
Since agriculture was equivalent to 70% of the national income, the most important economic transformations included the establishment of mines and the textile industry; the development of these sectors brought more profit and higher tax revenues. The beginnings were difficult due to floods and an intense diplomatic relationship with Prussia. It was not until 1822 when Prince Francis Xavier Drucki-Lubecki negotiated to open the Polish market to the world. He also tried to introduce appropriate protective duties. A large and profitable investment was the construction of the Augustów Canal connecting Narew and Neman Rivers, which allowed to bypass Danzig (Gdańsk) and high Prussian . Drucki-Lubecki also founded the Bank Polski, for which he is mostly remembered.
The first Polish steam mill was built in 1828 in Warsaw-Solec; the first textile machine was installed in 1829. Greater use of machines led to production in the form of workshops. The government was also encouraging foreign specialists, mostly Germans, to upkeep larger establishments, or to undertake production. By 1887, 550 of the 29,000 Prussian landowners in Poland were manufacturers. The Germans were also relieved of the tax burden. This allowed to create one of the largest European textile centres in Łódź and in surrounding towns like Ozorków and Zduńska Wola. These small and initially insignificant settlements later developed into large and multicultural cities, where Germans and Jews were the majority in the population. With the abolition of border customs in 1851 and further economic growth, Polish cities were gaining wealth and importance. Most notably, Warsaw, being associated with the construction of railway lines and bridges, gained priority in the entire Russian market.
Although the economic and industrial progress occurred rapidly, most of the farms, called , chose to rely on serfs and paid workforce. Only a few experimented by obtaining proper machinery and plowing equipment from England. New crops were being cultivated like sugar beet, which marked the beginning of Polish sugar refineries. The use of iron cutters and plows was also favoured among the farmers. During the January Uprising the occupying authorities sought to deprive peasant insurgents of their popularity among Szlachta. Taxes were raised and the overall economic situation of commoners worsened. The noblemen and landowners were, on the other hand, provided with more privileges, rights and even financial support in the form of bribery. The aim of this was to weaken their support for the rebellion against the Russian Empire.
Congress Poland was the largest supplier of zinc in Europe. The development of the zinc industry took place at the beginning of the 19th century. It was mostly caused by the significant increase of demand for zinc mainly in industrialized countries of Western Europe.
In 1899, Aleksander Ginsberg founded the company FOS ( Fabryka Przyrządów Optycznych-"Factory of Optical Equipment") in Warsaw, which produced cameras, telescopes, objectives and Stereoscopy. Following the outbreak of World War I the factory was moved to St. Petersburg.
In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Russia experienced a coal crisis marked by coal shortages and high prices. This was attributed to the dramatic increase of industrial output and a still nascent coal mining industry."The Coal Crisis in Russia." Financial Times, 22 Mar. 1900, p. 3. In 1900, because of coal shortages in the Warsaw industrial region, the Minister of Finance approved the Free trade import of 125,000,000 Pood of coal."Multiple News Items." Financial Times, 27 Nov. 1899, p. 1.
| +Linguistic composition of Congress Poland in 1897 !Language !Native speakers !% | ||
| Polish language | 6,755,503 | 71.85 |
| Yiddish language | 1,267,194 | 13.48 |
| German language | 407,274 | 4.33 |
| Little Russian | 335,337 | 3.57 |
| Lithuanian | 305,322 | 3.25 |
| Russian language | 267,160 | 2.84 |
| Belarusian | 29,347 | 0.31 |
| Other | 35,116 | 0.37 |
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