Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland

FOUR: “Poland Has Not Yet Perished”: From the Third of May to the Kościuszko Insurrection

Astring of important anniversaries followed the Mickiewicz translation in the first half of the 1890s. These dates included the centennials of the final years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—dates of immense significance for the nation. The events began with initiatives produced by a four-year-long session of the Sejm (1788–92), the most important of which was the Constitution of May 3, 1791. This first European constitution abolished aspects of the political system that had caused so much grief—the liberum veto, the elective monarchy, and the like—while creating a constitutional monarchy more along Western lines, where citizenship was based upon land ownership, not birth.1 This legislative initiative , which Karl Marx called “the only work of liberty which Eastern Europe has ever created independently,” served as shorthand for the ability of the Polish nation to reform itself and marked the dawn of a new era.2 At the same time, it was seen as a threat to the partitioning states, as the reaction of one influential Prussian suggests. He wrote: “The Poles have dealt a fatal blow to the Prussian monarchy, by bringing in a hereditary throne and a constitution better than England’s. . . . Sooner or later, Poland will take West and perhaps even East Prussia from us. How can we, exposed from Teschen to Memel, defend ourselves against a populous and well-ruled nation ?”3 Such words belied the stereotypes of Polish anarchy emphasized by the partitioners and suggested that the nation was more than capable of reforming and governing itself. The prospect of a reinvigorated Polish community nonetheless prompted the partitioning powers to seize further territory in 1793. In this they were aided by an ad hoc assembly of nobles known as the Confederation of Targowica, which invited Catherine the Great of Russia to interfere in Polish internal matters. As a result, the word “Targowica” entered into Polish discourse as a synonym for treachery. FOUR “Poland Has Not Yet Perished”: From the Third of May to the Kosœciuszko Insurrection  The indignity of the second partition prompted Poles who supported the Third of May Constitution to rebel in the spring of 1794. Their leader was the Polish officer and veteran of the American Revolutionary War Tadeusz Kosœciuszko. Despite a series of successful battles—including their first and most famous battle, at Rac`awice, during which scythe-bearing peasants helped to defeat the Russian army—and the spread of the insurrection to Warsaw, Wilno, and other cities, on October 10 the Polish campaign came to an end. The nation was unable to fend off the final blow: the third and final partition in 1795 that wiped the country off the map of Europe . The events of the final years of independent statehood nonetheless became the cornerstone for late-nineteenth-century Polish optimism about the future. Despite accusations by the Cracow school of history that the Poles had been to blame for their downfall, others felt it was important to demonstrate that the nation had not taken partition lightly, that a broad cross section of the eighteenth-century population of the Commonwealth had contrived, politically and militarily, to change the nation’s fate. The anniversaries of the Third of May Constitution and the Kosœciuszko Insurrection celebrated in 1891 and 1894 could potentially influence a broader swath of masses, including peasants. Both centennials were seen as opportunities for making progress with the goal of nationalizing the masses, of making villagers feel a part of the Polish nation; they also shed light on the changing face of Polish patriotism. This series of commemorations promised to be more potentially explosive than those of writers or royalty discussed to date. The Constitution and other Polish initiatives of the 1790s, after all, had been designed to shore up the Polish state and fend off further partition. Memories of these accomplishments and events could lead members of the nation to reflect upon the injustice wrought by the partitioning powers. Such recollections were inherently destabilizing, as they challenged Poles worldwide to question their present condition and seek to change their state of affairs, at times through illegal means. Perhaps most important, the celebrations of the Constitution of the Third of May, the partitions, and the Kosœciuszko Insurrection emboldened Poles across the social spectrum to believe that they could work together toward a brighter future. CELEBRATING THE 1791 CONSTITUTION For nineteenth-century Poles, a particularly attractive aspect of the Constitution of May 3, 1791, was that it gave the lie to...