Victories of the Counter-Revolution 487
nation,” wrote a Polish diarist of the time, “and therefore an equal freedom is nec-
essary for all classes of people.”^21
In Poland the main problem was serfdom. Kosciuszko, as military commander
of the insurrection, vested in fact with the powers of a dictator, had to choose be-
tween Right and Left among his supporters—between a Right which said that
peasant emancipation would create anarchy at an inopportune moment, and that
the peasant question should be regulated after independence was won; and a Left
which said that more equal rights for the peasant would never be granted at all
after the crisis was passed, and that, in any case, independence could not be won
unless the mass of the population was given reason to fight for it. Kosciuszko
chose for the Left, pressed by such Jacobin advisers as Kollontay. On May 7, he
issued, at his camp at Polaniec, the most memorable document of the abortive Pol-
ish revolution of 1794.
The Polaniec Proclamation, though it declared the serfs free, was nevertheless a
compromise, by which it was hoped that serf- owners could maintain their zeal for
the national movement. It called for a unity of all the people of Poland, blaming
the long record of past disunity on the intrigues of foreign courts. If this was an
exaggeration, it spared the sensibilities of the Polish nobles. “It is this day and this
moment that we must seize with enthusiasm. The enemy deploys all his forces to
make us fail.... Against this horde of frightened slaves we must set the imposing
mass of free men. Victory, we may be sure, will go to those who fight in their own
cause.” Robespierre had said the same, in effect, on the preceding February 5.^22
Kosciuszko therefore declared as follows:
- The people [including the peasants], by virtue of the law, enjoy the
protection of the national government. - Every peasant is free in his person, and may live where he pleas-
es—but must report his movements to the public authorities. - The days of labor owed by peasants to proprietors are reduced and
regulated—in a complex way, with peasants owing six days a week now
obliged only for four, and so in proportion for those owing less.... - Men who have been called up in the general levy [the pospolite
ruszenie mentioned above] are exempted from labor service while under
arms; they will not be obligated to it again until they return home.
Much else followed, including appeals to the peasants to continue faithfully at
their labors, so that agricultural production could be maintained during the strug-
gle. For the landlords it was revolutionary thus to emancipate their serfs. It was of
revolutionary import however considered. If carried through, and reinforced by the
rest of the Jacobin program, it might radically transform not only the labor ar-
rangements but many aspects of class status and human relations in Poland. But
for the peasants, or those of them who gave it thought, the proclamation seemed
grudging and hedged about. It lacked the ringing appeal of true revolutionary dec-
21 Ibid., 218.
22 The Polaniec Proclamation is printed in Angeberg, 373–79.