THE RUSSIAN PARTITION 79who were ordered to deal with rebels and traitors with bloody severity, were at
the same time rewarded for acts of magnanimity and self-sacrifice. For reasons
unknown to the ordinary citizen, one official would say 'Yes' and another say
'No'. Here was the timeless Russian paradox. Autocracy was justified and
perpetuated to combat the very vices which it encouraged and which made it
inoperative. It was a circle too vicious to be easily broken. Yet Tsarism was nei-
ther so monstrous nor so consistent as its later reputation suggests. Although
capable of meaningless savagery on occasion, it was milder and more humane
in practice than much that the twentieth century can boast of.
At the same time, the negative strength of the Russian Empire could not be
underestimated. If the Tsar could not rule his Polish provinces with the degree
of harmony that he wished for, he could easily prevent anyone else from
interfering. The powers of denial were unlimited, and very effective. The Army,
police, frontiers, censors, fortresses, and prisons were not maintained for show.
On the internal front, all the conspiracies and risings of a century and a half
were suppressed without serious difficulty. On the international front, great
advantages could be drawn from the Tsar's traditional role as the champion of
Legitimacy. No European monarchy would tangle lightly with the giant Empire
whose brute strength was a guarantee of international law and order. So long as
the partitioning powers kept common cause, the Polish Question could not be
raised. Diplomatic protests could be politely brushed aside. Of themselves, the
Poles had no means to effect fundamental change. In Russia, nothing changed
without the stimulus of an external defeat. It was the British and French whose
campaign in the Crimea provoked the reforms of Alexander II. It was the
Japanese whose victories in Manchuria made the 'Revolution' of 1905 possible
and the consequent establishment of the Duma. It was the Germans who in
1915—16 drove the Tsarist authorities out of the Polish provinces for good, and
who in the following year drove the subjects of the Tsar to revolution.
No amount of social and economic progress could alter the political situa-
tion. As the nineteenth century wore on, Russian Poland's share of the Empire's
wealth and advancement grew rapidly. Industrialization and urbanization
began much earlier than in central Russia. By 1914 Warsaw had grown to a city
of 900,000, Lodz to 230,000, Wilno to 193,000, Sosnowiec to 100,000. After
1850, when the internal tariff barrier was removed, Polish producers were able
to service the vast Russian market. After 1864, when serfdom was finally abol-
ished, the rural masses could move freely to the towns. An urban working class
appeared, and with it a seminal bourgeoisie, with strong German and Jewish
connections. Together, they accounted for almost one-third of the population.
The new social groups began to organize new political parties, some legal, some
illegal. But in no way should these developments be seen as 'steps on the road
towards independence'. Nicholas II was no more disposed to allow the Poles to
secede than Nicholas I. And the Poles in Russia in 1914 had no better means of
enforcing their demands than in 1814. It was the World War that eventually
broke the Russian hold on Poland, not progress. Despite its obvious faults, the