8o ROSSIYA
Tsarist Government did not discriminate unduly against its Polish citizens. In
Polish eyes, of course, it was supremely 'anti-Polish', just as in Jewish eyes, it
was 'anti-Semitic', or in Ukrainian eyes it was 'anti-Ukrainian'. But that is only
to say that it met all expressions of independent will with equal and total oppo-
sition. As a matter of fact, it was part of the Muscovite tradition that Russians
should be treated worst of all. In the words of Mickiewicz, 'Cursed be this
nation which kills its own prophets.'^11 The Government made a point of
oppressing its own people first and foremost. No Pole or Jew or Ukrainian could
claim that he was treated more harshly than the revolutionaries, sectarians, or
conspirators among the Russian population at large. It is true that the Poles
found no response to demands for independence. But they shared in such pros-
perity and suffering that was going. It was their expectations that were differ-
ent, not their objective predicament. Unfortunately, Tsarism did not cater for
expectations.
In the end, of course, the attempt to absorb the former Polish provinces into
Russia failed gloriously. Political integration did not lead to social assimilation.
On the contrary, it lead to increasing social polarization. Unlike the situation in
Austria, or in Prussia before 1871, where the good citizen could reconcile his
Polish patriotism to his loyalty to the Habsburgs or the Hohenzollerns, in
Russia people were forced to choose between their conflicting loyalties. If a per-
son continued to speak Polish, to practise the Catholic religion, and to cultivate
Polish friends, he was automatically suspect in the eyes of the political authori-
ties. In order to prove an acceptable degree of reliability and to qualify for a
responsible position, a Pole had to abandon his native language, even in his
home, to reject Catholicism or Judaism for Orthodoxy, and to shun his relatives
and friends. Inevitably, in such an environment, Russians and Poles were forced
to live separate lives. Social intercourse between the two nationalities dimi-
nished. In Warsaw, in Wilno, even in the smaller centres, the Poles kept to them-
selves. They formed their own closed societies, their own businesses, their own
secret societies. Their children married amongst themselves, and looked with
disfavour on any of their number who dared to break the unwritten rules of
national solidarity. They were condemned by circumstances to love their coun-
try, and to hate their rulers. They pretended with all their heart and soul that
Russia did not exist.
To people who have never experienced similar circumstances, it is difficult to
explain what Russia meant to those disaffected Polish generations.
Contemporary writers often expressed their predicament through metaphors
and vivid images of active oppression which cannot always be taken at their face
value. Having learned the lessons of successive Risings, the central government
in St. Petersburg increasingly sought, not to thrash the Poles into submission in
the Prussian fashion, but rather to wear them down by depriving them of all the
spiritual and cultural resources which make life tolerable. In an autocratic
Empire of 150 millions, which was increasingly preoccupied with the restless
Russian heartland, 15 million Poles could not hope to assert their eccentric inter-