THE RUSSIAN PARTITION 8lests. Their resistance was to be overcome not by bullets and rawhide whips but
by spiritual prescription, official ostracism, and 'internal exile'. For the most
part, the warfare was psychological not physical. The longest confrontations
took place not in the tumult of the barricades but in the quiet of private con-
sciences. Here was a highly deceptive situation which inspired Jozef Pilsudski to
call Russia 'an Asiatic beast hidden behind a European mask'. Later, one of
Pitsudski's successors, Marshal Smigly-Rydz, fearing a choice between submis-
sion to Russia or to Germany, expressed a clear opinion. It was an opinion
based on the Russian world in which most Poles grew up and with which many
of them would have agreed. 'Germany will destroy our body' he said; 'Russia
will destroy our soul.'^12
The predominant mood in Russian Poland, therefore, was one of loneliness,
emptiness, and frustration. For the government in St. Petersburg, the problems
of Vistulaland, with its eternal grievances and its incurable nieblagonadzhenost'
(unreliability) were of marginal concern. For the Poles, Russia was a wilderness
in which nothing they held dear was ever given serious consideration. Adam
Mickiewicz, travelling in Southern Russia in 1825, found an exact image for
these sentiments:
The Steppes of Akkerman
I have sailed on to the expanse of a dry ocean.
The wagon is submerged in greenery, and like a boat, wanders
Through the rustling waves of the prairie, and glides among the flowers.
I pass coral islets of rank vegetation.
Already dusk is falling. No road here, no dolmen.
I look up, seeking the stars, my ship's couriers. There, afar, a cloud gleams in the sky.
The morning star glimmers.
There lies the glistening Dniester! There, the pharos of Akkerman.
Halt! How still! I can hear a flight of cranes
Which are invisible, even to the falcon's stare.
I listen to a butterfly snuggling in the grassy lanes,
And to a smooth-breasted snake nestling in the clover.
In such silence, my curious ear strains
To catch a voice from Lithuania... Drive on! No one's there.^13
Russia rarely gave the Poles even an echo of what they wanted to hear. For them,
Russia was a wilderness in more senses than one.
In Russia at large, Poland's plight continued to command little sympathy. In
the great age of Russian literature which preceded the Revolution, frequent ref-
erence was made to Polish themes; but few comments were favourable.
Dostoevsky's pathological hatred of Poland was no doubt exceptional in its vir-
ulence. Yet it found many echoes in the opinions of his literary confreres. In
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy used the mouth of Karenin to express the prevalent
attitude of educated Russians of his day. ' "The Poles", Karenin said, as if to in-
form his audience of a little known fact, "are not Russians; but now they are
members of our nation, they ought to be Russified for their own benefit." ' It was