God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 2. 1795 to the Present

EDUCATION AND THE CULTURAL HERITAGE 173

university, these two institutes attracted the highest quality of teachers and stu-
dents. In the last decade of the century, the number of private schools in the
Vistula provinces doubled, and, in the period of concessions following the
Revolution of 1905—7, doubled again.
Self-education became a veritable craze. Its devotees were aided by the
monthly Poradnik dla samoukow (Guidebook for the Self-taught) to which all
the luminaries of the day contributed. Amazingly, it has been estimated that
one-third of the population of Russian Poland, young and old, was engaged in
some form of home-study at the turn of the century.
Special emphasis was laid on Libraries. In an era when Polish literature was
widely regarded as subversive, book collections had to be preserved in secrecy.
In Kalisz, in 1873, it was known that the only full set of the unexpurgated
Brockhaus Edition of Collected Polish Authors, published in Leipzig in 1858, was
to be found in the study of the acting Russian Governor, Rybnikov, an ardent
Slavophile. One night, Rybnikov's books were stolen by unknown burglars, and
deposited in the Town Gaol, where the Chief Constable's son undertook to hide
them from his father's mystified agents. Elsewhere, public libraries sprang up
under the cover of religious or social organizations. By 1897, the Warsaw
Charitable Society (WTD) was maintaining twenty-three branch libraries. An
attempt to purge the shelves of such 'degrading authors' as Hugo, Zola, and
Dumas led first to the expulsion of the Society's conservative Chairman, Prince
Michat Radziwill, and then to the suppression of the libraries by the police.
A concerted effort was made to export Polish culture to the masses. Both the
PPS and Dmowski's Polish League ran extensive educational programmes,
which were greatly boosted by the school strikes of 1904-7. Campaigns to edu-
cate the peasants were disguised as 'Bee-keeping Societies' or 'Sports
Associations'. In the towns, devoted teachers held lessons in private homes,
addressing their labours to a mixture of truants, adult illiterates, and youthful
volunteers. In 1911, a report submitted to the Russian Policemaster of
Sosnowiec, revealed the alarming extent of the problem in the towns of that area:

I have the honour to report to Your Excellency the existence of the following illegal

schools in the district entrusted to me:

In the settlement of Modrzejow:

1. In the house of Pergricht, the son-in-law of the foreman, Najer, a dangerous per-
   son by name of Rusek is teaching;


2. Two secret Jewish schools are to be found in the house of Szczekacz, but it is hard
   to say who the teacher is. (Modrzejow lies in the Police District of D^browa.) In
   the village of Niwka:


3. Maria Goralska, the daughter of an official of the 'Jerzy' Mine, holds lessons in a
   house belonging to the Company on the other side of the street from the clinic;


4. Janina Drozdowska and her sister hold lessons in another house of the same com-
   pany on Wesola Street;


5. The aunt, or possibly the mother of the manageress of the 'jutrzenka* store, name
   unknown, teaches in the flat ajoining the store;