THE GROWTH OF THE MODERN NATION 9a 'British national' is coterminous with official labels such as 'HM Subject' or
'Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies'; an 'American national' refers to
anyone who possesses the legal status of a citizen of the United States of
America.
The Poles, in contrast, belong to a community which has acquired its modern
sense of nationality in active opposition to the policies of the states in which they
lived. Polish nationality is a belief which at various times officialdom of the par-
titioning powers strove to suppress. The Polish nation was recruited from
people who, whilst conceding that they were Russian, Prussian, or Austrian sub-
jects, steadfastly refused to admit that they were 'Russians', 'Prussians', or
'Austrians'. In such circumstances, Polish Nationalism was largely propagated
by activists who sought to use national consciousness for political purposes
entirely contrary to those of the state authorities. To this extent, the Poles have
shared the experience of many stateless nations in Europe — from the Bulgars
and the Basques, to the Walloons, the Wends, or the Welsh. (In this connection,
it is interesting to note how precise is the official terminology of present-day
Eastern Europe, where the distinction between 'citizenship' and 'nationality' is
always made. In Soviet documents, for example, all residents of the USSR are
described as 'Soviet citizens', whilst leaving them free to declare their own
nationality as 'Russian', 'Byelorussian', 'Georgian', 'Jewish', 'Uzbek', 'Yakut',
or whatever. Unfortunately, English usage habitually refers to all Soviet citizens
as 'Russians' irrespective of their nationality, thereby smudging one of the most
important features of East European life.)
The Polish case is specially complicated by the fact that Polish statehood,
though intermittent, was not completely absent. In the old Republic, prior to
1795, Polish nationality could indeed be defined in terms of loyalty to the state.
The 'Polish nation' was usually reserved as an appellation for those inhabitants
who enjoyed full civil and political rights, and thus for the nobility alone. It did
not refer to a man's native language, his religion, or ethnic origin. Hence, in this
context, there were many 'Poles', who in modern terms might not be so
described; and there were masses of Polish-speaking inhabitants, in the peas-
antry or bourgeoisie, who did not regard themselves as Poles. In extreme
instances, as in the case of a seventeenth-century cleric, a man might describe
himself as canonicus cracoviensis, natione Polonus, gente Ruthenus, origins
Judaeus - 'a Canon of Cracow, a member of the Polish nation, of the Ruthenian
people, of Jewish origin'. Once the Republic was destroyed, however, the old
terms gradually lost their validity. Old words assumed new meanings, and were
used by different people in different ways and for different purposes. The word
'nation' shed its former political connotation and increasingly assumed its mod-
ern cultural and ethnic overtones. The word 'Pole' was abandoned in relation
to those peoples of the former Republic who were now developing their separ-
ate national identities as Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, or
Lithuanians; whilst it was commonly expanded to embrace everyone who could
speak the Polish language.