IO NAROD
Even so, many ambiguities persisted. Each of the bureaucracies of the
partitioning powers had their own terminological conventions. In Russian
official usage, a man living on the left bank of the River Bug might be called a
'Pole', in that he was a citizen of the Congress Kingdom; his neighbour on the
right bank of the river, even if he were the other man's brother, was a 'Russian'.
After 1874, when the Congress Kingdom was abolished, they were all classified
'Russians', whether they liked it or not. Even among the Poles themselves, wide
variations prevailed. People who looked for the restoration of a state resembling
the old Republic, continued to think of Polishness in non-national terms.
Mickiewicz, for one, saw no reason why he should not be a 'Pole' and a
'Lithuanian' at one and the same time. This apostle of Polish culture began his
most famous poem with an invocation not to 'Poland', but to 'Lithuania':
Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jestes jak zdrowie (O Lithuania, my Fatherland! You
are like health to me).^6 At a later date, Jozef Pitsudski expressed the same sort
of sentiment. Other people, whose aspirations departed completely from all his-
torical precedents, came to think of Polishness as a quality reserved exclusively
for Polish-speakers, or even for Polish Catholics.
So, here again, great caution is necessary. Nationalists, no less than state
officials have a strong propensity for turning terminology to their own uses. For
one thing, since the term 'nationalist' quickly acquires from official usage a
pejorative sense equivalent to 'separatist' or 'troublemaker', they prefer to
describe themselves as 'patriots' or 'activists'. For another, they adopt their own
private criteria to raise the concept of the nation into that of an exclusive com-
munity, projecting modern standards of national cohesion into the past, dis-
regarding the differing degrees of identification which individuals may have
professed, and ignoring the complicated web of conflicting loyalties to which
everyone was subjected. Thus, in nationalist argument, a Polish-speaking peas-
ant or a man with a Polish-sounding name will often be described as 'Poles'
whether they have any sense of belonging to the Polish community or not, 'a true
Pole' cannot at one and the same time be the loyal servant of an 'alien' state; and
the Polish nation is viewed as a compact community manfully defending itself
against 'enemies', 'aliens', foreign 'oppressors', and 'occupiers'. In nationalist
minds, the idea that the Prussian sergeant, the Russian bureaucrat, or the
Austrian Count might easily have been no less Polish than the people he was
allegedly tormenting, is entirely unacceptable. Reality, of course, was rather dif-
ferent. Many individuals are identified with more than one nation; and no
nation can fairly claim to enjoy the undivided allegiance of all its nationals.
When talking of 'the Poles', it is important to remember that one is using a form
of shorthand to define the common denominator in a variegated qollection of
human beings who might separately be better described as 'potential Poles',
'possible Poles', 'proto-Poles', 'part-Poles', 'semi-Poles', 'hyper-Poles', 'super-
Poles', 'non-Poles', 'pro-Poles', 'anti-Poles', 'crypto-Poles', 'pseudo-Poles', 'ex-
Poles', 'good Poles', 'bad Poles', 'Austro-Poles', 'Russo-Poles', 'Prusso-Poles',
or, most historically, 'Polish Austrians', 'Polish Russians', or 'Polish Prussians'.