THE GROWTH OF THE MODERN NATION 2.5apolitical. In later decades, they were joined by an assortment of interests which
viewed Nationalism as the express enemy of their chosen designs. Apart from
the Polish Slavophiles such as Kazimierz Krzywicki (18ZO-83), who wanted to
replace the particular Russian or Polish nationalisms by the brotherhood of all
Slav peoples, these included both Marxists on the Left and ultra-Catholic con-
servatives on the Right. All for their various purposes sought to preserve the
established framework of European sovereignty and to stifle all thoughts of
Polish Independence. They were abetted by the formidable accomplices of iner-
tia and apathy. In the Bismarckian Era, Triloyalism' enjoyed considerable
respectability. This was a new variation on the older idea that the best interests
of the Polish nation could only be maintained by fostering harmonious relations
between all three partitioning powers. It declined in the years before the First
World War when mounting international tensions revived the more usual Polish
game of trying to play off one of the partitioning powers against the others.
With Polish loyalists in Germany and Austria denouncing the imperialism of
Russia, and Polish loyalists in Russia denouncing the imperialism of the Central
Powers, the over-all balance was not disturbed. Hence, both by design and by
accident, Loyalism acted as a powerful buttress of the status quo.
At the other end of the political scale, the Polish Insurrectionary Tradition
was firmly rooted in the principles and practices of the old Republic. Every Pole
who wished to take up arms against the partitioning powers was conscious to a
greater or lesser degree of the ancient Right of Resistance and the example of the
confederations. If the noblemen of Poland-Lithuania had once felt justified in
their frequent resort to arms against their own, highly democratic government,
how much more could their sons and grandsons sense the justice of their strug-
gles against foreign tyranny. The new insurrectionary was the old rokoszanin
writ large. Resolved to overthrow the established order by force, he invariably
made demands for there-creation of an independent Polish state. It was natural
that the insurrectionary movement should have been strong in the first half of
the nineteenth century, when memories of independence were still alive, and
that thereafter it should have declined.
The pedigree of the Polish insurrectionary, therefore, was as old and as noble
as any in Europe. In the 1820s the numerous Polish patriotic societies may have
formed part of a widespread international network which included the German
' Bursenschaften', the Italian Carbonari, and the Russian Decembrists. But their
main source of inspiration lay in the legends of Kosciuszko and his National
Rising of 1794 and of Bonaparte's Polish Legions. In the ultra-conservative
world of Metternich and the dynastic empires, their activities could never be
legalized or condoned, and they could easily be branded as disturbers of the
peace or enemies of social progress and stability. As a result, they could never
obtain the active support of the masses who in ideal circumstances might other-
wise have sympathized with their aims. They remained a brilliant, impractical,
and tiny minority. Like Kosciuszko before them, they entertained exaggerated
hopes both as to the prospects for foreign support and to the vulnerability of the