44 NAROD
Lastly, it should be remembered that Polish Nationalism formed only part of
political life. In view of its ultimate success, it is sometimes awarded a degree of
attention which it did not always merit. Although the construction of the Polish
nation must obviously command the limelight, the parallel growth of Russian,
German, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Jewish nationalisms, and of populism,
socialism, liberalism, and conservatism in these same Polish lands was no less
important. Polish History in this period does not consist of a simple story
describing the onward march of the Polish nation towards Independence.
Rather, it relates a complex series of conflicts which, at the time, offerred little
prospect of easy resolution.
Some of the most fearless and enlightened figures of their day have escaped
general recognition, simply because they opposed all the reigning political fash-
ions without exception. Such a figure, indeed, was Jan Ignacy Baudouin de
Courtenay (Ivan Alexandrovitch Boduen de Kurtene, 1845—1929). A philologist
by profession, he was constantly refused employment in his native Warsaw, but
as Professor at Kazan, Dorpat, Cracow, and St. Petersburg, he established him-
self as one of the pioneers of modern linguistics. A pacifist, an environmentalist,
a feminist, a progressive educationist, and a freethinker, he defied most of the
social and intellectual conventions of his contemporaries. He was particularly
incensed by the current cant of Nationalism of all sorts. From his field-work
researching the dialects of the 'minor' Slav peoples such as the Sorbs, the
Silesians, and the Slovenes, he was perfectly well aware that the individual's
right to a cultural identity of his own was no less threatened by the modern
nationalist movements than by the imperialist regimes. In his view, the polit-
ician from Warsaw who wanted to turn the Kashubs, the Silesians, or the
Byelorussians into Poles could hardly claim to be aggrieved when Tsarist
officialdom tried to turn Poles into Russians. In Hungary, Baudouin de
Courtenay was denounced as a Tsarist spy, for interesting himself in the prob-
lems of the Slovaks. In Galicia, he found that his views on the Ukrainians were
equally unwanted, and that his contract to teach at the Jagiellonian University
was not renewed. In Russia, he was denounced as a degenerate and a traitor, and
in 1913 was gaoled for expressing unacceptable opinions. After all that, having
returned to Warsaw in 1918 to accept a professorial chair honoris causa, he out-
raged his compatriots by declaring in his inaugural lecture that 'Poland had not
been resurrected in order to swell the tally of imperialist hyena-states.' As a can-
didate for the Presidency in 1922, he received the support of the minorities, and
almost 20 per cent of the popular vote; but in the discussions on educational
reform, he shocked many of his supporters by suggesting that Polish should be
taught in all Jewish schools in Poland just as Yiddish ought to be taught in all
Polish schools. There can be little doubt that Baudouin de Courte-nay's ideals
were grounded in the best of Polish individualist and libertarian traditions; but
they could not be contained within the narrow limits of modern Polish nation-
alism. For this reason, they find little mention in modern histories. Yet without
them, any survey of the Polish political scene would be far from complete.^46