48 NAROD
the communist movement. It is a pity that few of the people who sing it today
know that its author, Gustaw Ehrenberg, was the son of Alexander I, Tsar of
Russia.
As successive Risings failed, noble leaders blamed the ignorance of the peas-
ants; liberals blamed the conservatism of the nobility. Social reformers tended
to view nationalist conspiracies as a threat to their own success, and were
unwilling to defer their reforms until the time for concerted political action was
ripe. The radical social legislation of the Risings, from Kosciuszko's Manifesto
of Polaniec to the emancipation decrees of 1863, was invariably overturned,
often provoking episodes of rampant reaction. What is more, in moments of
crisis, the authorities carefully exploited social reform as a means of winning
back their disaffected Polish subjects. Legal equality in the Duchy of Warsaw,
the rentification decree of 1823 in the Grand Duchy of Posen, the reforms under-
taken in Prussia and Austria in 1848—50 and in Russian Poland in 1861 and 1864,
were motivated as much by political considerations as by genuine social con-
cern. Alexander II's ukaz of March 1864 on the emancipation of the Polish peas-
antry deliberately topped both the concessions already made in Russia as a
whole, and those proposed by the leaders of the January Rising. It was an
expressly anti-nationalist initiative which successfully seduced the countryside
from national politics for the next generation. (See Chapter 16.)
Similar disillusionment awaited the national movement when both Socialism
and Marxism made their appearance. The first Polish socialist group, Ludwik
Warynski's 'Proletariat', founded in Warsaw in 1882, was obsessively anti-
nationalist. The main Polish Marxist party, the SDKPiL, actively opposed the
union of the Polish lands. Its leading lights, Roza Luksemburg (Rosa
Luxemburg), Feliks Dzierzynski, Julian Marchlewski, and Karol Radek, spent
most of their energies in the service of the German or the Russian revolutions.
The Polish Socialist Party (PPS), whose initial 'Paris Programme' placed equal
emphasis on national and social justice, was constantly split by the imcompati-
ble aims of its twin interests. As Pilsudski himself was forced regretfully to
admit, it was impossible to give equal priority to social and to nationalist poli-
cies. By the time he emerged in 1918 as the leader of the Polish Republic, he had
ceased to regard himself as a socialist.
Another series of conflicts arose with regard to rival national movements.
Russian and German liberals were all conspiring against the same partitioning
powers. In the later nineteenth century, Lithuanians, Byelorussians, Ukrainians,
Czechs, and Jews were all deprived and persecuted by the same imperial
regimes. Common action against the common enemy was consistently pursued.
But it was never achieved. (See Diagram B.)
The fitful Polish love-affair with the Russian dissidents was constantly racked
by mutual recriminations, and ended in separation. The Polish patriotic
societies of the 1820s had been in close contact with the Decembrists. Mickiewicz
among others took trouble to tour Russia and make friends with dissident liter-
ary circles, Pushkin included. In 1831, it was a popular demonstration in honour