THE RUSSIAN PARTITION 69officer condemned to death for sedition, and reprieved from the firing squad at
the last moment, and Tokarzewski, the Polish landowner and idealist, con-
demned to z,ooo lashes and ten years' penal servitude for promoting Father
Sciegenny's crusade for the liberation of the peasants, might be supposed to
have much in common. Here were two men of high principle, of good educa-
tion, and of similar standing, who were both suffering gross injustice together
for their integrity; and their mutual misunderstanding was complete:
Whenever he addressed us Poles, Dostojewski would always start with the phrase, "We,
the nobility.. .' So I would always interrupt him, 'Excuse me, sir', I would say, 'but I
think that there are no gentlemen in this prison, only convicts, men deprived of their
rights.' Then he would foam with anger, 'And you, sir, are evidently proud of being a
convict!...
It was unfortunate that Dostojewski so hated the Poles, for judging by his traits and his
name, one could recognize his Polish origins. He used to say that if ever he found a sin-
gle drop of Polish blood in his veins he would have himself purged immediately. How
painful it was to listen to this conspirator, this man sentenced for the cause of freedom
and progress, who confessed that he would never be happy until all nations had fallen
under Russian rule... According to him, the Russian nation alone was predestined for
its magnificent mission in the World. 'The French' he insisted 'at least show some resem-
blance to men; but the English, Germans, and Spaniards are simply caricatures. In com-
parison to Russian literature, the literatures of other nations are mere parodies...
Through what quirk, I wondered, had this son of the Russian Cadet Corps, found him-
self in penal servitude as a political prisoner...^6
Needless to say, Tokarzewski, who was sent back to Siberia for a further twenty
years after the January Rising, had as little love for Russia as Dostoevsky for
Poland. The main difference between them lay in the fact that the Pole was an
obscure political convict; the Russian was one of the supreme geniuses of world
literature, who could propagate his prejudices to a world audience. In this sense,
Dostoevsky has been described as 'the greatest enemy Poland ever had'.^7
For most Polish readers, the incompatibility of the Russian and the Polish
political traditions is so obvious, that many might question the place of an out-
line of the principles of Russian government in a survey of Polish History. Yet
the need, and the relevance, is undeniable. It is quite inappropriate to
conceive of the lands of the Russian Partition as being merely 'under Russian
occupation'. They were not merely occupied, but were annexed and incorpor-
ated into the main body politic of Russia. Although they retained their own
specific characteristics, as did all the provinces of the Empire, they were just as
much part of Russia as was the Ukraine, the Crimea, or Transcaucasia. Except
in the limited instance of the Congress Kingdom in 1815-32 and 1861-4, they
could not be compared to the position of the Grand Duchy of Finland, which,
though annexed in 1815 from Sweden, was never fully incorporated in the polit-
ical or constitutional sense. It is a hard truth for Poles to grasp; but the largest
element of the three parts of divided Poland did not enjoy even the nominal mea-
sure of separateness bestowed on the non-Russian Republics in the Soviet Union