Poland and History part I: World Power to Partition

When we were in Toruń, we had an extensive set of lectures about Polish culture. What struck me was just how much history seems to inform current attitudes and conditions. So at this point, I think that it is appropriate to provide some of the context surrounding my living arrangements. The States have a short history by European standards. While this is belaboring the obvious, and while anyone who’s been to Rome has marveled at 2000 year-old ruins, without further perspective it is hard to truly feel how long history in Europe truly is. For the first example of perspective, I’m going to have to handle Polish history in three parts. In the first part, I’ll talk about the general scale of history and do a general summary of relevant points up to the Third Partition of 1795. In the second part, I’ll consider Poland in the 20^th century. In the last part, I’ll talk about what it all means. As each of these three topics is a book in itself, I ask the gentle reader’s kind forbearance, for it is a topic worth an exploration at some length. A fellow Fulbrighter put it best when he said that the history of Poland is a perfect representation of almost every aspect of the human condition: triumph, tragedy, farce, short-sightedness and/or downright stupidity, endurance, resistance, crushing cynicism, exile, loss, hope, stubbornness, tolerance, narrow-mindedness, nationalism, the list goes on.

Let us consider the history of Poland on a familiar timescale, that of the United States. 400 years ago, the castle at Malbork was as historical to those living in the area at that time as West Point is to the residents of upstate New York or USS Constitution is to the residents of Boston today. I was humming a few bars of Thomas Tallis during our tour of Malbork because it seemed appropriate, imagining what the place must have been like with knights in it. But then I realized that that makes about as much sense historically as singing Elvis while imagining Washington at Valley Forge. In 1612, Jagellonian University in Krakow had already been around for 250 years, longer than Princeton, Penn, Pitt, Oberlin, Northwestern, or Michigan have been around in our own time. Wawel Castle had been a royal residence for 600 years, so the average Pole would have regarded the initial settlement on Wawel Hill as we would regard Cahokia Mound or Tenochtitlan today. In present-day America at that time, the settlement at Jamestown was barely holding on and had just managed to survive the winter of 1611. Without a constant influx of immigrants, that settlement would have died out at this time. The Pilgrims would not land at Plymouth for another 8 years. Blackbeard and Henry Morgan had not been born yet, and tales of Buccaneers on the Spanish Main were still 50 years in the future. St. Augustine in Florida, the oldest continuously-occupied European settlement in the continental U.S., had been founded 47 years previously, which is about the current age of the John Hancock Center in Chicago or what Florida is now most famous for, Disneyworld.

Modern Poland came together as a kingdom in the mid-10^th century AD, with an important date being 966 when Mieszko I converted to Christianity and brought in his territory with him. I will confess that between this date and 1386 my Polish history is rusty, but it looks pretty chaotic. Of note was Casimir the Great’s edicts of toleration towards Jews, which were very progressive at the time. Poland was in fact for a long time among the least anti-Semitic countries in Europe, though this varied from time to time. Indeed, Kazimierz, a district of Krakow, was granted to the Jews by Casimir and remained the Jewish quarter until the Nazis conquered Poland and murdered most of the inhabitants.

In 1386, Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania, married Queen Jadwiga of Poland.  Jagiełło was crowned King of Poland, and thus were laid the roots of what would become the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, which was for some time a major world power. The Poles and Lithuanians engaged in a major war with the Teutonic Knights (or krzyżacy in Polish) from 1409 to 1411, partly fought over the control of Danzig (currently known as Gdańsk). Disputes over Gdańsk would show up again and again in history, including in World War II: historically, the city was a major Hanseatic League port and German in nature. However, as the most important port in the general vicinity, it had great strategic and economic importance to Poland.

The Battle of Grunwald (also called Tannenberg) in 1410 was a major Polish-Lithuanian victory that seriously weakened the Teutonic Order. The allies laid siege to the Teutonic stronghold at Malbork (Marienburg), but were unable to take it by force. In fact, a Polish cannonball can still be seen in the wall of the summer court of the castle today. The war was ended by the Peace of Thorn (or Toruń), though the Teutonic order would continue to irritate the Poles until 1521, after which the Prussians paid homage to the Polish crown. This is important background because 1) I visited both Toruń and Malbork, which I hope to write about shortly, 2) it kicks off the “Golden Age” of Poland, 3) Grunwald is particularly important in Polish lore, not least because it was one of the times the Poles got to beat up on some Germans.

Poland-Lithuania is probably one of the most powerful countries you never heard of unless you grew up in a Polish family, in which case you’ve probably heard about little else. At its height, it spanned from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and in 1609, Polish troops captured Moscow.  Granted, that went about as well as Napoleon’s capture of Moscow in the long run, but hey, a win is a win.

What was particularly unusual about the dual monarchy was that in the 16^th century, the king was elected by all members of the szlachta (nobility) who wished to vote. Since at its height the szlachta consisted of about 10-15% of the Polish population this was actually a pretty extensive franchise, more extensive, for example, than that of England in the 18^th century. The king was also responsible to an assembly of nobles called the Sejm (which is the sejm name as the lower house of the Polish Parliament nowadays), and the szlachta would occasionally claim the right to rebel against the king if he stepped on too many toes. In a way, Poland has almost as long a semi-republican tradition as the United Kingdom does, and on 3 May 1791, Poland adopted the second written constitution in the world.

Unfortunately, the szlachta had very sensitive toes, and parts of the system were really stupid. For example, there was this crazy idea called the liberam veto: any member of the Sejm could prevent the passing of legislation by simply standing up and saying “I don’t allow it.” So, as you can imagine, this made the U.S. Congress seem extremely productive and harmonious by comparison. Indeed, I understand that in German the expression “Polish Parliament” has the same meaning as the American expression “Chinese Fire Drill,” an extremely noisy, confusing, and unproductive mess. After a lengthy period of this kind of nonsense, the Commonwealth was in serious trouble. In 1772, the First Partition of Poland took place, where parts of Poland were taken by the Prussians, Russians, and Austrians. There was a second partition in 1793. Following Thaddeus Kosciusko’s rebellion of 1795, there was a third partition and Poland ceased to exist as an independent state. Kosciusko had been a prominent officer in the American Revolution, designed West Point, and has quite a few counties and other things named after him in the States. He’s an important figure for a lot of Americans of Polish extraction for this reason.

The end of the Commonwealth brought 124 years of statelessness to the Polish people. During this time, conditions varied greatly depending on which power was occupying a particular region. The Russians deliberately tried to stamp out the Polish language and identity. The Prussians were a bit more conciliatory, but not much more. The Austrians, holding down a polyglot empire, were generally much more relaxed. By the start of the 20^th century, the Austrians were even allowing Poles to organize rifle clubs that were effectively paramilitary groups! The hope for an independent Poland certainly remained alive: Chopin was an ardent Polish patriot, as were other prominent Polish artists and intellectuals. Poles fought for Napoleon in Russia and elsewhere, and there was a formation of Polish lancers at Waterloo, largely because Napoleon had promised Poland an independent state and established the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Bonaparte is certainly not regarded as the Corsican Ogre in these parts. However, an independent Poland looked extremely unlikely for a long time, which is another theme in the history of this place. And yet, somehow, it just happened as a result of World War I….