Where Is Poland? | So how did the peasants become Poles?

Chapter 7

So how did the peasants become Poles?

Paradoxically, it was under the partitions that this group developed a sense of national awareness. The peasants discovered their ‘Polishness’ in opposition to representatives of the imperial government, who spoke a different language and professed a different religion. The peasants formulated their own modern political movement.

Religious proccession, postcard. Source: Polona.pl

Does ‘Polish’ have to mean ‘Catholic’?

The identity of the peasants, despite the lack of a developed sense of national consciousness, was based on three foundations: attachment to the language, to religion and a strong feeling of belonging to the land, passed down through generations -- the family village and its immediate surroundings. Peasants discovered their Polish identity in opposition to those who were in power, who spoke a different language and practised a different religion: Protestant Germans and Orthodox Russians. This was noted by Brandes, who wrote:

Among the people of rank and the common people there is only the economic distance; but between the Pole and the Russian rises the barrier of religion, the most powerful factor in the life of this country.

From this division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ there arose a popular stereotype of the ‘Catholic Pole’, a stereotype which intertwined nationalism with religion. But of course not everybody who felt Polish was also Catholic. During the times of Brandes, the persecution of the Unites was common knowledge. The Unites observed the Byzantine Rite, but they recognised the supremacy of the Pope. They were forced to convert to Orthodoxy and were Russified more intensively than the Catholics. This had an effect opposite to that intended by the Russian authorities: it bolstered pro-Polish sentiments among the Unites.

In many places the only institution the peasants encountered on an everyday basis was the Catholic Church, so naturally its power was enormous. Some priests used their authority to spread Polish ideas among their parishioners. Additionally, in Congress Poland, where it was illegal to organise patriotic events, Polish sentiments were often expressed in a camouflaged form during religious rituals, such as pilgrimages, which served as another patriotic impulse for the peasants.

For many young men growing up in the countryside, joining the clergy was the only possibility for upward social mobility. As such, some clergymen got involved in the emerging agrarian movement and activities aimed at improving the lot of the peasants; this cemented the relationship between the countryside and the Church even more. Even Brandes, who was famous in his home country of Denmark as an anticlerical atheist, noticed the positive role the Catholic Church played in the preservation of the Polish cultural and linguistic identity.

Agricultural Circle in Nałęczów, 1908. Source: Polona.pl

From Cottage to Parliament

The end of the nineteenth century was a time of politicism that saw the Polish peasants become self-organized, but this played out differently in each of the partitions. In the Prussian-held lands, where the process of enfranchising the peasants proceeded most rapidly, the agrarian movement was understood as an initiative meant to improve the life of peasants: cooperatives and agricultural circles, as well as cultural and educational initiatives. The dominant theme was national, cross-class solidarity in defending the land and language, and so the peasants did not put forward their own political agenda or their own candidates for the parliament of the Reich, but rather voted for a common Polish ticket.

The cradle of the Polish peasant political movement as a mass phenomenon was Galicia. In 1895, the Peasants’ Party was set up, and in its first elections already won six seats in the parliament in Vienna. As one of the agrarian politicians said, 'while it was true that the peasants were citizens and in theory voted on equal terms as the masters', they nevertheless had not had any representative to strive to ensure their interests.

In the Russian-held partition, where it was out of the question for any agrarian party to be set up, the illegal Polish Peasant Association was formed (in 1904).

A significant role in the peasants’ self-organization was also played by the cooperative movement.

Brandes: The peasants are waking up. They teach themselves to read in their Polish prayer-books. They club together and hire a teacher to give them privately all the necessary instruction in the correct writing of their forbidden tongue. Religious persecution especially rouses them and makes them conscious Poles.