Daniel Beauvais, Polacy na Ukrainie 1831-1863. Szlachta polska na Wolyniu, Podolu i Kijowszci:.yznie by L. R. Lewitter

Summary

Daniel Beauvois's study, based on a meticulous examination of fresh sources which he has tapped in Ukrainian and Russian archives, is a giant step forward in the investigation of the triangular relationship between the Polish szlachta, the Russian government and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasantry between 1831 and 1863.

Even as late as 1830 that part of the Ukraine, which lies on the right bank of the Dnieper and had been colonized by the Poles from the sixteenth century onwards, was little touched by change. The dominant class of this archaic community, the szlachta, still managed a considerable proportion of its own affairs and did not serve the state. The upper szlachta who owned most of the landed estates and their equally noble but poor underlings who managed them were Polish and Roman Catholic, the enserfed peasantry, before it became conscious of its Ukrainian nationality, was Ruthenian and Greek Orthodox, except for the 579,000 Catholics (hardly a ‘small' number out of a total peasant population of 4,822,500).

Professor Beauvois speaks more than once of a clash between Russian and Polish imperialism. This is surely a misapprehension. The Poles had not been empire-builders even at the zenith of their rule in the Ukraine, although no one would deny that as colonizers they exploited the native population as ruthlessly as any planter. But after 1831 the Poles, for all their economic power and strong sense of national identity were captives of the Russians; in the reign of Nicholas I 65,000 Russian troops were stationed in the region, apart from the police and their secret agents.

The hidden strength of the Poles, misnamed by Daniel Beauvois and feared by Nicholas I and his satraps, was something else: patriotism and, on the political Right, nationalism nurtured by Roman Catholicism, on the Left radical populism. The Russians had not forgotten the participation of the Poles in Napoleon I's invasion of their country in 1812, the contacts between the Southern Society of the Decembrists with Polish conspirators in the Ukraine or the uprising of 1830-31 which again had reached as far as the Ukraine. The activities of radical and liberal-conservative Polish emigrés in Paris were a cause of constant concern to the government in St Petersburg.