Part IMapping Imagined Communities: Mental Geography 1
âFrom the Baltic to the Black Seaâ
Polandâs Borders
The Polish Vision
After the final disappearance of âPolandâ from the map of Europe in 1795, Poles were forced to reinterpret their historical understanding of a âgentry nationâ as a âcommunity of tradition and spiritâ beyond existing political and social borders.1 This redefinition of a nationality could have led to a similar redefinition (or at least to an initial confusion) of a traditional Polish geography. But this did not happen. Instead, Poles clung to the familiar patterns of geography, keeping in mind what had disappeared from political maps.
To designate the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poles used such names as âPolandâ (Polska), âour Fatherlandâ (Âojczyzna nasza), âour provincesâ (nasze prowincje), or simply âthe country/our countryâ (kraj/nasz kraj) and âour landâ (ziemia nasza). Even when the Poles used the vaguest of designations, like kraj, they seemed to know exactly the territorial extent of their virtual country. At the same time, there was an increasing tendency to identify a Poland proper with ethnic Polish territories (for writers JĂłzef Korzeniowski and JĂłzef Ignacy Kraszewski in the 1840s, âPolandâ became synonymous with the Congress Kingdom),2 reserving for other parts of historic Poland, especially for its eastern territories, the term borderlands (kresy).3 Not everyone, however, was prepared to reduce âPolandâ to its core, the Kingdom of Poland (known also as the Congress Kingdom), which had been created by Russia in 1815.
In the 1830s one of the leaders of the November uprising and later radical ĂŠmigrĂŠ, Maurycy Mochnacki, stubbornly opposed this reductionist tendency and refused to identify âthe Congress regionâ (kraj kongresowy), that is, the Congress Poland with Poland proper.4 In the words of Mochnacki: âThe Constitutional Kingdom between the rivers Prosna and Bug is one of those ephemeral creations [jeden z tych efemerycznych utworĂłw] in politics that, as we see especially in contemporary history, emerge without an underlying ground [ . . . ], only as a result of protocols and conferences.â5 Instead, he wrote, Poland was the ârepublic of all Crown [koronnych], Lithuanian, and Ruthenian lands,â adding that Poles âdo not get it in a different shape!â (W innym ksztaĹcie i dzisiaj jej nie pojmujemy!).6 Mochnacki alluded to the existence of several entities within the Russian Empire that seemingly had equal claims to the name of âPoland.â These were Vistula Poland (Polska nadwiĹlaĹska), Wilia Poland (Polska nadwilejska), Bug Poland (Polska nadbuĹźaĹska), and Dnieper Poland (Polska naddnieprowa), all deriving their names from the major local rivers.7 This taxonomy became popular with Polish ĂŠmigrĂŠs, and as late as the 1850s Franciszek DuchiĹski, once a student of Kyiv University, wrote about âWestern Polandâ or âVistula Polandâ (Polska nadwiĹlaĹska), along with âEastern Poland,â consisting of âDniester Polandâ (Polska naddniestrzaĹska) and âDnieper Polandâ (Polska naddnieprzaĹska).8
Similarly, nineteenth-century Polish patriots never considered the restoration of a Polish state without the kresy (Lithuania, Belarus, and Right Bank Ukraine),9 and as late as the 1840s they claimed to represent âtwenty millionâ inhabitants of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.10 The formulation âtwenty million,â which became an almost cabalistic number in Polish nationalist demography, clearly referred to all the inhabitants of prepartitioned Poland regardless of ethnic background.11 This inclusive tendency found its expression both in poetry and in politics among writers of all ideological spectrums.
The poetic geography, or geografia serca as it was then called, was best encapsulated by a Romantic poet from Galicia, Wincenty Pol, in his poem âPieĹĹ o ziemi naszejâ (The song of our land, 1835), in which he provided a sociocultural description of the lands of prepartitioned Poland. The poet allotted much space to a description of Lithuania and Rusâ at the expense of the ethnically more âPolishâ western and northern lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He simply was not familiar with the idea of an ethnically based Poland.12 Before elaborating on each land, Pol addressed the inhabitants of prepartitioned Poland, making sure that they knew the full extent of their ânative countryâ (ziemia). According to Pol, that country consisted of various ethnic groups that made up one Polish âtribeâ:
Do you know, young brother?
Your tribes united by common blood?
Those Highlanders [from around Cracow] and Lithuanians?
And the holy Samogitians and Ruthenians?13
Those various Polish âtribesâ (rody) lived on territory from the Oder River in the west (Stara ziemia Piasta or âthe old Piast landâ) to âUkraineâ and âold Kyivâ in the east, and from the shores of the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea coast, âwhere in the south flows the Dnieperâ (na poĹudnie Dniepr tam pĹynie!). In an earlier poem, âPieĹĹ Januszaâ (Januszâs song), Pol expressed the idea of Polandâs borders âfrom sea to seaâ even more clearly:
I was in Lithuania and in the Crown [Congress] Poland,
I was in this and that side,
I was here and there;
From Beskid [Carpathian] Mountains to the Baltic sea coast,
From Lithuania as far as to Zaporozhia [the Dnieper rapids]
I know the entire Poland.
I know this whole fair tribe,
Polish seas and Polish land,
And the Polish salt;
And I dream of all this, fantasize,
And all this is like mine,
As if Iâm Polish king.14
When Polish Romantic poets such as Pol, Mickiewicz, Lenartowicz, or JĂłzef-Bohdan Zaleski sang about their native regions, they did with the understanding that they represented pars pro toto; each land (like Ukraine) was only a part of the entire motherlandâPoland.15 They imagined their motherland as a single entity and identified their native land (Ukraine, Lithuania, Podolia) with an âideological motherlandâ: the separate âlandsâ were not only geographical places but also the symbolical embodiment of a common motherland, which contained an entire nationality.16
Polish writers, even those who were quite apolitical, always had recourse to the mental geography of prepartitioned Poland. JĂłzef Ignacy Kraszewski, while rejecting âthe Ukrainian fashionâ in Polish literature, charted his own version of the poetic geography of historical Poland: âIn the land that was once Polish, the residents of Cracow, the Highlanders, the Red Ruthenians, the Great Poles, the Lithuanians do not have a peculiar and distinct poetry that is exclusively their own?â17 JĂłzef Korzeniowski, who lived in the 1830sâ1840s in Kyiv and Kharkiv, presented in his novel Emeryt (The emeritus) a sort of chart of the provinces whose inhabitants did the most âreading.â âIn the first place stood Ukraine, then Lithuania, Podolia, followed by Galicia, and finally the Congress Kingdom and Volhynia.â18 As we see, one did not have to be a radical ĂŠmigrĂŠ in order to live in the virtual space of a historic Poland. However, Kharkiv, where Korzeniowski spent several years, was outside the boundaries of an imagined Poland. Gustav Olizar, once a leader of Polish gentry of the Kyiv province, while referring to the lands of prepartitioned Poland as âour motherlandâ (ojczyzna nasza), ânative countryâ (kraj nasz), or âour provincesâ (nasze prowincye), unambiguously called the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv a âMuscovite cityâ (moskiewskie miasto).19
According to one of the best experts on Polish democratic thought, SĹawomir Kalembka, there were no differences among the attitudes of Polish ĂŠmigrĂŠ groups on the question of Polandâs borders. Their dominant idea was the restoration of Poland according to its 1772 borders, that is, from the Carpathians to the Dvina River and from the Baltic Sea to the lower Dnieper River.20 The idea of the restoration of Polandâs historical borders began to take shape right after the November uprising of 1830â31, especially among the Polish ĂŠmigrĂŠs in France. Long before this, however, Poles had hoped for the union of the Kingdom of Polandâestablished after the Congress of Vienna in 1815âwith eight provinces (gubernias) of Russia, several of which had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth prior to the 1790s. At first, they placed their hopes in Russian monarchs themselves, particularly Alexander I.21 Then, during the November uprising, the radicalized Polish diet, on May 5, 1831, proclaimed the incorporation of the âwestern guberniasâ into the Polish state, its core being the Congress Kingdom.22
One of the first declarations concerning the borders of the future Poland comes from 1832, when the newly established Polish Democratic Society (Towarzystwo Demokratyczne Polskie or TDP) outlined its platform. According to the TDPâs âProtestation Against Treatises from 1772 Until 1815 That Had Dismembered Poland,â âWe want the return of Polandâs old bordersâ; in other words, the society hoped to restore Poland to its prepartitioned geographical shape.23 Here, the eastern borders of Poland went as far as the Dnieper River, which was the border of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth prior to the 1790s.24 In a subsequent âManifestoâ from 1836 the TDP went even beyond the concept of historical (prepartitioned) borders and fantasized about an uprising of those âtwenty millionâ in Poland âfrom the Oder River and the Carpathians all the way to the Dnieper and the Dvina, and from the Baltic to the Black Seaâ (od Odry i Karpat aĹź poza Dniepr i DĹşwinČŠ, od BaĹtyckiego do Czarnego Morza).25 TDP leaders like Wiktor Heltman could not imagine a future Polish uprising occurring in a space smaller than that which stretched âfrom the Oder to beyond the Dnieper and Dvina, from the Baltic to the Carpathians and the Black Sea.â26
Maurycy Mochnacki, who was not close to the TDP, also included the Black Sea shore within his âideological fatherland.â He called for the ârestoration of a part of our country that from the cape of Courland stretches to the Black Sea.â27 The leaders of the TDP used economic arguments when they considered the possibility âof aspiring for a Poland larger than that before 1772â: a Poland âwithout the provinces adjacent to the Black Sea thus being deprived of a free delivery of its goods from this side, would be the entity not accomplished yet.â28
Moderate democrats from the circle of the most famous Polish historian, Joachim Lelewel, shared a territorial program similar to that of the TDP. As early as 1832 the Lelewelist group, known as The Revenge of the People (Zemsta Ludu), was preparing a constitution for a free Poland that was patterned on a federative constitution like that of the United States. According to the document, the borders of the new state would be âenveloped by the Black and Baltic Seas, and by the Oder, Dnieper, and Danube rivers.â29 Each province should be given self-government, which would not, however, conflict with the federal laws.
It is worth noting that in 1836 another Lelewelist group countered the idea of ânatural borders,â as advocated by partitioning powers with the idea of Polish historical borders from before 1772, condemning the âdisgusting politics that sought deceitfully [wymyĹlnie] natural borders.â30 It was, however, easy for the Poles to appropriate the idea of ânaturalâ borders. One of the first uses of ânaturalâ borders in political discourse came from MichaĹ WoĹĹowicz, who perished in 1833 trying to organize another uprising. He elaborated the territorial shape of a new Poland: âWe want to have an independent fatherland and to give it the old borders of the Baltic, the Dvina and Dnieper rivers, set against the shores of the Black Sea, the Carpathian Mountains, and the course of the Oder River.â31
In the mid-1830s the formula of Polandâs ânaturalâ borders began to dominate all ideological flanks, as reflected in a statement by yet another liberal group in 1837: âPoland [is] united and undivided [Polska jedna i nierozdzielna]. From the Oder to the Dnieper, and from the Baltic to the Black Sea [po Euxyn od BaĹtyku], these are the borders of its mightiness. Such a Poland will respond with dignity to its calling and fulfill its high mission among the Slavs.â32 In 1847, the philosopher BronisĹaw Trentowski summed up the idea of Polandâs natural borders from sea to sea using not only the arguments of nature per se but also those of race and civilization. The natural situation of Polish lands cried out for a distinct state separated by nature itself from Asian civilization and race:
The natural situation of Poland is such that it should and ought to become a separate state. Already its thousand-year old distinctiveness bears witness to this [ . . . ]. On the north Poland is surrounded by the Baltic, on the south the Tatra Mountains and the Black Sea make their appearance. From the Baltic but rather from the Courland haven to the Black Sea there spread out wide steppes, deserts, and swamps filtered...