2009/11/01 by Jarosław Czubaty · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Ancient history #Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics #Historical and Cultural Studies of Poland #History #Independence (probability theory) #Law #Linguistics #Lithuanian #National consciousness #Nationalism #Nobility #Partition (number theory) #Philosophy #Polish Historical and Cultural Studies #Political science #Politics #Sine qua non
paper · doi:10.1179/147909609x12490447533968
openalex publication_date 2009/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Literary scholars who have examined the reactions of Polish writers to the third and final partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795 have concluded that the dominant emotion of the first twelve years was despair, producing a moral desert, ruled by violence and treason. Most historians, in contrast, have emphasized cases of Polish resistance to foreign rule during the first years of statelessness. This article draws on a wide range of sources to present a more nuanced picture of Polish moods and attitudes in this period, especially in the lands annexed by the Russian Empire. A range of motivations emerges from the oaths of loyalty taken by the nobility to their new rulers. Military service in the service of one of the partitioning powers was at the time widely considered to be one of the more acceptable paths taken by those Poles who did not continue the struggle for national independence in exile. The article concludes that, by the time Napoleonic victories had changed the political outlook in 1806, the initial crisis of national consciousness had already been overcome, and that the existence of a Polish state was no longer the conditio sine qua non of the nation’s survival.