The Great Men of Late Modern Poland
Mikhail Brusilov 1787-1869
Brusilov had his feet in the pre-modern traditions of the Polish aristocracy – resentful of centralisation and monarchical power, devout in his Jewish faith and Slavic roots, distrustful of foreign influences and grounded in ancient tradition. He came from a family that had long been at odds with the absolutist monarch of eighteenth century Poland – his father being involved in a major anti-Zvenislava revolt in the 1790s. His selection as the Poland’s first Prime Minister in 1831 by Tsar Vasiliy IV was part of an effort to heal a longstanding divide in the Polish elite between secular, centralising, modernists on one side and pious, localist, traditionalists on the other. It was through an effort to build a permanent structure through this peace among the elite could be maintained that the Duma was established in 1840, and with it, Polish democracy was born.
Brusilov’s left a long shadow over Polish history not only through the creation of her seedling democratic institutions, but also through his decision to limit access to this representation to millions of minorities living in the non-European parts of the empire through the implementation of the Brusilov Line. Ironically, after the creation of his greatest achievement, his fortunes began to flag as in the mid-1840s he lost the confidence of his parliamentary supporters through his support for the abolition of Roma slavery and then court after the death of his patron Vasiliy IV. After another change in sovereign, he was granted the opportunity to make a comeback in 1850 and duly served for another six years before an unlikely sex scandal brought an end to his political career. Unfortunately for Brusilov, during his retirement he saw the conservative movement he had led for so long fall into infighting and division, and his vision of moderate Slavophilism fall out of favour.
Zhakov was the founder of Polish liberalism, moving it away from its origins as the inheritor of a modernist absolutist tradition towards a set of ideals based upon democracy, secularism, the free market and the rule of law. Becoming the first leader of the Constitutional Party after its foundation in 1856, he brought an end to Slavophile dominance by robbing them of their majority for the first time in 1858 and then forcing them into an uncomfortable liberal-conservative alliance. This coalition achieved long sought after liberal goals with the abolition of Roma slavery and, in 1863, the emancipation of the Polish peasantry from serfdom. The question of serfdom served a valuable political end as well, splitting the conservative movement and sending it into existential crisis – allowing Zhakov to rise to the premiership in 1863 and achieve the first ever liberal Duma majority in 1866. With even greater political capital, he broaden the franchise to the middle classes with the 1867 Reform Act, and won a further majority in 1868.
The resurgence of the right under the banner of the National Alliance ended his first spell as Prime Minister in 1872, and after a particularly stinging defeat in 1875 he stepped away from the leadership of the Constitutionalists in favour of younger heads. He made a short lived come back at the end of the decade – intervening to prevent liberals from coming to an arrangement with that would keep the conservatives in power in 1880, and returning to the premiership after winning a liberal plurality in the 1881 election. Sadly for the ageing liberal hero, his second spell in office was extremely short lived as, following a spate of violent industrial unrest his preference for a harsh line involving a ban on trade union and socialist organisations led to his own party forcing him out of power. Zhakov chose not to stand again in 1883, and went to his family estate to live out the last year of his life.
Yildilz Kazimzade 1829-1919
In many ways the flip side of Zhakov, Yildilz Kazimzade was the grand old man of Polish conservatism, dominating Polish political life for a generation. Prime Minister three times in 1875-1881, 1893-1896 and, if only for a matter of days, in 1914, Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition of 1897-1902 and a key minister and political player Israel and Vlasov ministries of 1872-1875 and 1887-1892 respectively. Incredibly, he played served in government for 22 of the 30 years between his election to the Duma in 1872 and the electoral defeat of 1902 that sent him into semi-retirement. In doing so, he forged a conservative movement in his own image and indelibly shaped late nineteenth century Poland.
Born into the comfort of the upper middle classes in the ethnically-mixed Don Valley, the son of a Rabbi, Kazimzade’s first passions were faith and business. Unusually for a member of the Polish elite of the nineteenth century, he was neither Russian nor Ashkenazi but hailed from the third Jewish ethnicity in the empire – the Khazars. He made his fortune in the 1860s in coal mining, but was drawn to politics through outrage at the liberal reforms of the era that gave Muslim Tatars in his home region a significant say over local administration for the first time. He joined the Agudah Yisrael and played a crucial role in pushing it away from being little more than a Hasidic pressure group, developing a more ideologically focussed philosophy that sought to imbue Judaism throughout Polish life and the state. In time, this ideology would consume the wider conservative movement as well.
Immediately upon being elected to the Duma in 1872, Kazimzade was thrust into government and made responsible for extensive reforms of education that both expanded coverage and placed Poland’s schools in the hands of religious institutions – Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Hindu. After moving from education to the foreign ministry, he led negotiations that ended the war with the Serbs and Papacy in 1874, but it was the following year that he was thrust into the centre of national politics as following the assassination of sitting Prime Minister David Israel, he secured the premiership for himself. Under his stewardship, Polish conservatism reached its electoral peak – securing its largest ever vote share at the 1875 election, and coming agonisingly close to repeating the feat in 1880. His government was active and sharply ideological – centring all of its activities around faith and nation. The alienation of the minority parties was his ultimate undoing, as they aligned closely with the liberals – making governing after 1880 impossible and leading to an electoral defeat in 1881 that sent him into opposition.
The following decade were Kazimzade’s wilderness years. Losing favour within conservativism to moderates, he idled in opposition until 1887, and served as a minister in, rather than leader of, the Vlasov ministry of 1887-1892, even as the conservative grassroots continued to idolise him. His brand of politics was brought back to the fore by the Brusilov Crisis of the 1890s. Skillfully marshalling a mass movement in defence of the Brusilov Line, he pressured the Duma and facilitated the National Liberal split in the Constitutionalist Party to scupper Prime Minister Orlov’s attempts at abolition in 1893 and secure his return to power with a narrow majority. Faced with a tempestuous political situation, his second ministry was not as effective as his first, and he lost power after just three years. That might have been the end of his political career had the Great War not intervened – with the Trudoviks inviting the right to join them in a national coalition in late 1897 as the conflict grew more dangerous and entrenched, giving Kazimzade the role of Deputy Prime Minister. After dutifully and ably serving the war effort, he had a final shot at averting the abolition of the Brusilov Line in the postwar vote of 1902 but fell to a clear defeat at the hands of the progressive parties. Now in his 70s, he fell back into the ranks of the Agudat Yisrael backbenches while a new generation sought to define conservativism in a post-Brusilov world. In his dotage he was drawn back into the fray by one last act, criticising the right wing premier Igor Gaidar for his cooperation with the Radicals after 1912, as a Khazar being rankled by their racial ideology, before agreeing to be the figurehead of the Tsar’s post-election 1914 coup. After the putsch collapsed, he was arrested by blackshirts, spared from execution owing to his age and respect on the right, he was sent to live out his in internal exile in a Siberian village, where he penned a seven-volume memoir recounting his remarkable life.
Through an era in which Poland and the world transformed so thoroughly and at such great speed, Tsar Nikolai was a constant source of calm and stability. He perhaps most valued in what he didn’t do rather than what he did, taking a less activist approach to the governing of his empire than his predecessors. He generally favoured cooperation between conservative and liberals over the involvement of minority and leftist parties, but was happy to appoint Tatar and Christian ministers and the world’s first socialist Prime Minister. Perhaps his only truly divisive political decision was overruling Petr Orlov’s effort to abolish the Brusilov Line in 1893, after the Prime Minister secured a plurality of Duma votes but failed to muster even half of the chamber in favour of his proposal. Nonetheless, the Tsar lived long enough to ratify the Line’s eventual abolition in the last years of his life. Over the course of his reign, Nikolai fostered an imperial cult that revelled in the Tsar as the embodiment of the empire’s imperial splendour, democratic constitution and righteous ideals. This respect helped to hold the realm together in testing times and, to the great misfortune of the Poles, was not successfully transmitted to his successor.
Daniil Chernov 1855-1927
Considering the breadth of his influence on Polish history, outside the confines of the political left at the very least, Daniil Chernov can often seem to be the forgotten man. Coming from a middle class provincial background, he was an early adopted of the new socialist movement – entering the Duma alongside the first cohort of Trudovik Deputies in 1887. Able in front of crowds, in the press and on the floor of the parliamentary chamber, Chernov became the leading figure within the socialist movement and oversaw its explosive growth through the 1890s that saw the party shoot to its electoral peak in 1896 with a plurality in the Duma, almost a third of the popular vote and the chance to form a government. With grand ambitions to reform society, no least by abolishing the Brusilov Line, Chernov was instead destined to become his country’s wartime leader – inviting the conservatives he had spent his career battling against to join him in a wartime national coalition.
After four steely years at the helm, following victory over the Germans, Chernov sought to reignite the left’s grand vision for the future – winning a second plurality in 1902, albeit with reduced support. Heading a progressive coalition with liberals and minority parties, the Chernov ministry gave birth to the Polish welfare state and, finally, did away with the Brusilov Line. Although falling behind the conservatives in support in the first post-Brusilov election in 1906, Chernov had every reason to expect to remain in power only for the Constitutionalist leader Ivan Tymoshenko to betray him and form a centre-right government – leading to a long personal feud between the two men.
After liberal-conservative cooperation broke down in 1908, Chernov led his Trudoviks – a party by then in clear decline in the face of far right competition – into an unstable progressive alliance under Poland’s first Christian premier Leonas Mironas. This coalition was deeply unpopular within his own party, and under pressure from the left Chernov broke with the government in 1911, eventually surrendering the leadership of his party entirely after another disappointing election in 1912. As Polish democracy entered its death throws, Chernov went into exile in the early days of the 1914 civil war – spending the rest of his life among various left wing groups of exiles across Europe and North America, always dreaming of one day returning to his homeland. Sadly, this was an ambition he would never have the chance to fulfil.
From humble origins would grow a monster. Boris Makarov hailed from the idiosyncratic province of Pomerania – a heavily industrialised Jewish and Russian enclave surrounded by Germanic and Baltic Christian lands, on the very edge of the Polish empire, and proud of its status as the only Samaritan-majority region on earth. As a young man Makarov worked as a shipbuilder in his home region, before travelling to the coal fields of the Don Valley – becoming involved in trade unionism and joining the Trudovik Party. In 1897 he was conscripted to fight in the Great War, earning decoration for his bravery over four years of service. After the return to peacetime he threw himself into politics and was elected to the Duma in 1902 as a Trudovik. He quickly found himself at odds with his party leadership over the issue of the Brusilov Line, and his party’s positive stance towards ethnic minorities, yet retained immense popularity with the rank and file.
After being expelled from the party in 1905 he formed the Radical Labour Party – securing re-election and 1.5 million votes in 1906, but failing to trouble the major parties. This changed after a merger with the Veterans League, a rightwing populist association lobbying for Great War veterans, to form the Radical Republic Party, and his movement’s embrace of violent street politics. Thereafter, powered by ethnic grievance at the reforms of the Golden Decade, effective organisation and his own charismatic leadership, the party gained ground rapidly. Between 1912 and 1914 the Radicals propped up a rightwing conservative government, and maintained pressure on it to ensure that it carried through on its extreme promises included the reimposition of the Brusilov Line. After winning a plurality in the 1914 election, Makarov seized power in the aftermath of the Tsar’s botched coup attempt and, following a bloody year-long civil war, established a brutal dictatorship. Over the following decade and a half the Vozhd would go about constructing a totalitarian regime built around his leadership – committing numerous violations of basic humanity. However, with the Russian Republic wrought by instability in the aftermath of the 1929 crash his position appeared less stable than ever before.