The Polish Connection

Abstract

Among the most interesting, yet more obscure aspects of the Southern Society’s history must count the nature and extent of its contacts with the Polish Patriotic Society. The full story of these contacts, which lies beyond the scope of this study, has still to be told; but their very existence suggests that the Decembrists did not regard their political aspirations as exclusive to Russia. It is true that foreigners had been specifically excluded from membership of the earliest Decembrist secret societies, but this was not held to prevent the Southern Society from actively seeking international links in the common pursuit of political and social reform that transcended national boundaries. In any case, at this time, Russians and Poles were subjects of the one emperor. Under the terms of the Treaty of Vienna (1815) Alexander I had assumed the crown of a new and independent ‘Congress Kingdom of Poland.’ While he remained the absolute autocratic ruler of Russia, he was Poland’s constitutional monarch. The kingdom had its own government and judiciary, its own elected Assembly or Sejm, and a separate civil service and army. ‘On paper at least’, in the view of Norman Davies, ‘it was one of the most progressive constitutions of Central Europe’. Alexander’s representative, resident viceroy in Warsaw and married to a Polish princess, was his younger brother, Constantine.