Crime of the Millenium ? The Partitions of Poland
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Above is the bust of one of my favorite authors, Victor Hugo. He was, perhaps, France’s greatest master of prose. Most of our generation reveres his historical fiction, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (actual title is “Notre Dame de Paris”), and thought of it as we sadly watched the roof of that Parisian landmark, which has been called the soul of France, go up in a pyre of flames.
I have recently undertaken two marathon acts of love among my bibliophilic quests. The first is to complete “Quo Vadis” by the Polish Noble Literature Award winning author, Henryk Sienkiewicz. The second quest is to finish the Hugo masterpiece “Les Miserables”. Both classic novels are up there with Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in page count, and I am happy to say I am at the halfway point of both novels.
While Sienkiewicz is the Polish author, I was greatly surprised to find the following discourse within the “Les Miserables” volume entitle “Marius”
“All contemporary social crimes have their origin in the partition of Poland. The partition of Poland is a theorem of which all present political outrages are the corollaries. There has not been a despot, nor a traitor for nearly a century back, who has not signed, approved, counter-signed and copied, ne variatur, the partition of Poland.”
OK, that part did not make it into the broadway musical, or any of the movies. but why did Hugo find this political maneuvering so offensive. Simply put, it was because it was the first time in European history when three mighty empires, themselves at war with each other over the centuries, jointly agreed to dissect and consume another sovereign state. Or as Prussia’s Frederick the Great, one of the initiators of this injustice declared, we will consume the lands of Poland “like an artichoke, leaf-by-leaf”.
The sequence of events began when in 1763 Poland’s King died. Unlike most of the other monarchies of Europe, Poland’s Kings were elected by the Szlachta, their ruling class of Nobles. Russia’s Catherine the Great utilized all means possible to influence the election of this free and sovereign state, including bribery and military threats of intervention, to have her ex-lover, Stanislaus Poniatowski, elected King. When that new king was introducing reforms to strengthen the monarchy, a subset of the Polish nobles rebelled, forming the Confederation of Bar (Bar being a town in then Southeast Poland, what is today the Ukraine}.
The Confederation of Bar uprisings were put down with massive Russian assistance. Poniatowski stayed on the throne, but Russia and Prussia declared Poland to be a failed political state. They convinced a reluctant Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa, to join them in the first partition in 1772. Russia took a bite out of the East, Prussia the North, and Austria the South, although Maria Theresa was to have said what right did Austria have to take lands from the country they once vowed to protect? Frederick the great was quoted as having said of the Austrian Empress, “The more she cries, the more she takes.”
Poland later enacted the first constitution in Europe on May 3, 1791, designed after that of the United States, with the intent to improve the governance of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as it was then formally known. This only initiated a second partition in 1793. After an subsequent uprising against Russia was spearheaded by Poland’s General Kosciusko, who himself had aided the American Revolutionaries, Russia, Prussia and Austria divided what remained of the Commonwealth in the third Partition. Poland disappeared formally from the maps of Europe for the next 123 years, until it was reconstituted by Woodrow Wilson’s 13th of his famous 14 points at the end of World War one.
So, it is refreshing to read a passage of my favorite author, albeit buried deep amidst his classic recognizing the criminality of this act. Yes it was to recur in September of 1939, with yet another partition between Hitler’s Nazi’s and The Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin. But at least no one calls those dictators “Great”, as they still do today of Austria’s Maria Theresa, Prussia’s Frederick II, and Russia’s Catherine II.
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