Publications · 19 December 2014
Between “fatal provincialism” and dreams of returning home
Review prepared by Andrei Tsikhamirau
The events of the November Uprising of 1830-1831 on the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania long remained outside the attention of Belarusian historiography. Only in the 1990s did this topic begin to “make its way” into the works of Belarusian scholars. It should be noted that the uprising itself and its consequences had enormous significance for the subsequent fate of the Belarusian-Lithuanian gubernias. It was after this that the Russian authorities began a planned and gradual policy of truly incorporating these gubernias into the rest of the empire, abolishing a certain form of administrative, legal, and cultural autonomy that had existed during the previous two decades.
Among the numerous consequences of the uprising of 1830-1831 was emigration. It was one of the first waves of forced departure by a significant part of the population of the Belarusian-Lithuanian gubernias to other countries and made an important contribution to the tradition of emigration.
In his book, Dzmitry Matveychyk offers a panoramic overview of the entire wave of political emigration from our lands after the November Uprising. The author not only describes in detail the factors that contributed to the formation of emigration from the Belarusian-Lithuanian gubernias, but also focuses on the broader context of emigration from other lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The book was published on the basis of a candidate dissertation defended in 2008 and is an important contribution to Belarusian historiography of the nineteenth century.
The work consists of an introduction, seven chapters, a conclusion, and two published documents as an appendix. The author relied on a wide range of sources and scholarly literature, among which works by Polish and Belarusian authors predominate. At the same time, the study of the fates of former insurgents specifically from the Belarusian-Lithuanian gubernias in emigration is the core of the monograph.
The book is written in a strict scholarly style, is quite rich in descriptions of facts and organizational structures, and the author pays attention to the fates of the most significant representatives of the emigration. At the same time, it should be noted that the work reads rather easily and should certainly interest a wide circle of readers, not only professional historians.
The first chapter consists of a brief overview of the sources and historiography of the question, which are rather extensive and already have a long tradition. Dz. Matveychyk used not only Belarusian and Lithuanian repositories, but also worked with documents kept in Poland (Warsaw, Kraków, Kórnik) and France (the Polish Library in Paris).
In the second chapter, “Causes of emigration. Settlement of emigrants from the Belarusian-Lithuanian gubernias”, the historian discusses the factors of Russian government policy that forced the insurgents to leave the empire, and also describes in great detail the number and settlement of participants in the uprising in Western European countries. France, which became the main center of the Great Emigration (Wielka emigracja, a term already traditionally used in Polish literature to denote this wave of emigration), was not initially the first stage in the journey of former insurgents; rather, the border states of Prussia and the Austrian Empire played that role. In addition to these countries, however, emigrants settled in England, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and the German states. The chapter also provides a detailed characterization of the settlement and occupations of former insurgents, including information that may be unexpected for most readers about attempts to involve them in the civil war in Portugal on the side of Dom Pedro.
The third chapter, “The consolidation of natives of the Belarusian-Lithuanian gubernias in emigration”, consists of four subsections and is devoted to the organizational formation of the “Belarusian-Lithuanian segment” of the Great Emigration. The author gives a general characterization of ideological currents, which are conventionally divided into the democratic current (led by the outstanding historian Joachim Lelewel) and the conservative current (whose main figure was Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski). The main part of this chapter focuses on three organizations of people from the Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian gubernias which, according to the definition of the contemporary Polish historian Andrzej Nowak, were a kind of laboratory of future East European nationalisms.
As Dz. Matveychyk notes, the consolidation of emigrants according to this territorial principle was a natural phenomenon, since it reflected not only geographical divisions as such, but also a certain shared historical memory. The author describes in detail the creation and activity of the Lithuanian and Ruthenian Lands Society, the Lithuanian Military Committee, the Society of Fraternal Union in Besançon, and the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Club. On the one hand, the activity of such organizations was a manifestation of “fatal provincialism” (in the words of Ignacy Domeyko), while on the other it emphasized the particular features of people from the Belarusian-Lithuanian lands (who at the same time felt themselves to be part of Poland—the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).
The question of self-identity is addressed precisely in the fourth chapter, “Self-consciousness and self-definition of emigrants from the Belarusian-Lithuanian gubernias”—perhaps one of the shortest in the book. The author emphasizes the multi-level character of the noble consciousness of the time (which was also characteristic of the emigrants), and, following Juliusz Bardach’s definition of it, gives examples of the various uses of ethnic terms by contemporary figures. It should be noted that this question could perhaps have been described more extensively, but the general character of the work evidently required necessary reductions.
The fifth chapter is an important one, describing the influence of emigration on the socio-political movement in the homeland. The main goal of the émigré activists was to renew the struggle for independence, and initially this question was central. At the center of the historian’s attention are Józef Zaliwski’s expedition (1832-1834), described above all through the prism of the activity of Michał Wołowicz and Marceli Szymański, and the organizational activity of Szymon Konarski in the Belarusian-Lithuanian and Ukrainian lands. The attempts of émigré emissaries to create new ground for armed struggle against the Russian Empire ended tragically, but certainly became an example of genuine self-sacrifice for a common cause. It is emphasized, however, that the unsuccessful attempts to transfer the insurgent ferment (even against the background of the revolutionary events of the 1830s, 1846, and 1849) led the leaders of the emigration gradually to move away from the idea of armed struggle.
The chapter “The literary and publishing activity in emigration of natives of the Belarusian-Lithuanian gubernias: a general overview” draws attention not only to the widely known work of Adam Mickiewicz, Joachim Lelewel, or Ignacy Domeyko, but also to the entire range of activity by people from our lands in disseminating knowledge about the events of the uprising, as well as about the historical fates of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, literature, ethnography, the natural sciences, and medicine. The author draws attention to the extensive development of memoir writing and the mass publishing activity of emigrants (above all in Paris and London)—especially Leon Zienkowicz, Wladysław Plater, Felix Wrotnowski, and no less famous authors, among whom Alexander Rypiński and Ignacy Jackowski are singled out. This aspect of the emigration’s activity was one of the most enduring cultural results for subsequent generations.
The final, seventh chapter, “Amnesty and the return of emigrants to the homeland”, contains an analysis of the fates of a small group of people from the Belarusian-Lithuanian lands (only about 12 percent of them) who, for various reasons, decided to return within the borders of the Russian Empire. The author defines the chronology and stages of return, the legal conditions, and also describes financial assistance to former emigrants.
As an appendix, the book publishes a list of members of the Society of Fraternal Union and the Founding Act and Statute of the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Club.
The panoramic character of Dzmitry Matveychyk’s work probably does not allow attention to be paid to many details connected with the problems of emigration itself and the broader context of events in Europe at the time, but at present the Belarusian reader has a book of a general character on this topic and, if desired, can use it as a kind of reference work. The book will be of interest not only to historians, but also to a broader circle of humanities scholars, especially literary scholars and sociologists.