Dangerous Knowledge, or What Polish Authors Always Knew About Russia

la_barbarie_et_le_cholera-morbus_entrant_en_europe.jpg, default, French caricature by Auguste Raffet 'Barbarism and Cholera enter Europe. Polish people fight, the powers make the protocols and France', 1831. Photo: , Dangerous Knowledge, or What Polish Authors Always Knew About Russia

#language & literature

In the 19th century, Polish authors, from Mochnacki and Mickiewicz to Norwid and Conrad, gained unique first-hand knowledge of the Russian Empire and its doings. This knowledge would remain useful and topical, if also largely unheeded, across the last two centuries. Here’s what they knew.

The dismantling of the Polish state by the partitioning powers (Russia being a leading force among them) ultimately in the late 18th century radicalised the way Poles perceived Russia. For Polish authors, the partitions were a confirmation - and a very traumatic one for that - of a terrifying potentiality that was a long time coming.

Early in the 19th century it also became clear that the nature of Russian rule threatened not only the existence of the Polish state, but also that of the Polish people itself with its culture, tradition and values. Polish authors were now in the unique position of witnessing first hand the oppressive policies of one of the most effective imperial colonial regimes in history. This experience would develop into a solid if also bitter body of knowledge - one which could just as well, however, be dangerous for the regime.

In making these observations Polish authors oftentimes anticipated a variety of modern approaches, pioneering 20th century sovietology and modern-day imperiology, but also, perhaps more interestingly, postcolonial and orientalising perspectives with regards to Russia - something which only recently has come to the surface of the mainstream.

Maurycy Mochnacki [1]: The essence of Russia is despotism.

Image of Maurycy Mochancki by Stanisław Łukomski, 1862

One of the most acute and likely the most radical of all Polish intellectuals facing the Russian question was Maurycy Mochnacki (1803-1834). A brilliant literary critic, Mochnacki had a first hand knowledge of Russia - and quite practical for that. Participant of the November Uprising (of which he then became its first historian), Mochnacki emigrated to France shortly after the fall of the Uprising and died prematurely, at the age of 31. But even before that he managed to become one of the greatest Polish literary and cultural critics of all time, a master of style, and one of the most noble and fearless spirits of Poland, unflinching in his stance towards Russia.

In a series of writings, published mostly in exile in France in the early 1830’s, Mochnacki developed a sweeping and fully original theory of the Russian state - a regime which he considered a unique phenomenon in the political history of the world. At its heart, forming a sort of unchanging and irremovable core element, was the absolute authority of the Tsar. As Mochnacki claims,

‘It is not the geographical expanse nor population but the government that has become the Muscovite colossus. It is only the despotism that constitutes the immensity of this country. Apart from this strange and original institution everything in the state of the Tsars is feeble and small.’

Mochancki [2]: Bondage as a form of patriotism

In trying to define Russia’s system of power, Mochnacki arrives at the most simple of definitions: Muscovy is Tsar and Tsar is Muscovy! ‘If anyone had asked us, what Muscovy is without the Tsar we would not know how to answer this hardest of all riddles,’ writes Mochnacki, who lived his life under the rule of tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I. (Let us also note here the insistence with which Mochnacki uses the term Muscovy, the traditional Polish term referring to the Duchy and Tsardom of Moscow, the predecessor states to the Russian Empire).

As Mochnacki argued, any attempt to limit the absolute power of the despot would automatically entail the dissolution of the state, a beginning of its end. A real political change - as Mochnacki brilliantly notes, palace coups don’t count as they’re innocuous (‘they strangle Paul, but there will be Peter’, he notes) - would ‘instantaneously smash the colossus into the tiniest of atoms.’ Hence even the tiniest dose of freedom can be lethal for the Russian system of power. Effectively, so Mochnacki, “bondage is [a form of] patriotism” in Russia.

Mochnacki [3]: Russia is Expansion, land grabs are a narcotic for the masses

Mochnacki claimed that the existence of the Muscovite state, with its inner despotism, is inextricably linked to its outward expansion (in the early 1830’s Mochnacki defined Russia’s strategic goals as the conquest of Turkey and that of the whole of Slavdom ‘all the way to the Odra river’). Russia’s political organism, he argued, feeds on new conquests, its structure being such ‘that in order not to tumble, it must at all time intoxicate its people - as with a narcotic potion - with new land grabs’. Thus the act of expanding its territories becomes its main principle. The Empire simply cannot stop:

‘The Tsarate cannot remain inactive. As it has no necessity of proving anything at home, it can only act outside. This mechanism of Muscovite absolutism is revealed in the act of incessant land grabs. Austria and Prussia can remain in status quo, increasing their internal power in peace. Prussia, oddly as it may seem, attempts, and not without effect, to erase the difference between the parts that constitute it. Moscow will not succeed in this. As her peace resides in perpetual preparation for war, that is, the act of constantly changing its status quo’.

But while the politics and logic of land grabs is incessant, Mochnacki also believed that ‘these conquests resulted from the needs of the government, and not the spirit of the Russian people’. As such, rather than being conquests only, they were much more a way to conserve the state in the face of the absence of other ‘uniting’ elements.

Mochnacki [4]: There is no such thing as Russian society, or the Russian nation!

Amédée de Noé (Cham), "La tache d'huile", 1863, fot. Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris

Mochnacki considered Russia (along with other Absolutist states like Prussia and the Austrian Empire) as an agglomerate-state. Not being real social structures, ‘they exist only through the power of their government, and will cease to exist on the first inner or outward commotion [...]’.

But even here, Russia was distinctive, as its political body was fully dependent on the nature of power, which on its part depends on outward movement, that is territorial expansion. Perhaps most radically (and controversially), Mochnacki argued that in case of Russia there is no such thing as a ‘Russian nation’ or ‘Russian society’ (‘From Peter I to present day, Muscovy has been more of a government than a nation in Europe’):

‘In point of fact, it is an empire composed of only two elements: physical power and that which imbues that power with movement. Governed beyond its measure, Muscovy is not a nation, but only a [stretch of] land; not a community but only an instrument.’

Mochnacki was also pointing to the sweeping ethnic diversity of the nations colonised by the Empire. As he claimed, speaking innumerable languages, they had nothing in common with each other nor, for that matter, with ethnic Russians. The Polish critic was also debunking the concept of ‘Slavic brotherhood’ (which would soon evolve into a powerful Panslavic ideology used to justify Russia’s imperial claims in Central and Eastern Europe): ‘As for the Slavic affinity between many peoples which are living there, one would have to deduce it from Sanskrit, or better, Noah’s arc,’ he concluded in a jocular fashion.

Mochnacki [5]: The perception is what allows its being

Auguste Desperet - Grandville - Grande Croisade contre la Liberté, photo: The Paris Musées/Public Domain Dedication

In a gesture reminiscent of post-modern relative philosophy, Mochnacki observed an interesting feedback loop between the existence of Russia and that of the outside spectator, that is Europe. (That Russia is in fact a sort of spectacle, mesmerising the viewer, was observed already by Joseph de Maistre… and Adam Mickiewicz!). Being perceived as a nation (and a big one at that!) and a state by Europe allows Russia or, more precisely, its despotic rulers to carry out their conquests:

As long as Europe will consider their [the tsars’] subjects as a nation, and their country as a state, they will thereby continue to grow and increment, to conquer and threaten; and they will continue to seem fearsome. The government of this country depends on its ability to grow, and vice versa: the expansion of Muscovy’s immense expanse depends on its government.

But in acting in such a way, Mochnacki continues, Europe was most certainly overestimating Russia’s potential. For Mochnacki what Russia excelled in was ‘the art of managing endeavors that far exceeded her true powers. For a hundred years, the Petersburg cabinet performed not what it was capable of, but what others in their carelessness let them achieve. Its advantage until now was its sole will [to accomplish things], as well as, in part, Europe’s superstition as to what it found appropriate to call a „nation” with regards to Muscovy’.

Russia in caricatures by Amédée de Noé (Cham) [gallery]

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Mochnacki [6]: No possession, no freedom – no inner politics!

Gustav Dore, The History of Holy Russia. Photo: public domain

In his writings on Russia, Mochnacki made an interesting historical connection between the contemporary lack of political freedom and the fact that all land in Russia (at least since Ivan the Terrible) was in the possession of the Tsar. Thus, “all things that the people of this country could claim as their own, became the property of the tsar’:

‘What elsewhere was [formed into] a social union, or even the most savage of ‘folk’ communities, sifted here into authority, transformed into government’

The eradication of all personal property and the ensuing annihilation of all traces of freedom - which in a Western society would guarantee a balance of powers and checks (a contract of sorts) - allowed for a situation where the Tsar was not obliged to actually manage and prove anything internally (i.e. introduce real reforms, manage in any real way, as governments do elsewhere, etc). ‘The Tsarate does not need to achieve anything internally’.

As a result Muscovy, as Mochnacki claims, was a strange mix: a combination of an impressive farsightedness in foreign affairs with incredible ineptitude of administration and internal policies. ‘The Tsar of the North reigns at home, as if he was not to rule tomorrow’, his army of poorly paid clerks ‘steal [...] and have no choice but to steal. Without this everything would instantly come asunder’.

Adam Mickiewicz [1]: Russia is a grand revue square!

Amédée de Noé (Cham), fot. Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris

Adam Mickiewicz’s earliest and yet most definitive Polish vision of Russia comes in the sequence of poems known as Digression, which concludes his 1832 drama The Forefathers’ Eve. Part III. In it, a decade ahead of Astolphe de Custine’s famous book, Mickiewicz created a powerful and overwhelming vision of Russia presented as a ruthless and endless despotic state, a prison of nations, where subjugation of the individual and militarism become a key social principle (and hence its most perfect metaphor is that of a military revue square, a subject of one of these poems).

This is a world ruled by omnipresent violence and contempt for human life - where the only role for an ordinary man is to become a cog in a larger mechanism of war and state. In his later reflections (most importantly the Parisian Lectures) Mickiewicz would further develop this concept, seeing the army as an all-encompassing goal of the state, as well as the template on which the whole society is modeled, including administration and… literature(!).

Mickiewicz [2]: Colonialism a la Russe & faux modernisation a l'européenne

As Mickiewicz notes in these poems, Russia’s power and alleged splendor come entirely from the wealth looted from others - the colonial conquests and exploitation of other territories and peoples, like Poland, Lithuania (Belarus) and Ukraine (and many others!). Again, much like de Custine years later, Mickiewicz also points to the imitative character of Russian ‘westernising’ policies, which mimicked the outer shape of institutions (or buildings! - mere architectural styles) but not their essence (liberal and democratic ideals, republican, individual and civil freedom). Russia, much like its capital Petersburg (depicted in the central poems of the sequence), is an artificial monster-like structure built on the bones of its people - a predator which devours its own children and constantly strives for more blood and flesh.

Mickiewicz [3]: Not despotism, but Tsarism!

Gustav Dore, The History of Holy Russia. Photo: public domain

Mickiewicz’s writings from the 1830’s show that he was well aware of the novel and unique character of autocratic rule being developed in Russia. As he argued, ‘Tsar Nicholas I introduced a system that was original, rational, and strong’. This regime, as Mickiewicz observed, differed substantially from that of all other traditional forms of autocratic rule known from history:

‘It is not enough to call the present system of government „despotism”. Despotism is old, tsarism is a new and original system. Despotism limited itself to the oppression of its subjects, and was often at peace with its republican neighbours; Tsarism is combined with propaganda, by its very nature it must conquer and expand. Despotism was often only a passive darkness, a lack of light; tsarism is active darkness, it is a true political devil.’

Mickiewicz [4]: War of the pen, or Russian hybrid warfare avant la lettre

Mickiewicz was deeply aware of Russia’s ability to methodically and ably disorient and mislead Western public opinion in matters of Russian interest. Already in Mickiewicz’s day, Russia was much involved in influencing Western opinion, using corrupt or paid authors to forward its own agenda. Mickiewicz referred to this as ‘a war of the pen’, but today one would be tempted to call it ‘an influence operation’, or ‘hybrid warfare’:

‘[Russia] is giving itself the liberty to print lies, even though she blasphemes against freedom of the press and hates it so much. This is because the Russian government deems any weapon that strikes its adversary a good weapon - just as she does not disregard any position that she can occupy, be it on land, water, or in public opinion.’

Mickiewicz observed that Russia ‘was recruiting and drafting believers in all political fractions, which divided public opinion in Europe’ - having a political offer for even those parties that were seemingly contradictory to her agenda. As Mickiewicz concluded, ‘Thus Russian despotism, the true evil spirit in Europe, has the devil-like ease to take on many different and contradictory shapes, in order to lure, deceive, and attract self-love and stupidity’.

Mickiewicz [5]: Self-colonization

The Rare and Extraordinary History of Holy Russia by Gustav Dore, 1854

Mickiewicz’s papers from the early 1830’s also include an interesting reflection on the colonial character of Russian rule, namely that of specific self-colonization. As Mickiewicz claims, Russian rule exploits and annihilates its own population (in warfare and through inner exploitation). Meanwhile it absorbs people from other nations, out of which it forms new elites which are conducive to the further outer expansion and inner exploitation of the masses. This exploitation, according to the Polish poet, is marked by unthinkable ruthlessness and brutality, one that would have been intolerable for the local (ethnic) elites.

Mickiewicz further suggests that Russia’s main partner in this long-term politics is Germany, as it is Prussians who supply and make up most of the Empire’s military and administrative elites (something that Mickiewicz considered a form of corruption). ‘Hence it was always part of the tsars’ political agenda to unite with Germany in order to ground despotism,’ wrote Mickiewicz in 1832.

Zygmunt Krasiński [1]: Russia as lethal danger to the West

krasinski zygmunt portret.jpg — Zygmunt Krasiński, Polona.pl

Unlike Mickiewicz, Zygmunt Krasiński (1812-1859), a fellow Romantic poet in exile, had virtually no illusions as to Russia’s potential to reform or modernise - be it from within or from without. He also saw no role for Russia in the future of the cilvilised world. For Krasiński Russia constituted the gravest ontological danger to Western civilization: an Asian-Byzantine formation, it was a negation of Western civilization and Christianity, an apocalyptic beast from the East, ready to devour Europe. Krasiński saw its sole ambition in its ‘striving towards a universal [i.e. global] monarchy: its only dream [is] to come tumbling down on the West. The government that rules Russia will not for the world deviate from this monstrous idea’.

Krasiński came to believe that Russia should be cordoned off from Europe, directed back towards the Far East. It is also here that he saw the role of free and independent Poland as a shield against a Russian invasion of Europe. As he argued in one of his letters addressed to the Western politicians: ‘There is no peace for Europe without Poland’.

Krasiński [2]: Russia has no history, existence or purpose…

Krasiński deemed the Russian people to be an utterly submissive community: devoid of its own volition or history (‘[Russia’s] sole history is the history of its Emperor’s glances, gestures, and words’, as he claimed). This, so he believed, allowed Russia’s subjects to identify fully with the imperial aims of the state.

Furthermore, Krasiński argued that the object referred to as Russia actually did not exist any more: ‘there’s only the government, which devoured it [the state], and exists without reason or purpose - because in order to have the right to exist one needs to be an expression of something different than oneself, something wider’.

‘Muscovian government has established itself, for its own sake, as absolutely as eternity and infinity, in finite space and time - thus putting itself in the place of God’” For Krasiński, who was a deeply religious person, this was a blasphemous act.

Krasiński [3]: Russia is communism… & Apocalypse!

Le diplomate Sisyphe by Amédée de Noé (Cham), Photo: Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris

An aristocrat by birth and conservative in his opinions, Krasiński believed in the deep affinity between the Russian and the revolutionary spirit. As he argued, ‘both [of these spirits] strive towards the same aim, and each of them would like to achieve it for itself’ - this aim being the upending of all order and hierarchies.

Krasiński - perhaps quite paranoically - came to believe that Russia was behind most of the revolutionary and progressive movements in the West. This conspiracy included infiltrating the majority of radical journals, and partaking in just about any subversive project with the aim of undoing Western civilization from within.

‘Russia is the great communism, governed by a power both military and theocratic; and this power, equal to the Terror of 1793 in horror, is incomparably superior to it in its organization and its ability to last’, Krasiński claimed in 1854.

Krasiński’s ultimate theme was that of the bloody revolution (just consider his masterpiece Un-Divine Comedy), which he linked to Russia. In his letters, he foretold a terrible, unprecedented in scale, social carnage which would erupt in Russia and then spill over across the continent, like ‘the Tatar murder and fire once had spread’ - destroying historical nations, creating instead a supranational, enslaved community, organized in its essence to resemble an atheist and materialistic despotism, he claimed.

Krasiński [4]: Russians as the damned of this world

In an attempt to explain Russia’s unbridled drive for conquest and exploitation of others Krasiński was offering an interesting psychological interpretation, one which verged on... the metaphysical:

‘Russians are the damned of this world and, being damned, they have this one consolation only - their pride. In their heart of hearts however they admit of their utmost degradation; but lack both common sense and human dignity to end it. They’d rather raise this [condition] to the level of some ideal of slavery - and they claim and dream that sooner or later all the world will be subjected to this bondage, just as they are.’

Cyprian Kamil Norwid [1]: Russia as the Empire of Form

Cyprian Norwid, fot. Cyfrowa Biblioteka Narodowa Polona

Like some Polish intellectuals before him, also poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid saw the distinct character of the Russian construction of the nation (rather than a proper ‘nation’ he considered the Empire a ‘formal situation’). For Norwid, Russia appeared as an “Empire of Form”, by which he meant the dominance of form (‘form’ being one of the key concepts in Norwid) and enslavement over spiritual content. ‘Enslavement’, as Norwid claimed in one of his poems, ‘is the placing of form in place of the goal” (That goal of every nation, let us add, should be of spiritual character). In this, Russia was similar to imperial Rome, both of which Norwid regarded as essentially decadent formations opposed to the spirit of freedom, nation or humanity.

Norwid [2]: Russia’s legal system, or ‘the right to not be killed’

Norwid’s most original stance on Russia comes to the fore in his interesting analysis of Russia’s Code of Law, introduced in the Polish Kingdom in 1847. Reading through the rules and paragraphs of this new legal system, Norwid comes to a conclusion about the essential difference in origin and understanding of the rule of law in the Russian Empire and in Europe. Norwid was querying the source or ground of these laws, and - unlike with the universalist grounding of Roman law - he found it in the sole will of the ruling figure. The poet observed that under this rule, ‘a human being does not have the right to live, but is only granted, by the ruler, the right to not be killed’. Norwid also recognized a different understanding of the concept of ‘crime’. As he noted, ‘because the monopoly of crime lies in the very foundation of the law, everything here can be considered a crime’.

“The entire Muscovian code of law for the Polish Kingdom is this brutal implementation of the state’s ideas, which – with no respect for human life – becomes an organic right of death.” [C.K. Norwid, note in the poem Niewola]

Joseph Conrad [1]: Spectre, ghost, something out of this world..

While Joseph Conrad may not immediately come across as a Polish writer, there are several good reasons to think of him as a Polish author after all – not the least important of which is his stance on Russia. In deed, Conrad shared in many Polish opinions about Russia in which he was largely inspired by his father Apollo’s stance towards Russia and his family’s political experience. These opinions included the (inalienably) despotic character of the regime, its essentially anti-European position, and a general assumption that Russia was a force given to keeping at bay all the liberal strivings and all ideas of progress in Europe.

Reflecting on Russia in the wake of Russo-Japanese war (1906), Conrad recognized something unreal or ‘unhistorical’ about Russia’s existence. As he believed, Russia remained a sort of spectral phenomenon (‘a gigantic and dreaded phantom’), a ghost that had been haunting Europe for over a century – in deed something quite out of this world:

‘This dreaded and strange apparition, bristling with bayonets, armed with chains, hung over with holy images; that something not of this world, partaking of a ravenous ghoul, of a blind Djinn grown up from a cloud, and of the Old Man of the Sea, still faces us with its old stupidity, with its strange mystical arrogance, stamping its shadowy feet upon the gravestone of autocracy […]’

Joseph Conrad [2]: Le Neant, or Russia as the Great Nothing

In the same essay, Conrad picks on the apocryphal words, allegedly spoken by Bismarck, in which the future Chancellor of the German Empire referred to Russia as Le Neant, or a Nothing… For Conrad this Nothing is tantamount to a void of moral and ethical values, any positive political and human proposition. Instead, at the core of Russia there is a nothingness, “which for so many years had remained hidden behind this phantom of invincible armies”:

‘There is an awe-inspiring idea of infinity conveyed in the word Néant - and in Russia there is no idea. She is not a Néant, she is and has been simply the negation of everything worth living for. She is not an empty void, she is a yawning chasm open between East and West; a bottomless abyss that has swallowed up every hope of mercy, every aspiration towards personal dignity, towards freedom, towards knowledge, every ennobling desire of the heart, every redeeming whisper of conscience.’

Conrad [3]: Russia, terrorism & the spirit of cynicism

Conrad’s most definitive perspective on Russia comes in what is perhaps his most personal novel, Under Western Eyes (1911). The novel focuses around the doings of Russian revolutionary activists engaged in underground political activity in Russia and Western Europe, and happens to be a very realistic depiction of Russian un-official politics of the day, as it portrays an interplay of the secretive activities of revolutionaries and those of the so-called agents-provocateurs (employees of the Russian Okhrana).

Conrad portrays them as either incredibly naive or deeply cynical figures, whose actions and beliefs are often motivated by false ideas of Russia’s perceived spiritual greatness (one of the many aberrations hiding behind the Neant), coupled with the critique of Western democracy seen as a ‘false conflict of parties’. Conrad links this to a specific form of cynicism which, as his narrator claims, is also the spirit of Russia en large:

‘For that is the mark of Russian autocracy and of Russian revolt. In its pride of numbers, in its strange pretensions of sanctity, and in the secret readiness to abase itself in suffering, the spirit of Russia is the spirit of cynicism. It informs the declarations of her statesmen, the theories of her revolutionists, and the mystic vaticinations of her prophets to the point of making freedom look like a form of debauch, and the Christian virtues themselves appear actually indecent…’

As Conrad scholar Zdzisław Najder argued, this ‘naive and hopeless’ cynicism, covered up by mystical pretences, which marked both the Russian autocracy and the Russian Revolution, would also become a definitive feature of the future Soviet regime.

Conrad [4]: The tiger cannot change its stripes

In the Author’s Note to the second edition of Under Western Eyes - published already after the Russian Revolution - Conrad encapsulated what came to be one of his final positions on Russia:

‘The most terrifying reflection (I am speaking now for myself) is that all these people [Russian protagonists of Conrad’s novel - ed.] are not the product of the exceptional but of the general - of the normality of their place and time - and race. The ferocity and imbecility of an autocratic rule rejecting all legality and in fact basing itself upon complete moral anarchism provokes the no less imbecile and atrocious answer of a purely Utopian revolutionism encompassing destruction by the first means to hand, in the strange conviction that a fundamental change of hearts must follow the downfall of any given human institutions. Those people were unable to see that all they can effect is merely a change of names. The oppressors and the oppressed are all Russians together; and the world is brought once more face to face with the truth of the saying that the tiger cannot change his stripes nor the leopard his spots.’

The latter observation - along with many other insights and strategies by Polish writers from across the long 19th century - seems eerily pertinent today: after yet another 100 years and in the midst of yet another colonial war waged by Russia on one of its neighbours.

Author: Mikołaj Gliński, January 2023

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