The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914 9781501702242

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THE

NATION IN THE

VILLAGE

THE NATION IN THE VILLAGE The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914 KEELY STAUTER-HALSTED

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 200 1 by Cornel l University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the p u b l isher. For i n formation, address Cornel l University Press, Sage House, 5 1 2 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 1 4 8 5 0 . F i r s t pu bl ished 200 1 b y Cornell University Press F irst printing, Corne l l paperbacks, 2004 Pri nted in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stauter-Halsted, Keely, 1 960The nation i n the v i l l age : the genesis of peasant national identity in Austrian Poland, 1 84 8 - 1 9 1 4 / Keely Sta uter-Ha lsted. p . cm. Incl udes bibl iogra phical references and index. ISBN 0-80 1 4-3 8 44-6 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0 - 8 0 1 4 - 8 9 96-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) I. Peasantry-Galicia ( Poland and Ukraine )-Pol itical activity. 2. Peasantry-Galicia (Poland and Ukra i ne )-Hi story- 1 9th centu ry. 3 . Peasantry-Ga licia ( Poland and Ukraine)-History-20th centu ry. I . Title. HD15 3 6 . P7S7 200 1 943. 8'6032-dc2 1 Cornel l University Press strives to use environmenta l l y responsible suppl iers and materia l s to t h e fu llest extent possible i n the p u b l i s h i n g of its books. S u c h materials i n c l u d e vegetable­ based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that a re recycled, tota lly chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Books that bear the logo of the FSC ( Forest Stewardship Counci l ) use paper taken from forests that have been inspected and certified as meeting the h ighest standards for environmental and social responsibility. For fu rther information, visit our website at www.comel l press.cornel l .edu . Cloth printing

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Contents

Illustrations

Vll

Acknowledgments

IX

Introduction : The Roots of Nationalism in the Polish Village

1

Part I. Politics in the Postemancipation Galician Village 1. Emanci pation and Its Discontents

21

2. The Roots of Peasant Civil Society: Premodern Politics

i n the Galician Vi llage

32

3 . Customs in Confl ict: Peasant Politics in the Viennese Reichstag and the Galician Sej m

60

4. Making Government Work: The Vil lage Commune as a

School for Political Action

78

Part II. The Construction of a Peasant Pole 5. The Peasant as Literary and Ethnogra phic Trope

97

6 . The Gentry Construction of Peasants: Agricultural Circles and the Resurgence of Peasant Culture

115

7. Education and the Shaping of a Village Elite

142

v

VI

Contents

8. The Nation in the Village: Competing Images of

Poland in Popular Culture 9. The Village i n the Nation: Polish Peasants a s a Political Force

185

216

Conclusion: The Main Currents o f Peasant Nationalism

243

Bibliography

249

Index

263

Illustrations

Austrian Officers Buying the Heads of Polish Gentry in 1846

2

Galician districts, 19 10

12

Departure for the harvest, Stare Bystre, Nowy Targ d istrict

25

Map of the village of Bienk6wka, Cracow district

35

Jewish minority, 1900

39

Shtetl Jew from Podole

40

Wait from the vil lage of Wola Justowska in the traditional dress of the Cracow district

83

Oskar Kol berg, father of Polish ethnography

102

Father Stanislaw Stojalowski

1 18

There Is Still Hope for a Better Future

162

Procession commemorating the Grunwald anniversary, Wa mpierz6w, 19 10

188

Scene from the play Kosciuszko at Raclawice, 19 16

2 13

Deputies from the Polish Peasant Pa rty to the Ga lician Sej m, 1895

235

Jan Stapinski, leader of the Polish Peasant Party-Left

241

VII

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to a number of individuals and i nstitutions for sup­ porting this proj ect both i ntellectually and materially. I began my inquiry into East European nation forming, social history, and cultural theory at the University of Michigan, working with Roman Szporluk, Raymond Grew, and Geoff Eley. While at Michigan, my work was supported by the Rackham Graduate School, Foreign Language Area Studies grants, and the International Research and Exchanges Board, with funds provided by the U.S. Department of State (Title VIII p rogra m ) , the National Endow­ ment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed . The project was further transformed during faculty appointments first at the University of Northern Iowa, and later at Michigan State University. While at UNI, I was the recipient of a summer research grant, as wel l as friendship and support from colleagues in the History Department, includ­ ing Tim O'Connor, Greg Bruess, and Charlotte Wells. A fellowship from the American Council of Teachers of Russian helped me to gain access to the Central State Historical Archives in L'viv and the papers of the Gali­ cian Viceroy's office. While at MSU, I have benefited from a n All University Research Grant ( AURI G ) , short-term funding from IREX for return trips to Poland, as well as the generous support of the Department of History. Lewis Siegel­ baum and Harold Marcus read and commented on the entire manuscript, as did Robert Blobaum and John-Paul Himka, the reviewers for Cornell University Press . Arista Cirtautas, of the University of Virginia, talked me through theoretical quandaries as the manuscript proceeded. Bartek Plichta proofread the Polish, and Ellen White provided maps. John Ackerman, IX

x

Acknowledgments

Susan Tarcov, Karen Hwa, and others at the Press were consistently both kind and professional as they shepherded the manuscript through the var­ ious stages of publication. During research trips to Poland, I had the privilege of working i n the Jagiellonian University Li brary i n Cracow, the State Archives for the Cra­ cow District, the Institute for the History of the Peasant Movement in Wa rsaw, the Ossolineum in Wrodaw, and the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow. The staff of each of these collections was friendly and helpfu l , perhaps most exceptionally t h e Ukrainian-speaking staff at t h e Centra l State Historical Archives in L'viv, who cheerfully worked with me to access long unused Polish materi a l . Alicja Maleta at Cracow's Ethno­ graphic Museum and Pawe! Popiel of the Iconographic Collection at the Za klad Historii Ruchu Ludowego i n Wa rsaw were enormously helpful in locating and reproducing ill ustrations to accompany the text. Professor Antoni Podraza at the Jagiellonian University served as advisor and advo­ cate during my initial research stay in Poland. Jerzy and Halina Groch, and their daughter Magda, have been my generous hosts and friends i n Cracow through numerous return trips t o that glorious city. Jerzy suc­ cumbed to cancer during the final preparation of the manuscript, depriv­ ing the world of an outstanding geographer of Galicia and a loyal friend. This book has encompassed the entire lifetimes of my two children, Christopher and Carol ine. Their todd ler and preschool years have been a l l -consuming and have sometimes made writing a challenge, but the j oy­ ful distraction they provide has made these hectic times enormously grati­ fying. As Christopher enters his early grade school years and begins asking how Mommy's " story " is coming, repeatedly offering his " help " in finish­ ing it, and proclaims Poland i s the most important country i n Europe, I realize what an impact it has had on his young life. The task of tending two sma l l children and making progress on a book manuscript was made easier by the children's supportive grandmothers, Marilyn Stauter and Judy Ha lsted, who managed to drop things in their own busy l ives long enough to insert themselves gracefully in ours so I could leave for short research stints or make deadlines, and by a series of trusted babysitters, including most especially Cassandra Schell, who helped get Caroline through her first year of l i fe while I wrote in the basement. Most of all, my husband, David Halsted, who was with me at the proj ect's inception, who shaped his own work and learned Polish to be with me in Poland, who edited and proofread, advised and extolled, even as his own career experi­ enced shifts and bumps, who spent long days and longer weeks alone with sma l l kids, is rea lly the strongest force behind this proj ect, and it is to him that the book is dedicated.

THE

NATION IN THE

VILLAGE

Introduction: The Roots of Nationalism in the Polish Village

On a snowy Shrove Tuesday night in February 1 846, Polish-speaking serfs from the district of Ta rnow huddled in the forests in the foothills of the Carpathian Mounta ins. Afra id to remain in their cottages lest they fall into the hands of marauding bands of aristocrats, the peasants had fled in order " to hide from the Poles. " An ill-fated gentry rising had begun in Cracow, and armed bands of " Polish " rebels were rumored to be roaming the Galician countryside searching for those who opposed their efforts to resurrect the old noble-led Polish state.' Trembling in fear of their Polish lords, the Tarnow serfs sought to keep as great a distance as possible from the national insurrection sweeping the countryside.2 The peasants' behavior during the 1 846 rising, i n which they ultimately sla ughtered some 1 , 1 00 noblemen, contrasted sharply with the enthusi­ asm for Polish symbols they expressed a half century later. During the summer of 1 8 94, farmers from throughout Austrian Poland gathered to celebrate the centennial of Tadeusz KOSciuszko's insurrection i n defense of Polish independence. Vi llagers marched i n parades honoring the fal len

1 Hi storians have not fu lly explored the links between peasant attacks on gentry rebels and the conclusion of carn ival week. For an overview of the h istoriography of the 1 846 revolt, see Thomas W. Simons Jr. , "The Peasant Revolt of 1 846 in Galicia: Recent Polish H istoriog· raphy, " Slavic Review 30, no. 4 ( December 1 9 7 1 ) : 795-8 1 7. The classic work on the Gali· cian jacquerie is sti l l Stefa n Kieniewicz, Ruch chlopski w Galic;i w 1846 roku (Wroclaw, 1 95 1 ). 2 The one exception t o t h e often-violent opposition among peasants t o the national u prising of 1 846 was i n the highland village of Chochol6w. See Wladyslaw tys, Powstanie cho­ cholowskie: w 110 rocznic{!, 1846-1956 (Warsaw, 1 9 5 6 ) , and Rafal Gerber, ed . , Powstanie chocholowskie 1846 roku: Dokumenty i materialy (Wroclaw, 1 96 0 ) .

1

2

Introduction

Austrian Officers Buying the Heads of Polish Gentry in 1846. Czartoryski

Museum, Cracow. Sketch 7377. Courtesy of the Ethnographic Museum, Cracow. Inventory number IIII1S008/F. Reproduction by Jacek Kubiena.

general and staged elaborate reenactments of the great Battle of Radaw­ ice, competing among themselves to play Polish pikemen rather than the despised Russian soldiers. Two generations after their emancipation from serfdom, Polish-speaking peasants could cheer " Long live Poland " while celebrating a symbolic moment in the old noble republic.3 But what did Polish peasants mean when they referred at the end of the nineteenth cen­ tury to an entity called " Poland " and how did this conception differ from their understanding of Poland or Polishness in 1 846? What accounts for the peasants' transformed vision of the " nation " and their place within it? This study situates the rise of peasant nationalism in the context of the precarious position emancipated peasants occupied within "modern " political institutions and ideas. In one sense, Polish villagers in the Aus­ trian Empire had access to and experience in a wide range of progressive public institutions. They were a ble to take advantage of Habsburg politiJ

Village commemorations of the KOSciuszko Rising are reported in Przyjaciel Ludu,

April-July 1894, and Zwiqzek Chlopski, April-May 1894. For the reconstruction of General Kosciuszko into a peasant hero, see Keely Stauter-Halsted, "Peasant Patriotic Celebrations in Austrian Poland: The Centennial of the KOSciuszko Uprising and the Rise of the KOSciuszko Cult in Galician Villages, n Austrian History Yearbook 25 (1994): 79-95.

The Roots of Nationalism in the Polish Village

3

cal reforms and administrative decentra lization that swept newly freed peasants into civic life in large numbers during the 1 8 60s and 1 8 70s. The political mobilization of Galician smallholders would help shape a distinct leadership cadre in peasant communities, consisting of village mayors, sec­ retaries, council members, and parliamentary deputies. These local leaders gradually established working relationships with intellectuals and gentry landowners in order to accomplish shared goals of economic reform and cultural regeneration. The public agenda devised by this peasant elite and their upper-class a llies was increasingly articu lated in terms of the wel fare of the nation. Such a conjunction of social forces helps explain the process by which the Polish political nation expanded to include larger sections of the population and wider cultural content. The book explores the transition from serf to citizen in the Polish lands by examining the formation of a peasant national identity ( or identities ) between emancipation in 1 84 8 and the outbreak of the Great War. Al­ though national consciousness would evolve among many villagers only a fter the reemergence of the Polish state in 1 9 1 8 , the postemancipation years were critical to shaping new public attachments in the countryside.4 D uring the half century following the end of serfdom, upper-class notions of the nation and its future came into direct and sustained contact with the attitudes of Polish-speaking peasants, prompting a complex process of negotiation between the bearers of the patriotic " message " and their peas­ ant audience.5 Yet even as Galician peasants were experiencing the benefits of modern civic l ife, their cultural outlook remained rooted in the rituals, customs, and beliefs of " premodern " agricultural communities .6 They contributed some of these notions to the national idea, helping to expand the patriotic message beyond a small group of upper-class patriots.? The result was a 4

On the development of peasant national consciousness during World War I and the early years o f the Second Repu blic, see Jan Molenda, "The Formation of National Consciousness o f the Polish Peasants and the Part They Played i n the Regai n i ng of Independence by Poland," Acta Poloniae Historica, nos. 6 3-64 ( 1 9 9 1 ) : 1 2 1 -4 8 . 5 T h e l i n k s between national and local politics h a v e been studied by Maurice Agulhon, The Republic in the Vii/age: The People of the Var from the French Revolution to the Second Republic (Cambridge, 1 9 8 2 ) , and Tony Judt, Socialism in Provence, 1871-1914: A Study in the Origins of the Modern French Left (Cambridge, 1 97 9 ) . Also helpful is Peter McPhee,

" Popular Culture, Sym bolism, and Rural Radicalism i n Nineteenth-Century France," Jour· nal of Peasant Studies 5, no. 2 (January 1 97 8 ) : 2 3 8-50.

Florencia Mallon d iscusses many of the theoretical problems associated with the rise of peasant national consciousness i n Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley, 1 99 5 ) . 7 M i roslav Hroch characterizes t h e penetration o f the national message t o the broad masses a s stage C i n a three-step process beginning with a small group of patriotic intellectuals (stage 6

4

Introduction

polyphony of voices that eventually emerged to contest national meaning. By focusing on peasant activism, this study thus complements theoretical work on the sources of nationalist ideology among intel lectual and bour­ geois activists,8 revea ling the ongoing tension between the national images of the political and cultural center ( in this case the Polish gentry ) and those of margina lized groups, including the Polish peasantry.9 Movements for nationa l unification and independence that seek to un ite disparate social groups behind a single political cause frequently camou­ flage the heterogeneous nature of national identity. 1 0 National heterogene­ ity can be made to appear homogeneous through the deployment of ambiguous national imagery and the reinterpretation of cultural icons to make them more accessible to marginal groups. I I Polish vil lagers remem­ bered Tadeusz Kosciuszko as a peasant l i berator, for example, while the gentry regarded him as a symbol of the old noble democracy. Similarly, the annual commemoration of the Polish Constitution of May 3 ( 1 79 1 ) was the occasion for the expression of opposition to foreign rule a mong the upper classes and, at the same time, for staging agrarian rituals a round maypoles in the countryside . By suffusing older, upper-class national icons with meanings rooted in village traditions, Polish peasants were able to coopt national imagery for themselves and esta blish a basis on which they could participate in national rituals; upper-class Poles would perform a A) and progressing to the u rban bou rgeoisie ( stage B ) . See M i roslav Hroch, Social Precondi­ tiolls of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Allalysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cam bridge, 1 9 8 5 ) , 1 4-30. Anthony

D . Smith has stressed the im portance of premodern cultural elements, including myths, mem­ ories, symbols, and val ues in defining modern nations, in The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1 9 8 6 ) . 8 The prototypical work o n capitalist transition a n d t h e spread o f nationalist movements i s Hroc h , Social Preconditions. See a l s o Ernest Gel lner, Nations and Nationalism ( Ithaca, 1 9 8 3 ) ; Karl Deutsc h , Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Founda­ tions of Nationality ( Cambridge, Mass., 1 9 5 3 ) ; Bened ict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism ( London, 1 99 1 ) ; and Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1 8 70- 1 914 ( Stanford, 1 97 6 ) . Y On multiple discou rses within t h e v i l l age and a l ternative nationa lisms, see Mal lon, Peasant and Nation, esp. 1 1 - 1 2 . On discursive polyphony in defi n i ng the peasantry, see Cathy A. Frierson, Peasant Icons: Representations o f Rural People i n Late Nineteenth Century Russia ( New York, 1 99 3 ) , 3-6 . 1 0 Jiirgen Habermas has argued that societies employing democratic institutions often seek to create the appearance of a shared political culture in order to mobilize the population beh ind common goals. See "The Eu ropean Nation-State-Its Achievements and Its Limits," i n Mapping the Nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan ( London, 1 99 6 ) , 2 84-9 3 . lI On t h e cultural ambiva lence of modern nations, see H o m i K. Bhabha, " Introduction: Nar­ rating the Nation , " in Nation and Narration, ed. Bhabha ( London, 1 9 94 ) , 1 -7.

The Roots of Nationalism in the Polish Village

5

similar discursive sleight of hand with symbols from folk culture. 1 2 Hid­ den behind the amalgam, then, a re competing subcultures vying for repre­ sentation in the dominant discourse . 1 3 In this submerged heterogeneity I believe the peasant national agenda can be found. Civil Society and the Creation of a Rural Public Sphere

To peel back the layers of meaning beneath the dominant symbols of mod­ ern nations, I have examined the public discussions within which many of these symbols evolved. National icons took on particular meanings for peasants, and consensus was reached on their significance via interactions within rural political life . " Politics " in the peasant context consisted of public debate in a wide variety of contexts, from casual meetings on the village green to sessions of official associations, political i nstitutions, and, perhaps most important, interactions within popular culture. Vil lage soci­ ety witnessed the open exchange of ideas via informal gatherings at the local tavern and chats during winter flax-spinning sessions. These regular and remarkably ritualized discussions formed part of an expanding rural civil society. 1 4 As clubs, reading circles, and, eventually, election commit­ tees arose i n the countryside, opportunities for public debate, compro­ mise, and consensus formation widened further. Participation i n the insti­ tutions of rural civil society helped peasants develop strategies and goals for use in more formal political bodies such as the Viennese Reichstag and Reichsrat, the Galician provincial diet (Sej m ) , and the organs of the Peas­ ant Party ( Stronnictwo Ludowe ) . 1 5 Each forum provided a n important 12 This two-way transformation of national cultu res is discussed i n Dirk Hoerder and I nge Blank, " Ethnic and National Consciousness from the Enlightenment to the 1 8 80s," in Roots of the Transplanted, vol. 1 : Late Nineteenth-Century East Central and Southeastern Europe, ed. Hoerder and Blank (Boulder, 1 9 94 ) , 43-46. 1 3 On the ways i n which opposing interests can make conflicting claims through cultural practices, see E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York, 1 9 9 3 ) , 1 -6 ; and Suzanne Desan, " Crowds, Community, and Ritual in the Work of E. P. Thompson and Natalie Davis, " in The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berke­ ley, 1 9 8 9 ) , 47-7 1 . 14 O n the concept o f civil society, see John Keane, Democracy and Civil Society: On the

Predicaments of European Socialism, the Prospects for Democracy, and the Problem of Con­ trolling Social and Political Power (London, 1 9 8 8 ) ; Keane, ed., Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London, 1 9 8 8 ) ; Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Ca mbridge, Mass . , 1 99 2 ) ; and Arato, Civil Society, Constitution, and Legitimacy (Lanham, Md., 2000 ) . 15

Works o n Polish populism a n d the rise of t h e Peasant Pa rty include Stefan K ieniewicz, The

Emancipation of the Polish Peasantry (Chicago, 1 96 9 ) ; O lga Narkiewicz, The Green Flag:

6

Introduction

arena of contested meaning, a locus of conflict and debate, in which differ­ ent and opposing publics maneuvered for space. Participation in these civil institutions helped create the preconditions for the formation of a rural public sphere . Voluntary association in clubs, societies, and cultural organizations in the countryside a llowed for the open exchange of opinions and the formation of consensus within village communities. Jiirgen Ha bermas has argued that these opinion-forming bodies, existing outside of formal politics, are crucial to the functioning of democracies since they bring pressure to bear on the political process as an a lternative to electoral participation. 1 6 I expand the notion of public sphere beyond the urban and bourgeois roots Habermas envisions to take account of rural interactions and peasant actors, including those denied suffrage rightsY The open discussions that grew out of the burgeoning associational l ife in the Polish countryside, including a l ively peasant press and an extensive agricultural circle movement, helped to create local pub­ lic spheres that would eventually be brought in closer interaction with the national, Polish-speaking cultural and political arena . At the same time, negotiation of national agendas took place in the realm of popular culture. Public entertainment, including festivals and parades, the performance of songs, ballads, and folktales, and the presentation of plays and popular spectacles, provided regular opportunities for villagers to articulate and debate symbols of group identity. One of the outcomes of this public debate was the formation of a lead­ ership cadre in the village consisting of peasants who perceived themselves to be harder working, better educated, more pious, and ultimately more patriotic than their fel lows . The moral hierarchy this demarcation created estab lished the lines a long which much public contestation would occur in the village. Those who were " i n " the el ite camp struggled constantly to de­ fine themselves against the masses in the " out" group. Nationalist l anguage was increasingly substituted in this negotiation as a code for a whole bas­ ket of rural priorities. The "nation " for the subset of " elite " villagers came to represent " progressive " values, while for the vast maj ority of i l literate,

Polish Populist Politics, 1867-1970 (London, 1 97 6 ) ; and K rzysztof Dunin-W�sowicz, Dzie;e Stronnictwa Ludowego w Galic;i (Warsaw, 1 95 6 ) . 16

Jii r gen H a bermas, Structural Transformation o f the Public Sphere: A n Inquiry into a Cat­

egory of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1 99 0 ) . 17 Geoff Eley h a s a rgued persuasively for expanding t h e contexts in w h i c h Habermas's idea of public sphere can be embodied. See his " Nations, Pu bl ics, and Political Cultures: Placing H a bermas i n the N i neteenth Century, " i n Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contempo­ rary Social Theory, ed. Nicholas B. D i rks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner (Princeton, 1 9 94 ) , 2 9 7-3 3 5 .

The Roots of Nationalism in the Polish Village

7

" superstitious " peasants, images of the nation remained closely tied to folk legends and a set of premodern beliefs . These multiple meanings of the Polish nation colored the peasantry's understanding of public interac­ tions as they began to take part in modern political processes at the turn of the twentieth century. Village life was j oined to outside communities by linkages that helped encourage broader associations in the countryside. I S Even before emanci­ pation, peasants enj oyed ties to cultural and economic life beyond the parish. Patterns of influence, from trade networks to kinship associations and larger religious communities, extended beyond the individual village. This study begins with the abolition of serfdom in 1 84 8 , not because the integration of Polish peasants into larger communities began with their emancipation, but beca use this new status changed the nature of that i nte­ grative process . 19 Emancipation altered the power relations separating lord from peasant, creating the possi bility of alliances across social classes. Villagers became the focus of " Polonization " efforts by the Polish upper classes who set out to attract their support for national l i beration move­ ments . The half century following emancipation in Poland saw the " mobi­ lization " of Polish peasants behind a national agenda, but the nature and content of that nationa l proj ect were to a great extent the work of peas­ ants themselves, based on networks and agendas established within the vil lage. Studies of peasant movements have tended to focus on f1ashpoints i n vil­ lage society where relationships between the village and the state break down.20 Yet change i n village society comes in small i ncrements as well as in convulsions. Even when not faced with desta bilizing changes, peasant 1 8 The classic study on the i nterdependency between " great" and " l i ttle" traditions is Robert Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization (Chi­ cago, 1 95 6 ) . See also P. M . Jones, Politics and Rural Society: The Southern Massif Central, c. 1 750- 1 880 ( London, \ 98 5 ), 3 1 3-27; Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 8 9-90; and Prasenjit Duara, Culture , Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1 900-1 942 ( Stan ford, 1 9 8 8 ) ,

1 94-2 16. , 9 Sociologists Wi l l i a m Thomas and Florian Znaniecki have a rgued f o r a sha rper break

between the preemancipation village social structure and relations among emancipated pea s­ ants, stressing the i ncrease in i n formation flow a fter l i beration that they believe sharpened conflict with i n the Polish countryside. See their seminal study, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 2 vols. (Ch icago, 1 9 1 9 ) . 20 Classics in this very rich genre include Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries ( New York, 1 95 9 ) ; James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in South­ east Asia ( New Haven, 1 9 76 ) ; Teodor Shanin, The Roots of Otherness: Russia's Turn of Cen­ tury, 2 vols. ( New Haven, 1 9 8 6 ) ; and Eric R. Wol f, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1 96 9 ) .

8

Introduction

societies experienced a process of dynamic social and political change, and vill agers engaged in active debate a bout their common futures.21 Much of the work of nation forming occurred during this process of organizing civil l i fe and negotiating issues of concern to the village community. While revolutions and uprisings provide momentary consensus and serve to mob ilize l arge numbers of relatively inactive individuals behind national goals, the analysis of day-to-day interactions between moments of tumult offers us a more nuanced appreciation of peasant politics. Nested Identities

Nationalism was by no means the only identity available to newly emanci­ pated peasants in the former Polish territories, nor was a psychological attachment to " Poland " preordained. Identification with the Austrian state, the Catholic Church, the native region, and with " peasantness" itself remained strong, even as a sense of national consciousness was honed in the village. The Austrian crown had long attracted the loyalty of its rural subjects by promulgating laws designed to protect them from the worst abuses of their gentry landlords.22 Peasant attacks on gentry insurgents during the 1 846 revolt were but one violent reminder of long-standing vil­ l age support for Vienna . The a bolition of serfdom by the Austrian emperor rather than at the initiative o f Polish landholders helped strengthen this peasant attachment to the crown. Polish-speaking villagers remained faithful to the memory of royal protection long a fter the end of serfdom, sending petitions and delegations to Vienna to appeal to the emperor and referring to themselves as the " emperor's people" even in the early years of the twentieth century.23 The close affinity Polish peasants felt for the Austrian crown was rein­ forced by their attachment to the Catholic Church. Religious practice clearly differentiated Polish speakers from the Uniate ( Greek Catholic ) Ruthenians and Jews with whom they shared the villages of central and eastern Galicia. The church would become a site of contestation during the battle for peasant mobilization, pitting the Austrian state against Pol21

F o r access to t h e l iterature on peasant mobil ization, including t h e debate between break­ down theories of peasant engagement and mobi l i zation or solidarity theory, see Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly J r. , eds., Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780-1914 ( Madison, 1 98 3 ) , 1 2- 1 6 . 22 Regarding the reforms of serfdom under Empress Maria Teresa and Emperor Joseph II, see Stefan Inglot, ed., Historia chlopow polskich, 3 vols. (Warsaw, 1972 ) , 1 6 1 -65, 1 8 1-99. 2.l Sociologist Franciszek Bujak was surprised to receive this response to his i n q u i ry " Who are you?" (Kim iestd?) when conducti ng su rveys among the peasants of Zmi�ca, a v i l lage i n t h e Carpathian footh i l ls, i n 1 90 1 and 1 902. Franciszek B u j a k , Zmiqca: WieS powiatu Limanowskiego. Stosunki gospodarcze i spoleczne ( Cracow, 1 90 3 ) , 1 3 1 .

The Roots of Nationalism in the Polish Village

9

ish agitators in a struggle over the symbolic meaning of church associa­ tion. Battle lines were not cleanly drawn i n this conflict over identities, however, as parish priests found themselves caught between their rural constituency and the more conservative, pro-Austrian church hierarchy. Less formal but no less compelling were associations villagers continued to feel as rural producers. The legacy of serfdom eroded only very slowly, and the social d istance peasants felt from their former landlords remained wide. Even as late as 1 907, Jakub Bojko could write a bout the " two souls" of the Polish peasant-the soul of the serf and the soul of the free man-which competed for attention in a lmost every field of peasant endeavor.24 Until the electoral reform of 1 907, villagers continued to vote in a separate curia, and their social status had to be recorded on every offi­ cial document from school matriculation records to imperial petitions. Finally, local and regional identities continued to play a role in peasant attitudes and behavior even as they were integrated into larger networks of influence. The Carpathian gorale ( mountaineers), for example, enj oyed a long tradition of organized violence and rebellion against their lords, while the "crakowian " peasants from the district around the old capital per­ ceived themselves as more "civilized " and sophisticated than their more " provinci a l " cousins. These regional, extraregional, and social attach­ ments helped nuance the ways in which peasants filtered the possibility of national a ffiliation, creating a pattern of nested identities.25 The develop­ ment of a Polish national consciousness was thus neither natural nor auto­ matic. Indeed, extraregional associations such as loyalty to empire, church, or nation appear to have ebbed and flowed depending on the cir­ cumstances of the moment and the utility of a particular attachment. Peasantness as a Historical Category

There has been a great deal of debate among anthropologists and social h istorians about the nature of peasant society and the definition of " peas­ ant. " 26 The sel f-identity of Polish smallholders in the nineteenth century was a question l ess of objective definition than of the specific socia l and cultural realities of postemancipation Poland. Prior to emancipation and 24

Jakub Bojko, Dwie dusze (Warsaw, 1 94 9 ) . Prasenjit Duara discusses t h e connection between such overlapping identities a n d t h e evo­ lution of a polyphonous nationalism in Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Nar­ ratives of Modern China (Ch icago, 1 99 5 ) . The influence of local attachments and particular historical memories among peasants on modern electoral a lignments is discussed i n Jones, Politics and Rural Society, 1 07, 1 4 5-77. 26 The range of definitions of peasantness can be accessed through Teodor Shanin, Russia as a Developing Society (New Haven, 1 9 8 5 ) , 66-92; Scott, Moral Economy, 2-6 ; Wolf, Peasant Wars, xiii-xv; and Redfield, Peasant Society, 25-34. 25

10

Introduction

to a great extent thereafter, the term peasant ( ch lop in Polish) coincided with the legal status of the serf or panszczyznia k . Nonpeasant agricultural producers enj oyed the legal standing (if not always the externa l trappings ) of the gentry, or szlachta,27 and " intellectual s " such as village priests and country schoolteachers were clearly marked by their educational level and professional activities. The term " peasant" speci fically designated those who worked the land­ lord's estate in exchange for the right to farm their own small plots. Even after the cessation of the landlord's legal rights over his serfs, a deep cul­ tural chasm separated small farmers from large landholders. The mental­ ity of generations of subj ugation helped to sepa rate Polish social strata, while distinctions in legal rights, landholding patterns, and public respon­ sibilities reinforced this historic divide. D uring the half century fol lowing emancipation, Polish society continued to view former serfs and their descendants as " peasants " despite the fracturing of this social group into landless la borers and middling farmers . To be a chlop in nineteenth-cen­ tury Poland was to share certa in elements of a subculture, including atti­ tudes and customary practices inherited from serfdom.28 This status and this self-concept were not easily eroded. Neither the acquisition of large amounts of land, learning a trade, nor even migration to the city led to the complete effacing of peasant identities.29 A " peasant" in this study is thus anyone who is actively involved in working the soil as a primary occupation, or whose family and hence cul­ tural identity are attached to work on the land and to interactions within the village community.3D O bviously, the Polish " peasantry " as I have described it was not a homogenous social entity. It was also not a social " class" in the Marxian sense since its members did not share the same relationship to the means of production.3! In order to highlight this het27 O n the symbolic i mportance attached to clothing styles, a rchitecture, and furniture by

i m poverished members of the lower gentry, see Teodora Ruppertowa, "0 szlachcie drobnej ( i naczej cz,!stkowej ) , " Wisla 2 ( 1 8 8 8 ) : 754-6 1 . 28 Jan Slomka, From Serfdom to Self-Government: Memoirs of a Village Mayor, trans. William John Rose ( London, 1 94 1 ), 1 4 8-73 . 29 The i nterplay between vil lage roots and urban envi ronments long a fter peasants migrated to l a rge cities has been examined by David L. Hoffm a n n i n Peasant Metropolis: Sociailden­ tities in Moscow, 1 92 9-1 941 ( Ithaca, 1 994 ) . 30 This definition follows that of P. M . Jones, w h o h a s a rgued that economic distinctions are less i m portant than the shared forms of cultural behavior i n defining peasants. Politics and Rural Society, 8 7-8 9 . 3'

F o r an a rgument supporting t h e emergence of a coherent peasant "class" a fter emancipa­ tion, see Jerome Blum, The Elld of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton, 1 97 8 ) ,

4 3 2-4 1 .

The Roots of Nationalism in the Polish Village

11

erogeneity, I have consciously sought to flesh out divisions within peasant communities. One of my goal s is to nuance our understanding of social diversity among agricultural producers, while at the same time drawing genera l conclusions a bout peasant national ism as a whole. Galicia as Metaphor

The setting for this study is the crownland of Galicia and Lodomeria, located in the northeastern portion of the Habsburg lands.32 This south­ ernmost section of the old Polish Republic ( the western part of which was known as Malopolska or Little Poland, while the eastern section mostly comprised the Ruthenian Palatinate) was annexed to the Austrian monar­ chy in the partitions of 1 772 and 1 79 5 ; the city of Cracow itsel f was trans­ ferred to Austrian j u risdiction after the failed gentry revolt of 1 846. As the home of the ancient capital of Cracow with its historic monuments, churches, and roya l castle, Galicia held a vital place in Poles' collective memories of prepartition times . The crownland was composed of some 46 percent Polish speakers (mostly in the west with large landlords scattered throughout the east), 42 percent Ruthenians ( in central and eastern Gali­ cia ) , 10 percent Jews (concentrated in the larger towns and rural shtetlach throughout the province ) , and 2-3 percent German speakers.33 The social composition of the Polish portion of the crownland was similar to that of the Prussian and Russian partitions, with some 2-3 percent wealthy aris­ tocrats, many with loyalties to the Austrian crown, 8-1 0 percent gentry landholders, an active and growing intelligentsia, and an overwhelming m a j ority ( 80-85 percent ) of sma l l peasant farmers. Throughout the Polish lands, intellectuals and gentry farmers spent the postemancipation period attempting to mobilize workers and peasants surreptitiously behind competing political programs. Only in Galicia, however, was this competition for lower-class support open and legal . The J2 For a n overview on the role of Galicia within the Habsburg monarchy, see Piotr Wandycz,

"The Poles i n the Habsburg Monarchy, " i n Nation-Building and the Politics of Nationalism: Essays on Austrian Galicia, ed. Andrei S. Markovitz and Frank E. Sysyn (Ca mbridge, Mass., 1 98 2 ) . For the role Galician Poles played i n relations with the empire, see Peter F. Sugar, " The Nature of the Non-Germanic Societies under Habsburg Rule," Slavic R eview 22, no. 1 (March 1 96 3 ) : 1 -30. Also of i n terest is Samuel Koenig, " Geographic and Ethnic Character­ istics of Galicia , " Journal of Central Eur,o pean Affairs 1 , no. 1 (April 1 94 1 ) : 55-65 . 33

F o r controversies surrounding figures on t h e ethnic makeup of Galicia, see John-Paul Himka, Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1 98 8 ) , xxi i-xx i i i ; and Paul Robert Magocsi, Galicia: A Historical Survey and Bibliographic Guide (Toronto, 1 9 8 3 ) , 1 2 1 -2 3 . An invaluable resource for i n formation on Jewish population distribution is Bohdan Wasiutynski, Ludnosc i:.ydowska w Polsce w wiekach XIX i XX: studjum statystyane (Warsaw, 1 930), esp. 90-1 5 8 .

PolI1II

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