The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-23 00:00:00

THE INSURRECTION IN POLAND.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
GALICIAN-VOLIIYNIAN FRONTIER, June 11.

The first act of the Polish insurrection in the
Ruthenian provinces is at an end, and the fall of the
curtain leaves the Polish insurgents in those regions
in a very helpless state ; or it may be said that the
race between the Polish National Government and
the Imperial Government of Russia for the goodwill
of the Ruthenian peasant has been run, and has been
won with ease by the latter. It is impossible to
prove that companies of Russian soldiers did not, as
has been said, pass over to the side of the insurgents
during some one of the very unimportant encounters
that have taken place in Volhynia, but I am sure
that no Pole who has lived in Volhynia of late years
will believe such an assertion. The Russian police at
Moscow had only to tell the Moscow workmen, 18
months ago, that the students of the University were
Poles, with bad intentions towards the Emperor, in
order to get them beaten and wounded as the real
Poles of Livonia were wounded the other day by
the raskolnikt. Certainly the Russian soldiers do not
love the Poles any more than the Russian workmen
and peasants love them.

If the Russian (Rosszani) or Ruthenian (Russini)
peasants had been fighting on the side of the insur-
rection, it is just possible, though not at all likely that
some Russian soldiers might have objected to fire
upon the newly liberated serfs, who are claimed as
brothers both by Russians and Poles, though they do
not seem to feel that they have hitherto been treated
as such on either side. But the peasant who is called
Russian by the Russians and Ruthenian by the
Poles,.and who is accustomed to hear both names
applied to him with perfect indifference, has shown
that his sole wish is to be allowed to cultivate his
garden in peace, and that, if his peace is disturbed,
he is ready to take part with those who are most
capable of restoring it. Now, in Polish poems and
songs, the " Ruthenian" peasant (which, for conve-
nience, it is well to call him, in order to distinguish
him from the peasant of Russia proper) may regret
" old times" and the Poland of the past, and look
forward with hope to the Poland of the future. But
in reality he knows nothing about the Poland of the
past, except that then, as until quite lately, and
until the Law of Emancipation published by the
Emperor Alexander came into force, he had to per-
form task work for the right of holding land, and
could be beaten by the proprietor if he did not per-
form it properly. The fact that the Polish proprie-
tors in the local dietines, and their representatives
in the national Diet, passed measures in 1791 for
abolishing serfdom throughout Poland, and that the
adoption of the constitution by which these mea-
sures were solemnly legalised was the signal for the
second dismemberment of the country,—this impor-
tant fact cannot be known to peasants who for the
most part are unable to read, and who are not al-
lowed to receive instruction of any kind except in
the Russian language, and from teachers appointed
by the Russian Government. I know several in-
stances of proprietors both in the Ruthenian pro-
vinces and in the kingdom getting into trouble for
having formed evening classes for their servants
and peasants without
-the permission of the officials.
In the Kingdom, however, permission to establish
Polish schools may be obtained under certain con-
ditions—the first of which is that the teacher shall
not be chosen by the person to whom the school
belongs. In Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine,
Polish schools cannot be formed under any cir-
cumstances, and a friend of mine residing in one
of these provinces has now an action pending
against him because he employed a Polish master
to teach his own domestic servants to read
out of Polish spellingbooks.
What must the feeling of dependents be who find
that their superiors do not enjoy the smallest
liberty of action, and that they are at the mercy of
the first petty official or spy who likes to inform
against them and get them punished, even for per-
forming the most meritorious deeds? Those de-
pendents who have been personally in contact with
the proprietors feel for them—and for themselves—
and have proved their readiness to fight on their
behalf; but this sympathy seems b be confined to
the house servants and to the stewards, forest-
keepers, and other persons occupying responsible
positions on the estates. The peasants appear only
to consider that the Czar is omnipotent, and that
their proprietor is as much his slave as they are,
though not so loyal a one.
As to the emancipation question in modern times,
the peasants have not been told that the Polish pro-
prietors were the first to respond to the appeal for
adhesion and co-operation made by the Emperor
to the nobility of the Russian Empire, when the
project of emancipation was first announced, and
that her Majesty publicly thanked them for their
support, when he had nothing but reproaches to
address to the nobility of MOSCOW. On the con-
trary, they are taught to believe that for the
long-continued evils of serfdom they have only
to thank the proprietors, and that for the re-
cent improvement in their condition they are in-
debted solely to the Emperor. The Sovereign
who to the Polish nobility is a tyrant, is regarded
by the Ruthenian peasantry as a liberator, and it is
not likely that the latter will ever be induced to take
up arms against him. The Poles know that the
peasants of Galicia have the highest veneration for

the Emperor of Austria, that in the purely Polish,
as well as in the Ruthenian half of the province, they
have forgotten their own name, and no longer call
themselves Poles, but " s," and that even
now, when there is no insurrection in Galicia, they
arrest insurgents on their way to the Kingdom and
to Volhynia. Why, then, should they imagine that,
the Ruthenians of Volhynia and Podolia, after 70
years' contact with Russia, are better Poles than
the Galicians ? The Russians are, at least, of kin-
dred race, and have nearly the same customs and
mode of life as the Ruthenians, and bring with
them a language which the Ruthenian peasantry
can understand up to a certain point—beyond which
no language would be very intelligible to them ;
whereas the German soldiers and officials of Austria
speak a tongue of which the Ruthenian and Polish
peasants of Galicia can make nothing, and which
they hold in abhorrence. At the present moment,
although all the civilisation of the Ruthenian pro-
vinces is Polish, the Ruthenian peasantry, who as
serfs never can have had any feeling of indepen-
dence, are as much like Russians as they can well
be. It is not flattering to them to say so, nor is it
any compliment to the Russians either. To say
that soldiers behave like Ruthenian peasantry, or
Ruthenian peasantry like Russian soldiers, comes to
about the same thing. Without discipline, and
excited and stimulated to violence and plunder,
soldiers and peasants behave in Russia and Poland
as they behaved in Spain during the war of inde-
pendence, and in France during the revolution, and
as under the same circumstances they would behave
almost everywhere. The worst and most unpar-
donable criminals are the Generals and officials who
tolerate the excesses committed under their eyes,
and who in many instances have even provoked and
directed them.

For some time past the unhappy rustics who till
the ground in Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine,
and who resemble the peasants of Polish romance
about as much as the peasants in Balzac's Scenes de
la vie de champagne are like those of Watteau's pic-
tures, have been objects cf great interest to Russian
and Polish publicists. How proud, how much " too
happy" they would be if they only knew what
beautiful articles have been written about them !
['hey have been proved on ethnological principles to
be Russians and on historical principles to be Poles,
and the contrary and also the converse ; but they
have not been consulted personally as to their notion
of patria, and, judging them by their late actions,
it seems to me that they may fairly be described as
an uncivilised race, without patriotic ideas, and set-
tled upon land which until the end of the last cen-
tury formed part of Poland, but for the last 70 years
has belonged to Russia. For the sympathy of this
race a battle has been fought, and if the comparison
be not too trivial it may be said that the struggle
between the Russians and Poles to get hold of the
Ruthenian peasant has been very like a contest be-
tween two rival omnibus conductors to gain posses-
sion of a gaping countryman who does not quite
know where either of them is going, but is assured
by both that he has only to jump in and it will be
all right, If in such cases the countryman mistrusts
both his would-be benefactors, but finally allows
himself to be carried away by the strongest, he does
just what, according to the Poles, the Ruthenian
peasant has done in the three south-eastern pro-
vinces of ancient Poland. The peasant has received
offers from Poland and offers from Russia ; but Rus-
sia has shown herself the most pressing and the
most powerful, and Russia has carried him off.
Another view of the matter is that the Ruthenian
peasant does not dislike the Russians acd very
much dislikes the Poles. I know that he ought to
hate the Russians—first, for partitioning his
country ; and, secondly, for forcing him to change
his religion. But, perhaps, he knows nothing
about the partitions; and while some of the Ruthe-
nians never left the Eastern Church at all, others
were forced to rejoin it as long ago as at the end
of the last century ; others again 30 years since, and
very few, indeed, at a time so recent as to have left
any bitter recollections in their breast as to the
manner in which the change was brought about.
If, moreover, these Ruthenians have such long me-
mories, they may have preserved tho tradition of
the union with Rome forced upon them by bishops
at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th
centuries; but it is to be presumed that they do not
see or feel any very great difference between the
Greek Church of Russia and the Greek United
Church, or they would not allow themselves to be
driven so easily, with or without sticks, from one to
the other. In the 15th century they had nothing
to do with Rome; in the 16th and 17th centuries
they were united to Rome ; in the 18th and 19th
they were disunited from Rome, and the last who
were separated (during the reign of the present
Emperor) were not separated by brute force, though
not without threats that force if necessary would be
employed. The Cossacks were too faithful and too
independent to be compelled, even by the severest
measures, to change their religion ; and no one in
the present day can imagine a village of Irish
Catholics being turned into Protestants, or of Scotch
Protestants being turned into Catholics, by any
amount of ill treatment. In short, it may be said
that the Ruthenian peasant knows nothing about
the past glories of Poland, nothing about the inten-
tion which the Poles of the last century certainly
entertained of emancipating him, and little if any-
thing about having been forced to change his reli-
gion either lately or upwards of two centuries and
a half ago. On the other hand, he knows that the
Emperor of Russia is his Emperor, that the Russian
prie _ts are his priests, and that the landed proprie-
tors whom he has been taught to hate, and whom for
a long series of years he has, perhaps, not had any
particular reason for liking, are Poles.
The Poles say that the Ruthenian peasant has
proved in Volhynia that he will side with the Poles
where the Poles are strongest, and where the Rus-
sians are strongest with the Russians. This, how-
ever, is not precisely the case. He does not attack
the Poles when he has no chance against them, and
he may, even with the cunning of his class, pretend
under such circumstances, to be well di-posed to-
wards them ; but as soon as the Russian troops
have arrived he has always joined them, and has
even welcomed them as protectors. One of my in-
formants on this point (not a Russian, or in such a
matter I should not quote his evidence) saw the
wives of the peasants in the neighbourhood of Sla-
wuta bring out food and drink to the soldiers who
had arrived to attack th© insurgents. The peasants
assisted the soldiers voluntarily, helped to capture
the Poles after they had been routed, chased them
like wild beasts in the woods, maltreated even those
who were wounded, and buried one alive—a feat
which has since been multiplied by three, and at-
tributed to the Russian soldiers, who have quite
enough to answer without that. I heard it said in
Cracow and Lemburg that Prince Roman Sangns.
zko, himself buried alive in Siberia during all his
youth, had written to St. Petersburg to demand an
investigation as to the alleged burial of wounded but
living prisoners by Russian soldiers. To believe
this, however, it would be necessary to believe that
the atrocities committed at Siawutl were really the
work of the Russians, and several who were in a
likely position to know the truth, as far as the truth
can be known, about what took place in the middle
of a wood, away from all observers except those
specially interested in keeping the ;proceedings
secret, assure me that such was not the case, and
that in, this particular instance the savages who
wounded and tortured unresisting Poles were the
Ruthenian peasantry of the place.
All regular fighting is at an end, but the peasants
have been armed, and they are ordered to arrest
and search every man or woman whom they may
suspect of carrying arms or ammunition. " When I
found that the peasants were empowered to lift up
my wife's crinoline," remarks a gentleman escaping
from actual to possible barbarism (for only a few
weeks ago the peasants had the same instructions
in Galicia as in Volhynia), 4, I thought it was time
for us to start. I took all the money I could col-
lect and all the plate, and shall go back when I
hear of an armed intervention.
The Polish National Government must have
known all along that the support of the Ruthenian
peasants of the Greek Church in the provinces in-
corporated with the Russian Empire wasnottobfe,
counted upon nearly so much as that of the Polish
peasants ofp atthrejoßtiomaenveen of
fh
thei latter Kingdom in the ‘ghas
not
and the sis

shown itself very flourishing—patriotism being, in-
deed, a kind of plant which cannot be grown and
forced at a few weeks' notice to serve a pressing
want, but must be allowed to spring up of itself
under a variety of favourable circumstances which
have never existed for the peasant in Poland. In,
Russia patriotism is replaced by a feeling of deep.
veneration and devotion for the Czar. This senti-
ment, for practical purposes, is a good substitute for
the other, and at least makes the Russian peasant
ready to sacrifice himself for his country, of which
the Czar is the personification. Tho enemies of the
Czar are his enemies, whereas the enemies and de-
stroyers of Poland are regarded by the Polish pea-
sant either with indifference or, as in Galicia and in
part, if not the whole, of Ruthenia, with absolute
devotion, akin to that felt by the Russian peasant
towards the Power which for centuries has " up-
held" his native land. In one district in Volhynia in
which the insurrection made its appearance, and in
which the insurgents " took" a town—that is to say,
they entered it when there were no Russian soldiers
there—the peasants complained bitterly that the in-
surgents had removed their portrait of the Emperor
from the " Chancellery of the Volost " (a " volost
being a group of villages), and made a target of it.
I do not know whether they felt the indignity
offered to their Sovereign—and we should only de-
ceive ourselves if we were to imagine that they
doubt for one moment the legitimacy of his way—
but they at least regretted their picture, and one of
them said within the hearing of a friend of mine,
" They make all sorts of promises, and the first
thing we see them do is to destroy our property."
Of course the Poles had no wish or thought of de-
stroying the property of the peasants, but they
know that is what the Russians desire the peasants
to believe concerning them, and they must have
been mad to commit an aspect of truth. The insur-
gents take from the peasants a real picture on a gilt
frame, and all they give them in return is a docu-
ment in gold letters proceeding from the Polish
National Government, and conferring upon them as
a free gift all the lands for which they have hitherto
had to perfcrm taskwork. When one of these
" golden charters" was read to an assembly of pea-
sants, and the reading produced but little effect,
they were asked whether they were not the friends
of the Poles, to which they replied with oracular
ambiguity, that " they were the friends of all who
wished them well." I should have been glad to find,
but cannot discover, that their love for Poland
was expressed anywhere, even in words, in any
warmer manner than this. In a village in Vol-
hynia, where 200 Catholic peasants had positively
promised to join the insurrection, they observed,
at the last moment, with remarkable dullness and
want of patriotism, but also, these deficiencies
being admitted, with characteristic common
sense, that if the Russians attacked them they
should know how to defend themselues, but that
if the Russians did not attair them they would
rather not fight.

After the defeat of the insurgents the peasants in
one place, to my certain knowledge, took their
" golden charters" to the Russian officials and de-
livered them up. I do not see how matter-of-fact
peasants can attach value to them anywhere, con-
sidering that the persons who gave them out had to
disappear as soon as the troops of the regular Go-
vernment came up in any force. The insurgents
fought with great bravery, according to the well-
known habit of the Po;es ; but they knew that they
were going to certain destruction unless they were
supported by the long-expected army from Galicia,
and the grand entry from Galicia into Volhynia was
not effected, and has not yet taken place, though it
is looked forward to from day to day.

JUNE 14.

A communication from the neighbourhood of
Zytomirz says that all is quiet for the present in
Volhynia, except here and there where outrages of
various kinds are committed by the peasants formed
by the Government into bodies of freebooters. Some
of the peasants are armed with muskets and fowl-
ing pieces taken from the insurgents. The others
carry sithes, so that the Russians have now their
kossyniere as well as the Poles. The last news is
that in the vicinity of Zaslaw a Russian official had
been arrested and made prisoner by the peasantry.
For this achievement 10 of the captors received 150
lashes each to teach them not to arrest the wrong
person another time. If love, not fear, were the
chief actuating feeling of the Volhynian peasant,
such conduct as this on the part of the Russian
Government might turn him against it. In the
woods about Slawuta bodies covered with
wounds and stripped entirely naked are being
picked up from time to time ; and a Hebrew
gentleman from Brody, the capital of Polish Judea,
assures me that the peasants who arrest and mal-
treat the proprietors, and murder helpless insur-
gents, are very anxious to get up a massacre of
Jews. It is certain that in one district of Volhynla
the peasants said to the officials, " We know how to
act towards the nobility, but what are the Jews to
have ?'' and they afterwards begged hard to be
allowed to treat them as they might think fit, " if
only for a couple of hours."
I have just seen a number of captive poles
in carts driven by Ruthenian peasants, who
made a swoop upon the insurgents last night
as they were crossing the frontier, and took
21 of them to the nearest Austrian post. It 03
happens that these amiable and highly civiised,
highly patriotic Slavonians of Polish Ruthenia gave
up their prisoners to men of the accursed Finnish
race. The soldiers into whose hands they fell are
Hungarians, and treat them kindly, and the pro'
prietor of the caravanserai from which I write—who
I don't think has studied either Duchinski or Lela-
wel, but is a better Pole than many who have--•
says, pointing to the Hungarians, " These are good,
honest men ; they would not injure a Pole willingly,
and we must give them cigars ;" and, pointing to
the Ruthenians, " Those Greek peasants are beasts,
they deliver up their own countrymen." The Poles
were not wounded, but were driven off smoking
familiarly and endeavouring to converse with their
Hungarian escort.
Yesterday, again, at about 15 'miles' distance
from my present quarters, I saw three Hungarian
hussars in the custody of a dozen Austrian infantrYi
who were marching in the direction of the nearest
town. These hussars had been called out, with
many others, to assist the peasants in capturing 12
carts containing arms, ammunition, and uniforms,
and on arriving at the spot where the carts stood,;
surrounded and guarded by Ruthenian " neutrals,
who had already put their Polish brethren to flight'
they gave a proof of neutrality after their fashiony'
that is to say, they rushed at the peasants and ad-
ministered to them such a beating with the flat °f
the sabre as to make them howl and run ; after
which 10 of the carts were taken quietly across the
frontier. Two only, containing boots and caps, were
brought back in solemn triumph to the Austrian
post. Of course, the peasants complained ; of course,
there was an inquiry into the affair ; and of course,
some of the offenders had to be arrested, though it
is said that the three who have been made prisoners
were not more guilty than the rest of their cony
rades.