Poles, Members of the Council of State, and the Polish Question in the Imperial Policy of Russia in the Early 1830s

摘要

The article analyzes the official and political biographies of prominent dignitaries and military leaders of Poland, including K.F. Drutsky-Lyubetsky, S.F. Grabovsky, V.I. Krasinsky, S.A. Zamoysky, A.A. Rozhnetsky, and I.L. Turkul, who became members of the Imperial Council of State after the Polish Uprising of 1830-1831, and studies domestic and foreign policy aspects of the problem of incorporation of representatives of the Polish administrative elite into supreme legislative institutions of the Russian Empire. The purpose of the article is to study the transformation of the policy towards the Kingdom of Poland from constitutionalism and autonomy under Alexander I to the system of absolute monarchical government and bureaucratic centralization in the reign of Nicholas I in the context of the participation of Poles in the activities of the Council of State and of its departments and committees. In this regard, special attention is paid to the study of the mechanisms for formalizing the Russification program of autocratic power aimed at establishing a new status of the Kingdom of Poland and a new model of its administration developed by the Committee of Affairs for the Kingdom of Poland and by the Department for Affairs of the Kingdom under the Polish Council of State, determined the role of these Polish statesmen in their activities, primarily in the creation of the Organic Statute on February 14, 1832, and of specific legislative acts that determined the administrative, socio-economic, and financial integration of Polish lands into the empire. The article identifies the socio-political reasons for the failure of Nicholas I to use the "Polish potential" for solving imperial problems. It is demonstrated that the contradictions that existed between the government program aimed at abolishing the state-legal and financial autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland and the ideological setting of the dignitaries who considered it most important to preserve the Polish national identity and independence that underlaid their unwillingness to participate in the legislative activities of the imperial Council of State.