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| Vistula Land | |||||||||||||
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| Krai of theRussian Empire | |||||||||||||
| 1867–1915 | |||||||||||||
 Administrative subdivisions of Vistula Land in 1914. | |||||||||||||
| Capital | Warsaw | ||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
• Established | 1867 | ||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1915 | ||||||||||||
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| Today part of | |||||||||||||
Vistula Land,[1][2] also known asVistula Krai (Russian:Привислинский край,romanized: Privislinskiy kray;Polish:Kraj Nadwiślański),[3] was the name applied to the lands ofCongress Poland from 1867, following the defeats of theNovember Uprising (1830–1831) andJanuary Uprising (1863–1864) as it was increasingly stripped of autonomy and incorporated intoImperial Russia. It also continued to be formally known as theKingdom of Poland (Polish:Królestwo Polskie) until the fall of the Russian Empire.[a]
Russia lost control of the region in 1915, during the course of theFirst World War. Following the 1917October Revolution, it was officially ceded to theCentral Powers under the terms of the 1918Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
In 1831, in the aftermath of theNovember Uprising, thePolish Army, the parliament (Sejm) and local self-administration were disbanded. TheConstitution of the Kingdom of Poland was repealed and replaced by the much less liberal and never fully implementedOrganic Statute of the Kingdom of Poland. Universities were closed and later replaced by Russian-language high schools.
For a short time, the territory maintained a certain degree of autonomy. The former Kingdom of Poland continued to use the Polish currency (złoty) and theAdministrative Council retained some of its privileges (although it was directly controlled by the Russian governor Field MarshalIvan Paskevich). However, the territory's separate status was gradually eroded. The Russian ruble became the legal tender in 1841 and the customs border was abolished in 1851. Themetric system and the Polishpenal code were also abolished (the latter replaced by the Russian penal code,de facto in use since the Uprising began). TheCatholic Church was persecuted and most monasteries were closed and nationalized. In 1875, following the rules of theSynod of Polotsk of 1839, theEparchy of Chełm-Belz of the CatholicRuthenian Uniate Church disbanded itself and united with theRussian Orthodox Church.
After 1837, allvoivodeships that constituted the Kingdom of Poland were turned intogovernorates and became an integral part of the Russian administrative division, ruled directly by theRussian tsars.
After theJanuary Uprising in 1863, the former coat of arms of the Congress Kingdom was abolished. ThePolish language was banned from office and education, and the process of incorporating the Polish gubernias and theRussification of its administration was completed.
The 1867 reform, initiated after the failure of the January Uprising, was designed to tie the Kingdom of Poland more tightly to the administration structure of the Russian Empire. It divided larger governorates into smaller ones and introduced a new lower-level entity,gminas. There were 10governorates: five on the right bank of theVistula River—Suwałki,Łomża,Płock,Siedlce, andLublin—and the remaining five on the left bank:Kalisz,Warsaw,Piotrków,Radom, andKielce.
Despite the abolition of the Kingdom of Poland, thetsars of Russia retained the title "Tsar of Poland".
The territory was anamestnichestvo until 1875 and later aGovernorate-General, ruled by theNamestniks and Governors-General of Poland.
In the 1880s, the official language was changed toRussian, andPolish was banned both from official use and education.
The name Vistula Land first appeared in official documents in 1888[4] although more recent scholarship traced it back to 1883.[5]
A minor reform of 1893 transferred some territory from thePłock andŁomża Governorates toWarsaw Governorate. A more extensive 1912 reform created a new governorate—Chełm Governorate (KholmskayaGuberniya in Russian)—from parts of the Siedlce and Lublin Governorates. However this was split off from the Privislinsky Krai and made part of theSouthwestern Krai of theRussian Empire, in order to facilitate itsrussification.
TheFirst World War initially expanded Russian control of Poland after theImperial Russian Army scored a series of early victories againstAustria-Hungary on theEastern Front andoccupied Eastern Galicia. Within a year theAustro-Hungarian Army and theImperial German Army reoccupied the territory and counterattacked into Russian Poland in theGorlice–Tarnów offensive.[6] During the Imperial Russian Army's subsequentGreat Retreat, it looted and abandoned theKingdom of Poland, trying to emulate thescorched-earth policy adopted during the1812 invasion.[7][8] The Russians also evicted and deported hundreds of thousands of the area's inhabitants whom they suspected of collaborating with the enemy.[7][9][10]
As the Russians retreated, theCentral Powers occupied the area (1915); subsequently, they proposed the establishment of theKingdom of Poland. In the March 1918Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia (by then embroiled in acivil war), effectively ceded all Polish territories it had formerly possessed to theGerman Empire andAustria-Hungary.
 Governorates of theVistula Land (1867–1914) | |
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a^ Sources agree that after the fall of theJanuary Uprising in 1864, the autonomy of Congress Poland was drastically reduced. However, they disagree on whether the state of the Kingdom of Poland (colloquially known asCongress Poland) was officially replaced by Vistula Land as a province of the Russian Empire, as many sources still use the term Congress Poland for the post-1864 period. The sources are also unclear as to when the Kingdom of Poland (or Vistula Land) officially ceased to exist; some argue it ended with the assumption of control by the German and Austro-Hungarian occupying authorities; others, that it ended with the proclamation of theRegency Kingdom of Poland in 1916; finally, some argue that it occurred only with the creation of the independentSecond Polish Republic in 1918. Examples:
