Patriotism and sovereignty -- these two values are deeply impressed in the consciousness of Poles who for two centuries have been struggling for their independent state. This fact is among others testified by "sagas" of families distinguished for their patriotism. Their stories illustrate two essential lines, approaches or streams in the struggle for sovereignty: one is armed action, the other is a long term, steady reconstruction of the existence of the state. It is not easy to separate these two intermingled streams, one of "struggle" and the other of "persistence". For struggle gave witnesses to persistence, according to the words of a soldiers’ song that eventually became the Polish national anthem:

Poland did not perish yet

As long as we live

What the alien powers took

We’ll regain with sabres

Persistence, expressed in various forms and shapes, is also a sort of struggle.

Over decades there formed in the Polish mentality a particular ethos of freedom, present in both of the lines mentioned. Freedom became for the Poles a "sacred cause". This sacralization of striving for liberation had two justifications:

1) Striving towards sovereignty had the nature of a "Christian duty"; service to God and to the Fatherland were treated in terms of obligations towards both fatherlands, "heavenly" and "earthly". The practice of joining in one watchword "God and the Fatherland," taken over from the tradition of the free Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the XVth century, gained new justification in a Poland partitioned by three neighbor states. In the time of partitions Poles fought for their own free state, struggling at the same time against religious persecution and oppression suffered by the Catholic Church, particularly afflicted in partitions remaining under control of non-Catholic: Prussia and Russia.

2) Each of the subsequent attempts to regain independence contained strong religious elements, based on a conviction of the goodness of God who supports "the good and right cause". The fact of including religious motives set apart Polish insurrections from "Godless revolutions," as liberation movements of the XIX century were usually named after the French revolution of 1789. This made it more difficult for governments of that time, including the Holy See, to classify the Polish liberation movement. This tried to restore the established political order and to deny the legal right of the states ruling over the partitioned lands of Poland, and in this it claimed divine legitimization. Reactions to Polish insurrections were extremely diverse: from spontaneous acceptance to sharp condemnation.

The practice of joining continuous efforts to regain sovereignty with religious motives had also another dimension, namely, a conviction that Poles have a "mission" to perform among nations, the vision of Poland as a "forerunner of liberty," a conviction that Poland opposes abusive political power and lawlessness. Restitution of the Polish state was not only necessary for political balance in Europe, but was also a requirement of international justice.

The striving for liberation, so lively in the last two centuries, began when the borders of the Polish Kingdom were still formally intact, that is, at the time of the Bar Confederation (1768-1772). They related to a four year period of guerilla warfare initiated in defense of the individual rights of noblemen and of the Catholic faith. A spontaneous armed movement, quenched and resurging in various parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and anti-reformist in its foundations, played a very important role in the process of deepening and widening the awareness that Poland ceased to be a sovereign state if the Russian army was stationed on its territory. Independence began to become a primordial value and was fought for decades to come.

Especially the minor nobility, hitherto entirely dependent on mighty aristocrats and manipulated by their interests, realized the state of affairs. This fact was very important for the future liberation movement. For "brothers in nobility," especially Polish yeomen, began to move to the cities as a result of socio-economic changes and transferred there certain patterns of patriotic behavior. Moreover, the number of the nobility in the Commonwealth was considerably large. Nobility endowed with full civil rights (including the right to elect the monarch) constituted from 10 to 25 percent (as for instance in Mazovia and Podlasie) of the whole population.

Independence and sovereignty became new categories of thinking, permanently inscribed into the awareness of a considerable number of the habitants of Polish lands. One of its first effects was a reaction to the treachery of the Diet of Targowica. Poles began then an uneven struggle with the overwhelming power of the Russian army. In these struggles there participated an army recruited from members of many social strata. It was not only a traditional "levy in mass," consisting exclusively of noblemen, that defended the country.

Subsequent patriotic upheavals, mobilizing Poles for attempts to regain their sovereign state, took place under different conditions.

The generation witnessing Poland’s disappearance from the maps of Europe hardly realized that the nation could last, even for many centuries, without its proper state, and that it can reemerge from the period of enslavement with a broader awareness that Poland is a "common Fatherland".

. . .

on the altar of self-governance

burned sacrifices of generations -

an excruciating cry for liberty

stronger than death.

The dramatic story of the Legions and Napoleon’s instrumental way of treating the Poles constitute a different problem and one that we cannot analyze here. What is essential is that a desperate exclamation of Tadeusz Czacki, the later founder of the Krzemieniecki Lyceum: "Poland is already wiped off the list of nations!" was balanced by the words of a hymn of the Legions, which later was to become Poland’s national anthem: "Poland did not die yet as long as we live". Further history was determined by a drama of choice between despair and hope, continuously present over the one hundred years of existence as a nation deprived of its sovereign state.

An unclear distinction between the notion of nation and society, emerging at the time of the November uprising, was hardly legible. This was true not only for European governments of that time, whose attitude towards Poland was hostile or neutral, but also for genuine sympathizers of the Polish cause. An example is a thesis, popular at that time, that "religion is an instrument of freedom". It opposed the practice of using religion for the purpose of subduing people to the imposed state power. It corresponded to liberal Catholicism represented by de Lamennais and by its main press organ "L’Avenir," which enthusiastically welcomed the Polish insurrection. But the points of reference were different. For the French liberals the point of reference was the people, whereas in the statement of Polish insurrectionists the subject of action was the nation. This state of affairs would have its further consequences in the romantic Messianism that had a remarkable influence on the Polish ethos of liberty throughout several generations.

In 1830/1831 for ten months there persisted a sui generis self-governing form of independent state power, acting openly and plainly, with its own government, assembly of national deputies, and a regular army. Such an insurrectional status quo gained the approbation of the local Church, in spite of the objections or even later condemnations by the Holy See (Gregory XVI’s bull Cum primum of 1832). It is not important how many Polish hierarchs and priest had a negative or reserved attitude towards the uprising, or how many of them actively supported it in their statements, pastoral letters, sermons, and through expansion of religious and patriotic celebrations. What is essential is the general approval of the Polish Church for the nation’s right to self-governance, seem as grounded in Christian traditions of the past.

An insufficient perception of the social problems in striving for regaining sovereignty was one of reasons of the fall of the uprising of 1846. Initiated in the Austrian partition, this uprising was intended to spread over the whole Polish territory. Emissaries of the Polish emigrants widely propagated the cause of peasants, and the first act of the Cracowian National Government was a decree granting peasants ownership of their land. Nevertheless in this most economically neglected sector of Polish lands there burst out bloody peasant riots, known as the "Galician slaughter". Among factors shaping this reality we should mention the particular misery of the Galicians, the egoism of the majority of landowners, the low intellectual level of clergy educated in Josephian seminaries, and the exceptional perfidy of Austrian authorities. Apart from the distinct social aspect of the situation, there were also reasons of a broader nature. The reign of the "arch-Catholic" emperor did not generate to the same extent as in the other two partitions, mechanisms of self-defense against both religious and national persecutions. The way to conscious patriotism was different in this part of Polish territories, especially in the last decades when Galicia was granted wide autonomy.

The context of the uprising of 1863 was totally different from that of 1830. The later armed attempt to regain independence was undertaken after a long and sharp oppression and after a quarter of century of uninterrupted martial law. It was the moment of a certain political alleviation due to a change on the throne of Tzars and to Russia’s defeat in the Crimean war. The outburst of the uprising was preceded by an intense patriotic indoctrination.

Religious and patriotic manifestations united people and sealed the union between the Church and the nation, between the Polish identity and Catholicism. Moral pressure brought to bear on the invasive governments, as well as a broad non violence movement contained elements of ecumenism, for people of various denominations and religions marched side by side.

The need for a new armed action aiming at regaining sovereignty was not so clear as in the case of former uprisings. Young people, unknown to anybody, prompted struggle at the moment when there were perspectives of gaining numerous liberties and a far-reaching autonomy. The January uprising was directed, as it seemed, once and for all against the whole established order of partitions. In the place of imposed political power an order was proposed that would be based exclusively on the idea of a sovereign nation. The uprising burst in a moment when doubts spread as to the very possibility of regaining sovereignty by means of armed revolt.

The January insurrection, in contrast to that of November 1830, was prepared and developed in conditions of conspiracy. In 1830 and in 1831 there were no essential doubts with reference to the legality and obedience towards the insurrectional government. In 1863 there emerged the following questions: do insurrectional authorities who acknowledged their armed action as a national uprising constitute a legal representation of the nation? May they be held as a mandatory of the nation? Have they the right to appeal to abolish "the tyrannous power"? The act of joining insurrectional forces and actions was not a gesture of subordination to an openly operating institution of national power, for this remained clandestine to the very end.

Decisions to participate in struggles were personal, marked by choices that were difficult, not only from the moral, but also in a way from the religious point of view. This latter aspect was related to prohibitions, continuously repeated by the Holy See, forbidding belonging to secret plots (these restrictions pertained above all to clandestine organizations such as freemasonry). That is why during the January uprising even pastoral actions of priests (and the participation of clergy was exceptionally great) had a different character than in the case of the November uprising. Many people might have had doubts about such gestures as taking an oath of loyalty to a National Government that remained clandestine, as consecration of banners, as proclaiming insurrectional decrees from pulpits, as dispensing sacraments to "rebels who destroy public order". (This was extended by established invasive authorities, not only to those who fought in insurrectional squads, but also to those who even sympathized with the uprising.)

Finally the option for independence won, the conviction that the right to sovereignty is not contrary to Christianity. This option denied the principle of legality to the established invasive power and strengthened the religious component, so characteristic of Polish striving for liberation. But making the decisions to join the uprising was more complex as many sober minded people saw the military hopelessness of the struggle. They feared oppression that would subjugate the nation. In this uneven struggle a peculiar ethos of desperate patriotism was formed for people who:

. . .

went to fight as nobly as they could

to offer lives fulfilling their duty

whose name was simply struggle for their freedom

and to proclaim that POLAND DID NOT DIE YET!

The fullest personification, a symbol of the generation of the January uprising was Romuald Traugutt -- the last leader and dictator of the uprising -- a Christian of great caliber, who sacrificed himself for the cause of independence.

. . . liberty . . .

is something we discover always anew

as a gift

that comes

and as a strife

of which we never have enough.

Strife, related to the incredibly strong love of freedom, meant not only armed attempts repeated in every generation, but also the already mentioned stream of persistence.

Continuous attempts to destroy the Polish identity and the distinct character of Polish lands both in the Austrian (till the period of autonomy) and in the Prussian partition, even if they were brutal, retained however some appearances of legality. The worst was the situation, under the Russian reign, of total autocracy (samodierzshavie). The Tzar joined in his hands the secular and the religious power, he located himself above the law. We can put an equation mark between total autocracy and lawlessness. The most drastic persecutions bred the most acute resistance. This was either direct, expressed in conspiratorial actions or even in fighting, or functioned as if subcutaneously, in various actions within a frame of apparent legality. Experiences of self-organization and of arranging underground actions acquired under alien governments proved to be useful during the second World War. In the field of education and self-education they bore fruits also after the war, and occurred in new forms in the time of the martial law after December 13, 1981.

The main stream of persistence ran along the lines of neighborly, familial, and religious connections. In preserving Polish identity and in deepening its awareness Polish customs played a great role, differentiating between "us" and "them". Families of landowners or of noble descent, settled in towns, cultivated customs of family, social, and religious life as their distinctive identifying feature. For peasants it was above all their folk customs, the mores of their fathers. The extent to which "Polish custom" included a specific codex of ethical conduct is testified by the fact that a correlate of the expression "family custom" was the expression "old Polish virtue," denoting a deep sense of human dignity. There was a common conviction that the Polish custom or style of life is in accord with Christianity. Mores regulated life from cradle to coffin, influenced relations of family clans, and were embedded into the rhythm of farm work and of the seasons. They were accompanied -- or rather indissolubly associated -- with rich religious mores of agricultural type, joining the secular calendar with that of liturgy. Mores were important both for social layers profiting from the written culture, in which the literary tradition played an important role, and for the much broader strata enjoying only oral culture. They were commonly respected as a significant discriminative factor.

It is characteristic that the number of people who, having suffered such long lasting and various forms of enslavement, yielded to denationalization and willingly renounced the moral heritage of their fathers were very scarce and on the margin of the society. The groups of elites that consequently assimilated foreign customs and culture were not very numerous. It is significant, moreover, that fascination with foreign culture stood in principle in no relation to the cultural influence of the invaders ruling over partitions.

In this persistence in maintaining Polish identity in partitions an important role was played by the Catholic Church. There were no theocratic tendencies in Poland, but the clergy was treated with respect. In the time of enslavement the clergy was controlled, pressured, and oppressed, and the hierarchy of the Church was to a great extent made dependant on the invasive regimes. In spite of that, the clergy generally opted for the nation. Despite the weakness of some people in the Church there was no process of dechristianization on the Polish lands, so characteristic of the XIXth century Europe. Poles remained faithful to their traditional religiosity with its wide scope of customs and mores. In the country torn up between three neighboring powers, the Church was the only official public Polish institution existing in all three partitions that, in spite of all decisions and pressures, retained the right to gather people and to speak to them in Polish. In a society in which the ability to read and write was had by only about 30 percent of the people there was exceptional significance to common, communal religious acts: singing, prayer, events gathering people coming from all social layers, moral direction given in confessionals to duties towards the Fatherland, as well as the national ethos, incessantly transmitted from pulpits, even if in a camouflaged form. Many patriotic elements were included in religious rites, especially in paraliturgical ceremonies, rooted in a rich Polish tradition. Moreover, in decisive moments the clergy supported acts of struggle for independence. Important here was not their immediate participation in attempts of regaining freedom, but rather the mentioned practice of administering sacraments, absolution, and Holy Communion to those who went to struggle, even if they were "conspirators and rebels". This meant, in a way, granting a religious sanction to the cause of freedom, based on a conviction about the connection existing between religion and the just cause, concretely the indispensable right of the nation to sovereignty.

The relocation of the main focus of national life in the sphere of private life, the creation of barriers protecting against invasion by whatever was alien, hostile, and imposed -- all these factors caused that in generations "born in slavery and put in chains in their cradles" (A. Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz) the family became the main pillar of Polish identity. As the nation lacked its proper public life, whatever was going on in the sphere of family, home, neighborhood, and private life had a strong -- we may say public -- reference to the life and cause of the nation.

As the process of industrialization was retarded on Polish lands, a special role in "persistence" was played by two types of families related to their land: peasant and landowner. Peasant families, in the painful process of liberation from feudal bonds and obligations, took more and more roots in their land, holding it to be their sacred patrimony. Their strength lay in their unusual determination to persist and in a gradually acquired awareness of their personal dignity and rights. Patriotism was bred here by the experience of "being at home" in terms of religion and neighborhood, by a conviction that "we have been living here for a long time," and that their fathers’ patrimony is a part of a larger unity, the Fatherland.

Families of minor nobility and yeomen living in little manors developed a certain model of being a pillar of Polish patriotism. The mores cultivated in them, in the course of migration to the cities, were transferred to emerging layers of intelligentsia and of minor bourgeoisie.

The times of partitions generated a type of "genuinely Polish family" that, irrespective of social status (many families, as an effect of oppression and economic changes, were subject to pauperization), had considerable ability for self-defense. Its main task was to educate for the future freedom and to unite its members around what -- in the language of our XIXth century ancestors – was called "our sacred cause". Especially strong here was the sense of heritage and of the duty to transmit values held primary. One of main duties was "persistence on the land of our fathers".

In this patriotic formation, we cannot overestimate the formational functions of the Polish home, this "family nest" that protected and immunized against violence. The family home since early childhood put its members into the rhythm of religious life, in moral obligations, formed the need of service for the Fatherland, transmitted "national knowledge and wisdom" (including mores, national songs and history, Polish literature). From their homes Poles inherited a certain codex of moral obligations, constituting a kind of "dowry" for their whole life, but also a certain burden, for it meant a barrier separating two worlds: one’s own, familiar and Polish, and the other, alien and imposed. The latter was seen as depraving and aggressive, the world that had necessarily to be confronted. Under the threat of loss of one’s identity, it was not allowed to familiarize, to entangle, or to identify with it. Allowing for the necessary points of contact (such as schools and offices ruled by the invadors), Poles were obliged to return always to their compatriots, to serve them, to lead a life deserving the name of a "righteous Pole". This was, therefore, a model of self-defense, a model of a "home fortress".

A "fortress home," being a treasury of certain patterns of behavior and a means of transmission of certain types of sensibility, was a "fortress" only toward elements recognized as "alien". For everything that was "ours," on the other hand, it remained entirely open. It promoted various forms of formal and extra-organizational contacts (so difficult to control for the police), as well as family, neighborly, and social relations. It had significant influence on the process of shaping the Polish public opinion. Thanks to family traditions Poles maintained the autonomy of national life in the private, personal, and individual sphere; the family was the most essential place for the transmission of the patriotic ethos. Education in fidelity to "our own heritage" entailed idealization of the history of the nation according to slogans such as "Blood, Honor, Fatherland," "struggle for your and our freedom," "every threshold will be our fortress". Transmission of the family tradition was woven with sagas full of heroism and knightly deeds, often illustrated with examples taken from lives of closer and more distant relatives. It is characteristic that a similar transmission in families goes on to this day, enriched by subsequent generations. Furthermore, "Polish knowledge and wisdom" was enlarged through clandestine education, in towns as well as in the country. Young people were taught reading and writing in Polish, elements of the history and geography of their native land, catechismal truths, Polish songs and mores. On higher levels, in numerous groups or circles of self-education students completed their knowledge in the area called "knowledge of the native land". How dangerous this "diversion" was for authorities imposed by the intruders is testified by the fact that for instance in the Prussian or especially in the Russian partition underground educative activity was punished as "high treason". In comparing the number of persons oppressed for conspiracy and fight against the invadors and the number of those who were engaged in "handing on the torch," who knows which of these would be greater in number?

In cultivating patriotic attitudes an exceptional role was played by women. A specific trait of Polish society in the time of partitions was the shortage of male elites, both moral and intellectual, for they were decimated practically in every generation by armed acts, exile, deportation, prisons, as well as by political and -- at the end of the XIXth century -- economic emigration. In this situation women, living in "home shelters," less involved in necessities imposed by a hostile and imposed way of life in the partitioned Poland, became guarantees of inner autonomy of the Polish home. That is why the Polish society to a great extent owes its "persistence" to Polish mothers. A great number of biographical testimonies confirms that "on their mother’s knees" young generations received religious and patriotic formation, rudimentary and sufficient for their whole life. It was in principle an exigent formation, permeating children with the sense of duty towards their nation, teaching them fidelity to values and readiness for sacrifice.

You will have to wrestle, boy

With yourself, with life, with people

And you must not lie to God

Nor fall down from a single punch.

You will have to weigh, to serve

To keep quiet, suffer, struggle

To destroy what you love

To raise it in other ways!

Such education, passed from one generation to another thanks to such a significant role of women, yielded fruits also in the nearest future. It is difficult, for example, to imagine how without this there would have been possible the survival of the nation during the second World War, the organized resistance of the whole society, or the functioning of the underground state. All this would be impossible without the continuous participation of mothers, sisters, daughters. This resistance contrasted with smoking crematory stoves and with the mouths of executed Poles sealed with plaster by their oppressor who could not stand their cries: "Poland did not die yet!". The Nazi invadors had less respect for women than authorities ruling Poland in the time of partitions, for they were subject to the same Nazi extermination as men.

Polish patriotism and the corresponding educational actions shaping public opinion -- in spite of all possible resentments against oppressors and invadors -- treated with hostility the apparatus of power, but not the neighboring peoples living in the invasive states. The formation that young generations received in their family homes highlighted the sense of solidarity with all those who struggle for freedom. Identification with the liberation strivings of other peoples or nations was one of reasons for the fact that in spite of many decades of enslavement and fight for protection of Polish identity, nationalism (unlike patriotism) in its sharp forms was alien to Polish mentality and aroused negative associations. That is why it is entirely erroneous to equate with nationalism the love of country, of Fatherland, and of freedom for which so many sacrifices were made.

Just one your word, O Lord of mighty thunders

Might resurrect us from the dust of slavery

And if we deserve your punishment, O Lord

Turn us in dust, but dust that will be free!

Before your altar we carry our plea

Give us back our free Fatherland, O Lord!

A long lasting intertwining of the stream of struggle and the stream of persistence, actual to this day, was based on an unbeatable conviction about Poles’ indispensable right to a sovereign existence. In this short sketch we could touch only upon some of the many complex problems and delineate the question of fusion of patriotism with religious attitudes, so difficult to understand for observers from outside.

Even if in our great historical tradition the idea of nation as a subject of state and law, the idea of civil community, was always vivid, yet the long period of lack of sovereignty made it, in a way, distant and sublime, reducing it to some kind of theoretical speculations. Nevertheless, this idea was the basic reason for rejecting the legitimacy of imposed political authorities, both in the XIXth and in the XXth century. Due to historical conditions the main efforts and energy of Poles focused on the cultural and ethnic community and, by the same token, on the question of survival of national identity. It remained obvious that the national community has the right to a sovereign state. But the long lasting dependance on alien nations resulted in the fact that, irrespective of all our appreciation of freedom, creativity in the domain of forms of state and law is to a lesser extent a feature of our national consciousness than is the case of Western countries.

The experience of our own state in the period between the wars was short, and was subsequently deformed and suppressed by the communist regime. Yet in the collective consciousness there remained the heritage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and of struggles for the independence of our Fatherland. What was preserved was awareness that only the nation is the mandatory of power and that it has a duty to resist illegitimate and imposed governance and to build itself. The key problems remaining for Poles were the problem of liberty and the problem of power mandated by the society.

. "Aspetti nazionali e universali della religiosita patriotica Polacca," in: The Common Christian Roots of the European Nation. An International Colloquium in the Vatican, Florence, 1982, pp. 1077-1085.