Russian-Polish relations (the Pan-Slavist context)

The article emphasizes the problems of scientific and socio-political relevance. The scientific novelty of the article is to identify the correlation between the relations of Russia and Poland, on the one hand, and the evolution of the ideology of Pan-Slavism, on the other. Appearance of Russian-Polish confrontation dates back to the partition of Poland and, in connection with it, to the launch of active anti-Russian propaganda in the West by the Polish emigration. The ideas associated with the restoration of the pre-existing borders of Poland were supplemented by ideologically renewed search of the Polish identity. Polish Pan-Slavists developed an original project of the cultural and political unification of the Slavs in a common Slavonic state under the auspices of Poland, but without the participation of Russia. During the Polish uprising of 1863-1864, a fundamental work, History of Poland's Downfall, by S.M. Solovyov appeared. As a researcher of the state history he believed that the West deliberately shifted the entire responsibility for the partition of Poland to Russia. He evaluated the inclusion of the Polish lands in Russia as a salvation of the Western Slavic civilization from Germanization. This point of view, not without geopolitical overtones, was worked out in detail by the classics of Russian Pan-Slavism. N.Ya. Danilevsky offered to give the Poles a complete freedom of choice in determining their position in relation to the "elder brother" and their place in the coming Slavic community. Historian M.P. Pogodin was also confident that the inclusion of the Poles in the Slavic Union exactly means the "solution" of the Polish issue. Professor of Philology A.F. Hilferding saw the possibility of the Polish question "abolishing" by the weakening of the Polish influence in the western provinces of the Russian Empire. Military Pan-Slavists had a different point of view, more responding to the Russian government opinion. Gen. R. A. Fadeev proclaimed the massive policy of Russification as the only way to solve the Polish issue. Thus, in the second half of the 19th century the Slavic faced a paradoxical prospect of a possible resolution of the Russian-Polish conflict: Russian or Polish removal from Slavism, and, as a consequence, their own implementation of their own Pan-Slavic conception. As soon as the projects of the Russifica-tion of Poland and the Poles became frankly utopian, in the beginning of the 20th century the idea itself was completely discredited. Therefore, Russian Pan-Slavists demanded administrative-territorial autonomy for the Poles. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was accompanied by a decline of interest in Pan-Slavist slogans, identifying the priorities of national interests of the Slavic peoples over the projects of a Common Slavic unity.

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