The first option favored self-sacrifice through participating in violent military actions against the foreign troops. The November and January Uprisings in 1830 and 1863 brought temporary freedom and bloody repression, including exile or deportation to Siberia of a whole generation of Polish nobility, whose lands were confiscated while they were sent far away. This military option was documented in a multitude of patriotic songs from the period of the November Uprising in 1830-31 copied by Helena and Romuald. The second option was the road actually taken by Helena and her husband, friend of Adam Mickiewicz and a former member of the Zwiazek Filomatow, Franciszek Malewski. They lived in St. Petersburg in the heart of the Russian empire where Malewski was sent to exile, but later became a civil servant of the Tsarist government. They practiced patriotism, passed on the language and culture of Poland at home, not in public.
The first vision of Polish patriotism if faithfully implemented leads to national annihilation and to the loss of the braves and brightest future leaders of the nation. The second approach of hiding the national sentiments at home while being publicly involved in the activities of the "oppressing" nation ensures biological survival, but may lead to the loss of the nation's soul and cultural identity. Either way, the situation is extremely difficult and we can only praise those who decided to fight and die and those who decided to hide and live, while preserving Polish culture and traditions in the homes during the partitions in the heart of the Russian Empire.
The patriotic texts of songs and poems copied by Helena and Romuald Szymanowski shame those who refuse to fight, praise bravery and self-sacrifice, going to fight even against overwhelming military power of the enemy, even when the defeat is almost certain and the uprising would end in a river of blood. They are often cheerful, focus on the present joy of being alive and the future joy of having died for the nation. The same ideology of brutal self-sacrifice has survived the 19th century of partitions and uprisings, all the way through the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, now idealized and idolized as a symbol of true patriotism and valor.
Let's review one example that continued to inspire youth to sacrifice their lives on the altar of national independence. "Polska mlodziez niechaj zyje" - found on p. 3 of manuscript 956 from Muzeum Adama Mickiewicza collection at the Polish Library in Paris, was later found in a songbook published in 1919 in Poznan, and used in the Silesian Uprisings.
Polska młodzież niechaj żyje, / Nikt jej nie przesadzi,
Bo jej ręka dobrze bije, / Głowa dobrze radzi.
Pognębieni, zapomnieni / Od całego świata,
Własnych baliśmy się cieni, / Brat unikał brata.
Long live Polish youth, / No one will surpass them,
For their hands fight well, / Their heads think well.
Depressed, forgotten / By the whole wide world,
We were afraid of our own shadows, / Brother avoided brother.
Ledwie polskie bronie błysły, / Polskie wstały dzieci!
Więzy nasze, jak szkło prysły, / Złota wolność świeci.
Każdy dzień żołnierza rodzi, / Mnożą się obrońcę:
Świetna zorza – po niej wschodzi / Najświetniejsze słońce!
As soon as Polish weapons flashed, / Polish children arose!
Our bondage broke like glass / Golden freedom shines.
Every day a soldier is born, / The defender multiplies:
Great aurora - after it rises / The most brilliant sun!
Niech do boju każdy biegnie! / Piękne tam skonanie,
Za jednego, który legnie, / Stu mścicieli stanie.
Zawsze Polak miał nadzieję / W mocy Niebios Pana;
On w nas jedność, zgodę sieje, / A przy nas wygrana.
Let all rush to the battle! / Beautiful dying there,
For each one who falls, / A hundred avengers will come.
Poles always had hope / In the might of Lord's Heavens;
He sows unity, harmony among us, / And Victory is with us.
Polish text copied from:
https://bibliotekapiosenki.pl/utwory/Polska_mlodziez_niechaj_zyje/tekst Spiewnik pracownic polskich, wyd. 5 powiększone, Poznań, 1919, s. 65, 66. Translated by Maja Trochimczyk
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Is "the most brilliant sun" of national freedom a complete delusion? Are these youth encouraged to die for nothing? Is God involved in any wars? Does God personally fight on the battlefields? What would happen to a youth who failed to respond to this call to action and throwing his life away? Would that person be branded a traitor or a weakling.... a total failure?
Let's recall how Fryderyk Chopin was torturing himself in Sttugart when the news about the end of the November Uprising in 1831 reached him, while he was on the way to Paris. He recorded his distress in the so-called Stuttgart Diary, a part of an album from 1829-1831, that, quite fittingly to our story, was destroyed in 1944 after the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising by Germans; now it is only known from photographs. The young composer also poured his distress and grief out into music, to mention the Étude, op. 10, no. 12 (“Revolutionary”), the Nocturne, op. 15, no. 3, and the Funeral March from the Piano Sonata, op. 35. Chopin had left Poland on 2 November 1830, but his friends went back to fight, as he wanted to. However, he was urged on to an international career as a pianist and composer. Would we be better off if he never composed anything after turning 21 and instead returned to Poland and died in battle, as so many young men did?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWHBHeNrg4 Eugene Kissin plays the Revolutionary Etude as an encore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2vLEQno9Ks Maurizio Pollini plays the Revolutionary Etude
Thirty years later, the January 1863 Uprising was an even greater national tragedy, and the reason why so many Poles could be found on all continents: after the defeat by Russians, they were exiled to Siberia, or sent abroad without a right to come back, while their estates and property were confiscated. A contemporary painting by Jakub Rozanski illustrates the discrepancy of military power symbolically, showing Polish insurgents in red square hats, with sabres or scythes, fighting a gigantic unhuman robot, a symbol of impersonal, powerful and merciless Russian army.
As Piotr Szafranski writes: "The results were dismal. Russia military (mainly) made small work with the insurgents. Pretty much every single Commonwealth gentry family and their dog were either wholesale, or partly deported to Siberia, hanged, or sent into slave labour in Russian mines. Shock, across that society layer, was unprecedented. All females of that generation, those who managed to stay in Poland, wore, rest of their lives, black dresses, black jewelry etc." Death in battle, deportation to ice-cold Siberia, or exile were the choices faced by Polish participants of this failed Insurrection.
Let's be kind and honor their sacrifices by remembering some of their names: Wladyslaw Sosnowski, Jan Surzycki, Henryk Kossowski, Boleslaw Dekanski, Jan Rotwand, Seweryn Marcinkowski, and many other high school students who followed the path of their forefathers and gave their young lives to defend their homeland from communist scourge. Ossendowski spent time in Siberia himself, first working as chemical engineer for the Tsarist government prior to WWI, then on the run from Soviet troops during the 1917-1919 revolution. He managed to escape through India and return to Poland, but remembered and commemorated the exiles that he met as they starved and froze to death while trying to escape. An earlier example of this fate is the family depicted in the paining below.
Professor Andrzej Targowski, honorary president of the association of Children of the Warsaw Uprising and a child participant in the Uprising himself takes an exception to this idea and believes that not fighting a losing battle with an overwhelmingly stronger opponent is a better, smarter option, since those who would have died would then live, instead.
Targowski writes (email of July 12, 2022):
"Throughout the period of the People's Republic of Poland, the truth about the Uprising was covered up in order not to pour water on the propaganda mill. However, in the Third Polish Republic it was said that as long as the insurgents were alive, it was not appropriate to talk about this truth. I guess we can today and it doesn't stop us from glorifying the Uprising's heroes. But we also have to remember the civilians because they died at a rate 9 times higher than the insurgents. Innocent, scared, killed, wounded, expelled and robbed (of their possessions buried in the cellars) and without hope of living due to demolished or burnt houses and flats. Widows with children without profession and without means of livelihood. People with bad "papers", i.e. members of the Home Army. My Mother, an 85% war invalid and a graduate of the Warsaw University of Technology, received a disability pension in the amount of PLN 182 per month, because the government found out that she was in the Home Army. This was less than $2 on the black market. My Father did not return from Dora, where he sabotaged the production of V2 until the last days. He was hanged 3 days before the liberation of this camp. Why was he doing it? According to the recent trend of the Institute of National Remembrance, such defeats are a victory. Are they?"
"And what if there was no Uprising? 1) 200,000 would not have died, 200,000 would not have been wounded and seriously ill, and 600,000 would have been expelled; 2) Warsaw would not be destroyed; 3) The government would be a coalition a la Czech Republic; 4) Perhaps we could even have had the status of Finland, because Stalin was "afraid" of the Poles, i.e. that they would have blown up the Soviet Union from within, 5) the Soviet occupation by proxy would be easier to bear, and 6) the next generations of the old intelligentsia would grow up and help build Poland; this generation is missing even now, in the Third Polish Republic."
Translated by Maja Trochimczyk from the Polish. A full version of this text has appeared in Polish in "Biuletyn Stowarzyszenia Dzieci Powstania 1944" and was entitled SYNDROM POWSTAŃCZY A SAMO-ROZBIÓR MENTALNY (The Insurgent's Syndrome and the Mental Self-Analysis).
I agree with Professor Targowski's ideas. Brave insurrections and selfless sacrifice for the nation are not the best for the national interest. But in the Polish national mythology, framed by multiple failed uprisings and insurrections against much more powerful adversaries, this myth of self-sacrifice as the best option for expressing patriotism has become deeply embedded, and melded with the cult of suffering and sorrow. The latter is fed by Christian theology of the Crucified Christ, and Mater Dolorosa, the tortured son and sorrowful mother. So Poland is covered with monuments to the dead, like the cement cross reproduced above, and the monument that Ossendowski built for the children fighting in the defense of Warsaw against the Soviets in 1920.
What if we discarded this onerous burden? And focused on Life and Joy instead? One reason I'm against blind faith in military action, the cult of violence and suffering is because hate breeds hate, violence breeds violence. Only Love is the solution. If you focus on Life and appreciate being alive as the ultimate gift, you will love yourself and all around you. You will not be able to kill them, and if they kill you, you will just die, go to rest, and reincarnate again. After all, we are all ONE, members of one humanity. But the nations are important and should be preserved, with their distinct cultures, languages, histories, areas of land... It is a complex issue and I cannot solve it here, or figure out a workable solution for my own worldview.
Yet, I'm still grateful for the sacrifices of those who chose to fight, like my Mom's friend Barbara Wysocka, whose entire family perished in the Uprising and she never married. After her death, her medals went to my Mom, and after she died in 2013, I donated these medals to the Polish Museum of the Warsaw Uprising. Here is this story:
https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2022/09/remembering-polish-war-anniversaries.html
So can we have our cake and eat it too? Can we praise and thank those who died for the homeland, fighting against much stronger and better equipped enemies, while also understanding that their sacrifice was a tragic loss and it would have been much better for the nation, if they did not fight and did not die?
