What Is the “Russian Cause” and Whom Does It Serve? Russian Nationalists and Imperial Bureaucracy in the Kingdom of Poland

In the summer of 1908, a letter from Warsaw reached the Interior Ministry in St. Petersburg. The message conveyed a bitter complaint about the local governor-general Georgii Skalon. The lament's anonymous authors blamed the official of betraying the “Russian cause” (Russkoe delo) in the Polish provinces. In their eyes, Skalon had failed to “venerate the Russian name” (podniat' russkoe imia) and protect the “national interests near the Vistula.” The authors—who introduced themselves as “Russians from Warsaw”—made clear that the Kingdom was “held tightly in the hands of the enemies of Russia.” ¹ While the denunciation made it explicit that the Poles needed to be seen as “the enemies of Russia,” it also indicated that Skalon's lack of vigilance may be explained by his non-Russian origins and his Baltic-German family background. ² To make matters worse, those who were willing to fight for the “Russian cause” would be stigmatized as “Russifiers” (obrusiteli). No wonder, the letter concluded, that the situation of the “Russian community” (russkoe obshchestvo) in the Kingdom was desperate. This is why the central institutions and the minister in St. Petersburg should intervene and rescue the “dying Russian cause in Poland” (gibnushchee russkoe delo v Pol'she). ³