Polonization

Polonization
Polonization (or Polonisation; Polish: polonizacja) was the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular the Polish language, as experienced in some historic periods by the non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially under the influence of Poland.

It is relevant to view Polonization in the same context as Germanisation and Russification. 

As with other examples of cultural assimilation, it could either be voluntary or forced and is most visible in the case of territories where the Polish language or culture were dominant or where their adoption could result in increased prestige or social status, as was the case of the nobility of Ruthenia and Lithuania. 

Between the 12th and the 14th centuries many towns in Poland adopted the so-called Magdeburg rights that promoted the towns' development and trade.

Magdeburg rights (German: Magdeburger Recht; also called Magdeburg Law) were a set of town privileges first developed by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (936–973) and based on the Flemish law, which regulated the degree of internal autonomy within cities and villages, granted by the local ruler. Named after the German city of Magdeburg, these town charters were perhaps the most important set of medieval laws in Central Europe thus far. They became the basis for the German town laws developed during many centuries in the Holy Roman Empire. Even more importantly, adopted and modified by numerous monarchs including the rulers of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, the laws were a milestone in urbanization of the entire region and prompted the development of thousands of villages and cities.

City charter of Kraków, Poland's medieval capital; inscribed in Latin.

The rights were usually granted by the king on the occasion of the arrival of migrants. Some, integrated with the larger community, such as merchants who settled there, especially Greeks and Armenians. They adopted most aspects of Polish culture but kept their Orthodox faith. Since the Middle Ages, Polish culture, influenced by the West, in turn radiated East, beginning the long and uneasy process of cultural assimilation.

In the 1569 Union of Lublin, the Ruthenian territories controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were transferred to the newly formed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The non-Polish ethnic groups found themselves under the strong influence of the Polish culture and language, and the word "under" is an operative term that applies in the context of cultural hegemony.

In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.

In philosophy and in sociology, the term cultural hegemony has denotations and connotations derived from the Ancient Greek word ἡγεμονία (hegemonia) indicating leadership and rule. In politics, hegemony is the geopolitical method of indirect imperial dominance, with which the hegemon (leader state) rules subordinate states, by the threat of intervention, an implied means of power, rather than by direct military force, that is, invasion, occupation, and annexation

One the most important Marxist intellectuals associated with this concept was Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) developed the theory of cultural hegemony to further the establishment of a working-class worldview.


Settlement and assimilation
Following the Union of Brest the Ruthenian Church sought to break relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The Union of Brest, or Union of Brześć, was the 1595-96 decision of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church to break relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church and to enter into communion with, and place itself under the authority of the Pope. The hierarchs of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church of Vilnius gathered for a synod in the city of Brest and composed 33 articles of Union, which were accepted by the Pope in Rome. At first widely successful, within several decades it had lost much of its initial support, mainly due to its enforcement on the Orthodox parishes, which helped stir up strong feelings of oppression and resulting in several large-scale uprisings.

The sparsely populated lands, owned by the Polish and Polonized nobility, were settled by farmers from central Poland. The attractions, and pressures of Polonization on the Ruthenian nobility and cultural elite resulted in almost complete abandonment of Ruthenian culture, traditions and the Orthodox Church by the Ruthenian upper class.

The Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila was offered the Polish crown and became Władysław II Jagiełło (reigned 1386–1434). This marked the beginning of the gradual, voluntary Polonization of the Lithuanian nobility. Jagiełło built many churches in pagan Lithuanian land and provided them generously with estates, gave out the lands and positions to the Catholics, settled the cities and villages and granted the biggest cities and towns Magdeburg Rights. The Ruthenian nobility was also freed from many payment obligations and their rights were equalized with those of the Polish nobility.
 
Polonization attained a certain degree of subtlety under Władysław III who introduced some liberal reforms. He expanded the privileges to all Ruthenian nobles irrespective of their religion, and in 1443 signed a bull equalizing the Orthodox church in rights with the Roman Catholic church. These policies continued but the predominant reason for the cultural expansion of Polish influence was that the Ruthenian nobility were attracted by the appeal of this Western culture as well as the Polish political order that allowed them to become the quasi-autonomous rulers of the lands and serfs in their vast estates.

Some Ruthenian magnates like Sanguszko, Wiśniowiecki and Kisiel, resisted the cultural Polonization for several generations, with the Ostrogski family being one of the most prominent examples. Remaining generally loyal to the Polish state, the magnates, like Ostrogskis, stood by the religion of their forefathers, and supported the Orthodox Church generously by opening schools, printing books in Ruthenian language and giving generously to the Orthodox churches' construction. 

The very first book printed in Cyrillic script, Oktoikh (Octoechos), was published by Fiol in 1491 in Kraków.

Schweipolt Fiol (died 1525 or 1526) was a German-born 15th century pioneer of printing in Eastern Europe, founder of the Slavic Cyrillic script typography.

Fiol spent a considerable part of his life in Poland, particularly Kraków, the capital of the Polish Kingdom at the time. The city was famous for its university. The burgeoning of the arts and sciences contributed to the early emergence of book printing here: as early as 1473-1477 there was a print shop in Kraków, which published numerous theological works.

Fiol was a multifaceted and gifted man: he worked as a mining engineer and jeweler, and then took over a print shop. It is this print shop, owned by Fiol, which first published in Cyrillic such Eastern Slavic religious books as Horologion, Octoechos, and the two Triodi.

Cultural assimilation over time
However, the resistance of the Ruthenian nobility was gradually waning with each subsequent generation as more and more of the Ruthenian elite turned towards the Polish language and Catholicism as the dominant cultural context. An aspect of this was the fact that most of the educational system had gradually been Polonized, and the most generously funded institutions, being to the west of Ruthenia, the Ruthenian indigenous culture was not in a position to compete culturally and so  continued to further deteriorate. 

In the territories of  Polish Ruthenia the language of the bureaucracy started to gradually shift towards the use of Polish. By the 16th century the bureaucratic language in Ruthenia was a peculiar mix of the older Slavonic and the Ruthenian language of the majority with the Polish language. 

With the Polish influence in the mix gradually increasing it was a situation where the Polish language became, more or less, superimposed upon Ruthenian phonetics, leading to a total confluence of Ruthenian and Polish cultural norms.
 
The Eastern Rite Greek-Catholic Church, that was originally created to accommodate the Ruthenian, initially Orthodox, nobility, ended up being an unnecessary institution as, in increasing numbers, they converted directly into the Latin Rite, so the Church largely became a hierarchy without followers. 

The Greek Catholic Church was then used to split the peasantry from their Ruthenian roots, but generally unsuccessfully. For the ordinary commoners, deprived of their native protectors, they sought protection from the Cossacks who, being fiercely Orthodox, tended to turn to violence against those they saw as their enemies, particularly the Polish state and its representatives, whether they be Poles,  Catholics, or Jews.

After several Cossack uprisings and foreign invasions, the Commonwealth, became increasingly powerless to challenge domination by its neighbours, started to decline, a process which eventually culminated with elimination of Polish statehood in 1795 for the next 123 years.

While the Commonwealth's Warsaw Confederation is widely considered an example of an unprecedented religious tolerance for its time, the oppressive policies of Poland towards its Eastern Orthodox subjects is often cited as one of the main reasons that brought the state's demise.

Polonization without a state of Poland
Polonization also occurred during times when a Polish state didn't exist, despite the fact that the German and Russian empires that partitioned Poland applied their own policies of Germanization and Russification  aimed at reversing the past gains of Polonization and replacing Polish identity following the eradication of the existence of a Polish national group.

However there was little chance that such an eradication of Polish cultural identity was feasible through forceful means. It would appear that the oppressive policies of Germany and Russia reinforced the cultural forces of a national resistance.

Following the failure of the January Uprising of 1863 across the territories occupied by the peoples of Poland, there was an impact that can only be described as a major psychological trauma and that resulted in this moment becoming an historic watershed; indeed, it sparked the development of modern Polish nationalism. 

The Poles, subjected within the territories under the Russian and Prussian administrations to still stricter controls and increased persecution, sought to preserve their identity in non-violent ways. After the uprising, Congress Poland was downgraded in official usage from the "Kingdom of Poland" to the "Vistula Land" and was more fully integrated into Russia proper, but not entirely obliterated. 

The Russian and German languages were imposed in all public communication, and the Catholic Church was not spared severe repression. 

Public education was increasingly subjected to Russification and Germanisation measures. Illiteracy was reduced, most effectively in the Prussian partition, but education in the Polish language was preserved mostly through unofficial efforts. The Prussian government pursued German colonization, including the purchase of Polish-owned land. 

On the other hand, the region of Galicia in western Ukraine and southern Poland, experienced a gradual relaxation of authoritarian policies and even a Polish cultural revival. 

Economically and socially backward, it was under the milder rule of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and from 1867 was increasingly allowed limited autonomy. Stańczycy, a conservative Polish pro-Austrian faction led by great land owners, dominated the Galician government. The Polish Academy of Learning (an academy of sciences) was founded in Kraków in 1872. Positivism replaced Romanticism as the leading intellectual, social and literary trend.

Social activities termed "organic work" consisted of self-help organizations that promoted economic advancement and work on improving the competitiveness of Polish-owned businesses, industrial, agricultural or other. New commercial methods of generating higher productivity were discussed and implemented through trade associations and special interest groups, while Polish banking and cooperative financial institutions made the necessary business loans available. The other major area of effort in organic work was educational and intellectual development of the common people. Many libraries and reading rooms were established in small towns and villages, and numerous printed periodicals reflected the growing interest in popular education. Scientific and educational societies were active in a number of cities. Such activities were most pronounced in the Prussian Partition.