Municipal self-government law for the Kingdom of Poland

The British chronology of the war records under 3 April 1915 that a Russian imperial ukase granted municipal self-government to the Kingdom of Poland. This was a law extending to the towns of the Kingdom’s governorates the Russian municipal statute of 1892, with changes provided for the Polish lands. Tsar Nicholas II approved it on 17 March 1915 by the Julian calendar, that is, 30 March by the Gregorian calendar. At the beginning of April the news spread through the press, and the Warsaw newspapers began to comment on it at length. This is probably the source of the date adopted by the British authors.

Half a century without self-government

After the fall of the January Uprising the towns of the Kingdom of Poland lost the remnants of their self-government. No councils were elected in them, and their municipal administrations were run by officials appointed by the Russian authorities. Nor did the Kingdom benefit from the reforms that in Russia proper had given towns elected dumas and districts and governorates zemstvos. The authorities feared that any elected institution would become a centre of Polish national activity.

After the revolution of 1905 municipal self-government became one of the main demands of Polish politics. The government prepared a bill, which in 1910 went to the State Duma. The bill disappointed the Poles. Elections were to be held in national curiae, which guaranteed seats to Russians even where there were very few of them, while limiting the representation of Jews, who in many towns made up a large part of the population and in some a majority. A high property qualification excluded the great majority of inhabitants from voting. Even so, the deputies of the Polish Circle (PL) supported the bill, judging limited self-government better than none.

The language question caused the most controversy. The Poles demanded that town councils be allowed to debate in Polish, which Russian nationalists opposed. At the end of 1913 the conservative State Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, rejected the provisions on the Polish language and the bill stalled. The dispute dragged on into 1914, and by the time war broke out the matter remained unresolved.

A wartime concession

The war changed the situation. In August 1914 Grand Duke Nicholas promised the Poles that after the war Poland, united under the Tsar’s sceptre, would be reborn “free in its faith, its language and its self-government”. Over the following months the Poles waited for any concrete step that would confirm these promises. Meanwhile the fighting went on across the lands of the Kingdom, and its inhabitants suffered enormous losses. The Russian authorities, with the government of Ivan Goremykin at their head, finally decided on a few gestures towards the Poles. In the spring of 1915 restrictions on teaching in Polish in schools were eased, and the towns of the Kingdom received the self-government law.

According to Polish scholars, the decision of March 1915 ensured that Polish could be the language of debate in the new town councils, something that had been blocked before the war in the Duma and the State Council. Otherwise, however, the law largely took over arrangements that had been criticised for years, including the undemocratic electoral system.

A cool reception

The Warsaw press received the law with mixed feelings. “Kurier Warszawski” wrote that in a few months society would at last be given an important field of activity, but admitted that self-government in the form passed by the Duma could not satisfy the Poles. Even so, it considered that in view of the towns’ urgent needs this temporary reform was worth putting to good use. “Tygodnik Illustrowany” judged it in a similar way. Many Polish politicians and journalists, among them Roman Dmowski, Władysław Grabski and Aleksander Świętochowski, treated it as a transitional solution until real reforms came. The press began to discuss what the future councils should deal with, from public health to the rebuilding of devastated towns.

A belated reform

The Russian law never came into force. Before elections could be held, in the summer of 1915 the armies of the Central Powers occupied the Kingdom of Poland and the Russians left Warsaw. The first elected town councils in the Kingdom were created only under German and Austro-Hungarian occupation, on the basis of electoral regulations issued by the occupiers. In Warsaw elections to the city council were held in July 1916.

The municipal self-government law showed how hard it was for Russia to win the Poles’ trust. A reform that before the war could have been an important step came in 1915 too late and in too modest a form to change the mood in the Kingdom.