Petrograd Soviet appeal to the Poles

On 27 March 1917 (14 March in the Julian calendar) the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies adopted a short appeal “To the Polish nation”. In it, it declared that Poland had the right to complete independence. The Soviet had come into being only two weeks earlier, on the day the February Revolution triumphed in the streets of Petrograd, and since mid-March it had in practice shared power with the Provisional Government. The next day, 28 March (15 March Old Style), the text was printed by Izvestia, the Soviet’s newspaper. That is why some Polish studies date the appeal 28 March, although Russian editions of the documents date it 27 March, the day it was adopted.

The text was only a few sentences long. The Soviet recalled that the tsarist regime, which for a century and a half had oppressed the Polish nation together with the Russian one, had been overthrown by the united forces of the proletariat and the army. Informing the Poles of this “victory of freedom over the all-Russian gendarme”, the Soviet declared that the democracy of Russia recognised the national and political self-determination of peoples, and proclaimed that Poland had the right to be “completely independent in state and international affairs”. Finally, it sent the Polish nation fraternal greetings and wished it success in the struggle to introduce a democratic and republican system in an independent Poland.

The Soviet adopted the appeal at the same plenary session at which it passed the manifesto “To the peoples of the whole world”. In it, it called on the peoples of the belligerent states, above all the workers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, to join in a common struggle for peace, and announced that Russian democracy would oppose the annexationist policy of its own ruling classes. The left-wing writer Nikolai Sukhanov, a member of the Soviet’s Executive Committee, later wrote that the appeal to the Poles had no class character. In his view it was a genuine international act, which the Soviet had performed “over the head of the government”. The Provisional Government had not yet taken a position on the Polish question.

For the Poles this was entirely new language. Since the proclamation of Grand Duke Nicholas in August 1914, Russia had promised them unification under the Tsar’s sceptre and limited autonomy. As late as December 1916 Tsar Nicholas II had counted among the war aims a “free Poland” made up of all three partitions, but had not explained what this freedom was to mean. The Soviet set no conditions: it said nothing of a union with Russia, a military alliance or frontiers. The historian Henryk Zieliński judged that the question of Polish independence, treated by the powers with reserve and ambiguity in the winter of 1916–1917, entered a new stage after the February Revolution, one that offered real hope of its solution. The appeal was, however, a declaration by a body that was not a government, and the lands of the Kingdom of Poland had been occupied by German and Austro-Hungarian troops since 1915.

Two days later, on 29 March (16 March Old Style), the government of Prince Georgy Lvov adopted its own appeal to the Poles. It, too, announced an independent Polish state, but now with significant reservations. Some Russian historians believe that the government acted under the clear influence of the Soviet’s appeal.