Political and Social Change in Warsaw from the January 1863 Insurrection to the First World War: Polish Politics and the "Jewish Question".

Warsaw in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the largest city of Congress (Russian) Pol and and of all the partitioned Polish l and s; in 1864-1914, its population grew from 223,000 to 885,000. It served as an unofficial capital for Poles in the Russian Empire, and as a symbolic one for Poles in other states. It was also the Russian administrative and military center for Congress Pol and , and the third city of the Russian Empire; and the largest Jewish center in Europe. A little more than half of its population was ethnically Polish, and a third was Jewish. In this period, as Warsaw experienced rapid growth and intensive socioeconomic change, the city also saw continued separate development of its Polish and Jewish communities. Ethnic distinctiveness and separatism prevailed. On the Polish side, the focus of this study, chauvinistic nationalism with anti-Semitism as one of its main features became a very powerful force. By the eve of World War I, it was axiomatic among most Polish nationalist groups in Warsaw that the Jews were an alien element, something to oppose, not to cooperate or work with. This dissertation examines the impact of the "Jewish question" on Polish politics in Warsaw before World War I, against a background of social, demographic, and cultural developments. Its principal sources include population censuses and other statistical materials, newspapers, memoirs, contemporary and subsequent studies, and archival records. Materials on population change, ethnic patterns of residence and employment, and education and the periodical press emphasize the separate nature of the development of Warsaw's Polish and Jewish communities. After 1905, the elections to the State Duma provided the first opportunity since the early 1860s for open, legal political activity in Warsaw. The 1912 election was an especially important event in the history of Polish responses to the "Jewish question," which was the decisive issue in the election. Because Polish nationalist parties split, Jewish groups won a majority of local electors, and chose a Polish Socialist for the Duma. The election campaign and outcome raised Polish-Jewish tensions considerably in Warsaw and Congress Pol and , and strengthened the position of anti-Semitism in the Polish nationalist movement there. In its final chapter, this study focuses on Polish approaches to the "Jewish question" during that election.Ph.D.European historyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158613/1/8204627.pd