Article citation information:
Rutkowski, M. Primary principles of a compulsory public works system
(corvée) in the construction, repair and maintenance of the communication
network of the Kingdom of Poland and other former Polish territories ruled by
tsarist Russia. Scientific Journal of
Silesian University of Technology. Series Transport. 2017, 96, 161-173. ISSN: 0209-3324. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20858/sjsutst.2017.96.15.
Marek RUTKOWSKI[1]
PRIMARY PRINCIPLES OF A COMPULSORY PUBLIC WORKS SYSTEM
(CORVÉE) IN THE CONSTRUCTION, REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE OF THE COMMUNICATION
NETWORK OF THE KINGDOM OF POLAND AND OTHER FORMER POLISH TERRITORIES RULED
BY TSARIST RUSSIA
Summary. This article focuses on the issue of
introducing of a legal system concerning public works carried out on the widely
understood transportation system in the Kingdom of Poland and other territories
directly or indirectly ruled by tsarist authorities after the partition of the
Commonwealth.
Keywords:
corvée; Kingdom of Poland; 19th century
1. INTRODUCTION
Obligatory maintenance of the state
corvée system (understood as the unfree “provision” of people, with and without
their own tools, for carrying out compulsory repairs of roads, bridges,
overpasses and dykes) constituted an “eternal” means of keeping the
transportation network in Poland in good shape. By the early 1760s, however,
these unpaid and unfree corvée obligations and burdens were most often
implemented in full accordance with local customary practices. The sole duty of
carrying out this forced labour had fallen on peasants, as well as on the
agricultural population of towns and even cities. Thus, in this simple way,
bridges, crossings and dykes were maintained in each Polish community area. At
the same time, in the pre-partitioned Commonwealth, the main routes (like in
many other countries, in Poland, these were generally known as “kings’ routes”)
were also built and repaired thanks to the unmodified service of this type.
Most often, compulsory transportation system maintenance was done on an
occasional basis.
It was not until
1764, at the start of the reign of the last king of Poland, Stanisław Antoni
(or August Poniatowski), that the Commission of Good Order (Commission Boni
Ordinis) was established, while the systematic improvements of the road system
were, at the same time, initiated in the whole of the Commonwealth. This
required, among other changes, the introduction of the formal distribution of
the corvée duty. With the passage of time, the Commission of Good Order even practised
the shifting the formal obligations regarding compulsory roads maintenance from
one county to another, while collecting dues from among the peasants in the
adjacent municipalities or territories.[2]
Above all, there was only one, albeit of a key significance, rule that imposing
this obligation on Polish subjects, as it was generally the case that people
were summoned for specific corvée purposes at a time when major agricultural
works were not mandated.
In the course of and after the
partitions of the Commonwealth, Prussian and Austrian authorities also imposed
compulsory transport building and maintenance obligations on former Polish
citizens, while the Berlin authorities tried to avoid imposing too heavy a
burden on the local populations. As a result of this attitude, local Prussian
administrative and financial offices were obliged, each time, to send such levy
tables to Berlin for final approval. These provisions, due to the relatively
short period since the seizure of the territories known as the ‘Congress
Kingdom of Poland’, or ‘Congress Poland’, (after the Congress of Vienna) by
Austria and Prussia, did not impose any significant impact on the further
development of the corvée procedures in that area. On the other hand, it was
important that, after the establishment of the Kingdom of Poland in 1815, when
the very idea of rebuilding the main roads when the Russian occupation of the
country was officially declared, the very issue of legal matters concerning the
use of forced labour in the transportation system was intensively raised and
settled.[3]
2. THE
CORVÉE LEVY SYSTEM IN CONGRESS POLAND
The
legislation regarding the formal corvée system of the Congress Kingdom of
Poland was combined in a bill with “the provisional rules for the execution of
public labour for the general construction of roads”, which were announced on
15 May 1816 by the Tsar’s Governor general Józef Zajączek and approved by the
Administrative Council. This bill was accepted at the request of the Government
Committee of Internal Affairs, after an analysis on this issue had been
undertaken by the most competent legislative body, the General Assembly of the
Council of State. The purpose of introducing this bill was formally “to
designate the rules by which the construction of public roads would be carried
out as long as the provisions in force do not apply”.
The newly
established law mostly emphasized that all communities/municipalities
(including Jewish communities) and land owners were mutually obliged to
maintain the viability of roads, bridges and dykes, as well as any crossings,
situated within the boundaries of their jurisdiction or area of ownership. The
way to implement such obligations was, in accordance with Article 1 of the Act
of 15 May 1816, to properly carry out all the requirements of the overall
corvée levy. Another basic aim of the new law was to “spread and divide” these
public road maintenance commitments among local landowners “in part and in
proportion to the population of their possessions”. The latter were clearly designed
to “contribute” to relatively smooth functioning of the corvée system.[4]
According
to General Zajączek’s official order of 20 April 1816, in cases where the
maintenance of large or “medium-sized” (secondary) roads exceeded the capacity
of a particular municipality or local landowner, the competent county
provincial commission was forced to make a call for help to other people in
local community or local landowners/residents from the area of the same county,
or even people residing in the closest neighbouring administrative districts,
in carrying out these heavy corvée duties. Nonetheless, such calls could only
take place after a prior examination of the circumstances of the particular
case by experts, despatched by transport authorities (Article 2). In the case
of “side roads”, however, no such possibility of providing extraordinary help
was formally foreseen by the lawgiver, who considered that the execution of the
corvée for this category of transport route by itself should have fallen within
the basic exclusive duties of local communes/municipalities or landowners
(Article 3).[5]
Despite
the promulgation of this new (seemingly less burdensome) public forced labour
law in relation to transportation matters, a substantial number of abuses and
shortcomings was observed in the Kingdom of Poland in this regard.
Consequently, on 21 June 1817, the Administrative Council ordered local
voivodeship committees to issue formal proclamations addressed to the public,
which formally indicated that persons who neglected to fulfil the
above-described duties, as a kind of retaliation rather than consequence, would
be made to undertake double their corvée obligations, performing them “in
nature”.[6]
Soon
after, a new and much more detailed description of the rules for the operation
of corvée procedures used for road and general transport purposes was written.
This project was developed once again by the Government Committee on Internal
Affairs. Then, at the Administrative Board formal meeting on 23 August 1817,
the Tsar’s Governor General Zajączek sent it once again on for review by the
General Assembly of the Council of State.[7]
The verification process occurred to be fast, such that, as early as 9
September 1817, the new general principles of the usage of corvée in Poland for
the construction and repair of public roads were established[8].
Undoubtedly
and to much surprise, at that moment, the genuine progress in terms of the
verification and improvement endeavours in the field of public transportation,
involving unpaid and unfree labour, in the Kingdom of Poland proved to be
unsatisfactory from the tsarist point of view. Based clearly on such an
assumption, Tsar Alexander I decided to return a whole new draft of rules for
public road repair work levies to Warsaw, as well as Tsar demanded the receipt
of additional data on Polish transport data. Polish administrators learned
about this unexpected request from the Tsar at the Administrative Council
meeting, held on 17 January 1818, when there also an extensive discussion on
“the correctness” of the law.[9]
In this situation, one cannot be taken by surprise that, on 10 March 1818, the
Polish government adopted a resolution provisionally extending “for the next
spring” only the current binding of public transport arrangements, especially
concerning the proper maintenance of the country’s transport system.[10]
The only significant innovation in the meantime regarding the corvée system,
which was occurred in the spring of 1818, concerned the formal issuing on 5 May
1818 of an Administrative Council proclamation regulating the mode of
pro-transportation services by residents of communes, who were located at a
significant distance from the main road system of the country.[11]
After another three
months, the Tsar’s Governor General publicly announced, on 25 August 1818, that
he had decided to regulate, for the time being, the issue of public
transportation statute labour in accordance with his previous orders and
instructions, previously issued by the Government Commission of Internal
Affairs.[12] The
case of communes far removed from the main roads was reopened on 5 January
1819, when the Administrative Council accepted another decree defining a
further 12-month rule for transport network works being carried out by
inhabitants of these local units. This time it was clearly and precisely stated
that the law at stake was in force within the territory of
municipals/communities located at least three miles away from the main roads.[13]
The important
moment came on 30 March 1819, when the comments of Tsar Alexander I, concerning
the scope of corvée burdens in the Kingdom of Poland, were read out in the
Administrative Council. According to the tsarist insights, “the exact amount of
corvée obligations must be precisely determined, even before the revenue that
the public treasure could gain from the same counterparts [who are obliged to
participate in transportation public works] could be known”.[14]
Next, at the
beginning of April of 1819, Polish chief administrative authorities issued a
decree decreasing, for the remainder of 1819, the number of so-called standard
days of compulsory working on building, repairing and maintaining roads. Thus,
on the basis of the decision of 3 April 1819, during the same calendar year, it
was necessary for every “entitled” citizen to actively “execute” the eight
working days of corvée. This was obviously lower than the previous 10 days of
unpaid compulsory transportation network maintenance per calendar year.[15]
In the meantime, new difficulties arose in
carrying out typical transportation tasks. Namely, in the spring of 1819, it
transpired that the local administrative authorities failed to prepare, on
time, a schedule of the main constructions and repairs in the Polish transport
network. Consequently, a decision made by the Administrative Council on 20
April 1819 suspended the execution of corvée until at least 15 May of the same
year.[16]
This postponed
commencement, in the spring of 1819, of transportation maintenance services
also gave the central authorities of the Kingdom the rare opportunity to deal
with issues related, perhaps in slightly different ways, with the main problems
of corvée procedures, such as the question of just compensation for the
possible consequences of accidents that could occur during dangerous public
road construction work. By accepting, here, a relatively positive position, the
Administrative Council, at its meeting of 18 May 1819, provided, for example,
25,000 Polish zlotys to support the remaining families of peasants who had died
as a result of a fatal accident while participating in road building activities
near the town of Lublin.[17]
All this practical
and legal turbulence undoubtedly confirmed that, together with the relatively
steady implementation of an initiated programme of redevelopment of the main
Polish roads (it is worth mentioning here that, although the initial request
for construction of national roads was made by the then Minister of the
Interior as early as 16 March 1816, nevertheless, the Administrative Council
only accepted the bill establishing a formal transportation network in the
country on 24 April 1819[18]),
the constant supervision of the whole of the practical process convinced the
then decision makers that “for the inability to concentrate the corvée effort
on the main building lines, their finishing would require too long a time” than previously expected.[19]
The strikingly slow development of transport projects carried out prior to
1820, especially on the main routes of the Kingdom, was not the only important
problem of the time. It was obvious that, while the main transport routes were
built for the sake of the common good and prosperity, “the main burdens of it
fell on these residents, who were living closer to the rebuilt or built tracks,
not touching the more distant neighbourhoods”. As a result, the need of
implementing the very basic principle of social justice in the distribution of
transportation duties and obligations became so evident that, nowadays, we can
only be surprised that the Polish authorities of the period 1816-1819 did not
foresee, or at least did not want to clearly see, this fundamental
inconvenience or even injustice.[20]
Eventually, at the
beginning of the 1820s, these inconveniences were slowly but gradually
repaired. On 21 June 1820, the Government Committee of Internal Affairs and
Police commissioned a conversion of part of the corvée duty into a relevant
monetary tax.[21]
After some discussions in the General Assembly of State Council, within almost
a month since proclaiming the above decision, a “partial approval” of the
conversion of unpaid days of labour in the transportation network for suitable
taxation was made at a meeting of the Administrative Council. That took place
on 18 July 1820, when members of the council approved the new legal solutions
“for the final decision” of Tsar Alexander I.[22]
Consequently,
and with the aim of a “fairer distribution of transport duties”, Tsar Alexander
I formally signed the law on 29 August 1820, which essentially changed the
rules on carrying out corvée obligations in the Kingdom of Poland.[23]
This important tsarist decree replaced the four days of unpaid work required
for every chimney/fume with a monetary payment, but the other four days
remained in place in the form of a compulsory obligation to work in the field
(in “nature”), which, however, could only be expected to be undertaken within
the perimeter of one Prussian mile from the place of a citizen’s permanent
residence area.[24]
Already five days after this new set of basic legal regulations was signed,
Alexander I confirmed an additional “imperial decree” changing the rules for
fulfilling corvée obligations, which in in principle converted real services
into cash payments.[25]
The decision of 29 August 1820 appeared to refer to a sort of long-term law,
which remained in force, not only in the Congress Kingdom, but also during the
post-uprising Paskievich era, and even after 1856 (i.e., after the Crimean
War).[26]
Soon after
the adoption of the essential law on transportation maintenance duties, on 14
November 1820, other extremely important provisions were introduced, which,
this time, set down rules for the diversification of corvée duties (in this
case, in the form of transportation system maintenance levies/taxation) on
individual chimneys/fumes. These solutions were implemented in accordance with
Article 5 of the August 1820 law, which had announced the future completion of
the general list of fumes, in turn becoming the formal basis for calculating
individual financial charges. Another, undisguised objective behind the
drafting of legislation in November 1820 by the Government Committee of
Internal Affairs and Police, in order to specify conditions for the levying of
corvée taxation, was the fulfilment of the obvious desire to introduce, at the
earliest and most appropriate opportunity, tax tables, which would allow the
levy itself to be available to the government in the anticipated year of 1821.[27]
Ultimately, the Administrative Council decided in mid-November of 1820
(without, however, elaborating the deadline) that the Government Committee of Internal
Affairs and Police should submit, as soon as possible, the general list of
“financial and natural” obligations, as far as the transportation duties were
concerned. This list was to be prepared not only in line with the new
principles described above, but also according to a detailed division of the
country into individual communities/municipalities.[28]
Despite
all these efforts, it soon became apparent that the new rules for carrying out
construction and repair duties in the network of the Kingdom’s transport system
did not necessarily have to be recognized by the highest authorities in order
for proper solutions and the expected positive results to occur. The first
reaction in this context was from Tsar Alexander I, himself, when he demanded
at the beginning of January of 1821 that the Administrative Council should
provide him with relevant explanations on the objections raised by Warsaw’s
parliament concerning the alleged improper trade in the amounts collected from
transportation levies.[29]
As more progress was made in the implementation of the new approach to the
exercising of passive and active corvée obligations, more and more doubts arose
in the interpretation of their real impact on the economy. That is why, on 10
April 1821, the Government Committee of Internal Affairs and Police prepared,
and then sent to individual voivodeship commissions, a specific regulation
note, which recognized the need for the detailed calculations of minimum corvée
taxation quotas, as well as of the actual number of working days required to
build and maintain local roads.[30]
Additionally, on 1 May 1821, the Administrative Council approved the
distribution of the levies to a selected category of chimneys/fumes for a
single province only. On that day, the chief executive authorities of the
Kingdom decided to accept the distribution of the levies on so-called “forest
fumes” in the sole area of Augustów Province.[31]
The introduction of
other noteworthy provisions took place on 22 January 1822, when the
Administrative Council accepted a resolution specifying the principle of
running corvée accounting according to the anticipated division of these
responsibilities between the Government Committee of Revenue and Treasury and
the Government Committee of Internal Affairs.[32]
A similarly important change took place on 25 February 1823, when a statement
by the tsarist representative, General Józef Zajączek, was given, in which he
broadened the scope of the duties performed by the staff of the Government
Committee for Internal Affairs and Police, to include the control and balancing
of transportation accounts. Therefore, as of that date, this control had to
include not only the works maintained in the field of land transport, but also
the financial aspect of water transport.[33]
After making all these changes to
the complex Polish economy of corvée procedures, on 8 July 1823, the Russian
Tsar and the Polish King finally agreed to set aside the road toll charges in
force within the Kingdom of Poland. Surprisingly enough, at the same time, the
monarch expressed some, albeit minor, objections about the predicted efficiency
of the very system of forced labour and taxation, which was required for the
satisfactory development of Polish transportation construction, maintenance and
repair. According to the Tsar, in the foreseeable future, the basic principles
for the general maintenance of roads in the Kingdom of Poland would be somehow
based on only a slight increase in tax charges for this purpose, “on which
[most of the] unpaid working days in nature are converted”. [34]
These remarks should not change our primary observation, however, that between
1818 and 1823, in the Kingdom of Poland, a relatively well-organized system of
carrying out transportation duties in both physical and financial terms was
introduced.
3. CORVÉE
SYSTEM IN THE KINGOM OF POLAND IN THE INITIAL PERIOD AFTER THE FALL OF THE
NOVEMBER UPRISING
With the general acceptance of the
pre-revolutionary legislation, which was still in force, a further slight
diversification in the implementation of corvée labour and taxation in the Kingdom of Poland was visible
just after the fall of the November Uprising of 1831. First of all, it turned
out that, at the beginning of so-called Paskievich period, the schedules for
labour, required from peasants, to carry out suitable maintenance of paved
roads were, to a relative extent, often temporarily changed or shifted. The
official reasons for such an attitude and behaviour among administrative
authorities were usually: a) “the destruction and demolition of national forces
because of a revolutionary war”; b) the increased need for the government to
protect the majority of or all inhabitants of the Polish countryside, who
became particularly economically weakened by the sudden and violent
interruption in agricultural activities; c) the eventually significant,
especially with the time lapse, possible delay in undertaking the essential
part of road construction works, at last in the areas of the country that were
mostly destroyed by the war. As a result, individual voivodeship committees,
such as the Masovian Voivodeship Commission, shortly after the end of fighting,
could hardly demand the implementation of corvée duties by local peasants with
a positive outcome.
Instead, in order to become
acquainted with the real status of even the most remote network structures of
the Polish transportation system, local authorities most often demanded
district commissioners to carry out a “an extensive search” and write down a
“full statement” of any possible need for repairs on all checked routes. These
commissioners did not have to travel themselves along every road in their
supervision district, but rather they were advised to make such inquiries with
persons directly responsible for regular transport structure control. This
indicated that inspection, carried specially by mayors of towns, was to be
finished by the end of April 1832, soon after which, as an outcome of this
initiative, a “decent list” of observed “difficulties” was to be procured. The
above-mentioned lists specifically referred to: a) the need to repair or build
bridges, located on individual roads, as well as the necessity to determine the
ownership of the land on which specific bridges were standing; b) the
specification of places in need of levelling (paved roads), sand filling or
dredging in order to level down mounds for the construction of dams; c) the
indication of places requiring the deepening or cleaning of road ditches built
to drain water from the road. These regulations, which effectively led to some
postponements in the road maintenance process, did not obviously deal with the
occurrence of emergency situations. In the event of the requirement for a
sudden or provisory backfilling/improving of any road defect, or an immediate
bridge repair, the legislator provided for the option of prompt performing such
repairs.
As suggested by the
Administrative Department of the Masovian Voivodeship Commission, in its
official announcement of 7 March 1832, in early May of the same year, district
commissioners were ordered to notify the mayors of towns, as well as commune
leaders of the necessity to carry out the “work required” on paved roads,
previously specified in already prepared official reports (as a result of
supervision process). The district commissioners were informed by the way that
each of the required works “should be mentioned [in their reports] with all
accuracy”. Corrective or improvement tasks had to be accomplished by the “local
force of the municipality... in due time after the spring sowing”. Taking this
into account, most of the burden on local communities regarding road
maintenance obligations was essentially moved over time, but not forsaken.[35]
The provincial voivodeship
commissions assumed in March 1832 that, in specific cases, namely, when the
local community would not have the capacity to carry out the lawful and
anticipated work for any independent reason, it was necessary to reach out for
additional support from neighbouring municipalities. At the same time, it was
expected that such aid, which was to be envisaged and performed only in
exceptional circumstances, should be granted “in a modest proportion”.[36]
In is also
necessary to admit that, in the period after the fall of the November Uprising,
specific access to extra works connected with the building or maintenance of
the Polish transportation network was generally linked to the fact that the
highest authorities of the Kingdom of Poland decided, in 1834, that the state
would strongly support, in economic terms, peasants “who as a result of the
aftermath of war, widespread deadly human diseases and many livestock plagues,
or due to other causes of the nature of decay, became poor, and as such were
indebted to the state treasury”. These actions had exceptionally
pro-development and pro-stability aspects, which finally sought to increase the
capacity of abstraction from peasants living via government property taxes.
The
government stated openly that the purpose of such proceedings was to help
peasants get “out of their arrears and, in addition, to provide means of
recovery for the treasury that falls to them”. Thus, the Administrative
Council decided to achieve this objective by regulating access to (additional)
corvée duties. Hence, the decision prioritized access to government peasants
for work on roadsides and around the Augustów Canal, or any other work
supervised by the Directorate of Land and Water Communications, as well as by
district and voivodeship provincial engineers. The appropriate edict of the
Government Committee on Internal Affairs, Public Health and Enlightenment was
issued on 30 October 1834. The ministerial note clearly underlined that, “in
the case of works combined with repairs of paved roads, water constructions,
stone breaking, and other [transportation] tasks done in an administrative
way”, government peasants would be provided on the priority basis of earning
money.[37]
As for the
less occasional changes in the corvée administration taking place after the
fall of the November Uprising, one can mention here that the tax levy collected
from residents of Warsaw for transportation purposes was changed at the
beginning of the 1840s. As the Administrative Council pointed out in Article 1
of its decision of 21 February 1840, tax collected from house owners in Warsaw,
then brought to the General Cashier of the Kingdom of Poland and left at the
disposal of the Government Committee of Internal Affairs, now had to be (i.e.,
as of 1 January 1840) transferred to the budget of the capital city of Warsaw.
On this occasion, the Administrative Council ordered employees of the Warsaw
Economic Commission to “keep paved roads and unpaved places in a proper order,
prolonging their use by keeping in good shape some mounds of broken stone,
similar to that process used in building sold roads”. However, the overall
amount of tax collected in the Polish capital from chimneys/fumes was left
unchanged.[38]
A specific
turning point in the continued functioning in the post-revolutionary Poland
transportation maintenance system seems to be 1840. The structure of corvée
duties itself, which had been functioning for many years now, either suffered
from legal corrosion or was no longer realistic. The number of so-called
“pedestrian fumes/chimneys” or “carriage fumes/chimneys”, from which a lump sum
of taxation was usually collected, or assistance was given in the form of
actual labour that was required, apparently changed over the passing years.
Nevertheless, it is almost unavoidable to say on this occasion that, dealing
almost every day with censuses and statistical settlements, Polish authorities
of the era could not have noticed this phenomenon. Difficulties, which deepened
time after time, must have proven to be particularly inconvenient when the
differences between the actual and formal state of corvée structure numbers
etc. often caused considerable distress, both in the sphere of transport tax
itself and in the distribution of transport work in “nature”. Consequently, in
the Kingdom of Poland of the late 1830s, there emerged “an unbridled
overburdening of some owners [combined] with undue relief for others” and,
equally obvious, there were observed some significant financial losses to the
state treasury.
In order
to prevent, in the near or more distant future, these apparent injustices and
inconveniences, it was decided at the general ministerial session of the
Government Committee of Internal Affairs, Spiritual Matters and Public
Enlightenment (held on 8 January 1840, under the chairmanship of the then Chief
Executive of this committee, General Szypov) to make a number of updates to the
tax collection and active transport services system. The main objectives of
this update were then laid down as follows: a) carrying out the new
lustration/chimney inspections; b) setting up new inventories, which were to
serve as a kind of legal basis for the upgrading of levies and the distribution
of actual works in “nature”/in situ. It was obvious that collecting these data
and rewriting taxation inventories required guberniya governments to present them for approval to the Government
Committee on Internal Affairs, which in turn passed them onto the
Administrative Council. All this action was semi-formally explained as being
provoked by deep conviction, coming out of an extensive administrative
experience, that any requirement imposed by the state to meet the transport
needs of a general nature “would be bearable for its active participants
[taxpayers, peasants working directly by roads etc.] and would become
acceptable for the government to make the distribution of transportation levies
convenient, only if, besides the moderate extent of the burden, each person
participating in it would be affected equally and annually”.
Finally, according to
its own previous decision made on 8 January 1840, the Government Committee of
Internal Affairs recommended on 14 March 1840 to all guberniya governments to
carry out a costless (in the original: “without the need for applying separate
costs”) inspection/lustration of all chimneys/fumes located in their sphere of
governance. Furthermore, as a legal basis for this action, reference was still
made to unaltered Articles 7, 8 9 and 10 of the old decree of 14 November 1820.
Eventually, some cosmetic changes related to the text of these articles were
only related to renaming the administrative structure of the Kingdom of Poland,
already accomplished already in 1838 (when voivodeships were converted into
gubernyas etc.).[39]
Thus, in the
above-described period, some of the main alterations or modification to the
transportation network maintenance system mostly concerned: a) giving
preference to its actual implementation, and b) the possible shift of
transportation money flows into the capital city of Warsaw. It was not until
the beginning of 1840 that the idea concerning the accurate actualization of lists
of corvée obligations required in the Kingdom of Poland was brought to light.
4. CORVÉE IN TERRITORIES DIRECTLY INCLUDED IN THE RUSSIAN
PARTITION ZONE
In the remaining
part of the former Commonwealth partitioned by the Russians, i.e., in the
territory, which, after 1795/1815, was a direct part of the tsarist Russian
Empire, a number of legal solutions was also introduced (as in a whole of the
tsarist state) referring directly or indirectly to the forced labour used to
maintain, repair and build the road network. These were: a) “remarks”
concerning roads, approved by Tsar Alexander I in 1817; b) the order of Tsar
Nicholas I of 2/14 March 1826; c) the opinion of the St. Petersburg’s State
Council of 1832, which also referred to the problem of road surveillance/repair;
d) the opinions and comments drawn up by a special committee, established “for
the purpose of building roads in the state”.[40]
In addition to the
14th point of the “sentence” of the St. Petersburg’s State Council, which
originated in 1832 before being approved by Tsar Nicholas I on 24 March/5 April
1833, further extensive re-evaluation of road/transport legislation took place
in Russia. On 25 January/6 February 1834, a formal order (“ukaz”) was issued by
the First Department of the Ruling Senate, to which was also attached the
proclamation of the State Council “on the building and maintenance of roads”,
approved earlier by Nicholas I on 29 December 1833/10 January 1834.[41]
First of all, it was stated here
that, according to the order of Alexander I dated as of 2/14 March 1826, the
“road duty” (“corvée”) essentially related to the exclusive maintenance of
roads in good shape (in the original: “in a decent state”). This obviously
referred to the necessity to direct effort, combined with compulsory public
works in transportation, on the road network already built, the repair and
maintenance of which had to be made in accordance with existing and already
practised rules. In addition, the legislator assumed the possibility of
improving roads as being a part of the process of maintaining the
transportation traction itself. Such opportunities would emerge when, at the
request of private landowners, or on the orders of persons managing state-owned
ruling areas, significant improvements in the road network were possible to
make, especially where, due to poor soil conditions, frequent and significant
damage to the transport network was constantly caused.
The Russian Council of State
allowed, in such cases, for the reworking (but only when using private financial
resources or private labour and resources) existing old roads by changing their
status to “paved” or “chausse” types of tracks. Generally, the law gave
preferences to repairing “perishable” sections of demolished roads with
fascines, poles or possibly with flat stones. The anticipated remaking of the
road structure and appearance was only allowed under the direct and strict
guidance, supervision and control of the district surveyor, as well as other
officials “aware of this stuff”, who were, as a rule, used on construction
works of Russian roads during 1830s. These persons had to be engaged in each of
such road re-working processes, at least “before civil [road] engineers could
be educated”.[42]
In some cases, the tsarist law “on
the installation and maintenance of roads” also provided for the possibility of
performing repair work on the transport network by relying on state resources.
Namely, the local governor of the respective gubernya was entitled to deliver
to St. Petersburg’s Ministry of Internal Affairs the specific desired
documentation, simply in order to obtain ministerial acceptance of the
preliminary estimation of repair costs of the presumably destroyed gubernya or
district road. Such documentation mainly included plans, drawn up by the local
county/gubernya surveyor in accordance with the existing rules (also in full
compliance with the standardized list of typical drawings, published in a
special atlas and manual). This situation would be at stake when, as a result
of the request made by local authorities, it was considered necessary from a
ministerial point of view to repair some of the longer parts of specific roads
(once such repair work was accepted and decided upon for some other reason).
The funds required would be, in such a case, provided by either the general
gubernya budget or local taxpayers, via land taxes obtained from private
citizens of a particular district.
The mere repair and maintenance of
roads in the form of a “corvée” system was expected to be accomplished by the
efforts of work of local peasants, led by “conscious and zealous officials”.
Technically speaking, the compulsory public work system for the construction,
repair and maintenance of the Russian communication network was, of course,
based on unpaid labour, and only the supply
of necessary building materials was paid for. The whole of the road network in
the area of the individual gubernya, and all of the smaller bridges and less
important dykes, which were capable of being built or repaired even by
unprepared and inexperienced common peasants, were described in detail by
district surveyors. Subsequently, the obligation to build and maintain them was
divided into separate “faculties” or “districts”, which formally consisted of
local residents in the main. The overall process of keeping the local
transportation network of a particular part of it in at least relatively good
shape was thus delegated to all local inhabitants of all social classes.
Obviously, such a delegation only referred to those who were, by law, obliged
to carry out “corvée” duties in one form or another.[43]
Having described examples of Russian
legislation concerning “corvée” procedures (which were also in force in the
tsarist part of the partitioned territory of the former Commonwealth), one can
observe a rather strange and less devoted attitude among the St. Petersburg
authorities towards this phenomenon, such that some of the burden was placed on
the shoulders of citizens, without proper support from the state.
5. CONCLUSION
The system of compulsory construction
and repair/maintenance work in the transportation network, which had been
functioning for a long time in the Commonwealth, was significantly altered and
above all formalized in the areas directly or indirectly occupied by tsarist
authorities after the partition of Poland had taken place. The preliminary time
frames of these changes can be dated back, for both the Kingdom of Poland and
the Russian Empire, to 1816/1817. Problems with the correct distribution of the
actual corvée service, which finally led to significant inequalities in the
share of public burdens, resulted in the Kingdom of Poland, during the period
1820-1823, publishing a number of diverse statutes dealing with these matters.
Even after the fall of the November Uprising, this new system, despite a few
modifications and updates, did not change significantly. On the other hand,
within the former Polish territory, which was then directly under the authority
of St. Petersburg, somewhat different solutions were adopted, involving a less evident
role of the state in the eventual improvement of the transportation network.
References
1.
Central
Archives of Historical Record in Warsaw. The
Third Council of the Kingdom of Poland: 1864. Signature: 256.
2.
Central Archives of Historical Record in Warsaw.
The Second State Council of the Kingdom of Poland: 1816, 1817, 1818, 1819,
1820, 1821, 1822, 1823.
Signature: 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
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Received 26.03.2017; accepted in revised form 20.07.2017
Scientific Journal of
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