Article citation
information:
Rutkowski,
M. The attempts to improve
the formal transport system in the Kingdom of Poland during the crisis in the
early 1860s. Scientific Journal of Silesian University of
Technology. Series Transport. 2016, 93, 99-113. ISSN:
0209-3324. DOI: https://doi.org/10.20858/sjsutst.2016.93.11.
Marek RUTKOWSKI[1]
THE ATTEMPTS TO IMPROVE THE
FORMAL TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN THE KINGDOM OF POLAND DURING THE CRISIS IN THE EARLY
1860S
Summary. The
purpose of this paper is to focus on the possibilities for improving the
administration and delivery of the Polish transport system, which occurred in
early 1860s, the last phase of local autonomous government.
Keywords: transportation structures, Kingdom
of Poland, 19th century
1. INTRODUCTION
The
quasi-independent Polish transport services functioning in the Kingdom before
1847 were seen in the period of crisis during the early 1860s as a sort of an
administrative body that could be restored. This era of political turmoil, or
rather a “thaw”, brought with it a reasonable degree of hope to improve
Polish transport structures and consequently re-establish Warsaw’s Board of
Land and Water Communications. This very idea became a specific goal of
many Polish patriots, wishing to live in a country that was governed directly
or indirectly by its citizens. It was not, however, entirely in the gift of the
local Third Council of State and other governing institutions to have a
decisive voice in these matters, especially in a partitioned country in which
the Tsarist authorities finally decided the fate of Polish transport issues. In
the following paragraphs, we follow some of the formal endeavours to make
communication in the Kingdom of Poland more appropriate to the resolution of
local transport problems.
2. PRELIMINARY IDEAS TO CHANGE THE FORMAL
DEPENDENCY OF THE POLISH TRANSPORT SYSTEM ON TSARIST AUTHORITIES
On the basis of a decision made by
Tsar Nicholas I, on the 5/17 December of 1846, instead of a local transport
infrastructure, the so-called Vienna Congress agreed that Poland should be
subject to the St. Petersburg authority, known as the Board of the 13th
District of Communications of the Russian Empire[2], which meant the formal liquidation
of the quasi-independent Polish transport services[3]. From a legal point of view, this
situation did not completely change when a decision by Tsar Alexander II led to
the introduction on 22 February/6 March 1861 in the Kingdom of a new law, which
replaced the existing administrative structure with the Seventh District of
(Land and Water) Communications of Russia[4].
However, in the period of the
emergence of some origins of specific and rationed autonomy in the Kingdom of
Poland, on the 11/23 October 1861, at an official gathering of Warsaw’s
Administrative Council, which offered some form of quasi-government, it was
decided to create new opportunities for the establishment of the country’s
modern rules required for the stable functioning of the local public land and
water transport system. It was therefore proposed to widely introduce and apply
new solutions in the field of transport. Soon enough, the matter was undertaken
by another important administrative body of the Kingdom, namely, the Third
Council of State, which was generally responsible for legislation. The very
opportunity to make some improvements to the Polish communication system
actually occurred to the members of the Department of Tax Administration of
Warsaw’s Council of State, while analysing the report of the Board of the
Postal Services of the Kingdom of Poland for 1860. After reading this report in
its entirety, appropriate “rules and directions” for transport were also
developed[5].
The new assumptions about the role and usage of Polish transport services,
specifically aimed at “improving the quality of all kinds of communications in
the Kingdom and restoring in due course the authority of the [Polish]
Government Commission for Internal Affairs over the old Board of Land and Water
Communications” was a consequence of the original proposals concerning postage
and postal matters[6].
Having revealed in the autumn of
1861 their opinions and suggestion about the state of the Polish postal
system, state counsellors issued a collective written statement on
communications in Poland. They expressed their view on this matter as follows:
“It is a widely recognized truth that nothing contributes as effectively
to the growth of agriculture, trade, richness and overall wealth as a
convenient communication [system] that facilitates trade within the country.
Wisely provided appropriate means of communication on the one hand represent
the most effective lever for continuous and gradual improvement in the quality
of agriculture, as well as all kinds of industry; on the other hand, serving as
the most visible example of good administration, they are rightly regarded as a
sign of sane national prosperity. Conversely, according to economists, the
scarcity of communication is the source of poverty of the country; even though
its basic area contains many natural resources which, due to lack of
transportation, fruitlessly rest in its womb. The very idea of [the]
facilitating of land and water connections leads the same way to some further
facilitations for local population, including [a] variety of ways to improve
its existence. From hence derives direct growth of industry and trade. Each and
every development of these branches of economy is therefore directly and
closely linked with the emergence of an increasingly dense network of
transport”[7].
As a consequence of this statement from
the autumn of 1861, the Department of Tax Administration of the Third Council
of State officially and directly “requested” the “improvement” of all
transport networks and communication programmes, which existed at the time in
the Kingdom of Poland. In order to achieve these goals, the resubmission of the
existing Board of the 13th/Seventh District of Communications of the Russian
Empire, under the authority of the Warsaw’s Government Commission for Internal
Affairs, was collectively and officially proposed. At the same time, State
Counsellor Łaszczyński personally submitted his preliminary request for the
reorganization of the Board of Communications. After the initial overall
analysis of the legal status of the Polish administration system, the General
Assembly of the Third Council of State, at its 40th session, dated 11/23
November 1861, decided again to return the transportation problem issue to its
own Revenue Department for further processing[8].
This administrative request for delivering some more specific arguments was
also personally supported on 6/18 August 1861 by the main residing director of
the Polish Government Commission for Internal Affairs, a Warsaw military
governor general, as well an adjutant general and a lieutenant general in one
person: Alexander Gerstenzweig[9].
What was most important was that he also considered it necessary to focus on
“combining the Board of Administration of the country and the Board of
Communications in one place”[10].
3. ANALISIS OF PROPOSALS FOR THE MODERNIZATION OF
LAND AND WATER TRANSPORT IN THE KINGDOM OF POLAND SUBMITTED BY STATE COUNSELLOR
ŁASZCZYŃSKI
The submission by State Counsellor
Łaszczyński on 21 November 1861, which was a “request to improve the land
and water communications”, comprised in the first place a proposal for
restoring laws that were obligatory in the Kingdom of Poland before 1832
concerning transportation expenses and the process for controlling spending in
this regard. The basic aim was to solely leave these matters to the discretion
of the local administrative authorities, as was the case before the November
Uprising, which was finally crushed in September/October 1831 The most
important demand from the state counsellor, however, was the request made “in
order to replace the Board of the Seventh District of Communications (of the
Russian Empire) with the restored Polish Directorate of Roads and Bridges
[previous name]/Board of Land and Water Communications [later name] as a
technical authority only”. According to this concept, these powers of the
authorities of Kingdom’s communication services, which under the law of Tsar
Nicholas I, dated 5/17 December 1846, which had been granted to the main
manager of communications and government edifices in the Russian Empire, would
be transferred to a member of Warsaw’s Administrative Council, namely, General
Major Stanisław Kierbedź, as the head of the Polish government’s transport
structures. The wording of the application was subsequently transferred to
Actual State Counsellor Michał Lewiński, who was ordered to write a brief
historical outline in the field relating to the analysed applications from
Counsellor Łaszczyński. This collected data were to be presented for evaluation
by the Department of Tax Administration and then by the General Assembly of the
Third Council of State [11].
Meanwhile, in his next project,
which described the “conclusions as to the communication of land and water
communications”, Łaszczyński emphatically suggested (basically repeating
previously delivered theses) the restoration in Poland of the very organization
of transport services, which existed in the Kingdom of Poland before 1832.
However, the author of an undated dissertation specified, on this
occasion, these suggestions received strong support. Firstly, Counsellor Łaszczyński
demanded to exclude road/transportation funds from the general state
budget. Secondly, he proposed again to replace the Board of the Seventh
“Engineering” District with the re-established Board of Land and Water
Communications, in turn granting them “technical and administrative powers”.
Another proposal from Łaszczyński was that transport funds and corvée fees [in
Polish: szarwark] (as measures directly related to the management of provincial
authorities and, possibly, to counties) would remain at the discretion of the
local Government Commission for Internal Affairs. He also predicted the
elimination of custom charges levied at the border on certain goods from people
entering the Kingdom (and the duties levied on ships passing the Polish water
border). The counsellor, while acknowledging this burden was introduced
solely in Tsarist Poland, claimed that he was instead proposing the idea of
restoring the toll road, which had been used in the past on the main roads of
the Kingdom.
Counsellor Łaszczyński also added to
his official proposals to change the rules of operation of road and water
transport in the Kingdom of Poland so-called “motives”[12],
which proved that the amount of funds allocated annually for maintenance and
building of main country roads was unreasonably and unjustly fully dependent on
the general state of government finances, and therefore subject to constant
fluctuations[13].
According to the counsellor, the incorporation into the state budget of
the corvée funds and fees, as well as road revenues (a solution that was forced
onto the Polish authorities after the fall of the November Uprising, which was
even contrary to the provision decree of Tsar Alexander I dated 1820), “has
brought great harm to the funds of this part of the administration and delayed
the building of main roads in many regions of the country”. Therefore, it
seemed fully desirable to the author of a screed that funds derived from corvée
fees and road tolls should be treated only as a “conditional amount of money
kept by the state”, subject to their use only in communication[14].
Finally, Łaszczyński, in his
“motives”, was of course referring once more to the basic issues related to the
functioning of the Board of Transportation by proposing some changes. The
principle thought boiled down to the conclusion that the administration of transport
“in the flat country, without mountains and gorges, as is the Kingdom of
Poland itself, should not be expensive and difficult to manage”. The evidence
for this assertion was to be a state in which were found some secondary/side
roads located in the Warsaw Province, the length of which was even greater than
600 versts (i.e., 636.6 km) and which were built in a 15-year period between
1845 and 1860 without any possible involvement or support from the Board of
13th/Seventh District of Communications of the Russian Empire. Instead, this
construction process took part only “under the supervision of civil and
administrative authorities”. Based on this particular example, the state
counsellor pointed out the need to increase the role of (still to be formed) county
councils in “guiding” local transport administration, although the most
important transport management issues in principle should have been attributed
to Warsaw’s Government Commission for Internal Affairs.
In addition, this simple fact was
recalled in the counsellor’s “motives”, given that the Department of
Administration and Finance of the Third Council of State itself considered
combining “in one place the Board of Communications for something as strictly
necessary for the prosperity of the Kingdom”. The previously considered
establishment in Warsaw of the position of “chief of the District
Communications” of the Russian Empire was an obvious obstacle in that union.
Thus, the only correct and proper solution to this problem would be to
establish, in the Kingdom of Poland, a Board of Land and Water Communications,
to be located in Warsaw, which would be completely independent of St.
Petersburg’s main manager of communications and government edifices. The author
of the “motives” instead proposed to hand over the existing (and even expanded)
powers of the Russian head of communications to the person appointed by the
Warsaw Administrative Council (or, more precisely, one of its members). In
turn, the observed “institutional difficulty” would disappear and the local
management of communications would be placed fully within the framework of
the administration of the Kingdom of Poland. Thus, the work of the
administration of transport would be considerably accelerated and one would
avoid a specific “collision” of power; on the other hand, the Polish central
government could have (in spe) a
number of reasons to be satisfied with the efficiency of this branch of
administration.
Assessing the up-to-date influence
of the St. Petersburg headquarters on the work of transport services in Poland
on the Vienna Congress, Łaszczyński expressed his opinion more clearly, writing
explicitly: “Experience has taught that the [Russian minister] chief executive
of communications had almost no effect on the local Board of Communications”.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, in a formal or rather final version of
these “motives”, this opinion confirming the lack of any real impact by St.
Petersburg’s head of communication on activities relating to Polish transport
services was not expressed as sharply. Compared to the draft version of
the examined document, its meaning was rather mitigated, as in the original
form there was no hesitation in denying any Russian impact on Polish
communications[15].
4. FURTHER PROCEEDINGS CONCERNING PROPOSALS FOR
THE RESTORATION OF A FORMAL QUASI-INDEPENDENT POLISH TRANSPORT SERVICE
DONE WITHIN STRUCTURES OF THE THIRD COUNCIL OF STATE
Having received, in the late autumn
of 1861, such formulated conclusions and supplements to previous opinions,
members of the Department of Administration and Finance of the Third Council of
State subsequently commenced their profound verification. Referring to the most
pressing request for the formal restoration of the Board of Communications as a
subordinate entity in relation to the Warsaw’s
Government Commission for Internal Affairs, “from which this Board in the past
has been separated”, the administrators considered any further lecture in this
field as superfluous. Citing similar reasons previously described in relation
to the issue of postal internal relations, they only emphasized the very
existence of the significantly high need to “disconnect” Warsaw’s Seventh
District of Communications of the Russian Empire from its St. Petersburg’s
headquarters. The need for the strict fixation on the local Board of Land and
Water Communications within the general structures of administration in
the Kingdom of Poland was considered a “striking” one.
Moreover, as explained by members of
the Department of Administration and Finance of the Third Council of State, the
need to combine transport services in the Kingdom with the rest of the
administrative system of the country was “in the belief that every [citizen]
with any knowledge of the national administration strongly and steady confirmed”.
It was generally believed to be even more possible to separate (although with
an obvious loss of quality in Polish governing structures) Warsaw’s postal
system from the local administration in the Kingdom than accept any sort of
prolonged disconnection of Poland’s transport services from other functioning,
albeit diverse, alternatives. Therefore, the Third Council of State concluded
that the function of transport services should be seen as extremely important,
given that, “in all its branches, at any time, has an undoubted and
unquestioned privilege to appeal to all administrative offices of any sorts and
levels in their indispensable need”.
In the case
involving an application for the restoration of Warsaw’s Board of Land and
Water Communications, the main presiding director of the Polish Government
Commission for Internal Affairs, Alexander Gerstenzweig made a comprehensive
statement, during a session of a committee composed of members of
Department of Administration and Finances of the Council of State, in which he
recalled, in the first place, that this was a request “aiming to improve in the
Kingdom all existing transport matters and to restore at the same time the
composition of the local Board of Communications within the Government Commission
for Internal Affairs itself”[16].
Assessing the application on its
merits, the minister of interior acknowledged that (as well as in relation to
the issue of including post offices in the Polish administration system), for
someone so strongly and clearly motivated, it was hard (as he said himself) to
find any additional arguments in its support. Recognizing the demand as fully
justified, he did not have anything essentially to add. Gerstenzweig noted only
that, in view of the enormous impact that would now, due to the law recently
introduced, by Tsar Alexander II, be exerted on communication matters in the
Kingdom of Poland’s provincial and district councils, it would be even more
necessary to combine “in one place” the civil administration and the Board of Transport[17].
The main presiding director of the
Government Commission for Internal Affairs warned, however, about the existence
of legal obstacles in this regard, which, for other persons dealing with
transport matters before him, came down to the fundamental issues. The problem
was related to the formal establishment and existence of the formal position of
the head/chief executive of the Board of the 13th/Seventh District of
Communications of the Russian Empire.
Taken as such, the position
expressed by Gerstenzweig was in principle rather a general repetition of
earlier information given in this field, rather than offering much that was new
to the basic discourse on changing the principles of the operation of transport
services in the Kingdom of Poland.
Subsequently, the Legislative
Department of the Council of State focused on the issue of transport, which
finally led to the reading at a general gathering of the Council the conclusions
made by State Counsellor Łaszczyński. These were labelled as “on the restoration
of old regulations prior to 1832, so that the same management authorities of
land and water communications, and the collection of toll would be established
again”. Then, at another meeting of the Legislative Department, which took
place on 24 November/6 December 1861, State Counsellor Lewiński provided
further comments in this regard. Besides Lewiński, also present at this meeting
were Chairman and State Counsellor Putkiewicz and members of the Faculty, a
member of the Council, State Counsellor Opurzecki, and Legal Secretary of the
Council of State Brzozowski, as well as Vice Referendary of the Second Class
Potocki[18]
as a substitute for another vice referendary.
According to Lewiński, in order to
examine more closely the issue of the return of formal processes, prior to the
period of change during the so-called Paskievich times, relating to the management
structures of Polish communication, as well as the rules of road toll
collection, it was advisable and reasonable to first answer a number of
questions. These questions were formulated by Lewiński as follows. Firstly:
what were the real incomes of all categories of road charges before changing
the hearth tax? Secondly: did the abolition of additional road border duties
and charges imposed on vehicles cause any adverse effects on the state budget?
Thirdly: what was the exact amount of cash coming into the State Treasury from
the toll roads in the last three years before abolition, taking into account
data gathered from all main routes in the Kingdom? Fourthly: what additional
funds were taken from the state budget to spend on the development of
Polish communication before 1832? Altogether Lewiński thought that the
appropriate source to obtain the necessary data would be found in the archives
of the Government Commission for Revenue and Treasury. He additionally
requested that Warsaw’s Ministry of Finance should identify one of its employees,
who would be able to submit the required data precisely.
All the observations from State
Counsellor Lewiński were fully supported by the Legislative Department of
the Council of State on 6 December 1861. It was thought at the same time
that, given their very extensive merits and also their strictly administrative
nature, their proper implementation would surely require a longer time. It was
also assumed that there would likely be an emergence of need to endeavour some
additional archival research and collate new explanations from the
administrative authorities of the Kingdom. Such a need and possibility,
nonetheless, led to decision by Department of Tax Administration of the Council
of State. As of the beginning of December 1861, the above-mentioned department
had already completed its work on the budget of the Kingdom for the fiscal
year of 1862; therefore, it was considered as quite possible and appropriate to
refer the communication question to this appropriate administrative unit,
namely, the Department of Tax Administration of the Third Council of State[19].
As a result of its diverse works, in
1862, this department came up with several proposals for the transformation of
communication services in Poland. All these proposals, however, were only to be
found in the minutes of the 45th official gathering of the Third Council of
State III, which took place on 8/20 October 1862. The main authorities of the
Kingdom waited until 23 October/4 November 1863 for all these proposals to come
into effect[20].
Fig.
1. Signatures of members of the committee established by the Department of Tax
Administration and the Third Council of State from 1861 for the evaluation of
the project to restore the Board of Land and Water Communications within
the frames of administration of the Kingdom of Poland[21]
5. FORMAL CONVERSION OF THE
BOARD OF THE SEVENTH DISTRICT OF COMMUNICATIONS OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE INTO THE
BOARD OF LAND AND WATER COMMUNICATIONS OF THE KINGDOM OF POLAND
The above-described
delay in works of the Third Council of State on projects streamlining the
transport system in the Kingdom, thereby overturning of its quasi-independence,
unambiguously shows an obvious and striking lack of correlation with the
process of real systemic changes, which accelerated in Poland in the summer of
1862. Now, at this time, based on the order dated 27 May/8 June 1862 to render
the Tsarist governor in the Kingdom to a Polish major, who was superior to the
all levels of national administration, Tsar Alexander II issued a decision to
completely change the formal status of Polish transportation structures. That
is, in place of the Board of the Seventh District of Communications of the
Russian Empire was established in Warsaw, “separate and independent from the
management of the Empire”, the Board of Land and Water Communications of the
Kingdom of Poland. The supreme lawmaker found it suitable, however, to
emphasize that the existing arrangements for the “composition and organization”
of transport services were still in the Tsar’s power, unless the need to make
necessary changes was proven. Tsar Alexander II formally signed his decree on
the 7/19 August 1862[22].
Fig. 2. Decree re-establishing the Board of Land and Water Communication
in the Kingdom of Poland, dated 1862, draft version (p. 1)[23]
Fig. 3. Decree re-establishing the Board of Land and Water Communication
in the Kingdom of Poland, dated 1862, draft version (p. 2)[24]
6. WORKS OF COMMITTEES ESTABLISHED TO
REORGANIZE THE ADMINISTRATION OF TRANSPORT IN THE KINGDOM OF POLAND
At the request of the chief
executive of transport services in the area of the Kingdom (since 27 July/8
August 1861, it has been General Major Stanislaw Kierbedź[25]),
the Administrative Council released, on 11/23 October 1861 Order no. 6,774 on
the Verification of Principles of Operation of This Branch of Government[26].
In October 1861, it was decided to establish, working under the guidance of the
head of the Board of the Seventh District of Communications of the Russian
Empire, a special committee, which also consisted of a vice chairman and some
“ordinary” members, appointed by definition from among both public officials
and private citizens. The choice had to be made from among to persons who were
recognized as having in-depth knowledge of the industrial problems of the
country. The name of this new administrative organization was the Committee for
Improvement Measures and Enlargement of Resources for Communications in the
Kingdom of Poland.
Despite the apparent gravity of the
problem, it was only after 14 months, i.e., on 4/16 January 1863, that the head
of Board of Land and Water Communications located in Warsaw, namely, General
Major Stanisław Kierbedź, submitted a request (no. 105) to the Administrative
Council for the appointment of a full team to work on the above-mentioned
committee, which would draft new rules for the operation of the local public
transport system as well as propose new structural solutions in the field of
communications.
Kierbedź proposed for its deputy
manager a well-known member of the Council of State, Franciszek Węgleński.
Among the other members primarily chosen for this committee were the following:
two members of the Council of State, Lewiński and Kurtz; Actual State
Counsellor Muszyński, who was also Director of the Department of Non-permanent
Revenues in the Government Commission for Revenue and Treasury; State Adviser
Łaszczyński, who was also Director of the Department of Industry and Crafts of
Government Commission for Internal Affairs; Stanisław Englerhardt, Director of
the Bank of Poland; Stanislaw Wysocki, Chief Inspector of the Railways;
Lieutenant Colonel Leonard Wasilewski of the Corps of Engineers of Communications,
who was also the Government Commissioner on the Main Roads of the First Class;
William Kolberg, Inspector of Communications in the Kingdom of Poland; and
Tadeusz Chrzanowski, a permanent bridge constructor working in Warsaw.
The chief of Polish communications additionally proposed on 4/16 January
1863 that the following should also become members of this committee:
Leopold Kronenberg, Ewaryst Mokronowski, Henryk Earl Starzenski, Kazimierz
Skórkowski, Stanislaw Skrutkowski and Ludwik Walchnowski. The full complement
of nominations proposed by the chief manager of the Kingdom’s communications
for membership of the committee appointed for the purpose of general
improvement to the Polish transport system was accepted during the meeting of
the Administrative Council, which took place on 8/20 January 1863[27].
Due to the outbreak
of January Uprising, it should not be too surprising that it was not until 7/19
October 1863, nine months later, that any items requiring any significant
development were officially presented to the new committee. It was, accordingly,
“the request of the Department of Tax Administration of State Council of Kingdom
for a description of the means of the proper business development of the
committee established by decision of the Administrative Council of 1123
October 1861 to prepare a draft of permanent rules to be in force for the
communication system of land and water, to improve the quality of existing laws
and to propose new legal solutions”[28].
In the preamble to this conclusion statement, members of Department of Tax
Administration wrote mainly about the costs of transport as a major factor
that was impeding the movement of goods. References were also made to famous
verses written by the economist Michel Chevalier, who saw the development of
transport as a “fundamental improvement, bringing at the same time advantages
to all kinds of industries”. Mentioning the necessity to put a considerable
amount of work into the improvement of communication existing in the
Kingdom of Poland, the authors of the report relied on the very content of
a letter sent by the local head chief of communications to the Administrative
Council on 9/21 October 1861, in which General Kierbedź described the overall
unsatisfactory state of Polish transport and emphasized the absence of an
overall communication development strategy[29].
It was also
recalled that, as a result of a similar assessment of the local transport
situation by the Third Council of State, the government of the Kingdom, at its
gathering on 27 November/4 December 1861 unanimously adopted a specific request
from the Department of Tax Administration of the Council of State concerning
transport finances. The specific issue referred to was about possibly including
in future state budgets, corresponding to the real possibilities of Warsaw’s
treasury, the amount of money intended for the construction of main roads and
for improvement to watercourses and rafting on Polish rivers. The resolution
was subsequently approved by Tsar Alexander II.
Members of the Department
of Tax Administration also indicated that, by acting precisely under these
assumptions, their unit of the Council of State, as early as 1862, when
assessing the budget of the Kingdom for 1863, detected in Poland a highly
insufficient number of local roads, even in relation to the “Polish provinces”
on the border with partitioning states, i.e., the Prussian Grand Duchy of
Poznan and Austrian Galicia. In turn, the Department of Revenues firmly
supported a strong increase in the amount of the projected loan, intended for
use by the Board of Communications and a rapid undertaking of resolute
measures to improve the general state of communication in the country. It
should be added that the General Assembly of the Council of State unanimously
supported all the observations and conclusions of its department.
The report also
recalled that the previously established new committee intended to draft some
new mandatory rules, which would be useful for land and water transport in the Kingdom,
as well as work on a project to improve the general condition of existing
transportation and introduce some concepts for the development of new lines of
communication. According to the assumptions imposed in October 1861 by the Administrative
Council, the tasks of this committee were then determined as follows: a) laying
down tracks for the railway, linking them up with main roads of the first and
second class; b) defining the scale of importance of individual plans for
building up the land transport network and identifying the sequence of their
execution; c) determining the scale of difficulties in river rafting and
identifying measures to remedy these deficiencies; d) verifying and publicizing
financial resources available in Poland in order to maintain and possibly
develop the transport network structure, as well as identifying the most
beneficial way to use these funds; and e) designing eventual changes to the
existing transport rules and possibly introducing completely new legal
solutions in this area.
According to the
authors of this dissertation, in October of 1863 (i.e., the exact date when the
report was written), the Board of Land and Water Communications, after adding
various proposals for improving land and water transport to its report for
1862, emphasized that “all of these items will be recognized gradually by the
committee [which is] separately established”. The Board of Transport pledged to
gradually submit to the sovereign authorities the individual proposals and
observations, which had been made in the case of individual projects during the
progressive works of the committee[30].
Unable to confine itself to such vague statements, the Department of Tax
Administration of the Third Council of State demanded that Lieutenant Colonel
Wasilewski, a crucial member of the Board of Land and Water Communications,
provide a more detailed explanation of the actual work of that committee[31].
In response, the Department of the Council of State was informed by the transport
administration that “current national scale events [namely, pre-uprising social
tensions in Poland] were the sole reason why the head of the Board of
Communications, after getting in touch with some citizens, no earlier than at
the end of 1862, saw no possibility of enforcing the provisions of the
Administrative Council for creating the personal composition of the committee”.
From the knowledge acquired by the Department of Tax Administration, it was
discovered that doubly formally convened meetings of that committee were held
prior to the beginning of July1863. These events should have eventually taken
place on 20 April/2 May 1863 and on 22 June/4 July 1863. As a resulted of the
report delivered by Lieutenant Colonel Wasilewski, at these meetings, “despite
constantly renewed invitation calls, none of the members chosen among the
citizens showed up”.
During the time of
this apparent obstruction shown by civic members of the committee, it was
possible for the government side to prepare at least a draft version of its
internal organization and then present such a proposal on 26 June/8 July 1863
for the approval of the Administrative Council, which approved it.
Specific works conducted by the committee in the summer of 1863 included
developing instructions for its international verifying administrative body
appointed for the detailed description of the actual status of the Vistula
River, in terms of the width of the water-based border between the Kingdom of
Poland and Austria, and submitting research results to the Council of State.
Subsequently, the General Transport Improvement Committee gave its opinion on
the request of the local government of the Warsaw Province, as well as some
resolutions from Łęczyca and Włocławek district councils to allocate from state
budget amounts of money needed for the renewal of one main road of the second
class, running from Zgierz and Włocławek.
The committee
additionally considered one project by the entrepreneur Adolf Kurtz, concerning
the construction of a navigable channel connecting Prague with Zgierz, and
appointed from among its members a delegation to negotiate with him on a
suitable contract. Lastly, the same committee, at the request of the
Administrative Council, embarked on measures that would compensate for any
possible financial losses caused by the elimination of the border road toll
charged in the Kingdom of Poland.
Given by Lieutenant
Colonel Wasilewski, such a presentation of the detailed analysis of previous
works of the committee set up, due to the need, among others, to develop a new
communication system in the Kingdom, did not meet with any evidently positive
response from the representatives of central authorities in the country.
Members of the Department of Revenues of the Council of State did not express
full approval of its up-to-date proceedings. They pointed out that the
committee was instead focusing exclusively on issues of a specific and minor
nature, which did not correspond either to its rank nor its assumptions and
goals. These members strongly supported the view that the originally set
targets could not “be subject to any delay in theirs fulfilment”,
especially when the development and overall improvement of Polish communication
were defined as being “most pressing needs of the country”.
Furthermore, due to
an acceptance by the Department of the Council of State of some of the Board of
Communication members’ explanations, which in reality shifted the whole
responsibility for evidently poor results of the committee working on repairing the communication system
onto the difficulties that occurred when gathering together its full
composition, state counsellors presented a firm proposal in this regard. In
other words, they considered it necessary to submit to the General Assembly of
the Third Council of State new proposals to develop some “countermeasures”,
which would effectively led to the introduction of the above-mentioned
committee in its proper sphere of activities of a general nature, namely,
its recovery[32].
That is, it was about the co-option by the committee a number of new and
competent people. As such, in the early autumn of 1863, the Department of Tax
Administration of the Third Council of State requested firm principles to be
developed, which would result in the highly effective and efficient
commencement of activities by the Committee for Improvement Measures and
Enlargement of Resources for Communications in the Kingdom of Poland, which had
been set up in 1861.
However, at the meeting
of the Council of State on 23 October/4 November 1863, its members decided
to indefinitely postpone the whole question[33].
This decision turned out to be a prophetic one given the much-changed political
situation. On 25 February/9 March 1867, the Tsarist authorities issued a
decisive decree concerning the final abolishment of any quasi-autonomous
management of transport in the Kingdom of Poland. On the basis of Article 1 of
this legal act, on the territory adherent to Vistula River, Tsar Alexander II decided
to establish the 11th District of Communications of the Russian Empire, which
was fully dependent on St. Petersburg [34].
7. CONCLUSION
When, in 1861,
General Major Kierbedź, the head of the Board of the Seventh District of
Communications of the Russian Empire, seemed to give negative feedback on the
Polish transport system, he also included some extremely bitter observations:
“The navigable rivers in the Kingdom insufficiently meet their appropriation
because of the obstacles found within of them. The main roads are not properly
maintained in all places... But the most important disadvantage of the present
state of communication is the lack of any permanent transport system structure,
which would meet the needs of industry and commerce, internally and externally”[35].
Thus, despite formal independence from St. Petersburg gained in the summer of
1862, representing a short period of political “thaw” prior to the outbreak of
the January Uprising, Polish administrators failed to develop and implement
innovative transportation solutions, which would significantly boost the poor
status of national communication. After January 1863, this kind of work became
practically impossible, mostly due to obvious social obstruction and rapidly
progressing ostracism on the part of the Tsarist invaders’ power base.
References
1.
Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw.
Third State Council of the Kingdom of Poland: 1862, 1863 and 1864.
Signature: 256, 257, 310.
2.
1867. Dziennik Praw Królestwa Polskiego. [In
Pollish: Journal of Laws of the Kingdom of Poland]. Vol. 66.
Warsaw: Publishing House of Commission of Public Enlightenment.
3.
Gazeta Rządowa Królestwa Polskiego. [In Pollish: Government
Gazette of Kingdom of Poland].
1/13 September 1861, no. 204. Warsaw: J. Jaworski.
4.
Okolski Antoni.
1880. Wykład Prawa Administracyjnego oraz Prawa Administracyjnego
Obowiązującego w Królestwie Polskiem. [In Pollish: The Lecture on
Administrative Law and Polish Administrative Law in Force in the Kingdom of
Poland]. Warsaw: Editorial Office of Library of Legal Utilities.
5.
Rutkowski Marek.
2015. Zarządzanie Logistyką w Królestwie Polskim
ery Konstytucyjnej i Paskiewiczowskiej: Infrastruktura Przydrożna. [In Pollish: Logistics Management
in the Kingdom of Poland in the Constitutional and Paskievich Era: Roadside
Infrastructure]. Bialystok: Publishing House of the Technical University of
Bialystok.
6.
1847. Svod Zakonov Rossijskoj Imperii. [In Pollish:
Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire]. Vol. 21, Part 3. St. Petersburg:
Printing House of Second Division of His Imperial Majesty’s Chancery.
Received
13.08.2016; accepted in revised form 02.10.2016
Scientific Journal of Silesian University of
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