Russia through the eyes of top-notch writers of the post-January-Uprising era

Abstract

The article is an attempt to remove the loyalist or legalistic odium that fell on the representatives of the post-January-Uprising generation in connection with their attitude towards the “Russian issue”. The first-class positivist writers, such as Świętochowski Konopnicka, Prus, in their statements on the nature of Polish-Russian relations, took up a fight against their compatriots’ opinions, censorship pressure, and, above all, their own ideological dilemmas. In view of the strategy of remaining silent about the “Russian issue” used in national literature, the mentioned authors had the courage to speak, and also to separate the Russian state from the Russian nation, and especially from Russian culture. Their recognitions were sometimes divergent, inconsistent, but they were guided by the ambition to rise above the compensatory stereotype, common in the 19th century, the myth of the “Russian Empire of Evil”, as well as the need to escape from martyrological approaches. The article characters are also united by the drama of hope and disappointment with the events of 1905.