Searching for the better city: urban discourse during the Revolution of 1905 in the Kingdom of Poland
Searching for the better city: urban discourse during the Revolution of 1905 in the Kingdom of Poland

Summary/Abstract: The main argument of this paper states that the Revolution of 1905, which established the era of modern politics in Central and Eastern Europe, was also an important landmark for the cities in the Kingdom of Poland. The rapid urbanisation and industrialisation of the Kingdom of Poland after the January Uprising brought irreversible change to the country’s social structure. New agents like the proletariat and the intelligentsia appeared in the urban space. As a result, urban contexts during the Revolution of 1905 were much more important in Russian Poland than in the Interior of the Russian Empire. A conflict arose between groups supporting different visions for the cities: traditional, moderately progressive and radical. Actually, the urban discourse of 1905 was a dispute about the scope of urban democracy. With reference to manifestos or projects for legal acts, as well as articles or reports from Warsaw’s national journals and the local press from Lodz, I examine changes in the Kingdom’s urban discourse from criticism of the existing administration (the so-called Magistrats) to demands for introducing the modern system of self-governance. Urban discourse tells us a lot about the Polish middle-class and its ideological attitudes. During the Revolution, the initial democratic enthusiasm was soon replaced by the logic of exclusion. Established by the bourgeoisie as a consequence of the revolutionary exposure of class antagonism, it took measures to limit the influence of the working class and its political position in the future urban self-governance.

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