4.32 Europe: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 25/27)

The establishment of the modern Finnish language is credited to Johan Snellman (1806- 1881). Carl Ludwig Engel (1778-1840) was the architect of the great square of Helsinki. Jean Sibelius (1875-1957) began his symphony work as the century closed. (Ref. 34 , 175 )

Eastern europe

Even as today, in the l9th century most of east Europe belonged politically to Russia, although there were multiple language groups such as Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Polish and some Swedish and German along the coast, while Great Russian, White Russian and Ukrainian were separate language groups farther east. Agricultural yields throughout eastern Europe remained low and, in fact, had changed little from the 16th century. There was no significant rural surplus and therefore no really prosperous towns. The dread cholera, coming out of Bengal in 1826, reached south Russia, then Poland and the Baltic by 1830, before going on to Western Europe. (Ref. 8 , 260 , 140 )

Southern baltic area

The southern shore of the Baltic remained throughout this period basically divided between Russia and Germany. Poland remained dispersed within the three great empires of Europe, but life went on. The world's first sugar-beet factory was built in Silesia in 1801. Some quivers of hope appeared when Napoleon marched into Warsaw at the end of 1806 and the people at first felt that he was a savior and about to free their country. The Russian troops had fallen back to their own border after several battles with the French, but Poland did not survive the Vienna Congress. Once again the Poles revolted in 1830 and declared their independence in Warsaw in 1831, but Czar Nicholas' army quickly crushed them in the battle of Ostroleka, each side suffering some 6,000 casualties. Under Nicholas' orders an internal campaign attempted to eliminate all traces of dissidence. Polish universities were suppressed and the Polish army disbanded. Prussia gave Russia moral support in these activities. (Ref. 8 , 211 , 135 )

Nicholas' successor, Alexander II, at first tried some reconciliation, allowing exiles to return, the Catholic Church to function and created a new Warsaw University. But those attempts at reform did not placate the Polish people and religious ceremonies were used as political demonstrations. When an attempt was made to conscript dissident Polish youths into the Russian army, hundreds of young men fled to to the forests and in January, 1863 a revolutionary committee called for an insurrection. It began with an attack on a Russian soldiers' barracks and the Poles were actually joined by White Russians and some Ukrainians who wanted agrarian reform. But the political and social diversity involved allowed General Muraviev and Field Marshal Paskenvich to put peasant against landlord and in spite of two years of guerilla warfare against the Russian army, then the largest in Europe, the Poles lost again. There followed wholesale executions, confiscations and deportations. Subsequently Poland became the most industrialized province of the Russian Empire, producing large amounts of textiles, coal and iron. In the last third of the century, the Russian imprint on Poland became ever more evident. (Ref. 56 )