In recent years a large number of histories of cities in Eastern Europe has been produced. Karl Schlögel’s often-cited dictum of a “renaissance of the city” has in fact come true.^[1] Riga, Odessa, Moscow, or St. Petersburg, Budapest, Lvov, Kraków, or Prague – all of these place have stimulated recent research on reconsidering the interdependency of modern times and the metropolis in the context of the multiethnic empires of Eastern Europe.^[2]
Jörg Gebhard’s study is of a different kind as it focuses on a still rather neglected site of (urban) history, Lublin, a city in the “backyard of modernity,” as the author puts it. Gebhard tells the story of a smaller-sized city that was touched by industrial and technical modernization relatively late and that witnessed only retarded and always fragile social and cultural change. Lublin was not a showcase of modern urbanity, but remained a provincial town that never developed into anything more than a regional center of southeastern Poland.
By depicting the slower, fragmented path of change of a city such as Lublin, Gebhard opens a perspective on the “normality of the periphery,” where slowness was much more the typical mode of life and change than the hectic urbanity of the large modern metropolis. It is exactly this focus that makes Gebhard’s book fascinating reading since it sheds light on the somewhat weaker and always ambivalent forces of modernization of one of the many smaller city in one of the many inner peripheries of the East European empires. Gebhard presents a stimulating, multifaceted, and lively picture of this town in “the backyard of modernity.” The book has much to offer for anyone interested in the contorted ways of the nonlinear, retarded, and fractured processes of modernization in this historical context. At the same time, Gebhard touches upon important issues of the history of partitioned Poland and of Russian rule in the “Vistula lands.” Finally, he tells the fascinating story of a bi-confessional town with a Jewish population of almost 50% and gives a nuanced account of the troubled relations between the Polish and Jewish parts of urban society.
Corresponding to this variety of themes, Gebhard chooses a multilayered approach to his research object. He opens with a chapter on the historical site and the development of Lublin as a town during the 19th century, and then focuses on the Jewish population in the following chapter. Chapter 4 deals with the conflict-ridden relationship between the local Polish society and the Russian administration, while Chapter 5 tells the story of accelerated change under the growing influence of modernization during the last decades of the 19th century. The concluding chapters deal with the rise of Polish nationalism in Lublin and the role anti-Semitism played in the formation of a new “Polonized” public sphere. All of these chapters reveal the surprisingly high complexity of the small city of Lublin – a complexity that this review can hardly begin to cover.
Lublin’s development as a town was characterized by its peripheral and isolated location (Ch. 1 and 2). As Gebhard states it: “Lublin is a province” (S. 49). It rested in the dominant shadow of Warsaw, which was considered the only real metropolis of the Kingdom of Poland.^[3]Gebhard depicts how this influenced the course of social and cultural change: The financial budget of the town and its entrepreneurs remained very constrained, the local market was small in size and thus industrial production was limited, and the cultural provincialism resulted in a brain drain toward the more attractive Warsaw. Only after the railway connected Lublin with the west of the country and beyond, in 1877, did modern times start to reach the town (S. 52, 75-93).
In the provincial setting of Lublin a conservative, Jesuit Catholicism was the prevailing cultural force of Polish society (S. 53-54), while the Jewish segment was no less dominated by a religious conservatism embodied by the Chassidic as much as the Rabbinate communities. Lublin represented a center for both, while the Jewish enlightenment Haskalah played only a very marginal role in the Jewish society. Gebhard points to this community’s long-lasting autonomous status, due to discriminatory legislation that was lifted only in 1862, as well as to its having little contact with the Polish parts of the city. Jewish life remained isolated in a parallel sphere (S. 107-126) – a fact that not only explained the Haskalah’s marginal position but also contributed to the rather peaceful cohabitation of Jews and Poles well into the 19th century (S. 122). This, as many other things, changed with the advent of the forces of modernization.
In one of the most intriguing chapters of the book, Gebhard deals with the interaction of the Polish society and the tsarist bureaucracy (S. 127-160). He asks whether it is not too simple to speak of “occupiers” versus “occupied” when, even in 1868, hardly any of the district or municipal administrators were of ethnic Russian heritage (S. 130). Presenting individual cases, Gebhard reveals a large spectrum of cooperation between society and state structures coexisting with lingering mistrust and alienation, and even violent conflicts. In Lublin as in other cities of the Kingdom of Poland, the (appointed) city mayor played the most important role in bridging the gap between officialdom and society. People like Henryk Wolinski (city president from 1868 to 1886) were the driving force behind crucial urban modernizing projects and established close ties to the local Polish elite (from which Wolinski stemmed himself).^[4] But even the tsarist governors were willing to tolerate the limited participation of the local establishment, and invited urban experts and dignitaries to be part of the planning committee for the construction of a much-needed sewer system (S. 134-135).
The image of the tsarist administration as a purely oppressive force becomes less clear in other fields as well. Thus, the bureaucracy supplied significant funding for the renovation of the city’s churches, without distinguishing between the confessions when it came to distributing the money (S. 136). By focusing on local interactions, Gebhard depicts the various ways of cooperation between society and state and profiles the “experts” who specialized in establishing contact with the more distant higher bureaucracy in Warsaw or St. Petersburg (S. 140-143).
Of course, relations were often tense as well, and Gebhard does not deny the many everyday conflicts. The lingering cult of the heroic uprising of 1863–1864 that was so strong among the Polish elite perpetuated alienation and caused permanent quarrels. On the other hand, tsarist restrictions in the field of cultural activity, strict censorship, and discriminatory legislation on mobility produced numerous conflicts and cemented the perception of Russian rule as oppressive (S. 145-146). Symbolic Russian usurpation of the city’s landscape, such as the construction of the monumental Orthodox “Church of the Holy Cross,” resulted in Polish protest (S. 157-158). Such tensions culminated in the revolution of 1905–1907, although the tsarist authorities never lost control over the city (S. 146-149). Interestingly, in the Jewish part of the town conflicts with tsarist officialdom were less frequent – simply because, in general, little formal contact existed between this still isolated world and the state (S. 145). In conclusion, Gebhard states convincingly that narratives of conflict and confrontation as a “permanent condition” are misleading since they obscure the many forms of interaction that also characterized the epoch of partition (S. 159). One can easily agree with this point, but it remains unclear whether the dichotomy between “cooperation” and “conflict” that Gebhard uses really does justice to the many lines of uncertainty, where ways of cooperation and conflict constantly mingled.
The chapters on the city’s change in the course of accelerated modernization in the last decades of the 19th century are surely the centerpieces of Gebhard’s study (S. 161-245). Here, he tells the fascinating story of a now rapidly growing city, spreading industrialization, social change among the town’s population and elite, and the late and slowly introduced infrastructural, technical, and cultural modernization of the urban center. Well-known symbols of modernity now appeared on the streets of Lublin: high-rise apartment houses, representative bank buildings, water- and gasworks, gas lighting, streetcars, telephones, and a municipal theater changed the surface of the city. Some ambitious projects – such as electric streetcars or the modern sewage system – were not completed before 1914. Although these features of a modern metropolis are familiar, Gebhard portrays Lublin’s modernization as a very distinct story with individual local forces and local difficulties. Much of this modernization process was random and often paradoxical. Consider the example of the local Polish patriot Anastazy Suligowski, who had fought during the January uprising and later in 1879 obtained from the authorities the concession for running the gasworks. In the following decades he successfully defended his monopoly and obstructed all plans to open an electric power station in the city (S. 167-170). Thus, successful modernization of the gas-supply system turned into one of the greatest obstacles to further development of the city. And it was none other than this Polish patriot who caused this lasting “backwardness.”
In many other fields as well, the modernization process was far from linear. That many of the acclaimed improvements of modern urbanity still made their way into provincial Lublin was partly due to a small cohort of entrepreneur-pioneers (S. 180-190), but mainly the result of initiatives of a handful of engineers as the town’s new technical elite (S. 190-195). For all of them the outbreak of World War I and the Austrian occupation in 1915 proved to be catastrophic – thus, demonstrating ex post the extent to which Lublin, as a place of modest industrial production, had depended on the large Russian domestic market (S. 198-201).
No doubt, a new city elite established itself in the course of industrial change and developed new forms of social engagement. Gebhard portrays the financial and economic networking of this new bourgeois milieu, their common engagement in establishing an industrial bank or a higher school of commerce, and their new social institutions, such as charities, organizations, clubs, and a city theater (S. 205-209). In particular, the growing number of associations demonstrates the extent to which these new ways of social interaction were accompanied by the increasing self-enclosure of the Polish elite toward all ethnic non-Poles. Jews often were not permitted access to these “Polish” associations, thus forcing the small Jewish business elite into a parallel cosmos of their “own” Jewish institutions. The older fragmentation of the city’s population along confessional lines lingered amid the times of a blossoming public sphere (S. 210-225).^[5]This fragmentation was so fundamental that hardly anyone crossed the borderlines of the confessional communities (S. 225). To Gebhard’s credit, he portrays those few who did commute between the congregations (S. 225-231).
“Polonizing” associations corresponded to the “Polonization” of the country and the city (S. 250). “Polonization” as promoted by the forces of the “National Democracy” aimed at the ethnic cleansing of the Polish nation. Excluding all “alien elements” was seen as a crucial precondition for the future modernization of the country. “Polonization” viewed the large Jewish community as an “obstacle” of future nation building. The Polish press of Lublin, which was predominantly in the hands of the Endecja, mirrored this radical and aggressive form of nationalism and fostered a general anti-Semitic climate in the developing public sphere (S. 251-252).
As in Warsaw, the conflict escalated to the boycott of Jewish shops and goods, which was declared by the Endecja newspapers in 1912. Hardly anyone among the local Polish society protested against this exclusion of half of the town’s population from the city’s mental map. For large segments of urban Polish society, Jews no longer seemed to be simply “alien” but instead a menacing and harmful threat that needed to be contained (S. 255).
This neglect of an urban multiethnicity and the vision of excluding everything “foreign” or “alien” from a “Polish” town was a heavy burden that continued to constrain interconfessional and interethnic relationships after the end of Russian occupation (S. 268-270, 283-287). As Gebhard convincingly demonstrates, the advent of modernity in one of its backyards was characterized not only by the construction of street lighting but also by the dark side of ethnic-confessional phobia.
Gebhard’s study of Lublin is impressive in its presentation of well-written and deep insights into the local particularities of the supra-local forces of modernization. Still, there is some room for criticism. Surely, one problem is the order in which the author chose to arrange his rich material. Some issues reappear in the book frequently (e.g., the question of associations), thus creating redundancies. But a larger problem is the fact that historical caesurae are not dealt with systematically. Thus, the fundamental difference between the time spans before and after 1863–1864 is not clear in terms of its local relevance. In addition, neither the revolution of 1905–1907 nor the basic changes of the political system after the October manifesto contribute much to the story Gebhard tells. His statement that tensions grew after 1907 lacks supporting evidence and it would have been interesting to learn more about local adjustments to the new political situation with its growing public sphere, lifted censorship, legalized political parties and trade unions, and regular election campaigns for the Duma.
These minor shortfalls point to the most severe limitation of the book. Gebhard rarely connects local patterns of change with the broader context of the Kingdom of Poland or the Russian Empire. Lublin remains an isolated setting seldom touched by decisions and policies formulated and implemented far beyond the borders of the region. But shifts within the locality, such as the mushrooming number of associations after 1907 or the simultaneous flourishing of the local press, can only be explained within the context of trans-Imperial changes (in this case the fundamental laws of 1906). Statements regarding the “higher neglect” of tsarist authorities toward Polish towns “in comparison with the cities of inner Russia” (S. 163) reveal a rather limited knowledge of internal imperial matters. Otherwise it is difficult to explain why Gebhard reduces the St. Petersburg minister’s granting of permission to open a local school of commerce simply to the flow of bribes, ignoring that the tsarist bureaucracy itself was very actively engaged in the modernization effort (and thus was establishing such schools all over the empire). Gebhard unwittingly reproduces the stereotype of a monolithic tsarist administration aimed at oppressing the country and curtailing all progressive forces of society – a stereotype that dominates Polish historiography of the Kingdom of Poland. Much needed here, as in other cases, is a broader contextualization of the patterns of change in Lublin. It is unfortunate that the author cites almost no studies on familiar settings and configurations, whether situated in the Kingdom of Poland, or in nearby Galicia and the “Western territories,” or in more distant Petersburg.^[6]
All of these limitations somewhat lessen the merits of Gebhard’s study. But its merits still far outnumber these points of criticism. The book portrays a detailed knowledge of the locality and the social and cultural forces changing the local setting. The author has produced a very thick description of many local interrelations and various local agencies pushing for or working against patterns of modernization. He presents a lively picture of a provincial town, its astonishingly active and complex social and cultural cosmos, and the multilayered, ambivalent, and partly paradoxical directions of change. Gebhard takes the reader on a very informative and stimulating walk in one of the backyards of modernity.