Congress Poland

Congress Poland

The Kingdom of Poland (Polish: Królestwo Polskie ; Russian: Королевство Польское, Царство Польское, Korolevstvo Polskoye, Tsarstvo Polskoye, Tsardom of Poland), informally known as Congress Poland (Polish: Królestwo Kongresowe or Russian Poland), created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire. It was gradually politically integrated into Russia over the course of the 19th century, made an official part of the Russian Empire in 1867, and finally replaced during the Great War by the Central Powers in 1915 with the theoretically existing Regency Kingdom of Poland.

Though officially the Kingdom of Poland was a state with considerable political autonomy guaranteed by a liberal constitution, its rulers, the Russian Emperors, generally disregarded any restrictions on their power. Thus effectively it was little more than a puppet state of the Russian Empire. The autonomy was severely curtailed following uprisings in 1830–31 and 1863, as the country became governed by namestniks, and later divided into guberniya (provinces). Thus from the start, Polish autonomy remained little more than fiction.

The territory of the Kingdom of Poland roughly corresponds to the Kalisz Region and the Lublin, Łódź, Masovia and Świętokrzyskie voivodeships of Poland.