Analyzing the Fate of the Evacuated Bureaucracy of the Kingdom of Poland under the Provisional Government and Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars in 1917

Abstract

The article investigates the efforts made by Russian ministries to assist civil servants who were evacuated during the liquidation of Russian state institutions in the Kingdom of Poland, which began in 1917. The position of the evacuated Polish bureaucracy regarding their entitlements is examined, along with the arguments presented by Polish officials who demanded additional payments, while portraying themselves as victims of tsarism. The article notes that the national identity of Polish civil servants became more pronounced following the February Revolution of 1917, and the bureaucratic corporation became fragmented due to political processes. The Soviet authorities no longer considered them as victims of tsarism. In January-February 1918, local councils began to terminate payments of wages and benefits to the employees of evacuated institutions based on a decree issued by the SNK. The article concludes that the collapse of the Russian Empire had a significant impact on the situation of specific nationalities and professional groups, and the evacuated Polish bureaucracy attempted to utilize political slogans of the revolution to serve their own material interests.