Congress Kingdom of Poland (Polish: Kongresówka; Russian: Tsarstvo Polskoe). Semiautonomous state established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 out of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and tied to the Russian Empire by a political and dynastic union (the Russian tsar was also the king of Poland). After the Polish rebellions of 1830–1 and 1863–4 Russia abolished any vestiges of the kingdom's autonomy, introduced Russification, and in 1888 renamed it the Vistula Land. Its area covered 123,000 sq km. It had a population in 1910 of 12 million. The kingdom was divided into 10 gubernias and encompassed the Kholm region and Podlachia, which constituted the eastern parts of the gubernias of Lublin and Siedlce and were settled mostly by Ukrainians. In 1912 these regions became part of a separate Kholm gubernia.


Encyclopedia of Ukraine