The organizers of the January Uprising, which broke out in the Russian partition in 1863, tried to win the peasant masses over to the national cause. The Insurgent National Government had drawn conclusions from the people’s insignificant support for the November Uprising and from the tragic Galician Slaughter. In the absence of a regular army, the support of the peasants was crucial to the success of the uprising. As early as January 1863, the National Government issued a decree enfranchising the peasants in the Kingdom of Poland. Two months later, on 12 April 1863, a similar decree, known as the Golden Writ (Pol. Złota Hramota) addressed to the rural population of Volhynia and Ukraine, was issued in Warsaw. The text, in Ruthenian, was printed in gold Cyrillic letters. The decree was part of the plan to prepare a national uprising in the whole the pre-partition area seized by Russia. The Golden Writ introduced personal freedom for the peasants, gave them their own courts independent of the lords, and enfranchised them on the land they farmed. It therefore made reference to social needs and sought to provide better conditions for the peasants than those proposed by Tsar Alexander II in his decree of 1861. The document itself was arbitrarily modified by Marian Sokołowski, a National Government commissar, who halved the minimum area of land to be allocated to participants in the fight against the Russians. The impact of the decree was much less than expected. This was due not only to the cultural distance between the peasants and the nobility, which also existed in lands that were predominantly ethnically Polish, but also to animosities between the Orthodox Ukrainian people and the Catholic Polish nobility, which were exploited and fuelled by the Russian government. Just as in 1846 in Galicia, so now most of the addressees of the Golden Writ saw the uprising as a predominantly Polish cause spearheaded by the nobility. Although the Golden Writ did not bring the expected results, it was the last significant document written in the spirit of the community of nations of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and has come down in history as an initiative aimed at joint action to restore brotherly independence and political understanding between the Poles and the emerging Ukrainian nation.

As a result of the rivalry between the liberal and the democratic fraction within the Association, the radicals, dominated by the liberals, established a new organisation called the Universal Polish Nation Confederation in 1837. Soon afterwards, the Association of the Polish People was dismantled. Szymon Konarski was arrested by the Russians in 1838 and executed a year later.

Influenced by the radical patriotic sentiments sweeping the streets of Warsaw, the deputies to the Sejm resolved unanimously on January 25, 1831 that Nicholas I be removed from the throne of Poland. This was tantamount to severing the personal union between the Russian Empire and Poland, declaring the Kingdom’s independence, and continuing the war against Russia. All the attempts made by the Uprising’s interim authorities in December 1830 to agree terms with Russia thus came to naught.

Following the collapse of the November Uprising, the act on dethronement was whisked away to France and safeguarded there from the Russians, who sought to obtain and destroy it.

The Constitution introduced hereditary succession to the throne for the Saxon Wettin dynasty, in reference to the provisions of the Third of May Constitution. The Sejm was maintained as a bicameral parliament, consisting of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. Bishops, voivodes and castellans (titular offices by then) held seats in the Senate ex officio, just like in the pre-partition Commonwealth. As in France, the executive power was strengthened. The government consisted of ministers. A Council of State chaired by the king and consisting of ministers, a secretary and four referendaries, was also set up according to the French model. The Council was tasked with drafting laws, resolving conflicts of competence between courts, cassation jurisprudence, and bringing ministers to justice. Similarly, following the French example, the country was divided into departments and districts, headed by prefects and sub-prefects respectively.

The text describes material and human resources that could be used to organise resistance against the partitioners and the strategy the Poles should adopt to ensure the success of a future uprising. The most important thesis presented by Pawlikowski is that the Poles should pursue their independence on their own, without referring to support from other European powers. He recognised the strengths lying in the Polish peasantry as a means to achieve independence. It was precisely the peasantry that he considered the basis of future insurrectionary forces.

Many democratic and liberation reforms were needed in Kościuszko’s and Pawlikowski’s opinion, however, to convince the peasants to support the Polish cause. It is worth noting that attempts at reforms following that direction were made already during the Kościuszko Uprising, including especially the Proclamation of Połaniec issued on 7 May 1794. Pawlikowski’s brochure contains also words of criticism against the attitude of the nobles, who opposed the empowerment of peasants for the sake of the defence of their economic interests.

Can the Poles with their independence? is a founding text for the democratic trend, one of the main trends in the Polish thought in the 19th century. In accordance with the ideas included in Pawlikowski’s brochure, the trend postulated educating the Polish peasantry and rousing them to fight for Poland, a fight that would guarantee social and political reforms. This trend gave birth to other institutions, for example the Patriotic Association (Towarzystwo Demokratyczne) active during the November Uprising, the Polish Democratic Association (Towarzystwo Demokratyczne Polskie) and later on also the party of the “Reds” (Czerwoni) active before the January Uprising. Among the most distant heirs to those thoughts were such movements as the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna) or National Democracy (Narodowa Demokracja), which would significantly contribute to the restoration of the independence of Poland in 1918.