Polish question

[10] In the era of rising nationalism, the question of whether an independent Poland should be restored, and also what it meant to be a Pole, gained increasing notoriety.

[12][15] In his memorandum of 20 January 1914, Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov proposed the restoration of an autonomous Kingdom of Poland with the Polish language used in schools and local administration, to which eastern Silesia, Western Galicia and eastern Poznan would be attached after the war,[16][17][18] and on 16 August 1914 he persuaded the Tsar that Russia should seek reintegration of a unified Polish state as one of its war aims.

[19] In 1916, Germany, with the Act of 5th November, publicly promised to create the Regency Kingdom of Poland, while secretly planning to annex up to 35,000 square kilometres of its territory and ethnically cleanse up to 3 million Poles and Jews to make room for German settlers after the war.

Russia protested the move, as it saw its own rump Polish state, the Congress Kingdom (or Vistula Land) as the only "Poland" that mattered.

[32] The term was also used later in the 20th century, in the 1980s during the Solidarność period, when opposition activists struggled to free the People's Republic of Poland from the domination of the Soviet Bloc.