Vistula Land

Vistula Land, also known as Vistula Country (Russian: Привислинский край, romanized: Privislinskiy kray; Polish: Kraj Nadwiślański), was the name applied to the lands of Congress Poland from 1867, following the defeats of the November Uprising (1830–1831) and January Uprising (1863–1864) as it was increasingly stripped of autonomy and incorporated into Imperial Russia. It also continued to be formally known as the Kingdom of Poland (Polish: Królestwo Polskie) until the fall of the Russian Empire.^[a]

Russia lost control of the region in 1915, during the course of the First World War. Following the 1917 October Revolution, it was officially ceded to the Central Powers under the terms of the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

In 1831, in the aftermath of the November Uprising, the Polish Army, the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland, its parliament (Sejm) and local self-administration were disbanded. The constitution was replaced by the much less liberal and never fully implemented Organic Statute of the Kingdom of Poland. Also all universities were closed, and replaced several years later by purely Russian-language high schools.

For a short time the territory maintained certain degree of autonomy. The former Kingdom of Poland continued to use the Polish currency (złoty) and the Administrative Council retained some of its privileges (although it was directly controlled by the Russian governor Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich). However, by 1832 the currency and the customs border were abolished, as was the metric system and the Polish penal code (which was replaced by the Russian penal code, de facto in use since the Uprising began). Also the Catholic Church was persecuted and most monasteries were closed and nationalized. In 1875, following the rules of the Synod of Polotsk of 1839, the Eparchy of Chełm-Belz of the Catholic Ruthenian Uniate Church disbanded itself and united with the Russian Orthodox Church.

After 1837 all voivodeships that constituted the Kingdom of Poland were turned into gubernias and became an integral part of Russian administrative division, ruled directly by the Russian tsars.

After the January Uprising in 1863, the coat of arms of the Congress Kingdom was abandoned, the Polish language was banned from office and education and the process of incorporation of the Polish gubernias and Russification of its administration was completed.

The 1867 reform, initiated after the failure of the January Uprising, was designed to tie the Kingdom of Poland more tightly to the administration structure of the Russian Empire. It divided larger governorates into smaller ones and introduced a new lower-level entity, gminas. There were 10 Governorates: five on the right bank of the Vistula River—Сувалкская (Suvalkskaya), Ломжинская (Lomzhinskaya), Плоцкая (Plotskaya), Седлецкая (Sedletskaya) and Люблинская (Lublinskaya)—and the remaining five on the left bank: Калишская (Kalishskaya), Варшавская (Varshavskaya), Петроковская (Petrokovskaya), Радомская (Radomskaya) and Келецкая (Keletskaya).

The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Poland was abolished at this time.