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Association of the Polish Youth "Zet"


The Związek Młodzieży Polskiej "Zet" ("Union or Association of the Polish Youth "Zet"", abbreviated ZMP or more commonly Zet) was a clandestine organization of Polish students at universities of the three partitioning powers (Russia, Germany, Austria) and other European universities with larger groups of Polish students. Its aim was to bring together talented young men and further educate them as community leaders, pro-Polish agitators and possibly for a role in the civil service of a future Polish state. Universities where Zet was active included St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev (Russia), Warsaw (then in the Russian partition), Berlin, Breslau, Munich (Germany), Vienna (Austria), Kraków, Lemberg (Polish Lwów, then in the Austrian partition), Paris (France), Zürich, and Geneva (Switzerland).

Zet was formed in Kraków, then in Austria, by Zygmunt Balicki (1858-1916), a Lublin-born national activist who had escaped from the Russian partition, in 1887. In the following year, it became a formal part of the larger conspirative organization Liga Polska ("Polish League") formed by Zygmunt Miłkowski (pseudonym Teodor Tomaż Jeż) from his exile in Switzerland in 1887.

Its activities included conspirative meetings in which the members studied and discussed issues from Polish history that were not part of the regular curricula at the universities of the partitioning powers. It also organized Polish-language instruction for interested students of Polish origin with a deficient command of the (standard) language. Zet published the magazines Teka ("Portfolio"), Dla Polski ("For Poland"), Wici ("The Web"), which Polish students secretly circulated among themselves.


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