Sejm of Congress Poland

Sejm of Congress Poland Sejm Królestwa Polskiego
Title page of the 1820 Journal of Debates of the Sejm of the Congress Kingdom of Poland
Type
Type	bicameral
History
Founded	1815
Disbanded	1831
Preceded by	Sejm of the Duchy of Warsaw
Succeeded by	Legislative Sejm
Seats	128 deputies, 64 senators, king

The Sejm of Congress Poland (Polish: Sejm Królestwa Polskiego) was the parliament in the 19th century Kingdom of Poland, colloquially known as Congress Poland. It existed from 1815 to 1831. In the history of the Polish parliament, it succeeded the Sejm of the Duchy of Warsaw.

After the Congress of Vienna, a small Kingdom of Poland, known as Congress Poland, was recreated, with its king being the Tsar of Russia, Alexander I. Alexander I, an enlightened autocrat, decided to use Congress Poland as an experiment to see if Russian autocratic rule could be mixed with an elective legislative system, and rule Poland as a constitutional monarchy. At that time many hoped that this experiment would be a success and pave way to a liberalization in Russia; in the end it proved to be a failure.

Tsar Alexander left the administration to his younger brother, Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia, to serve as viceroy. Constantine, with the help of Nikolay Nikolayevich Novosiltsev, "Russified" Congress Poland and oversaw secret police investigations of student groups in contravention of the Constitution. Alexander visited the Sejm in 1820 and received such condemnation from the deputies (members of the Sejm's lower house) that he reversed his stance of the Sejm as a liberalization experiment although he was still bound by the Congress of Vienna not to liquidate Russia's partition of Poland entirely. By 1825, Alexander I was sufficiently dissatisfied with the Sejm that he decided to bar some of the most vocal opposition deputies from it.

Although the Sejm was supposed to meet every 2 years, only four sessions were called by the Tsar as it became the scene of increased clashes between liberal deputies and conservative government officials. With regards to the years the Sejm met, Bardach gives the dates of 1818, 1820, 1823 and 1830; Jędruch offers a similar list, however lists 1825 instead of 1823.