Population of the Russian Partition of Poland 1815-1897

This graph shows the total population of the Russian Partition, sometimes known as Russian Poland, between the years 1815 and 1897. In the late eighteenth century the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth entered a period of political, military and economic decline and was its territories were then split between Austria, Prussia and Russia, and there was no official Polish state until 1918. The Russian Partition covered some of modern-day Poland, as well as much of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, and the number of ethnic Poles in these regions was much higher than it is today.
From the graph we can see that the population of this area was 2.6 million people in 1815, and it grew to be just under 9.5 million before the turn of the next century. This proved to be a tumultuous period in the region's history, including some rebellions and uprisings, and harsh Russification policies that made life difficult for the natives. Despite this turmoil, it is difficult to assess its impact on the local populations. We can see that growth in the 1850s and 1860s was stagnant and the population even dropped during this time, although there is no clear explanation for this today. Poland eventually became an independent state again in 1918 after the First World War, although the period after this would prove to be the most devastating in Poland's history.