In 1815, the Congress of Vienna decided the fate of the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for the next century. A significant part of them became part of Russia - first as the Kingdom of Poland, endowed with a constitution and self-government, then as the Privislinsky Territory, devoid of any autonomy. Twice these lands were shaken by large uprisings, and then the revolution of 1905. From a testing ground for liberal reforms, they turned into a source of constant concern for St. Petersburg, an object of subordination and Russification. The author shows how the Russian bureaucracy and the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Poland simultaneously clashed and found zones of peaceful interaction, which was especially pronounced in the modernization of the urban environment; how the clash with the "Polish question" changed the attitude of the imperial core to the rest of the peripheral regions and how the image of the "rebellious Poles" affected the formation of the national identity of the Russians; as Polish provinces, even after an attempt to russify them, remained for St. Petersburg a "foreign land" that was not subject to complete cultural transformation. Malte Rolf is a professor at the Karl von Osetsky University of Oldenburg (Germany), a specialist in the history of Central and Eastern Europe.