THE MOST IMPORTANT episode in the political history of hasidism in central Poland was the government investigation conducted in the years 1823 and 1824. Despite its importance, the investigation has never been properly described, and the literature on the subject, though extensive, is comprised of works in which incomplete knowledge of the facts is mixed with pure confabulation, biased interpretations given as fact, unclear allusions, second-hand testimonies, or hasidic hagiography.5 At best, these accounts are sketchy descriptions or focused on selected threads of the investigation. The task of this chapter is, above all, to set out what we know about the investigation on the basis of the extant sources—and what we do not know. This should help to eliminate at least some of the worst errors that still persist in works on Polish hasidism.

Hussites: The Beginnings of the Investigation

In September 1823 Viceroy General Józef Zajączek received a report written by Colonel Dulfus, the head of the gendarmerie in Parczew, a small provincial town in the Podlasie voivodeship:

We do not know where Colonel Dulfus obtained this information, nor do we know why he wrote his report. Disturbed by the emergence of such a harmful, new, and strange sect that evidently appealed to young men, the viceroy ordered the Government Commission for Internal Affairs and Police ‘to get to know the circumstances and the general situation corresponding to the rulings made in this area’. In the name of the minister of internal affairs, Stanisław Staszic therefore wrote to the Government Commission for Religious Denominations and Public Enlightenment with a request for information relating to this ‘sect of Hussites’ and for suggestions of effective means of maintaining control.