The evolution of the position of the main Russian political factions on the Polish question in the period of the January Uprising may be divided into three basic phases: 1856–1861, 1861–1863, and 1863–1866. These attitudes were already taking shape earlier, along with the development of the diverse trends in early 19st-century Russian political thought – Slavophilism, Pan- Slavism, conservatism, nationalism, and radical democracy. Political reflection continued after the Crimean War, often with an admixture of sympathy for the Poles and criticism and censure of Nicholas I's system. This was associated with the spread of a belief that the Polish problem within the Empire was due more to the repressive policy exercised by the conservative, absolutist police state with respect to its subjects, who were making a collective stand in defence of their civil freedoms, rather than to its intrinsic nature as a permanent and ineradicable conflict on national grounds.

The fear of opening up the Polish can of worms tended to be associated with the hope that there would be a chance to resolve the Polish issue if the political situation changed, and that it could be settled in compliance with the interests of the Empire, and even to the advantage of its modernisation and expansion in line with the nationalist and Slavic idea. Such views were voiced particularly by Pan-Slavists, but also by Russian liberals.

For members of the intelligentsia susceptible to the ideas of liberalism and those of the nobility who wanted a constitution, the resolution of the Polish question could become the point of departure for far-reaching domestic political transformation, and for a rise in Russia's prestige abroad. Hence the popularity of the idea of autonomy for Poland, albeit usually limited to a guarantee of its national and cultural rights and a curiosity about its constitutional and political system.

The Polish moral revolution in the Russian partitional zone and the patriotic demonstrations of 1861–1862 that preceded the Uprising put the Polish question in the limelight.