Editing Pope Pius IX (section)

===Russian Empire===
{{Main|Pope Pius IX and Russia|Pope Pius IX and Poland}}
The [[Pontificate]] of Pius IX began in 1847 with an "Accomodamento", a generous agreement, which allowed Pius to fill vacant [[episcopal see]]s of the Latin rites both in Russia (specifically the Baltic countries) and in the Polish provinces of Russia.{{Citation needed|date=  January 2010}} The short-lived freedoms were undermined by the [[Russian Orthodox Church]],{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}} Polish political aspirations in the occupied lands,{{Citation needed|date= January 2010}} and the tendency of imperial Russia to act against any dissent. Pius first tried to position himself in the middle, strongly opposing revolutionary and violent opposition against the Russian authorities and appealing to them for more ecclesiastical freedom.{{sfn|Schmidlin|1934|pp= 213–224}} After the failure of the [[January Uprising|Polish uprising]] in 1863, Pius sided with the persecuted Poles, protesting against their persecutions, and infuriating the Tsarist government to the point that all Catholic dioceses were eliminated by 1870.{{sfn|Shea|1877|pp= 274ff}} Pius criticized the Tsar&nbsp;– without naming him&nbsp;– for expatriating whole communities to Siberia, exiling priests, condemning them to [[Katorga|labour camps]] and abolishing Catholic dioceses.{{Citation needed|date= January 2010}} He pointed to Siberian villages [[Tunka (village)|Tounka]] and [[Irkutsk|Irkout]], where in 1868, 150 Catholic priests were awaiting death.{{sfn|Shea|1877|p= 277}}