This article analyses the attitude of officials in the Russian Empire towards the role of Poles in Lithuania and Belarus at the beginning of the twentieth century, focusing mainly on the period after the 1905 revolution. In this article I argue that the tsarist authorities were unable to compete with the Polish influences in the Northwestern Region, specifically in Belarus, and their actions show that they were aware of this reality. This was why no higher education institution was established in the Northwestern Region, the ‘Lithuanian’ governorates had no zemstvos, and the Polish-speaking residents of the western districts of the Grodno governorate could not learn Polish in primary schools.