The uprising of the Poles against the Russian occupation in November 1831 caused a serious rift among Czech patriots. While the younger generation was decidedly sympathetic to the Poles and their struggle for freedom against Russian oppression, the older generation of Czech revivalists bemoaned the "fatal Slavic disunity" and condemned the Poles for their presumptuous defiance against the largest Slavic nation and state. In a letter to his friend Antonín Marek, Josef Jungmann wrote in a similar vein. Influenced by his aspiration for Slavic national and cultural unity, his views on the Russification of the Poles contrasted with his lifelong efforts to emancipate the Czech language. As he wrote: “I pity the Poles, but I rejoice for Slavs, seeing that their great domestic enemy has been reduced. The suppression of the Polish language will make room for spreading Russian, and this may be the first step towards a universal Slavic written dialect.”