Lecture 15 Politics in Independent Poland 1921-1939 1. the Promise
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- 1 - Lecture 15 Politics in Independent Poland 1921-1939 1. The Promise and Perils of Independence. The re-emergence of the Polish state after 130 years of foreign rule was the most obvious example of the triumph of the principle of nationality in the post-First World War settlement. The new state, with a population of nearly 30 million, was the largest and most powerful in East-Central Europe, and the feeling was widespread that the shedding of foreign rule would make it possible quickly to dispel Polish backwardness, and would soon enable Poland to take her place as a highly developed European country. The euphoria which followed the achievement of independence masked, if only briefly, the extent of the divisions which were to mar Poland’s political life. For the country’s partition before 1914 between the three great dynastic empires of Eastern Europe, Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, had created political groupings which differed not only in ideology but also in their view of how the Polish cause could best be advanced, and which of the partitioning powers should be sought as an ally. From the start the political stability of the new state was extremely precarious. The principal reason for this was the now largely anachronistic clash between the National Democrats and the supporters of Piłsudski. This had been extremely bitter before 1914. Dmowski had attacked Pi_sudski and his followers as pathetic and dangerous imitators of the nineteenth-century noble revolutionaries, men with no practical sense of politics who preached insurrection for its own sake and who were likely - 2 - to bring new disasters on their unfortunate country. Pi_sudski’s supporters saw the National Democrats as subservient, lacking any real desire for Polish independence, and prepared to go to any lengths to appease the Russians. In the immediate aftermath of independence, as we have seen attempts were made to bring the two groups together and led to the establishment of a government in which both were represented, but the dispute broke out with new bitterness as a result of the Polish-Soviet war of 1920, which was precipitated by Pi_sudski, at this time both head of state and commander-in-chief, in an attempt to foster his federalist schemes by exploiting the weakness of the Soviet Union after the civil war. He aimed at dislodging the Ukraine and Belarus and linking them federally with Poland, and his plans were denounced by the National Democrats as rash, indeed even as criminal folly. The catastrophe they feared very nearly materialized and was only averted by the Polish victory in the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920. In spite of this, recriminations continued and the question of how far the victory in this ‘miracle on the Vistula’ was Piłsudski’s own achievement was much disputed. The quarrel between the National Democrats and the Piłsudski faction affected every aspect of political life. The National Democrats dominated the Constituent Assembly (which drew up the constitution of the new state) , and were determined that Pi_sudski should never again exercise the influence he had enjoyed between 1918 and 1922 as head of state. It was with the specific aim of curbing Piłsudski’s influence that the powers of the presidency as established by the new constitution were so limited, and the Marshal, realizing this, refused to stand for election to the new office. The constitution as a whole was never accepted by his followers as a legitimate political framework. - 3 - The conflict also spilled over into the army. The officer corps derived from a variety of sources. Some officers were veterans of Piłsudski’s wartime Legions. They were generally without formal military training, but because of their past as the first Polish army, which had acknowledged the need for ‘active struggle against Russia’, they felt that they were entitled to special consideration. In the words of one of their spokesmen: The Legions, through the genius of their creator and leader, were not only the inheritors of the national chivalric spirit, but also the inheritors of the great historic mission of Poland –the Jagiellonian tradition based on modern methods of realization. They were continually at odds with the officers who had formerly served with the Austrian Imperial Army, whom they reproached for their long servility to the Austrians, as well as with the officers from the Tsarist army and the Polish corps of General Józef Haller, which had gone over to the Allies from the Austrian side in protest against the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. On the surface, this conflict took the form of a dispute over the method of organizing the army, but what was really at issue was the question of who should control the military. Throughout the conflict, the National Democrats were aggressively hostile to Pi_sudski. The deep chasm between the followers of Dmowski and Piłsudski was not the only problem facing the state. The constitution adopted in March 1921 was highly democratic in character, in accordance with the general belief that the war had shown the superiority of democratic over autocratic systems. It was modelled on that of the Third French Republic, with an all-powerful Lower House (the Sejm) and a weak presidency and Upper House. The president had no power of veto over legislation and the senate could only delay laws by demanding they be passed by an 11/20 majority in the Lower - 4 - House. This sophisticated system did not work well in Poland. The long years of partition had created very different political traditions among those who had lived in areas administered by semiconstitutional Germany and Austria and those who had been ruled by autocratic Russia. In no sphere more than politics, claimed Stanisław Thugutt, a peasant leader, was it so important, whether one became active under the Russians or under the Austrians, with the tradition of armed uprisings and mole-like conspiratorial work in the blood or with the habit of small struggles for the achievement of very limited aims. The different political traditions, together with the introduction of proportional representation and the exuberant individualism of the Polish intelligentsia, which played a leading role in all political groupings, led to far-reaching fragmentation. In 1925, for example, there were 92 registered political parties in Poland of which 32 were represented in the Sejm, organized into 18 clubs. This political fissiparation made it most difficult to create a stable and lasting government: between the achievement of independence in November 1918 and Piłsudski’s coup of May 1926 there were 14 different regimes. Political inexperience was one of the principal causes of this instability. The Polish clubs in the Austrian, Russian and Prussian parliaments had been small, minority pressure groups, concerned almost exclusively with Polish problems and with attempts to gain redress for political grievances. This background did not adapt easily to the demands of parliamentary government in independent Poland. As Thugutt wrote, ‘everyone wants to be in opposition; on no account will anyone accept responsibility.’ Moreover, in spite of the failure of Piłsudski’s federal schemes, the new state was multi-national in character. Germans, Jews Ukrainians and Belarussians made up a third - 5 - of the population and were all to some degree dissatisfied with their position. The highly centralized constitution gave no scope for self-government to the territorially compact Ukrainians and Belarussians, who were also embittered by the failure to introduce a significant measure of land reform. The Germans resented the attempts to undo the policies of Germanization which had been pursued in Prussian Poland, while the large Jewish population was subject to a fair measure of discrimination and harassment. The failure to deal fairly with the national minorities was partly due to the pervasive air of national insecurity. Poland had re-emerged not so much as a result of its own efforts as because of the simultaneous collapse of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary. Both Germany and Russia were dissatisfied with the 1921 frontiers of Poland and, as their strength revived, the validity of the state was often questioned in the west. The country’s economic problems were also daunting. Partition had made her different areas integral parts of Russia, Germany and Austria, and it proved a long and difficult task to create a single economic unit from them. Communications, for example, had been constructed with the interests of the partitioning powers in mind: more than 50 Austrian and German railway lines led to the Russian frontier – only 10 continued on the other side. There were, as well, sharp contrasts in the level of economic development in the different territories. Industry was highly developed only in Upper Silesia, and in isolated areas in the Congress Kingdom such as the textile centre of Łódź or the Dąbrowa basin with its coal mines and metallurgical industries. In fact, despite comparatively rapid industrial development in the fifty years before 1914, the new Polish state was still overwhelmingly rural, with 74 per cent of its - 6 - population on the land, and in agriculture too it proved difficult to achieve integration of the different areas. Whereas the agriculture of the former Prussian partition was highly capitalized and efficient, its development encouraged by the rapidly growing needs of Germany, that of Russian and Austrian Poland was characterized by overpopulation and inefficiency outside the large estates, which in 1921 constituted 47 3 per cent of the arable land, but only 0.9 per cent of all holdings. The rapid industrial development necessary if the pressing social problems of the country were to be alleviated was impeded by wartime destruction. By 1920, 55 per cent of the bridges, 63 per cent of the railway stations, 48 per cent of the locomotives and 18 per cent of the buildings in the country had been destroyed.