- 1 - Lecture 14 The Emergence of an Independent State and the Settlement of the Frontiers 1. Introduction. 2. The Settlement of the Frontiers The compromise which had led to the formation of the Paderewski government masked deep differences over the form the new state should take. No single group emerged dominant in the first elections and the period of the struggle for the frontiers saw a succession of weak governments. Throughout this period from the creation of the government in January 1919 to the end of the period of hostilities and the new elections, which were held in November 1922, there were shifting political alliances and the position of the Centre parties became more significant as the period grew on. Table 1. Party alignments 19I9-22 Feb. 1919 June 1919 Jan. 1920 July 1922 Right (mainly the National Democrats) 34.2 35.8 18.1 24.8 Centre (mainly the various Peasant parties) 30.8 33.2 59.1 53.9 - 2 - Left (mainly the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) 30.3 26.8 17.7 16.5 National minorities 3.5 3.2 3.2 3.9 Non-party l.2 l.0 l.9 0.9 The differences over the frontiers and structure of the new state were a continuation of the long-standing feued between the National Democrats and the adherents of Piłsudski. Dmowski and his followers, true to their belief that Germany was Poland’s principal enemy, aimed at extending the country as far as possible to the west, in order to make it a ‘buttress against the German Drang nach Osten’. In the memorandum Dmowski presented to President Wilson in October 1918 on behalf of the Polish National Committee, he made large claims on Germany: Poznania, Pomerania, Upper Silesia and parts of East Prussia. He did not limit Polish claims in the east to those areas where there was a Polish minority, but demanded the whole of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, parts of Volhynia and Podolia and the whole of Galicia. In these areas he believed that Polish cultural influence was dominant and their population could thus be assimilated to the Polish nation in a unitary and centralized state. Piłsudski continued to regard Russia as the main threat to Polish independence. Although he did not have his own party, he dominated political life in the first years on independence. Throughout the period from the establishment of the Paderewski government until the elections to the new parliament, which took place in November 1922, he retained the post of head of state as well as that of commander-in-chief, which he had resigned to parliament on 20 February and in which he had been unanimously - 3 - confirmed. Though he lacked a veto over domestic legislation, he played a major though not undisputed role in shaping foreign policy and was clearly the dominant figure in the army. Indeed, one of the most signicant developments in the first year of Polish independence was the great increase in the size of the army which grew from barely 30,000 officers and men on 11 November 1918 to over 600,000 by August 1919, organized in the autumn into twenty divisions. Piłsudski continued to regard Russia as the main threat to Polish independence. He opposed far-reaching claims in the west on the grounds that they would make impossible a satisfactory relationship with Germany. He saw in the weakening of Russia, caused by the revolution and civil war, the opportunity to ensure Poland’s security in the east by fostering the creation of national Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian states which would be federally linked with Poland. Though the Poles were to be the dominant power in this federation, Piłsudski was almost certainly sincere in his claims that he respected the nationai aspirations of the Lithuanians, Belarusians and Ukrainians in these areas. The same could hardly be said for the Polish landowners here who saw in these federal schemes a means of safeguarding their estates. Poland probably lacked the resources to embark upon so grandiose a policy, but Pilsudski was convinced that only a powerful state of this type could maintain its independence against Germany and Russia. As he asked rhetorically, was Poland ‘to be a state equal to the great world powers or a little state in need of the protection of the mighty?…[It is vital that Poland] should be the greatest power not only militarily, but also culturally, in the East.’1 The settlement of the frontiers of the new state preoccupied political life for the hrst two and a half years of independence. Indeed, the country only took the form it held - 4 - for most of the interwar period in March 1922, when the Vilna area was finally incorporated, and it was only in March 1923 that its frontiers were recognized by the Allies. The Versailles treaty, finally signed on 28 June 1919, laid down the western frontiers of Poland. The settlement, partly as a result of the unwillingness of the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George to press Germany too hard, did not fully meet the Polish claims. It assigned to Poland the province of Poznania, which had come under Polish control as a result of an uprising on 27 December 1918 which had anticipated the peace treaty, some adjacent areas of Silesia and Pomerania (Pomorze), with access to the sea at Danzig. Danzig itself became a Free City, with Poland entrusted with the conduct of its foreign affairs and granted a customs area within it and use of the port, its railways and waterways. The future of disputed areas in East Prussia and Upper Silesia was to be decided by plebiscite. In Prussia the plebiscite took place in July when the Poles seemed about to be overwhelmed by the Red Army, but of greater importance was the tradition of long association with Germany and the use of administrative pressure. Only 2.2 per cent in Allenstein voted for amalgamation with Poland and 7.6 per cent in Marienwerder. The situation was different in Upper Silesia where the plebiscite took place after two Polish uprisings. The same factors were present as in East Prussia, but 40.3 per cent voted for Poland, against 59.6 per cent for remaining part of Germany. The Poles, however, were in a majority in the more industrialized eastern districts. The fear that they might remain in Germany led to the third Silesian uprising on the night of 2-3 May 1921. Unable to agree among themselves on the future of Silesia, the Allies recommended to the Council of the League of Nations that the province be partitioned. Poland obtained most of the industrial and mining areas with a population of nearly a million, of whom about a - 5 - quarter were Germans. According to German statistics some 530,000 Poles remained within Germany. In truth the Polish government, being more concerned with the conflict with Soviet Russian and therefore wary of antagonizing the Western Powers, had been slow to support the Silesian insurgents. The special problems of Silesia led to the granting of wide autonomy, including a regional parliament dealing with all matters except foreign affairs, the army, the judiciary and tariffs. Polish Silesia continued to enjoy regional self-government until 1939. The remaining source of conflict in the west was Austrian Silesia, of which the principal town was Teschen (Cieszyń). A provisional agreement was reached on 5 November 1918 between the Polish and Czech national committees which had sprung up in the area to divide the province on ethnic lines. This would, however, have left the railway from northern Bohemia to Slovakia in Polish hands, as well as the valuable coking coal deposits and metallurgical factories of the Karwina basin. It was therefore unacceptable to the Czechoslovak government, which took advantage of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in eastern Galicia to seize part of this area on 23 January 1919. A truce was arranged by the Allies on 1 February with a new demarcation line favouring the Czechs. It was agreed that a final division of the territory was to be made by the Supreme Allied Conference. Polish demands for a plebiscite, accepted by the Allies in September, proved impossible to carry out and in July I920, at the height of the Polish-Soviet war, the Allies decided at the Spa Conference in favour of Czechoslovakia. As a result the area up to the left bank of the river Olża was incorporated into Czechoslovakia with a Polish minority, overwhelmingly Protestant, amounting to 140,000 according to official Polish claims. This ostensibly minor dispute was to cast a - 6 - dark shadow over Polish-Czechoslovak relations throughout the inter-war period and after. It was the settlement of the Polish eastern frontier which was to create most difficulty. Here not only did Piłsudski’s federal concepts conflict with the National Democrat policy of a unitary state which would assimilate Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, but also created problems in the mixed-nationality areas between ethnic Poland and ethnic Russia which involved the Russian Whites, the Bolsheviks and the emergent nationalist groups. The Poles first clashed with the Bolsheviks when their troops, moving into the vacuum created by the collapse of the Ober-Ost, met one another at the small town of Bereza Kartuska in February 1919. The conflict assumed more serious dimensions in April, when Piłsudski captured Vilna, in his words, ‘the key to Lithuanian-Belarusian affairs’. He failed, however, to win substantial support for his schemes from either the Lithuanians or the Belarusians. Lithuanian nationalism was fundamentally anti-Polish in character and Polish-Lithuanian relations deteriorated still further in August 1919 as a result of an attempted coup by the Polish Military Organization (POW) aimed at placing a pro-Polish government in power at Kaunas (Kovno).