Józef Piłsudski

Polish revolutionary and political leader

• Born: December 5, 1867
• Birthplace: Zulów, Poland, Russian Empire (now in Lithuania)
• Died: May 12, 1935
• Place of death: Warsaw, Poland

Piłsudski led the Polish independence movement and created the Polish Legions, which fought against czarist Russia in World War I. He first led the Polish government and military as field marshal and chief of state and was then Poland’s governmental leader, refusing the title of president. He is credited with leading Poland to independence from the Russian Empire and was the leading influence in the formation of the country’s domestic and foreign policy.

Early Life

Józef Piłsudski (YEW-zehf peel-SEWT-skee) was born in Zulów, Czarist Poland, just after the end of the January Uprising (1863-1865) of Poles and Lithuanians against the Russian Empire. Piłsudski grew up on stories of Polish patriotism and sacrifice for the nation and thus developed an early hatred for Russian imperialism.

Piłsudski went on to study medicine at Kharkov University. While at the university, he came in to contact with various socialist circles. In 1887, Piłsudski and his brother became involved in a plot to kill Czar Alexander III and was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in Siberia. During his incarceration, he came into contact with many other Polish exiles, even some revolutionaries from 1863. He became even more dedicated to Polish independence while in exile and decided that socialism would be the vehicle to bring this objective to fruition.

Life’s Work

On his return from Siberia, Piłsudski joined the newly formed Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party), or PPS, and was named the primary editor of the party’s newspaper Robotnik (worker). In addition to writing for the paper, he also was responsible for printing the paper. He had to move the press frequently to avoid arrest. The clandestine activity that Piłsudski took part in at this time molded his individual character. He took full control and responsibility for all that happened. He defined his own path and let nothing get in his way.

In 1900, Piłsudski was arrested after Robotnik offices were located by authorities. He was jailed in the Warsaw Citadel and then moved to St. Petersburg. He escaped in 1901 from a military hospital by feigning insanity and then went into exile, eventually reaching England. In England he joined other Polish revolutionaries, and by the end of 1902, he had returned to Russian-occupied Poland to resume his underground life.

In 1904, war broke out between Russia and Japan . Piłsudski saw the war as an opportunity to undermine the Russians. He traveled to Tokyo to get Japanese support for a Polish uprising and to offer Poles as spies to weaken the Russian war effort. The Japanese military did not accept the offer, but it did give him funds to conduct intelligence gathering and to carry out terrorist attacks on czarist targets in Russian Poland. Piłsudski used the money to organize and train volunteers for the Organizacja Bojowa PPS (Fighting Organization of the PPS). Bojowa carried out attacks on czarist targets throughout the 1905 revolution in Russia.

Following the 1905 revolution, Bojowa continued its activities, which angered some in the PPS. Piłsudski began to move away from social reform as his goal and closer to the concept of armed struggle to free Poland, which was his paramount objective. Bojowa began to transform from terrorist cells to paramilitary units.

In 1908, Piłsudski created Związek Walki Czynnej (Union for Armed Struggle), or ZWC, a nonpartisan umbrella organization for anyone and any group willing to fight for Poland. The ZWC was to be a nucleus for a Polish army. Piłsudski began talks with the Austrian government in 1910 with the goal of creating riflemen’s associations (Strzelec) in Galicia, Austrian Poland. From 1912 to 1914, the Strzelec were used to train officer cadres for a future Polish army. It was during this training that revolutionaries made the transition to being Polish soldiers. By April of 1914, more than 7,200 riflemen had been trained as officer cadres.

When World War I began in 1914, Piłsudski formed the Legiony Polskie, or Polish Legions, to fight against czarist Russia. The legions were loosely associated with the Austrian army but were not considered Allies in the war. Piłsudski was working on a scenario in which Russia would be defeated by the Central Powers (the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman Empires) and, in turn, suffer defeat at the hands of the Entente (Russia, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy), thus leaving Poland free of its occupiers.

The legions were to fight on the Eastern front only. Piłsudski, asked to head the military section of a new provisional government tied to Germany and Austria, gave the illusion of cooperation in order to form an underground army known as the Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (Polish Military Force), or POW. The POW was an army formed to back up the Polish Legions should they fail in their tasks. A crisis hit in 1917, when Piłsudski was arrested and the legions were disbanded for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the German and Austrian governments. The POW, however, continued to function after Piłsudski was sent to a German prison. He became a martyr fighting for Poland.

Piłsudski returned to Warsaw on November 10, 1918, after his release by the German authorities. He was hailed as a national hero and named head of a new Polish government. He focused his attention on the delineation of Poland’s new borders. The Poles, who found themselves in conflict with Lithuania, Germany, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and, most importantly, Soviet Russia, were fighting on five fronts simultaneously.

By the end of 1919, only Soviet Russia remained the greatest threat to the freedom of the newly emerged Central European states. Piłsudski envisioned a defensive confederation of Central European states from the Baltic to the Black Sea to respond to any threats from the two neighboring giants. Poland was to be the focal point and Ukraine a keystone in the confederacy. Piłsudski signed an alliance with Simon Petliura, a Ukrainian leader, for a joint offensive to rid Ukraine of Soviet interference on their territory. The joint Polish-Ukrainian offensive was initially successful, but resources were stretched too thin.

By the summer of 1920, the Red Army had regrouped and pushed the allied forces back toward Warsaw. Lenin envisioned the Red Army marching over the “corpse of White Poland ” to Germany and into the West. Piłsudski had other ideas and prepared a counteroffensive, which was launched on August 15. The Polish army used blitzkrieglike tactics to break through a weak point in the Red Army’s lines.

Soviet forces were taken by surprise and pushed all the way back to Minsk in Bielorussia (Belarus). Moscow sued for peace. The Polish army was too weak to press its advantage so agreed to open talks in Riga, Latvia. The Treaty of Riga ended the war and ended Piłsudski’s confederation plans.

Piłsudski remained in politics until the assassination of his friend, Gabriel Narutowicz , Poland’s first elected president in 1922. Narutowicz was murdered by a right-wing political fanatic. Piłsudski retired from politics in disgust and took up the life of a country squire. The political situation continued to spiral downward, and by 1926 he felt a need to return to public service. With the Polish government on the verge of collapse, Piłsudski led a coup d’état that put him in complete control of Poland from 1926 to 1935.

Piłsudski, who believed that partisan politics led to Poland’s political paralysis, created in 1926 a new coalition party called the Sanacja, meaning sanation, or restoration to health, to end partisanship, encourage nationalism, and heal the nation. The Sanacja, however, was never formalized as a party, and so members created in 1928 the Bezpartyjny Blok Współlpracy z Rza̧dem, or Non-Partisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government. Political troublemakers were sent to the Bereza Kartuska detention camp to reorient their priorities: Poland first and politics second.

Poland became a semiauthoritarian state under Piłsudski, who left the day-to-day functioning of the government to associates. He devoted his time to preparing Poland for the impending confrontation with either or both of its neighbors. He set into motion the creation of an industrial heartland to make Poland self-sufficient economically, or, at minimum, less reliant on others. He maintained control over the armed forces to keep them free of politics and ready for battle.

Piłsudski’s fears came to fruition with the arrival of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany in 1933. While the rest of Europe chose to ignore the German threat, Piłsudski approached the French and others about a preemptive strike to remove Hitler from power. When his plan went ignored, Piłsudski decided to sign nonaggression pacts with both Germany and Soviet Russia to delay the inevitable. Until his death in 1935, he tried to maintain a balance between Poland’s revanchist (revengeful) neighbors.

Significance

Piłsudski, the archetype of Polish patriotism, remains one of the great individuals of Polish history, even into the twenty-first century. His popular words, “To be defeated and not give up is victory but to live on your laurels is defeat,” remain part of Polish lore. Following the collapse of Communist Poland, where he had been persona non grata, one could hear historical recordings, see long-hidden photographs, read an abundance of new and reprinted old books, and witness the creation of new monuments to the great marshal and hero of Poland.

Bibliography

Dziewanowski, M. K. Joseph Piłsudski: A European Federalist. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institute Press, 1969. An excellent work on the federalist plans of Piłsudski. The book covers primarily the period from 1918 to 1921 to the signing of the Treaty of Riga.

Jedrzejewicz, Waclaw. Piłsudski: A Life for Poland. New York: Hippocrene Press, 1982. A biography of Piłsudski written by a former colleague and admirer, who also was a member of the Polish Legions in World War I and part of the Polish government before World War II.

Piłsudski, Józef. Memoir of a Polish Revolutionary and Soldier. London: Faber & Faber, 1931. An English translation of some of Piłsudski’s early writings up to World War I. The editor’s notes are very helpful and worth reading.

Reddaway, W. F. Marshal Piłsudski. London: Routledge, 1939. The best biography on Piłsudski, even though dated. It is written by a respected British historian of East European history.

Rothschild, Joseph. Piłsudski’s Coup d’État. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. The classic, in-depth work on Piłsudski’s coup of 1926, the political chaos that preceded it, and the heavy-handed tactics used to return order.

Stefancic, David. “Piłsudski’s Polish Legions: The Formation of a National Army Without a Nation State.” In Armies in Exile, edited by David Stefancic. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 2005. A concise essay on Piłsudski’s efforts to create a Polish army prior to and during World War I in the absence of a Polish state.