Piłsudski's building the strength of the reborn Poland was like after December. Each jerked towards him. When there were arguments at the top of the government as to whether the new state was to be a federation or an ethnically homogeneous country, tragedies took place in the streets. The bloody pogroms were deceptively reminiscent of cold-blooded executions ...
Getting to 20 Bóżnicza Street is not that easy. The entrance is tightly barred and it is impossible to explode it with a grenade. The road leads through the gate of the tenement house adjacent to the inner yard. Polish soldiers blow up the entrance to the building and break through the store. There are about thirty of them. They scream around the apartments. There are also civilians right behind them.
There is terrible confusion in the large tenement house on the second floor. Together with the soldier in the steel helmet, there is a sister with the sign of the Red Cross. They tear off curtains, roll up carpets, take out anything of any value from cupboards. They burst into the room where a young couple is quickly getting dressed. The sister shouts to Feldfebel in the helmet:"Shoot!" The Gorne State are killed on the spot.
Rings don't want to come off easily. Dead fingers must be twisted. A terrified fourteen-year-old girl falls out of the next room. He kneels, folds his hands as if in prayer, and begs for mercy. A Feldfebel in a steel helmet and with a red and white badge shoots her in the mouth. The girl freezes. A day later, her relatives find her still in the same pleading pose. The leaking blood has already solidified in a brown trail around the mouth.
Lviv bestiality
To be everything to everyone is too often to be nothing. Piłsudski was aware of this. Building the strength of the new state was going smoothly. Each jerked towards him. The new Polish free press is silent about the Lviv pogrom, in which, according to preliminary reports, several hundred people died. Except for one newspaper - "Robotnik" edited after all by Feliks Perl - which has an article by Andrzej Strug on this subject. Besides, silence.
It is not a conspiracy of silence. This is the price of a nationwide consensus. Silence, or perhaps a shrug, goes without saying. Piłsudski certainly knows about the bestialities of Lviv. But he does not intend to do anything about it. He considers the pogroms an "exaggeration", but invariably expects from the Jews - "children of the same land" unconditional loyalty to the nascent Polish independence. Even in the face of repeated anti-Semitic riots. It is also a hostage to the consensus. The most important are the army and the elections. They were to take place at the end of January.
Beit Chasidim Synagogue burned down during the Lviv pogrom.
However, Lviv complicates his plans on at least a few issues. The pogrom of Jews has a disastrous impact on the image of Poland. And yet you have to communicate with the enthusiast. It is quite easy to dismiss the reports of the Viennese daily as coming from the propaganda tube of a former enemy.
However, the more urgent the matter of agreement with the National Democracy. The KNP member who arrived in December clearly indicates that neither the submission of the KNP to the Chief nor the return of the Blue Army is possible until a real government of national unity is formed. Real - that is, with the endeavor in the lineup.
You have to rule by force
The very outbreak of fighting with the Ukrainians and the fact that the first military victory was the defense of Lviv has far-reaching consequences. Piłsudski's concepts relating to the arrangement of relations with the peoples of the former Commonwealth arise directly from his view of Russia.
He has long criticized the treatment of Russia as a monolith. Russia is a multinational state. The nations inhabiting them are divided into historical ones - like Poles and Lithuanians, and new ones - like Ukrainians, Belarusians and Latvians. Among them all, Poles should, of course, take priority, but Piłsudski also understood that none of these nations alone could oppose the Russians. And Russia - Bolshevik or tsarist - will always be imperialist.
Some form of cooperation between smaller nations was necessary - a federation, for example. Piłsudski was under the illusion that a direct battle with the Ukrainians was just an accident at work. He did not think about the claims of Lithuanians to the entire historical Lithuania - with Vilnius at the forefront - he considered them to be the result of German schemes.
The text is an excerpt from the latest book by Maciej Gablankowski, "Piłsudski. A perverse portrait. Biography ”, which has just been released by the Znak publishing house.
Unfortunately, the Lithuanians - really - made claims to the whole of historical Lithuania, and the Ukrainians - really - wanted their own state. The federal program of "national" Piłsudski was not attractive to them. Well, unless it was a federation "with a revolver in your pocket". The problem is also that the alternative program, the so-called incorporation - attributed to Dmowski - of an ethnically homogeneous state, or at least ruled by an ethnically homogeneous majority, was equally unrealistic. Dmowski directly stated:"The Federation is a weakness" and added:"Especially since there is nobody to federate with."
He did not mention, however, how to put into practice the concept of a unified state in a country where there is not even one city without a significant minority, but with many, where Poles are a minority. He did not mention, because the answer to this question does not differ from the one proposed by Piłsudski:you have to rule by violence.
Find out more:Piłsudski's forgotten sin. Was it his fault that the Bolsheviks stood near Warsaw?
Piłsudski's testament
Though it seemed impossible, things sped up at the very end of the year. On December 27, the Greater Poland Uprising breaks out. The ignition spark is driving Ignacy Paderewski through Poznań. This outstanding pianist and a slightly less distinguished politician with clearly Endec views, considerable money (he founded, among others, the Grunwald Monument in Krakow), great charisma and an outstanding wife, thanks to his status as an international star, has already done a lot for the Polish cause.
Sometimes it is said that it was his merit that he introduced the postulate of creating an independent Poland into Wilson's agenda. And yet just a few years earlier, the US president - a lawyer, academic teacher and historian by profession - in his book spoke about Poles, to put it mildly, with great reserve, as people "who always lacked all the skills and energy to work, as well as any initiative or intellect ” . Paderewski arrived in Warsaw on January 1, 1919.
The arrival of Ignacy Jan Paderewski to Poznań on December 27, 1918 was a direct impulse for the outbreak of the Greater Poland Uprising.
December 1918 was difficult for Piłsudski. For the first and only time, he called a notary to write a will. He was tormented by an untreated flu that turned into pneumonia. The last will - sealed in the presence of five witnesses - has never been found. Perhaps it is somewhere among the family papers.
Jan Piłsudski was among those assigned to execute the will. Perhaps Józef would have chosen a bit older than Jan Adam, but the latter invariably held the position of an accountant at the Vilnius City Hall since 1909. Despite the changing authorities. In December 1918, the Germans were standing there.
Source:
The text is an excerpt from Maciej Gablankowski's book "Piłsudski. A perverse portrait. Biography ”, which has just been released by the Znak publishing house.