He prepared the tool, chose a place and even made a plan B - in case he failed to kill the first time. Why did Józef Piłsudski want to commit suicide? How was he planning to take his own life?
Andrzej Garlicki, the most insightful of Józef Piłsudski's biographers, summed up this particular matter in one short sentence. Describing the events in the fall of 1886, he stated that the future Commander "was then going through some mental crisis, even thinking of suicide".
Depressed Józef was a student, he had just finished his first year of medicine at the University of Kharkiv. The city was gloomy, provincial, and the studies themselves did not seem to captivate the young man. He decided to move to another university - to the more progressive, even liberal Dorpad in present-day Estonia. However, as Garlicki pointed out, the matter dragged on and Piłsudski did not manage to start his studies at the beginning of the new academic year.
Is that why he became deeply depressed? Maybe he was overwhelmed by the lack of prospects, the family bankruptcy, the lack of ideas for his own future? Years later, however, he pointed to another reason. He openly admitted that he wanted to kill himself… due to a huge ego overgrowth.
Kharkiv University. Photograph taken around 1900. It was after Piłsudski's first year of studies here that really dark thoughts came to me.
Dreams of greatness
He did not highlight the matter until 1931 in a conversation with the former prime minister of the Republic of Poland and senator, Artur Śliwiński. Almost half a century has passed since the mysterious episode, but Piłsudski referred to it in great detail. And it started with a little brag.
- From an early age (...) I dreamed of greatness - emphasized the Marshal.
The interlocutor replied with some irony, or at least without the seriousness expected. "I made a point that many children dream of this," he later noted. Piłsudski decided to raise the stake clearly. He not only dreamed of greatness, but also:he was already planning his suicide.
I never parted with this thought. I persevered in the decisions of my childhood. It exposed me to a hard time. In my youth, life was not conducive to such decisions. It was also the moment when I doubted that I could do great things. And life immediately lost its charm to me.
Former Prime Minister Artur Śliwiński. It was he who made Piłsudski's confession about the planned suicide.
I told myself that since I can't be great, I have nothing to live for. It was after returning to Vilnius from the first year of university studies in Kharkiv. I was so tired that I decided to end myself irrevocably. I even made plans to do it.
In the end, I decided to take the boat to my favorite Trakai lake, stand on the edge of the boat and shoot myself with a revolver. I reasoned that if the shot was not fatal, I would fall into the water and no one could save me.
Artur Śliwiński claimed, on the basis of Piłsudski's confessions, that he did not decide to pull the trigger because "there had been events that convinced him that it was possible to live for greatness." These incidents were ... "imprisonment, and then exile to Siberia." In other words: it was the tsarist protection and the possessive apparatus of power that saved Piłsudski's life. And it was thanks to the Russian authorities that he could become the Commander, Marshal and Chief of State in the future.
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Source:
Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on:
- A. Śliwiński, Marshal Piłsudski about himself , "Independence", vol. 16 (1937), pp. 367-368.
- A. Garlicki, Józef Piłsudski 1867-1935 , Sign 2017, p. 31.