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Josef Pilsudski

Józef Piłsudski (December 5, 1867 – May 12, 1935) was a Polish marshal, statesman and the one of the founders of the Second Polish Republic.

Born in Zułów (Zalavas, in today's Lithuania) in a patriotic, aristocratic Polish family and brought up in austere circumstances, he attended a grammar school in Vilnius (Wilno). He studied at the University of Kharkov (Charków) and then joined a clandestine revolutionary and anti-tsarist organization “The People's Will.” In 1887 the Tsarist authorities arrested him and sentenced him to exile in Siberia for five years. His brother, Bronisław Piłsudski, also participated in a revolutionary plot, and became an associate of Lenin's brother.

After his release, he encountered the socialist movement and in 1892 he was among the founders of the PPS, the Polish Socialist Party. In 1900 he was arrested again for editing an underground leftist daily Robotnik (“The Worker”). He managed to escape and organized military groups of the party. During the Russo-Japanese war (1904–1905) he attempted to create a legion from Poles conscripted into the Russian army and captured by traditionally friendly Japan, but failed. At that time he believed in revolutionary guerilla warfare and carried out bank and train raids that many consider to be pure banditism. With the money he seized, he slowly built up a new revolutionary army with the goal of gaining independence from Russia. This program encountered the opposition within his own party, which split into the PPS Frakcja Rewolucyjna of Piłsudski and the PPS Lewica, the predecessor of communists.

In the years immediately before World War I, Piłsudski became a leading figure who linked and helped several military, paramilitary or guerilla groups. All those groups aimed at Polish independence, but disagreed over which of the European powers that had dominated the region since the 1871 (Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary) was the main enemy (see History of Poland). Piłsudski saw the main enemy to be Russia.

In 1914 he established the Polish Legions (Legiony Polskie, ideologically one of the predecessors of the Polish Army, practically Austrian auxiliary troops) and fought alongside Austro-Hungarian and German troops against Russia. He hoped that Russia would be defeated by the Central Powers. The possible outcome of a Central Power victory would have been the independence of Congress Poland, while a Russian victory could have brought the unification of all Polish provinces for the first time since the Partitions. According to some witnesses, Pilsudski correctly predicted a third possibility: the victory of the Central Powers over Russia and the Western Allies over Germany.

Initial Pilsudski's action in Congress Poland encountered the opposition of the majority of Polish society there. Poles were afraid of Germans, especially after the bombing and demolition of Kalisz without apparent reason.

In 1915 the Central Powers occupied all of Congress Poland and in November 1916 they declared an independent Kingdom of Poland as part of Mitteleuropa plan. Pilsudski became a member of the Regent council, the ruling body in absence of the king.

As the end of the war was nearing and the victory of the Entente became apparent, Piłsudski organized a mutiny in which his troops declined to swear allegiance to the Austrian emperor in 1917. As a result of this action Piłsudski was arrested and sent to the Magdeburg stronghold, while his men were either interned or forced to join the Austro-Hungarian army.

With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Russia had to renounce claims to what was until then its part of Poland, and part of Congress Poland was promised to Ukraine.

In 1918 Piłsudski was released by the revolutionary German troops and on November 11 he became the provisional head of the newly formed Polish state. His authority was so great that all Polish governments: Kingdom of Poland (Mitteleuropa), Temporary Government of Republic of Poland and the council in Galicia proclaimed him the naczelnik państwa.

However, it was Piłsudski's political opponent, Roman Dmowski, who represented Poland at the Versailles Treaty.

With the outbreak of hostilities in February 1919, the Polish-bolshevik war started, however both sides of the conflict committed minor forces. Piłsudski did not want to start an offensive against Bolshevik Russia, as he did not want to help the anti-communist forces, who did not support the independence of Poland.

In April 1920, Piłsudski signed an alliance with Ukraine under the leadership of Simon Petlura, where Poland passed to Ukraine its rights to the right bank of the Dnepr river up to the 1772 border, in exchange for cession of Galicia and Volhynia to Poland. Subsequently the allied Polish and Ukrainian armies under Piłsudski's and Petluras's leadership launched a successful preemptive attack against the Russian army in Ukraine, pushing back the Red Army and liberating Kyiv. However, his plan to install a working government of Ukraine failed.

The Soviets launched a long prepared attacked in Belorussia, soon also counter-attacking in Ukraine, reconquering Ukraine and advancing through Poland. Piłsudski's supporters claim that it was thanks to his command that the overwhelming bolshevik forces were defeated in the Battle of Warsaw (known to Poles as the Miracle on the Vistula River). Others point at foreign support (Marshall Foch assisted Poland) and the role of the government, presided by Wincenty Witos.

The final Treaty of Riga (1921) forced by Piłsudski's political opponents gave Belarus with Minsk to Russia, that together with incorporation of Central Lithuania after referendum of 1922, made Poland more like a national state, in opposition to Piłsudski's aim of restoring a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a federal country including all Central European nations.

The newly passed constitution of March 1921 cancelled both posts Piłsudski occupied (Commander of the State and Commander in Chief). In December 1923 Piłsudski had been elected president of Poland by the polish Sejm, but he declined. He remained the military leader until 1923. After a three-year retirement he returned to stage a successful military coup d'etat in May 1926. Piłsudski started the Sanacja movement, or movement for sanitization of the political and social life. Although he played an overwhelming role in Poland during this period, he was only for a short time prime minister, being mostly minister of defense or inspector of the army.

Piłsudski's death in 1935 left a political vacuum, many unresolved problems for the newly re-established Polish state, and started a short period of struggle for power between various of his former brothers in arms.