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Roman Dmowski
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Roman Dmowski (August 9, 1864, Warsaw – January 2, 1939, Drozdowo, Poland) was a Polish politician, statesman, and chief ideologue and co-founder of the National Democratic Party ("Endecja").
Early life
Dmowski was born in Congress Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. As a student he became active in the "Zet" Polish Youth Association (Zwiazek Mlodziezy Polskiej "Zet"), organizing a student street demonstration on the 100th anniversary of the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791.
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Encyclopedia
Roman Dmowski (August 9, 1864, Warsaw – January 2, 1939, Drozdowo, Poland) was a Polish politician, statesman, and chief ideologue and co-founder of the National Democratic Party ("Endecja").
Early life
Dmowski was born in Congress Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. As a student he became active in the "Zet" Polish Youth Association (Zwiazek Mlodziezy Polskiej "Zet"), organizing a student street demonstration on the 100th anniversary of the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791. For this he was imprisoned by the Russian Tsarist authorities for six months in the Warsaw Citadel.
Later Dmowski headed the National League (Liga Narodowa). In 1895 he settled in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (modern Lviv, Ukraine; known as Lwów to the Poles), and in 1897 co-founded the National-Democratic Party (Stronnictwo Narodowo-Demokratyczne or "Endecja"). The Endecja was to serve as a political party, a lobby and an underground organization that would unite Poles who espoused Dmowski’s views into a disciplined and committed political group. In 1899, Dmowski founded the Society for National Education as an ancillary group. A biologist of some repute, he attained great prestige within the Polish community for his scientific accomplishments. Between 1898-1900, he resided in both France and Britain. In the face of an ascendant Germany, he argued for tactical Polish cooperation with Tsarist Russia and brought about a pro-Russian orientation within the National-Democratic Party. In 1901 he took up residence in Kraków, then part of the Austrian partition of Poland.
Upon the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Dmowski traveled to Japan in a successful effort to prevent her from providing Józef Pilsudski with Japanese assistance for a planned insurrection in Poland, an insurrection which Dmowski felt would be doomed to failure.
In 1905 Dmowski moved to Warsaw, at the time, part of the Russian partition of Poland. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Dmowski favoured co-operation with the Imperial Russian authorities and welcomed Nicholas II's October Manifesto of 1905 as a stepping stone on the road towards renewed Polish autonomy. During the revolt in Lódz in June 1905, the Endeks, acting under Dmowski's orders, opposed the uprising led by Pilsudski's Polish Socialist Party. Ironically, during the course of the "June Days," as the Lódz uprising is known, a miniature civil war raged between Endek. and the PPS.
As a result of the elections to the First Duma, which were boycotted by the PPS, the National Democrats won 34 of the 55 seats allotted to Poland. Dmowski himself was elected a deputy to the Second and Third Dumas and as president of the Polish caucus within it. Prior to 1914, Dmowski was prepared to settle for Polish autonomy within the Russian Empire, as he believed that an independent Poland would swiftly become dominated by Germany, as the Germans (in his view) had a better developed state and stronger social organisations. In light of what he regarded as German superiority, Dmowski felt that a strong Russia was in Poland's best interest, and would afford it a better opportunity to ultimately reunite all Polish territories under one rule. In Dmowski's view the Russian policy of Russification would not succeed in subjugating the Poles, while the Germans would be far more successful with their Germanisation policies. On the contrary, Dmowski's great rival, Józef Pilsudski, argued that Russia was a greater threat to the Polish nation than either Germany or Austria-Hungary [e.g. "With the Germans, we lose our land. With the Russians, we lose our soul".]
Political Outlook
Throughout his life, Dmowski deeply disliked Pilsudski and everything he stood for. Dmowski came from an impoverished urban background and had little fondness for Poland's traditional social structure. Instead, Dmowski favored a modernizing program and felt Poles should stop looking back nostalgically at the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which Dmowski held in deep contempt and should instead embrace the "modern world." In particular, Dmowski despised the old Commonwealth for its multi-national structure and religious tolerance. He was especially critical of its failure to create a common identity for various ethnic groups, such as Ukrainians and Belarusians. Dmowski was a scientist and preferred logic and reason over emotion and passion. Dmowski once told Ignacy Jan Paderewski that music was "mere noise". Dmowski felt very strongly that Poles should abandon what he considered to be foolish romantic nationalism and useless gestures of defiance and should instead work hard at becoming businessmen and scientists. Dmowski was very much influenced by Social Darwinist theories, then popular in the Western world, and saw life as a merciless struggle between "strong" nations who dominated and "weak" nations who were dominated. In his view nations could be classified in four categories :
- Nations on the lowest scale of being able or desiring to become independent and self-governing for example in Dmowski's view the Belarusians.
- Nations capable of self-governing themselves with awakened nationalistic aspirations-for example Ukrainians.
- Nations wishing to regain independence with centuries-old cultures and statehoods past (e.g. Poles).
- Nations on the highest ladder of social development and tradition, possessing a country currently (e.g. Germans).
In his 1902 book Mysli nowoczesnego Polaka (Thoughts of a Modern Pole), Dmowski denounced all forms of Polish Romantic nationalism and traditional Polish values. He sharply criticized the idea of Poland as a spiritual concept and as a cultural idea. Instead Dmowski argued that Poland was merely a physical entity that needed to be brought into existence through pragmatic bargaining and negotiating, not via what Dmowski considered to be pointless revolts doomed to failure before they even began against the partitioning powers. For Dmowski, what the Poles needed was a “healthy national egoism” that would not be guided by what Dmowski regarded as the unrealistic political principles of Christianity. In the same book, Dmowski blamed the fall of the old Commonwealth due to its tradition of tolerance. While critical of Christianity, Dmowski viewed some sub-groups of Christianity (other than Catholicism) as beneficial to certain nations. This was particularly true of Anglicanism and German Protestantism. Later in 1927 he revised this earlier view and renounced his criticism of Catholicism, seeing it as an essential part of the Polish identity. Dmowski saw all minorities as weakening agents within the nation that needed to be purged. In regard to the Jewish minority, in Mysli nowoczesnego Polaka, Dmowski wrote "...in the character of this race [the Jews], so many different values strange to our moral constitution and harmful to our life have accumulated that assimilation with a larger number of Jews would destroy us, replacing us with decadent elements, rather than with those young creative foundations upon which we are building the future".
First World War
In 1914 Dmowski praised the Grand Duke Nicholas's Proclamation of August 15, 1914 which vaguely assured the Czar's Polish subjects that there would be greater autonomy for "Congress Poland" after the war, and that the Austrian provinces of East and West Galicia together with Pomerania province of Prussia would be annexed to the Kingdom of Poland when the German Empire and Austria-Hungary were defeated. However, subsequent attempts on the part of Dmowski to have the Russians make firmer commitments along the lines of the Grand Duke Nicholas’s Proclamation were met with elusive answers.
In 1915 Dmowski went abroad to campaign on behalf of Poland in the capitals of the western Allies. During his lobbying efforts, his friends included such opinion makers as the British journalist Wickham Steed. In particular, Dmowski was very successful in France, where made a very favorable impression on public opinion. In 1917, in Paris, he created a Polish National Committee aimed at rebuilding a Polish state. In September 1917, the Polish National Committee was recognized by the French as the legitimate government of Poland. The British and the Americans were less enthusiastic about Dmowski's National Committee, but likewise recognized it as Poland's government in 1918. However, the Americans refused to provide backing for what they regarded as Dmowski's excessive territorial claims. The American President Woodrow Wilson reported, "I saw M. Dmowski and M. Paderewsi in Washington, and I asked them to define Poland for me, as they understood it, and they presented me with a map in which they claimed a large part of the earth."
In part, Wilson's objections stemmed from dislike of Dmowski personally. One British diplomat stated, "He was a clever man, and clever men are distrusted: he was logical in his political theories and we hate logic: and he was persistent with a tenacity which was calculated to drive everybody mad." Another area of objection to Dmowski was to his antisemitic remarks, as in a speech he delivered at a dinner organized by the writer G. K. Chesterton, that began with the words, "My religion came from Jesus Christ, who was murdered by the Jews." A number of American and British Jewish organizations campaigned during the war against their governments recognizing the National Committee. Another leading critic of Dmowski was the historian Sir Lewis Namier, who served as the British Foreign Office's resident expert on Poland during the war and who claimed to be personally offended by antisemitic remarks made by Dmowski. Namier fought hard against British recognition of Dmowski and "his chauvinist gang".
After the First World War
At the end of World War I, two governments claimed to be the legitimate governments of Poland: Dmowski's in Paris and Pilsudski's in Warsaw. To put an end to the rival claims of Pilsudski and Dmowski, the composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski met with both men and persuaded them to reluctantly join forces. Both men had something that the other needed. Pilsudski was in possession of Poland after the war, but as the Pole who had fought with the Austrians for the Central Powers against the Russians, he was distrusted by the Allies. Pilsudski's newly reborn Polish Army needed arms from the Allies, something that only Dmowski could persuade the Allies to deliver upon. Beyond that, the French were planning to send the Blue Army of General Józef Haller de Hallenburg — loyal to Dmowski — back to Poland. The fear was that if Pilsudski and Dmowski did not put aside their differences, a civil war might break out between the partisans of Pilsudski and Dmowski. Paderewski was successful in working a compromise in which Dmowski and himself were to represent Poland at the Paris Peace Conference while Pilsudski was to serve as provisional president of Poland.
As a Polish delegate at the Paris Peace Conference and a signer of the Versailles Treaty, Dmowski exerted a substantial influence on the Treaty's favorable decisions regarding Poland. On January 29, 1919, Dmowski met with the Supreme Council of the Allies for the first time. At the meeting, Dmowski stated that he had little interest in laying claim to areas of Ukraine and Lithuania that were formerly part of Poland, but no longer had a Polish majority. At the same time Dmowski strongly pressed for the return of Polish territories with Polish-speaking majorities taken by Prussia from Poland in 1790s. Dmowski himself admitted that from a purely historical point of view, the Polish claims to Silesia were not entirely strong, but he claimed it for Poland on economic grounds, especially the coal fields. Moreover, Dmowski claimed that German statistics had lied about the number of ethnic Poles living in eastern Germany and that, "these Poles were some of the most educated and highly cultured in the nation, with a strong sense of nationality and men of progressive ideas". In addition, Dmowski, with the strong backing of the French, wanted to send the "Blue Army" to Poland via Danzig, Germany (modern Gdansk, Poland); it was the intention of both Dmowski and the French that the Blue Army create a territorial fait accompli. This proposal created much opposition from the Germans, the British and the Americans, and finally the Blue Army was sent to Poland in April 1919 via land. Pilsudski was opposed to needlessly annoying the Allies, and it has been suggested that he did not care much about the Danzig issue.
In regard to Lithuania, Dmowski didn't view Lithuanians as having a strong national identity, and viewed their social organisation as tribal. Those areas of Lithuania that had either Polish majorities or minorities were claimed by Dmowski on the grounds of self-determination. In the areas with Polish minorities, the Poles would act as a civilizing influence; only the northern part of Lithuania, which had a solid Lithuanian majority, was Dmowski willing to concede to the Lithuanians. These claims caused Dmowski to have very acrimonious disputes with the Lithuanian delegation at Paris. With regard to the former Austrian province of East Galicia, Dmowski claimed that the local Ukrainians were quite incapable of ruling themselves and also required the civilizing influence of Polish leadership. In addition, Dmowski wished to acquire the oil-fields of Galica. However, only the French supported Polish claims to Galica wholeheartedly. In the end, it was the actual fighting on the ground in Galica, and not the decisions of the diplomats in Paris, that decided that the region would be part of Poland. The French did not back Dmowski's aspirations in the Cieszyn Silesia region, and instead supported the claims of Czechoslovakia.
Dmowski himself was disappointed with the Treaty of Versailles, partly because he was strongly opposed to the Minorities Treaty imposed on Poland and partly because he wanted the German-Polish border to be somewhat farther to the west then what the Versailles had allowed. Both of these disappointments Dmowski blamed on what Dmowski claimed was the "international Jewish conspiracy". Throughout his life, Dmowski maintained that the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had been bribed by a syndicate of German-Jewish financiers to give Poland what Dmowski considered to be an unfavourable frontier with Germany. Dmowski's relations with Lloyd George were very poor. Dmowski found Lloyd George to be arrogant, unscrupulous and a consistent advocate of ruling against Polish claims to the West and the East. Dmowski was very offended by Lloyd George's ignorance of Polish affairs and in particular was enraged by Lloyd George's lack of knowledge about river traffic on the Vistula. Dmowski called Lloyd George "the agent of the Jews".
A political opponent of Józef Pilsudski, Dmowski favored what he called a "national state," a state in which the citizens would speak Polish and be of the Roman Catholic faith. If Pilsudski's vision of Poland was Jagiellon, a multinational federation (Miedzymorze federation), Dmowski's vision was the earlier Piast, ethnically and religiously homogeneous. Pilsudski believed in a wide definition of Polish citizenship in which peoples of different languages, cultures and faiths were to be united by a common loyalty to the reborn Polish state. Dmowski regarded Pilsudski's views as dangerous nonsense, and felt that the presence of large number of ethnic minorities would undermine the security of Polish state. At the Paris Peace Conference, he argued strenuously against the Minority Rights Treaty forced on Poland by the Allies.
Anti-Semitism
Dmowski was an anti-Semite and Social Darwinist who saw life as a zero-sum game in which any gain made by one group came at the expense of another. Dmowski often stated his belief in a "international Jewish conspiracy" aimed against Poland. In his essay "Zydzi wobec wojny", which comprises pages 301-308 of his 1926 book Polityka Polska i odbudowanie panstwa, Dmowski claimed that Zionism was only a cloak to disguise the Jewish ambition to rule the world. Dmowski asserted that once a Jewish state was established in Palestine, this would serve as a nucleus for the Jewish take-over of the world. In the same essay, Dmowski accused the Jews of being Poland's most dangerous enemy and of working hand in hand with the Germans to dismember Poland. Dmowski believe that the 3,000,000 Polish Jews could not be assimilated and that they were far too numerous. In his own words, "a little salt may improve the taste of the soup, but too much will spoil it."
For Dmowski, one of Poland's principal problems was that not enough Polish-speaking Catholics were middle-class, while too many ethnic Germans and Jews were. To remedy this perceived problem, he favored a policy of confiscating the wealth of Jews and ethnic Germans and redistributing it to Polish Catholics. Dmowski was never able to have this program passed into law by the Sejm, but the National Democrats did frequently organize "Buy Polish" boycott campaigns against German and Jewish shops. The first of Dmowski's anti-Semitic boycotts occurred in 1912 when he attempted to organize a total boycott of Jewish businesses in Warsaw as "punishment" for the defeat of some Endek candidates in the elections for the Duma, which Dmowski blamed on Warsaw's Jewish population. Throughout his life, Dmowski associated Jews with Germans as Poland's principal enemies; the origins of this identification stemmed from Dmowski's deep anger over the forcible "Germanization" policies carried out by the German government against its Polish minority during the Imperial period, and over the fact that most Jews living in the disputed German/Polish territories had chosen to assimilate into German culture, not Polish culture. In Dmowski's opinion Jewish community was not attracted to the cause of Polish independence and was likely to ally itself with potential enemies of Polish state if it would benefit their status.
Later life
Dmowski was a deputy to the 1919 Sejm and minister of foreign affairs from October to December 1923. When it came time to write a Polish constitution in the early 1920s, the National Democrats insisted upon a weak presidency and strong legislative branch. Dmowski was convinced that Pilsudski would become president, and saw a weak executive mandate as the best way of crippling his rival. The constitution of 1921 did indeed outline a government with a weak executive branch, and a disgusted Pilsudski refused to seek the presidency. Instead, Pilsudski persuaded a friend of his, Gabriel Narutowicz to run for President. When Narutowicz was elected President by the Sejm in 1922, Dmowski was outraged. Narutowicz was elected with the support of the parties representing the Jewish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian and German minorities. In Dmowski's view, only parties representing those of the Roman Catholic faith and of Polish language and culture should have been allowed to elect the President. After Narutowicz's election, the National Democrats started a major campaign of vilification of the “Jewish president” elected by “foreigners.” Subsequently, a National Democrat named Eligiusz Niewiadomski assassinated Narutowicz.
In 1926 Dmowski founded the Camp of Great Poland (Obóz Wielkiej Polski), and in 1928 the National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe). In 1934, a section of the youth wing of the Endecja found Dmowski insufficiently anti-Semitic for their taste and broke away to found the more radical National Radical Camp (known by its Polish acronym as the ONR). Dmowski had long advocated emigration of the entire Jewish population of Poland as the solution to what Dmowski regarded as Poland's "Jewish problem", came to argue for increasing harsh measures against the Jewish minority, though Dmowski never advocated killing Jews. Dmowski's last major campaign was a series of attacks on the alleged "Judo-Masonic" associates of President Ignacy Moscicki.
Dmowski died on January 2, 1939, in Drozdowo, near Lomza, where he had spent the last few years of his life.
Trivia
There was a rumor explaining his bachelorhood as having been the result of an unfulfilled (or fulfilled, according to yet another variant) love for Pilsudski's wife, Maria Juszkiewicz.[30] The rumor was never substantiated.
Dmowski's life has been subject to an internet hoax posted on a webpage of a marginal left-wing party in Poland in which he was described as gay agent of Russian Empire.
Writings
- Mysli nowoczesnego Polaka (Thoughts of a Modern Pole), 1902.
- Niemcy, Rosja a sprawa polska (Germany, Russia and the Polish Cause), 1908.
- Upadek mysli konserwatywnej w Polsce (The Decline of Conservative Thought in Poland), 1914.
- Polityka polska i odbudowanie panstwa (Polish Politics and the Rebuilding of the State), 1925.
Quotes
- "Wherever we can multiply our forces and our civilizational efforts, absorbing other elements, no law can prohibit us from doing so, as such actions are our duty."
See also
Further reading
- Cang, Joel: "The Opposition Parties in Poland and Their Attitude towards the Jews and the Jewish Question" pages 241-256 from Jewish Social Studies, Volume 1, Issue #2, 1939.
- Davies, Norman "Lloyd George and Poland, 1919-20"" from Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 6, Issue 3, 1971.
- Fountain, Alvin Marcus Roman Dmowski: Party, Tactics, Ideology 1895-1907, Boulder : East European Monographs, 1980 ISBN 0-914710-53-2.
- Groth, Alexander: "Dmowski, Pilsudski and Ethnic Conflict in Pre-1939 Poland" pages 69-91 from Canadian Slavic Studies, Volume 3, 1969.
- Komarnicki, Titus Rebirth of the Polish Republic: A Study in the Diplomatic History of Europe, 1914-1920, London, 1957.
- Lundgreen-Nielsen, K. The Polish Problem at the Paris Peace Conference: A Study in the Policies of the Great Powers and the Poles, 1918-1919: Odense, 1979.
- Macmillan, Margaret Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed The World, New York : Random House, 2003, 2002, 2001 ISBN 0-375-50826-0.
- Mendelsohn, Ezra The Jews of East Central Europe Between The World Wars, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1983 ISBN 0-253-33160-9.
- Porter, Brian, When Nationalism Began to Hate. Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-515187-9
- Wandycz, Piotr Stefen "Dmowski's Policy and the Paris Peace Conference: Success or Failure?" from The Reconstruction of Poland, 1914-23, edited by P. Latawski: London, 1992.
- Zamoyski, Adam The Polish Way A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and their Culture, London: John Murray Ltd, 1987 ISBN 0-7195-4674-5.
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