“‘For Your Freedom and Ours’: Polonia and the Struggle for Polish Independence,” special issue, Rocznik Przemyski 55, no. 3 (23)

Abstract

In September 2018, a symposium titled “For Your Freedom and Ours”: Polonia and the Struggle for Polish Independence took place at Daemen College in Amherst, at the outskirts of Buffalo, New York. An outcome of the event is a special issue of the journal Rocznik Przemyski published by the Society of Friends of Learning in Przemyśl, one of the sponsors of the conference. The issue, edited by Tomasz Pudłocki and Andrew Kier Wise, contains ten scholarly articles, in addition to a short introduction, a set of primary sources, and six book reviews, that showcase scholarship presented at the symposium by historians from the United States and Poland. While not all of the contributions specifically examine the subject of Polonia in the context of Polish independence, each explores how World War I and the restoration of the Polish state affected and were affected by a variety of Polish, American, or Polish American actors.The underlying argument proposed by the editors is that “the Polish-American and broader American communities played a key role in the formation of the Polish state at the end of World War I” (p. 5). They argue that Polish Americans who joined the military received “an opportunity . . . to get to know their ancestral country and define their Polish identity within the complex multicultural society in the new homeland in America.” Correspondingly, “the presence of so many Polish Americans and others from the United States energized their aspirations for independence and confirmed their belief that the new Second Republic would represent a turning point in world history and international relations” (p. 6). The issue's articles, however, hardly attempt to support these arguments. A much clearer message that emerges out of those that address the question of Polish Americans, World War I, and Poland is that Polonia in the United States, including Polonia in the Buffalo region (the subject of several articles), was actively invested in the cause of Polish independence, intensely loyal to both the United States and Poland, and unreservedly patriotic.The editors refer to the issue as “a book” (p. 6), but it is neither an edited book nor a typical special issue of an academic journal. Instead, Pudłocki and Kier Wise offer what could be best characterized as conference or symposium proceedings where the conference's explicit goal was to commemorate a momentous event, in this case the centennial of Polish independence. To be sure, there is certainly space for this kind of publication in humanities scholarship. An issue of an established journal used as a vehicle for conference proceedings is a welcomed addition as it provides space for those scholars who present original research projects at various stages of development as well as those invited to offer more general overview-style reflections. Consequently, “For Your Freedom and Ours” is an uneven issue, the value of which stems from what it is rather than from what the editors suggest it is in the introduction.The issue opens with James Pula's overview of multiple strategies, including political pressure, financial support, and direct military involvement, in which Polonia in the United States (dubbed “the Fourth Partition”) engaged to support the cause of Polish independence. Pula provides a clear introduction to and builds a foundation for other articles in the issue that directly address the symposium's subject. He introduces themes, organizations, and individuals that reappear in several other articles. These include an increased sense of nationalist consciousness among Polish Americans on the eve of World War I; the role of Polish American organizations in popularizing “the Polish cause”; the challenges and logistics of creating military units representing a state that formally did not exist, particularly General Józef Haller's Blue Army; Polish pianist and politician Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who served as a bridge between Poland and the United States; and financial campaigns that collected hundreds of millions of dollars to support Polish independence.Three articles, by Joseph Hapak, Rafał Sierchuła, and Krzysztof Kaczmarski, follow Pula's lead and shed light on Haller's Blue Army. While they are at times repetitive, each highlights a different aspect of the history of the troops that were eventually organized in France and fueled by, among others, Polish American volunteers. Hapak investigates connections between Haller's troops, the Buffalo region, and the Polish Falcons, which became an important source of volunteers ready to fight for the cause of Polish independence. He focuses on the proximity of Buffalo to the Polish Army Camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake, a town not far from Buffalo but on the Canadian side of the US-Canada border, and the role of Buffalo as “a transit point for many volunteers on their way to Canada” (p. 121). By 1919, out of 20,720 men sent to France, a Buffalo Falcons–affiliated recruiting center provided 1,082 volunteers (p. 123). Kaczmarski's article complements Hapak's as it discusses the Polish side of the organization of the Polish Army in France. Kaczmarski focuses on the actions of the Polish National Committee under the leadership of Roman Dmowski, who later was a member of the Polish delegation at the peace conference in Paris. Sirechuła provides a general overview of Haller's army. His article, descriptive rather than analytical and based largely on several secondary sources, seems particularly superfluous, although it is certainly the responsibility of the editors, and not the author, to avoid texts that overlap to a large extent with others in the issue (that also includes Pula's article).Three other authors, Carl Bucki, Andrew Kier Wise, and Penny Messinger, continue the theme of the response of the Polish American community in Buffalo to the war. Out of these, Messinger provides the most intriguing discussion of how World War I and the postwar Red Scare changed the character of Americanization from “bottom-up” to “coercive Americanization.” Focusing on Buffalo, Messinger argues that the city serves as an illustrative case of a shift pushed by the Wilson administration's “attempt to create national cohesion and unity in the face of widespread public opposition to American entry into World War I” that, she notes, “led to a wave of chauvinism, intolerance, and xenophobia” (p. 31). While the author largely ignores the abundant prewar “chauvinism, intolerance, and xenophobia” and to some extent idealizes the prewar unity of immigrant workers and their response to the Americanization efforts led by “labor organizations, labor leaders, and working-class radicals” (p. 31), the article is a timely reminder that the suppression of social justice ideals rooted in working-class communities has a long and tragic history in the United States. Similarly, Kier Wise's analysis of Dr. Francis Fronczak's rhetoric, used “to create a positive image of Polish-Americans and to promote the Polish national cause to the broader American audience” (p. 98), sheds light on how local leaders often have served an extremely important role bridging the gap between the immigrant and the so-called native-born communities. Kier Wise argues that Fronczak, one of the most prominent Polish American figures in Buffalo in the first half of the twentieth century, skillfully used the concept of shared values and images of suffering Poles not merely to appeal for sympathy but to convince Buffalonians of all extractions that Polish independence was a worthy goal.Bucki's article reveals an issue that historians studying Buffalo's Polonia have been facing for decades. Despite the long and rich history of Poles and their descendants in Buffalo, the community is relatively poorly documented in local archives. Like many historians before him, Bucki relies on local press to argue that Poles and Polish Americans in Buffalo en masse supported the goal of Polish independence and remained exceptionally loyal Polish patriots. Bucki's evidence, however, is weak, to say the least. This is not to argue that Buffalonians of Polish descent were not invested in the cause of Polish independence. However, Bucki trusts his sources without reservations, even if potential red flags seem obvious. For example, based on reports by Buffalo Commercial, Bucki argues that one piece of evidence for the local community commitment to Poland was that “60,000 Polish residents attended ceremonies marking the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald” (p. 82). The argument is not particularly convincing for a number of reasons. How can we know that the 60,000 attendees were “Polish residents”? What does it even mean to be a “Polish resident” in Buffalo in 1910? This is a question raised in the issue by Messinger (pp. 33–34). Even if we assume the attendance was as high as suggested by local newspapers, why should we assume that each attendee came to the parade out of love for Poland? Is it possible that some appeared because of the general spirit of summer festivities? In short, Bucki reads his limited sources in a simplistic manner, which produces a simplistic narrative and an unconvincing argument.Two articles are case studies of women active in Poland during and shortly in the aftermath of the war. Both are descriptive rather than analytical and neither is interested in the examination of the role that gender played in this crucial moment of history for women in Poland. Anitta Maksymowicz investigates the actions of Agnes Wisla, who first supported recruitment efforts for the Blue Army and later traveled to France and newly independent Poland to support Polish troops as a nurse. Tomasz Pudłocki looks into the letters that Edith B. Cullis-Williams, an American Red Cross volunteer, wrote to her mother from postwar Poland. While the author reads the letters closely, paying attention to, for example, the smallest details of landscapes as seen by Cullis, he misses opportunities to analyze much more telling elements of her letters. For example, based on evidence cited by the author, it is rather clear Cullis was unabashedly anti-Semitic although Pudłocki is reluctant to say it. Instead, he talks about “her negative attitude towards the Jews” (p. 169) or claims she “was not favourably disposed towards” them (p. 172). Furthermore, at times Pudłocki relies on speculations. He assumes, for example, that a driving force of Cullis's decision to travel to Poland was a sort of middle-age crisis. Or, as the author puts it, “After all, Edith was forty years old then, and had an unsuccessful marriage on her scorecard. It seemed to be the best time for a change” (p. 174; see also p. 160). Similarly speculative is Pudłocki's limited search for the causes of Cullis's anti-Semitism, when he writes, “She must have been surprised by the fact that whereas the Jews she knew in the USA were mostly well-off and assimilated, Polish Jews were in stark contrast to them: most were orthodox and poor, and stood out in their outfits against other Poles” (p. 171; see also p. 169). The author does not provide convincing evidence for either of the conclusions.Pudłocki's decision to discuss Cullis's anti-Semitism in vague and speculative terms reflects the issue's tendency to avoid discussing any complexity or controversy around the newly independent Polish state or competing contemporary definitions of Polishness. All authors discussed thus far take the ethnic definition of Polishness, both in the case of Poles and Polish Americans, for granted, while glossing over the fact that interwar Poland was an extremely diverse society and a very imperfect state, the political system of which was at various points of the two decades of its existence fueled by authoritarian and xenophobic sentiments. The only exception to that approach in the issue is Marcel Garboś’s discussion of ethnically Polish elite from Kyiv and the broader Right-Bank Ukraine and their efforts to argue for the “incorporation of their region, the former ‘southeastern borderlands’ of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, into the embryonic Second Polish Republic” (p. 53). This national-conservative group, which at times lobbied from Warsaw, “fashioned themselves as bearers of Poland's special ‘civilizing mission’ on the Dnieper River,” even if the question of what “civilization” implied in this context remained open-ended (p. 54). Garboś’s article, the best and most thought-provoking in the issue, not only offers a fascinating discussion of how nationalism has always been historically coupled with economic self-interest but also contributes to the ongoing discussion among historians, who for some time now have been attempting to deconstruct the mythical image of the interwar period as the golden era of heroic Polish statehood, a narrative still popular in the politics of memory (polityka historyczna) in Poland today.With the exception of Garboś’s article, “‘For Your Freedom and Ours’: Polonia and the Struggle for Polish Independence” is not an issue filled with cutting-edge scholarship, but as a record of a commemorative event, it does not need to be. Most readers may still appreciate both a general introduction to the history of transnational connections between “the Polish cause” and the United States shortly before, during, and after World War I that the issue provides as well as the lesser-known case studies that contribute to an always-interesting discussion of how local history weaves into global history.