International legal status of the Free City of Danzig (1920-1939)

Abstract

The article is devoted to a little-studied page of the history of international law and international legal personality - the status of the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk) in 1920-1939. The topic of such state entities with a special international regime of territory and subjectivity is a veryinteresting page of the international experience of settling territorial disputes between states. Unfortunately, their research in the Ukrainian international law (in particular, the international legal status of the Neutral Moresnet and the Free City of Krakow) began to appear only in recent years.
 The article examines the history of Danzig and the circumstances that actualized the issue of its statehood after the end of the First World War. It was emphasized that the decision to create the Free City was a compromise between the interests of Poland and the residents of Danzig on the one hand, and the interests of various victorious states on the other.
 The main sources of the international legal status of the Free City of Danzig are highlighted. The peculiarities of the international legal personality of Danzig in the context of relations between the Free City and Poland and the League of Nations are analyzed. Special attention is paid to various aspects of legal personality, in particular: external relations and membership in international organizations; economic issue; guarantees of the security of the Free City. It is substantiated that, despite the special regime of the territory and the limitation of sovereignty, Danzig was an independent state in the international context.
 The reasons that led to the end of the history of the Free City of Danzig are singled out, in particular: permanent conflicts with Poland; the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations as a key guarantor of the security of the Free City; the coming to power of the Nazis in Danzig and their policy of rapprochement with Nazi Germany. It is shown that in the future the use of such formats for the resolution of international disputes is impractical due to the impossibility of considering the entire set of circumstances.