Kształtowanie układu administracyjnego II Rzeczypospolitej w świetle ówczesnych map = Development of the administrative system of Poland’s Second Republic as revealed in maps of the period

Abstract

This article pursues an analysis seeking to explain how political borders and administrative boundaries took shape in the Polish state that came back into being at the end of the First World War. This was a continuing period of instability from a military point of view, given the ongoing war with Bolshevik Russia (which continued through to 1920). The further investigation of this subject matter is assisted by the presentation here of cartography in the form of 8 original maps coming into being at that historic time. The first map dates from early 1919 – as first elections to the Legislative Sejm were pending. It thus shows constituencies (electoral districts) which at that time coincided with the country’s (county-level) units of administration. The presentation of this little-known (in essence now-forgotten) cartographic configuration offers a starting point for the further consideration of the political borders and administrative division that took shape in the newly-reborn Poland. Further historical maps included in the text thus show the Polish state with borders as variously construed, in what were a mixture of both authors’ concepts as to how these ought to look and borders actually existing at the given time and adjusted to the political situation of the given moment. These were thus limits set by military action, in the context of the armed conflicts that broke out with the polities neighbouring with Poland. The map included last in the text came out in 1921. It presents Poland’s political and administrative layout in the wake of the entry into force of the Treaty of Versailles, as well as in line with the provisions of the Treaty of Riga definitively setting the course of Poland’s eastern border. Also marked out on it is the internal division of the country into units at voivodeship level, as had been decided upon by the authorities of the independent Polish state. In essence, it was the political and administrative borders and boundaries established at that time that would persist unchanged through to 1938.