Michał Bobrzyński kontra Roman Dmowski: historiograficzno- -polityczny dwugłos na temat wskrzeszenia państwa polskiego

Abstract

Michał Bobrzyński vs. Roman Dmowski: A historiographical-political duet on the resurrection of the Polish state Just as the year 1795 was traumatic – the year of removal of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic from the political map of Europe – and it rekindled a passionate dispute on the reasons of the fall of the previously spacious and powerful monarchy, so was the year 1918 happy for the Poles – the year of regaining independence, which marked the beginning of another great, and no less passionate, dispute upon the merits in the task of the resurrection of the Polish state. That dispute went beyond the frame of historical debates or schoolbooks, evoking unflagging political emotions during the two decades of the Second Republic’s existence. It was a kind of a settlement of accounts with the recent (for the people of the time) national past, while the question on merits in the task of reviving the state was, at the same time, a question on the moral right to rule the state and control its fate. Two voluminous publications issued shortly after Poland regained independence played a particularly important role in the aforementioned dispute: a two-volume “historical essay” Wskrzeszenie państwa polskiego (Resurrection of the Polish state), published anonymously by Michał Bobrzyński in the period 1920–1925, and a piece by Roman Dmowski entitled Polityka polska i odbudowanie państwa (Polish politics and rebuilding of the state), published in 1925 and followed by two more editions within the author’s lifetime: the second edition in 1926 and the third one in 1937. This text analyses both works in the context of the above-mentioned historiographical-political dispute upon merits in the restoration of the Polish state.