What kind of Poland?

Abstract

The end of World War I brought the collapse of three multinational monarchies, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany, in Central and Eastern Europe, which offered the societies living in the region a chance to organize their own state structures. In Poland, the political elites agreed that the western border would be demarcated at the Paris Peace Conference, while chances for a more independent resolution were seen in the east. There were two competing notions of the Polish presence in this area: the incorporationist view, promoted by nationalists and advocating the division of the so-called partitioned territories between Poland and Russia, and the federal view, under which socialists and Pilsudski supporters championed the establishment of independent Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus, which were bound to it by alliances, on the eastern fringes of the Republic. Although the final decisions at Riga were closer to the former, the territory of Poland that was outlined in both concepts raised objections from Ukrainians and Lithuanians. Germany reacted similarly to demands that Pomerania, Greater Poland and Upper Silesia be annexed to Poland, and Czechs opposed the annexation of Cieszyn to Silesia. These demands were only moderately strengthened by the ethnic predominance of Poles in these areas, but the final decisions were influenced by the pressure of uprisings and the goodwill of France. The borders postulated by the nationalists and the Pilsudskiites corresponded with their vision of policy toward national minorities. The nationalists believed that Slavic minorities, who were denied the right to a separate state, should be assimilated. The Pilsudskiites, on the other hand, advocated state assimilation: they allowed religious, cultural and linguistic separateness of national minorities on condition of loyalty to the Polish state. Ultimately, however, the Second Republic failed to develop a long-term and consistent policy towards national minorities, as well as towards Poles living abroad.