Poland полностью

At the next elections, in March 1928, the Non-Party Bloc of Cooperation with the Government (BBWR), created by Piłsudski as a surrogate party through which to support his policies, came out with almost 30 per cent of the vote, while his greatest enemies, the National Democrats, were soundly beaten. But Piłsudski was disappointed that his Bloc had failed to gain a more substantial majority, and what little respect he had for parliamentary procedures evaporated.

A life of conspiratorial activity had taught Piłsudski to use trusted men to carry out his plans and to obviate institutional channels. He gathered round him a bevy of trusties from the PPS, the Bojówki, the Legions or the POW. They were men like Walery Sławek, honourable, naive, devoted, with no political ideas of his own and few talents; and Edward Śmigły-Rydz, a soldier and patriot with the soul of a second-in-command. They were the levers through which the Marshal exerted power. He treated all parliamentarians with mounting scorn and attempted to intimidate the opposition in the Sejm by various means, including packing the chamber with army officers on one occasion, and when this did not work he ignored it.

This was not as unpopular as might have been expected: in Poland, as elsewhere in Europe, many committed democrats found the parliamentary process wanting and reached the conclusion that ‘strong government’ of one sort or another was needed to deal with the acute problems of the day. Others, spiritual heirs of the nineteenthcentury Democrats, found parliamentary politics too humdrum, and lurched to the left out of a romantic longing for upheaval.

The opposition grew increasingly truculent, and in 1929 a new centre-left coalition of 183 deputies (known as the Centrolew) called for reform to strengthen the powers of the Sejm. At a meeting in Kraków the following year its members spoke out in defence of democracy and criticised the government and the President in strident terms. President Mościcki responded by dissolving the Sejm, nominating Piłsudski Prime Minister, and arresting eighteen deputies. The elections held in November 1930 were marred by intimidation, arrests, confiscation of leaflets and vote-rigging. The BBWR received 46.8 per cent of the vote, which was somehow translated into 56 per cent of the seats.

Piłsuski and his henchmen backed up their increasingly authoritarian rule with a barrack-room ideology of ‘cleaning up’ political life which earned the regime the sobriquet Sanacja (’sanitisation’). Opposition leaders such as Witos, arrested in 1930, were put on trial on charges of conspiracy, and the freedom of the press was gradually restricted. Following the death, on 12 May 1935, of Piłsudski, the ruling clique tightened its grip.

A new constitution was passed, by sleight of hand, when many opposition deputies were absent from the chamber, in April 1935. It reduced the Sejm to a more manageable 208 deputies elected from 104 constituencies, which cut out small parties that had thrived on proportional representation. Its powers were curtailed and those of the president extended, enabling him to legislate by decree, but it was not President Mościcki who ruled. The camarilla put in place by Piłsudski remained in control, dominated by the éminence grise of Marshal Śmigły-Rydz, head of the armed forces.

Most of the opposition boycotted the elections of September 1935, and turnout fell to 45.9 per cent, but this did not affect the situation. The government founded the Camp of National Unity (OZN), which sucked in frustrated National Democrats as well as malcontents from smaller parties. The only weapons left to the opposition were strikes and demonstrations, but these were put down with force.

In 1936 a group of concerned constitutionalists, including Wicenty Witos, General Józef Haller, General and ex-Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski and Ignacy Jan Paderewski, met at the latter’s home near Morges in Switzerland and founded the Morges Front in an attempt to build a respectable centre-right opposition. There was little they could do, as opposition at home melted away in the face of intimidation and a certain conformism took hold—at the 1938 elections turnout was back to over 67 per cent, and the OZN captured 80 per cent of the vote.

European politics of the 1920s and 1930s present an unedifying picture of confrontation, fed by class hatred and racism, thuggish behaviour and riots, and constitutional crises leading to military coups. In Poland, the twenty years of the Republic witnessed a breakdown of parliamentary procedures and the emergence of intimidation as a tool of governance; but neither public life nor politics sank to the levels seen in most neighbouring countries, let alone in France, Spain and Italy. Poland may not have resembled a democracy, but it was not a dictatorship, and dissent flourished despite the Sanacja regime.