Piłsudski and parliament

The new Polish state which emerged after the First World War adopted a highly democratic constitution based upon that or the Third French Republic. The powers of the President and the Cabinet were indeed even weaker than those allowed by the French Constitution. Although the Senate could hold up legislation and demand that proposed laws be passed in the Sejm by an 11/20 majority, in practice political power was concentrated in the Lower House, elected by universal suffrage with proportional representation.
This constitution, adopted in March 1921, worked badly from the start. One hundred and thirty years of partition had created very different political traditions among those who had lived under either Austrian, Prussian or Russian rule. In addition, the political experience of the Polish clubs in the ueichsrat, the Reichstag and the Duma had been that of sectional groups whose sole concern had been to obtain the redress of minority grievances, a training singularly unfitted for members of a national legislature such as the Sejm, a body responsible for the effective control of the country's government. Widespread poverty and ignorance encouraged politicians to indulge in demagogy, and the prevalence of corruption in public life tended more and more to be ascribed to the nature of parliamentary government, which became increasingly discredited. The long years of foreign rule, during which Polish national survival had been the pre-eminent goal in politics, obscured the new state's obligations towards her own national minorities, who made up altogether one third of her population. Moreover Poland's perilous international position, her newly won independence threatened by both Germany and Russia, lent calls for a stronger government greater force. Parliament was further discredited by the failure of the politicians to deal successfully with the exceedingly difficult economic problems which confronted the new state. Finally, the persistence in the post-war period of the now largely anachronistic conflict between the National Democrats, under Roman Dmowski and the supporters of Jozef Piłsudski, the charismatic leader of the Polish legions in the First World War and Supreme Commander in the victorious war with the Soviet Union, was a continual source of instability. Thus it was not surprising that the progressive breakdown of the parliamentary system, conflicts over the position of the Piłsudski-ites in the Army, and the recurrence of severe economic difficulties led to a coup in May 1926 which brought Piisudski to power after three days of fighting.
Piłsudski had no well-defined political ideas. He was principally interested in foreign policy and Array affairs, and showed little interest in the day-to-day running of the Government. He did not, therefore, to the surprise of some of his adherents, establish a dictatorship after his coup. Instead he maintained the 1921 Constitution, introducing a number of modifications. Of these the most important were the provision that the Government's budget proposals be enacted automatically if the legislature failed to approve a budget in the specified time, and that which deprived Parliament of the right to effect its own dissolution, a right now granted to the President acting with the approval of the Cabinet. Piłsudski attempted to co-operate with Parliament through the accomodating Kazimierz Bartel, a former radical politician who was Prime Minister from May to September 1926 and again from June 1928 to April 1929 (between October 1926 and June 1926 he was Vice Premier). The system of government pursued in this period was a sort of guided democracy 1 which allowed Parliament a limited role in criticizing the activities of the Government, but reserved the formulation and implementation of policy as the exclusive province of the Cabinet. The Cabinet was only formally responsible to the Sejm, and in fact could not be forced to resign by a vote of no-confidence.
Under Polish conditions there was much to be said for this semi-autocratic system. It allowed a fair degree of personal and political freedom; parties, apart from Communist organizations, were not banned, few people were arrested, and the press was relatively free. At the same time, it provided a strong Government with continuity of policy, a vital need if any consistent plan was to be pursued concerning the national minorities, economic problems or foreign policy. Yet this 'Piłsudski-ite system' was to prove scarcely more successful than the 1921 Constitution.
Although Piłsudeki had come to power with the support of the parties of the Left (the Polish Socialist Party and the two radical peasant groups, the Peasant Party and the Liberation), he came into increasing conflict with then, particularly after the elections of March 1928. This conflict culminated in the formation of an alliance of six parties of the Centre and Left, the so-called Centrolew which demanded the replacement of the Piłsudski system 9 by a return to full democracy. Nevertheless, in the elections of November 1930, after arresting a large number of Opposition politicians and by using considerable administrative pressure to influence the voting, Piłsudski won a decisive victory over his opponents. The arrests, the Government's electoral victory, and the trial and conviction of the leading Opposition politicians in October 1931 saw the virtual abandonment by the Sanacja as the Government called itself, of the residual parliamentarianism which had persisted after the coup. Although the press continued to enjoy relative freedom, and most political parties were allowed to exist openly, the Government became far more autocratic, though still not authoritarian. This development became much more marked, and the clash between the liberal and authoritarian elements within the Sanacja more evident, after Piłsudski's death in May 1935 had exposed the ideological hollowness of hie 'system'.
This thesis is an attempt to describe the failure of two constitutional experiments: that of the democratic constitution of March 1921, and that of the semi-autocratic system introduced after the coup of May 1926. It takes as its starting-point the elections of November 1922, the first to be held under the new constitution. The detailed narrative continues to the end of 1930, when the Government's victory in the elections and the arrest of the leading Centrolew politicians saw the culmination of the move to a more autocratic system.
The problem of Poland's political evolution during this period has been relatively neglected, both in Poland and in the West. In Poland, a fair amount of work has been done on the radical political parties, both Communist and non-Communist. However, very little has been published on either the Piłsudskiites in this period, or the National Democrats, although there are signs that something may soon be done to bridge this gap. In America, a valuable book has recently been published on Piłsudski's coup, but since it concentrates its attention upon the events of the coup itself and on its military aspects, its treatment of the political background and of subsequent political developments in somewhat sketchy. Apart from this book, almost nothing of serious academic worth has been written in the West on Polish internal politics between the Wars, although a number of useful works on foreign policy have appeared.
This thesis is based primarily on Government documents in tne Archiwum Akt Nowych in Warsaw, on papers dealing with the Polish Socialist Party in the Archiwum Zakładu Historii Partii. on the minutes of the debates in the Sejm and Senate, on memoirs and on contemporary newspapers. Of the papers in the Archiwum Akt Nowych, principal use has been made of the minutes of Cabinet meetings, the special files of the Prime Minister's Office, the reports of the periodic meetings of local government officials, and the Switalski papers. To the best of my knowledge, no one from the West has had access to this material before.
The first chapter of the thesis attempts to sketch the social and economic background of the new Poland. This has been treated in some detail, partly because a prevailing weakness of Polish historiography has been a tendency to consider political problems in almost complete isolation from their social context, partly because, although some valuable detailed work has been done on theae problems in Poland, no synthetic treatment exists either in Polish or in any Western language.
The second chapter outlines the nature or the 1921 Constitution and the other basic laws or the country. It also describes the political parties, both Polish and those of the national minorities. Particular attention has boon devoted to the conflict between Dmowski and Piłsudski, which had dominated Polish politics before ana during the First world War and continued to exercise an enormous influence after Independence. The importance of the national minorities has also been stressed, since in a political system with universal suffrage their numbers ensured that their influence would be felt.
The third chapter deals with the way the 1921 Constitution functioned between the elections of November 1922 and the coup of May 1926, The importance of the failure of the elections to produce a clear majority in the Sejm, which precipitated the parliamentary crisis, has been shown, and an attempt has been made to illustrate the continual interaction of the economic crisis and the political situation. In addition, it is shown that disputes over the position of the Army and of the Piłsudskiites within it weant that the Government could not count on the Army's loyalty in a clash with Piłsudski. Defeats in foreign policy, the failure to deal successfully with the national minorities, and the prevalence of corruption all further undermined tho parliamentary system.
In the fourth chapter is described the final political crisis created by the collapse of the Skrzyński coalition on 20 April 1926, which brought on the coup. It is argued that Piłsudski did not expect an armed clash, but believed that the whole Army would follow him, and that this demonstration of his power would induce his old friend, President Wojciechowski, to capitulate to him. The course of the three-day civil war is briefly described, and the chapter ends with an account of the extent to which the Piłsudski-ites had entrenched themselves in power by August 1926.
The fifth chapter is divided into two parts. The first describes the achievements of the new Government, the so-called Sanacja, in the first three years after the coup. It deals with improvements in the administration, the position of the Army, relations with the Church, the economic situation, the treatment of the national minorities and foreign policy. The second part relates how the Government came more and more into conflict with the existing Parliament, which it had not dissolved after the coup. It concludes with the elapsing of the Parliament's constitutional five-year existence in November and the proclamation of now elections for March 1928.
These elections are described in the sixth chapter. The Government saw them as a relative victory, although its electoral grouping, the 'Non-party Bloc for Co-operation with the Government', did not win a majority in the Sejm. Moreover, the methods which the Government had employed to obtain this result, notably the use of the local administration to put pressure on voters and the misappropriation of Government funds for its electoral expenses, were to prove a source of later conflict. Relations between the Government and the new Parliament were difficult from the start: an open clash was provoked by the Government's unwillingness to present to Parliament its supplementary credits (those not provided for in the budget) for legal ratification, as it was constitutionally obliged to do. This course of action was almost certainly dictated by Piłsudski's reluctance to reveal the fact that he had authorized the appropriation of public funds for the Sanacja's electoral campaign. The chapter ends with the resignation of the moderate Bartel, and his replacement by the first openly anti-parliamentarian 'Colonels' Cabinet' headed by Col. Kazimierz Świtalski.
The seventh chapter follows the course of the conflict between the Government and the Opposition. It deals first with the onset of the Great Depression in Poland, where it was to prove exceedingly severe and make more difficult the achievement of any political compromise. It goes on to describe the impeachment of Gabriel Czechowicz, the Minister or Finance, whose trial ended with an inconclusive verdict , but one which was nevertheless seen as a defeat for the Government. The development of the clash between Government and Parliament led to the alliance of six parties of the Centre and Left, the Piast, the Christian Democrats, the National Workers' Party , the Liberation, the Peasant Party and the Socialist Party, in the Centrolew bloc. When the Government dissolved parliament in August 1930, the Centrolew believed it could force the Sanacja to abdicate by defeating it in the elections. However, by arresting a large number of the Opposition and by strong administrative pressure, the Government won a resounding victory in the new elections. Nevertheless, it did not win in the Sejm the two-thirds majority necessary for constitutional revision.
The epilogue sketches the subsequent evolution of Polish politics in an increasingly autocratic direction. It also speculates upon the reasons fur the failure of the semi-parliamentary 'Piłsudski system'. It failed partly because it was anachronistic. The methods of parliamentary control exercised by Giolitti in Italy before 19l4 could no longer be applied after the revolutionary upheavals of the First World War. Piłsudski's increasing isolation, his failing health, his inability to grasp what co-operation with even a subservient Parliament meant, and the political incapacity of most of his subordinates also helped to defeat his attempt to work within a semi-parliamentary framework. The impact of the Great Depression, which coincided with the clash with Parliament, considerably aggravated political differences. The failure to avert a direct clash between Government and Opposition was extremely unfortunate for Poland's political evolution. Although the Government never became openly fascist it became increasingly isolated from public opinion, particularly after Piłsudski's death. Yet, in spite of increased repression, the Opposition parties survived. The Government formed under General Sikorski in France in 1940, after the catastrophic defeat of Poland in September 1939, was composed of their representatives and was unquestionably democratic in the Western sense. But the victory of the U.S.S.R. in Eastern Europe meant that the democratic experiment was not given a second chance in Poland.