There were four main political movements in Poland: Socialists, Nationalists, Peasants and Christian Democrats. They were all strongly represented in the government after the foundation of the Polish state in 1918.
The Polish Socialist Party (PPS) was founded in 1892 in Paris. Since then it had split into two sides; the mainline PPS-Revolution, which held that Polish independence was most important and that no social progress could continue without it, was led by Pilsudski. PPS-Left considered the opposite, they though that no independence could be achieved without a social change. The Nationalist movement, violently opposed to socialism was started by Dmowski’s National League; its main areas of interest lay in ethnic issues, economic development, and international affairs. The Peasant movement (PSL) was founded at Rzeszow in 1895. It represented all the peasants and thereby it was the most numerous party, they often couldn’t agree among themselves though and thereby the party was weakened. The fourth party was the Christian Democratic Movement, which proposed a blend of Catholic philosophy and social action.
Poland also had problems concerning the different nationalities that were in the areas in and around Poland. Germans, Jews, Byelorussians and Ukrainians were the biggest groups of non-Polish nationalities fighting for their rights. The Germans had a socialist party, the DSAP, and a nationalist party, the Jungedeutsche Partei. The Jews in Poland didn’t really have one or two big parties. They were divided among hundreds of different small independent political groups. In contrast, the Byelorussians had one organization that represented them all, the Hramada. The Ukrainians took over and organizations a lot of parties after that Poland lost its areas around Lwow, they also organized a widespread campaign of terrorism and sabotage. On the side there were also a number of vociferous groups on the political fringe. The Fascists were on the Right and the Communists at the left.
Those were problems to be solved by the two leaders.
Both Dmowski and Pilsudski were democrats, they wanted though to achieve their goals in very different ways. In the pre-war time they both sought help from foreign countries, Dmowski visited Washington, later on Japan were he met Pilsudski. Dmowski organized a National League and wanted to fight the Germans from Paris, he sought the Russian as less dangerous and wanted therefore to restrain good relationships with them. Dmowski wanted to gain independence by using words. He opposed using force and saw politics as a game of skill that could be won only by rational thinking. Pilsudski on the other hand, wanted to fight from Poland. He organized an army and took armed actions against the ones that he sought as most dangerous, the Russians. He believed that the world was only ruled by brute force and to be free, required the same, fighting with arms on the battlefield.
National Independence was the first and most important thing Pilsudski concentrated on. He thought that a country must be independent if it’s going to recover from its bounds. Pilsudski also argued that all social, cultural and economic activities were worthless if a country wasn’t independent, all the profits would go to the oppressor and not to the fighting country. Dmowski on the other hand saw social, cultural and economic activities as most important before establishing a country. He said that a country had to solve its internal problems prior to gaining an independence, which wouldn’t last long without the mentioned factors. Therefore, he concentrated on starting up a Polish autonomy and organizing Poles outside the country.
One of the biggest contrasts of Pilsudski and Dmowski were their emotional modes of political action. Pilsudski was a warrior, he was not afraid of dying on the battlefield fighting the enemy. In 1917 when the German Governor of Warsaw offered Pilsudski to rule over the German part of Poland he answered: ‘’Germany would gain one man, but I would lose a nation”. Dmowski saw this as a wrong approach and appealed to the people that they should wait and be on their guard, conspiring and being aware of the suppressors but not making any heroic uncontrolled actions in the cause of Polish independence.
As mentioned before, Pilsudski was tolerant against all races and beliefs. His concept of a nation was simply that all the people sharing the same goals, values and loyalties, could create a good-working nation. As hundreds of years earlier, when Poland was the biggest country in Europe, including tens of different minorities and races, Pilsudski believed that it could once again unite and fight for their independence. Dmowski however, saw one race as one nation. He didn’t tolerate the people with different languages, beliefs and history to form a nation. He believed that God had segregated them for a purpose and that was to create distinctive, separate nations. Pilsudski tolerated all religions and nationalities that fought for an independent Polish state, therefore he got more people with him and managed to re-create Poland. Although they both shared the same goal, Pilsudski’s plan ended up being correct and after leading the Polish army to victory in the Battle of Warsaw, he was praised as the man who freed Poland and it’s people.
