Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T04:30:48.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Century of Selective Ignorance: Poland 1918–2018

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2019

Maciej Górny
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article identifies some of the rarely recalled phenomena accompanying Poland's path towards independence. First is the level of economic, cultural, and everyday integration with imperial centers. Second is the growing intensity of interethnic strife. Third, the social turmoil, at times bordering on popular revolt, started in 1917 and lasted long after 1918. Fourth is the large-scale economic transformation and deprivations that this transformation brought about. Finally is the general longing for restoring law and order, a feeling that facilitated actions by minor groups of nationalists capable of creating at least a rudimentary state apparatus. None of the newly-created states of east central Europe was a result of consequent political action. Rather, they came into existence out of the interplay of social, economic, and cultural factors.

Type
Critical Discussion Forum: 1918/2018
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , Fall 2019 , pp. 654 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Walicki, A., “Rosa Luxemburg and the Question of Nationalism in Polish Marxism (1893–1914),” The Slavonic and East European Review 61, no. 4 (October 1983): 565–82Google Scholar.

2 For the controversy between Luxemburg and Kelles-Krauz see Snyder, Timothy, Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, 1872–1905, 2nd ed. (New York, 2018), 53–76Google Scholar.

3 Cited in Kumaniecki, Kazimierz W., Odbudowa państwowości polskiej: Najważniejsze dokumenty. 1912–styczeń 1924 (Cracow and Warsaw, 1924), 29–30Google Scholar.

4 Cited in Moczulski, Leszek, Przerwane powstanie polskie 1914 (Warsaw, 2010), 395–96Google Scholar.

5 Kakowski, Cardinal Aleksander, Z niewoli do niepodległości: pamiętniki, eds. Krawczak, Tadeusz and Świętek, Ryszard (Krakow, 2000), 123Google Scholar.

6 Galandauer, Jan, “Kriegsbegeisterung in Prag,” in Velek, Luboš, Goodsey, William D. Jr. and Svatoš, Michal, eds., Magister noster: Sborník statí věnovaných in memoriam prof. PhDr. Janu Havránkovi, CSc (Prague, 2005), 327–33Google Scholar; Borodziej, Włodzimierz and Górny, Maciej, ”Mobilisierung und Besatzung in den Großstädten Ostmitteleuropas,” in Fejtová, Olga, Ledvinka, Václav, Maříková, Martina and Pešek, Jiří, eds., Documenta Pragensia: Nezměrné ztráty a jejich zvládání. Obyvatelstvo evropských velkoměst a I. světová válka 35 (Prague, 2016), 49–61Google Scholar.

7 Zieliński, Konrad, “Population Displacement and Citizenship in Poland, 1918–1924,” in Baron, Nick and Gatrell, Peter, eds., Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London, 2004), 98–118Google Scholar.

8 Borodziej, Włodzimierz and Górny, Maciej, Nasza wojna, vol. 1: Imperia, 1912–1916 (Warsaw, 2014), 117–19Google Scholar.

9 Ronge, Max, Kriegs- und Industriespionage: Zwölf Jahre Kundschaftsdienst (Vienna, 1930), 91Google Scholar.

10 Cited in Ronge, 82.

11 Lohr, Eric, ‘The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportations, Hostages, and Violence during World War I,” The Russian Review 60, no. 3 (July 2001): 404–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).

12 Prymaka-Oniszk, Aneta, Bieżeństwo 1915: Zapomniani uchodźcy (Wołowiec, 2016)Google Scholar.

13 Matsuzato, Kimitaka, ‘The Role of Zemstva in the Creation and Collapse of Tsarism’s War Efforts during World War One,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 46, vol. 3 (1998): 321–37Google Scholar.

14 Zahra, Tara, “‘Each Nation Only Cares for Its Own’: Empire, Nation, and Child Welfare Activism in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1918,” The American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006): 1378–1402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Przeniosło, Małgorzata and Przeniosło, Marek, Rada Główna Opiekuńcza w latach I wojny światowej (The Central Welfare Council during the First World War), (Kielce, 2018)Google Scholar.

15 See Balkelis, Tomas, “Nation-Building and World War I Refugees in Lithuania, 1918–1924,” Journal of Baltic Studies 34, no. 4 (2003): 432–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Priedite, Aija, “Latvian Refugees and the Latvian Nation State during and after World War One,” in Baron, Nick and Gatrell, Peter, eds., Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London, 2004), 35–52Google Scholar.

16 Quoted in Blobaum, Robert, A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War (Ithaca, 2017), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Kučera, Rudolf, Rationed Life: Science, Everyday Life, and Working-Class Politics in the Bohemian Lands, 1914–1918 (New York, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Hass, Ludwik, “Robotniczy Pruszków w latach 1918–1920,” in Herbst, Stanisław, ed., Odgłosy Rewolucji Październikowej na Mazowszu i Podlasiu. Praca zbiorowa (Warsaw, 1970): 155–81Google Scholar, 172.

19 See Durand, E. Dana, “Currency Inflation in Eastern Europe with Special Reference to Poland,” The American Economic Review 13, no. 4 (December 1923): 593–608Google Scholar

20 Kocka, Jürgen, Klassengesellschaft im Krieg: Deutsche Sozialgeschichte 1914–1918, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Morelon, Claire, “A Threat to National Unity? The Urban-Rural Antagonism in Prague during the First World War in a Comparative Perspective,” in Dornik, Wolfram, Walleczek-Fritz, Julia and Wedrac, Stefan, eds., Frontwechsel. Österreich-Ungarns “Großer Krieg” im Vergleich (Vienna, 2014), 325–43Google Scholar.

22 Tolkatsch, Dimitri, “Lokale Ordnungsentwürfe am Übergang vom Russischen Reich zur Sowjetmacht: Bauernaufstände und Dorfrepubliken in der Ukraine, 1917–1921,” in Buchen, Tim and Grelka, Frank, eds., Akteure der Neuordnung. Ostmitteleuropa und das Erbe der Imperien, 1917–1924 / W poszukiwaniu nowego ładu. Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia wobec upadku imperiów, 1917–1924 (Berlin, 2016), 93–111Google Scholar.

23 “Raport polityczno-informacyjny Sztabu Generalnego Wojska Polskiego o sytuacji w okręgach: warszawskim, krakowskim, łódzkim i kieleckim,” in Marek Jabłonowski, Piotr Stawecki, and Tadeusz Wawrzyński, eds., O niepodległą i granice, vol. 2: Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych o sytuacji wewnętrznej Polski 1919–1920 (Warsaw, 2000), 76–80.

24 Archiwum Akt Nowych [Central Archive of Modern Records] (Warsaw), Biuro Sejmu RP, 1919–1938, sygn. 56a, Działalność Komisji Sejmowej dla Badania Okrucieństw Ukraińskich. Protokoły o postępowaniu z ludnością podczas inwazji ukraińskiej XI 1918–V 1919.

25 ”Pismo ks. Stanisława Cembrucha do Kurii Metropolitalnej obrządku łacińskiego we Lwowie o sytuacji w parafii Sarnki Dolne podczas inwazji ukraińskiej 1918–1919, Sarnki Dolne 16 IX 1919,” in Wołczański, Józef, ed., Kościół rzymskokatolicki i Polacy w Małopolsce Wschodniej podczas wojny ukraińsko-polskiej 1918–1919. Źródła, vol. 1 (L΄viv, 2012), 598–99Google Scholar.