Józef Piłsudski

), Vilna Governorate, Russian Empire (now Lithuania)
, death_date =
, death_place = Warsaw, Poland
, constituency =
, party = None (formerly PPS)
, spouse =

, children = Wanda, Jadwiga
, profession =
, signature = Józef Piłsudski Signature.svg
, footnotes =
, nickname =
, allegiance = Austria-Hungary
Second Polish Republic
, branch = Polish Legions
Polish Army
, serviceyears = 1914–1923
1926–1935
, rank = Marshal of Poland
, unit =
, commands =
, battles = World War I
Polish–Ukrainian War
Polish–Lithuanian War
Polish–Soviet War
, awards =
, resting_place =

Józef Klemens Piłsudski (; 5 December 1867 – 12 May 1935) was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State (1918–1922) and First Marshal of Poland (from 1920). He was considered the ''de facto'' leader (1926–35) of the Second Polish Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs. After World War I, he held increasing dominance in Polish politics and was an active player in international diplomacy. He is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic re-established in 1918, 123 years after the final Partition of Poland in 1795.

Seeing himself as a descendant of the culture and traditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Piłsudski believed in a multi-ethnic Poland—"a home of nations" including indigenous ethnic and religious minorities. Early in his political career, Piłsudski became a leader of the Polish Socialist Party. Believing Poland's independence would be won militarily, he formed the Polish Legions. In 1914, he predicted a new major war would defeat the Russian Empire and the Central Powers. After World War I began in 1914, Piłsudski's Legions fought alongside Austria-Hungary against Russia. In 1917, with Russia faring poorly in the war, he withdrew his support for the Central Powers, and was imprisoned in Magdeburg by the Germans.

Piłsudski was Poland's Chief of State from November 1918, when Poland regained its independence, until 1922. From 1919–21 he commanded Polish forces in six wars that re-defined the country's borders. On the verge of defeat in the Polish–Soviet War in August 1920, his forces repelled the invading Soviet Russians at the Battle of Warsaw. In 1923, with a government dominated by his opponents, in particular the National Democrats, Piłsudski retired from active politics. Three years later he returned to power in the May Coup and became the strongman of the Sanacja regime. He focused on military and foreign affairs until his death in 1935, developing a cult of personality that has survived into the 21st century.

Some aspects of Piłsudski's administration, such as imprisoning his political opponents at Bereza Kartuska, remain controversial. Yet, he is highly esteemed in Polish memory and is regarded as a founder of modern independent Poland.

Early life

Birth, family, and education

Piłsudski was born 5 December 1867 to the noble Piłsudski family at their manor near the village of Zułów (Zalavas, now in Lithuania). At his birth, the village was part of the Russian Empire and had been so since 1795. Before that, it was in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an integral part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1569 to 1795. After World War I, the village fell under Polish administration and was part of Poland when Piłsudski became Prime Minister. During World War II, the village became part of the USSR. The estate was part of the dowry brought by his mother, Maria, a member of the wealthy Billewicz family. The Piłsudski family, although pauperized, cherished Polish patriotic traditions, and are characterized either as Polish or as Polonized-Lithuanian. Józef was the second son born to the family.

Józef was not an especially diligent student when he attended the Russian Gymnasium in Vilnius. Along with his brothers Bronisław, Adam and Jan, Józef was introduced by his mother Maria to Polish history and literature, which were suppressed by the Imperial authorities. His father, also named Józef, fought in the January 1863 Uprising against Russian rule. The family resented the government's Russification policies. Young Józef profoundly disliked having to attend Russian Orthodox Church service and left school with an aversion for the Russian Tsar, its empire, and its culture.

In 1885 Piłsudski started medical studies at Kharkov University where he became involved with ''Narodnaya Volya'', part of the Russian ''Narodniki'' revolutionary movement. In 1886, he was suspended for participating in student demonstrations. He was rejected by the University of Dorpat, whose authorities had been informed of his political affiliation. On 22 March 1887, he was arrested by Tsarist authorities on a charge of plotting with Vilnius socialists to assassinate Tsar Alexander III; Piłsudski's main connection to the plot was the involvement of his brother Bronisław. Józef was sentenced to five years' exile in Siberia, first at Kirensk on the Lena River, then at Tunka.

Exile to Siberia

While being transported in a prisoners' convoy to Siberia, Piłsudski was held for several weeks at a prison in Irkutsk. During his stay, another inmate insulted a guard and refused to apologize; Piłsudski and other political prisoners were beaten by the guards for their defiance and Piłsudski lost two teeth. He took part in a subsequent hunger strike until the authorities reinstated political prisoners' privileges that had been suspended after the incident. For his involvement, he was sentenced in 1888 to six months' imprisonment. He had to spend the first night of his incarceration in 40-degree-below-zero Siberian cold; this led to an illness that nearly killed him and health problems that would plague him throughout life.

During his exile, Piłsudski met many '' Sybiraks'', groups of people who have resettled to Siberia. He was allowed to work in an occupation of his choosing and tutored local children in mathematics and foreign languages (he knew French, German and Lithuanian in addition to Russian and his native Polish; he would later learn English). Local officials decided that, as a Polish noble, he was not entitled to the 10-ruble pension received by others.

Polish Socialist Party

Early activism and marriages

In 1892, Piłsudski returned from exile and settled in Adomavas Manor near Teneniai. In 1893, he joined the Polish Socialist Party (''PPS''), and helped organize their Lithuanian branch. Initially, he sided with the Socialists' more radical wing, but despite the socialist movement's ostensible internationalism, he remained a Polish nationalist. In 1894, as its chief editor, he published an underground socialist newspaper called '' Robotnik'' (The Worker); he would also be one of its chief writers and a typesetter. In 1895, he became a PPS leader, promoting the position that doctrinal issues were of minor importance and socialist ideology should be merged with nationalist ideology because this combination offered the greatest chance of restoring Polish independence.

On 15 July 1899, while an underground organizer, Piłsudski married a fellow socialist organizer named Maria Juszkiewiczowa ( Koplewska). According to his biographer, Wacław Jędrzejewicz, the marriage was less romantic than pragmatic in nature. The printing press of "Robotnik" was in their apartment first in Vilnius, then in Łódź. A pretext of regular family life made them less subject to suspicion. Russian law also protected a wife from prosecution for the illegal activities of her husband. The marriage deteriorated when, several years later, Piłsudski began an affair with a younger socialist, Aleksandra Szczerbińska. Maria died in 1921, and in October, Piłsudski married Aleksandra. By then, the couple had two daughters, Wanda and Jadwiga.

In February 1900 Piłsudski was imprisoned at the Warsaw Citadel when Russian authorities found ''Robotnik'' underground printing press in Łódź. He feigned mental illness in May 1901 and escaped from a mental hospital at Saint Petersburg with the help of a Polish physician, Władysław Mazurkiewicz, and others. He fled to Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary, and thence to Leytonstone in London, staying with Leon Wasilewski and his family.

Creation of an armed resistance

At the beginning of the 1900s, almost all parties in Russian Poland and Lithuania took a conciliatory position toward the Russian Empire and aimed at negotiating within it a limited autonomy for Poland. Piłsudski's PPS was the only political force prepared to fight the Empire for Polish independence and to resort to violence to achieve that goal.

On the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in the summer of 1904, Piłsudski traveled to Tokyo, Japan, where he tried unsuccessfully to obtain that country's assistance for an uprising in Poland. He offered to supply Japan with intelligence to support its war with Russia, and proposed the creation of a Polish Legion from Poles, conscripted into the Russian Army, who had been captured by Japan. He also suggested a "Promethean" project directed at breaking up the Russian Empire, a goal that he later continued to pursue. Meeting with Yamagata Aritomo, he suggested that starting a guerrilla war in Poland would distract Russia and asked for Japan to supply him with weapons. Although the Japanese diplomat Hayashi Tadasu supported the plan, the Japanese government, including Yamagata, was more skeptical. Piłsudski's arch-rival, Roman Dmowski, travelled to Japan and argued against Piłsudski's plan, discouraging the Japanese government from supporting a Polish revolution because he thought it was doomed to fail. The Japanese offered Piłsudski much less than he hoped; he received Japan's help in purchasing weapons and ammunition for the PPS and their combat organisation, and the Japanese declined the Legion proposal.

In the fall of 1904, Piłsudski formed a paramilitary unit (the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party, or ''bojówki'') aiming to create an armed resistance movement against the Russian authorities. The PPS organized demonstrations, mainly in Warsaw; on 28 October 1904, Russian Cossack cavalry attacked a demonstration, and in reprisal, during a demonstration on 13 November, Piłsudski's paramilitary opened fire on Russian police and military. Initially concentrating their attention on spies and informers, in March 1905 the paramilitary began using bombs to assassinate selected Russian police officers.

Russian Revolution

During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Piłsudski played a leading role in events in Congress Poland. In early 1905 he ordered the PPS to launch a general strike there; it involved some 400,000 workers and lasted two months until it was broken by the Russian authorities. In June 1905, Piłsudski sent paramilitary aid to an uprising in Łódź, later called June Days. In Łódź, armed clashes broke out between Piłsudski's paramilitaries and gunmen loyal to Dmowski and his National Democrats. On 22 December 1905, Piłsudski called for all Polish workers to rise up; the call went largely unheeded.

Piłsudski instructed the PPS to boycott the elections to the First Duma. The decision, and his resolve to try to win Polish independence through revolution, caused tensions within the PPS, and in November 1906, the party fractured over Piłsudski's leadership. His faction came to be called the "Old Faction" or "Revolutionary Faction" ("''Starzy''" or "'' Frakcja Rewolucyjna''"), while their opponents were known as the "Young Faction", "Moderate Faction" or "Left Wing" ("''Młodzi''", "''Frakcja Umiarkowana''", "'' Lewica''"). The "Young" sympathized with the Social Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, and believed priority should be given to co-operation with Russian revolutionaries in toppling the tsarist regime and creating a socialist utopia to facilitate negotiations for independence. Piłsudski and his supporters in the Revolutionary Faction continued to plot a revolution against Tsarist Russia to secure Polish independence. By 1909, his faction was the majority in the PPS, and Piłsudski remained an important PPS leader until the outbreak of the First World War.

Preparation for WWI

Piłsudski anticipated a coming European war with the need to organize the leadership of a future Polish Army. He wanted to secure Poland's independence from the three empires that partitioned Poland out of political existence in the late 18th century. In 1906 Piłsudski, with the connivance of the Austrian authorities, founded a military school in Kraków for the training of paramilitary units. In 1906 alone, the 800-strong paramilitaries, operating in five-man teams in Congress Poland, killed 336 Russian officials; in subsequent years, the number of their casualties declined, and the paramilitaries' numbers increased to some 2,000 in 1908. The paramilitaries also held up Russian currency transports that were leaving Polish territories. On the night of 26/27 September 1908, they robbed a Russian mail train that was carrying tax revenues from Warsaw to Saint Petersburg. Piłsudski, who took part in this Bezdany raid near Vilnius, used the obtained funds to finance his secret military organization. The funds totaled 200,812 rubles was a fortune for the time and equaled the paramilitaries' entire takes of the two preceding years.

In 1908, Piłsudski transformed his paramilitary units into an "Association for Active Struggle" ('' Związek Walki Czynnej'', or ''ZWC''), headed by three of his associates, Władysław Sikorski, Marian Kukiel and Kazimierz Sosnkowski. The ''ZWC'' main purpose was to train officers and noncommissioned officers for a future Polish Army. In 1910, two legal paramilitary organizations were created in the Austrian zone of Poland, one in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), and one in Kraków, to conduct training in military science. With the permission of the Austrian officials, Piłsudski founded a series of "sporting clubs", then the Riflemen's Association, for cover to train a Polish military force. In 1912, Piłsudski (using the pseudonym "''Mieczysław''") became commander-in-chief of a Riflemen's Association (''Związek Strzelecki''). By 1914, they increased to 12,000 men. In 1914, while giving a lecture in Paris, Piłsudski declared, "Only the sword now carries any weight in the balance for the destiny of a nation", arguing that Polish independence can only be achieved through military struggle against the partitioning powers.

World War I

At a meeting in Paris in 1914, Piłsudski presciently declared that for Poland to regain independence in the impending war, Russia must be beaten by the Central Powers (the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires), and the latter powers must in their turn be beaten by France, Britain and the United States. At the outbreak of the war on 3 August in Kraków, Piłsudski formed a small cadre military unit called the First Cadre Company from members of the Riflemen's Association and Polish Rifle Squads. That same day, a cavalry unit under Władysław Belina-Prażmowski were sent to reconnoitre across the Russian border before the official declaration of war between Austria-Hungary and Russia on 6 August.

Piłsudski's strategy was to send his forces north across the border into Russian Poland into an area the Russian Army evacuated in the hope of breaking through to Warsaw and sparking a nation-wide revolution. Using his limited forces in those early days, he backed his orders with the sanction of a fictitious "National Government in Warsaw", and he bent and stretched Austrian orders to the utmost, taking initiatives, moving forward, and establishing Polish institutions in liberated towns while the Austrians saw his forces as good only for scouting or for supporting main Austrian formations. On 12 August 1914, Piłsudski's forces took the town of Kielce, of Kielce Governorate, but Piłsudski found the residents less supportive than he had expected.

On 27 August Piłsudski established the Polish Legions, formed within the Austro-Hungarian Army, and took personal command of their First Brigade, which he would lead into several victorious battles. He also secretly informed the British government in the fall of 1914 that his Legions would never fight against France or Britain, only Russia. Piłsudski decreed that Legions' personnel were to be addressed by the French Revolution-inspired "Citizen" (''Obywatel''), and he was referred to as "the Commandant" ("''Komendant''"). Piłsudski enjoyed extreme respect and loyalty from his men, which would remain for years to come. The Polish Legions fought against Russia, at the side of the Central Powers, until 1917. In August 1914, Piłsudski set up the Polish Military Organisation (''Polska Organizacja Wojskowa''), which served as a precursor Polish intelligence agency and was designed to perform espionage and sabotage missions.

In mid-1916, after the Battle of Kostiuchnówka, in which the Polish Legions delayed a Russian offensive at a cost of over 2,000 casualties, Piłsudski demanded that the Central Powers issue a guarantee of independence for Poland. He supported that demand with his own proffered resignation and that of many of the Legions' officers. On 5 November 1916 the Central Powers proclaimed the independence of Poland, hoping to increase the number of Polish troops that could be sent to the Eastern Front against Russia, thereby relieving German forces to bolster the Western Front.

Piłsudski agreed to serve in the Regency Kingdom of Poland, created by the Central Powers, and acted as minister of war in the newly formed Polish Regency government; as such, he was responsible for the Polnische Wehrmacht. After the Russian Revolution in early 1917, and in view of the worsening situation of the Central Powers, Piłsudski took an increasingly uncompromising stance by insisting that his men no longer be treated as "German colonial troops" and be only used to fight Russia. Anticipating the Central Powers' defeat in the war, he did not wish to be allied with the losing side. In the aftermath of a July 1917 "Oath Crisis" when Piłsudski forbade Polish soldiers to swear a loyalty oath to the Central Powers, he was arrested and imprisoned at Magdeburg. The Polish units were disbanded and the men were incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Army while the Polish Military Organization began attacking German targets. Piłsudski's arrest greatly enhanced his reputation among Poles, many of whom began to see him as the leader who was willing to take on all the partitioning powers.

On 8 November 1918, three days before the Armistice, Piłsudski and his colleague, Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, were released by the Germans from Magdeburg and soon placed on a train bound for Polish capital of Warsaw, as the collapsing Germans hoped that Piłsudski would create a force that was friendly to them.

Rebuilding Poland

Head of state

On 11 November 1918, Piłsudski was appointed Commander in Chief of Polish forces by the Regency Council and was entrusted with creating a national government for the newly independent country. Later that day, which would become Poland's Independence Day, he proclaimed an independent Polish state. That week, Piłsudski negotiated the evacuation of the German garrison from Warsaw and of other German troops from Ober Ost. Over 55,000 Germans peacefully departed Poland, leaving their weapons to the Poles. In the coming months, over 400,000 in total departed over Polish territories.

On 14 November 1918, Piłsudski was asked to supervise provisionally the running of the country. On 22 November he officially received, from the new government of Jędrzej Moraczewski, the title of Provisional Chief of State (''Tymczasowy Naczelnik Państwa'') of renascent Poland. Various Polish military organizations and provisional governments (the Regency Council in Warsaw; Ignacy Daszyński's government in Lublin; and the Polish Liquidation Committee in Kraków) supported Piłsudski. He established a coalition government that was predominantly socialist and introduced many reforms long proclaimed as necessary by the Polish Socialist Party, such as the eight-hour day, free school education and women's suffrage, to avoid major unrest. As head of state, Piłsudski believed he must remain separated from partisan politics.

The day after his arrival in Warsaw, he met with old colleagues from his time working with the underground resistance, who addressed him socialist-style as "Comrade" (''Towarzysz'') and asked for his support for their revolutionary policies. He refused it and answered: "Comrades, I took the red tram of socialism to the stop called Independence, and that's where I got off. You may keep on to the final stop if you wish, but from now on let's address each other as ' Mister' ather than continue using the socialist term of address, 'Comrade'" He declined to support any party and did not form any political organization of his own; instead, he advocated creating a coalition government.

First policies

Piłsudski set about organizing a Polish army out of Polish veterans of the German, Russian, and Austrian armies. Much of former Russian Poland had been destroyed in the war, and systematic looting by the Germans had reduced the region's wealth by at least 10%. A British diplomat who visited Warsaw in January 1919 reported: "I have nowhere seen anything like the evidence of extreme poverty and wretchedness that meet one's eye at almost every turn." In addition, the country had to unify the disparate systems of law, economics, and administration in the former German, Austrian, and Russian sectors of Poland. There were nine legal systems, five currencies, and 66 types of rail systems (with 165 models of locomotives), each needing to be consolidated.

Biographer Wacław Jędrzejewicz described Piłsudski as very deliberate in his decision-making: Piłsudski collected all available pertinent information, then took his time weighing it before arriving at a final decision. He held long working hours, and maintained a simple lifestyle, eating plain meals alone at an inexpensive restaurant. Though he was popular with much of the Polish public, his reputation as a loner (the result of many years' underground work) and as a man who distrusted almost everyone led to strained relations with other Polish politicians.

Piłsudski and the first Polish government were distrusted in the West because he had co-operated with the Central Powers from 1914 to 1917 and because the governments of Daszyński and Moraczewski were primarily socialist. It was not until January 1919, when pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski became Prime Minister of Poland and foreign minister of a new government, that Poland was recognized in the West. Two separate governments were claiming to be Poland's legitimate government: Piłsudski's in Warsaw and Dmowski's in Paris. To ensure that Poland had a single government and to avert civil war, Paderewski met with Dmowski and Piłsudski and persuaded them to join forces, with Piłsudski acting as Provisional Chief of State and Commander-in-Chief, while Dmowski and Paderewski represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference. Articles 87–93 of the Treaty of Versailles and the Little Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, formally established Poland as an independent and sovereign state in the international arena.

Piłsudski often clashed with Dmowski for viewing the Poles as the dominant nationality in renascent Poland, and attempting to send the Blue Army to Poland through Danzig, Germany (now Gdańsk, Poland). On 5 January 1919, some of Dmowski's supporters (Marian Januszajtis-Żegota and Eustachy Sapieha) attempted a coup against Piłsudski but failed. On 20 February 1919 Polish parliament (the Sejm) confirmed his office when it passed the Little Constitution of 1919, although Piłsudski proclaimed his intention to eventually relinquish his powers to the parliament. "Provisional" was struck from his title, and Piłsudski held the office of the Chief of State until 9 December 1922, after Gabriel Narutowicz was elected as the first president of Poland.

Piłsudski's major foreign policy initiative was a proposed federation (to be called ''"Międzymorze"'' (Polish for "Between-Seas"), and known from the Latin as '' Intermarium'', stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. In addition to Poland and Lithuania, it was to consist of Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Estonia, somewhat in emulation of the pre-partition Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Piłsudski's plan met with opposition from most of the prospective member states, which refused to relinquish their independence, as well as the Allied powers, who thought it to be too bold a change to the existing balance-of-power structure. According to historian George Sanford, it was around 1920 that Piłsudski came to realize the infeasibility of that version of his Intermarium project. Instead of a Central and Eastern European alliance, there soon appeared a series of border conflicts, including the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918–19), the Polish-Lithuanian War (1920, culminating in Żeligowski's Mutiny), Polish-Czechoslovak border conflicts (beginning in 1918), and most notably the Polish-Soviet War (1919–21). Winston Churchill commented, "The war of giants has ended, the wars of the pygmies begun."

Polish–Soviet War

In the aftermath of World War I, there was unrest on all Polish borders. Regarding Poland's future frontiers, Piłsudski said: "All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente—on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany." The situation was different in the east, of which Piłsudski said that "there are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far." In the east, Polish forces clashed with Ukrainian forces in the Polish–Ukrainian War, and Piłsudski's first orders as Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army, on 12 November 1918, were to provide support for the Polish struggle in Lviv.

Piłsudski was aware that the Bolsheviks would not ally with an independent Poland and predicted that war with them was inevitable. He viewed their advance west as a major problem, but he also considered the Bolsheviks less dangerous for Poland than their White opponents.