Jozef Pilsudski
S tanley Bill’s review of my book, Jozef Pilsudski: Founding father of modern Poland (February 17), artfully captures the main themes surrounding the enigmatic Polish leader. Bill is right to emphasize that a “paradox of Pilsudski’s life was that this great restorer of Poland’s independence went on to destroy its nascent parliamentary democracy in 1926 with a military coup that made him a virtual dictator until his death in 1935”. It is important to add that Pilsudski not only restored independence in November 1918, but also led the transition to a democratic, constitutional state with an independent judiciary, equality before the law and minority rights. He became profoundly embittered following the assassination in December 1922 of the reborn Poland’s first president, Gabriel Narutowicz, by a right-wing Polish fanatic who claimed the president had been elected with the support of the Jews and was therefore illegitimate. The assassination came on the heels of a vicious press campaign by Poland’s right-wing parties referring to Narutowicz as “the president of the Jews”. That some Poles praised the assassin as a hero of the nation changed Pilsudski for ever.
He vowed never to allow his right-wing political opponents, whom he blamed for the assassination, to take power. A combination of the German-Soviet Treaty of Berlin in April 1926, which threatened Poland’s security, and the coming to power of a rightwing government whose members had spearheaded the campaign against Narutowicz back in 1922, led Pilsudski to take power and impose order. When asked after the coup if he intended to put Poland on the road to dictatorship, he replied: “I do not believe that Poland can be governed by coercion. I do not like coercion”. He went on to say he wanted constitutional reform, in which a new constitution would be based on the American model, with three co-equal branches of government.
I thus conclude that Pilsudski did not lose faith in the democratic ideal or in democratic government. He lost faith in the Poland that was emerging before his eyes – in Polish society’s ability to exercise its new freedom responsibly, to respect equality before the law for all citizens, including the right of every citizen to have his or her vote counted equally, and to accept the outcomes of free elections, even if the results are disappointing. But the periodic censorship of the opposition press and the arrest of members of the right-wing opposition in 1930 form a dark chapter in Jozef Pilsudski’s legacy.
Alessandro Manzoni
Michael F. Moore doth protest too much, methinks (Letters, June 2). And there was I thinking that I had afforded him some quite large mercies for which to be grateful. In assessing this new version of Manzoni’s The Betrothed (May 19), far from “nit-picking”, I was considering the accuracy and appropriateness of the stylistic regist
