Independence Day

Poland’s ‘Independence Day’ has been commemorated intermittently since 11 November 1918. It is symbolised by Pilsudski, whose statue is newly constructed in Warsaw’s central square (recently renamed Plac Pilsudskiego), and more generally by his wartime legions which emerged as unexpected victors from the Great War. But Pilsudski’s project to recreate pre-partition Poland as the leading partner of a federation extending east- and southwards was rejected by most other nationalities. Despite victory over the Red Army in 1920 (an event recalled as ‘the Miracle on the Vistula’), the proposed federal state did not emerge. Instead of a united state in which minorities could co-exist despite ethnic differences, the region reverted to competing nationalisms, with a would-be supra-national Soviet Union in the wings. After retiring from active politics in 1922, Pilsudski seized power by coup d’état in 1926 and extended the notion of Independence Day into ‘a retrospective reconstruction of what Poland was, and a projection of what it should be. It was a national philosophy’ (p. xii). M.B.B. Biskupski’s book is an original and meticulous account of this process and its convoluted and often contradictory consequences

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