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Polish Elections 1919-1928

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

A. J. Groth
A. J. Groth*
Affiliation:
University of California at Davis
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Extract

Much valuable information on the dynamics of Poland's political life between the world wars is still to be uncovered in the records of national elections. Of particular interest are the contests of 1919, 1922, and 1928, since in all of these elections political parties were still allowed to participate directly (as they were not in 1935 and 1938), and governmental restraint and manipulation were not yet so massive as to cast doubt on the entire result (as in 1930).

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1965 , pp. 653 - 665
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1965

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References

1 See Andrzej, Gwizdz, Buriuazyjno-obszarnicza konstytucja z 1921 roku w praktyce (Warsaw, 1956), pp. 18–19 Google Scholar, and Tadeusz, Rek, Chjeno Piast (Warsaw, 1955), pp. 22–23 Google Scholar. In both cases the authors allege that “undue” clerical influence prejudiced the results of the first two elections. An excellent survey of the practices employed by the government in 1928 is given by Próchnik, Adam, Pierwsze pietnastolecie Polski niepodlegfej, 1918-1933 (Warsaw, 1933), pp. 274–80 Google Scholar. They included pressure on state employees to vote for the BBWR and to participate in its electoral campaign, much manipulation to staff the electoral machinery with trusted government men, extensive use of government facilities on behalf of the BBWR, large outlays of public funds, and invalidation of opposition lists prior to election as well as of ballots afterwards. Prochnik declines to estimate the total effect of these methods. See also the admissions of Gen. Felicjan Slawoj -Skladkowski, the Minister of the Interior, before the the Sejm on June 5, 1928, Sprawozdanie Stenograftczne (1928), Session XVII, p. 116. For typical summaries of uncensored foreign press reports, see Henryk, Frankel, Poland: The Struggle for Power 1772-1939 (London, 1946); pp. 142–46 Google Scholar.

2 Figures based on Ludwik, Krzywicki, ed., Statystyka wybordw do Sejmu Ustawodawczego (Warsaw, 1922)Google Scholar.

3 Figures based on L., Blaszkowski, ed., Statistique des elections a la Diete et au Senat effectues le 5 et le 12 novembre 1922, Vol. VIII (Warsaw, 1926)Google Scholar.

4 Tadeusz, and Rzepeccy, Karol, Sejm i Senat 1928-1933 (Poznari, 1928)Google Scholar .

5 See my “Proportional Representation in Prewar Poland,” Slavic Review, XXIII, No. 1 (March 1964), 103-16. The year 1922 was the last “year of opportunity” for the Right when, with plurality support throughout most of Poland, it might conceivably have ruled the country under a different electoral system.

6 See for example M. W. Graham, “Polish Political Parties,” in Poland, ed. Bernadotte E. Schmitt (Berkeley, 1947), pp. 117-18, on the alleged decline of the Socialists after 1930. The evidence of three successive national elections sharply challenges the view that “Socialism of this variety in a polyglot state could never be more than skin-deep.” A much more likely and judicious appraisal was offered by Stanislaw, Mackiewicz, Historja Polski od 11 listopada 1918 r. do 17 wrzeinia 1939 r. (London, 1941), p. 152 Google Scholar, who saw the Socialists as the principal opposition to the Right in a potential two-party system.

7 Pilsudski, Józef, 1926-1929, Mowy, Deklaracje i Wywiady (Warsaw, 1939), esp. pp. 13, 31-32, 232, 276Google Scholar.

8 Comparisons are complicated by the fact that in many areas the Leftist parties did not present their lists in 1922, or in 1928, or both. For the same reason it is impossible to evaluate adequately the progress of the PPS in comparison with other Leftist groupings in several of the electoral districts in western and eastern Poland.

9 Some of this decline, as in Warsaw, for example, appears to confirm fairly substantial defections of the Jewish voters to the Government Bloc. On the whole, however, in central and western Poland the Left appears to have profited most by the decline in minority voting.

10 In 1922 list No. 8 received 28.9 percent of the Sejm vote and 39.1 of that for the Senate. In 1928 the combined vote of the BBWR and the Nationalists was 29.1 percent for the Sejm and 38 percent for the Senate.

11 On this theme see Chalasinski, Józef, PrzeszloU i przysziosd inteligencji polskiej (Rome, 1947), pp. 149–57 Google Scholar, particularly his reference on pp. 154-55 to Waclaw Makowski, My i Wy (Warsaw, 1938), pp. 104-6, with respect to the treatment of Jews. Simon Segal wrote in 1938: “The regime founded by the late Marshal is taking over the program of his greatest enemy, Dmowski,” and “The Pilsudski regime adopted their [National Democratic] program but gave them no share in its realization.” The New Poland and the Jews (New York, 1938), pp. 73 and 82 respectively.

12 This statement obviously implies a rejection of the view propounded by Sharp, Samuel L. in Poland, White Eagle on a Red Field (Cambridge, Mass., 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see particularly p.81. For an excellent factual rebuttal of this view see Rose, William J., The Growth of Polish Democracy (London, 1944), pp. 183–85 Google Scholar. For a discussion of differences between authoritarian movements of the right and center, see Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (Garden City, 1960), pp. 133–74 Google Scholar.

13 Writing of the Marshal's Socialist past, Mackiewicz quoted Pitsudski as saying that he “got off the Socialist streetcar at the station marked ‘Independence’ “ (Mackiewicz, p. 83). For glimpses of Pilsudski's fiscal and social conservatism see Slawoj-Skladkowski, Felicjan, Strzepy meldunkdw (Warsaw, 1938)Google Scholar.

14 As he told the Polish press shortly after the May coup: “I have performed an act unique in history…. I have accomplished something on the order of a revolution without any revolutionary consequences.” Pilsudski, Józef, Pisma zbiorowe (Warsaw, 1938), IX, 13 Google Scholar. See also Joseph, Barthelemy, La Crise de la democratic contemporaine (Paris, 1931), p. 97 Google Scholar.

15 See Joseph, Rothschild, “The Ideological, Political and Economic Background of Pitsudski's Coup d'Etat of 1926,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXVII (June 1963), 224–44Google Scholar. See also Robert, Machray, The Poland of Pilsudski (London, 1936), pp. 239–40 Google Scholar.

16 On such tendencies within the Bloc see Mieczyslaw, Szawleski, Polonizm: Ustroj narodu polskiego (Warsaw, 1938), p. 291 Google Scholar.

17 Lipset, p. 141.

18 The character of the Government Bloc's electoral clientele has yet to find adequate treatment in Western scholarly accounts. Graham (p. 138) saw as the principal result of the 1928 election the ruin of the populist cause! Rose (p. 175) believed the BBWR gains to have been “chiefly at the expense of the Center and Right” but did not attempt to assess the impact of the outcome (such as he believed it be) on the Bloc. Machray (p. 241) concluded simply that “it was impossible not to see … that the country had given a verdict for Pilsudski,” though he saw the victory as having been won “at the expense of the Right and Center.” Raymond Leslie Buell in Poland: Key to Europe (New York, 1939) continued to believe that “although the non-party bloc made minor inroads [!], the Endeks lost comparatively little ground before 1934” (p. 108). See also Ferdynand, Zweig, Poland Between Two Wars (London, 1944), p. 66 Google Scholar; and Bernard, Singer, Od Witosa do Slawka (Paris, 1963), p. 119 Google Scholar, on the results of the 1928 election in Warsaw.