Roman Stanisław Dmowski (<small>Polish:</small> , in official Russian documents Рома́н Валенти́нович Дмо́вский; 9 August 1864 – 2 January 1939) was a Polish politician, statesman, and co-founder and chief ideologue of the National Democracy (abbreviated "ND": in Polish, "Endecja") political movement active during the interwar period.

While he never wielded significant political power except for a brief period in 1923 as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmowski was one of the most influential Polish ideologues and politicians of his time. A controversial personality most of his life, Dmowski desired a homogeneous, Polish-speaking and Roman Catholic-practicing nation. Throughout most of his life, he was the chief ideological opponent of the Polish military and political leader Józef Piłsudski and of the latter's vision of Prometheism, a multi-ethnic Poland reminiscent of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

As a result, Dmowski's nationalist rhetoric actively marginalized other ethnic groups living in Poland, particularly those in the Kresy (which included Jews, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians). During the partitions, Dmowski saw the Germanization of Polish territories controlled by the German Empire as the major threat to Polish culture and therefore advocated a degree of accommodation with another power that had partitioned Poland, the Russian Empire. Openly antisemitic throughout his career, Dmowski believed that Poland's Jews were working hand in hand with the Germans to partition Poland and supported economic boycotts and property confiscation against both ethnic groups.

He favored the re-establishment of Polish independence by nonviolent means and supported policies favorable to the Polish middle class. While in Paris during World War I, he was a prominent spokesman for Polish aspirations to the Allies through his Polish National Committee. He was an instrumental figure in the postwar restoration of Poland's independent existence. Dmowski remains a highly polarizing figure. While often denounced as an antisemite, xenophobe, and an admirer of fascism, Dmowski has been highly influential in the history of Polish nationalist movements, A key concept of the League was Polskość (Polishness), as opposed to trójlojalizm (triple loyalty). He also rejected liberalism and socialism for putting the individual above the nation-state, which for Dmowski was the only unit that really mattered. Dmowski himself was elected a deputy to the Second and Third Dumas (beginning on 27 February 1907) and was president of the Polish caucus within it. During the Polish-Soviet War he was a member of the Council of National Defense and a vocal critic of Piłsudski's policies.

Introducing his agenda to the Sejm's Foreign Affairs Commission on 16 November 1923, Dmowski stated

When presenting Poland's attitude towards the victorious countries, he placed particular emphasis on relations with France, stressing that it was “most interested in implementing the Treaty of Versailles.”

In the tense international situation caused by the German crisis – after French occupation of the Ruhr – Dmowski pursued a cautious but confident policy. He also managed to ease tensions in Polish-Soviet relations, which had been strained for several years due to the Soviet Union's nonfulfillment of its obligations assumed in the Treaty of Riga and Poland's refusal to recognize the USSR as a federal state. Dmowski's actions as the person responsible for the country's foreign policy did not reveal any ideological concepts, remaining broadly consistent with the policy pursued by Poland since the beginning of 1922. It was an attempt to maintain the status quo: both political and territorial.

Having lost the support of the majority of the Sejm as a result of the secession of a group of 15 peasant deputies and lacking the support of the Marshal and the President, the cabinet resigned. Thus, Dmowski served as Minister of Foreign Affairs for only six weeks.

In the same year he received the Order of Polonia Restituta from the government of Władysław Sikorski. In 1928 he founded the National Party (Polish: Stronnictwo Narodowe).

Death and funeral

thumb|Dmowski c. 1938. The last portrait photo.|left|275x275px

Right after Christmas, Dmowski suffered paralysis on the right side of his body and partial speech impairment. In addition, pneumonia occurred. He died on 2 January 1939, shortly after midnight at the age of 74.

thumb|253x253px|Dmowski's funeral procession, 7 January 1939, Warsaw.

The National Party authorities wanted to embalm the body, but the Niklewicz family, clearly citing Dmowski's wishes, did not consent to it.

Political outlook

Theorist of nationalism

From his early student years, Dmowski was opposed to socialism and suspicious of federalism; he desired Polish independence and a strong Polish state, and saw socialism and conciliatory federalist policies as prioritizing an international idea over the national one. Dmowski saw all minorities as weakening agents within the nation that needed to be purged.</blockquote>

In the pre-war years, the history of Poland was contested terrain as different ideological forces pulled Polish nationalists in opposite directions, represented by Dmowski and Piłsudski. In his essay (Jews on the War) written about World War I, In the same essay, Dmowski accused the Jews of being Poland's most dangerous enemy and of working hand in hand with the Germans to dismember Poland again. In his 1938 essay Hitleryzm a Źydzi, Dmowski wrote: <blockquote>"The tool of the Jews was Wilson, who was concerned that the Allied troops did not cross the German border...Lloyd George stopped regions from becoming part of Poland as they were before: the great majority of our Upper Silesia, Malborg, Sztum and Kwidzyn, and also Gdansk. Lloyd George acted like an agent of the Jews, and nothing gave the impression that Wilson was any less dependent on them. The Jews, therefore, negotiated an agreement with German Freemasonry, who, in return for help at the conference on the border question, agreed to provide them with a leading position in the German Republic. Eventually, after the peace, the Jews worked for Germany and against Poland in England, American, and even in France, but especially stove so that Germany became less and less a German state and more a Jewish one".</blockquote>

For Dmowski, one of Poland's principal problems was that not enough Polish-speaking Catholics were middle-class, while too many ethnic Germans and Jews were. To remedy this perceived problem, he envisioned a policy of confiscating the wealth of Jews and ethnic Germans and redistributing it to Polish Catholics. Dmowski was never able to have this program passed into law by the Sejm, but the National Democrats did frequently organize "Buy Polish" boycott campaigns against German and Jewish shops. The first of Dmowski's antisemitic boycotts occurred in 1912 when he attempted to organize a total boycott of Jewish businesses in Warsaw as "punishment" for the defeat of some Endecja candidates in the elections for the Duma, which Dmowski blamed on Warsaw's Jewish population. Conversely, he has been described as the founder of contemporary Polish antisemitism and criticized for his disdain for women's rights. Dmowski's life and work has been subject to numerous academic articles and books. Andrzej Walicki in 1999 noted that main sources on Dmowski are Andrzej Micewski's Roman Dmowski (1971), Roman Wapiński's Roman Dmowski (1988) and Krzysztof Kawalec's Roman Dmowski (1996). Both Jarosław Kaczyński and Lech Kaczyński have cited Dmowski as an inspiration. Lech, then the mayor of Warsaw, supported the erection of the Dmowski statue in 2006.

  • 85x85px Order of Polonia Restituta (1923)

Foreign orderes

  • 85x85px Order of the Star of Romania (Romania)
  • 85x85px Order of Orange-Nassau (Netherlands)

Honorary degrees

  • Honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK) on 11 August 1916
  • Honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the University of Poznań (Poznań, Poznań Voivodeship, PL) on 10 June 1923

Honorary titles

  • Baltia Student Corporation of Poznań University (Patron and first honorary Philistine, 1921)
  • All-Polish Youth (Honorary president, 1922)

Literary awards

  • Jan Kasprowicz Literary Award of the City of Poznań (6 December 1927)

Selected works

  • Myśli nowoczesnego Polaka (Thoughts of a Modern Pole), 1902.
  • Niemcy, Rosja a sprawa polska (Germany, Russia and the Polish Cause), 1908. French translation published under the title: La question polonaise (Paris 1909).
  • Separatyzm Żydów i jego źródła (Separatism of Jews and its Sources), 1909.
  • Upadek myśli konserwatywnej w Polsce (The Decline of Conservative Thought in Poland), 1914.
  • Polityka polska i odbudowanie państwa (Polish Politics and the Rebuilding of the State), 1925.
  • Zagadnienie rządu (On Government), 1927.
  • Kościół, naród i państwo (The Church, Nation and State), 1927.
  • Świat powojenny i Polska (The World after War and Poland), 1931.
  • Przewrót (The Coup), 1934.

See also

  • History of Poland (1918-1939)
  • Poland in World War I
  • Dmowski's Line

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Cang, Joel: "The Opposition Parties in Poland and Their Attitude towards the Jews and the Jewish Question" Jewish Social Studies, Volume 1, Issue #2, 1939. pages 241–256
  • Dabrowski, Patrice M. "Uses and Abuses of the Polish Past by Józef Piłsudski and Roman Dmowski," The Polish Review (2011) 56#1 pp.&nbsp;73–109 in JSTOR
  • Davies, Norman "Lloyd George and Poland, 1919–20," Journal of Contemporary History, (1971) 6#3 pp 132–54 in JSTOR
  • Fountain, Alvin Marcus Roman Dmowski: Party, Tactics, Ideology 1895–1907, Boulder: East European Monographs, 1980 .
  • Groth, Alexander J. "Dmowski, Piłsudski and Ethnic Conflict in Pre-1939 Poland," Canadian-American Slavic Studies (1969) 3#1 pp 69–91.
  • Komarnicki, Titus Rebirth of the Polish Republic: A Study in the Diplomatic History of Europe, 1914–1920, London, 1957.
  • Kossert, Andreas. "Founding Father of Modern Poland and Nationalistic Antisemite: Roman Dmowski," in In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe edited by Rebecca Haynes and Martyn Rady, (2011) pp 89–105
  • Lundgreen-Nielsen, K. The Polish Problem at the Paris Peace Conference: A Study in the Policies of the Great Powers and the Poles, 1918–1919: Odense, 1979.
  • Macmillan, Margaret Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed The World, New York : Random House, 2003, 2002, 2001 , pp 207–28
  • Mendelsohn, Ezra. The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983 .
  • Porter, Brian. When Nationalism Began to Hate. Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland, (Oxford University Press, 2000).
  • Seitz, Richard George. "Dmowski, Piłsudski, and the Ideological Clash in the Second Polish Republic." PhD dissertation University of Washington., 1975.
  • Valasek, Paul S. Haller's Polish Army in France, Chicago : 2006 .
  • Walicki, Andrzej. "The Troubling Legacy of Roman Dmowski," East European Politics & Societies (2000) 14#1 pp 12–46. stresses xenophobia, anti-Semitism and role of Church
  • Wandycz, Piotr Stefan "Dmowski's Policy and the Paris Peace Conference: Success or Failure?" from The Reconstruction of Poland, 1914–23, edited by P. Latawski: London, 1992.
  • Wandycz, Piotr S. "Poland's Place in Europe in the Concepts of Piłsudski and Dmowski," East European Politics & Societies (1990) 4#3 pp 451–468.
  • Zamoyski, Adam The Polish Way A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and their Culture, London: John Murray Ltd, 1987 .

In Polish

  • Website dedicated to Roman Dmowski
  • Roman Dmowski's funeral (video)
  • TVP Opole documentary about Roman Dmowski