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). In the aftermath of World War I, he became an increasingly dominant figure in Polish politics and exerted significant influence on shaping the country's foreign policy. Piłsudski is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic, which was re-established in 1918, 123 years after the final partition of Poland in 1795, and was considered de facto leader (1926–1935) of the Second Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs.
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 to be assimilated as Poles. 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 to 1921 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 Sanation government. He focused on military and foreign affairs until his death in 1935, developing a cult of personality that has survived into the 21st century.
Although some aspects of Piłsudski's administration, such as imprisoning his political opponents at Bereza Kartuska, are controversial, he remains one of the most influential figures in Polish 20th-century history and is widely regarded as a founder of modern Poland.
Early life
Piłsudski was born 5 December 1867 to the Piłsudski family of nobility at Zułow, their manor near the village of Zułowo in present-day Lithuania. He personally knew Lithuanian and was able to communicate using it, in addition to Polish. Zułowo had been under the Russian Empire's rule since 1795, having previously been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, itself in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1569 to 1795. After World War I, the village was part of the Vilnius Region that was contested between Lithuania and Poland throughout the interwar period. From 1922 until 1939, the village was in the Second Polish Republic. During World War II, Zułowo suffered Soviet and German occupations. 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 Lithuanians. 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 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 services 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 Narodniks revolutionary movement. The next year, he was suspended for participating in student demonstrations. Piłsudski 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.
Siberian exile 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, people forcefully exiled 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, Lithuanian and Russian in addition to 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 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, Maria Juszkiewiczowa, née Koplewska. According to his biographer Wacław Jędrzejewicz, the marriage was less romantic than pragmatic. Robotnik'''s printing press was housed in their apartment first in Vilnius, then in Łódź. A pretext of regular family life made them less suspect. Also, Russian law 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; in October that year, 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.
Armed resistance In the early 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 of 1905 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, where 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" ("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 Russian Empire 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.
Prelude to World War I