WI No Gabriel Narutowicz Election and Assassination in 1922

Would anyone who is more familiar than I am with interwar Polish history comment on this dissertation by Paul Brykczynski ("Political Murder and the Victory of Ethnic Nationalism in Interwar Poland")? http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/97869/paulbryk_1.pdf (The "Doctrine of the Polish Majority" to which he refers is in brief the doctrine that only ethnic Poles had the right to rule Poland and that any Polish government that depended for its majority on people who were not ethnic Poles was illegitimate. The argument of the dissertation is that this doctrine, based on an "ethnic" concept of Polish-ness that had been vigorously contested before 1922, became dominant thereafter.)

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"This dissertation examines the impact of the 1922 election and murder of Gabriel Narutowicz, the first president of Poland, on the discursive field of Polish nationalism Narutowicz was seen as an illegitimate president by the nationalist right, and murdered by a nationalist sympathizer because of the support offered to him by Jewish, Ukrainian, and German deputies during the election. Using a blend of cultural, intellectual, and microhistorical approaches, the dissertation demonstrates that the most important shifts in the discursive field of Polish nationalism in the early 20th century occurred in response to specific, contingent, political events. The election and murder of Narutowicz constituted the most important in a series of these events. By examining the pre- and post- assassination discourse of both left- and right-wing Polish thinkers and politicians, the dissertation shows that the murder, and the street violence associated with it, propelled the left to abandon its “civic” vision of the imagined community of the nation. At the same time, despite suffering a temporary setback, the nationalist right quickly reaffirmed its commitment to anti-Semitism and further radicalized its “ethnic” nationalism. Therefore, the murder of Narutowicz played an instrumental role in the transformation of the discursive structures of Polish nationalism between 1918 and 1939, and can help explain the ultimate victory of an ethnic and anti-Semitic nationalism in interwar Poland...

"Furthermore, as I show in Chapter VII, the emergence of the Doctrine of the Polish Majority, which played such an enormous role in mobilizing the National Democrats’ followers and in forcing the left to back down in its defense of a (relatively) inclusive conception of Poland, can only be understood in the context of the particular and highly contingent outcome of the election. While the NDs had been fully committed to political anti-Semitism for well over a decade, the election’s results played right into their narrative of a Jewish takeover of Poland, appeared to vindicate their most paranoid fears, and allowed them to present what had previously been a vague and mysterious scepter as a concrete and specific threat.

"Of course, it is possible and even highly likely that anti-Semitism would have triumphed in Polish politics regardless. But precisely *how* history would have unfolded is anyone’s guess. What can be said with certainty is that the Doctrine of the Polish Majority would not have been formulated if the outcome of the 1922 parliamentary elections was even slightly different. Nor would it have assumed such a prominent place in Polish political discourse, if the presidential election had unfolded differently (that is if the left had united around a single, well known, and popular candidate).

"Further, it must be pointed out that the student thugs who briefly ruled Warsaw on December 11 did not represent the majority of “ethnic” Polish society which, as we will recall, gave the National Democrats less than 39% of its votes. To say that the Polish left capitulated in the face “popular” anti-Semitism is simply not true. From Chapters VIII, IX, and X we will recall that it was the political *leaders* of Piast and the left who counseled acquiescence and “moderation,” against the more radical demands of the grassroots.

"The impact of the Narutowicz election and murder was profound, and could be felt on both the left and the right. Contrary to what all Polish historians have argued until now, the crisis which ended in the assassination of president was actually a victory for the National Democrats. As I argued in Chapter VII, the hatreds unleashed during the parliamentary elections of 1922, assumed an entirely new focus during the weeks preceding the presidential election. And in the aftermath of the election of Narutowicz, as I showed in Chapter VIII, all Poles witnessed the extraordinary power of hateful anti-Semitic nationalism to mobilize its adherents. Perhaps most importantly, the hateful sentiments and rhetoric which led to the murder of the president were never repudiated by the National Democratic elite. As I show in Chapter IX, even the murderer was very quickly accepted as a nationalist hero and martyr. His trial and execution, as covered by the major right-wing newspapers, actually provided the right with the opportunity to reaffirm the legitimacy of the principles in the name of which the president was murdered. Even if the murder was a short-term political setback, there is no doubt that it was a long term discursive victory.

"To understand the real nature and profound significance of this victory we must look at the center and left of the political spectrum, and the surprisingly quick surrender of the entire Polish political class to the Doctrine of the Polish Majority. The centrist politicians from Piast seemed eager to adopt the Doctrine not so much because of the numbers commanded by the advocates of exclusive nationalism and anti-Semitism, which in all likelihood did not change all that much following the events of December 11, but because of their intensity, intransigence, and willingness to resort to violence. But while the fear of violence and anarchy can certainly help explain the capitulation of Piast and other centrist politicians to the “Polish Majority,” it by no means rendered this capitulation inevitable.

"Indeed, in some ways this story is about agency as much as it is about contingency. As Maciej Rataj’s decision to embrace the Doctrine of the Polish Majority illustrates, Piast had a very clear alternative to an alliance with the National Democrats. According to Rataj, a shrewd and intelligent political leader, most Poles would have opted for land reform even in alliance with the “Jews” (or the minorities to be more precise). Yet, it was Piast *leadership* rather than the grassroots, which effectively made the decision to opt for anti-Semitism and rejected more radical calls for land reform. In the case of Rataj, this decision was certainly the result of pragmatic calculations rather than visceral fears.

"To return to David Ost’s framework of the “politics of anger,” in the aftermath of Narutowicz’ murder, Piast had the choice to ally with the left, mobilize economic anger by providing an economic narrative of “what went wrong” and champion radical social change. Alternately, it had the option to ally with the right and join the latter in providing a narrative that emphasized the culpability of a whole people, the Jews, for Poland’s problems. The advantage of the second narrative was that it could help avoid rapid and potentially destabilizing social change. Rataj’s acceptance of the Doctrine of the Polish Majority in the aftermath of the December Events, illustrates in a particularly clear manner the thinking which seems to have motivated many other Piast deputies, as well as other leading centrist politicians, such as Premier Wladyslaw Sikorski and President Stanislaw Wojciechowski. All of them appeared to have made the choice to accept an alliance with political anti-Semitism rather than face the possibility of social instability. These were active and conscious decisions made by individual politicians, rather than the results of some inevitable social process...

"In the Pilsudski “Camp”, the situation was more complicated. To be sure, as long as Pilsudski was alive, his followers would never openly accept either the Doctrine of the Polish Majority or political anti-Semitism. Still, in Chapter X we saw a palpable if subtle change in the approach of leading politicians and publicists to the “Jewish Question” and, what follows, to the discourse of the nation. With some notable exceptions such as Tadeusz Holówko, the Pilsudczyks, and the Polish left as a whole, found themselves unable to honestly analyze and articulate the causes of the president’s murder or to take an honest and forceful stand against the destructive effects anti-Semitism and exclusive nationalism in the public sphere.

"The causes of this surprising timidness cannot be easily discerned. It is unlikely that people who could deploy the formidable POW organization or the feared PPS militia would cave in before National Democratic high school and university students. Certainly, the Pilsudczyks were sensitive to losing the “hearts and minds” of educated Polish youth which, as the riots following the election of Narutowicz demonstrated, was more attracted to anti-Semitism than most Poles. It is also likely, though difficult if not impossible to demonstrate conclusively, that they were awed by the collective effervesce evinced by the protesters.

"But perhaps the deepest reason for the Pilsudczyks’ silent surrender to the Discourse of the Polish Majority was...the internal contradictions of their political thought. As I have attempted to argue in Chapters IV and V, Pilsudczyk thought was more modern and sophisticated than is generally acknowledged. But it was also more inherently contradictory and unstable. In particular, the “civicness” of Pilsudczyk nationalism was always somewhat dubious, with the primary criteria in their understanding of belonging to the national community being culture rather than citizenship. Further, the Pilsudczyks’ quasi-Nietzschean dedication to “greatness” was in constant tension with the commitment to “humanity” and universalism. In the late 1910s and early 1920s it appeared that these principles could be easily reconciled by the creation of a powerful Polish state capable of upholding the independence of its weaker neighbors. But those hopes were dashed by the outcome of the Polish-Soviet war and, even more so, by Stanislaw Grabski’s handling of the peace negotiations at Riga. And since the “great” multiethnic Poland of their dreams never materialized and Jews, Ukrainians, and Belarusians were never *really* seen as Poles in the full sense of that word, the temptation to sacrifice the minorities in the service of some presumed greater good was always inherently embedded in Pilsudczyk political thinking. The contingent events surrounding the election and murder of Narutowicz created a situation in which such a bargain appeared ever more tempting. These considerations may help explain why the Pilsudczyks were willing to give up, or rather tone down, their defense of the civic conception of the Polish nation so quickly and so easily.

"At any rate, having effectively abandoned the field to the National Democrats in December 1922, the Pilsudczyks seemed to have lost the ability to publicly challenge the discourse of the Polish Majority. Indeed, this would appear to be the most significant legacy of the Narutowicz murder: Even after they seized power in 1926, the Pilsudczyks proved unable to articulate a convincing counter-narrative of the nation and defend it in the public arena. While their first moves in dealing with the “Nationalities Question” must be described as admirable, they were quickly abandoned. The dreaded “Nationality” and “Jewish” Questions continued to be a thorn in the side of succesive Pilsudczyk governments. 3 And while the National Democrats continued and intensified their relentless anti-Semitic barrage, it was clear to all that the Pilsudczyks lacked the heart to engage the discourse of the right in the same forceful manner as before the bloody events of December 1922. Once the discursive field had been surrendered once, it proved impossible to reclaim.

"The rapprochement between the followers of Pilsudski and anti-Semitic nationalism, so eagerly anticipated by Adolf Nowaczynski in the Endek *Mysl Narodowa* and the mysterious A.N-A. in the Pilsudczyk *Droga*, could never take place as long as Pilsudski was alive. But following his death in 1935, the faction of General Rydz-Smigly defeated Pilsudski’s anointed successor, Colonel Walery Slawek, and won power in the internal struggle within the Pilsudczyk movement. To bolster their flagging popularity, Rydz’s followers attempted, for the first time in the history of the Pilsudczyk movement, to create a mass-based party organization. The result of these attempts was the Camp of National Unity (Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego or OZN), which embraced economic and political anti-Semitism in an explicit effort to reach out to a number of National Democratic splinter groups..."
 
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