Józef Piłsudski died 90 years ago. He left a good and bad legend

Piłsudski became a legend during his lifetime. A Tsarist exile, founder and leader of the Polish Socialist Party, but also a collaborator of the Austro-Hungarian intelligence. At the outbreak of World War I, he decided that it was worth betting on Germany and Austria-Hungary and fighting Russia together, because maybe in this way he could rebuild Poland. When he realized that his temporary allies were only interested in Polish recruits, he refused to cooperate any longer. He paid for this with internment in Magdeburg, but his instincts did not fail him. In November 1918, the authorities of Germany, engulfed by revolution, not only released him, but also provided a train that took him to Warsaw. Military units and most political groups – with the exception of the National Democrats – obeyed him. With such support, he took power as the Head of State and held it until the adoption of the March Constitution, and in practice even a little longer. He encroached on the competences of the government and the Sejm, and in 1922, against the parliamentary majority, he did not accept the election of Wojciech Korfanty as the new prime minister.

He withdrew from politics for several years, but did not lose his influence on it. In 1926, he carried out an armed coup and established dictatorial rule, although, apart from a short period when he was prime minister, he did not hold any leading positions in the country. He exercised power through politicians who were subservient to him – military and civilian. He did not have a good opinion of the qualifications of most of them. “You are like children,” he would say to them when they reported to him at the Belweder Palace.

He wrote about General Stanisław Szeptycki that he would not advise him even to his personal enemy. He also gave blunt and critical opinions to Józef Haller, Tadeusz Rozwadowski, and a devastating one to Edward Rydz-Śmigły: "He would not be able to cope with the capricious and overgrown ambitions of the generals at the present time, I am not sure of his operational abilities in the scope of the work of the Commander-in-Chief and his ability to measure not only the military forces, but the entire state of his own and the enemy" - he wrote.

However, it was Rydz-Śmigły who became Piłsudski's successor – he received the marshal's baton and the position of Inspector General of the Armed Forces, which involved complete power over the army.

The system created by Piłsudski after the May Coup survived until the outbreak of World War II. Piłsudski's successors were blamed by the new Polish government (in exile) for not preparing the country militarily and diplomatically for war. However, the legend of Piłsudski himself survived in Poland and was strengthened in the Polish People's Republic by the reluctance of a large part of society to the new system imposed from Moscow.

True statements attributed to him became part of Piłsudski's legend.

The most frequently cited ones were those about history: "whoever does not respect and does not value his past is not worthy of the respect of the present or the right to the future" and fight ("to be defeated and not submit is a victory, to win and rest on one's laurels is a defeat."

People critical of Piłsudski, however, recall offensive and even vulgar opinions about the Sejm, opposition MPs and the constitution. "I do not call it the Constitution, sir, I call it a constitution. And I invented this word because it is closest to a prostitute. This system of breaking the Constitution to suit various needs must make the Constitution an ordinary girl - and this must not be allowed" - he said in August 1930 in a press interview. Just a few days later, after dissolving the Sejm, he ordered leading opposition politicians to be imprisoned in a military prison in Brest. He commented on the protests against this decision just as sharply: "When the Sejm is dissolved, there are no MPs - they do not exist - everyone is free to think that if they want to keep their powers, they must be considered ordinary scum that must poison the air with their existence".

On the other hand, Piłsudski crossed out his former comrade from the PPS, but in 1930 a sharp critic, Kazimierz Pużak, from the list of people who were to be sent to Brest: "What would be said about me if I locked up a prisoner of Shlisselburg in a fortress?" - he explained.

Even during Piłsudski's lifetime, there were heated arguments about his various statements, sometimes assigning completely different meanings to them. This was the case, for example, with the sentence in which he compared Poland to a pretzel, in which all the best is on the outside. Some considered it a praise of the borderlands, others - an insult to central Poland.

In Silesia, Piłsudski was remembered for the words he had uttered in the summer of 1919 to delegates asking him to support the insurgents. "What do I care about Silesia? It's an old Prussian colony," they supposedly heard in response. However, immediately afterwards, in spite of such a declaration, money and weapons secretly flowed from Warsaw, along with several thousand officers. This assistance would not have been possible if Piłsudski had not agreed to it, but officially Poland did not admit to anything.

With the exception of a small group of subordinates, few people knew about Piłsudski's deteriorating health. He had increasingly frequent fevers, slept very badly, and his legs began to swell. From January 1935, severe attacks of pain occurred. Piłsudski's adjutant Mieczysław Lepecki recalled: "Later, vomiting began to appear. The Marshal attributed all these symptoms to digestive tract indispositions and began to go on a diet. So first he gave up on heavy meals, then he began to limit his portions, and finally he began a therapeutic fast."

Despite the urgings of Dr. Marcin Woyczyński, who was taking care of him, to stop the hunger strike, Piłsudski continued it. "This method," Lepecki recalled, "at first had some success. Nausea appeared rarely, as did pain. The weakness only grew. The Marshal gradually began to reduce all physical exertion. He limited, and then completely abolished, walks around his office, he visited my room less and less often, he even preferred to play solitaire for him, not wanting to torment himself."

According to Prof. Andrzej Garlicki, author of the marshal's biography: "The starvation treatment that Piłsudski applied to himself could have been a symptom of the next stage of the disease. Simply loss of appetite as a result of the body rejecting food. But at that time it was very fashionable to cleanse the body through an appropriate diet, or rather fasting. (...) The rapid weight loss mentioned by all those who came into contact with Piłsudski in those last months was probably the result not of the fasting, but of the rapidly developing cancer. It is impossible to determine how long this disease lasted. Individual differences in the disease process are very large in cancer diseases."

On April 21, Piłsudski, after much persuasion, finally agreed to the arrival of Professor Karl Wenckebach, a renowned specialist in cancer diseases, from Vienna. Four days later, tests were performed. The diagnosis left no hope: a malignant liver tumor that was inoperable. This information was passed on to General Składkowski, who informed the president and prime minister of the results of the tests.

In the following days, Marshal Piłsudski wrote down his last will: "I don't know if they won't want to bury me at Wawel. Let them! Let them only hide my then closed heart in Vilnius where my soldiers lie who in April 1919 threw Vilnius at my feet as a gift as a commander. On a stone or a tombstone, engrave the motto I have chosen for my life +When, having the choice, he chose instead of home/ An eagle's nest on the rocks, let him know/ To sleep when his pupils are red from thunder/ And you can hear the moan of the devils in the contemplation of the pines/ That's how I lived.+ And I beseech all who loved me to bring the remains of my mother from Suginty, Wilkomirski district to Vilnius and bury the mother of the greatest knight of Poland above me. Let a proud heart rest at the feet of a proud mother. Bury the mother with military honors, the body on a carriage and let all the cannons thunder with a farewell salvo and welcome so that the windows in Vilnius would shake. My mother raised me for the role that fell to me. On a stone or tombstone, Mother should engrave a poem from Słowacki's "Wacław" beginning with the words "Proud ones cannot be unhappy". Before she died, Mother told me to read it several times for her".

On May 4, Marshal Piłsudski was taken to Belweder. A week later, he began bleeding from the mouth. The last moments of Piłsudski's life were described in his diary on May 12 by the Marshal's adjutant in the Belweder Palace, Captain Aleksander Hrynkiewicz: "The priest begins the prayers, they pass the holy oils with which the ritually designated places on the Commander's head are anointed. The entourage kneels and prays. The family stares at the Commander's face with silent pain, not yet fully aware of the tragedy of the approaching moment. The end of the Commander's life is approaching, this can be seen and felt without words or explanations. (...) The Commander looks into space with a glassy and motionless gaze as if reviewing the image of his heroic and tragic life. He explains some thoughts, some will with a weak movement of his hands, which during life and during illness were always so active and mobile. (...) The minutes drag on one after another, as long as the past decades pregnant with history. I turn my head, on the clock face 8:45, the end of an era associated with the life of the Great Man".

Immediately after the Marshal's death, the salon of the Belweder Palace, where he died, was transformed into a funeral chapel, where his body rested on a catafalque. An honor guard was set up for the deceased, which was performed by four officers, two non-commissioned officers and two privates. The silver coffin with Piłsudski's body was exhibited in the Belweder Palace on 13 and 14 May. The catafalque was adorned with a purple cloth with the coat of arms of the Republic of Poland.

The marshal's body was dressed in a uniform, girded with a large ribbon of the Virtuti Militari order and with combat orders on the chest. In his hands Piłsudski held a picture of Our Lady of Ostra Brama. Above the head of the deceased were placed the banners of the Polish army from 1831 and 1863 adorned with a pall, as well as the legion banners. Next to it stood a crystal urn with the marshal's heart, next to it were placed the Maciejówka cap, the marshal's baton and a sabre.

On May 15, the coffin with Piłsudski's body was transported on a trailer pulled by six horses to St. John's Cathedral. It was placed in the main nave of the church. There, crowds bid farewell to the Marshal. Stanisław Cat-Mackiewicz recalled these events as follows: "The body of Marshal Piłsudski was carried to St. John's Cathedral, left overnight under the vault. And the Warsaw crowd began to flow like a river from morning. There were thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of people - people stood for eleven hours waiting their turn, to quickly pass by the coffin for a moment, to cast at least a glance at its closed lid."

Cat-Mackiewicz is also the author of one of the most accurate summaries of Piłsudski's legacy. He wrote: "Piłsudski had fanatical admirers who loved him more than their own parents, than their own children, but there were many people who hated him, he had entire layers of the population, entire districts of Poland against him, a powerful distrust of himself. And this was not visible on the day of his funeral. On the contrary, it can be stated as a fact and truth that on the days of his funeral, that at the news of his death, fear and anxiety about what would happen to Poland now that he was gone, flew from the Baltic through Poznań and Silesia and from the Carpathians to the Dvina. Across the entire great homeland that we lost four years after his death." (PAP)

jkr/ drag/