Intermarium

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Lokyz (talk | contribs) at 17:10, 1 September 2007 (even if they're your personal blogs?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 17:10, 1 September 2007 by Lokyz (talk | contribs) (even if they're your personal blogs?)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Proposed Międzymorze federation. Lighter green denotes Ukrainian and Belarusian territories controlled after 1921 by the Soviet Union.

Międzymorze was the name for Józef Piłsudski's proposed federation of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, and the Czech lands. It would link every Slavic nation except Russia and Bulgaria with the Baltic states and Hungary. The Polish name can be translated as "Intersea" ("Between-Seas"), and has also been rendered, from the Latin, as "Intermarum" or "Intermarium."

The proposed federation was meant to emulate the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, that, from the late 14th to the late 18th century, had united Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the latter also incorporating modern Belarus and Ukraine).

Międzymorze complemented Piłsudski's other great geopolitical vision—Prometheism, whose goal was the dismemberment of the Russian-dominated state. Piłsudski wanted to break up the Russian Empire. Together these two projects were intended to strengthen Poland and her neighbors at the expense of Tsarist Russia, and later of the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union.

Precedents

Commonwealth

A Polish-Lithuanian union and military alliance had come about as a mutual response to a common threat from the Teutonic Order. It had been cemented by the personal union in 1385 of Poland's Queen Jadwiga and Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, who became King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland. It had been further extended by the 1569 Union of Lublin, when the two states merged into a federation, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (in Polish, Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów — the "Republic of the Two Nations"), which would remain until the late 17th century the largest state in Europe. Its combined resources enabled it to hold its own against the Teutonic Order, the Mongols, the Russians, the Turks and the Swedes, for four centuries until the late-18th-century partitions of the weakened Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by its neighbors.

Under the Commonwealth, proposals were advanced to form an expanded, Polish-Lithuanian-Muscovite or Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian, Commonwealth, but these were never implemented.

Czartoryski's plan

File:Adam Jerzy Czartoryski1.png

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski.

Between the November and January Uprisings, in 1832–1861, the idea of resurrecting an updated Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was advocated by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, residing in exile at the Hôtel Lambert in Paris.

A visionary statesman and former friend and confidant of Russia's Tsar Alexander I, Czartoryski acted as the unacknowledged minister of foreign affairs for a nonexistent Poland. He wrote that, "Having extended her sway south and west, and being by the nature of things unreachable from the east and north, Russia becomes a source of constant threat to Europe." He argued that it would have been in Russia's interest, instead, to have surrounded herself with "friend slave." Czartoryski also identified a future threat from Prussia and urged the incorporation of East Prussia into a resurrected Poland.

Above all, however, he aspired to reconstitute — with French, British and Turkish support — a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth federated with the Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians and all the South Slavs of the future Yugoslavia. Poland, in his concept, could have mediated the conflicts between Hungary and the Slavs, and between Hungary and Romania.

Czartoryski's plan seemed close to realization during the period of national revolutions in 1848–1849 but foundered on lack of western support, on Hungarian intransigence toward the Czechs, Slovaks and Romanians, and on the rise of German nationalism. Nevertheless, his endeavor constituted a vital link between the 16th-century Jagiellon federative prototype and Józef Piłsudski's federative-Prometheist program that was to follow after World War I.

Piłsudski's "Międzymorze"

Józef Piłsudski's strategic goal was to resurrect a modern form of the old Commonwealth, while working for the disintegration of the Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, into its ethnic constituents (the latter was his Prometheist project). The accomplishment of these ends, somewhat approximated, decades later, with the creation of the European Union, and with the abolition of the Soviet Union in 1991, might have transformed much of Central Europe into a "Third Europe" invulnerable to Poland's historic antagonists, Germany and Russia.

Motives

While some scholars accept at face value the democratic principles claimed by Piłsudski for his federative plan, others view such claims with skepticism, pointing out that in later life Piłsudski would become increasingly disillusioned with democracy, as he observed its operation in interbellum Poland. In particular, his project is viewed unfavorably by some Ukrainian historians, with Oleksandr Derhachov arguing that the federation would have created a greater Poland in which the interests of non-Poles, especially Ukrainians, would have gotten short shrift.

Piłsudski saw the Międzymorze federation as a counterweight to potential imperialist tendencies on the part of Russia and Germany. His vision was, however, opposed not only by foreign nationalist and imperialist politicians but also in reborn Poland, where Roman Dmowski argued for an ethnically purer Poland in which minorities would be Polonized.

Some historians hold that Piłsudski, who argued that "There can be no independent Poland without an independent Ukraine", may have been more interested in Ukraine being split from Russia than he was in Ukrainians' welfare. He did not hesitate to use military force to expand Poland's borders to Galicia and Volhynia, crushing a Ukrainian attempt at self-determination in the disputed territories east of the Western Bug River, which contained a substantial Polish minority, mainly in cities like Lwów (Lviv), but a Ukrainian majority in the countryside.

Speaking of Poland's future frontiers, Piłsudski said: "All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente — on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany", while in the east "there are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far." In the eastern chaos, the Polish forces set out to expand as far as feasible. On the other hand, Poland had no intention of joining the western intervention in the Russian Civil War or of conquering Russia itself.

Opposition

Piłsudski's dream faced opposition from virtually all interested parties. The Soviets exerted their influence to thwart it. The western Allies feared that a weakened Germany and Russia might be unable to pay their World War I reparations and obligations, and that the European balance of power might be excessively altered by coordinated action among the newly independent countries. The Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Belarusians who were invited to join a federation, dreaded any compromise to their own cherished independence and were discouraged by a series of wars and border conflicts fought in the wake of World War I over disputed territories (the Polish-Lithuanian War, Polish-Ukrainian War, and border conflicts between Poland and Czechoslovakia). Finally, many Polish politicians such as Roman Dmowski opposed the idea of a multi-cultural federation, preferring to work instead toward a nationalistic, ethnically-pure Poland.

Failure

File:Jozef Beck.jpg

Józef Beck.

In the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War, Piłsudski's concept of a federation of Central and East European countries lost any chance of realization.

A late version of the concept was attempted by interwar Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck, a Piłsudski protegé. It envisioned a Central European union as also including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece — thus stretching not only west-east from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, but north-south from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Such a polity, comprising some 150 million Central Europeans, with a common foreign policy, might have been a force to be reckoned with by Nazi Germany in the west and the Soviet Union in the east.

World War II and since

The concept of a "Central European Union" — as a triangular geopolitical entity anchored in the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic or Aegean Seas — was revived in Władysław Sikorski's Polish government in exile during World War II. A first step toward its implementation — discussions between the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments regarding a prospective Polish-Czechoslovak union — ultimately foundered on Soviet opposition, which led to Czech hesitation and Allied indifference or hostility.

The concept has more recently, since the demise of Soviet hegemony in east-central Europe, been advocated under various names including "Intermarum" or "Intermarium" (Latin for "Międzymorze", "Intersea" or "Between-Seas"). One version of the idea envisions such a federation as a constituent of the European Union; "Intermarum" could, it is argued, give protection to its member states against domination by the European Union's wealthier, more powerful western members.

References

Józef Pilsudski, Polish revolutionary and statesman, the first chief of state (1918–22) of the newly independent Poland established in November 1918. (Józef Pilsudski in Encyclopedia Britannica)
Released in November 1918, returned to Warsaw, assumed command of the Polish armies, and proclaimed an independent Polish republic, which he headed. (Piłsudski, Joseph in Columbia Encyclopedia)
Timothy Snyder, Covert Polish missions across the Soviet Ukrainian border, 1928-1933 (p.55, p.56, p.57, p.58, p.59, in Cofini, Silvia Salvatici (a cura di), Rubbettino, 2005).
Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 030010670X, (p.41, p.42, p.43)
"Although the Polish premier and many of his associates sincerely wanted peace, other important Polish leaders did not. Josef Pilsudski, chief of state and creator of Polish army, was foremost among the latter. Pilsudski hoped to build not merely a Polish nation state but a greater federation of peoples under the aegis of Poland which would replace Russia as the great power of Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine were all to be included. His plan called for a truncated and vastly reduced Russia, a plan which excluded negotiations prior to military victory."
Richard K Debo, Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-192, Google Print, p. 59, McGill-Queen's Press, 1992, ISBN 0-7735-0828-7.
^ "Pilsudski's program for a federation of independent states centered on Poland; in opposing the imperial power of both Russia and Germany it was in many ways a throwback to the romantic Mazzinian nationalism of Young Poland in the early nineteenth century. But his slow consolidation of dictatorial power betrayed the democratic substance of those earlier visions of national revolution as the path to human liberation"
James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, p. 432, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-7658-0471-9
Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-1923, 2001, Routledge (UK), ISBN 0-415-24229-0, Google Print, p.49
Yohanan Cohen, Small Nations in Times of Crisis and Confrontation, SUNY Press, 1989, ISBN 0791400182 Google Books, p.65
"No less influential and popular than the concept of national democrats was the "federalist" program of Josef Pilsudski, a socialist and the most authoritative Polish political of the 20th century. The essence of that program was that after the ovethrowal of tsardom and the disintegration of the Russian empire, the large, strong and mighty Poland was to be created in Eastern Europe. It was the reincarnation of the Rzeczpospolita on "federative" principles. It was to include the Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian lands. The leading role, of course, was to be given to the Polish ethnic, political, economic and cultural element. Despite the program failed to address the question on what to do if the people would not want to join into the Rzeczpospolita, the socialists declared the voluntaraly entry into the future state. So, two influential and popular Polish political doctrines in regard to Ukraine, the "incorporative" and the "federalist", even before the creation of the Polish state were based on the disregard of the rights of the Ukrainian people for self-determination and on the claims on the Ukrainian lands. Other concepts did not play a significant role"
Oleksandr Derhachov (editor), "Ukrainian Statehood in the Twentieth Century: Historical and Political Analysis", Chapter: "Ukraine in Polish concepts of the foreign policy", 1996, Kiev ISBN 966-543-040-8
Template:Pl icon Wojna polsko-bolszewicka. Entry at Internetowa encyklopedia PWN. Last accessed on 27 October 2006.
"Pilsudski dreamed of drawing all the nations situated between Germany and Russia into an enormous federation in which Poland, by virtue of its size, would be the leader, while Dmowski wanted to see a unitary Polish state, in which other Slav peoples would become assimilated."
Andrzej Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom, p. 10, Penn State Press, 2003, ISBN 0-271-02308-2
Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman, Elisabeth Glaser, The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-521-62132-1, Google Print, p.314
Roman Dmowski have been quoted saying: "Wherever we can multiply our forces and our civilizational efforts, absorbing other elements, no law can prohibit us from doing so, as such actions are our duty."
Tomaszewski J. Kresy Wschodnie w polskiej mysli politycznej XIX i XX w.//Miedzy Polska etniczna a historyczna. Polska mysl polityczna XIX i XX wieku.—T.6.—Warszawa, 1988.—S.101. Cited through: Oleksandr Derhachov, ibid
"The newly founded Polish state cared much more about the expansion of its borders to the east and southeast ("between the seas") than about helping the dying state of which Petlura was de facto dictator. ("A Belated Idealist." Zerkalo Nedeli (Mirror Weekly), May 22-28, 2004. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.)
Piłsudski is quoted to have said: "After the Polish independence we will see about Poland's size". (ibid)
A month before his death, Pilsudski told an aide: "My life is lost. I failed to create a Ukraine free of the Russians"
<Template:Ru icon Template:Uk icon Oleksa Pidlutskyi, Postati XX stolittia, (Figures of the 20th century), Kiev, 2004, ISBN 966-8290-01-1, LCCN 20-0. Chapter "Józef Piłsudski: The Chief who Created Himself a State" reprinted in Zerkalo Nedeli (the Mirror Weekly), Kiev, February 3 - 9, 2001, in Russian and in Ukrainian.
^ THE REBIRTH OF POLAND. University of Kansas, lecture notes by professor Anna M. Cienciala, 2004. Last accessed on 2 June 2006.
MacMillan, Margaret, Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003, ISBN 0-375-76052-0, p.212"
JOSEPH PILSUDSKI. Interview by Dymitr Merejkowsky, 1921. Translated from the Russian by Harriet E Kennedy B.A. London & Edinburgh, Sampson Low, Marston & Co Ltd 1921. Piłsudski said: “Poland can have nothing to do with the restoration of old Russia. Anything rather than that – even Bolshevism”. Quoted from this site.
Voice of the Prokonsul. March 31, 2005. Retrieved September 1, 2007.
Eurosceptic Confederacy of Intermarium. Accessed September 1, 2007.

Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, "Polski pionier zjednoczonej Europy" ("A Polish Pioneer of a United Europe"), Gwiazda Polarna (Pole Star), vol. 96, no 19 (September 17, 2005), pp. 10-11.
M.K. Dziewanowski, Czartoryski and His Essai sur la diplomatie, 1971, ASIN: B0072XRK6.
M.K. Dziewanowski, Joseph Pilsudski: a European Federalist, 1918-1922, Stanford, Hoover Institution, 1979.
Peter Jordan, Central Union of Europe, introduction by Ernest Minor Patterson, Ph.D., President, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, New York, Robert M. McBride & Company, 1944.
Antoni Plutynski, We Are 115 Millions, with a foreword by Douglas Reed, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1944.

External link

Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Messiah and Central European Federalist by Patryk Dole

Misplaced Pages