HOW INDEPENDENT POLAND WAS BUILT
The 5th week: 10 – 16 December 1918
In response to the enactments of the Polish District Seym the Germans organized a meeting of communist delegates in Poznań on 12 – 13 December. The subject of the debates were ‘the extraordinary pressure by the German in the east’ and a danger of separating the Greater Poland from the German country. The meeting was accompanied by strong demonstrations. About 6 thousand German soldiers marched through Poznań. The Pruss administration did not agree to setting forth postulations by the Commissariat of the Main Communist Council about partial polinizing offices and schools. Despite Polish protests, divisions of Grenzschutz began to arrive in the Greater Poland which mean a probability of forces used against Poles. Also Polish guarding formations were being broken, German administration was being brought back, which had been changed on a peace way and there were attacks on Polish activists.
On 15 December, in relation to the tense situation in the Greater Poland, the government broke diplomatic relations with Germany. Also a decision was made about the necessity of electing Polish representatives to the Legislative Seym from the area of the Prussian partition. On the same day in Warsaw a big national meeting took place with ‘lots of delegations of craftsmen and workers’ from the whole country. It was enacted to establish a new national government consisting of representatives of the all three partitions. After the meeting the participants went to Belweder where they passed over their demands to Józef Piłsudski.
Also on 15 December the Polish National Council of Śląsk Cieszyński which, at the end of October, announced taking over the authority in the Duchy of Cieszyn, establishing the Temporary National Government with Jan Michejda at the helm. On 5 November the Council signed a contract with its Czech equivalent about the division of the duchy into the Polish and the Czech spheres of influences.
On 16 December a meeting of Social-Democrats of Poland and Lithuania, as well as the Polish Social-democrat Party ‘Leftist’ began in Warsaw. Both parties decided to merge and create a new organization – Communist Labour Party of Poland. During the meeting there was a belief that the revolution in Germany, and later in whole Europe, would succeed. Independence of Poland was consistently rejected, explaining it as contradictory with a postulate of the lack of national borders in the homeland of the world proletariat. There were particular attacks on creating the Polish army which was considered as an arm of Polish imperialism and nationalism. This radicalism in national matters made the National Broadcasting Council could not rely on the support of the society whose majority was extremely patriotic. Communists managed to gain influenced only in a few councils of labour delegates, mainly in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie.
Translated by Aneta Amrozik
Niedziela 49/2018 (9 XII 2018)