Naprawa czy zniszczenie demokracji? : tendencje autorytarne i profaszystowskie w polskiej myśli politycznej 1921-1935

Abstract

This work is a synthetic presentation of authoritarian and pro-fascist tendencies appearing in the Polish political thought between 1921 and 1935, tendencies resulting from the crisis of a liberal parliamentary democracy getting stronger (not only in Poland) in the interwar period. After regaining independence, the realities of parliamentarism did not overlap with hopes and expectations harboured so far that is why disappointment with democracy started to germinate in different environments. In the first half of the 1920s the slogans of a withdrawal from democracy remained rare and tentative, and, in general, constrained to postulates of a temporary facilitation of the institution and democratic mechanisms. The 1926 was the breakthrough. The awareness of the democracy crisis has become common. Despite this, authoritarianism initially seemed a temporary phenomenon. In the 1930s, Great Economic Crisis deepened disappointment with democracy making what was initially an exception to the rule a rule. The harbinger of the new epoch was the birth of the National Radicalism. The first chapter is devoted to terminological issues, and explains the notions of demoliberalism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism used in this work. The second chapter describes the bases from which authoritarian tendencies were born in the interwar period, namely criticism of democracy to be found in the Polish political thought of the 19. century. Next chapters present antidemoliberal conceptions of fascists in the 1920s, conservatives, national democrats, Christian democrats, Piłsudski’s camp, national-workers movement, agrarian movement and Marxist groups, as well as esoteric circles, Pan-Slavists, eugenic activists, technocrats, war veterans, and, finally, National Radicals from the beginning of the 1930s. Both system solutions proposed in their political thought and their ideological justification were examined. An alternative to a parliamentary democracy took on different forms. One can see here a variety of propositions: from insignificant corrections of the democratic system to its total negation. “Old” national democrats, some conservatives, Christian democrats, agrarian populists, and initially Piłsudskites were limited to the reform of parliamentarism with maintaining its fundaments. Authoritarianism was represented by “young” national democrats of the Obóz Wielkiej Polski (the Greater Poland Camp), and a majority of conservatives. After 1926 it was a direction in which the reform moved. Totalitarianism did not have many followers. Reform proposals showed far-reaching similarity: reinforcement and independence of the executive, reorganization and restriction of the role of the Parliament, and, finally, corporatist system based on organized social groups were postulated. What was different, on the other hand, was the justification of these projects. The national democrats wanted to protect the interest of the ethnic Polish nation. Piłsudskites and conservatives accentuated the necessity to provide the Polish state with power (and, thus, the possibility of expansion). The latter, with Christian democrats, motivated their postulates with a defense of a traditional social and moral order. According to the left-wing activists, strong authority was also to be a tool of nation modernization and conducting social reforms. The most peculiar explanation was given by esoteric groups, according to whom the change of the political system was to serve the fulfillment of moral and metaphysical aims.