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Post by pieter on Sept 6, 2006 11:45:12 GMT -7
I posted a few threats about the Polish political history, about the PPS (Socialists), Endencja (National democrats), PSL (farmer party), Pilsudski and Dmovski. Most of these parties and movements had to do with the Sanacja movement and regime, supporting it or opposing it. It was an important in the Polish Interbellum. Pieter SanaciaSanacja was a coalition political movement of the Second Polish Republic in the inter war years. It was created following in 1926 by Józef Pilsudski. It was a wide movement created to support " moral sanitation" of the society and the politics in Poland prior to and after the May Coup d'Etat of 1926. HistoryNamed after the Latin word for sanitation ('' sanatio''), the movement was formed primarily by former military officers disgusted with the corrupt nature of Polish politics. It represented a coalition of members from the right, the left, and centrists. Its main focus was to eliminate corruption within Poland and to minimize inflation. It appeared prior to the 1926 Coup d'Etat and lasted until the war, but it never was formalised. Since Pilsudski himself strongly opposed all political parties which he saw as promoting their own interests instead of supporting the State and its people, Sanacja never led to creation of a political party. Instead, in 1928 various Sanacja members took active part in creation of the Bezpartyjny Blok Wspólpracy z Rzadem ('' Non-party Block for Cooperation with the Government'', BBWR), a bizarre coalition political party claiming not to be one. Although Pilsudski never personally claimed the power, he had much influence over Polish politics after the Sanacja took the power in 1926. For the next decade, Pilsudski dominated Polish affairs as a strongman of a generally popular centrist regime. Military in character, the Government of Kazimierz Bartel and all the following governments were unofficially accepted by Józef Pilsudski before they could be accepted by the president. Pilsudski mixed democratic and dictatorial elements while pursuing the sanacja, or national cleansing. Indeed, the internal stability was increased and thanks to the successful reforms by Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski the economical stagnation ended. However, at the same time Sanacja persecuted the communist parties, tried to limit the importance of the opposition by dividing them from the inside onto several factions. In April 1935, shortly before Pilsudski's death, a new constitution was passed which supported all the main ideas of Sanacja: strong, centralised State with the presidential system of government. However, Pilsudski died soon after the new act was passed and sanacja faced several serious internal problems. Eventually it evolved into three separate movements: The Leftists ('' Lewica sanacyjna'', formed around Walery Slawek), who sought some modus vivendi with the opposition, The Castle ('' Zamek'', formed around the president Ignacy Moscicki who resided in the Warsaw Castle - hence the name), who later became the centre. The Rightists ('' Prawica sanacyjna'', formed around Edward Rydz-Smigly) which soon became almost inseparable from the Camp of National Unity party. The first of the groups soon lost much of its significance, but the other two continued the ideological struggle for the shape of the country until the war broke out. Many of Sanacja members were taken POW by the Germans during the Polish Campaign of 1939, others were evacuated to Romania where they stayed until the rest of the war or managed to reach France and Britain. Although France insisted on not including Sanacja in the Polish Government in Exile, Many of them remained highly influential. After the war their forced exile was made permanent by the communist regime, which branded them as enemies of the state. Links: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanacjapl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanacja
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Post by pieter on Sept 6, 2006 12:44:22 GMT -7
Ignacy Moscicki
Ignacy Moscicki (1867-1946) was a Polish politician and chemist, president of Poland (1926-1939). Ignacy Moscicki was born December 1, 1867, in Mierzanów (a small town near Ciechanów, Poland). After completing school in Warsaw, he studied chemistry at the Riga Polytechnicum. There he joined the Polish underground leftist organization, Proletariat. On graduating he returned to Warsaw, but was threatened by the Tsarist secret police with life imprisonment in Siberia and was forced to emigrate in 1892 to London. In 1896 he was offered an assistantship at the Catholic University in Fribourg (Switzerland). There he patented a method for cheap industrial production of nitric acid. In 1912 he moved to Lwów, where he accepted the Chair of Physical Chemistry and Technical Electrochemistry at the Lwów Polytechnic. In 1925 he was elected rector of the Polytechnic, but soon moved to Warsaw to continue his research at the Warsaw Polytechnic.
After Józef Pilsudski's May coup d'etat, on June 1, 1926, Moscicki — an erstwhile associate of Pilsudski's in the Polish Socialist Party — was elected president of Poland by the National Assembly. After the death of Pilsudski, Moscicki was the leading moderate figure in the government, opposing the more right-wing Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly. Moscicki remained president until September 1939, when he was interned in Romania and forced by France to resign his office. He passed it on to Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz. In December 1939 he was released and allowed to move to Switzerland, where he remained through World War II. He died at his home near Geneva on October 2, 1946.
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Post by pieter on Sept 6, 2006 13:16:45 GMT -7
Edward Rydz-Smigly
Edward Rydz-Smigly (March 11, 1886 - December 2, 1941); nom de guerre Smigly, Tarlowski, Adam Zawisza) was a Polish politician, an officer of the Polish Army, painter and poet. After many successes as an army commander during the Polish-Bolshevik War, Rydz succeeded Józef Pilsudski as the Marshal of Poland (from 11 November 1936) and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish armed forces. He served in that post during the Polish Defensive War of 1939, which was the first stage of the Second World War.
Early life Edward Rydz was born in the village of Lapszyn near Brzezany, Tarnopol Voivodship, Galicia. He was the son of a professional NCO in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Tomasz Rydz, and Maria Babiak. The family endured rather humble circumstances and he was orphaned at the age of 13 years. He was then raised by his maternal grandparents and, after their deaths, by the family of Dr. Uranowicz, the town physician at Brzezany. After graduating with distinction at the local Gymnasium Rydz went to Kraków where he completed studies in philosophy and history of art at the Jagiellonian University. He then studied to be a painter at the arts academy (Akademia Sztuk Pieknych) in Kraków, and later in Vienna and Munich. In 1910-1911 he attended the reserve officers' academy in Vienna and received military training at the famous Austrian 4th Infantry Regiment "Deutschmeister" (so called after Archduke Eugene, a cousin of Emperor Francis Joseph I, who was Grand Master of the Teutonic Order).
He finished his military education with distinction and was offered a commission in the Imperial Army, which he declined. In 1912 Rydz was one of the founders of the Polish paramilitary organisation Riflemen's Association (Zwiazek Strzelecki). At the same time he completed his art studies; he was regarded as a very promising talent in landscape and portrait painting and praised by his professors and critics, who foresaw a great future for him.
Drafted into the Austrian army in July 1914, Rydz was transferred in August to the Polish Legions and fought in the famous Polish 1st Brigade of Pilsudski. He took part in many battles against the Russians in the region of Southern Vistula and rose quickly in rank. By 1916 he was already a full colonel. However he did not forget his art and exhibited his work at a gallery in Kraków. In 1917, after refusing to swear an oath to the Austrian and German authorities, the Legions were disbanded, their soldiers interned and Pilsudski imprisoned in Magdeburg fortress. By Pi?sudski's appointment, Rydz (who escaped prison on the grounds of bad health) became commander of Polish Military Organization (POW) and adopted the nom de guerre Smigly (Fast or Agile), which he later added as an integral part to his surname. In October 1918 Rydz entered the socialist government of Ignacy Daszynski in Lublin as Minister of War. Having been promoted brigadier general (one-star general in the Polish system), he emphasised that he had accepted the office as a deputee of Pilsudski). It was at this time he began using the double-barrelled name of Rydz-Smigly. On November 11, 1918 the Government relinquished all power to Pilsudski, who became Provisional Head of State. After some hesitation, Pilsudski (who was displeased by Rydz-Smigly's cooperation with the socialists - he himself "having left the streetcar of Socialism at the stop called Independence") confirmed him as a brigadier.
Military triumphs During the Polish-Bolshevik War of the years (1919 - 1921), Rydz commanded Polish armies in several offensives. Among victorious engagements, he captured Wilno and Dünaburg. After that he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Latvian armed forces and liberated Livonia from Red Army oppression. Subsequently he achieved complete annihilation of the Red Army's 12th Division and took Kiev. He then commanded the Central Front of Polish forces during the famous Battle of Warsaw, known as the Miracle on the Vistula. In this decisive battle, Polish commander Pilsudski outwitted the Soviet commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Rydz-Smigly's Central Front held against the Soviet attack and later blocked the escape routes for the defeated Soviet 4th and 15th Armies and the 3rd Cavalry Corps of Soviet general Gay Dimitrievich Gay, which had to fly ungloriously to East Prussia, where they were interned by the Germans.
Second Man in the State After the 1919-21 war he was appointed the Inspector-General of the Polish Army in the Vilna district and later in Warsaw. In 1926, during Pilsudski's coup d´état (the May Coup), he took the Marshal's side and sent troops from Wilno to reinforce anti-government troops in Warsaw. Pilsudski never forgot this fidelity and in 1929 Rydz was appointed as the Marshal's deputy on all matters concerning the East. On May 13, 1935, in accordance with the last wishes of Józef Pilsudski, Rydz was nominated by the president and the government of Poland to serve in the capacity of the Inspector-General of the Polish Armed Forces and on November 10, 1936 he was elevated to the rank of Marshal of Poland. As such he reversed his name and called himself from now on Smigly-Rydz.
He was now one of the most powerful people in Poland and was awarded the title of "Second Man in the State after the President". The government became increasingly authoritarian and conservative, though Smigly-Rydz's power was balanced by the more moderate Ignacy Moscicki, who remained President. For a time being Rydz sought an alliance with the liberal Peasants' Party (PSL), but after being rejected by them he turned to the extreme right wing. After 1938 he reconciled himself with the President, but the ruling clique was henceforth divided into the "President's Men" (or "Castle Group") — most of them civilians, and the "Marshal's Men" who were mostly old companions of Pilsudski and professional officers.
1939
In March 1939, Hitler occupied Bohemia and Moravia and created the satellite client-state of Slovakia. This encircled Poland with an iron ring on all sides except the east. Rydz was the only member of the government who clearly saw the impending danger of a conflict with Germany. However time remaining was too short for the creation of completely new Polish operation plans in the west. During negotiations in Moscow in August 1939 Rydz refused all attempts by the Western Powers to obtain Polish permission for the Red Army to march westward, stating: "there is no guarantee that the Soviets will really take active part in the war; furthermore, once having entered Polish territory, they will never leave it".
On 1 September 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland, Smigly-Rydz was named Commander-in-Chief of Polish forces. On 7th September, along with most of the government, he evacuated Warsaw as it came under the German blitzkrieg attack. Soon afterwards Polish coordination began to suffer from communications problems, which impaired Rydz's ability to command the forces. In Brest (Brzesc) on 11 September he ordered that the Polish capital be defended at all costs. In his plan, Warsaw and the nearby Modlin Fortress were to become two redoubt citadels in central Poland, fighting on for months, while the bulk of Polish forces were to defend the Romanian bridgehead and await the counterattack promised by Poland's French and British allies. Unknown to Smigly-Rydz, the Western Allies had no such plans and expected Poland's fall. His plan was further crippled when Soviet forces attacked Poland from the east on 17th September. Realising that defence against both neighbours was impossible, Smigly-Rydz issued orders for Polish forces to retreat towards Romania and avoid fighting the Soviet aggressors.
After avoiding capture by Soviet and German troops, on September 18, 1939 Smigly-Rydz, crossed the Romanian border and was interned. The Polish government’s crossing into Romania saved Poland from surrender and allowed Polish soldiers to carry on fighting against Germany, though Rydz's crossing sparked some controversy, considering his position as supreme commander of the armed forces. Large numbers of Polish soldiers and airmen crossed southern Europe and regrouped in France, and after her surrender, in Britain.
The last years Smigly-Rydz, as the Commander-in-Chief of Polish Armed Forces, took complete responsibility for Poland’s military defeat in the September 1939. There were no excuses for this Polish officer, even though Poland was attacked from all sides by Europe's two most powerful military machines — the Wehrmacht and the Soviet Army (Raboche-Krest'yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya). On the other hand one cannot deny that Rydz, an extremely able Commander on smaller fronts, was not an experienced strategist in a great conflict. In 1922, in an evaluation of Polish generals, Pilsudski had written about him: "in operational work he displays healthy common sense and a lot of stubborn energy. I could recommend him to everybody as a commander of an army, I am however not sure if he possesses sufficient abilities to function as commander-in-chief in a war between two states." During his internment in Romania, Smigly-Rydz initiated creation of the Polish underground. This was based on officers who were loyal to the memory of Pilsudski. Still in Romania, on October 27, he relinquished his function as the Commander-in-Chief and Inspector-General of the Armed Forces. This role was assumed by Wladyslaw Sikorski, who was serving in the new Polish government in exile in France (and after 1940 in the United Kingdom). Smigly-Rydz was transferred from the internment camp to the villa of a former Romanian prime minister in Dragoslavele, from where he escaped on 10th December 1940 and crossed illegally into Hungary. His flight to Hungary and rumours about his planned return to Poland were a source of considerable displeasure to his rival Sikorski, now Prime Minister. Sikorski had been in opposition to Smigly-Rydz and Pilsudski from the time of the 1926 May Coup. He refused to accept any military assignment by Smigly-Rydz in September 1939 and now declared in a telegram to General Stefan Grot-Rowecki, leader of the Armia Krajowa (AK) underground resistance in Poland: "the Polish Government will regard a sojourn of the Marshal in Poland as a sabotage of its work in the country. The Marshal must as soon as possible move to some country of the British Empire". However Smigly-Rydz left Hungary on October 25, 1941, and travelling through Slovakia reached Poland. On October 30, in strict secrecy, Smigly came back to Warsaw to participate in the resistance movement as a common underground soldier, thus voluntarily suspending his rank of Marshal of Poland. He contacted Grot-Rowecki, but did not partake in any combat as he suddenly died of heart failure on December 2, 1941, just 5 weeks after his arrival in Warsaw. He was buried in Warsaw under his conspiratorial name "Adam Zawisza". His grave on the Powazki Cemetery carried that name until 1991. A new, impressive tombstone was erected by the people of Warsaw in 1994.
Rydz was married to Marta née Thomas (by previous marriage Zaleska) who died in Nice in a car accident in 1951. The couple had no children,
Legacy
Edward Rydz-Smigly's reputation after World War II was mixed. In communist Poland and the Soviet Union, he was decried for his participation in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, and the political repression under the military government of the late 1930s. In the West, due to the influence of anti-Pilsudski circles with Wladyslaw Sikorski as their foremost representative, he was seen as having fled from the battlefield in 1939, with little recognition given to the circumstances of Poland's defeat by the Germans and Soviets. Today, after 1990, Rydz-Smigly has been regaining his rightful place in the Polish national consciousness, as a patriot who sacrificed his life to the service of his nation and one of the tragic heroes of Poland's history.
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Post by pieter on Sept 6, 2006 13:34:42 GMT -7
Kazimierz Bartel
Kazimierz Bartel (1882-1941) was a Polish mathematician and politician who served as Prime Minister of Poland from 1926 to 1930. He was born in Lemberg (Lwów, in Polish) March 3, 1882. After completing secondary school he studied at the Lwów Polytechnic in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He graduated in 1907 and soon became an assistant in Descriptive Geometry. By 1914 he was a professor at his alma mater. Conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, in 1918 he returned to Lwów. In 1919, as commander of railway troops, he fought in the defense of Lwów against the Ukrainian siege. Appointed minister of railways in 1919, in 1922-1930 he was a member of Poland's Sejm (parliament). After Józef Pilsudski's May coup d'etat (1926) he became prime minister and held this post for four years. In 1930 he gave up politics and returned to academia. In 1930 he became rector of the Lwów Polytechnic and was soon awarded an honorary doctorate and membership in the Polish Mathematical Association. In this period he published his most important writings, among them a series of lectures on perspective in European painting throughout the ages. In 1937 he was appointed a senator of Poland and held this post until the war broke out. After the Soviet occupation he was allowed to continue giving lectures at the, now renamed, Lvov Polytechnical Institute. In 1940 he was appointed to Moscow and offered a seat in the Soviet parliament. He refused and returned to Lvov. Soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, on June 30, 1941 the Wehrmacht entered Lvov. Kazimierz Bartel was arrested two days later and imprisoned in Gestapo prison. He was offered to create a Polish puppet government. He refused and, by order of Heinrich Himmler, was shot on July 26, 1941, shortly after the mass murder of his colleagues ended. His place of burial remains unknown.
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Post by pieter on Sept 6, 2006 13:39:32 GMT -7
Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski
Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski (30 December 1888 - 22 August 1974) was a Polish politician and economist. After Józef Pilsudski's May coup d'etat of 1926 in the Second Polish Republic, he was recommended by president Ignacy Moscicki for the post Minister of Industry and Trade in the government of Kazimierz Bartel. Among the most famous achievements of Kwiatkowski are the giant construction projects: the construction of Gdynia seaport, the development of the Polish Merchant Navy and sea trade, and the creation of the Centralny Okreg Przemyslowy industrial region. After the Soviet Union joined Nazi Germany in the invasion of Poland in 1939, he evacuated Poland with the rest of the Government on 17 September. He was interned in Romania until 1945. He returned to Poland and supervised the projects of reconstruction of the Polish seacoast, and in the years 1947-1952, he was a deputy to the Polish parliament (Sejm). With the strengthening of the communist and Soviet grip on the Polish government, which he opposed, he fell out of favour of the communist government of the People's Republic of Poland and was forced to retire in 1948. From 1952 onward, he concentrated on studies of chemistry and physics. He died in Kraków on 22 August 1974.
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Post by pieter on Sept 6, 2006 13:48:21 GMT -7
Józef BeckJózef Beck ; October 4, 1894 – June 5, 1944) was a Polish statesman, diplomat, military officer, and close associate of Józef Pilsudski. After the outbreak of World War I, Beck was a member of the clandestine Polish Military Organization ( Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, or POW) founded in October 1914 by Pilsudski. In 1914-1917 Beck served in the First Brigade of the Polish Legions, and was aide to Pilsudski. In 1926 he helped to carry out the May 1926 military coup d'état that brought Pilsudski to de facto governmental power. In 1926- 1930 Beck served as chief of staff to Poland's Minister of Military Affairs, and in 1930- 1932 as Vice Prime Minister and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. Groomed by Pilsudski to implement Poland's foreign policy, in 1932 he took office as Minister of Foreign Affairs, a post he was to hold until the outbreak of World War II. In his international diplomacy, Beck sought to maintain a fine balance in Poland's relations with its two powerful neighbors, Germany and the Soviet Union. Pursuant to this, in July 1932 he concluded a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, and in January 1934 a German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact. He sought guarantees of security for Poland from the western powers: from Great Britain and France. His signal accomplishment in this realm was securing such guarantees from Britain in the spring of 1939, when it had become clear that Germany would not be swayed from embarking on war, and renewal of the Franco-Polish Alliance. Beck's policies could not avert war, but they did ultimately cause Germany's attack on Poland to embroil Germany in conflict with the western powers. Beck detested the Minorities Treaty, guaranteeing the rights of Poland's Jewish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithunian and German minorites, that the Allies had forced on Central European states under the 1919 Versailles Treaty. Beck argued that, while Poland and Czechoslovakia were forced to respect the rights of their respective German minorities, the Polish and Czechoslovak minorities in Germany and the Soviet Union were not so protected. In addition, Beck resented that Germany used the Minorities Treaty to exert pressure on neighboring states and to become involved in the internal affairs of Poland. In September 1934, Beck renounced the Minorities Treaty after the Soviet Union was admited to the League of Nations. Largely because the League of Nations had been the principal guarantor of the Minorities Treaty, Beck had a strong dislike for the League, and made little effort to hide his disdain for the League. After Pilsudski's death in May 1935, a triumvirate emerged, comprising Beck, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Smigly and President Ignacy Moscicki, that effectivly dominated the Sanacja and hence ruled Poland. The stability of the triumvirate was weakened, owing to personal conflicts within it, and none of the three men who made up the triumvirate managed to dominate Polish politics. The period from 1935 to 1939 is often described by historians as a "dictatorship without a dictator." Beck also actively explored possibilities of realizing his mentor Pilsudski's concept of Miedzymorze (" Tween-Seas"): of a federation of central and eastern European countries stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and — in later variants — from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Such a polity, between Germany in the west and the Soviet Union in the east, might have been strong enough to deter both from military intervention. Beck realized that for the immediate future there was no realistic chance of building such a European superstate, but he was prepared to settle for a diplomatic bloc led by Poland, referred to as a " Third Europe," that might become the nucleus of a Miedzymorze federation. Beck's " Third Europe" diplomatic concept comprised a bloc of Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania. It was toward this goal that Beck devoted most of his energy during his time as Foreign Minister. His efforts failed because both Italy and Hungary preferred to align themselves with Germany rather than Poland; the dispute between Romania and Hungary over Transylvania doomed efforts to include them in a common bloc; the desire of both Fascist Italy and Hungary to partition Yugoslavia between them blocked any effort to include Rome, Budapest and Belgrade in an alliance; none of the four states that were meant to form the "Third Europe" with Poland were interested in accepting Polish leadership. Italy, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia were all economically and militarily weak states, as their dismal performance during World War II would amply show, and that to believe that, if only the "Third Europe" bloc had been created, Poland could have been saved from German and Soviet occupation in September 1939, does not seem very realistic. Beck loathed Czechoslovakia and its Foreign Minister (later President) Edvard Benes, who in his turn reciprocated these feelings in full. By contrast, Beck's relations with the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, were good. Beck often toyed with the idea of partitioning Czechoslovakia between Poland and Hungary, though he never attempted to actually do this (except that Poland did in 1938-1939 successfully work with Hungary for a restored common Polish-Hungarian border, at Czechoslovakia's expense: see article on the First Vienna Award). The chances of Polish-Czechoslovak alliance in the 1930s were never good, but the mutual hatred between Beck and Benes ended what slight chances there were. In May 1939 Beck firmly rejected German demands over the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) and for a German exterritorial highway to run across Polish Pomorze (Pomerania) to East Prussia, as well as Germany's invitation for Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact directed against the Soviet Union. Beck famously voiced his refusal of German demands in a speech on May 5, 1939, less than four months before Adolf Hitler's military attack on Poland: " Peace is a precious and a desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but a measurable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of men, nations and countries that is without price. That thing is honor." After Poland had been overrun by its neighbors in September 1939 in a historic " fourth partition" of the country, on the night of September 17- 18, 1939, Beck withdrew together with the rest of the Polish Government into Romania, where he was interned by the authorities. It was then that he wrote a volume of memoirs, Ostatni raport (Final Report). He died in Stanesti, Romania, June 5, 1944. In May 1991, Beck's remains were repatriated to Poland and interred at Warsaw's Powazki Cemetery, one of Poland's pantheons of the great and valiant. Another links for Polish readers; pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walery_Slawekpl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezpartyjny_Blok_Wspó?pracy_z_Rz?dem
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Post by pieter on Sept 6, 2006 14:46:07 GMT -7
Janusz JedrzejewiczJanusz Jedrzejewicz (1885-1951) was a Polish politician and educator, a leader of the Sanacja political grouping, and Prime Minister of Poland ( 1933- 1934). He joined Józef Pilsudski's Polish Socialist Party in 1904. After World War I broke out, he joined the Polish Legions and the Polish Military Organization. In 1918 he joined the Polish Army and served as aide to Pilsudski. In 1919 he was transferred to Section II ( Intelligence) at the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front Headquarters, and later to the General Staff. After the Polish-Bolshevik War, in 1923 Jedrzejewicz became a politician. He was elected a deputy to the Polish Sejm ( 1928- 35) and later a senator. In 1930 - 1935 he was vice-president of the Bezpartyjny Blok Wspólpracy z Rzadem ( BBWR) party. From August 12, 1931, to February 22, 1934, he served as minister of education. He introduced a reform of Poland's educational system that came to be named, after him, " Jedrzejewicz's Reform." From May 10, 1933, to May 13, 1934, he was Prime Minister of Poland. In 1926 he founded the monthly, Wiedza i Zycie. In 1929 he organized a teachers' union, Zrab, and other educational societies, including the Polish Academy of Literature. He was also co-author of the 1935 Polish Constitution. After Pilsudski's death in 1935, he opposed the OZON party and the right wing of the Sanacja movement, and retired from political life. After the Soviet invasion during the Polish Defensive War of 1939, he fled to Romania and later through Palestine to London. In 1948 he was chosen to be head of Liga Niepodleglosci Polski, a political party in exile. He died in 1951. He was a brother of Waclaw Jedrzejewicz. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waclaw_Jedrzejewicz
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