Piłsudski has 3 monuments in Russia. Yes, but Bronislaw, not Joseph. Recently, the interest in Bronisław Piłsudski (1866-1918) was increased, and he was dealt with by prof. Antoni Kuczyński, and his Siberian journals were published.
This biography is popular, so nothing fresh to what we already know brings, but it is read well. However, the author succumbs to a de facto obsessive trend of Polish writing about Russia and Siberia in the 19th century – it is expected to be scarier than it was in reality. Only that later someway it is essential to explain how so many Poles made large careers there, specified as in Austria and Germany they could never do.
Bronisław Piłsudski is an example of this, which is inactive recognised as a “Russian scholar”, and not only in Russia. A man with unfinished studies, sent for implicating himself in a conspiracy against Tsar Alexander III, becomes famous, and his investigation on the peoples of Sakhalin – Gilakami and Ajnami – is now a legacy of planet discipline (his work is now published in English).
A fragment of the book discussing his return to Poland (to Galicia) after 1906, after nearly 30 years in Russia, is very distinctive. We read in the book: "Piłsudski was already a widely respected scientist at the time, but... he had no academic titles recognized in the university environment. He didn't even have a higher education. Therefore, he could not get his dream occupation at the Jagiellonian University, which would give him permanent income, and thus as specified a life-stabilization. He was constantly struggling with financial problems. He met with indifference everywhere, his vast cognition barely curious anyone. So he took on various poorly paid activities. In order to hold on, he was forced to sale any of his rich collection: descriptions, artifacts and any recordings on wax rollers.
"In the country formulas are more crucial than the essence of things," he wrote. “For a learner I am besides old, for a student I deficiency technological degrees. And yet I am both now. I feel like a Pole, I am even an admired Pole abroad, and to my own I am a completely unnecessary thing, only a beggar who can ask out a part of bread!’
"His relatives helped him a little, he made any money with a pen, but he felt painfully the indifference of our universal teaching to the treasures of cognition he had accumulated, and the desire for his ability to work," Wacław Sieroszewski wrote with bitterness. "They valued him and invited strangers: Russians, Americans, Germans – theirs, after long efforts, donated a place of concipient in any insignificant Galician old age". The only ones curious in his works in Sakhalin were the Russians from the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. 2 of his works were published in the autumn of 1907 as a consolation in Vladivostok: “A review of the economical life of Ajnów in Sakhalin” and “A fewer information on individual Aynian settlements on the island of Sakhalin” (issued together with the 10th volume of “Amur Region investigation Group Bulletin”).
No little interesting episode in his life was working on the Polish National Committee in Paris, at the command of Roman Dmowski He was hired as an expert with a monthly wage of 600 francs. Why did Dmowski do it? Pilsudski had protectors, in Jan Emanuel Rostwarowski, associate of the National League, secondly – Dmowski liked Bronisław Piłsudski, although he only met him in Paris (it is besides possible that he met him earlier in Zakopane). Bronisław was the other of Joseph – open to say naive, non-conflict, he wanted to unite everyone. He was a freak and eccentric. It is certain that in the spring of 1918 he was to go to Japan with Dmowski. There Piłsudski left his household (wife was a associate of the Ajnów tribe, had children there). Dmowski made a passport for the occasion in the French Ministry of abroad Affairs, but it was never used. It is located in the Roman Dmowski Archives. The specified fact that they were both to go to Japan shows that there was intimacy between them.
Historians had problem interpreting this passage of Bronisław Piłsudski's life. As a rule, they deliberately tried to diminish the fact that Joseph Piłsudski's brother was working with the endeciation. A classical example of this is the work of the notable student of the past of Siberia Prof. Antoni Kuczyński, who in writing about Bronisław consistently omitted to inform readers that the National Committee of Poland was the creation of an endection, and its core was the politicians of this camp. His work does not include the name “National Democracy” at all, and in the NDP politicians' biographies it does not say that they were endecids and writes only enigmatically in the biographies “independence activist”. individual who doesn't know past will never know who Bronisław Piłsudski truly worked with.
The evidence of this is besides the selective citation of the priceless origin of the diary Jan Emanuel Rostwarowski, in which he wrote about Bronisław's views on various issues, including political ones. It is clear from them that he was a large supporter of Dmowski's politics, besides in relation to Russia (although he frequently interpreted it somewhat infantilely). These passages are omitted, besides by the author of this book.
Let me give you a fewer of these:
"13/5 [1918] Morning [Bronisław Piłsudski] besides asked me what I thought of the German Rescription on Lithuania. He considered it a substance of prime importance and expected us to make a proposal. He thought this step would be a breakthrough, forcing us to search support in Russia and to agree with it against the Germans. He considered it to be little evil for Lithuania to stay under Russia, but expressed hope that Russia might be able to set aside Lithuania and Western Belarus."
14/5 [19] He wrote [Bronislaw] a card to hr[abi] Maurycy Zamoyski asking him to “make it easier” for him to get to know “Russians with good families”, due to the fact that “I decided” to “marry a Russian female who would agree to fight with me to reconcile Poland with Russia, to join not western Poland at least part of Lithuania. To defend the land threatened by Teutons, there is no way to stay strong with Russia."
This is the secret of Bronisław Piłsudski, which is besides not discovered by the author of his latest biography, but the book is worth reading due to cognitive qualities.
Jan Engelgard
Przemysław Słowiński, “The another Piłsudski. Biography of Bronisław Piłsudski – an exile, traveler and ethnographer”, Warsaw 2022, p. 359.
Think Poland, No. 25-26 (18-25.06.2023)
