Chauvinism, Polish Style: The Case of Roman Dmowski (Beginnings: 1886-1905) by Krzywiec Grzegorz

Author:Krzywiec, Grzegorz
Language: eng
Format: epub

explained: ‘Guided by a sense of […] responsibility and […] obligation, we have decided to deploy in our paper stricter control over Polish opinion and over the activities of political factors of every kind, and to record and judge just about every fact of Poland’s overal political life, the partitioning powers’ actions, the voices of the press�’

The leader of the League wanted to turn Przegląd into a journal promoting a new philosophy of thinking about politics and society� This project, stil very much in its infancy, was meant to create a mental space for the birth of the new man� The need for comprehensive solutions, which had been maturing even earlier in leading LN circles during the first years of the 20th century, began to take real shape� The new detailed ideological formula was not only meant to consolidate the political parties’ prevailing demands on a more lasting basis , but also to help them reach new supporters, and in a broader context to become the seed for the regeneration of the whole of society�

The harbinger of Dmowski’s comprehensive ambitions was the publication in 1901 of a series of twelve articles entitled W Naszym obozie. Listy do przyjaciół

politycznych ( In Our Camp. Letters to Political Friends), which came out over the course of the whole year� The writer signed himself ‘Narodowiec’ (‘A Nationalist’) and set himself the goal of changing a great many convictions grounded in the community�144

In the first piece opening the series Dmowski warned that his contribution would be polemical in tone and indeed certain sections represented a change in the League’s doctrinal line� The Jewish question, which was touched upon in every one of the twelve instalments, doubtless played a not insignificant part�

Although Dmowski’s propositions did not ostensibly diverge from the dominant concept, they in fact represented a radical breakthrough� It was as if the prevailing arguments had taken a 180˚ turn in relation to the League’s previous pronouncements�

The first issue that Dmowski tackled was to define the Jewish question� As early as the first article the writer excluded the Jews from the national community, acknowledging them as an immutably foreign element� He rejected out of hand the view that the Jewish population could in gremio be subject to the naturalization process� From the point of view of an ethno-tribal approach, dear to 144 See M� Sobczak, ‘Wpływ myśli Romana Dmowskiego na postrzeganie przez forma-cję narodowo-demokratyczną „kwestii żydowskiej” na ziemiach polskich w latach 1901–1905’, Szkice Humanistyczne OSW 3, vol� 5, 2003, nos� 3–4, p� 7 and note�

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