Statistics may also help to explain, though not to excuse, why so many Poles, especially on the political Right, succumbed to the temptation to dismiss the two Slavic, eastern minorities as too immature and primitive to merit serious consideration as authentic nations. The census tabulations for illiteracy indicate considerably higher rates in the provinces where these two minorities were concentrated than in Poland as a whole (see table 6). Similarly, the economic structure of their Orthodox and Uniate denominations show higher absorption in agriculture and lower representation in more “advanced” economic sectors than the general average (see table 7).
TABLE 6
ILLITERACY ABOVE THE AGE OF TEN (IN PERCENTAGES)
| Region | 1921 | 1931 |
| Provinces of Ukrainian concentration: | ||
| Wołyń | 68.6 | 47.8 |
| Stanisławów | 46.0 | 36.6 |
| Tarnopol | 39.2 | 29.8 |
| Lwów | 29.2 | 23.1 |
| Provinces of Belorussian concentration: | ||
| Wilno | 58.3 | 29.1 |
| Nowogródek | 54.6 | 34.9 |
| Polesie | 71.0 | 48.4 |
| Poland | 33.1 | 23.1 |
TABLE 7
RELIGIONS BY ECONOMIC SECTORS (INCLUDING DEPENDENTS). 1931 CENSUS*
*Tabulations for Jews were presented in table 4.
Of course, except for the Jews, who have been analyzed earlier, religion does not quite correspond with ethnicity. Here, for example, the Roman Catholic Belorussians and Germans cannot be separately identified as such. Also, about a third of the Protestants were Poles, though almost all the rest were Germans. On the other hand, the Uniates and Orthodox were entirely composed of Poland’s eastern Slavic minorities and hence table 7, even when interpreted conservatively, does demonstrate that these were overwhelmingly relegated to the relatively poor and backward agricultural sector. This was the result of long historical neglect far more than of interwar Poland’s policies. Indeed, illiteracy rates of these peoples declined dramatically under Polish rule (table 6).
It must be acknowledged that even a rich and long-established state—and interwar Poland was neither—might well have been baffled by the staggering problems presented by her ethnic minorities: their number, their size, their recalcitrance, their external support, and, in the eastern regions, their poverty. Poland was doubly handicapped by having simultaneously to cope with the postpartition reintegration of the long-severed parts of the Polish state-nation as she vainly sought for a consistent and feasible approach toward the minority problem. Her search for a solution was fatefully compromised by the apparent incompatibility between her frontiers and her institutions. Piłsudski’s military efforts had incorporated non-Polish populations whom Dmowski’s domestic arrangements could not digest. The Right, which by the 1930s had ideologically saturated Polish society, viewed all expressions of nationalism on the part of minorities as treasonable and to be stifled. Believing that the old quasi-federalistic commonwealth had too long been suicidally indulgent toward the non-Polish and non-Catholic populations, the Right insisted that restored Poland either assimilate or expel her minorities. But they were too numerous, already too conscious, and still too rooted for either of these alternatives to be practicable at that time. They were simply alienated by the whole sterile paraphernalia of discriminatory devices which this program entailed: skewed census tabulation, boycott, numerus clausus, colonization, biased land reform, prejudicial tax assessment, and violence.
7
Already in reborn Poland’s first and most important assertion of sovereignty, the drafting of its constitution, the chasm between Piłsudski and the Right proved crippling. The resurrection of an independent Poland at the close of World War I was made possible by that war’s singular outcome, which Piłsudski had uniquely anticipated: the defeat of all three of her partitioning powers—first of Russia by Germany, then of Germany and her Austrian partner by the Western Powers. Piłsudski and his Legionnaires had fought as associates of the Central Powers until Russia’s defeat had been assured in the spring of 1917. Then, insisting on Polish priorities, they had refused further collaboration and were interned until the war’s end. This audacious, skillful, and successful conduct had won such high moral authority for Piłsudski that he was promptly acknowledged as chief of state and commander in chief of the armed forces upon his return to Warsaw from German confinement on November 10, 1918. Thus, for the moment, he eclipsed his rightist rival Dmowski, who had endorsed the Russian and Western war efforts and whose wartime activities had been diplomatic and political rather than military and political. The Polish Right had traditionally been more interested in the development of a modern society than in independent statehood; hence it liked to see in the Russian Empire—Piłsudski’s bête noire—both a shield against what it feared was the more pressing menace of Germany to Polish society, and a vast market for that society’s nascent industries.
To the disappointment of his friends of the Polish Left, who hoped at one stroke to achieve land reform, nationalization of industry, social security, secularization of culture, and the democratization of society, Piłsudski now refrained from instituting a radical-reform dictatorship and insisted, instead, that fundamental social changes could only be initiated by an elected legislature. Accordingly, he arranged for the early election of a unicameral Constituent Assembly, which on February 20, 1919, proclaimed itself the sovereign authority while unanimously confirming Piłsudski as chief of state, which became an office of reduced authority, and commander in chief, which remained a position of great power. Piłsudski’s apparent self-restraint during this period may be interpreted either as a manifestion of an impressive sense of democratic responsibility, or as an intended (but unsuccessful) maneuver to free himself from all partisan and ideological affiliation and thereby render himself the umpire among the several political phalanxes whom he hoped would emerge deadlocked from the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
The Right, however, emerged from these elections as the strongest phalanx but not sufficiently dominant to give Poland stable governments. Thus, whatever may have been Piłsudski’s hopes and intentions, the elections were politically premature and inaugurated seven-and-a-half years of party anarchy and fragile coalitions until Piłsudski closed this painful era with his reseizure of effective power by a coup d’état in May, 1926.
The