In consequence to the question of who was the most crucial Polish Conservative we usually hear about thinkers or writers.
From those who acted in the field of practice, the most common mention is Alexander Wielopolski; 1 must besides point to Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (a closer heart of the minister of abroad affairs of Russia than as the later leader of Hôtel Lambert), and later on to Michał Bobrzyński – 1 of the Krakow's "Stanists" who reached the highest positions in the empire of Franciszek Józef (although he did not play a function in independent Poland). The designation awakens Stanisław Cat-Mackiewicz, a superb head and pen, but actually only a small politician.
But small is remembered Aleksandr Skrzyński (1882-1931), although he was possibly the most successful of active conservative politicians in the Second Republic: between 1922 and 1926 he served 3 times as abroad Minister and Prime Minister. Meanwhile, the figure of number Skrzyński today's Polish conservatives, wishing to callback their perfect ancestors and traditions, can see as a kind of signpost. Taking into account the discussions that are presently taking place in our conservative environments, we will see that this statesman’s views have not become obsolete.
Before planet War I Skrzyński was a professional diplomat in the service of the Habsburg Empire; he stayed in abroad institutions in respective countries. He later joined the organization of the National Right, the organization of the “Stans”. It is characteristic that in this group, where there were no shortages of prominent minds, Skrzyński was considered to be exceptionally talented. Władysław Leopold Jaworski, leader of the conservatives of the time of the Krakow war, recorded in his private records in 1918: “Aleksander Skrzyński rapes for the Krakow organization to release the program. I have an instinct that it won't help, it will hurt. But in order not to lose Skrzyński, let him be announced.”
However, let us focus on the distinctive features of the east and Western politics which Skrzyński later led as the head of the Polish Ministry of abroad Affairs. Symptomatic that this aristocrat shaped by the atmosphere of the oldest monarchy in Europe was – as the historian of diplomacy writes Andrzej Skrzypek – the first after regaining independency as a minister of abroad affairs, who “made the Land of Council and the arrangement of good neighbourly relations with it” [1]. Of all the political camps in Poland at the time, the Bolshevik state should be most horrified by conservatives, but it was the head of the Ministry of abroad Affairs from the conservative organization of established tradition that decided to turn towards establishing a partnership relation with the russian Union.
In January 1923 Skrzyński as abroad Minister in General Władysław Sikorski's government He gave instructions on the east Policy, in which he wrote: “However, it should not be concluded that Poland is pursuing an aggressive policy towards Russia on the Baltic or that it is aiming to close Russia's economical path, which is essential for its future development. We have not opposed Russia's trade expansion by Latvia and Estonia to date, and we inactive have no intention of doing so. We consider our friendly attitude towards the Baltic States to be a valuable warrant of the state of our possession in the East and North, and as specified we want to keep it, not giving it any traits hostile to Russia." [2] In September 1925 Skrzyński accepted his russian counterpart, the National Commissioner for abroad Affairs in Warsaw Georgija ChicherinaA aristocrat, too. During the three-day talks, Czicherin expressed concern that the projects promoted by Poland to make a regional organisation of the Baltic countries were turned against the USSR. In his answer Skrzyński stated that Poland is not in a military alliance with the Baltic States and does not intend to support anti-Soviet politics of any of them. He besides declared the anticipation of developing an agreement on the neutrality of the Baltic countries, which Poland and the russian Union could jointly support [3].
Western Skrzyński's policy understood as a policy towards Germany was aimed at consolidating and securing the western borders of Poland. It was to counter the minister (and temporarily Chancellor) Gustava Stresemanna sought a peaceful revision of the treaties which, after the defeat of Germany, sanctioned the simplification of their territory. The wider Western Skrzyński policy has been marked by the desire to strengthen the function of the League of Nations as a governing and resolving global dispute. Skrzyński was not the only right-wing man in this recently formed organization.
During the interwar period, many Conservatives expressed sympathy not only for the League of Nations but besides for another political forms of internationalism. planet War I led to the demolition of conservative empires – Russian, Austrian, German and Turkish, and caused an detonation of voracious nationalisms. Especially conservatives, specified as Skrzyński, of the Habsburg monarchy, critically looked at the postwar eruption of the populace nationalism in European politics, liberated by the demolition of the conventional "powers concert"; the grievances of the recently carved national states in Paris, surrounded by tight fences, and at the same time ready to set the planet on fire again in the name of a shift between the neighbour's disadvantage.
They so supported the emerging pacifist movement, which aimed to bury all national rematches and revisionisms. 1 of the most prominent Kraków Conservatives, Stanisław Estreicher, in 1924 he became co-founder of the pacifist youth union, and then assumed the position of curator of this student organization. Her patrons at the university were besides mentioned earlier Władysław Leopold Jaworski; The 2 of Estreicher supported the Union's “Consent of Nations” letter. The remainder of the right mostly did not cover up their reluctance to pacifist initiatives, which were mainly patronised by liberal and laity environments, frequently of clearly Masonic prowess. Therefore, number Adam Romer in his publications convinced of the request for mass engagement of Catholics in the global pacifist movement and thus changing its worldviewal color. He argued that Catholics are the most valuable personnel for the pacifist movement, due to the fact that they realize best why the planet should be protected from nonsense bloodshed.
The Conservatives besides straight joined the efforts to make Paneuropa, which in the 1920s began to launch the number in various countries Richard Coudenhove-Kallergy. The Polish Committee of the Pan-European Union was actually headed by Stanisław Estreicher, and there were another well-known conservative politicians – Józef Targowski and Wojciech Rostwarowski. Symptomatic that the last 2 belonged during planet War I to the “activists” camp allied with Austria and Germany. The first Pan-European Congress, convened in 1926, enthusiastically advertised “Time”, the press organ of the Kraków Conservatives, and the correspondent of this diary sent to Congress, Tadeusz DzieduszyckiHe himself joined the pan-European movement.
Conservatives supported the expanding internationalism in politics, as they wanted to reconstruct stableness to the world, which was distorted by the destructive work of the “great war”, or to introduce simple order into the inactive unformed and threatening next devastating explosions of the fresh world, which grew on the ruins of the old, overturned war. But there was more to this support. Conservatives in the fresh realities wanted to recreate what in 1918 was demolished by French, English and American troops, especially in the form of the Habsburg Empire: a origin in ordering the world, standing above the national egoisms now unleashed. So it was the thought of rebuilding a universal political structure, many centuries earlier realized in the form of a European ecumen, Christianitas, under the authority of the emperor or the pope. The Conservatives, however, realized that restoring political universalism in the postwar planet requires putting on a fresh organization garment. That's why they sympathized with projects to establish Paneuropa or the United States of Europe. The starting point for their construction was seen in the already existing League of Nations, whose creation – which does not surprise in the wider context of their political imagination – conservatives saw as an crucial achievement. Skrzyński besides promoted in his speeches the thought of a gradual transformation of the League of Nations into a "European United States" [4].
The meaning of the League-bound Conservatives was not unfounded. It was the League of Nations, in which they had their representatives from the Yugoslav monarchs Karadziordziewicz, Bulgarian Koburgs or Romanian Hohenzollerns (but, on the another hand, from 1934 besides the russian Union), that it was possible to repeal the repression and humiliating restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, to which the Catholic Chancellor's government effectively sought from 1930 to 1932. Heinrich Brüning. Germany's exit from the League (and earlier Japan, due to the fact that it did not want to be embarrassed about setting fire to China) and Hitler's war rage only brought demolition to the remnants of the old planet that survived the First planet War. The announcement of where this would end brought earlier the aggression of Italy to Abyssinia. The League of Nations stood up for the Ethiopian Empire and Italy proved to be another arsonist who emerged from it.
Alexander Skrzyński so appears as a symbolic figure: a very essential example of conservatism present favouring pan-European ideas and at the same time striving to reconcile with Russia – the opposing views of our right hand, which defends the national state against pan-Europeanism and is besides rusophobic. What are the perspectives of political universalism and internationalism today? The erstwhile is to be considered buried, if not for the future, at least for this moment. Political universalism has been ruined 3 times: the first time by Hitler's accomplishments, the second time by the block-camp (nomen omen) division of the planet during the Cold War period, the 3rd time by its own demoliberous parody in the form of American "unipolarism" and its usage of Atlanticism in another countries after 1989.
So let us focus on the soft version of political universalism, which is internationalism, primarily represented present by the United Nations, the successor of the League of Nations, and besides by regional global organisations specified as the European Union. Its sensibility may rise concerns at a time erstwhile the planet wellness Organisation – the UN's agenda – is trying to impose degeneration on individual countries as a sign of abortion and homosexuality, and so does the European Union through the Council of Europe.
It is surely the right way for countries specified as Poland present to separate from the influences of the Western world, and to strengthen ties with anti-Western and anti-liberal states: the planet of Islam, Africa, Russia, China. From this point of view, I would not prematurely delete the United Nations. In 1975, the UN General Assembly was able to adopt a resolution condemning Zionism (as a form of racism). Like another acts of this type, it had no binding force in global law, but it contributed to the perceived problems of the Zionist occupier of Palestine and his American protector. After 2011, it was the UN, specifically through the Russian-Chinese veto on the safety Council, that did not let the US and their allies to invade Syria openly.
International relations traditionally have the character of "anarchy of states" (not only states) – and so it should be; this is simply a long legacy of ancient and medieval times. On the another hand, the introduction of certain elements of universal political governance, even if soft, is besides a legacy of the mediate Ages. In their re-introduction in the form of first the League of Nations and then the United Nations, we can see the reversal of the sinister 17th-century treaties, which, contractually, removed all elements of universalism from global relations, and opened the age of formation and hegemony of "national states". And there's nothing to go back to her. Until there is simply a fresh universal political order, in peculiar matters of the United Nations, as the most crucial representation of internationalism today, it can inactive do the anti-liberal states a favor. The future of the European Union seems to be more obscure.
Adam Danek
[1] Andrzej Skrzypek, "Baltic Union. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland in the politics of Poland and the USSR from 1919 to 1925", Warsaw 1972, p. 183.
[2] Quoted for: there.
[3] Ibid. pp. 271-272.
[4] More about Skrzyński's attitude and contemporary conservatives to pan-Europeanism see in Peter Cosmala's work "On the defender of the Old Continent. Unity of Europe in the Polish Conservative thought of 1914-1945" (Warsaw 2020), from which I obtained the information utilized in this text.
Think Poland, No. 11-12 (16-23.03.2025)
