Constitution Of The Republic Of Poland April 23rd 1935

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1945.

The Origins of Modern Polish Democracy is a series of closely integrated essays that traces the idea of democracy in Polish thought and practice. It begins with the transformative events of the mid-nineteenth century, which witnessed revolutionary developments in the socioeconomic and demographic structure of Poland, and continues through changes that marked the postcommunist era of free Poland. The idea of democracy survived in Poland through long periods of foreign occupation, the trials of two world wars, and years of Communist subjugation. Whether in Poland itself or among exiles, Polish speculation about the creation of a liberal-democratic Poland has been central to modern Polish political thought. This volume is unique in that is traces the evolution of the idea of democracy, both during the periods when Poland was an independent country—1918-1939—and during the periods of foreign occupation before 1918 through World War II and the Communist era. For those periods when Poland was not free, the volume discusses how the idea of democracy evolved among exile and underground Polish circles. This important work is the only single-volume English-language history of modern Polish democratic thought and parliamentary systems and represents the latest scholarly research by leading specialists from Europe and North America.

This scholarly study sheds important new light on the politics of Polish Jewry on the eve of its destruction. Drawing from sources in the Polish Jewish and non-Jewish press and from archives in Europe, Israel, and the United States, Emanuel Melzer examines the efforts of Jews in this major center of Jewish life to secure its existence and advance its interests in the late 1930s, when the radicalization of antisemitism became an increasingly prominent theme in the countrys political life. With the death of Pilsudski, the prognosis for the Polish Jews appeared increasingly bleak, as hostile forces sought to abrogate their constitutional rights and force them to leave the country en masse. The enmity they experienced drew in no small measure from the example of Nazi Germany, which did not hesitate to portray the Jews as the common enemy of Germans and Poles alike. In the face of these developments, Polish Jews attempted to wage a coordinated and concerted political battle against the economic persecution, hostile administrative practices, discriminatory legislation, and violent riots that increasingly pervaded their daily lives. Melzer recounts those attempts and analyzes their failure. Of the three primary groups among Polish Jewrythe Zionists, Agudas Yisroel, and the Bundonly the last was capable of carrying on effective opposition to anti-Jewish forces. But it was not prepared to join with nonproletarian Jewish groups in an all-Jewish defense. The Jewish press, too, was not able to forge a unified Jewish organizational framework, tied as it was to the existing political parties and reflecting their attitudes and shortcomings. The only official political voice of Polish Jewry was the small Jewish parliamentary caucus. Although respected by much of the Jewish public, the Sejm and Senat deputies were not recognized as its legitimate spokesmen and usually acted without coordinating their interventions with one another. As a result, the most effective Jewish actions were undertaken on the local levelnotably the self-defense organized during the Przytyk pogrom and the stubborn battle of Jewish students against the ghetto benches. Melzer demonstrates that the vociferous Jewish public debate over questions of policy and the tenacious daily struggles against discrimination had little effect upon Polish Jewrys deteriorating situation. Without charismatic leadership and an organizational framework based on common Jewish destiny and mutual identification, its ability to confront the grave challenges that lay ahead was seriously impaired. With the approach of war, many felt they were trapped with no way out, left to face the Nazi onslaught virtually alone.

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