Stanisław Grabski
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Stanisław Grabski (5 April 1871 - 6 May 1949) was a Polish politician and economist, an ideologue of endecja known for his support of the Polonization policies during the time of the Second Polish Republic.
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[edit] Biography
He became a political activist early in his life. In 1890 he was the editor of the Workers Gazette in Berlin. In 1892 he was a cofounder of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), but in 1901 he detached himself from that political movement, instead becoming a member of the 'nationalist' camp of Roman Dmowski (his movement was later known as endecja).
A member of Liga Narodowa since 1905, a year later he become one of its leaders. From 1907 he was a member of Dmowski's party, the Stronnictwo Narodowo-Demokratyczne. During World War I he, like Dmowski, supported the idea that Poles should ally with Russia, and later he joined Dmowski's Komitet Narodowy Polski in Paris.
From 1919 to 1925, in the newly-independent Poland (Second Polish Republic), he was a deputy to the Sejm (Polish parliament) from the 'endek' party, the Związek Ludowo-Narodowy.
During the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921) he strongly opposed the alliance between Poland and the Ukraine (represented by Symon Petlura). He resigned as chair of the parliamentary commission on foreign relations in protest of this alliance[1]. During the later negotiations of the Treaty of Riga (1921), where he was one of the Polish negotiators, he was to a significant extent responsible for disregarding the Ukrainians' side requests, with the eventual consequence being the partitioning of Ukraine between Poland and the Soviet Union[2] instead of the creation of an independent Ukrainian state, as advocated by one of the architects of the Polish-Ukrainian alliance, Józef Piłsudski.[3]
In 1923 and from 1925 to 1926 he was a minister of religion and education. In that time he further pursued 'endecja' nationalist policies, especially polonization. He was the architect of the 1924 'Lex Grabski', which de facto tried to eliminate the Ukrainian language from Polish schools.[4] In 1926 he was also one of the first Poles to speak on radio, during the inauguration ceremony of Polish Radio.[5]
After Piłsudski's May Coup in 1926 he distanced himself from politics and concentrated on scholarly research into economics. Before the Second World War, in the Second Polish Republic he was a professor at the University of Lviv, Dublany Agricultural Academy, and Jagiellonian University.
In the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of 1939, when the Soviet Union joined the German invasion and took control of Eastern Poland (Kresy), Grabski, like many prominent Polish intellectuals, was arrested by the Soviets and imprisoned. In the aftermath of the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement he was released and moved to London, where he joined the Polish government in exile. He returned to Poland in 1945 and decided to cooperate with the Polish communist, becoming one of the deputies to the president of the quasi-parliament State National Council, until the new Sejm (leader) was elected in the Polish legislative election, 1947. Afterwards he returned to his teaching career, becoming a professor at the University of Warsaw.
He died in Sulejówek and was buried at the Powązki Cemetery.
Stanisław was the brother of another prominent Polish politician, the Prime Minister of Poland and economist, Władysław Grabski.
[edit] Quotes
- "We want to base our relationships on love, but there is one kind of love for countrymen and another for aliens. Their percentage among us is definitely too high (...) The foreign element will have to see if it will not be better off elsewhere. Polish land for the Poles!" (1919) [6]
- [Poland's aim should be] "the transformation of the Commonwealth into Polish ethnic territory" [7]
[edit] Works
- Zarys rozwoju idei społeczno-gospodarczych w Polsce (The sketch of development of socio-economics ideas in Poland) (1903)
- Ekonomia społeczna (Social economy) (1927-1929)
- Państwo narodowe (National country) (1929)
- Ku lepszej Polsce (Towards a better Poland) (1937),
- Na nowej drodze dziejowej (On the new path of history) (1946)
- Pamiętniki (Memoires), prepared for print and ed. by W. Stankiewicz, Warsaw 1989.
[edit] References
- (Polish) Stanisław Grabski, entry in the Polish PWN Encyclopedia
- This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding Polish Wikipedia article as of 1 June 2006.
