Józef Piłsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland

by Joshua D. Zimmerman

The story of the enigmatic Józef Piłsudski, the founding father of modern Poland: a brilliant military leader and high-minded statesman who betrayed his own democratic vision by seizing power in a military coup.

In the story of modern Poland, no one stands taller than Józef Piłsudski. From the age of sixteen he devoted his life to reestablishing the Polish state that had ceased to exist in 1795. Ahead of World War I, he created a clandestine military corps to fight Russia, which held most Polish territory. After the war, his dream of an independent Poland realized, he took the helm of its newly democratic political order. When he died in 1935, he was buried alongside Polish kings.

Yet Piłsudski was a complicated figure. Passionately devoted to the idea of democracy, he ceded power on constitutional terms, only to retake it a few years later in a coup when he believed his opponents aimed to dismantle the democratic system. Joshua Zimmerman's authoritative biography examines a national hero in the thick of a changing Europe, and the legacy that still divides supporters and detractors. The Poland Piłsudski envisioned was modern, democratic, and pluralistic. Domestically, he championed equality for Jews. Internationally, he positioned Poland as a bulwark against Bolshevism. But in 1926 he seized power violently, then ruled as a strongman for nearly a decade, imprisoning opponents and eroding legislative power.

In Zimmerman's telling, Piłsudski's faith in the young democracy was shattered after its first elected president was assassinated. Unnerved by Poles brutally turning on one another, the father of the nation came to doubt his fellow citizens' democratic commitments and thereby betrayed his own. It is a legacy that dogs today's Poland, caught on the tortured edge between self-government and authoritarianism.

Genres: Biography, History, Poland

640 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2022

About the author

Joshua D. Zimmerman is an Associate Professor of History and the Eli and Diana Zborowski Professorial Chair in Holocaust Studies and East European Jewish History at Yeshiva University in New York. He is the author of Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia (2003) and the editor of two contributed volumes: Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and its Aftermath (2003) and Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945 (Cambridge, 2005).

Reviews

[Michał Smejlis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detached analysis of rich original materials concerning Piłsudski's personal letters, ministerial meetings, and international relations provide a biography of a man not known beyond Poland, yet one who shaped today's Europe. Today's Polish statesmen, who quarrel amongst themselves and embroil Poland in conflict with itself, are undeserving of uttering his name.

[Kevin Hawkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well researched book. It explains the balancing act that Pilsudski performed between two powerful enemies better than any book I have read. It is a great book about a great individual.

[Marius · Rating 1 out of 5]

The most inaccurate book. The Author doesn't understand this region problems and historical circumstances. This book shows only Polish side and Pilsudski is depicted as hero and divine figure. By the way, it has may historical mistakes. If you know real history, you must remember that Pilsudski was dictator, occupied part of Lithuania and Belarus, started war with Ukraine and etc. So, I don't recommend you to read this book.