From Siberian exile to Poland's founding marshal: the path of Józef Piłsudski
When Poland reappeared on the map in November 1918, after 123 years of partition, Józef Piłsudski became its Chief of State. He had reached that point by way of Siberian exile, an underground printing press, a feigned mental illness and a trip to Tokyo seeking Japanese weapons.
Piłsudski was born on 5 December 1867 at Zułów, a family manor near Zułowo in present-day Lithuania, then under Russian rule. His impoverished noble family cherished Polish traditions; his father had fought in the January 1863 Uprising, and his mother taught the boys Polish history the authorities suppressed. He left the Russian gymnasium in Vilnius with a lasting aversion to the Tsar. In 1887, largely because his brother Bronisław was involved, he was arrested over a plot against Alexander III and exiled to Siberia for five years. A night spent in forty-below cold at the start of an extra prison term left him with lifelong health problems.
Returning in 1892, he joined the Polish Socialist Party the next year and argued that socialism should serve the goal of independence. From 1894 he edited, wrote for and even typeset the underground paper Robotnik, whose press was hidden in his apartment; his 1899 marriage to fellow organizer Maria Juszkiewiczowa partly provided cover. Arrested in 1900 when the press was found, he pretended to be mentally ill and escaped from a Saint Petersburg hospital in 1901. During the Russo-Japanese War he travelled to Tokyo seeking support for a Polish uprising, but his rival Roman Dmowski argued against it, and Japan offered only help buying arms.
Convinced independence would be won by force, he built a combat organization and later the Polish Legions, which fought beside Austria-Hungary against Russia after 1914. In 1917 he withdrew support from the Central Powers and was imprisoned by the Germans in Magdeburg. As Chief of State from 1918 to 1922 and Marshal of Poland from 1920, he led forces in six border wars; in August 1920, facing defeat, his army turned back the Soviet advance at the Battle of Warsaw.
He retired in 1923 but returned through the May Coup of 1926, dominating the Sanation government while formally minister of military affairs. He favoured a multi-ethnic Poland modelled on the old Commonwealth, yet jailed opponents at Bereza Kartuska. He died on 12 May 1935, still widely regarded as a founder of modern Poland.
Source: Józef Piłsudski
