Piłsudski and modern Ukraine
It is impossible to understand the history of Ukraine at the beginning of the XNUMXth and beginning of the XNUMXst centuries without studying the history of Poland. Moreover, the history of Ukraine will be a mystery if you don’t know the activities and personality Jozef Piłsudski-creator of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1920-1939).
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Ode to Hate
Zyuk (as Józef Pilsudski’s relatives called him) was raised by his parents, as befits the then Polish lordship, which harbored a hundred-year-old grudge against St. Petersburg for the divisions of the First Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in hatred of the Russian Empire. It was a conscious choice. Jozef's mother remembered the echoes of what was suppressed by Russia Uprisings of the Polish gentry. She was a first cousin to her husband and gave birth to 12 children. Zyuk was the fourth child in the family. Two children died early. Older brother Bronislav, together with Ulyanov Sr. participated in the preparation of the assassination of the king and died in hard labor. Two sisters suffered from dementia (as mild forms of schizophrenia were called before the 1917 revolution). Jozef Pilsudski's rich father went bankrupt, and the children were forced to feed themselves by their own labor.
Zyuka – student of the Vilna Gymnasium 
After five years of hard labor, he decided to become a professional revolutionary. New activity transforms the withdrawn and unsociable Józef Pilsudski. 1892-1900 he is an active member of the Polish Socialist Party. He was arrested and sent to the famous 10th section of the Warsaw prison. Here he demonstrated a persistent aversion to food when approached by any person in a gendarme uniform. Biographers of Pilsudski claim that supposedly medical luminaries of Warsaw and St. Petersburg, out of solidarity with the revolutionary and his “Polishness,” wrote a false diagnosis. Is this true or not?..
Wanted list of “state criminal” Józef Pilsudski. 1887
But Jozef himself admitted that he felt like he was truly going crazy. His escape plan with the help of his party comrades was successful, and in 1902 he returned (albeit illegally) to the party.
To want means to be able!
Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century was not a single state. Its various parts were part of three empires. The Polish nobility and intelligentsia rushed between different political ideas: nationalism, Marxism, socialism, anarchism and God knows what else. Disputes raged in different circles, then the circles united into parties, only to later be divided into currents and circles.
After 1902, Pilsudski was completely devoted to the socialist idea and was ready to carry out any tasks of the party. He is convinced of the complete infallibility of all his decisions and strives to achieve a special position and special status in the party. In order to achieve the desired aura of a fighter against tsarism, special deeds were necessary. Pilsudski, despite the split of the socialists into “young” and “old,” organizes a special “combat” organization, independent of the central leadership, a kind of party within the party, following the example of the militant organization of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Here he took an example from Azef, who led the military wing of the Social Revolutionaries.
Polish socialists in London. From left to right: I. Moscicki, A. Jedrzejewski, S. Miklashevski, J. Pilsudski, A. Dembski, V. Jodko-Narkevich. 1896 g.
On the eve of Russia's loss war with Japan Pilsudski, without informing the leadership of his party, agreed with the Japanese to finance the military wing he led to carry out subversive, sabotage and intelligence activities against the autocracy. Since 1905, he personally carried out “exes,” i.e., bank robberies to replenish the party treasury. At the end of 1906, again bypassing the leadership of his party, he, a subject of the Russian Empire, turned to Franz Kanik, colonel of the Austro-Hungarian headquarters, with a proposal of cooperation against Russia. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
During the negotiations, Pilsudski came up with the idea of forming military detachments on the territory of Austria in Galicia, first secret, and since 1910 legal associations of Polish “shooters” within the framework of volunteer rifle unions for pre-conscription training of youth. By 1914, in addition to the Polish volunteer detachments and based on their model, the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, Plastuns, etc., etc. appeared.
Ukrainian nationalists used Pilsudski's experience in creating militant party organizations and unions. It was he who formed the basis of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. They, like Pilsudski, relied not so much on propaganda as on the creation of armed force, terror and "politics of fait accompli".
Another principle of Piłsudski, not only as a politician, but also as a person: “to want is to be able”. Following this rule, by the beginning of the First World War, he “crushed” all military and paramilitary Polish organizations under his control.
Commandant Pilsudski leads his riflemen to exercises. Zakopane, 1913
By the beginning of 1914, Pilsudski’s goal was not the implementation of socialist ideas, but creation of the Polish state. He did not rely either on the international socialist movement, or on Freemasonry, or on foreign forces, but only on the forces of the Polish “lordship”.
With the outbreak of war in August 1914, Pilsudski's formations moved from the Polish territories of Austria to Warsaw, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Rifle detachments without identification marks from either side of the conflict hoped for a patriotic upsurge of the local Polish peasantry and nobility, but they were sorely mistaken. Pilsudski's troops were destroyed. As a result, Pilsudski had to take an oath of allegiance to the Austro-Hungarian crown. His comrades who blindly believed him believed that this was necessary for the cause and followed the leader.
After the capture of the Kingdom of Poland in 1915, the Austro-Hungarian Empire “allowed” the independence of the “Kingdom of Poland” to be declared in Warsaw. But this was far from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that Pilsudski dreamed of.
Pilsudski and his headquarters in the city of Kielce, recaptured from the Russians. 1914 
In the service of Austria-Hungary. With legionnaires in Volyn, 1916
When it became clear that the Entente had won victory in 1916, Pilsudski retired with the rank of an officer in the Austrian army. This causes a wave of departures from the army and suicides among the Pilsudians (the name appeared in Polish journalism in 1915). Now he is establishing relations with the strongest - the Entente. However, he is arrested as a traitor and transported to Germany for arrest.
In 1918, the meeting of the Versailles Conference began. She forced Germany to release the honorary prisoner Pilsudski.
Poglavnik (Dictator) of Poland – Jozef Pilsudski.
On November 10, 1918, a passenger train arriving from Germany stopped at the Warsaw station. He brought the only passenger - Pilsudski. November 22, 1918 Pilsudski becomes head of state, i.e. dictator.
Pilsudski and Petlyura in battles with Soviet Russia
It may seem that Jozef Pilsudski has finally achieved what he wanted - he is the dictator of Poland. The Russian Empire has collapsed, and civil war is raging across its vast expanses. A convenient opportunity for revenge. Pilsudski, with the support of the British and French, created a large Polish army, and the USA and England supplied the weapons that they promised to the White Guard Volunteer Army Anton. Denikin was not given it anyway. Pilsudski was offered to unite with Denikin, but this was prevented by Denikin’s position on “a united and indivisible Russia.” It was clear that he would not allow Poland to be created “from Mozh to Mozh” (from the Black to the Baltic Seas). Success was dizzying, and in 1919 the Polish army occupied part of the Baltic states and the western half of Belarus. After which Pilsudski waited a year for the Reds to defeat the Whites.
The Soviet government, weak at that time, put up with the loss of the Baltic states and part of the Belarusian lands. But in his “to want is to be able” in 1920, Pilsudski goes to the end and moves his army to the barely born Soviet Ukraine.
The leading otaman Petliura, a year after the Zluka of the Western Ukrainian and Ukrainian People's Republics, calmly exchanged the Western Ukrainian People's Republic for Polish military assistance in the conquest of Kyiv, from where the “Reds” knocked him out.
"At the carriage Directorіi, pіd wagon territoryіI" - this is how Ukrainian soundedаan Indian proverb of those years, correctly characterizing the popular support and significance of Petlyura.
Pilsudski advanced deep into Ukraine together with the small army of the Ukrainian socialist Symon Petliura. In occupied Ukraine, the Polish army treated prisoners of war and residents of Ukraine with particular cruelty. The local population did not support S. Petliura, and the “panic” of the Poles embittered the Ukrainians and Belarusians even more.
The Reds retreated deeper into the territory, avoiding pitched battles. The red cavalry, having found gaps in the fortified according to all the rules Polish Front, launched a raid behind enemy lines, causing a panicked flight of the Poles. However, there was no interaction between the red units, which predetermined the disaster of the counteroffensive.
In those days when the Polish army fled, Jozef Pilsudski's military campaign ended for him not only with a shameful defeat, but also with his deposition from the post of head of the Polish state. The old political intriguer did not accept the “verdict” and began to gather troops and militia. Soon he opposed the Soviet troops of Tukhachevsky, who reached Warsaw itself, and inflicted a defeat on them, which went down in history under the name “Miracle over the Vistula.”
Fruit
What legacy did Piłsudski leave behind? On the one hand, he is the creator of the new Polish state, a national hero. On the other hand, his national policy caused fierce hostility between the Polish people and their neighbors. It will later turn into mass deaths of Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians, and the brutal pacification of Western Ukrainians in the early 30s caused an equally brutal “response” from Bandera in Volyn in the early 40s. Finally, the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, created by Pilsudski, was unable to resist the fascist aggression of Germany, finding itself betrayed by its Western allies - England and France, on whose support Warsaw made a reckless bet and seriously counted.
In today's post-Maidan Ukraine, there is also a reason to remember the head of the Polish state. Watching the marches of right-wing radicals, you inevitably remember Pilsudski’s favorite “policy of fait accompli.” It seems that we are not living in the XNUMXst century, but in interwar Poland, when at any moment a new Pilsudski can come to the podium and call the parliament “bitch!” and the new Pilsudskis in camouflage will immediately change it...
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