The Recent Events in Poland

An opinion exists that the movement headed by Pilsudski is a revolutionary movement. It is said that Pilsudski is fighting for a revolutionary cause in Poland —for the peasants against the landlords, for the workers against the capitalists, for the freedom of the oppressed nationalities in Poland against Polish chauvinism and fascism. Because of this, it is said, Pilsudski deserves to have the support of the Communists.
That is absolutely wrong, comrades!
Actually, what is going on in Poland at present is a struggle between two groups of the bourgeoisie: the big bourgeois group, headed by the Poznaners, and the petty-bourgeois group, headed by Pilsudski. The purpose of the struggle is not to defend the interests of the workers and peasants or the interests of the oppressed nationalities, but to consolidate and stabilise the bourgeois state. The struggle arises from a difference concerning the methods of consolidating the bourgeois state. The fact of the matter is that the Polish state has entered a phase of complete disintegration. Its finances are going to pieces. The zloty is falling. Industry is in a state of paralysis. The non-Polish nationalities are oppressed. And up above, in the circles close to the ruling elements, there is a regular orgy of theft, as is admitted quite freely by spokesmen of all the various groups in the Sejm.59 The bourgeois classes are therefore faced with the dilemma: either the disintegration of the state goes so far that it opens the eyes of the workers and peasants and brings home to them the necessity of transforming the regime by a revolution against the landlords and capitalists; or the bourgeoisie must hurry up and stop the process of decay, put an end to the orgy of theft, and thus avert the probable outbreak of a revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants before it is too late.
Which of the bourgeois groups, the Pilsudski or the Poznan, is to undertake the stabilising of the Polish state?—that is the point at issue. Undoubtedly, the workers and peasants link their aspirations for a radical improvement of their lot with Pilsudski’s struggle. Undoubtedly, for this very reason the top section of the working class and the peasantry in one way or another support Pilsudski, as being the representative of strata of the petty bourgeoisie and petty nobility, in his struggle against the Poznaners, who represent the big capitalists and landlords. But undoubtedly also, at the present time the aspirations of certain sections of Poland’s labouring classes are being utilised not for a revolution, but to consolidate the bourgeois state and the bourgeois order. Of course, certain external factors are also playing their part here. Poland is a small country. It is linked financially with certain Entente circles. In the present deplorable state of its finances, bourgeois Poland cannot, of course, do without foreign loans. But the so-called Great Powers cannot finance a country in which the ruling circles unanimously admit that there is an orgy of theft in all branches of state administration. In order to obtain loans, the state administration must first be “improved,” the orgy of theft must be stopped, some kind of guarantee must be provided that the interest on the loans will be paid, and so on. Hence the necessity for the “rationalisation” of the Polish state. Such, in the main, are the internal and external factors which have determined the present struggle between the two principal bourgeois groups in Poland. There are in Poland today a number of fundamental contradictions which, when they develop further, are bound to create a direct revolutionary situation in the country. These contradictions occur in three basic spheres: that of the working-class question, that of the peasant question, and that of the national question. All these contradictions may at once become evident and cause an explosion if Poland embarks on a war adventure, if it is incapable of establishing good-neighbourly relations with the surrounding states. Can Pilsudski, can the motley Pilsudski group, resolve these contradictions? Can this petty-bourgeois group solve the working-class question? No, it cannot, for to do so it would have to come into fundamental conflict with the capitalist class, which it cannot and will not do under any circumstances if it does not want to forfeit the financial support of the Great Powers. Can this group solve the peasant question—for example, along the lines of confiscating the landlords’ land? No, it cannot; and it will not do so if it does not want to bring about the complete disintegration of the commanding personnel of Pilsudski’s army, which consists mostly of small and middle landlords. Can this group solve the national question in Poland along the lines of granting freedom of national self-determination to the oppressed nations: the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, the Byelorussians, etc.? No, it cannot; and it will not do so if it does not want to forfeit all confidence in the eyes of those “Greater Poland” chauvinists and fascists who constitute the chief source from which Pilsudski’s group derives its moral support.
What, then, remains for it to do?
Only one thing: after defeating the big bourgeois group militarily, to submit to the same group politically and drag at its tail—unless, of course, the Polish working class and the revolutionary section of the Polish peasantry in the near future set about the revolutionary transformation of the Polish state and drive out both groups of the Polish bourgeoisie, the Pilsudski group and the Poznan group.
That raises the question of the Polish Communist Party. How could it happen that the revolutionary discontent of a considerable section of the workers and peasants in Poland brought grist to the mill of Pilsudski, and not of the Polish Communist Party? Among other reasons, because the Polish Communist Party is weak, weak in the extreme, and because in the present struggle it has weakened itself still further by its incorrect attitude to Pilsudski’s army, in consequence of which it has been unable to assume the lead of the revolutionary-minded masses. Recently I read in our Soviet press an article on Polish affairs by Comrade Thälmann,60 member of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party. In that article Comrade Thälmann touches on the attitude of the Polish Communists in calling for support of Pilsudski’s army, and criticises it as unrevolutionary. I have to admit, unfortunately, that Comrade Thälmann’s criticism is absolutely correct. I have to admit that our Polish comrades committed a gross error in this instance.
That, comrades, is all I wanted to tell you about affairs in Britain in connection with the general strike and about the recent events in Poland. (Stormy applause.)

Zarya Vostoka (Tiflis)
No. 1197, June 10, 1926