Council of State Defence formed

On 1 July 1920 the Legislative Sejm passed an act establishing the Council of State Defence (PL). It was an extraordinary body in which representatives of the Sejm, the government and the army sat together, headed by the Chief of State, Józef Piłsudski. The Council was to decide “all matters connected with the conduct and ending of the war and with the conclusion of peace”. It was created at a moment when the Polish army had been retreating in Ukraine for a month and Tukhachevsky’s army was preparing to attack in Belarus.

The June crisis

After Budyonny’s Cavalry Army broke through the front, the Polish troops gave up Kiev and within a few weeks fell back more than 200 kilometres in Ukraine. Defeat at the front coincided with a crisis at home. On 8 June the workers of the Warsaw power station, gasworks and waterworks went on strike, and on 9 June the government of Leopold Skulski (PL) resigned. For two weeks the parties quarrelled over a new cabinet. Only on 23 June did Władysław Grabski form a government, but his cabinet was regarded as weak, and in the Warsaw salons Piłsudski’s opponents loudly reminded everyone that they had warned against the expedition to Kiev from the start.

On 28 June Grabski discussed the situation with the Marshal of the Sejm, Wojciech Trąmpczyński. The idea of a government of national defence including all parties found no support at the time from the right and the centre, on which the new cabinet rested. Instead a plan was drawn up for a narrower committee in which representatives of the Sejm, the government and the High Command would sit. Piłsudski supported it. The government adopted the bill on 29 June, and the next day it was agreed with the left, which wanted more deputies on the Council. On 30 June the bill went to the Sejm, and on 1 July the Sejm passed it.

Membership and powers

Under the act the Council consisted of the Chief of State as chairman, the Marshal of the Sejm, ten deputies appointed by the Sejm, the prime minister, three ministers appointed by the Council of Ministers and three representatives of the army named by the Commander-in-Chief. Nineteen people in all. Among the deputies were the leaders of the main parliamentary clubs, from the National Democrats, represented by Roman Dmowski, to the Piast peasant party’s Maciej Rataj (PL) and the socialist Norbert Barlicki (PL). In practice the army was represented by various generals, most often Kazimierz Sosnkowski and Tadeusz Rozwadowski.

In matters of war and peace the Council could issue ordinances and orders that were to be carried out immediately. Those which by law required an act of parliament the government was afterwards to submit to the Sejm for approval. For its resolutions to be valid, two thirds of the members had to be present, including at least half of the deputies. Only the Sejm could dissolve the Council. The act was signed by Trąmpczyński and Grabski, and on 3 July it was published in the Dziennik Ustaw and came into force that day. The Council limited Piłsudski’s former freedom of action as Commander-in-Chief, but he himself urged the mistrustful deputies of the left to vote for it. The Council did not replace the government, but it allowed decisions to be taken quickly and jointly where until then one had had to wait for the Sejm.

First decisions

The Council at once dealt with voluntary enlistment and an appeal to the public. On 3 July Piłsudski, in its name, called on the whole nation to fight. On 5 July the Council appealed for help to the conference of the Entente powers meeting at Spa, and on 6 July Grabski went there to ask for mediation in negotiations with Moscow. On 7 July the General Inspectorate of the Volunteer Army was created, headed by General Józef Haller. According to the IPN more than a hundred thousand volunteers joined it in less than three months.

The Council existed until 1 October 1920. In that time it issued several dozen ordinances, among other things establishing the Cross of Valour (PL), and it was the Council that in July authorised the government to open armistice talks with Soviet Russia.