First session of the Provisional Council of State

On 14 January 1917 the Provisional Council of State, a Polish body set up by the occupiers to prepare the institutions of the future Kingdom of Poland, was inaugurated at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The governors-general of the two occupation zones, the German Hans Hartwig von Beseler from Warsaw and the Austro-Hungarian Karl Kuk from Lublin, handed the 25 members of the Council their letters of appointment. The rescript appointing them had been announced three days earlier, on 11 January. The next day, 15 January, the Council met for its first working session in the Krasiński Palace, known as the Palace of the Commonwealth, which had been handed over to the Council. Both dates therefore appear in the literature as the start of the Council’s work: 14 January, the day of the ceremony at the Castle, and 15 January, the day of its first deliberations. The chairman of the Council, with the title of Crown Marshal, was the Kalisz landowner Wacław Niemojowski (PL). According to some sources he was elected while still at the Castle, according to others a day later, at the session in the Palace of the Commonwealth.

From ordinance to inauguration

The Council was created by an ordinance of the two governors-general, published on 6 December 1916. It was the first practical step after the Act of 5 November, in which the emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary had announced the creation of a Kingdom of Poland from the occupied lands. The Council was to have 25 members: 15 from the German and 10 from the Austro-Hungarian occupation zone. Nobody elected them; they were appointed by the occupiers. The Council was to advise the occupation authorities on legislation, draw up plans for future state institutions and co-operate in creating a Polish army. Commissioners of both governments were attached to the Council: Count Hugo Lerchenfeld for the German side and Jan Konopka for the Austro-Hungarian. More than five weeks passed between the publication of the ordinance and the appointment of the members.

Who sat on the Council

The Council was made up exclusively of activists (PL), that is, supporters of building a Polish state alongside the Central Powers. They included landowners, lawyers, industrialists, clergymen and social activists. Marshal Niemojowski, grandson of Bonawentura Niemojowski, an activist from the days of Congress Poland, had headed the Agricultural Society in Kalisz for ten years. His deputy, the vice-marshal, was the professor of agricultural chemistry Józef Mikułowski-Pomorski. The Council also included, among others, Prince Franciszek Radziwiłł, the banker Kazimierz Natanson (PL), the publicist Władysław Studnicki, for years an advocate of basing the Polish cause on Germany, and Count Bogdan Hutten-Czapski, a Polish aristocrat in German service and a close associate of Beseler, who on 5 November had read out the Polish text of the two emperors’ act at the Castle.

The best-known name was Józef Piłsudski. The creator of the Legions had no longer been in the army since the autumn of 1916; in December he came to Warsaw and, after some hesitation, agreed to join the Council. He hoped in this way to gain influence over the creation of a Polish army and not to leave it entirely in Beseler’s hands. For the occupiers he was an awkward ally, because his camp kept repeating that without a Polish government there would be no Polish army.

The passivists’ boycott

The Council did not represent the whole of society. The passivists (PL), grouped in the Inter-Party Political Circle (PL), were counting on an Entente victory and refused to take part. They believed that a Council appointed by the occupiers and deprived of real power was a tool of Germany, which above all needed Polish recruits. In the absence of the National Democrats and their allies, the Council brought together only part of the Polish political scene, although its members argued that they were creating a state office and not the organisation of a single camp. On the other side of the front Russia was still promising the Poles its own version of freedom: less than three weeks earlier Tsar Nicholas II had included among the aims of the war the creation of a free Poland from all three partitions.

The proclamation “Poles!”

The Council’s first public act was a proclamation to the nation, printed as the appeal “Polacy!” (“Poles!”) dated 15 January 1917. According to some works it was published on 17 January. It began with the words that “by the just decree of Providence” the Polish nation had been called to rebuild its own independent state. The Council declared the great task of the moment to be the extension of statehood “to all the lands gravitating towards Poland and taken from Russia”. It announced the preparation of a Sejm and of a constitution based on the equal rights of all citizens. It did not question the monarchical system: it was itself to act “before supreme authority is assumed by the King of Poland”.

Most of the proclamation was devoted to the army. The Council called the creation of “a numerous, valiant and disciplined Polish army” “a joyful and urgent necessity” and the first condition of independent existence. The army was to help obtain “the widest possible frontiers”, and until universal military service could be introduced it was to be formed from volunteers, for whom “our heroic legions form ready cadres”. The Council also announced the building of a Polish treasury and administration, the reconstruction of the devastated country and the restarting of industry. It warned that the war would demand further sacrifices and that the fruits of its work “will not depend on it alone”. It ended with the slogan: “From dreams and words about the Polish State we pass to deeds”.

First decisions

In the following days the Council organised itself. On 16 January Piłsudski placed the clandestine Polish Military Organisation under its authority. At its second session, on 17 January, the Council elected the Executive Department (PL), the nucleus of a future government, and set up a commission to prepare drafts of a constitution and an electoral law for the Sejm. Besides the marshal and vice-marshal, the Department included, among others, Piłsudski, the economist Stanisław Dzierzbicki and the landowner Wojciech Rostworowski. At the end of January its work was divided into sections, and later departments, conceived as the germs of future ministries.

The dispute over the army broke out at once. The Council wanted to create a military department, but the occupiers would not agree. In its place a Military Commission (PL) was set up, headed by Prince Radziwiłł. At its first session, on 18 January, Piłsudski was chosen as its rapporteur. In the Executive Department he sat as “military rapporteur”, without the title of head of a department. Command of the Polish army remained in the hands of Beseler, who since November had been calling on Poles to enlist as volunteers, with little effect.

Significance

The Provisional Council of State had modest powers, but for the first time in decades Poles could officially, under a Polish name and in Polish, prepare the future institutions of their own state. In July its commission adopted a draft constitution (PL), and the Council’s departments became the nucleus of the Polish administration, school system and judiciary. The Council, however, lasted only a few months. The question of the army, which had occupied it from its first days, led in the summer to the oath crisis. At the beginning of July Piłsudski left the Council, the legionaries at his call refused to swear loyalty to the brotherhood in arms with Germany and Austria-Hungary, and at the end of August 1917 the members of the Council resigned their seats.