Resolution of the Polish Circle

On 28 May 1917, in the City Council chamber of the Wielopolski Palace in Kraków, almost all the Polish parliamentarians from Galicia gathered: deputies to the Austrian Imperial Council and to the Diet in Lviv. This joint assembly, called the Polish Parliamentary Circle, adopted a resolution that began with the words: “The Polish Parliamentary Circle declares that the sole aspiration of the Polish nation is the recovery of an independent, united Poland with access to the sea, and declares itself in solidarity with this aspiration.” Twelve days earlier, on 16 May, a resolution of the same content had been passed by the Polish Circle (PL), the club of Polish deputies in the Vienna parliament, and it was from this body that the resolution took its name. For the first time since the partitions, Polish deputies in the parliament of one of the partitioning powers had openly set themselves the goal of an independent Poland made up of the lands of all three partitions.

Galicia after the Act of 5 November

Only half a year earlier most Galician politicians had linked Poland’s future with the Habsburg monarchy. They counted on the so-called Austro-Polish solution: the union of Galicia with the Kingdom of Poland under the Habsburg sceptre. This camp included the Supreme National Committee, set up in August 1914 on the initiative of the Polish Circle, which sponsored the Legions. The Act of 5 November 1916, however, announced a Kingdom of Poland without Galicia, dependent above all on Germany. By way of consolation the old Emperor Franz Joseph promised Galicia broad autonomy, the so-called separation from the Austrian half of the monarchy. The project was prepared by the minister for Galicia, the historian and conservative Michał Bobrzyński. The work dragged on for months, and after Franz Joseph’s death the new Emperor Karl I and the Austrian government were in no hurry to finish it.

Meanwhile the international situation was changing rapidly. In January 1917 the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, spoke out in the Senate for a united, independent and autonomous Poland. In March tsarism fell, and the Russian Provisional Government in its proclamation to the Poles recognised Poland’s right to independence. At the beginning of April Britain endorsed it, and a few days later the United States entered the war. Russia’s promise admittedly concerned only lands that Russia did not control, but independence had ceased to be the slogan of a handful of radicals. In the face of such declarations, autonomy for Galicia looked a very modest gain.

The front of Galician pro-Austrian sentiment began to crumble. At the end of April the National Democrats withdrew from the work on the separation of Galicia. At the beginning of May Emperor Karl visited Kraków with Empress Zita, but the visit, on which Bobrzyński had pinned great hopes, did not change the mood. Among other things, people complained that the monarch had replied in German to the welcoming speech of the city’s mayor, Juliusz Leo, delivered in Polish.

From the Polish Circle to the Parliamentary Circle

The breakthrough came from the peasant party. At the beginning of May the deputies of the Polish People’s Party “Piast” decided to leave the Supreme National Committee, and on 6 May they declared the separation of Galicia no longer relevant. They repeated this on 14 May at a meeting of the Polish Circle and demanded Bobrzyński’s departure. Two days later, on 16 May, the Circle passed a resolution tabled by the peasant deputy Włodzimierz Tetmajer. Tetmajer, a painter from Bronowice near Kraków, immortalised by Stanisław Wyspiański as the Host in “The Wedding”, had sat in the Vienna parliament since 1911. The socialist leader Ignacy Daszyński also put forward his own draft resolution. In it he wrote that the Poles could not regard any relief from wartime suffering or any change in the way Galicia was governed as a solution of the Polish question, “still less as payment for the loss of the immortal right of the Polish nation to freedom and independence”.

After the resolution of 16 May Bobrzyński decided to resign. To calm tempers, the peasant leader Wincenty Witos proposed that the final decision be taken by a wider body, the Parliamentary Circle, an assembly of all the Polish parliamentarians from Galicia. It was convened in Kraków for 28 May. According to the historian Damian Szymczak, author of a study of Bobrzyński as minister, Bobrzyński tried to the last to prevent the resolution from being repeated by this most important body of Polish politics in the monarchy, all the more so as the irritated emperor was threatening not to appoint his successor and to change his policy towards the Poles.

The text of the resolution

The Kraków resolution consisted of four short sentences. After the sentence about an independent, united Poland with access to the sea, the Circle affirmed “the international character of this question” and regarded its realisation “as a guarantee of lasting peace”. It went on to express the hope that “the Emperor of Austria, well disposed towards us, will take this matter into his hands”. The last sentence read: “The resurrection of the Polish State with the help of Austria will secure for her a natural and lasting ally.”

What mattered most was what the text did not say outright. A “united Poland” meant the lands of all three partitions, and thus also Greater Poland, Pomerania and Silesia within the borders of Germany, Austria-Hungary’s ally. The words about access to the sea could refer only to Danzig and Pomerania. Recognising the Polish question as international meant that Poland’s future was to be decided by a future peace conference, not by the Central Powers alone. The appeal to the emperor was a precaution. The historian Damian Szymczak regards it as at most a fig leaf, and some politicians of the time, as Jan Hupka noted in his diary, considered it downright “mockery”.

The session in Kraków

At the session of 28 May, Daszyński was among those who spoke on the separation of Galicia. He explained that if all the parties had once supported this project, it was only so “that separation might be a bridge to union with the rest of the Polish lands”. He cautiously did not rule out a role for Austria in the future: Poland, “free and content, will be a pillar of the Austrian throne”. The peasant party, the socialists, the National Democrats and most of the conservatives voted for the resolution. According to accounts cited by Tetmajer’s biographers, only two conservatives voted against: Dawid Abrahamowicz of the Podolian camp and Prince Andrzej Lubomirski (PL), and some of those present abstained. Witos recalled that it was “a great, perhaps the greatest day in Tetmajer’s life”, and called him “the priest at this great national rite”. News of the resolution was received in Kraków with enthusiasm, and the peasant paper “Piast” described the proceedings as “a historic session of the Parliamentary Circle”.

Significance

The resolution of the Polish Circle changed nothing in Galicia’s position, but it closed a chapter. Politicians who throughout the war had built Poland’s future on an alliance with the Habsburgs admitted that the goal was full independence and unification, not autonomy within the monarchy. According to Szymczak it was in effect a declaration for independence and for the Entente, which the request addressed to the emperor could not conceal. The Galician Poles, for half a century regarded as one of the most loyal nationalities of the monarchy, began to move into opposition. No one any longer took the separation of Galicia seriously. Bobrzyński left the government at the beginning of June, and a few weeks later the whole Austrian cabinet fell.

The resolution came on the eve of an important event in Vienna. On 30 May the Imperial Council met for the first time since 1914, and representatives of the nations of the monarchy, led by the Czechs, came forward there with declarations of their own. The voice of the Polish deputies was part of this wider phenomenon: the nations of Austria-Hungary were looking ever more clearly for a future outside the monarchy.