Union of Active Struggle is founded

In June 1908, in Lviv, in the flat of the architecture student Kazimierz Sosnkowski, the secret Union of Active Struggle (Związek Walki Czynnej, ZWC) came into being. The Museum of Polish History gives the date as 17 June; other accounts say only June or the end of the month. The ZWC was not meant to kill anyone or rob cash transports. It was meant to teach. Its courses, held in the Austrian partition (PL), were to produce the officers and NCOs of a rising that would break out in the Russian partition once the partitioning powers went to war with one another. On the centenary of its founding the Polish Sejm called it the first pro-independence paramilitary organisation, “the nucleus of the Polish Army”.

From fighting squad to school

The founders came from the PPS Combat Organisation, which during the 1905 revolution had attacked Russian officials and cash transports. The revolution was dying down and arrests were thinning the ranks. Sosnkowski, 23 years old and formerly commander of the fighting squads in the Warsaw district, had lived in Lviv since the autumn of 1907. He acted on the inspiration of Józef Piłsudski, leader of the PPS – Revolutionary Faction, who wrote at the time in a letter to Witold Jodko-Narkiewicz that he was working on “making money, as founding capital for the future” and on “military agitation”. Biographers disagree on how much of the idea was Piłsudski’s and how much Sosnkowski’s. Formally the founder was Sosnkowski, who himself said he had been inspired by a conversation with Piłsudski. The name was reportedly proposed by Marian Kukiel (PL).

According to Walery Sławek, Sosnkowski “decided to go beyond the socialist camp and try to draw into the preparatory work those people who are ready to take up arms in the fight for Polish independence”. At the founding meeting he is said to have declared: “only an armed fist can wrest concessions from tsardom, only it can guarantee that they are kept. An independent democratic Polish republic lies at arm’s length.” Aleksandra Szczerbińska recalled that the very first meeting decided to work in the Austrian partition and named as its aim “preparatory work towards creating an army in the future”. Many of the old PPS activists opposed this, and Piłsudski, who backed the plan, lost many supporters among them.

A cadre organisation

The Union copied the structure of the fighting squads. Its basic cell was the “six”; three sixes formed a detachment, two detachments a district, and districts a region. It was run by a four-member Executive on which Sosnkowski sat. The organisation saw itself as above party, but it was closely linked to the Revolutionary Faction. Michał Sokolnicki, one of its members, wrote that it differed from the fighting squads in its “strictly preparatory, school-like character and the exclusion, for the time being, of all combat action”. Instead of sabotage it taught drill, handling of the rifle, small-unit tactics, map reading and the history of wars, from the Boer and Russo-Japanese wars to the 1863 rising. Its lecturers included Kukiel and Władysław Sikorski.

The Union grew slowly. In November 1908 it had 64 members and in 1910 about 220, mostly students in Lviv and Kraków and in the centres of Polish youth abroad. Its start-up money came partly from the raid on the train at Bezdany, which Piłsudski led in September 1908. Formally he became head of the ZWC only in 1912 (some accounts say 1909), but his leadership was never in doubt from the start.

The Austrian umbrella

Galicia, with its autonomy (PL) and Polish administration, gave the conspirators a freedom impossible in the Kingdom, and Vienna saw Russia as its main adversary. As early as 1906–1907 Piłsudski began talks with officers of Austrian military intelligence. His first offers were turned down, but in time the Austrians decided it was worth tolerating people who in a war could destabilise Russia’s rear and supply information on its army. The ZWC’s legal status nevertheless remained unclear, and the accidental arrest of some of its activists showed that it could not go on like this. In 1910 the Union therefore set up open rifle associations registered with the authorities. In August 1914 its graduates formed the cadre of the riflemen who marched with Piłsudski into the Kingdom.