Józef Piłsudski

Interview in Le Petit Parisien

(16 March 1919)

The interview cited below was conducted with Piłsudski by Claude Anet, representative of the Le Petit Parisien daily on 16 March 1919. The interview appeared in the 23 March 1919 edition.

The interview discusses Piłsudski’s attitude towards the Central Powers during World War I and includes Piłsudski’s predictions concerning Russian policy.

The interview was not authorised.

• General, what was your intention when you armed the Legions against Russia?

• I had a deep hatred for Russia, since it oppressed my country in a horrible way, which is hard even to imagine in France. My main goal was to create national Polish military forces. This was impossible in the lands that were ruled by Russia after the partitions. Still, I had no choice. I formed my units in Galicia. Then I asked myself the question: who would be the first to be defeated in the event of a war, Austria or Russia? I knew the organic weakness of the Russian state, so I chose to go against Russia.

I have a question to ask here and you, General, are so sincere in what you are saying that I will allow myself to ask it.

General, you fought against the Entente in the war. Did you not consider that in this way, you could have weakened the coalition and that as far as it was possible, you wanted to see it defeated?

• We were in no way able to believe Russia’s promises of autonomy. Russia makes promises when she is forced to do so, and she reneges on them when she is strong enough to do so. In 1815, Alexander I promised Poland a constitution and delivered.1 But what did he do with us before the end of his reign and what did his successors do to us? You know all that. During the present war, the most important thing was to form a Polish army that would be able to defend Poland if necessary.

• But if we had been beaten, what would Poland’s fate have been?

• Had the Entente been defeated, Poland would have gained more freedom under Germans and Austrians than it enjoyed under Russian rule. This would already have been a benefit. But a treaty was made with the German and Austrian governments that in no case could the Legions be used on the western front.

• General, why did the Germans arrest you?

• They felt that I was fighting for Poland rather than for them. I was too independent. Just like my officers, I resisted all their attempts to recruit soldiers in Poland in order to sustain their war against the Coalition. So they arrested me in 1917 and put me in the Magdeburg fortress.

The interviewer mentions that Piłsudski was imprisoned until the outbreak of the revolution and that he was freed by Graf von Kessler, a well-known figure in Parisian artistic circles before the war.

• Why did Mr. von Kessler free you, General?

• I knew him personally and dealt with him during the war when I commanded the Legions.2 He knew that the revolution would free me anyway. He wanted to take credit for freeing me; he also undoubtedly imagined that he would harm my image in the eyes of the Coalition in this way and that two years of German prison would be forgotten.

• General, do you still belong to a socialist party?

• I do not belong to any party.

• Did you have any trouble with the Polish National Committee in Paris?3

• These difficulties are now being removed.4 The Parisian Committee had no detailed information on Polish affairs and could not see the exact picture from a distance. Its members have not been in Poland for a long time.

• General, what is the political situation now in your opinion?

• In my opinion, the upheaval in Russia will last long, very long, even if the Bolsheviks are overthrown. You cannot predict the future. Depending on what consecutive governments it is led by, Russia will be an ally of either Germany or Poland. Thus we will sometimes be friends and sometimes enemies of Russia. For now, I am convinced that Soviet Russia will try to attack Poland. Irrespective of its government, Russia is fiercely imperialist. This is an essential trait of her political character. Once we had tsarist imperialism; today we see its red version, i.e. Soviet imperialism. Poland is a barrier against Slavic imperialism, whether tsarist or Bolshevik. The Bolsheviks are still strong because they have a very large ruling class; these people have made their careers and fortunes under Bolshevism and know that the success of their doctrines is a matter of life or death for them. If they are defeated, they will be hanged so they will defend themselves vigorously. Their attack on Poland is primarily dependent on the outcome of the Ukrainian issue. The Soviet policy is influenced by material considerations, and first of all by hunger. They need food from Ukraine, which is rich. If the Ukrainian case is settled in their favour, they will advance on Poland, but in order to reach it, they will have to cross lands that are completely destroyed and desert-like – these lands cannot provide them with anything. Thus they have to take everything from Ukraine. Finally, given the geographical conditions, they will be forced to move along the few railway lines that exist. They have no horses and thus cannot stray far from railway tracks.

• And their internal propaganda?

• At this moment I believe that it has no chance of being successful. We have hardly any workers and if the land reform is implemented, we will have enormous numbers of small farmers.