March Constitution of 1921: The Crowning of Reborn Poland’s Ambitions

The March Constitution was the crowning of an important stage in the building of the Second Republic. It proved the maturity of the young state and strengthened Poland’s authority in the international arena. Its articles indicate a tendency to use solutions adopted in Western democracies as well as to draw on the legal traditions of…


Jan Kowalewski’s three victories

An inscrutable face, a short moustache, today bringing no good associations yet a century ago almost a classic feature of an officer’s image, and original service ribbons on his distinctions – from the Silesian Cross of Valour to the Order of the Rising Sun. The phrase ‘He took many secrets to his grave’ sounds like…


August 1920: how Poland saved Europe from Bolshevism

The end of World War I was greeted with relief throughout Europe, but in most countries this was accompanied by profound disillusionment with the political and social establishment which had brought it about. Such feelings led to revolution in Russia, Germany and Austria, and violent unrest in France, Great Britain, Italy and elsewhere as many…


The roads to (an independent) Belarus

Without the Belarusian People’s Republic and several military formations established at the end of the First World War and several months after its end, there would be neither the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic nor the present-day Republic of Belarus on the territory between the Bug and Berezina rivers. by Wojciech Stanisławski   For many reasons,…