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Międzymorze was the name for Józef Piłsudski's proposed Polish-led federation with Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia and the Czech lands. It would have linked every Slavic nation except Russia and Bulgaria with the Baltic states, Hungary and Romania. The Polish name may be translated as "Intersea" ("Between-Seas") and has also been rendered, from the Latin, as "Intermarum" or "Intermarium." Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski, in a memorandum to US President Woodrow Wilson, referred to this entity as the "United States of Poland."

The proposed federation was meant to emulate the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, that, from the end of the 16th century to the end of the 18th, had united the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Międzymorze complemented Piłsudski's other ambitious geopolitical vision—Prometheism, whose goal was no less than the dismemberment of the Russian-dominated state (Piłsudski wanted to break up the Russian Empire). Together these two projects were intended to strengthen Poland and her neighbors at the expense of Tsarist Russia, and later of the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union.

The concept resurfaced in the 1990s. Although the idea of a Międzymorze-like Polish-led federation has generated little interest outside Poland, several cooperative frameworks have been created in the region.

Precedents

Commonwealth

A Polish-Lithuanian union and military alliance had come about as a mutual response to a common threat from the Teutonic Order. It had been cemented by the union in 1385 of Poland's Queen Jadwiga and the Gediminid dynasty represented by Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, who became King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland. It had been further extended by the 1569 Union of Lublin, when the two states merged into a federation, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (in Polish, Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów — the "Republic of the Two Nations"), which would remain until the late 17th century the largest state in Europe. Its combined resources enabled it to hold its own against the Teutonic Order, the Mongols, the Russians, the Turks and the Swedes, for four centuries until the late-18th-century partitions of the weakened Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by its neighbors.

Under the Commonwealth, proposals were advanced to form an expanded, Polish-Lithuanian-Muscovite or Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian, Commonwealth, but these were never implemented.

Czartoryski's plan

Between the November and January Uprisings, in 1832–61, the idea of resurrecting an updated Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was advocated by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, residing in exile at the Hôtel Lambert in Paris.

A visionary statesman and former friend and confidant of Russia's Tsar Alexander I, Czartoryski acted as the uncrowned king and unacknowledged foreign minister of a nonexistent Poland. He wrote that, "Having extended her sway south and west, and being by the nature of things unreachable from the east and north, Russia becomes a source of constant threat to Europe." He argued that it would have been in Russia's interest, instead, to have surrounded herself with "friend slave." Czartoryski also identified a future threat from Prussia and urged the incorporation of East Prussia into a resurrected Poland.

Above all, however, he aspired to reconstitute — with French, British and Turkish support — a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth federated with the Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians and all the South Slavs of the future Yugoslavia. Poland, in his concept, could have mediated the conflicts between Hungary and the Slavs, and between Hungary and Romania.

Czartoryski's plan seemed achievable during the period of national revolutions in 1848-49 but foundered on lack of western support, on Hungarian intransigence toward the Czechs, Slovaks and Romanians, and on the rise of German nationalism. "Nevertheless," concludes the late Professor Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, "the Prince's endeavor constitutes a link the 16th-century Jagiellon and Józef Piłsudski's federative-Prometheist program ."

Piłsudski's "Międzymorze"

Józef Piłsudski's strategic goal was to resurrect a modern form of the old Commonwealth, while working for the disintegration of the Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, into its ethnic constituents (the latter was his Prometheist project).

Motives

While some scholars accept at face value the democratic principles claimed by Piłsudski for his federative plan, others view such claims with skepticism, pointing out that in later life Piłsudski would become increasingly disillusioned with democracy, as he observed its operation in interbellum Poland. In particular, his project is viewed unfavorably by some Ukrainian historians, with Oleksandr Derhachov arguing that the federation would have created a greater Poland in which the interests of non-Poles, especially Ukrainians, would have gotten short shrift.

Piłsudski saw the Międzymorze federation as a counterweight to potential imperialist tendencies on the part of Russia and Germany. His vision was, however, opposed not only by foreign nationalist and imperialist politicians but also in reborn Poland, where Roman Dmowski argued for an ethnically purer Poland in which minorities would be Polonized. US President Woodrow Wilson noted "I saw M. Dmowski and M. Paderewski in Washington, and I asked them to define Poland for me, as they understood it, and they presented me with a map in which they claimed a large part of the earth."

Some historians hold that Piłsudski, who argued that "There can be no independent Poland without an independent Ukraine", may have been more interested in Ukraine being split from Russia than he was in Ukrainians' welfare. He did not hesitate to use military force to expand Poland's borders to Galicia and Volhynia, crushing a Ukrainian attempt at self-determination in the disputed territories east of the Western Bug River, which contained a substantial Polish minority, mainly in cities like Lwów (Lviv), but a Ukrainian majority in the countryside.

Speaking of Poland's future frontiers, Piłsudski said: "All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente — on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany", while in the east "there are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far." In the eastern chaos, the Polish forces set out to expand as far as feasible. On the other hand, Poland had no intention of joining the western intervention in the Russian Civil War or of conquering Russia itself.

Opposition

Piłsudski's plan faced opposition from virtually all parties concerned. The Soviets exerted their influence to thwart the Międzymorze agenda. The western Allies feared that a weakened Germany and Russia might be unable to pay their World War I reparations and obligations, and that the European balance of power might be excessively altered by coordinated action among the newly independent countries. The Lithuanians, Belarusians and Ukrainians, invited to join a federation, were unwilling to compromise their recently regained independence and were further discouraged by a series of wars and border conflicts fought in the wake of World War I over disputed territories — the Polish-Soviet War, Polish-Lithuanian War, Polish-Ukrainian War, and border conflicts between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Finally, many Polish politicians such as nationalist Endecja (National Democratic Party) leader Roman Dmowski opposed the idea of a multicultural federation, preferring instead to work for a unitary Polish nation-state.

Failure

In the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War, Piłsudski's concept of a federation of Central and East European countries, based on Polish-Ukrainian axis, lost any chance of realization. Next, Piłsudsdki's planed to form a federation or alliances with the Baltic states and Balkan states. It envisioned a Central European union as also including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece — thus stretching not only west-east from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, but north-south from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. This project also failed, mostly due to the Polish-Czechoslovak tensions as well as the tensions between various Balkan states themselves; only Polish-Romanian alliance was estabilished. Finally, a late version of the concept was attempted by interwar Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck, a Piłsudski protegé, who in late 1930s proposed a "Third Europe" - alliance of Poland, Romania and Hungary; that plan also yielded no results before World War II begun.

World War II and since

The concept of a "Central European Union" — as a triangular geopolitical entity anchored in the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic or Aegean Seas — was revived in Władysław Sikorski's Polish government in exile during World War II. A first step toward its implementation — 1942 discussions between the Greek, Yugoslavian, Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments regarding a prospective Greek-Yugoslavian and Polish-Czechoslovak federations — ultimately foundered on Soviet opposition, which led to Czech hesitation and Allied indifference or hostility.

Piłsudski's concept has survived into the 21st century. More recently, since the demise of Soviet hegemony in east-central Europe, been advocated under various names including "Intermarum" or "Intermarium" (Latin for "Międzymorze", "Intersea" or "Between-Seas"). One version of the idea envisions such a federation as a constituent of the European Union; "Intermarum" could, it is argued, give protection to its member states against domination by the European Union's wealthier, more powerful western members. In early 1990s Polish president Lech Wałęsa proposed the concept of NATO-bis as subregional security framework. The concept, although supported by Polish right-wing as well as populist movements, and politicians such as Leszek Moczulski, which both appeal to the notion of a Polish mission in East Central Europe, did not gain much support abroad, as Poland's neighbors, most of whom only recently regained independence tended to perceive the concept as imperialistic and the concept was mostly discarded. Other modern project of an East Central Europeann federations included the Baltic-Black Sea Federation proposed by Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk, the Visegrád Group and the Central European Initiative.

Notes

1. Aviel Roshwald, "Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-1923]", Routledge (UK), 2001, ISBN 0-415-17893-2, p. 37
2. Richard K Debo, Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-192, McGill-Queen's Press, 1992, ISBN 0-7735-0828-7, p. 59.
3. James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-7658-0471-9, p. 432
4. Andrzej Paczkowski, "The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom", Penn State Press, 2003, ISBN 0-271-02308-2, p. 10
5. David Parker, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, ISBN 0-393-02025-8, p.194
6. Iván Tibor Berend, Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe Before World War II, University of California Press, 1998, ISBN 0520229010, Google Print, p.148
7. Józef Pilsudski, Polish revolutionary and statesman, the first chief of state (1918–22) of the newly independent Poland established in November 1918. (Józef Pilsudski in Encyclopedia Britannica)
   Released in November 1918, returned to Warsaw, assumed command of the Polish armies, and proclaimed an independent Polish republic, which he headed. (Piłsudski, Joseph in Columbia Encyclopedia)
8. Timothy Snyder, Covert Polish missions across the Soviet Ukrainian border, 1928-1933 (p.55, p.56, p.57, p.58, p.59, in Cofini, Silvia Salvatici (a cura di), Rubbettino, 2005).
   Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 030010670X, (p.41, p.42, p.43)
9. "Although the Polish premier and many of his associates sincerely wanted peace, other important Polish leaders did not. Josef Pilsudski, chief of state and creator of Polish army, was foremost among the latter. Pilsudski hoped to build not merely a Polish nation state but a greater federation of peoples under the aegis of Poland which would replace Russia as the great power of Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine were all to be included. His plan called for a truncated and vastly reduced Russia, a plan which excluded negotiations prior to military victory."
   Richard K Debo, Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-192, Google Print, p. 59, McGill-Queen's Press, 1992, ISBN 0-7735-0828-7.
10. ^ "Pilsudski's program for a federation of independent states centered on Poland; in opposing the imperial power of both Russia and Germany it was in many ways a throwback to the romantic Mazzinian nationalism of Young Poland in the early nineteenth century. But his slow consolidation of dictatorial power betrayed the democratic substance of those earlier visions of national revolution as the path to human liberation"
    James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, p. 432, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-7658-0471-9
11. ^ Template:Pl icon, Tadeusz Marczak, Międzymorze wczoraj i dziś, Polish version of article published in Belarusia as „Mieżdumorje wcziera i siewodnia”, in „Biełaruś – Polsza: Put’ k sotrudniczestwu. Materiały Mieżdunarodnoj Naucznoj Konfieriencji”, Minsk 2005
12. Security Cooperation in Central Europe: Polish Views. NATO, 1996.
13. Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, "Polski pionier zjednoczonej Europy" ("A Polish Pioneer of a United Europe"), Gwiazda Polarna (Pole Star), Sept. 17, 2005, p. 10.
14. Dziewanowski, "Polski pionier zjednoczonej Europy," pp. 10-11.
15. Dziewanowski, "Polski pionier zjednoczonej Europy," p. 11.
16. Dziewanowski, "Polski pionier zjednoczonej Europy," p. 11.
17. Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-1923, 2001, Routledge (UK), ISBN 0-415-24229-0, Google Print, p.49
18. Yohanan Cohen, Small Nations in Times of Crisis and Confrontation, SUNY Press, 1989, ISBN 0791400182 Google Books, p.65
19. "No less influential and popular than the concept of national democrats was the "federalist" program of Josef Pilsudski. (...) It was the reincarnation of the Rzeczpospolita on "federative" principles. It was to include the Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian lands. The leading role, of course, was to be given to the Polish ethnic, political, economic and cultural element."
    Oleksandr Derhachov (editor), "Ukrainian Statehood in the Twentieth Century: Historical and Political Analysis", Chapter: "Ukraine in Polish concepts of the foreign policy", 1996, Kiev ISBN 966-543-040-8
20. Template:Pl icon Wojna polsko-bolszewicka. Entry at Internetowa encyklopedia PWN. Last accessed on 27 October 2006.
21. ^ "Pilsudski dreamed of drawing all the nations situated between Germany and Russia into an enormous federation in which Poland, by virtue of its size, would be the leader, while Dmowski wanted to see a unitary Polish state, in which other Slav peoples would become assimilated."
    Andrzej Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom, p. 10, Penn State Press, 2003, ISBN 0-271-02308-2
22. Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman, Elisabeth Glaser, The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-521-62132-1, Google Print, p.314
23. Roman Dmowski have been quoted saying: "Wherever we can multiply our forces and our civilizational efforts, absorbing other elements, no law can prohibit us from doing so, as such actions are our duty."
    Tomaszewski J. Kresy Wschodnie w polskiej mysli politycznej XIX i XX w.//Miedzy Polska etniczna a historyczna. Polska mysl polityczna XIX i XX wieku.—T.6.—Warszawa, 1988.—S.101. Cited through: Oleksandr Derhachov, ibid
24. Margaret Macmillan Paris 1919: Six months that changed the world, pages 212-213.
25. "The newly founded Polish state cared much more about the expansion of its borders to the east and southeast ("between the seas") than about helping the dying state of which Petlura was de facto dictator. ("A Belated Idealist." Zerkalo Nedeli (Mirror Weekly), May 22-28, 2004. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.)
    Piłsudski is quoted to have said: "After the Polish independence we will see about Poland's size". (ibid)
26. A month before his death, Pilsudski told an aide: "My life is lost. I failed to create a Ukraine free of the Russians"
    <Template:Ru iconTemplate:Uk icon Oleksa Pidlutskyi, Postati XX stolittia, (Figures of the 20th century), Kiev, 2004, ISBN 966-8290-01-1, LCCN 20-0. Chapter "Józef Piłsudski: The Chief who Created Himself a State" reprinted in Zerkalo Nedeli (the Mirror Weekly), Kiev, February 3 - 9, 2001, in Russian and in Ukrainian.
27. ^ THE REBIRTH OF POLAND. University of Kansas, lecture notes by professor Anna M. Cienciala, 2004. Last accessed on 2 June 2006.
28. MacMillan, Margaret, Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003, ISBN 0-375-76052-0, p.212"
29. JOSEPH PILSUDSKI. Interview by Dymitr Merejkowsky, 1921. Translated from the Russian by Harriet E Kennedy B.A. London & Edinburgh, Sampson Low, Marston & Co Ltd 1921. Piłsudski said: “Poland can have nothing to do with the restoration of old Russia. Anything rather than that – even Bolshevism”. Quoted from this site.
30. Alfonsas Eidintas, Vytautas Zalys, Lithuania in European Politics: The Years of the First Republic, 1918-1940, Palgrave, 1999, ISBN 0312224583. Google Print, p.78-81
31. Eurosceptic Confederacy of Intermarium. Accessed September 1, 2007.
32. Monika Wohlefeld, 1996,Security Cooperation in Central Europe: Polish Views. NATO, 1996.

References

• David J. Smith, Artis Pabriks, Aldis Purs, Thomas Lane, The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Routledge (UK), 2002, ISBN 0415285801 Google Print, p.30 (also available here).
• Janusz Cisek, Kilka uwag o myśli federacyjnej Józefa Piłsudskiego, Międzymorze – Polska i kraje Europy środkowo-wschodniej XIX-XX wiek (Some Remarks on Józef Piłsudski's Federationist Thought, Międzymorze — Poland and the East-Central European Countries in the 19th-20th Centuries), Warsaw, 1995.
• Piotr Okulewicz, Koncepcja "miedzymorza" w myśli i praktyce politycznej obozu Józefa Piłsudskiego w latach 1918-1926 (The Concept of Międzymorze in the Political Thought and Practice of Józef Piłsudski's Camp in the Years 1918-1926), Poznań, 2001, ISBN 83-7177-060-X.
• Jonathan Levy, The Intermarium: Madison, Wilson, and East Central European Federalism, ISBN-10: 1581123698, 2006
• Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, "Polski pionier zjednoczonej Europy" ("A Polish Pioneer of a United Europe"), Gwiazda Polarna (Pole Star), vol. 96, no 19 (September 17, 2005), pp. 10-11.
• M.K. Dziewanowski, Czartoryski and His Essai sur la diplomatie, 1971, ASIN: B0072XRK6.
• M.K. Dziewanowski, Joseph Pilsudski: a European Federalist, 1918-1922, Stanford, Hoover Institution, 1979.
• Peter Jordan, Central Union of Europe, introduction by Ernest Minor Patterson, Ph.D., President, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, New York, Robert M. McBride & Company, 1944.
• Antoni Plutynski, We Are 115 Millions, with a foreword by Douglas Reed, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1944.

External links

• Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Messiah and Central European Federalist by Patryk Dole
• European Review of History. 'Intermarium' and 'Wedding to the Sea': Politics of History and Mental Mapping in East Central Europe. Retrieved September 9, 2007

• Modern Europe
• History of Poland (1918–1939)
• History of Lithuania
• Proposed countries
• Federalism
• Supraorganizations