|
Roman Stanisław Dmowski was a Polish politician, statesman, and the chief ideologue and co-founder of the right-wing National Democracy political movement. He saw the aggressive Germanization of Polish territories controlled by the German Empire as the major threat to Polish culture and therefore advocated a degree of accommodation with Poland's other partitioning power, the Russian Empire. He favored the re-establishment of Polish independence by nonviolent means, and supported policies favorable to the Polish middle class. During World War I, in Paris, through his Polish National Committee, he was a prominent spokesman for Polish aspirations to the Allies. He was one of the principal figures who were instrumental in the postwar restoration of Poland's existence.
Dmowski never wielded official political power, except for a brief period as a Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1923. Nevertheless, he was one of the most influential Polish politicians and ideologues of his time. A controversial personality all his life and since, Dmowski believed that only a Polish-speaking Roman Catholic could be a good Pole; in his thinking, he marginalized other minorities and was vocally anti-semitic. He tried to emulate Italian fascism in 1926. Dmowski remains the prototype of Polish right-wing nationalism and has been called "the father of Polish nationalism." Throughout most of his life, he was the chief opponent and arch-rival of Polish military and political leader Józef Piłsudski and his vision of Poland as a multinational federation.
|
