Full title: The Minority Treaty and the Foundations of Ethnic Democracy in Poland

Author: Dr. Wiktor Marzec

Abstract/summary:

National politics in emerging statehoods of inter-war Eastern Europe often orbited around national and ethnic cleavages. Thus, there are good arguments to claim that what decided about the regime change in the region – a question important for students of democratization and authoritarian slide alike – was the principle of minority integration in the emerging polities and statehoods.
The first parliament of the new Polish state was to forge the new legal order and foundations of the emerging polity. Amidst the already heated constitutional debate the so- called little treaty of Versailles, regulating the minority protection in Poland – a paradigm for a series of similar agreements with other ‘new’ states – spurred on a vivid controversy. Many voices were heard expressing indignation about the suppression of Polish sovereignty and dignity. These vehement protests often pointed out at the alleged Polish tradition of tolerance and cohabitation of different national and ethnic groups in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.

Previous legacies as war-time alliances in Poland and abroad, strategic calculations beyond the immediate outcomes, and tactical maneuvers aimed at discrediting the opponents shaped the debate, too. Although these positioning and arguments were somehow contingent, they no less had an impact not only on the constitution making process but also on future discussions, party alignments and policy decisions. The sequence of clashes on the parliamentary forum anticipating the minority treaty, accompanying its signing and ratification, and later renegotiations of its meaning for everyday legal practice, were one of the important critical junctures structuring the Polish political sphere in the interwar period.
For contingent reasons in the first parliament only the Jewish MP’s actively supported the treaty. This only added the grist to the mill of the antisemitic obsessions of some of the MP’s. The issue of minority provision was coupled with the debate on the status of Jews, and antisemitic undercurrents marred the argumentation. Positions taken by various protagonists of this debate did not always follow the usual line of divisions, though. While the treaty was formally signed by the representants of the nationalist right, it was the left who attacked in the name of the state sovereignty, at the same time undermining its own political goals in the long run. It was no longer possible to use international agreements to support any cause. Despite the formally inclusive constitution, on the level of detailed bills (regarding the voting order and other practicalities) the Polish state became an ethnic democracy of sorts.

On the one hand, the international agreements were crucial for the resulting constitutional order. On the other, the ensuing debate was even more consequential for the practice of ethnic democracy in inter-war Poland. It had also an impact on the long-term patterns of reasoning and argumentation. While the language of national sovereignty against the international pressurizing is of course nothing specific for the Polish right, a common association of international agendas with the Jews perhaps is.