This article was originally written as a final coursework piece for HIST2167 “Anarchism, Radicalism, Utopianism: Actors, Communes, and Movements in the Modern World” at the University of Hong Kong

Poland is a land known for its revolutionary history and as the birthplace of numerous important revolutionary thinkers. The name “Poland” conjures up images of the Tadeusz Kościuszko (an acquaintance of George Washington) and his eponymous Uprising of 1794,[1] Poles fighting in the armies of Napoleon under the banner of “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”,[2] and Rosa Luxemberg (born in 1871 in Russian Poland).[3] Yet despite its connection with such revolutionary histories, Poland is not necessarily a country which is immediately brought to mind when one thinks of anarchism. However, thanks to the fact that Poland was effectively absent from the map of Europe for decades, looking at anarchism in Poland is a particularly interesting way of rethinking what transnationalism means, as it effectively entails looking at transnationalism when there is no nation to speak of and in a movement which is typically thought of as not caring for nations. As Norman Davies put it the second volume of his well known text God’s Playground, “during the five or six generations when it had no concrete existence, ‘Poland’ as an abstraction, could be remembered from the past, or aspired to for the future, but only imagined in the present.”[4] As such, this essay shall seek to push forward the notion that Poland is firstly an important location in the history of anarchism, and secondly that it is uniquely placed as a lens through which to reconsider transnationalism in anarchist movements.

The Polish case provides us with a way to understand support for nationalities within an anarchist framework. The idea of nationalism being part of a programme of anarchist action might indeed seem totally contradictory since anarchism is typically considered an internationalist ideology. Bakunin described “real nationality” as a “historical, local fact which has an undeniable right to general recognition, like any other real and harmless fact”, and espoused a brand of internationalist pan-Slavism. Following his escape in 1861 from his exile in Siberia for promoting Polish nationalism, he wrote an open letter titled “To Russian, Polish and Other Slavic Friends” insisting “[…] that every tribe, great and small, be given the full opportunity and right to act according to its will. If it wants to merge with Russia and Poland – let it merge. Does it want to be an independent member of a Polish or Russian or general Slavic federation? Then let it be so. Finally, does it want to separate completely from every other people and live as a totally separate state? Then God bless it! Let it separate.”[5] This idea of peoples and nations freely confederating is similar to the idea of free association of trade unions, and whilst anarchism may be considered to be an ideology which focuses on internationalism, Bakunin is able to get around this by recognising nationalism as a relevant factor, but not the primary concept which everything else must revolve around.

From a position looking more generally and less specifically at Poland, but certainly still applicable to that nation, Bakunin argued at the Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom in Geneva that “Universal peace will be impossible so long as the present centralised States exist. We must desire their destruction in order that, on the ruins of those forced unions organised from above by right of authority and conquest, there may arise free unions organised from below by the free federation of communes into provinces, of provinces into the nation, and of nations into the United States of Europe.”[6] Again, one can see the ideas of free association and confederation similar to those applied by anarchists to trade unions and similar organisations.

On the other hand, Proudhon saw any championing of Polish nationalism as ridiculous for the simple fact that he believed that a Polish nation did not exist and since there were no existing institutions for a Polish people to connect with one another and act as a check on the Polish nobility, going so far as to rhetorically ask of the Polish nation “[e]st-il […] si malheureux de mourir?” (or “is it really such a shame to die?”), although it should be noted that he did agree with Bakunin that if Polish nationalism was to be pushed forward, it should be done so within a framework of pan-Slavism.[7] Interestingly, Bakunin’s ideas seemed to become closer to Proudhon’s latter on, and after the failed Polish insurrection in 1863, Bakunin started to become critical of nationalist radicalism.[8]

Aside from this more ideologically driven argument, Proudhon also had a more brutally pragmatic reason for arguing that Poland should remain partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Looking at historical examples, he concluded that a weak monarch sitting on the Polish throne would ultimately lead to the country simply being swallowed up by one of the other European powers, that Poland was a dangerous flashpoint for violence in Europe, and that ultimately the Polish lands were too desirable for neighbouring powers to resist taking, and as such, Proudhon concluded that the continued partition of Poland was necessary to maintain peace on the European continent.[9]

It is important to note that all of this is not to say that Proudhon was cold-hearted and simply cared not for the Polish people. Instead, Proudhon recognised that a united Poland was simply too weak to survive in the Europe of his time and that Polish revolutionaries were effectively divorced from the reality of the situation, a sentiment shared by modern historians such as Norman Davies who said that “The strength of the Insurrectionary Tradition [in Poland …] bore no relation to the numbers of its adherents or to the outcome of its political programme. It reflected not the support of the masses, but the intense dedication of its devotees, whose obstinate temper, conspiratorial habits, and unfailing guardianship of the Romantic approach to Literature and History was effectively transmitted from generation to generation.”[10] This also appears to have been very indirectly hinted at by Bakunin, who in Statism and Anarchy remarked that “The Poles are such an unruly people that not a single free town can be left to them: they will immediately start to conspire in it and to establish secret ties with all their lost provinces with the aim of restoring the Polish state. In 1841, for example, Cracow was the one free city they had left, and Cracow became the center of all Polish revolutionary activity.”[11] As such, it could be said that to Proudhon, Poland was an acceptable casualty in the wider aim to maintain peace in Europe.

Putting Bakunin and Proudhon into conversation is a way of considering Poland in transnational anarchism. Through their respective arguments on how Poland should be dealt with, Bakunin and Proudhon were able to cross borders and argue with each other about the issue of Poland’s national independence. There is also the more obvious factor of these two anarchist thinkers from outside Poland concerning themselves with Polish affairs. Whilst not directly relating to anarchism in Poland, the importance here is that Poland can be used as a way to bring together different anarchist thinkers and establish transnational links between these thinkers through the medium of the discussion of the country.

Looking at goings on in Poland itself, not only had the partition divided the Polish nation into different imperial spheres of influence, but it had also rather neatly parcelled the different strands of anarchism in Poland into different geographical regions as well. Rafał Chwedoruk suggests that “Within each partition, anarchism took on a different shape. In the relatively liberal Austria reformist tendencies prevailed in the labour movement, and among anarchists the dominant trend was anarcho-syndicalism. In the Russian partition, only a violent revolutionary struggle was possible; whereas in the German partition the socialist and anarchist movements attracted marginal support. Besides, all modern political trends had to focus their attention on the question of Polish independence and national self determination.”[12] It is interesting to see how despite the fact that all three partitioned territories were part of the same nation, there was a distinct lack of even intranational cross-pollination of ideas.

There is also the issue of the influence of Polish anarchism and Poles on anarchism outside of the Polish lands. In an article written in 1901, Emma Goldman stated that “Each age has had its John Browns, its Perovskayas, its Parsons, Spies, and Angiolillos, and its Brescis, who were misunderstood, persecuted, mobbed, tortured, and killed, by those who could not reach the sublime heights attained by these men”, with Perovskaya being a Russian nihilist who was executed in 1881 and was the leader of the group which killed Tsar Alexander II on the 13th March 1881.[13] The actual person who killed Tsar Alexander II was also a Pole by the name of Hriniewicki. After the Tsar got out of his carriage to inspect the damage caused by Hriniewicki’s comrade Rysakov and told bystanders “Thank God, no” when asked if he was injured, Hriniewicki answered back “Thank God?” and threw the bomb that would end the Tsar’s life.[14] Conversely, back in Poland, the Russian Narodnaya Volya had an influence on the party known as Proletariat.[15] Additionally, one of the main Polish revolutionary syndicalist theoreticians, Józef Zieliński issued his texts in France (although they were written in Polish).[16] That such an important thinker in anarchism as Emma Goldman was influenced and felt the need to memorialise an event which ultimately was executed by a Pole shows the wide reaching effect of Polish anarchists, even if not immediately obvious, whilst the influences on the Proletariat party show the influence of foreign anarchists on Polish political life. Zieliński’s publication of his texts in France is a more obvious example of Polish anarchism crossing borders, though through practical execution rather than through influence.

In addition, Polish anarchism as a whole borrowed widely from foreign ideas, combining Polish nationalism, syndicalism from the Spanish CNT and French CGT, Sorelian ideas, concepts from a mix of conservative, revolutionary, and national-socialist movements in Germany, and even anti-liberal ideas from French fascism.[17] This shows not only transnational combination of anarchist ideas, but also combined transnational and trans-ideological mixing with philosophies that one would think are completely anathema to anarchist beliefs.

Moving forward in time, the Russo-Japanese War managed to establish transnational links between Poland and Japanese anarchists in an unlikely way. Bronisław Piłsudski, brother of the famous Józef Piłsudski who would ultimately become leader of the independent Republic of Poland from 1918 to 1922, was an ethnographer who studied the Ainu and other people in Sakhalin and Hokkaido, and having been involved in an attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander III had been exiled to Sakhalin.[18] On 13 November 1904, the Polish Socialist Party, led by Józef Piłsudski, began a demonstration in Warsaw’s Zachodna district to protest against the ongoing Russo-Japanese War.[19] The demonstration turned violent, with six civilians and one policeman being killed, but failed to spark off a general revolt.[20] In the same year, Józef Piłsudski had travelled to Japan to try to gain support there for Polish revolutionaries to take advantage of the war and end the rule of the Tsar. His brother Bronisław then became involved in with the Japanese cooperatist anarchists and worked with Russian émigrés in Nagasaki in publication.[21] Bronisław Piłsudski had a wide network of connections in Japan, and helped various Japanese activists meet each other, leading to translations of Russian and Polish works to be published in the Japanese woman’s journal Sekai fujin, as well as the bar that Piłsudski lodged in, Hakodetaya, becoming a hub for cooperatist anarchists.[22]

Although his attempt to start a general uprising failed (note, however, that following the events of Bloody Sunday, Polish workers and farm labourers did indeed become involved in the 1905 Russian Revolution),[23] it is clear to see that the setting up of this rather abortive revolt attempt brought Polish socialists into conversation with Japanese anarchists. Aside from the direct attempts to gain support from the Japanese for a Polish revolt, there is also the issue of the translation of Russian and Polish texts into Japanese, and one might suggest that Bronisław Piłsudski was an interlocutor of Russian and Polish literature in Japan. It could also be said that in this case, the transnational link here was far more relevant to anarchists in Japan than Poland, as Józef Piłsudski’s revolt simply failed to materialise, whilst his brother Bronisław Piłsudski was instrumental in creating links between activists in Japan.

Looking again at a slightly more recent time period, another important area to look at when considering transnationalism and anarchism in regards to Poland is Poland during the interwar era, and the region of Silesia in particular. Following the partition of 1772, Silesia was split between Austria and Prussia.[24] By the beginning of the 1900s, Poles in Prussian Silesia began to agitate in support of the wider Polish independence movement.[25] However, it was not until the interwar era that an anarcho-syndicalist movement truly emerged as a relevant force in that region. Whilst the Anarchististisches Föderation Deutschlands (Anarchist Federation of Germany) and the Freie Vereinigung Deutscher Gewerkschaften (Free Association of German Unions) had been active there prior to the First World War, and their leader since 1907 Franz Nowak (also known by his pseudonym “Gypsy”) had tried to centralise the anarchist movements in Silesia, it was not until the formation of groups such as the Freie Arbeiter Union (“Free Workers’ Union”, FAU) in August 1919 under the call of the Communist Party of Germany that the anarcho-syndicalists in Silesia organised into a purposeful force, with the FAU becoming affiliated with the Freie Arbeiter Union (Syndikalisten), otherwise known as the “Free Worker’s Union of Germany (Syndicalists)” or FAUD/S, in 1920.[26]

Initially, these groups held a strongly internationalist standpoint, with the declaration of principles of the FAUD stating that “Syndicalists reject all arbitrary political and national boundaries; they discern in nationalism only the religion of the modern state and reject in principle all attempts to obtain a so-called national state unity, behind which is hidden the government of the propertied class. They acknowledge only differences of a regional nature and demand for every ethnic group the right to be able to look after their own affairs and their particular cultural needs in their own way and in accordance with their own predispositions in agreement and in a spirit of solidarity with other groups and popular associations.”[27] Interestingly, much of the sentiments in the FAUD declaration of principles here seem quite similar to those expressed by Bakunin in regards to “real nationality” as seen above.

Furthermore, Dieter Nelles stated that “the question of national affiliation played no role in either the FAUD or the Schwarze Schar” (the Schwarze Schar, or “Black Cohort” being an anti-fascist combat group),[28] something for which they suffered. The FAUD publication Der Syndikalist noted that “On the German side they called us syndicalists ‘Polish shock troops’. The Polish nationalists, on the other hand, called us ‘German patriots behind a mask of international fraternisation’.”[29]

By the 1930s, anarcho-syndicalists in Silesia had chosen to accept the “patriotic-revolutionary mentality” of the Central Wydzial Zawody (“Central Trade Union Confederation”, also known as the ZZZ) as a fact of the matter, with Alfons Pilarski even advocating for the “recognition of ambitions for national independence” in regards to Central Europe.[30] It is important to note here that the world wars had the effect of strengthening the issue of nationalism in Poland to the detriment of those ideologies advocating for internationalism,[31] which may be a reason why the anarcho-syndicalists chose to avoid overemphasising their internationalism and chose to ride on the waves of the trend of patriotism instead. It also did not help that anarchists in Poland had to contend with a negative historical stereotype thanks to the lack of theoretic development under the anarchists in Russian occupied Poland.[32] Indeed, even by the formation of the Anarchist Federation of Poland in 1926, Polish anarchists were mainly just reiterating old anarchist concepts with little development on top of these ideas, with Rafał Chwedoruk going so far as to claim that “Polish anarchism repeated the sins of Communism: ideological dogmatism, sectarianism and hostility to the rest of the left”.[33] Ironically though, one might suggest that there was in a sense a certain innovation in the ideology of Polish anarcho-syndicalists of the 1930s, as they broke away from Bakunin’s idea of recognising nations as a fact and instead made the national question a central concept.

From the examples seen above, the transnational links in the anarchist history of Poland in the interwar era are mixed and transitory. To begin with the very genesis of the syndicalist movement in Poland, it began as a result of orders from the Communist Party of Germany rather than from an indigenous origin, making transnational links essential to this narrative. Furthermore, the strongly internationalist ideology of the early Polish anarcho-syndicalists would suggest an openness to foreigners and their ideas. However, beginning with the 1930s, the anarcho-syndicalist movement took a nationalistic turn, and there does not appear to be evidence to suggest that there was any injection of new ideas from outside during the later interwar period, especially as the Polish anarchist movement became ideological static. As such, it would seem that there was something of a paradox in that whilst the genesis of the anarcho-syndicalist movement in independent Poland lay in transnational links, these were dumped a mere decade later. This is not to say that such a turn of events was illogical; considering that public sentiment seemed to be against internationalist ideologies and focused on the question of the Polish nation, such a path would seem inevitable if the anarcho-syndicalist movement was to survive.

In conclusion, it is clear to see that there is certainly an anarchist history in Poland, and despite the fact that some argue that Polish anarchism was static and stuck in old, oft-repeated anarchist principles, there is evidence to suggest that there was a unique Polish anarchism. However, this distinct Polish brand of anarchism appears to have been muddled, drawing from many different influences, and hence difficult to apply outside of its homeland, where it still struggled to remain relevant. Yet it is precisely in this muddled approach that one can see the transnational influences in Polish anarchist circles, with the Poles drawing on ideas across the European continent to create their own form of anarchism. Aside from the transnational influences on Polish anarchism, Polish anarchists and insurrectionists had an influence on those outside of Poland, including such important figures as Emma Goldman, as well as being instrumental in the development of anarchist networks in other countries, as was the case with Bronisław Piłsudski in Japan. Nevertheless, it should also be recognised that transnational links in Polish anarchist history were by no means permanent or consistent, with the interwar era perhaps being the clearest example of a time where Polish anarchism appears to have become isolated and insular. Perhaps most significantly, Poland was an area where different anarchist thinkers could be brought into conversation with each other, as clearly demonstrated with Bakunin and Proudhon. Ultimately, it is clear to see that Poland has an anarchist history that is worth investigating, and that it is a useful way of looking at the different aspects of transnationalism in anarchism.

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Prichard, Alex. “Deepening anarchism: international relations and the anarchist ideal.” Anarchist Studies 18, 2 (2010): 29-57.

Prichard, Alex. Justice, Order and Anarchy: The international political theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2013.

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[1] Michał Burczak, “The Creation of an Enduring Legend of the National Hero: A Comparison of Tadeusz Kościuszko and George Washington,” The Polish Review 59, 3 (2014): 26, 29.

[2] Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, vol. 2, 1795 to the Present, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 12.

[3] Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson, “Introduction” in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, ed. Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 8.

[4] Davies, God’s Playground, 2:6.

[5] Alex Prichard, “Deepening anarchism: international relations and the anarchist ideal,” Anarchist Studies 18, 2 (2010): 42.

[6] Ibid, 44.

[7] Ibid, 46-47.

[8] Jean Christophe Angaut, “Revolution and the Slav Question: 1848 and Mikhail Bakunin,” in The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought, ed. Douglas Moggach and Gareth Stedman Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 426-427.

[9] Alex Prichard, Justice, Order and Anarchy: The international political theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2013), 61.

[10] Ibid, 63.

[11] Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, ed. and trans. Marshall S. Shatz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 71-72.

[12] Rafał Chwedoruk, “Polish Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism in the Twentieth Century,” in New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational, ed. David Berry and Constance Bantman (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 143.

[13] Kevin Morgan, “Herald of the future? Emma Goldman, Friedrich Nietzsche and the anarchist as superman,” Anarchist Studies 17, 2 (2009): 60; W.E. Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, rev. ed. (New York, NY: Collier Books, 1976), 145.

[14] Mosse, Alexander II, 146.

[15] Piotr Żuk, “Edward Abramowski’s concept of stateless socialism and its impact on progressive social movements in Poland in the twentieth century,” History of European Ideas, (2018): 1-2.

[16] Chwedoruk, “Polish Anarchism,” 144.

[17] Ibid, 152, 154.

[18] Sho Konishi, Anarchist Modernity: Cooperation and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 269.

[19] Robert E. Blobaum, Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904-1907 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 41-42.

[20] Ibid, 43.

[21] Konishi, Anarchist Modernity, 273.

[22] Ibid, 273-274.

[23] Blobaum, Rewolucja, 72, 115.

[24] R.F. Leslie et al., The History of Poland since 1863 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 3-4.

[25] Ibid, 35.

[26] Dieter Nelles, “Internationalism in the Border Triangle: Alfons Pilarski and Upper Silesian Anarcho-syndicalism during the Interwar Years,” in New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational, ed. David Berry and Constance Bantman (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 81-82.

[27] Ibid, 80.

[28] Ibid, 86, 87.

[29] Ibid, 83.

[30] Ibid, 89, 91.

[31] Chwedoruk, “Polish Anarchism,” 143.

[32] Ibid, 145.

[33] Ibid, 146-148.