TWENTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE 299Map 14. The Second Republic, (1921-39)national unity which under the later Sanacja regime assumed overriding prior-
ity. In practice, this left very little scope for minority interests or for those polit-
ical groups, whether conservative or revolutionary, which were not impressed
by the nationalist fashion. The Catholic Church was pushed on to the fringes of
political life, whilst the Communist Party (KPRP), by boycotting the first elec-
tions, expressly preferred an underground existence. The army, in contrast,
which had played such a prominent role in the formation of the Republic, rep-
resented a political instrument of the first importance. In the era of the
'Colonels', which followed Pitsudski's death in 1935, it assumed a dominant
position.^12
The fires of Polish nationalism were fuelled by the fact that the ethnic minor-
ities were so large. According to the linguistic criteria of the 1931 census, the
Poles formed only 68.9 per cent of the total population. The Ukrainians with 13.9
per cent, the Yiddish-speaking Jews with 8.7 per cent, the Byelorussians with 3.1
per cent, and the Germans with 2.3 percent, made up nearly one-third of the