TWENTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE 313that the sin in men's souls could be scrubbed clean by spit and polish.
(According to its opponents, it blended the philosophies of Nietzsche and Kant
— nietzsche in Varsovian slang meaning 'rubbish', and kant meaning a 'swin-
dle'.) Its main instrument at the outset was the so-called Non-Party Block for
Co-operation with the Government (BBWR) organized in 1927 by Col. Walery
Slawek (1879-1939) with a view to managing the forthcoming elections. In 1928,
having obtained the support of only one-quarter of the electorate in open vot-
ing, it lost confidence in proper methods, and in 1930 ensured a majority vote by
arresting its leading opponents or cancelling their candidacies. Thereafter, it
could not be easily challenged by legal means, especially when in April 1935 a
new Constitution was introduced, giving wide powers of discretion to the
President over the executive government and the Sejm. In the period after
Pilsudski's death on the ninth anniversary of the May Coup, it inspired the for-
mation by Col. Adam Koc (1891-1969) of the so-called Camp of Nation
Unification (OZoN) with a much more disciplined and exclusive organization
on the military model. The strident, and increasingly chauvinistic accents of
OZoN, and its leading personalities such as General S. Skwarczyriski and
Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz (1886-1941), reflected the tensions which were
growing in the internal no less than in the external sphere.^28
Throughout the Sanacja era, the effectiveness of the democratic Opposition
was gradually whittled away. In the first years, the main political parties of the
Sejm - the Christian Democrats (ChD), the National Workers (NPR), the
Peasant Movements (PSL), and the Socialists (PPS) - joined together to chal-
lenge the activities of the government-sponsored BBWR, and in 1929 to form the
inter-party alliance of the Centre-Left (Centrolew). In June 1930, fearing that
Piisudski might face them with a further fait accompli, they called a Convention
of People's Rights whose aims were no longer confined to parliamentary
manoeuvres:
The representations of Polish democracy, assembled on 29 June 1930 in Cracow, declare
the following:
WHEREAS Poland has been living for more than four years under the power of the actual
dictatorship of Jozef Piisudski: the will of the Dictator is carried out by changing govern-
ments: the President of the Republic is subject to the will of the Dictator: the nation's
confidence in the law of its own State has been undermined... and the people have been
deprived of any influence whatsoever over the Republic's domestic and foreign policy...
WE RESOLVE:
- The struggle for the rights and freedom of the people is not merely the struggle of the
Sejm and Senate, but the struggle of the whole nation. - Without the abolition of dictatorship, it is impossible to control the economic depres-
sion or to solve Poland's great domestic problems... - The abolition of dictatorship is the indispensable condition for preserving the inde-
pendence, and assuming the integrity of the Republic...
AND WE DECLARE: - That the struggle for the abolition of Jozef Pihudski's dictatorship has been under-
taken jointly by us all, and will be pursued jointly to victory;