TWENTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE 315... There are many signs that the Sanacja camp, burdened with the consequences of the
violence of 1926 and devoid of any legitimizing idea, is beginning to tremble and to fall
apart. Today, the so-called ruling 'elite' of the state is drawn from a clique of colonels, who
head one of the most stupid and harmful dictatorships imaginable, but who now see that
the masses are not there simply to obey and to carry out orders... The demonstration in
Zamosc, impressive by virtue both of its mood and of its numbers (15,000)... shows that
'the strong government' is no longer in control of the situation...^30
However, the Sanacja regime did not collapse, even after Pilsudski's death. In
1937-8, when the Merges Front was formally organized with the participation
of Paderewski, Sikorski, Witos, Korfanty, and Jozef Haller, it was more con-
cerned with foreign policy than with domestic affairs; and it decisively
influenced neither.
No one can claim that the policies of the Second Republic were an unbounded
success. Parliamentary democracy collapsed after only eight years, and was
never replaced by any consistent system. The arbitrary acts of the Sanacja
regime were no more edifying than the political squabbles which preceded them.
The May Coup, in the words of one bold spirit, must be likened to 'an attack by
bandits on a lunatic asylum'.^31
Violence was never far from the surface. The assassination in December 1922 of
the first constitutional President, Gabriel Narutowicz (1865-1922) was followed
by a series of notorious political murders, including that of the Soviet ambas-
sador, Volkov, in 1927. In the 1930s, conditions were clearly deteriorating. The
minorities were increasingly pressurized. The repression of Ukrainians in the
countryside coincided with the growing threat to Jewish' security in the towns.
Antagonisms could be calmed neither by police'action nor by publicity cam-
paigns favouring official 'anti-anti-Semitism'. Agrarian reform gradually lost
momentum. The peasant's lot was barely improved. Economic and industrial
reform produced far too little, and much too late. Financial stability was
achieved at the cost of low investment and high unemployment. State planning
pointed the way to a future which had no time to develop. The mood of the
working class was sullen, and its earning power derisory. Foreign confidence in
Poland was low, and foreign capital notably lacking. All in all, social resources
were strained to the utmost merely to keep pace with the soaring birth-rate,
which pushed the Republic's population from 26.3 millions in 1919 to 34.8 mil-
lions in 1939. The one point of success, in education, proved a mixed blessing.
Ignorant people had been docile. People who learned to read, also learned to be
discontented. By the end of the 1930s, the radicalization of the Polish masses was
already well advanced. If the Second Republic had not been foully murdered in
1939 by external agents, there is little doubt that it would soon have sickened
from internal causes.
At the same time, one needs to keep these failures in proportion. It is essential
to realize the enormities of the problems, and to judge Poland in the context of
contemporary Europe. If there was hardship and injustice in Poland, there was
no mass starvation or mass killing as in Russia, no resort to the bestial methods