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All 444 seats to the Sejm | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Turnout | 74.8% [1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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![]() Results by constituency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 16 November 1930, with Senate elections held a week later on 23 November. [2] In what became known as the Brest elections (Polish : Wybory brzeskie), the pro-Sanation Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government took 47% of the vote and 249 of the 444 seats in Sejm and 77 of the 111 seats in the Senate. The elections are known as the least free elections in the Second Polish Republic due to the Brest trial controversy.
The elections were rigged by the pro-Sanacja elements in the Polish government [3] [4] under the control of Józef Piłsudski (although Piłsudski left most of the details of the internal politics to others). [5] After the BBWR came up well short of a majority in the 1928 elections, Sanacja and Piłsudski left nothing to chance.[ citation needed ]
The elections were supposed to take place in May, but the government invalidated the May results by disbanding the parliament in August [4] and with increasing pressure on the opposition started a new campaign, the new elections being scheduled to November. [6] Using the anti-government demonstrations as a pretext, 20 [4] members of the oppositions, including most of the leaders of Centrolew alliance (from the Polish Socialist Party, Polish People's Party "Piast" and Polish People's Party "Wyzwolenie") were arrested [5] in September without a warrant, only on the order of the minister of internal security, Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski accusing them of plotting an anti-government coup. [7] The opposition members (who included the former prime minister Wincenty Witos, and the Silesian national hero, Wojciech Korfanty) were imprisoned in the Brest Fortress, where their trial took place (thus the popular name for the election: the 'Brest election'). A number of less known activists were arrested throughout the country. They were released after the end of the election in the same month. The Brest trial ended in January 1932, with 10 accused receiving sentences up to three years of imprisonment. Some of them decided to emigrate instead. [5]
In addition, the minorities were also discriminated against; [8] the government crackdown on opposition was especially hard in the eastern provinces, [4] [9] affecting the Blok Ukraińsko-Białoruski (Ukrainian-Belarusian Bloc) party.
On 24 November 1930, Time , in its coverage of the elections, wrote:
During the campaign which ended in Poland's general election last week, opposition papers were so mercilessly censored that some were reduced to printing pictures of Friederich Nietzsche (1844–1900) with the caption: He Died Crazy. Because Dictator Jozef Pilsudski has publicly made such statements as that "Parliament is a prostitute!" (Time, July 9, 1928) and because he somewhat resembles Philosopher Nietzsche in face and whiskers, his government promptly confiscated all Nietzschean campaign pictures, all papers in which they appeared. [10]
Nonetheless despite the governments pressure, the opposition members (from Centrolew and endecja ) still sat in the parliament, [11] soon in the new parliament they tried to pass the motion of no confidence to the new government. The imprisonment and trial of political opponents was a setback for Polish democracy, but no genuinely open trials of political opponents such as the one in Poland took place elsewhere in contemporary Central Europe [7] The exception was the 1933 Berlin trial of the Bulgarian communist Georgy M. Dimitrov. The success of BBWR, while certainly enhanced by the government crackdown on opposition, also stemmed from the fact that Sanacja and Piłsudski's held considerable support, and the Centrolew politicians were viewed as incapable in preventing the economic crisis (Great Depression). [12] The Centrolew coalition fell apart in 1931 due to internal conflicts.[ citation needed ]
The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I. The Second Republic ceased to exist in 1939, after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, marking the beginning of the European theatre of the Second World War. The Polish government-in-exile was established in Paris and later London after the fall of France in 1940.
Józef Klemens Piłsudski[a] was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State (1918–1922) and first Marshal of Poland. In the aftermath of World War I, he became an increasingly dominant figure in Polish politics and exerted significant influence on shaping the country's foreign policy. Piłsudski is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic, which was re-established in 1918, 123 years after the final partition of Poland in 1795, and was considered de facto leader (1926–1935) of the Second Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs.
Sanation was a Polish political movement that was created in the interwar period, prior to Józef Piłsudski's May 1926 Coup d'État, and came to power in the wake of that coup. In 1928 its political activists would go on to form a Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (BBWR).
Kazimierz Władysław Bartel was a Polish mathematician, freemason, scholar, diplomat and politician who served as 15th, 17th and 19th Prime Minister of Poland three times between 1926 and 1930 and the Senator of Poland from 1937 until the outbreak of World War II.
Wincenty Witos was a Polish statesman, prominent member and leader of the Polish People's Party (PSL), who served three times as the Prime Minister of Poland in the 1920s.
Janusz Jędrzejewicz was a Polish politician and educator, a leader of the Sanacja political group, and 24th Prime Minister of Poland from 1933 to 1934.
The Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government was a "non-political" organization in the interwar Second Polish Republic, in 1928–35. It was closely affiliated with Józef Piłsudski and his Sanation movement. Its major activists included Walery Sławek, Kazimierz Bartel, Kazimierz Świtalski, Aleksander Prystor, Józef Beck, Janusz Jędrzejewicz, Wacław Jędrzejewicz, Adam Koc, Leon Kozłowski, Ignacy Matuszewski, Bogusław Miedziński, Bronisław Pieracki, Adam Skwarczyński, and Janusz Franciszek Radziwiłł.
The Polish Socialist Party is a socialist political party in Poland.
Marian Zyndram-Kościałkowski was a Polish politician, freemason and military officer who served as voivode of Białystok Voivodeship in 1930-1934, Mayor of Warsaw in 1934 and 27th Prime Minister of Poland from 1935 to 1936.
Ignacy Ewaryst Daszyński was a Polish socialist politician, journalist, and very briefly Prime Minister of the Second Polish Republic's first government, formed in Lublin in 1918.
Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego was a Polish political party founded in 1937 by sections of the leadership in the Sanation movement.
Guided democracy, also called directed democracy and managed democracy, is a formally democratic government that functions as a de facto authoritarian government or, in some cases, as an autocratic government. Such hybrid regimes are legitimized by elections, but do not change the state's policies, motives, and goals.
Confederation of Independent Poland was a Polish nationalist political party founded on 1 September 1979 by Leszek Moczulski and others declaring support for the pre-war traditions of Sanacja and Józef Piłsudski.
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 4 March 1928, with Senate elections held a week later on 11 March. The Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government, a coalition of the Sanation faction - won the highest number of seats in the Sejm and 48 out of 111 in the Senate–in both cases, short of a majority. Unlike latter elections during the Sanation era, opposition parties were allowed to campaign with only a few hindrances, and gained a significant number of seats. The 1928 election is often considered the last fully free election in the Second Polish Republic.
The Brest trials were among the most famous trials conducted under the Second Polish Republic. Lasting from 26 October 1931 to 13 January 1932, they were held at the Warsaw Regional Court where leaders of the Centrolew, a "Center-Left" anti-Sanation-government political-opposition movement, were tried.
Wacław Kostek-Biernacki (1882–1957) was a Polish interwar politician and a popular fantasy writer as well as a Polish soldier of World War II, imprisoned and blacklisted in Stalinist Poland. In his youth, he was an activist in the Polish Socialist Party, and member of the secret Polish Military Organisation during World War I. Kostek-Biernacki joined the Polish Legions in World War I under Józef Piłsudski. He supported the May Coup d'État of 1926.
Walery Roman was a Polish lawyer and politician. His early government career was related to the creation of the Regency Kingdom. He was a supporter of Józef Piłsudski. In the aftermath of World War I he was involved in the establishment of Polish judiciary in the Suwałki region, and negotiations between Poland, Lithuania and Germany (Ober-Ost); in 1921 received the honorary citizenship of Suwałki. Voivode of the Polesie Voivodeship from 1921 to 1922, Polish government's delegate to Republic of Central Lithuania in 1922-1924 during the region's transformation into the Wilno Voivodeship. Participant of Piłsudski's May Coup of 1926; deputy to Polish parliament from sanacja's the Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (BBWR) party until 1935. He retired from politics afterwards, and continued his career as a lawyer until 1950.
Piłsudski's colonels, or the colonels' regime, dominated the government of the Second Polish Republic from 1926 to 1939. In some contexts, the term refers primarily to the final period (1935–1939), which followed the death of their mentor and patron, Józef Piłsudski.
Adam Ignacy Koc was a Polish politician, MP, soldier, journalist and Freemason. Koc, who had several noms de guerre, fought in Polish units in World War I and in the Polish–Soviet War.
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