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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.
The history of interwar Poland comprises the period from the revival of the independent Polish state in 1918, until the Invasion of Poland from the West by Nazi Germany in 1939 at the onset of World War II, followed by the Soviet Union from the East two weeks later. The two decades of Poland's independence between the world wars are known as the Interbellum.
The Wilno Voivodeship was one of 16 Voivodeships in the Second Polish Republic, with the capital in Wilno. The jurisdiction was created in 1926 and populated predominantly by Poles, with notable minorities of Belarusians, Jews and Lithuanians. Before 1926, the voivodeship's area was known as the Wilno Land; it had the same boundaries and was also within the contemporary borders of Poland at the time.
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.
Poland has a multi-party political system. On the national level, Poland elects the head of state – the president – and a legislature. There are also various local elections, referendums and elections to the European Parliament.
The Folkspartei was founded after the 1905 pogroms in the Russian Empire by Simon Dubnow and Israel Efrojkin. The party took part in several elections in Poland and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s and did not survive the Holocaust.
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 16 November 1930, with Senate elections held a week later on 23 November. In what became known as the Brest elections, 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 general election in the Republic of Central Lithuania was an election to the Vilnius Sejm (parliament) of the Polish-dominated Republic of Central Lithuania on 8 January 1922. The new parliament was intended to formally legalize incorporation of Central Lithuania into Poland. Such measure was fiercely opposed by Lithuania, which claimed the territory for itself. The election was boycotted by non-Polish population and its results were unrecognized by either the Lithuanian government in Kaunas or the League of Nations. The elected parliament convened in February and, as expected, voted on 20 February 1922 to have the Republic incorporated into Poland. At the end of March 1922, Central Lithuania became Wilno Land of the Second Polish Republic.
The Belarusian minority in Poland is composed of 47,000 people according to the Polish census of 2011. This number decreased in the last decades from over 300,000 due to an active process of assimilation. Most of them live in the Podlaskie Voivodeship.
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.
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 5 November 1922, with Senate elections held a week later on 12 November. The elections were governed by the March Constitution of Poland, and saw the Christian Union of National Unity coalition emerge as the largest bloc in the Sejm with 163 of the 444 seats.
Yitzhak Gruenbaum was a noted leader of the Zionist movement among Polish Jewry in the interwar period and of the Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine. Gruenbaum was the first Interior Minister of the State of Israel.
The Polish minority in Belarus numbers officially 288,000 according to 2019 census. However, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland the number is as high as 1,100,000. It forms the second largest ethnic minority in the country after the Russians, at around 3.1% of the total population according to the official census. According to the official census, an estimated 205,200 Belarusian Poles live in large agglomerations and 82,493 in smaller settlements, with the number of women exceeding the number of men by 33,905. Some estimates by Polish non-governmental sources in the U.S. are higher, citing the previous poll held in 1989 under the Soviet authorities with 413,000 Poles recorded and the census of 1959 with 538,881 Poles recorded in Belarus.
The Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance (UNDO) was the largest Ukrainian political party in the Second Polish Republic, active in Western Ukraine. It dominated the mainstream political life of the Ukrainian minority in Poland, which with almost 14% of Poland's population was the largest minority.
Maksymilian Apolinary Hartglas was a Zionist activist and one of the main political leaders of Polish Jews during the interwar period, a lawyer, a publicist, and a Sejm deputy from 1919 to 1930.
Jan Stankievič was a Belarusian politician, linguist, and historian.
Jakub Wygodzki was a Polish–Lithuanian Jewish politician, Zionist activist and a medical doctor. He was one of the most prominent Jewish activists in Vilnius. Educated as a doctor in Russia and Western Europe, he established his gynecology and pediatric practice in 1884. In 1905, he was one of the founding members of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) in Vilnius Region. In 1918, he was co-opted to the Council of Lithuania and briefly served as the first Lithuanian Minister for Jewish Affairs. After Vilnius was captured by Poland, Wygodzki was elected to the Polish parliament (Sejm) in 1922 and 1928. He died in the Lukiškės Prison during the first months of the German occupation of Lithuania during World War II.
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland was a Jewish socialist party in Poland which promoted the political, cultural and social autonomy of Jewish workers, sought to combat antisemitism and was generally opposed to Zionism.
The Democratic Union Party was a political group in Romania, one of the political forces which claimed to represent the ethnic Romanian community of Bukovina province. The PDU was active in the wake of World War I, between 1919 and 1923, having for its leader the historian and nationalist militant Ion Nistor. It was formed by Nistor and other activists who wrote for the regional periodical Glasul Bucovinei, and, as a consequence, the party members were commonly referred to as Glasiști ("Glas-ists").
Leon Reich was a Polish Zionist leader, lawyer and politician.
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