Prometheism or Prometheanism () was a political project initiated by Józef Piłsudski, a principal statesman of the Second Polish Republic from 1918 to 1935. Its aim was to weaken the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, by supporting nationalist independence movements among the major non-Russian peoples that lived within the borders of Russia and the Soviet Union.Richard Woytak, "The Promethean Movement in Interwar Poland", East European Quarterly, vol. XVIII, no. 3 (September 1984), pp. 273–278.
Between the World Wars, Prometheism and Piłsudski's other concept, that of an "Intermarium federation", constituted two complementary geopolitical strategies for him and for some of his political heirs."Pilsudski hoped to build not merely a Polish nation state but a greater federation of peoples under the aegis of Poland which would replace Russia as the great power of Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine were all to be included. His plan called for a truncated and vastly reduced Russia, a plan which excluded negotiations prior to military victory." Richard K. Debo, Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918–1992, Google Print, p. 59, McGill-Queen's Press, 1992, .
Sources of Prometheism
Piłsudski's elaboration of Prometheism had been aided by an intimate knowledge of the Russian Empire gained while he was exiled by its government to eastern Siberia. The term "Prometheism" was suggested by the Greek myth of Prometheus, whose gift of fire to mankind, in defiance of Zeus, came to symbolize enlightenment and resistance to despotic authority.In ethics, "Prometheism" is an individual's voluntary subordination of self to the good of a larger social group or even all mankind. This altruistic concept relates to the myth of Prometheus, and denotes rebellion against divine decrees and natural forces, and self-sacrifice for the sake of the general good. In literature, the Promethean stance is exemplified by Kordian in Juliusz Słowacki's Romantic drama Kordian (1834); by Konrad in Part III of Adam Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve (); by Dr. Judym in Stefan Żeromski's Homeless People (, 1899); by the Biblical Adam in Jan Kasprowicz's (Latin for Day of Wrath); and by Dr. Rieux in Albert Camus's The Plague (1947).
A brief history of Poland's Promethean endeavor was set down on February 12, 1940, by Edmund Charaszkiewicz, a Polish military intelligence officer whose responsibilities from 1927 until the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939 had included the coordination of Poland's Promethean program. Charaszkiewicz wrote his paper in Paris after escaping from a Poland overrun by Nazi Germany.Charaszkiewicz, 2000, pp. 14–16, 56, 76, 81.
A key excerpt from Piłsudski's 1904 memorandum declared:
The Promethean movement, according to Charaszkiewicz, took its genesis from a national renaissance that began in the late 19th century among many peoples of the Russian Empire. That renaissance stemmed from a social process that led in Russia to revolution. Nearly all the socialist parties created in the ethnically non-Russian communities assumed a national character and placed independence at the tops of their agendas: this was so in Poland, Ukraine, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia and Azerbaijan. These socialist parties would take the lead in their respective peoples' independence movements. While all these countries harbored organizations of a purely national character that likewise championed independence, the socialist parties, precisely because they associated the fulfilment of their strivings for independence with the social movement in Russia, showed the greater dynamism. Ultimately the peoples of the Baltic Sea basin—Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—won and, until World War II, all kept their independence. The peoples of the Black and Caspian Sea basins—Ukraine, Don Cossacks, Kuban, Crimea, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Northern Caucasus—emancipated themselves politically in 1919–1921 but then lost their independence to Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War.Charaszkiewicz, 2000, pp. 56–57.
In 1917–1921, according to Charaszkiewicz, as the nations of the Baltic, Black and Caspian Sea basins were freeing themselves from Russia's tutelage, Poland was the only country that worked actively together with those peoples. In these efforts, Poland met with opposition from the western coalition; the latter backed the (anticommunist) White Russians in their endeavor to rebuild the erstwhile Russian Empire. At the same time, according to Charaszkiewicz, Germany, with her occupation forces, strengthened her influences in Lithuania and Latvia, manipulated Ukraine's Lt. Gen. Pavlo Skoropadsky toward Ukrainian federation with a possible future non-Bolshevik Russia, and attempted a German hegemony in the Caucasus against the political interests of Germany's ally, Turkey. According to Charaszkiewicz, Germany's true intentions were at last made manifest in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, concluded with the Bolsheviks in 1918.Charaszkiewicz, 2000, p. 57.
However, the secret organisation Aufbau established in Munich in 1920 by a section of the white Russian émigrés in Germany developed far-ranging plans that had similar aims to the Promethean movement, only aligned with the economic interests of Germany in the east. Aufbau's chief political allies were Erich Ludendorff and Adolf Hitler as the leaders of the incipient Nazi movement. Aufbau sought to overthrow the Bolshevik government through military intervention and to break up Bolshevik Russia into a number of National Socialist successor states, including the Ukraine-led Black Sea League, similar entities in the Baltic and Siberia, and a rump Russia. The Ukrainian representative in Aufbau was Ivan Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia, former chancellor of the anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian State, head of the Ukrainian National Cossack Organization. In 1921 Aufbau secured two million marks of funding for Vasyl Vyshyvanyi's army in return for trading and industrial concessions to Germany in the future Ukrainian state and recruitment began, while Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia joined Vyshyvanyi's Supreme Council in Vienna. An offensive in Ukraine was to be combined with a new undertaking in the Baltics along the lines of the 1919 Latvian Intervention by the West Russian Volunteer Army of Pavel Bermondt-Avalov. A Russian nationalist coup against the "Jews" (i.e. the Bolsheviks) to establish a "Russian national farmers' dictatorship" was planned for the summer of 1923 under the leadership of Vasily Biskupsky and Pyotr Krasnov. By 1923, the Munich leader of the Military Organization of Eastern Galicia, Bohdan Hustevych, was receiving military training from Ernst Röhm, and Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia proclaimed that the "time of a productive National Socialist revolution ... has drawn near". The plans were thwarted financially by the internal divisions within the White Russian emigration, as the Supreme Monarchical Council of Nikolai Markov favoured a Great Russian restoration with French backing, and refused to work with either Bermondt-Avalov or Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia. Further development of the Aufbau plans was delayed by Hitler's failure to seize power in Germany in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, but in 1933 Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia moved to Berlin at Hitler's invitation and his collaboration with Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg intensified again. He supported Rosenberg's plans for a semi-colonial Ukrainian satellite state and pledged the German-trained Ukrainian Cossack forces fully to the Nazi project. Rosenberg himself was in charge of aiding the Ukrainian independence movement in Soviet Ukraine in its propaganda and terrorist activities.
The German support for the right-wing Ukrainian aspirations for national independence stood in direct opposition to the Polish Promethean plans, as it entailed the creation of a German–Ukrainian border through the destruction of the Polish state. In Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia's words, the cause of Ukrainian freedom was bound to eastward German expansion and directed "against [Soviet] Russia, against Poland, and against France". His activities were monitored closely by French and Polish military intelligence.
Charaszkiewicz argues that Germany's approach departed from the basic ideological tenets of Prometheism as it constituted "an elastic, opportunistic platform for diversion, amenable to exploitation for current German political purposes in any direction". He emphasizes that in this field there were never any organizational or ideological ties between Poland and Germany. The legitimate national representatives of the Promethean émigrés allied with Poland showed a marked political loyalty to Poland.Charaszkiewicz, 2000, pp. 57–58.
Principles
Throughout the years 1918–1939, according to Charaszkiewicz, the Polish Promethean leadership consistently observed several principles. The purpose of the Promethean enterprise was to liberate from imperialist Russia, of whatever political stripe, the peoples of the Baltic, Black and Caspian Sea basins and to create a series of independent states as a common defensive front against Russian aggression. Each Promethean party respected the political sovereignty of the others. Any disputes between Promethean parties were placed in abeyance pending the liberation of the several parties from Russia. By mutual consent of the Polish and Ukrainian Prometheans (if occasionally less than whole-heartedly on the Petlurists' part), largely Ukrainian-populated areas of southeastern Poland were treated as an internal Polish sphere of interests and were off-bounds to Ukrainian Promethean organizing.Charaszkiewicz, 2000, pp. 58–59.
The Polish Promethean leadership, writes Charaszkiewicz, regarded the other Promethean nationalities as equal partners in the common struggle against Russian imperialism. Contrary to what has sometimes been thought, according to Charaszkiewicz the Polish General Staff did not treat the various Promethean émigré communities merely as political instruments to be exploited for ad hoc purposes of diversion.Charaszkiewicz, 2000, p. 59.
Prometheism had no organizational or political backing in any Polish political party of the left, right or center. Within the Piłsudskiite camp [] itself, Prometheism found many opponents. Paradoxically, among young people in Poland's National Democratic Party—arch-rivals of the Piłsudskiites []—and some other opposition youth organizations, the Promethean question was spontaneously taken up and gained advocates.
The history of Poland's interwar collaboration with the "Promethean peoples" falls into five periods.
First period (1918–1921)
In the first period (1918–1921), Poland established her new eastern boundaries in wars with Soviet Russia and Ukraine; her borders with Germany, in the Poznań and Silesian uprisings, and in plebiscite operations in Warmia and Mazury; and her southern borders in plebiscite operations and a brief war with Czechoslovakia over disputed areas of Cieszyn Silesia, Spisz and Orawa.
In the Baltic basin, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia emerged as independent states. Poland was among the first countries to extend them recognition, although Polish-Lithuanian relations were strained following the Polish-Lithuanian War.
In the Black and Caspian Sea basins, this period saw the emancipation of Ukraine, Crimea, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Don, Kuban and Northern Caucasus. Signs of national renaissance also appeared in Idel-Ural and Turkestan; there, however, it was limited to the calling of "National Assemblies".Charaszkiewicz, 2000, pp. 59–60.