The story of the enigmatic Jozef Pilsudski, the founding father of modern Poland: a brilliant military leader and high-minded statesman who betrayed his own democratic vision by seizing power in a military coup. In the story of modern Poland, no one stands taller than Jozef Pilsudski. From the age of sixteen he devoted his life to reestablishing the Polish state that had ceased to exist in 1795. Ahead of World War I, he created a clandestine military corps to fight Russia, which held most Polish territory. After the war, his dream of an independent Poland realized, he took the helm of its newly democratic political order. When he died in 1935, he was buried alongside Polish kings. Yet Pilsudski was a complicated figure. Passionately devoted to the idea of democracy, he ceded power on constitutional terms, only to retake it a few years later in a coup when he believed his opponents aimed to dismantle the democratic system. Joshua Zimmerman’s authoritative biography examines a national hero in the thick of a changing Europe, and the legacy that still divides supporters and detractors. The Poland that Pilsudski envisioned was modern, democratic, and pluralistic. Domestically, he championed equality for Jews. Internationally, he positioned Poland as a bulwark against Bolshevism. But in 1926 he seized power violently, then ruled as a strongman for nearly a decade, imprisoning opponents and eroding legislative power. In Zimmerman’s telling, Pilsudski’s faith in the young democracy was shattered after its first elected president was assassinated. Unnerved by Poles brutally turning on one another, the father of the nation came to doubt his fellow citizens’ democratic commitments and thereby betrayed his own. It is a legacy that dogs today’s Poland, caught on the tortured edge between self-government and authoritarianism.

First published in 1941, this is a biography written by the wife of Józef Piłsudski (1867-1935), the Polish statesman who was Chief of State from 1918-1922, “First Marshal of Poland” from 1920, de facto leader of the Second Polish Republic from 1926-1935, and Minister of Military Affairs. He had a major influence in Poland’s politics from mid-World War I onwards and was an important figure on the European political scene. Piłsudski was also the person most responsible for the creation of the Second Polish Republic in 1918, 123 years after it had been taken over by Russia, Austria and Prussia. A fascinating read.

An authoritative biography of Jozef Pilsudski, a key figure in interwar Europe regarded as the founding hero of a pluralistic and democratic modern Poland. After the first elected president was assassinated, Pilsudski lost faith in Poles’ commitment to democracy, led a military coup, and ruled as a strongman, leaving a complicated legacy.

Józef Piłsudski (1868-1935) is the heroic and controversial leader of the reconstituted Poland that emerged out of World War I. He was a revolutionary who defeated the Red Armies outside of Warsaw and although he never held an elected office, he placed his personal stamp on the development of the Pre-War Polish Republic. In some ways he was a visionary for the era (A Federation of Eastern States, free education, woman’s suffrage) he also was responsible for a dominant military presence and a coup against the elected government. Dr. Lenkiewicz examines the life of this hero of Poland based on original documentation and people who knew him.

The epic story of Joseph Pilsudski, the father of Polish independence. Although he is largely either unknown or misunderstood in the West, Pilsudski was a consequential historical figure whose defeat of the Red Army in 1920 preserved Poland's sovereignty and quite possibly spared Europe from Bolshevik revolution. This account of Pilsudski's life places this and other achievements in the proper context by providing sufficient background in Polish history and illuminating his interconnectedness with more well known historical events.

A scholarly study of Polish nationalist, field marshall, president, and finally dictator, J=sef Pilsudski (1867-1935), being an edited and abridged translation of Garlicki's major biography, which went unpublished in its entirety within Poland until 1988, a year before the final collapse of the comm

First published in 1939, Marshal Pilsudski presents a comprehensive biographical history of Józef Klemens Pilsudski (1867-1935). This book discusses various facets of his life and is an important historical reference work.