Skirting the Subject and the Facts. Remarks on the Volume ”Przyczyny i skutki przewrotu majowego 1926 roku [The Causes and Effects of the May 1926 Coup]”, Edited by Janusz Gmitruk, Published by the Museum of the Polish Peasant Movement, Warsaw 2017, pp. 435 + 12 nn.

Abstract

The coup d’état carried out by Józef Piłsudski, which took place mainly in the streets of Warsaw between 12 and 15 May 1926, is the subject of several in-depth studies. Historians analysing this part of Polish history have primarily attempted to reconstruct the facts, but also to interpret them. The outcomes of these attempts can be described as directly proportionate to the time and place of publication. Nonetheless, these are studies that have made a significant contribution to the state of knowledge about the subject. It is difficult to draw the same conclusion for the volume under review, for it is a concoction of about a dozen texts with varying degrees of convergence with the intended subject matter. Theoretically, the objective of the Editor and Authors was to publish a work that dispels the myth of the “great” Marshal Piłsudski. Admittedly, most Authors accept this assumption and attempt to prove this point. The problem is in the execution, however; I believe most of them have failed not so much in terms of factual knowledge (although I have noted a great many factual errors), but in their vision of how to tell the story. It is no great achievement to mechanically state that Piłsudski should be considered a harmful influence on the state; the point, however, is to prove it. And the one thing missing from this edited volume is exemplification.