Disappointment

Two years ago, when preparations began for the elections to the Warsaw Sejm, a firm belief prevailed among the Belarusian population of Western Belarus that better times would come for it too.

"Things have been bad until now because we had no defenders of our own in the Sejm," people thought, sincerely hoping that the entry of Belarusian deputies into the Sejm would decisively change the rightless condition of our land.

This very belief led the Belarusian peasantry to the ballot boxes and put into their hands the ballots with the numbers under which Belarusian names stood on the electoral lists.

The brilliant electoral victory of the Belarusians strengthened still more the people's belief that their lot could be improved through the Sejm. People went to their deputies with complaints and requests, sent resolutions and mandates in which they demanded schools in their native language, land, civil liberty and, finally, autonomy for Western Belarus, so that our own people might be master in its own Fatherland.

But month followed month, year followed year, and the situation of the Belarusian working masses under Polish rule grew harder and harder. The voice of the Belarusian deputies in the Sejm proved to be "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." The Polish state, through the lips of its "first citizen," President Wojciechowski, declared resolutely that the "born master" within the borders of Poland is, and will be, exclusively the Polish people. And life's practice has shown that such an "unwritten constitution," which turns the non-Polish nationalities into the bondsmen of the "born master," is much stronger than the written one, which solemnly proclaimed the equality of all citizens of the state, regardless of their nationality and faith.

And the hopes of an improvement in the rightless life of Belarusian toilers were dispelled, and faith in the Sejm, in the Constitution, in autonomy died. Nor could it have been otherwise: what would autonomy be worth, even if it were confirmed by that very Sejm which is convinced that the Polish people is called to rule over us, and that we must serve it as the manure on which "great Polish culture" grows and blossoms?

Not one point of the Belarusian electoral program has been realized through the Sejm. And now our deputies declare openly from the Sejm rostrum that our people has lost faith in Polish "democratism," lost faith even in that Polish democracy which knew how to say so many sweet words before the elections. There is no hope for a better future in present-day Poland, even if it were to grant "autonomy" to its "borderlands" (kresy)….

Exactly the same statements are made by the Ukrainian deputies in the name of their people. Everywhere there is complete disappointment, complete loss of faith in the possibility of a better life within the borders of the Polish state.

And so, instead of the quite moderate slogans — native school, land, autonomy — slogans are put forward from the Sejm rostrum that go much further than all the electoral programs and cries. The Ukrainian deputies speak of separating the Ukrainian lands from the Polish Republic: Pavlo Vasynchuk by way of a plebiscite, Voitiuk by demanding the withdrawal of Polish troops and the Polish administration and union with Soviet Ukraine. The Belarusian deputy Tarashkevich places his hopes on a political and social revolution in Poland.

We note these facts as "signs of the times," as concrete results of all Polish policy so far in the "borderlands." The dreams of the last "romantic in politics," Mr. Józef Piłsudski, that Poland would become a center which, by the force of its culture and the freedom prevailing in it, would attract the neighboring peoples, have been utterly shattered by real life. Real Poland, the Poland that actually exists, has turned out to be so far from the ideal Poland, dreamed up by the fighters for its independence, that disappointment seizes not only the oppressed "national minorities," not only Poland's traditional friends abroad, but also the best elements of Polish society itself. And above all it seizes the Polish working masses — Polish workers at the bench and at the plow, who represent a quite real force. And not "political romantics," but only this force, perhaps, will be able to build a Poland that will no longer be a "prison of peoples," but will settle justly and fraternally the question of relations with its territorial and non-territorial minorities.