Roman Dmowski’s concept of the eastern borders of Poland

The article reveals the content of the concept of the eastern borders of the revived Poland that was defended by Roman Dmowski, the representative of Polish delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the leader of the Polish national-democratic party. Roman Dmowski presented his conception in conversations with Polish politicians and in contacts with representatives of the Western powers. He proceeded from the premise that Poland should be a large, economically self-sufficient state that is capable to pursue an independent foreign policy. According Dmowski’s vision the great, strong and independent Poland should be a deterrent to Germany and maintain the strategic balance in Europe. Nevertheless, he believed that the territorial «appetites» of Poland in the east should be limited. He warned against repeating the mistakes of the past, when the excessive expansion of Poland to the east in the Middle Ages led to internal instability as well as weakened Poland’s western borders. Therefore, the politician proposed to include in Poland only the territories those provide the Polish people with an absolute predominance and allow them to govern the state as nationally Polish. He also called to consider Russia’s territorial interests in the Eastern European region those allowed him to propose the Polish frontier even little more advanced to the East than it was after the second partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1793. Dmowski rejected the idea of large federal state in Poland advocated by J. Pilsudski’s supporters. He believed that the federal system would weaken Poland due to the unwillingness of Lithuanians, Belarusians and Ukrainians to federal relations. Consequently Dmowski’s project was closer to reality than Pilsudski’s plan for the radical territorial reorganization of the Eastern Europe.