The Battle of Warsaw, 1920
He stopped the Red Army's advance west towards Germany and Europe.
AgataGro — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Fallaner — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Fallaner — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Fallaner — CC BY-SA 4.0
A modern museum in the town of Sulejówek east of Warsaw, built around the house where Józef Piłsudski lived, the founder of modern independent Poland. Piłsudski is a figure without whom Poland cannot be understood. Poland vanished from the map of Europe for a hundred and twenty-three years after Russia, Prussia and Austria partitioned it in the eighteenth century. Piłsudski built a Polish military force during the First World War, and when all three empires collapsed together in 1918 he declared the state and became its head. Then came the decisive moment: in 1920 the Red Army advanced west towards Warsaw, intending to carry the revolution into Germany and Europe. Piłsudski stopped it at the Battle of Warsaw with a flanking manoeuvre, a battle historians count among the most consequential of the twentieth century. His legacy is complicated: he led a coup in 1926 and ruled Poland with near-absolute practical authority until his death in 1935. The museum does not ignore that. Practical points: entry is ticketed, the building is modern and the display interactive — allow two to three hours. Sulejówek is about twenty kilometres east of Warsaw by suburban train.
He stopped the Red Army's advance west towards Germany and Europe.
1918 made possible what had not been: a state returning after 125 years.
He led a coup in 1926 and ruled near-absolutely — the museum says so.
Sulejówek, east of Warsaw
Three partitions between 1772 and 1795 in which Russia, Prussia and Austria divided the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until it ceased to exist. Poland was not a state again until 1918. Across those centuries the language was banned in places, uprisings were crushed and many emigrated. That explains why questions of independence and sovereignty sit so centrally in Polish political culture to this day.
If modern Polish history interests you, yes — it is among the best-presented recent Polish museums and far quieter than the Rising Museum. The suburban train takes about forty minutes. With two days in Warsaw, the Rising Museum and POLIN come first.
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