Ignacy Ewaryst Daszyński (; 26 October 1866 – 31 October 1936) was a Polish socialist politician, journalist, and very briefly Prime Minister of the Second Polish Republic's first government, formed in Lublin in 1918.
In October 1892 he cofounded the Polish Social Democratic Party (Polish abbreviation: PPSD), a precursor to the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). In 1897 he was elected to the Austrian Parliament and remained there until 1918.
From 1903 he took part in several congresses and gatherings of the International Socialist Party, advocating for the independence and reunification of all Polish territories, as an integral part of the Polish socialist program. In 1912 he began a long collaboration with future Marshal and Chief of State Józef Pilsudski. He was appointed editor-in-chief of the Socialist newspaper Naprzód (Forward), published in Kraków.
Following World War I, Daszyński cofounded the Polish National Committee, and for a few days served as head of the Provisional People's Government of the Republic of Poland formed in the city of Lublin on 7 November 1918. On 26 January 1919 he was elected to the Polish Sejm, and was re-elected in 1922, 1928, and 1930. From July 1920 to January 1921 he served as deputy prime minister in a Government of National Unity led by politician and diplomat Wincenty Witos.
Though he strongly supported Józef Piłsudski during the May 1926 Coup, he later joined the center-left opposition. From 1928 to 1930 he was the third Marshal of the Sejm. When Piłsudski entered the Sejm chamber, accompanied by a sizable military escort, Daszyński refused to open the Sejm session. He ended his political career in 1930 when Piłsudski dissolved the Sejm.
In his journalistic and underground activities, he used the pseudonyms Daszek, Żegota, and Ignis.
Childhood Ignacy Daszyński was born on 26 October 1866 in Zbaraż in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (now in Ternopil Oblast), which, following the Partitions of Poland, was then a part of the Austrian Empire. He came from a not very wealthy family of the gentry, one that cherished patriotic traditions. He was the son of Ferdynand Daszyński (1816–1875), an Austrian clerk, and Kamila, née Mierzewska (1834–1895). He had three brothers, one sister, and older half siblings from his father's first marriage.
In 1872 Daszyński began his education in a school run by Franciscans in Zbarazh. He was a very good student because he already knew how to read and write and, as he grew up in a multicultural environment, he knew several languages. From childhood, he could speak Ukrainian and Yiddish and understood German. On 6 December 1875, his father died and the family moved to Stanisławów. To improve their financial situation, his mother leased flats to secondary school students. Two years later, he entered secondary school. During this time he earned money by giving his colleagues private lessons.
At that time, he was under the strong influence of his older brother, Feliks, who taught him how to be a good Polish patriot. Together they performed minor subversive actions. Feliks wrote an anniversary poem in honour of Maurycy Gosławski, a poet who fought in the November Uprising. Ignacy made copies of the poem and scattered them around the poet's grave. The Austrian police started an investigation and Feliks was arrested, while Ignacy was released pending trial. However, they were both acquitted. Feliks still did not abandon his subversive activity. He created a conspiratorial group that drew Polish and Ukrainian teenagers from the Stanisławów area. Ignacy contributed to the group by establishing its rules.
In 1882 Ignacy Daszyński gave a patriotic speech to students during the long school break. This brought his expulsion from the school and an end to his family's easy life in Stanisławów. Their financial situation collapsed, and they had to move to Lwów. Feliks began studying chemistry at the Lwów Polytechnic. Soon Ignacy and his mother had to move again. They went to Drohobycz, where he began his first job, as a lawyer's secretary (no school was willing to enroll him). During this time he came into contact with the working class for the first time. Soon he started to write for the leftist biweekly Gazeta Naddniestrzańska (Dniester Gazette), in which he wrote about the hard conditions of workers employed by the petroleum industry in Stanisławów and Drohobycz.
In September 1884, when his mother moved to Przemyśl, Ignacy was left alone in Lwów. Again he was refused enrollment at school, and so studied at home.
Politics and diplomacy
At that time, Daszyński's socialist political views were already taking shape. In 1886, he became a tutor to some friends of his parents. On 8 April 1888, he was allowed to pass the Matura (school leavers' examinations) without attending the classes. He received his diploma on 22 September 1888 and went on to study philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Thanks to his brother Feliks, he was in touch with socialists in Kraków. In 1889, he met Ludwik Kulczycki, whom he helped in delivering socialist brochures in Congress Poland.
Daszyński soon had to abandon his studies because of financial problems. He became a tutor again, working under a false name for the Gniazdowski family from Czarnostaw. On the night of 2–3 May 1889, he was arrested by the Russian police and spent six months in jail in Pułtusk because he was mistaken for his older brother Feliks, who was engaged in the socialist movement abroad (he attended the Congress of the Second International in Paris). When Ignacy was released from jail he was expelled from Congress Poland and returned to Kraków. While there, he was accused of engaging in illegal political activities, but was acquitted under a statute of limitations. He returned to university, but had to give up his studies after taking part in a demonstration.
After these events, Daszyński decided to emigrate to Argentina. However, before leaving Europe he went to Switzerland to visit his brother Feliks and his wife Zofia. His brother had tuberculosis and was taking a cure in Davos. After meeting his brother, he went to Paris to buy a ticket to sail to Argentina, but on 9 April 1890 he was informed of Feliks's death. After this, Stanisław Mendelson and Aleksander Dębski persuaded him not to emigrate. He decided to study in Switzerland and was admitted to the University of Zurich. During his studies there, he was supported by Mendelson, who gave him 60 pounds per month.
In Switzerland, Daszyński continued his brother's socialist activity. He was one of the founders of the Polish Working Class Association "Zgoda" (Stowarzyszenie Robotników Polskich "Zgoda"). He collaborated with Julian Marchlewski, Rosa Luxemburg and Gabriel Narutowicz. His greatest achievement at that time was the creation of order-keeping services that protected socialist demonstrations. The ceremony of moving Adam Mickiewicz's ashes to Poland turned into such a demonstration, during which Marchlewski gave a speech.
Daszyński returned to Poland in October 1890. First he stayed in Kraków, then moved to Lwów, where he created a management center for the socialist movement in Galicia. He collaborated with Ukrainian socialist activists and attended the founding meeting of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party (Rusko-Ukraińska Partia Radykalna), where he met the poet Ivan Franko.
Social Democratic Party Daszyński wanted to unite all the working-class movements of Galicia. Particular groups were connected with two newspapers, Praca and Robotnik; he himself was a Praca journalist. At a meeting on 7 November 1890 in Lwów, socialist activists decided to create an official and legal Labour Party. The next step was to establish a new socialist poverty-relief and educational association, Siła ("strength" or "force"), on 15 February 1891. When the organization grew bigger, its presence reached Stanisławów and Kraków. At that time, he was very active as a journalist and politician. He delivered speeches at many rallies, such as the election rally on 1 May 1891 in Lwów, and he published a political brochure, O partiach politycznych w Galicji ("On the Political Parties in Galicia"), under the pseudonym Żegota on 30 April 1891. After its publication, he was charged with affiliation with an underground organization, but, since the Socialist Party was legal, the charge was dismissed. In June he became a Galician delegate at the Congress of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria in Vienna.
From 16 to 23 April 1891, Daszyński led a delegation of Polish socialists to the Congress of the Second International in Brussels. He then went to Berlin, where he became editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper Gazeta Robotnicza ("Workers' Gazette"). He worked there for six months. When he was leaving Berlin, he was arrested by the German authorities on charges of publishing seditious articles. However, since they could not prove that he was in fact their author, he was released.
In early 1892 he went to Lwów, where he played an important role in the first convention of the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia (I Zjazd Galicyjskiej Partii Socjalno-Demokratycznej). He delivered a speech about the party's political program and tactics. On his way back, he was arrested again and spent ten days in jail in Kraków. On his release, he returned to Lwów.
At the Third Congress of Austrian Socialists he argued for the separation of the Polish Social Democratic Party from the numerous Austrian organizations emphasizing pro-independence clauses in the party's Marxist political program, which aimed to put socialism into practice by abolishing private property. The first steps to achieve this aim were to be democratization of the election procedures (liquidation of privileges of the bourgeoisie) and introduction of an eight-hour working day. His dream of a separate Polish party partially came true when, in 1892, the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna or PPS) was created.
Daszyński met and fell in love with Felicja Nossig-Próchnik, with whom he allegedly had a son, Adam Próchnik. Between 1892 and 1893, Daszyński lived in the Carpathian Mountains, where he was resting. In 1893 he moved to Kraków, where he became editor of the socialist newspaper Naprzód ("Forward"). In March 1893 he attended the Second Socialist Congress in Kraków. The police broke up the meeting, and he spent five days in jail. In October he moved to Lwów again, where he published the brochure Krótka historia rozwoju partii socjalistycznej w Galicji (od maja 1890 do 1 maja 1894) ("A Short History of the Development of the Galician Socialist Party (from May 1890 to May 1894)"). Meanwhile, he returned to Kraków and resumed editorship of Naprzód. Later he attended the Third Socialist Congress of Galicia and Silesia and published another brochure, Bankructwo demokracji galicyjskiej ("The Bankruptcy of Galician Democracy"), in which he strongly criticized the bourgeoisie.
In 1895 Daszyński's mother died. In 1896 he attended the International Congress in London. In the autumn of 1896, the Polish Minister-President of Austria, Count Kazimierz Badeni, introduced a partial reform of the electoral law, such that 72 members of parliament were to be elected through a form of universal male suffrage. Daszyński believed that this gave a chance for socialist ideology to become more popular, as well as a chance to fight for his ideology in parliament. Constituencies were divided in such way that they included towns and villages. He was a candidate in the Kraków constituency, where he received 75% of the vote (22,214 out of 29,758 votes). He was supported by workers, peasants, students, many of them Jews. In 1897, he became a member of parliament and in the same year he married the actress Maria Paszkowska in Vienna.
Austrian Parliament