National Democracy (Poland)
민족민주당 (엔데차)
A Polish nationalist political movement and its parties, active from the late nineteenth century until 1939. It grew out of the secret National League (1893) and the National-Democratic Party founded in 1897, continued in the interwar Popular National Union (1919) and National Party (1928), and had Roman Dmowski as its founder and chief ideologue. From the Polish initials ND it was called Endecja.
In depth
The movement grew among a generation that concluded, after the failure of the January Uprising of 1863, that independence would be won through education and culture rather than arms. The secret Polish League founded in 1886 was renamed the National League in 1893, published the All-Polish Review from 1895 and had an official party, the National-Democratic Party, from 1897. Alongside Dmowski its early leaders included Zygmunt Balicki and Jan Ludwik Popławski. Unlike the Polish Socialist Party, which pursued armed resistance, the National Democrats advocated peaceful negotiation, and under Dmowski's radical nationalism and social Darwinism they turned against other nationalities, above all the Jews; antisemitism became an element of the movement's ideology. Its base was Greater Poland in the west, where it grew out of opposition to German Germanization policies, and its supporters were mainly the ethnically Polish intelligentsia, the urban lower-middle class and the young.
In the First World War, while Piłsudski's socialist camp sided with the Central Powers, the National Democrats allied first with the Russian Empire and later with the Western powers. Dmowski and Paderewski won international backing at the Paris Peace Conference, which let them share power with Piłsudski. After independence the movement worked through the parliamentary Popular National Union, and in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 and the Riga peace Stanisław Grabski and others opposed Piłsudski's eastern federation in favour of a nation-state frontier with fewer minorities. After the May Coup of 1926 it was in opposition to the Sanacja regime and radicalised through the Camp of Great Poland (1926) and the National Party (1928). In the 1930s the National Party demanded the Polonization of minorities and the exclusion and emigration of Jews, and organised or inspired boycotts, demonstrations and attacks; a group of young radicals split off to form the fascist-influenced National Radical Camp (ONR).
During the Second World War the National Party joined the coalition behind the government-in-exile and was closely linked to the underground National Armed Forces. Under the postwar communist regime most remaining National Democrats emigrated or resisted, though some, such as Bolesław Piasecki, collaborated with the regime.