Political Influence in the Self-Government of Rural Communes of the Kielce Province in the Years 1918–1939

Abstract

After 1918, country dwellers comprised majority of citizens of the revived Poland and a success of construction of the consolidated civil society depended on their political conduct. Social, economic and ethnic antagonisms appearing in the countryside as well as the weak degree of identification of peasants from the revival with the Polish state did not facilitate this task. Accepted political and legal solutions, including appointing the commune self-government as well as the announcement of the agricultural reform, were supposed to politically and financially connect the country dwellers with the Polish state. The country environment in general positively referred to the shape of the appointed commune self-government, all the more that a tradition of the collective commune had already existed in the Kielce province.