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The Union of Polish Cities in the Second Polish Republic, 1918–1939: Discourses of Local Government in a Divided Land

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2002

Abstract

The new Polish state was founded more than 100 years after Poland's partition by Prussia, Russia and Austria. The partitioned Polish lands had been included one way or another in the administrative structure of the ocupying powers, and the individuals who became active in urban issues in the new state were socialised by associations established by the partitioners. Poland became not only a arena for a meeting of Prussian, Russian and Austrian imaginations about local government but also a place with a great variety of municipal praxises as well. The author analyses different meanings of local government with special attention to those employed by municipal officers from Warsaw and Cracow within the Union of Polish Cities. There were strong regional cleavages in the Union, but the political development of the Polish state strengthened centralisation and the Union itself remained united.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The present article is based on a lecture delivered during a meeting of the Central European Commission of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences on 16 January 2001 and at the conference ‘Europe 1000–2000: A thousand years of civitas, communitas et universitas,’ CEU Budapest 27–29 April 2001. I would like to thank the participants of the conference and members of the Commission and Professor Bogusław Dybás from Toruń for their kind and inspiring critique.