Unvanquished

Magnificent and comprehensive October 30, 2011 By Jan Adams Format:Hardcover This is an outstanding book. Hetherington has accomplished many different things in this fascinating and compelling history. He has created a Bildungsroman in reverse. That is, Pilsudski's character and deeply held convictions illuminated and forced an evolution in history and those around him, rather than the converse. Joseph Pilsudski, a complex and unique mixture of Poland's past, present and future, is brought to vivid and unforgettable life in these pages, in terms of not only his personal desires and accomplishments, but in the fierce interplay of his noble and all-too-human strengths and weaknesses with those of his beloved Poland. In order to understand Pilsudski, Hetherington says, you must understand Poland. He proceeds to prove it. By the time he has finished, one believes that both are truly understood. In addition, Hetherington unravels a complicated and lesser known part of the world, and shows us how we can never really understand the western Europe most of us are much more familiar with until we understand the eastern Europe that was shaped and definitively influenced by Pilsudski's dreams of liberty, human dignity, and a unified country. It is a remarkable and little known fact that, without Pilsudski, who most of us never heard of, all of Europe would have been infinitely more at risk of both Soviet and Nazi domination. We owe Pilsudski a debt that can never be repaid, and we owe Hetherington kudos for describing and explaining this remarkable man, his times, and his meaning to the world. This is a book for anyone who cares about history, freedom, heroism, and great writing.

Excellent Mini-Encyclopedia About Pilsudski Authored by a Non-Pole December 6, 2011 By Jan Peczkis TOP 1000 REVIEWER Format:Hardcover Very rarely does someone who is not Polish acquire a productive fascination with Polish issues and personages. Such is the case with the author of this book, and his interest in Pilsudski. Hetherington comments: "In many ways, Pilsudski was an embodiment of Polish history...Unfortunately, outside of Eastern Europe most people know little of Polish history, and much of what they `know' is wrong." (p. 15). This book goes a long way in correcting this problem!

Hetherington has assembled dozens of books and articles related to Pilsudski, and has interwoven them into one large volume about this key man in Polish history. The citations are presented as footnotes at the bottom of each page. This makes it very convenient for the reader to conduct further reading on a given subject. What's more, a valuable timeline is provided (pp. 701-702) of Pilsudski's life, and the book is rounded out with a profuse index.

In no sense is this book a dry historical narrative. To the contrary: The style used by Hetherington makes for enjoyable reading. For example, his description of Pilsudski's anti-Russian train robbery (p. 200-on) is sure to capture the reader's interest. Hetherington provides good background to those who may be unfamiliar with Polish history.

There are certain details in which the author's analysis is a bit on the superficial side, and the sources he cites sometimes cause distortions. Thus, for example, Roman Dmowski's views are not nearly as extreme as portrayed in this work. (See, for instance, the Peczkis Listmania: UNDERSTANDING POLISH STATESMAN ROMAN DMOWSKI AND HIS NATIONAL MOVEMENT.) However, the general thrust of the book's content is unambiguously factual and substantive, and the author's efforts to be objective are obvious. For instance, Hetherington brings up the Polish internment camp at Bereza Kartuska (pp. 661-663), but puts it in proper perspective. It was a drop in the ocean compared with the Nazi and Soviet concentration camps.

This book is balanced in the choice of topics presented. These include early Polish history, the early life of Pilsudski, the days of Pilsudski as an anti-Russian revolutionary, the resurrection of the Polish State, the pivotal 1920 Polish-Soviet war, the coup of 1926, Pilsudski's declining years and death, and Pilsudski's legacy.

IndieReader Review April 24, 2012 By Amy Edelman Format:Hardcover At the turn of the twentieth century, Joseph Pilsudski, a citizen of the Russian Empire, was one of many Polish patriots working to restore the the independence of Poland, a once-proud nation that in 1900 was divided between Germany, Austria, and Russia. He was publishing an underground Socialist newspaper and stirring up resentment against the hated Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia.

Pilsudski, having already spent five miserable years in exile in Siberia, had returned to his hometown of Wilno (now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania) and continued his subversive activities until being arrested by the Russians in 1900 and sent to the Warsaw Citadel, one of the most brutal prisons in the imperial Russian system. Pilsudski feigned insanity to get himself sent to a mental hospital in St. Petersburg, from which he quietly escaped to continue his seemingly hopeless fight to restore the Polish state.

It is this story - not Pilsudski's birth, not his heroic stand against the Russians fighting for Austria in the First World War, not his valiant command of Polish forces in the 1919-21 war against the Russian Bolsheviks, and not even his involvement in a 1908 train robbery to help fund the Polish underground's activities - that author Peter Hetherington uses to begin his story of the life of Poland's most important modern hero, with only Pope John Paul II and Lech Wa''sa approaching him in terms of importance.

The story encapsulates how Marshal Joseph Pilsudski (1867-1935), the father of modern Poland, refused to be defeated in his struggle to re-establish Poland as a country once again after it disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795 through partitioning by the Russian Empire and the Germanic countries.

Hetherington presents a sweeping narrative of Pilsudski, a leader of the Polish independence movement and the de facto leader of Poland in the first years of its post-World War I independence and from 1926 to 1935 as minister of war, that vividly brings to life not only a man but an entire people. As the reader will find out, Poland was once the most enlightened and most powerful nation on the European continent, with a devotion to freedom that rivaled that of England and an astonishingly democratic system of government in which kings were elected rather than entitled to power through dynastism. The uniquely Polish characteristic to live free was what drove Pilsudski not only to re-establish Polish statehood but to secure freedom for the vast region that the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth once ruled.

Hetherington tells Pilsudski's story in rich detail with direct language and a meticulous explanation of the politics of central and eastern Europe before and after World War I. There are surprising stories that most Westerners and most Americans not of Polish descent will learn for the first time. Pilsudski's successful repulsion of the Bolshevik offensive in the 1919-21 war destroyed Vladimir Lenin's dream of extending Communism to the West. Pilsudski was the only leader to stand up to Adolf Hitler before 1939, and he commanded a larger army than Germany at the time Hitler came to power; Pilsudski was more than willing to wage a pre-emptive war against the Third Reich. He played Germany and the Soviet Union against each other to keep Poland secure. Much of his achievements in founding and preserving modern Poland came against overwhelming odds, and he likely prevented World War II from happening sooner. To understand Pilsudski's refusal to bow to international pressures detrimental to Poland and his firm handling of domestic matters is to understand the Polish nation today and the roles of a Polish pope and a shipyard electrician in Gda'sk in ending the Cold War.

Hertherington's book does a superb job in illustrating Pilsudski's life without resorting to hagiography. He minces no words when examining Pilsudski's abuses of power after taking over Poland in a 1926 coup to prevent the rising influence of the center-right and his arrests of dissidents during times of crisis. Poland became more authoritarian, with Marshal Pilsudski running everything behind the façade of an elected government. Much of his actions in the last nine years of his life diminished his stature, but his devotion to a free and independent Poland never wavered. "Unvanquished" is an important and majestic biography as complex, as engrossing, and as important as its subject. It's required reading for anyone who wants to understand all of Europe as well as Poland.

Typographical errors include numerous references to the "Noble" Prize, the use of the word "trial" for "trail" twice, and, on page 675, the use of "initiative" as a verb instead of the correct "initiate," as well as a reference to flags being flown at half "mask" on page 691. Also, look out for punctuation errors ("the League of Nation's" role, etc.) These are only a few examples of the typos found; in a 700-page book, it's easy to forget and lose count of them. And the final paragraph on page 700 does not have justified margins. Also, like most authors, Hetherington speaks of "Russia" in reference to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was founded in December 1922 and of which Russia was a part; in describing Pilsudski's dealings with the U.S.S.R. from 1922 to his death in 1935, Hetherington refers to that country as Russia and the Soviet Union interchangeably. None of this should distract from this highly readable, well-researched (1,862 footnotes and a four-page bibliography) and important book, however.

Reviewed by Steven Maginnis for IndieReader