The Activities of Polish Diplomacy in 1931
The Activities of Polish Diplomacy in 1931

Summary/Abstract: The events of 1931 augured a shift of values on the international political scene. This was noticed in Warsaw. On 7 March, as he inaugurated a conference of envoys of the Republic of Poland (RP) accredited to the Central European states (a meeting he had summoned himself), Undersecretary of State Józef Beck ventured a definition of a new phenomenon, which he called a “revisionism of the ways of international life” prejudicial to the established and observed “political convention” that had its roots in the Versailles-Washington order. He also emphasized that the previous year had seen “developments of great moment”—even if their ramifications, seen from the perspective of merely several months, appeared inconsequential. However, Beck had no doubt that in the future the impact of these developments would be noticeable. For the time being their effect was delayed by the international Great Depression, which was determining moves on the international arena and was not without impact on diplomatic activities of nearly all states, including Poland. Recently a volume of Polish diplomatic documents from 1931, a vast majority of which had never been published before, was brought out by the effort of the Polish Institute of International Affairs. These materials provide answers to lingering questions concerning international issues and the activity of Polish diplomacy in that year.

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