ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the cultural and psychological sources and effects of the role played by the military in Poland's politics. The national consciousness of Poles, formed under conditions of the military struggle for national liberation in the nineteenth century, has traditionally given a very high rating to such military values as courage, patriotism, and honor. The nation deprived of national independence and of its armed forces, learned how to admire its military heroes regardless of whether war was their profession or only a reason for which they abandoned their civilian interests. In the nineteenth century, the national independence of Poland as well as the liberty of all oppressed became the symbolic central values of national heroism. "Some historians," writes the prominent sociologist Jan Szczepanski, "are inclined to see the main cause in the political ineptitude and class selfishness of the aristocracy and the gentry, both of whom were unable to see beyond their class interests to the national interest.
