ABSTRACT
Personalisation of politics is far from being a characteristic of older Western European democracies only: the phenomenon can indeed be observed in post-communist countries, in Poland, for instance. The biggest country of Central and Eastern Europe thus constitutes an interesting example, in part as a result of the singular political history and of the last democratic transition of the country. For 123 years, between 1795 and 1918, Poland lived under foreign powers and without its own State: some strong personalities appeared on the political scene during the period, as Tadeusz Kościuszko who led the insurrection of 1794 or Józef Piłsudski who played a crucial role in 1918 when independence was regained.
