Edmund Charaszkiewicz - Prometheism

Prometheism

Office 2 was also responsible for "Promethean operations," conceived by Józef Piłsudski. The idea was to combat Soviet imperialism by supporting irredentist movements among the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union. Thus the Prometheists' ultimate goal was nothing less than the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.

As Piłsudski and his adherents (the "Piłsudskiites") exerted a preponderant influence on Poland's government through nearly the entire interwar period, the Promethean agenda became integral to the operations of many Polish public institutions concerned with eastern European affairs.

After Piłsudski's May 1926 coup d'état, Section II intensified its engagement with Prometheism. The movement's leaders included prominent Sanation figures such as Colonel Walery Sławek and the publicist and Sejm deputy, Tadeusz Hołówko. Great importance was attached to Prometheism by Section II's successive chiefs, Colonel Tadeusz Schaetzel and Colonel Tadeusz Pełczyński, and by deputy chief Lieutenant Colonel Józef Englicht. The movement's intelligence operations were directed by Edmund Charaszkiewicz. Contacts were maintained with Ukrainians and Cossacks, and with representatives of several peoples of the Caucasus: Azeris, Armenians and Georgians.

In its prosecution of the Promethean agenda, Office 2 worked with official institutions such as the Institute for Study of Nationality Affairs (Instytut Badań Spraw Narodowościowych) and the Polish-Ukrainian Society (Towarzystwo Polsko-Ukraińskie) and its Polish-Ukrainian Bulletin (Biuletyn Polsko-Ukraiński), published from 1932. The latter Society included such experts on East European affairs as Leon Wasilewski, Stanisław Łoś and Stanisław Stempowski, and its founder and prime mover as well as the Bulletin's editor was Włodzimierz Bączkowski, a leading figure in the "Promethean movement." From March 1934 Charaszkiewicz was a member of the Commission for Scientific Study of Eastern Lands (Komisja Naukowych Badań Ziem Wschodnich) and the Committee on Eastern Lands and Nationalities (Komitet do Spraw Ziem Wschodnich i Narodowościowych) at the Council of Ministers. He had already become a spokesman for the oppressed peoples east of Poland who wished to deepen their national self-awareness and groom leaders for their liberation.

Since 1927, Wasilewski, Sławek, Schaetzel and Hołówko had been laying foundations for Promethean movements in Paris, Warsaw and Istanbul. They had been studying questions involving national self-determination and federative polities with help from academic experts at institutions such as the Eastern Institute (Instytut Wschodni) in Warsaw and an analogous one in Vilnius, as well as at an Institute for Study of Nationalities (Instytut Badań Narodowościowych) and at several publications.

Charaszkiewicz's deputies at Office 2 were two officers from the Third Silesian Uprising: Major Feliks Ankerstein (1929-39), who during that Uprising had commanded a group (from April 27, 1921, the subgroup "Butrym"); and Major Włodzimierz Dąbrowski, who had commanded group "G" in the Destruction Office (Referat Destrukcji).