page_title: Józef Piłsudski
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Józef Piłsudski / Early life
context_page_description: Józef Klemens Piłsudski was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State and First Marshal of Poland. He was considered the de facto leader of the Second Polish Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs. After World War I, he held great power in Polish politics and was a distinguished figure on the international scene. He is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic re-established in 1918, 123 years after the final Partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia and Russia in 1795.
  Seeing himself as a descendant of the culture and traditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Piłsudski believed in a multi-ethnic Poland—"a home of nations" including indigenous ethnic and religious minorities he hoped would establish a robust union with the independent states of Lithuania and Ukraine. His principal political opponent, Roman Dmowski, leader of the National Democrat party, by contrast, called for a Poland limited to the pre-Partitions Polish Crown and based mainly on a homogeneous ethnically Polish population and Roman Catholic identity.
  Early in his political career, Piłsudski became a leader of the Polish Socialist Party.
context_section_description: He was born 5 December 1867 to the noble Piłsudski family, at their manor near the village of Zułów. At the time of his birth, the village was part of the Russian Empire... and had been since 1795. Before that, it was in the territory of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After World War I, they became part of Poland again, and were in Poland at the time Piłsudski became Prime Minister of that country. During World War 2, the village became part of the USSR. As of 2020, they are in the Švenčionys District Municipality in Lithuania. The estate was part of the dowry brought by his mother, Maria, a member of the wealthy Billewicz family. The Piłsudski family, although pauperized, cherished Polish patriotic traditions, and are characterized either as Polish or as Polonized-Lithuanian. Józef was the second son born to the family.
  Józef, during the time he attended the Russian gymnasium in Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), was not an especially-diligent student. One of the younger Polish students at this gymnasium was the future Russian communist leader Feliks Dzierżyński, who later would become Piłsudski's arch-enemy. Along with his brothers Bronisław, Adam and Jan, Józef was introduced by his mother Maria, née Billewicz, to Polish history and literature, which were suppressed by the Russian authorities. His father, likewise named Józef, fought in the January 1863 Uprising against Russian rule of Poland.
  The family resented the Russian government's Russification policies. Young Józef profoundly disliked having to attend Russian Orthodox Church service and left school with an aversion not only for the Russian Tsar and the Russian Empire, but for the culture, which he knew well.
  In 1885 Piłsudski started medical studies at Kharkov University (now Kharkiv, Ukraine), where he became involved with Narodnaya Volya, part of the Russian Narodniki revolutionary movement. In 1886, he was suspended for participating in student demonstrations. He was rejected by the University of Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia), whose authorities had been informed of his political affiliation. On 22 March 1887, he was arrested by Tsarist authorities on a charge of plotting with Vilnius socialists to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. In fact, Piłsudski's main connection to the plot was the involvement of his elder brother Bronisław, who was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor (katorga) in eastern Siberia.
  Józef received a milder sentence: five years' exile in Siberia, first at Kirensk on the Lena River, then at Tunka. While being transported in a prisoners' convoy to Siberia, Piłsudski was held for several weeks at a prison in Irkutsk. There, he took part in what the authorities viewed as a revolt. After one of the inmates had insulted a guard and refused to apologize, he and other political prisoners were beaten by the guards for their defiance; Piłsudski lost two teeth and took part in a subsequent hunger strike until the authorities reinstated political prisoners' privileges that had been suspended after the incident. For his involvement, he was sentenced in 1888 to six months' imprisonment. He had to spend the first night of his incarceration in 40-degree-below-zero Siberian cold; this led to an illness that nearly killed him and to health problems that would plague him throughout life.
  During his years of exile in Siberia, Piłsudski met many Sybiraks, including Bronisław Szwarce, who almost become a leader of the January 1863 Uprising. He was allowed to work in an occupation of his choosing, and earned his living tutoring local children in mathematics and foreign languages (he knew French, German and Lithuanian in addition to Russian and his native Polish; he would later learn English). Local officials decided, as a Polish noble, he was not entitled to the 10-ruble pension received by most other exiles. During the exile, he participated in a prisoner mutiny and two of his front teeth were knocked off when he was hit by the back of a gun – missing teeth is the reason for his characteristic, bushy mustache.
  In 1892, Piłsudski returned from exile, and set
caption: Piłsudski in 1899
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