Państwa narodowe czy federacja? Kwestia narodów Europy Środkowej w helweckiej myśli politycznej okresu I wojny światowej

Nation states or a federation? The issue of Central European nations in Helvetic political thought during the First World War

Abstract: At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Swiss political parties were formed. Basic press organs also crystallized, which became the official nationwide titles of particular trends. Regardless of internal discrepancies, most of these bodies pursued a fairly consistent propaganda policy regarding the future of multicultural lands after the end of the First World War. One of the issues that fit into this theme was the issue of the Polish-Ruthenian-Lithuanian borderland. The entire Helvetic public opinion was of the opinion that it was necessary to create a federal state in Central Europe, which was to be an antidote to emerging nationalist movements. The promotion of such a solution was related to the desire to disseminate in Europe its own, Swiss constitutional solutions, which had proven to function efficiently for half a century. In the conditions of the borderland of Central Europe, such a vision turned out to be unrealistic. Revealing nationalist tendencies and ineffective attempts to find a compromise solution between the representatives of the emigration of nations in question present in Switzerland led to the collapse of the idea of promoting the Slavic federation in the Helvetic press in autun 1918.