Pieracki, Bronisław

Pieracki, Bronisław, b 28 May 1895 at Gorlice, d 15 June 1934 in Warsaw. Polish politician and government official. One of the leading activists of the Sanacja regime, he headed the Nonparty Bloc of Co-operation with the Government. He supported ‘strong-arm’ tactics with respect to national minorities and the introduction of the so-called active policy with regard to the Ukrainians. In 1930 he directed the Pacification in Lviv and then (as minister of the interior) was responsible for similar actions in Lisko county in 1931 and in Volhynia and Polisia in 1932. In 1931 he made some concessions in economics and education to the Ukrainian minority. In June of that year he held several meetings with Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance leaders and Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. He was assassinated by H. Matseiko, an Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists follower. The assassination was used by the Polish government to justify the creation of a concentration camp for political prisoners at Bereza Kartuzka. The organizers of the assassination, with the exception of Matseiko, who managed to escape, were tried from September 1935 to January 1936 at the so-called Warsaw OUN Trial. A study of the trial by Zynovii Knysh appeared in Toronto (2 vols, 1986).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]