Ignacy Moscicki (1 December 1867-2 October 1946) was the President of Poland from 4 June 1926 to 30 September 1939, succeeding Stanislaw Wojciechowski and preceding Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz.
Biography[]
Ignacy Moscicki was born on 1 December 1867 in Mierzanowo, Plock Governorate, Congress Poland. While studying chemistry, he joined the Polish leftist underground group Proletariat, and in 1892 he was forced to emigrate to London after the Czarist secret police threatened to sentence him to life imprisonment in Siberia. He joined the Polish Socialist Party while in exile, and after Jozef Pilsudski's 1926 coup, he was installed as the new President of Poland after Pilsudski refused to take office. He had a pact with Edward Smigly-Rydz to share power, although he opposed many of Smigly-Rydz's right-wing nationalist views. In September 1939 he was pressured by France to resign his office and go into exile in Romania, and he lived in Switzerland through World War II and until his death in Geneva in 1946.