Geneza powołania Komitetu Polskiego w Sztokholmie w latach pierwszej wojny światowej

The aim of the article is to present the origins of the Polish Committee in Stockholm during the First World War. The author verifies all the findings that researchers in this field have made so far. Józefa Ledóchowska, an Ursuline nun, stated that the Polish Committee in Stockholm was established on the initiative of Aleksander Lednicki, President of the Council of Polish Organisation Congresses for War Victims and the Polish Committee in Moscow. Andrzej Nils Uggla presented a different view on the origins of the Stockholm Committee. He argued that the organization was established on the initiative of Polish emigration in Sweden, which originated from the descendants of emigrants who came to this country after the January Uprising, supported by national democrats. The above-mentioned researchers did not present the sources on which they based their findings. Based on primary sources stored in Swedish and Polish archives, as well as Swedish and Polish press, the author of the article confronted both aforementioned claims. A detailed analysis of the above-mentioned primary sources allowed to determine that the initiative to establish the Polish Committee in the Swedish capital was taken during the mission of Józef Evert, Vice-President of the Polish Committee in Moscow, who went to Stockholm. The mission took place at the end of November and beginning of December 1915. In Stockholm, Evert met the representatives of the ‘old emigration’, as well as the ‘new emigration’ caused by the First World War. The talks resulted in an offer made by Evert to allocate a certain amount of money from the funds of aid organizations operating in Russia to a charity to be established in Sweden. The goal of this new organisation was to help the Poles living in Sweden regardless of their citizenship.