Poland полностью

At the time of writing, the Sejm was dominated by two allegedly right-wing parties, differentiated less by their policies than by their style and rhetoric. As both were formed by a coming together of earlier parties and splinter groups, they lacked a proper statement of their policy fundamentals, not to mention the internal democratic mechanisms regulating choice of leader, internal discipline, formulation of policy and so on. They were ultimately defined by the personality of their leaders, and it was a matter for conjecture whether they would exist at all under their current names in five years’ time.

In contrast to the less than glorious trajectory of Poland’s political development since 1989, her foreign policy has been surprisingly intelligent and consistent. This was a vital element in the re-establishment of the Polish state, considering both the Poles’ former dominance in the east and the lack of any settlement with Germany after 1945, not to mention the problem of developing a new relationship with Russia.

Given the history of relations between the two over the past five centuries, the re-emergence of an independent Poland could not be viewed in Russia as anything but a challenge, one that raised a great many questions and posed huge problems for the ailing Soviet Union. Particularly as, in this area at least, Polish political thought had progressed radically over the preceding decades.

The question of how Poles should regard the areas of the former Commonwealth lying beyond Poland’s boundaries had been exercising minds since 1795. But it was the events of 1918-21 and the horrors of the Second World War that turned the issue into a moral one for thinking Poles. The consequence was a wide-ranging discussion on the whole question of what a future Poland’s attitude to Russia, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine should be. This discussion was carried on during the 1970s and 1980s, in word and print, in smoke-filled rooms and over the radio waves, both within Poland and in émigré circles, particularly in London and Paris, where the periodical Kultura, edited by Jerzy Gedroyc, led the debate. It was in many ways the kind of reassessment that former colonial powers were forced to make during the 1950s and 1960s, and it had three fundamental consequences. The first was that the Poles came to accept the necessity of taking territorial disputes and assumed wrongs such as the Volhynian ethnic cleansing of 1943 out of the argument. The second was that they grew used to treating the other nations as equals and their aspirations as legitimate. The third was an acceptance that the only way forward was through cooperation, at any cost.

Within weeks of its formation in September 1989, the contractual government’s Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski opened up relations with the Soviet republics of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, as if they were sovereign states. Within a year he was signing bilateral agreements with Ukraine, ignoring a clamour there for a Polish apology for Operation Vistula and one in Poland for a Ukrainian apology for the Volhynian cleansing. Relations with Belarus were circumscribed by its closeness to Russia, while those with Lithuania were complicated by the vociferous Polish minority there, which demanded territorial revision or at least special minority status. In response, Skubiszewski declared that Poland would never seek to revise her frontier with Lithuania and did not consider Poles resident in that country to be anything other than Lithuanian citizens. This attitude to minorities beyond its frontiers was in stark contrast to the irredentism displayed by other states in the area, notably Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia. But relations with Lithuania remained tense, partly because from the start Lithuanian nationalism had defined itself in opposition to Poland, and partly because Russia was loath to relinquish its grip on the area.

Poland’s relations with the Soviet Union were bound to be strained. There were large bodies of Russian troops stationed in Poland (they would not leave until the autumn of 1993), and Russia was still hoping to keep the country within its sphere of interest. Both sides trod carefully; Poland refrained from bringing up the question of the troops and the Soviets made a formal admission that the Katyn massacre had indeed been perpetrated by the NKVD, a gesture greatly appreciated in Poland.

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked a turning point. Poland was the first country to recognise Ukraine’s declaration of independence, and the second to recognise Lithuania. Matters were more complicated with respect to Belarus, which identified strongly with Russia, and where nationalists claimed large areas of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.