Poland has not yet perished, so long as her reasonable patriots are still alive.*
What impression do you get when you read or hear about Poland’s politics these days? The most striking impression is that Warsaw is among the most war-mongering states within NATO and the European Union. Poland’s president and Prime Minister never tire of morally and politically pressurizing the West to intensify lethal arms supplies to Ukraine, to deploy American nuclear armaments to Poland (yes!) and to wage war against Russia cost it what it may. Poland’s former minister of foreign affairs Radosław Sikorski made the internet headlines when on the day of blowing up the NordStream pipelines he openly congratulated America for the feat, that is, he blabbed about what Americans had done to the whole world, and only later (obviously under American pressure) did he remove the congratulatory text from his twitter account, (just like a few months later Ursula von der Leyen redacted her video piece in which she in turn blabbed about the enormous human losses sustained by the Ukrainian army).
Polish people – as one publicist skilfully put it – cut off from Moscow’s lies and forced to rely on Ukrainian truth, mostly opened their homes wide to accept Ukrainians fleeing their country. Not that Ukrainians had not been present in Poland prior to the outbreak of the hostilities in the east: already before February 24, 2022, Poland ranked among the most refugee-friendly countries in Europe. After February 24, 2022 the number of Ukrainians present in Poland went through the roof: officially there are a million and a half of them, but in reality there must be far, far more: go and take a stroll in any larger Polish city with your ears wide open. If you know Russian and Polish, then you will be surprised to hear Russian (very rarely Ukrainian) spoken around.
Put an End to the Americanization of Poland
Poland’s foreign policy is American-oriented. In the years 2003-2005 the CIA received permission from Warsaw to have its secret prisons in Poland where Afghan guerrilla fighters and other enemies of the United States were interrogated and (who knows?) tortured. Polish politicians are deeply indebted to the West in general and to the United States in particular. The members of the two main political parties originate from the famed Solidarity Movement of the 1980s, the movement that fought against the communist regime. It was the time when the movement received huge support from Western countries, when many members of the movement stayed in one of the Western countries, which naturally created a relationship of dependency, indebtedness, and gratitude between the anti-Communist fighters and their Western sponsors.
The tragedy of Poland consists in its ruling circles being indebted to foreign powers. Before 1989, when Poland was governed by the communists, it was Moscow; after 1989, it is the collective West, with some factions of the former Solidarity movement leaning more towards Europe (Germany), and others – to the United States (or the Anglophere). Independent the Polish authorities are not.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, Warsaw has always been engaged in interfering with Belorussian internal affairs: Poland harbours a special TV station broadcasting to Belarus, and nurtures Belorussian dissidents. Of late, Warsaw has been deeply involved in Ukrainian matters, supporting all the Maidans there and the membership of Ukraine in the European Union and possibly NATO. Why does Warsaw behave like this? The answer to this question is partially easy to find, and partially it is baffling.
① Poland has always been at daggers drawn with Russia: there was a time when Poland lost its independence among others to Russia (the whole of the 19th century) and part of it was incorporated into the Russian Empire.
② Poland has always been psychologically, mentally and spiritually dependent on the West. The Polish aristocracy used to elect monarchs from abroad (Germans, Swedes, a Frenchman), while under the occupation of Prussia and Russia the Polish ruling elites pinned their hopes of liberation on France. It might come as a surprise but the Polish national anthem has a stanza devoted to Napoleon Bonaparte! Mind you that the French national anthem does not as much as mention him. This reliance on the foreign and western powers has took root in the Polish collective mentality. With Napoleon Bonaparte and France as a world power being gone, Poland’s political and mental dependence has been shifted to the United States.
③ Poland used to be a country whose area stretched from the Baltic Sea almost the Black Sea, and Kiev with the surrounding territory was part of this state! Naturally many Polish patriots – surely also some members of the current ruling elites – keep dreaming of restoring that greatness and they are likely to be lured by this prospect by their western guardians.
These are the reasons why Warsaw behaves the way it does. Yet, there are counterarguments that expose Warsaw’s policy as weird. What are they?
① Poland has always been at daggers drawn also with Ukraine. Though Ukraine used to be a part of Poland for centuries, the cohabitation of the two nations resulted in a series of bloody civil wars, with both sides butchering the members of the other ethnicity with a passion. Those hostilities did not cease when Poland lost its independence and they were revived the moment Poland became an independent country again in 1918. The appalling, cold-blooded Volhynia massacre of the Polish population perpetrated by Ukrainians took place in 1943, when Poland was occupied by Germany. In the post-war time a large number of Polish people were haunted by the recollections of Ukrainian atrocities rather than those committed by Germans. To this day the name of (Stepan) Bandera, the Ukrainian leader during the Second World War, evokes the same if not greater feelings of fear, revulsion and hate than that of (Adolf) Hitler. And still, and despite the fact that Ukrainians continue to venerate Bandera and his accomplices in mass murders and have not apologized for the Volhynia massacre, the Polish ruling circles and a large part of the nation are unconditionally servile to the Ukrainian cause. The fact that Russians did apologize for the 1940 massacre of the Polish elites in Katyn has not won the hearts of the Polish people. Why?
② Poland did not lose its independence in the 19th solely to Russia: it also lost its independence to Germany (then known as Prussia) and Austria (that is, a German state for all practical purposes). Yet, the Polish nation does not seem to resent it too much nowadays. Is it because one can go to Germany and earn good money with which to buy a Volkswagen or an Audi?
③ To make things even more complex, for some years now Warsaw has been raising the issue of war reparations that Berlin ought to pay Poland. What is going on? you might want to ask. Has Warsaw gone mad? The Polish ruling elites are openly hostile against an atomic power Russia, they have let in and continue to let in millions of Ukrainians who venerate Stepan Bandera, and to top it all they antagonize Germany, the economically most powerful nation in the European Union, the traditional ally of Russians with whom they deprived Poland of her independence more than once!
The political and military reliance of Warsaw on Washington resembles the reliance of Warsaw on Paris and London before the Second World War. Is Poland in for yet another catastrophe like that of 1939?
It was in 1939 that Poland participated in the destruction of Czechoslovakia as it tore off a small chunk of Czechoslovakian territory at the time when the German troops were liquidating the Czechoslovakian statehood. It is rumoured now that Warsaw would gladly tear off the westernmost chunk of Ukraine, territories that were once for a long time under Polish rule. No wonder then that the non-mainstream media in Russia and Germany (let me reiterate: in Russia and Germany) have begun quoting Winston Churchill’s words that Poland is the hyena of Europe.
By the way, to the Polish mind Winston Churchill is yet another Napoleon-like figure: though his name is not included in the lyrics of the Polish national anthem, he is venerated very much, although he sold Poland to Stalin, just like Napoleon had sacrificed Poland’s interests to make peace with Prussia and Russia, Poland’s archenemies. Never mind that: Poland remains devoted and loyal to everything Western, viewing the United States as her guardian angel, guaranteeing her independence.
Has the nation and especially its ruling elites failed to learn anything from the past? For the most part they have. The unrequited love for everything Western is very strong: it is a kind of infatuation. One can do nothing about it. Yet, there is a politically healthy part of the Polish nation that can see the writing and the wall. What is this writing?
① Poland is being pushed towards a confrontation with Russia, a nuclear power;
② Poland is turning its western neighbour – Germany – into an enemy;
③ Poland is being flooded by Ukrainians, which in the long run spells political and social disaster; and
④ Poland has become and continues to be the United States’ stooge.
These few people with healthy political views have started the Polish Anti-War Movement (Polski Ruch Antywojenny) and Put an End to the Americanization of Poland movement (Stop Amerykanizacji Polski). Their political platforms express an adverse reaction to the four points listed above. With the emergence of these grassroots movements all hell broke loose. The mainstream media began savaging their leaders and prominent members accusing them of – yes! you guessed it right! – being on Putin’s payroll and acting as the fifth column for Russians. Not that it is the first time that people with dissenting opinion are being silenced. Right from the start of the war in Ukraine a number of independent political newspaper outlets (like Myśl polska or Polish Thought) were shut down. A news outlet like the mentioned Myśl polska has a numerically insignificant readership and yet it had to be silenced! Why? To think of it: these measures against political dissidents are taken by the former fighters, followers or sympathizers of the Solidarity movement who once were shooting their mouth off about the importance of free speech and about how they, once in a position of power, would guard the freedom of expression!
The two anti-war and anti-American movements emerged out of the deep disagreement and disapproval on the part of Polish patriots of Warsaw’s policymaking. They were particularly incensed by a Polish spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs who publicly declared that Poland is Ukraine’s servant! What is that statement supposed to be?
Polish Anti-War Movement
The Polish Anti-War Movement states among others:
① “We are in favour of peace and a peace policy geared to good relations with all neighbours.”
② “Poland is being treated as a ‘strategic buffer’ for the USA, to which we do not agree. […] We do not agree to […] the participation of the Polish Army in Washington’s wars of aggression.”
③ “Unconditional aid to the Ukrainians is not in Poland’s national interest. Tolerating the cult in Ukraine of criminals such as Bandera or Shuchevych [one of the chief perpetrators of the Galicia-Volhynia massacres of approximately 100,000 Poles] and genocidal organizations […] is a disgrace and a slap in the face for every Pole.”
④ “The war in Ukraine is not our war. We strongly oppose the military aid directed by the government in Warsaw to Ukraine.”
Will reason and common sense prevail? With all the pro-American, pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian indoctrination and brainwashing probably not. The war hysteria whipped up by the Polish media of all mainstream political persuasions, the presentation of Putin as a murderer, the massive arms purchase of tanks, armoured vehicles and aircraft, Polish mercenaries in Ukraine, the millions of Ukrainians inside Poland, the sycophancy towards Washington and the general warmongering do not bode well for the Polish nation.
*Paraphrase of the first two lines of the Polish national anthem that run: Poland has not yet perished, So long as we still live.
