The writer of the
Polish national epic, one of the last epic poems written in Europe, was born in present
day Belarus and wrote in the first line of his poem Pan Tadeusz:
Litwo, Ojczyzno moja!
ty jesteś jak zdrowie; [Lithuania, my fatherland! You are like health]
From this you can
deduce everything that is important about Poland history.
Adam Mickiewicz was
Polish, but was not born within the boundaries of present day Poland. The
countries of Central Europe expand and contract as history passes. A German
Kafka could live in what is now the Czech Republic. He was not Czech. A
Hungarian Liszt may not have spoken a word of Hungarian and was born in present
day Austria, yet somehow Hungary claims him even if his parents were German.
All is a muddle and a melting pot that did not melt difference.
Poland begins sometime
around the year 960 AD and covers a territory not dissimilar to that of today.
Who were the Poles?
They were the people who worked the land and tilled the fields [pola].
The Slavs who had a
certain unity of language and perhaps identity, gradually separated into Rus’,
Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians and other Southern Slavs. The greatest division
perhaps was that the West Slavs looked to Rome while the East Slavs looked
first to Byzantium and then when Constantinople fell to the Third Rome that
became the capital of Holy Rus. It still is the capital and wants desperately
to unite all the lands of Rus whether they want to be united or not.
But Poland was never
Rus. From the beginning what made someone a Pole was that he was not Rus. Later
the distinction was because a Pole was Catholic while a Rus was Orthodox. Later
still the difference perhaps was because the Pole looked westwards to Rome and
beyond Rome to everything that was of the West, while the Rus never quite
managed to be part of Europe even if he tried hard.
But where is Poland? At
various historical periods Poland has extended as far North as present day
Estonia, as far East as Ukraine and certain parts of Russia and as far South as
the Black Sea.
So what is it to be Pole? Is it someone from
Smolensk, Riga, Vilnius or from the Black Sea Coast? All of these place were
once at least in some way part of Poland. Then again at another time there was
no nation state called Poland. It looks rather like a part of Eastern Europe
that is both everywhere and nowhere.
The Polish Lithuanian
Commonwealth came about because of a marriage. Jogaila Grand Duke of Lithuania
(1377–1434) married Jadwiga of Poland (ca 1373-1399). The best university in
Poland “Jagiellonian” is still named after the dynasty that resulted from their
“love”.
This was an Empire to
rival that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but contained the same weaknesses
that were to eventually bring about the latter’s destruction in 1918. Austria-Hungary
was partitioned because it contained far more than merely Austrians and
Hungarians, but at least Austria and Hungary remained and survived the
destruction of their Empire. Neither Poland, nor Lithuania would survive the
fact that their commonwealth contained too many people who were neither Polish,
nor Lithuanian.
How many different
peoples made up the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth? Besides Poles and
Lithuanians, there were Germans, Jews, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians
and Ruthenians (i.e. East Slavic speakers who spoke the languages which became
modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian). The Commonwealth was more tolerant
than the average realm at the time. It was known as paradisus judaeorum. While
other European countries expelled Jews, Poland welcomed them and treated them
better than anywhere else. But this tolerance saved neither the Poles nor the
Jews.
The weakness of the
Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth ultimately can be traced to the fact that it was
Polish and Lithuanian. A Lithuanian can marry a Pole, but unless they learn
each other’s language they can’t understand each other. The distance between
Polish and Lithuanian may not be as much as between German and Hungarian. There
was a proto Balto-Slavic language which the ancestors of both Poles and
Lithuanians spoke, but they had diverged to such an extent that this language
family would only be apparent to linguists.
The Commonwealth never
really achieved unity. It was split down the middle into a Polish part and a
Lithuanian part. Different customs and laws applied. Different identities were
maintained. It is this that led to the partitions. Lithuanians and all of the
other identities never really had any loyalty to Poland, nor did Poles really
have any loyalty to them. A Pole did not much mind a partition that sold
Lithuania down the Volga, nor did a Lithuanian mind if Poland was sold down the
Rhine or the Danube. This is why both Poles, Lithuanians and the others who
made up their Commonwealth were willing to betray each other and give up their
Empire for temporary gain. No-one quite had a homeland because their ultimate
loyalty was to the language that they spoke and the people who they were rather
than to a dynasty that didn’t really represent any of them.
The three partitions of
Poland that took place in the eighteenth century could well have been terminal
for both Poland and Lithuania. If history had turned out only slightly differently
Poles may well have been the equivalent of Kurds, a people without a land. The
problem is that when you are divided between Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, you
need to fight all of them to unite to form a Kurdish nation and how can you do
that if Kurds are mixed up with everyone else.
So too Poles lived in
the Austro Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and eventually the German
Empire. No matter how much they might revolt in the nineteenth century it must
have looked simply impossible to create a land which would unite all the Poles.
How are people without a state to defeat three empires?
The process of uniting
Poland began with the end of the First World War. This was what Poles had been
waiting more than a century for. This was the condition for the possibility of
there being a Poland. If Russia had remained undefeated and allied with the
Entente then Poland as we know it would not have been created. Who would have
rewarded Russian sacrifice with the loss of its Polish territory? At best some
Polish lands may have been taken from Germany and Austria Hungary, but it would
have lacked the heart of Poland.
But the Poland that was
created after the First World War repeated many of the mistakes of the Polish
Lithuanian Commonwealth. In trying to gather in all that had once been Polish
it overreached itself and ended up containing far too much that was not.
By extending the
boundaries of Poland Eastwards into the lands of the Polish Lithuanian
Commonwealth, post First World War Poland gathered in most of the Poles, except
those still living in Germany, but it also gathered in huge numbers of
non-Polish speakers and people who had little or no loyalty to Poland.
The newly formed Polish
Army by virtue of the Miracle on the Vistula was able to defeat the Soviets,
but led Poland into a temptation. It took advantage of temporary Russian
weakness to extend its boundaries eastwards into the lands of the Rus. But
Russia would not always be weak. The victory was temporary and led directly to
the fourth partition of Poland.
Once more Poland
effectively ceased to exist. Even when the Second World War ended and Poland
was as it were shifted westwards, it didn’t really have independence. The
entire Eastern bloc was really just part of an extended Russian Empire renamed
the Soviet Union. Poland was on the map, but it was a Russian vassal.
The results of the
Fourth Partition of Poland remain. The territory lost to the Soviet Union is
still lost and forms parts of modern Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. The
territory gained had been German for centuries, but brought Poland back to its
beginning with the Piast dynasty.
But in history it is
always necessary to take the long view. Poland won the Second World War. It
gained a Polish nation state for almost the first time in history whose
population was overwhelmingly Polish. 97.7 % of the Polish population are
Poles.
Prior to the Second
World War there was a significant German population in Poland who wished to
citizens of Germany. There were also significant populations of Lithuanians and
East Slavic speakers. Where did the loyalty of these people lie? Some of them
no doubt were loyal to Poland, but not all. Some would have looked north
towards Lithuania, others East towards Minsk, Kiev and beyond.
Tragedy followed for
the population of Poland in the war years. Jews were murdered to the extent
that there are now few Jews in the land that had been their main home for
centuries. Ukrainians killed Poles living in what they thought was Ukrainian
land and punished Poland for its resurrection and its extent. Lithuanians were
grateful that the Fourth Partition of Poland gave them back Vilnius, just as
Ukrainians were grateful that it gave them Lvov. Each complained about Soviet
rule but kept the results of that rule. No-one quite noticed the hypocrisy.
Many of those Poles who
had lived in the Kresy Wschodnie ended up living in places in Western Poland
that had been German for centuries. Ordinary Germans were driven out just as
ordinary Poles were driven out from the East. But for all the tragedy that
occurred it is necessary to recognise that Poland won the Second World War.
The Soviets tried to
decapitate Poland in a forest near Smolensk and by standing by as Warsaw rose
and was then raised to the ground. It must have seemed to many Poles who had
fought in the Battle of Britain at Monte Cassino at Arnhem and elsewhere that
their sacrifices had been futile. Britain and France went to war to liberate
Poland, but Poland was not free. Worse the land lost due to the Fourth
Partition had not been restored and never would be.
But Polish history
teaches us one thing. Be patient. The tradition of rebellion against the
Russian Empire continued in Gdansk and although they were crushed in the short
term, this time it only took a few years before they succeeded.
Poland after 1989 was
free and united in a way that perhaps it never had been before. This was the
victory that was gained over those who wanted to wipe Poland from the map
again.
Poland was decapitated
again in 2010. The president of Poland Lech Kaczyński and many others died in
an air crash that had strange echoes of that which killed Władysław Sikorski in
1943. But this time Poland was fortunate for Kaczyński had a twin.
How many hundreds of
years did it take to arrive at 1989 and a free united Poland. Yet only a few
years later there are those Poles, reminiscent of those who cooperated in the
first three partitions of Poland who would like to collaborate in a fifth.
By good fortune and
through tragedy the Polish population is both united and Polish, but the
European Union would prefer that it ceased to be quite so Polish and ceased to
be quite so free.
Western Europe has
chosen to imitate the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth by becoming so tolerant
that it allows anyone from anywhere to live in its territory. It can’t bear
that Poland having experienced throughout its history the consequences of a
divided population and seeing the results of the experiment in places like
London and Paris, chooses not to take part.
The solution proposed
by the European Union is absorption into an ever closer union. To achieve this
end it is willing to bribe. It pays money to Poland and threatens to cut it off
if Poland doesn’t do as it is told.
It may for a time be
possible for Poland to maintain its identity and its freedom while accepting
the bribes given by the European Union, but it won’t be possible for ever.
The bribes and the
threats are the same ones that have threatened Poland’s existence since the
Partitions began. You either get this, or you don’t. Kaczyński gets it, for
which reason it is most fortunate that just as we can survive the loss of one
eye and still see, we can survive the loss of one twin and still see Donald
Tusk’s cooperation in betraying everything that Poles have been fighting for
since the eighteenth century. If Poles partition Poland once again for 30
pieces of silver it is hardly likely that they will be forgiven.
