Soviet tanks rolling into Poland in 1939
By Padraic Kenneymarch
An old train route south from the eastern Polish city of
Przemysl passes through Ukrainian territory, then back into Poland. The
tracks are a relic of the prewar past, when this was all Polish
territory, before the Soviet Union “liberated” western Ukraine in 1939
from Poland and incorporated it into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist
Republic.
In
the Communist period, some traveled this loop — no stops allowed — only
to get a glimpse of a land then forbidden and inaccessible. But in 1980
and 1981 the brief Soviet excursion became a propaganda jaunt for
Poles. Passengers flashed Solidarity signs from opened windows, boasting
to their neighbors of the dissident trade union whose rapid growth
threatened the Communist monopoly on power in Poland.
Before
long, the Soviet regime insisted windows be kept shut on their
territory, and eventually their Polish comrades suspended the route. A
decade later, his country and Communist rule were gone, and Poles and
Ukrainians could get closer than through the grimy window of a lumbering
passenger train. But the emotions of that old train route still
illuminate the fears and hopes that now make Poland a central player in
the sharpest European crisis since 1989.
For
the last quarter-century — the first time in modern history — Poles
have not faced an existential threat from the East. But within living
memory, Poland lost its eastern provinces when Hitler and Stalin carved
it up in 1939; in 1945, the loss became permanent in a redrawn Poland
that now included former German lands. So invasions, dismemberments and
wholesale remappings of nations are not implausible to Poles. The idea
that Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s president, could simply send his troops
to occupy and effectively annex territory from Ukraine without real
provocation may have seemed fantastical from farther away, but not from
Warsaw.
Today,
Poland is a member of NATO and can summon its allies to consult when it
feels under threat, by invoking Article 4 of the alliance’s treaty, as
it did last week. Poland “is threatened in the broad sense of that
word,” Gen. Stanislaw Koziej, chief of Poland’s National Security
Bureau, explained in an interview. “It is true that today we are not
threatened directly by an attack of foreign troops on our territory, but
over a longer term we cannot exclude the possibility.” And when Mr.
Putin gave a rambling news conference last week that some Westerners
thought held reasons for optimism, Poles heard a direct threat to their
own country in his accusation that the snipers on Kiev’s Independence
Square had been trained in Poland.
Yet
before we all dust off our Cold War textbooks and revive their
Manichaean pronouncements, we should note that more than just
geopolitics changed when the Soviet Union collapsed and the European
Union grew eastward. First, naked anti-Russian emotions ceased to be an
essential part of Polish rhetoric. Most Poles today are too young to
have had required Russian-language classes in grade school. Russia is a
difficult trade partner, but not an affront to one’s very Polishness.
A
more important theme in Polish thinking has its birth in those signs
flashed from train windows decades ago. Poles believe they have a
special message, even a special gift, to convey to those around the
world who struggle for liberty and civil rights, and especially to
Ukraine.
The
two nations are drawn together more by a painful past than by common
threads. Ukrainian peasants once worked for Polish noblemen. After World
War I, the Polish Army helped dash Ukrainians’ brief hopes of
independence. World War II brought horrific massacres to both
populations, from many directions, and ended with vast ethnic cleansing.
But
from this pain came a slow discovery of common ground. Both sides took
the idea of “solidarity” to mean a shared struggle against dictatorship.
In
the 1980s, Polish and Ukrainian anti-Communists began talking about the
darker moments of their nations’ histories, trying to overcome deep
mistrust. In 1989, the Polish dissident Adam Michnik was cheered when he
addressed the founding congress of Ukraine’s first mass opposition
movement. In 2004, during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, Kiev’s streets
were full of young Poles alongside Ukrainians.
It
seemed then that Ukraine was experiencing the same democratic carnival
that Poland and other former Eastern bloc states saw 15 years before.
Even when the Orange Revolution ended in political squabbles, Polish
fascination with Ukraine persisted. In the European Union, Poland has
consistently advocated for Ukraine.
There
can be a whiff of condescension in this championing of Ukrainian
aspirations, especially when many Ukrainians have encountered Western
prosperity working as domestics in Warsaw homes. The Polish online
weekly Kultura Liberalna warned recently that Poles were adopting a
“postcolonial” attitude to Ukraine. It cautioned that magical thinking
about Ukrainian democracy was no substitute for concrete support.
True
enough. But Poland’s perspective on Ukraine is from very close up.
Poles, too, have seen their territory taken and blood spilled on city
squares. They have also seen popular determination and grass-roots
organizing lead to democracy. And they see a turn toward Europe as a
moral choice, not one that simply brings prosperity and stability.
The
idealism of 1989 has been combined with a pragmatic, firmly
institutional view of international relations. It makes Poland a
formidable player in Europe, and an essential friend to Ukraine.
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