Warsaw is getting stronger. Suomen Kuvalehti, 5 April 2023
Poland shakes the continental plates of security policy. Helsingin Sanomat, 5 June 2023
The Russian invasion brought Poland to the center of European politics. , 20 February 2023
Recent news headlines convey a parallel message: Poland is fast becoming a European powerhouse.
At the same time that Europe’s traditional power duo, Germany and France, have sought their line, Poland has been Ukraine’s most important and loyal supporter since the beginning of the war. Armed aid has flowed to Ukraine through Poland and the country has received it more than one and a half million a Ukrainian refugee.
Poland has also strengthened its own defense with gigantic arms purchases and is becoming a military power.
Eastern European researcher, docent Jussi Jalonen confirms the analysis of the growth of Polish influence.
– The war increases Poland’s weight, regardless of its outcome. If the war turns out to be fatal for Ukraine, Poland will become a protective wall against Russia. If Russia loses, Poland will become a hegemonic influence with no significant competitor in Eastern Europe.
The idea of Poland as a great power may sound foreign. In recent history, Poland has been more of a war tent caught between the great powers, a country that has been marched over and burned many times.
But there has also been a different kind of Poland. When the historian Kalervo Hovi pondered in the introduction to his book History of Poland (1994) what distinguishes Poland from the other countries of East Central Europe, he found one point he considered crucial:
“Poland was the only one that – together with Lithuania – had formed a mighty and long-lived great power in this region. It was a circumstance that had left an indelible mark on the mentality, values, values and way of thinking of the Poles, in a word, on the character of the people.”
The great power loomed in the mind of the Polish strongman
Historian Kalervo Hovi refers to Poland-Lithuania, which has its roots in the deep Middle Ages and was at its greatest in the 17th century. At that time, the sphere of influence of Poland-Lithuania extended from the southern parts of Estonia almost to the Black Sea. In the east, the great power pushed deep into the territories of present-day Russia and Ukraine. Today’s Belarus was Poland-Lithuania as a whole.
The great power period was followed by the partition of Poland at the end of the 18th century, when the Polish state disappeared from the map for over a hundred years. The new coming of Poland happened as a result of the First World War. The empires that divided Poland – Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary – fell apart and a number of new European states rose from their ashes, including Finland, along with Poland.
Poland became independent by war. In the First World War, Poles were in the armies of several countries. Immediately after the end of the world war, Poland was still at war with its neighbors. A strong man of the Polish army, a self-taught soldier Józef Piłsudski, the goal was to restore a greater Poland that resembled the historical Poland-Lithuania, which would have included Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. However, Piłsudski emphasized that it would have been a union of countries with equal taxes, not an empire ruled by Poland.
Although Piłsudski’s goal was not realized, under his leadership a great but fragmented Poland was born, writes Kalervo Hovi. About a third of its inhabitants were of non-Polish nationality. Among other things, there were 4 million Ukrainians, more than the entire population of Finland at the time.
Poland was also in disputes with almost all of its border neighbors. For example, Lithuania, whose historical capital Vilnius had been conquered by Poland, considered itself to be at war with Poland.
In Greater Poland, intimidation is part of the Kremlin’s propaganda
So Poland has been a great power and now it is once again called the most powerful country in Eastern Central Europe. So is the old Greater Poland making a comeback and what does that mean for its immediate neighbors? Will a hegemony and a group of vassals emerge in the core of Europe?
– I wouldn’t consider it likely, says Eastern European researcher Jussi Jalonen.
According to Jalonen, this is the view that Russia has used in its rhetoric.
– The Kremlin likes to warn about Poland’s efforts to restore the old superpower position, where Ukraine and Belarus would be in some kind of subordinate position.
According to Jalonen, Poland has been assigned a special role in Russian propaganda. Among other things, a person born in Ukraine has been harnessed to help Nikolai Gogol the classic Taras Bulba. In it, the Poles are described as the historical enemies of the Ukrainians, Russia as a messianic savior.
According to Jalonen, a union of states with equal taxes is more likely to emerge in Eastern Central Europe, which will increase the weight of the entire region.
There are already signs of this. In 2020, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine formed a cooperation organization that promotes Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. After the Russian attack, the organization has announced that it supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity on internationally recognized borders and has demanded that Russia stop hostilities.
The name of the organization, the Lublin Triangle, strongly refers to the past. The Polish city of Lublin was the birthplace not only of the new organization, but also of the old Polish-Lithuania.
The horrors of Volhynia and the reconciliation of history
The above does not mean that there are no pain points in the common history of Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania. The Vilnius issue poisoned the relationship between Poland and Lithuania in the 1920s and 30s. However, according to Jalonen, it no longer affects the relationship between the countries. Recent proof of this is the statement of the President of Lithuania a few weeks ago, in which he hoped “add Poland to Lithuania”.
On the other hand, the events in today’s Western Ukraine, in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, which belonged to Poland between the world wars, have from time to time strained the relationship between Poland and Ukraine. In the 1920s and 1930s, the most important city in the region, Lviv, was known by its Polish name Lwów.
– Ukrainian nationalism was strong, after all, they had already fought for their own state in 1918. When the region ended up being part of Poland, it aroused opposition. From Poland’s point of view, it was terrorism, which was answered with a heavy hand, explains Jussi Jalonen.
The enmity between Polish and Ukrainian nationalists peaked during World War II.
– Ukrainian nationalist partisans carried out ethnic cleansing in Volhynia. A large number of Polish civilians were murdered.
An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people died in the mass killings in Volhynia in 1943-45.
The events in Volhynia have strained the relations between Poland and Ukraine. In Ukraine, after the Orange Revolution and the Maidan, nationalist symbolism increased, including the nationalist leader Stepan Bandera emerged as a heroic figure. Poland, on the other hand, passed a history law in 2018 that equated the crimes committed in the name of the Bandera ideology with the Holocaust.
However, according to Jalonen, Poland and Ukraine have also succeeded in solving the pain points of history.
– Poland and Ukraine have done a lot for the historical reconciliation. Things can be talked about, and they haven’t been buried under carpet even during the ongoing war.
The most recent example is from last Sunday. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi and the President of Poland Andrzej Duda participated in a memorial service in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, where the victims of Volhynia were honored. Zelenskyi wrote on his Twitter account in Polish and Ukrainian:
“Together we honor the innocent victims of Volhynia.” “Memory unites us. Together we are stronger.”
According to Jalonen, the background is a common view that the only one who benefits from historical disputes is Russia.
– It is interesting how, when the history dispute was at its hottest, Putin was silent. He watched from the sidelines and let the Ukrainian and Polish governments fight each other. But as soon as we got back on the road to reconciliation, Putin started drumming up Bandera and the Nazis.
Listen from Areena: One hundred years of independent Poland