"The subjects of this book are the transformation of national ideas, the causes of ethnic cleansing, and the conditions for national reconciliation."
A detailed history of Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian-Ukrainian relations since the Union of Lublin in 1569 which created the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to the end of the XX century when Poland joined NATO.
My takeaways: nationalism makes people do horrible things, the real history and especially individual history is messy and context is important, life is most important, forgiving is a necessary virtue, reconciliation is possible, even among peoples who committed ethnic cleansing on each other.
The articles published in Kultura by Giedroyć and Mieroszewski influenced or were the base of Polish eastern policy after 1989, the policy of supporting independent states, no territorial claims, reconciliation.
I heard of Kultura, but I was just a teenager/young adult in 1990s, living in Warsaw, witnessing the Round Table talks through the official media, and the June 4th 1989 election campaign and later events also through Gazeta Wyborcza. Receiving history education in communist Poland, the east was for me the Soviet Union, with capital in Moscow. I did not know much about the Soviet republics. At that time I didn't even know that one of my grandfathers was born and raised in Lviv.
I was influenced by Pomarańczowa Alternatywa, Bareja, Smoleń, Wałęsa, Kuroń, Michnik, Gazeta Wyborcza, Bartoszewski, Geremek. The subject of talks were: workers strikes, shortages of everything, communism, ZOMO. I remember picking up on the train some illegally printed leaflet, I remember TV hacking by the underground opposition: the government TV station channel (there were no private stations) would suddenly get a news ticker with opposition news, and a message at the end to turn off and on the room lights a few times to acknowledge receipt of the message.
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Interesting, little known bits of history:
Re: borders:
In spring 1990 Prime Minister Mazowiecki made clear that he had no wish to see Soviet forces leave Poland until Poland's border with Germany was codified.
At a time when West German leaders would not publicly commit to the preservation of the existing border with sovereign Poland, Poland's first democratic government extended unconditional assurances to not yet sovereign Ukraine.
Poland was the first state to formally recognise the state of Ukraine.
Re: "NATO expansion":
MOSCOW, OCTOBER 1990
Skubiszewski's October 1990 visit to Moscow was a provisional success. Skubiszewski took pains to separate "Soviet Union day" from "Russian Federation day," paying as much attention to Russian as to Soviet authorities. The declaration Skubiszewski signed with Russian authorities was the first official document the Russian Federation signed with any outside state. Polish-Soviet negotiations were underway on both a new state treaty and an agreement on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland. In December 1990 Poland linked the withdrawal of Soviet troops to transit rights for Soviet troops returning from Germany. The main issues of dispute were the so-called "security clauses," which would have forbidden Poland to join alliances (except with the Soviet Union), cooperate with foreign intelligence services (except the Soviet one), or allow foreign armies (except the Red Army) to station troops on its territory. The dispute over transit was resolved and the security clauses withdrawn.
Re: Ukrainian nuclear weapons:
By late 1992 Kravchuk was determined to press forward towards an alliance with Poland directed against Russian predominance in Eastern Europe, perhaps one in which Ukraine would provide a nuclear umbrella with the weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union. [...] In spring 1993 Ukraine proposed a "Baltic-to-Black Sea Pact" of which the Ukrainian-Polish partnership would be the nucleus. - page 265.
Poland's main foreign policy goal at that time was integration with NATO and the European Community.
Re: Volhynia massacres:
Oh my. The Polish-Ukrainian chapters are the most messed up. Like in a plane crash investigation, there are often many things that had to occur to cause the catastrophe. I cannot summarize these chapters, I will only provide some snippets of information here. If you are interested in the subject, you should really get the book and read it carefully.
"[...] what Ukrainians did to Poles, and what Poles did to Ukrainians, cannot be reduced to an escalation of events concerning only those two groups, [...]" - page 158. Soviet occupation provoked conflict between Poles and Ukrainians in 1939, to create the conditions of "revolution". In Volhynia after 1941, the German occupier offered Ukrainians a chance to persecute Poles (1941-42), and then Poles to do the reverse (1943-44).
"German attempts to colonize the Ukrainian-Polish borderlands near Zamość in 1942-43, in which Ukrainian Central Committee played an organizational role, were designed such that they had to worsen Ukrainian-Polish conflicts."
"The demoralization and decimation of Ukrainian and Polish elites was perhaps the most important cause of Ukrainian-Polish conflict." - page 163.
Deportations and murders of Polish and Ukrainian elites by the Soviets and Germans.
"German repression also created the conditions for unforgettable injuries: as when Polish Kapos killed the two brothers of Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in Auschwitz. Poles in the Chełm region liquidated 394 leaders of Ukrainian society on basis of collaboration."
The Polish government had little authority in Volhynia. "Its representatives were surprised by the participation of Volhynian Poles in the German administration, and unable to prevent Volhynian Poles from joining the German police. The Ukrainian case was starker. There was no state to organize an official army, and only the far Right was represented in the field."
"It was this maimed OUN-Bandera, led by Mykola Lebed' and then Roman Shukhevych, that cleansed the Polish population from Volhynia in 1943."
"Even Metropolitan Sheptyts'kyi, who sheltered Jews, reasoned that a Galician SS division was desirable as the nucleus of a future Ukrainian army. [...] As the brother of a general who helped create the Polish army which defeated the West Ukrainian republic in 1920, Sheptyts'kyi knew from hard experience that a Ukrainian state without an army was an impossibility."
Errata - some of the errors I noticed:
The map of Postwar Eastern Europe circa 1945 on page XV... is 1951 circa 1945? There was a border change in 1951 between Poland and the USSR, and the "circa 1945" map shows the border after the 1951 change. This is a common error, that I think even most Poles in my generation don't know about:
page 214. Is: "Most modern Polish nationality include hostility to Ukraine?". Should be: "Must ...".
page 225: is "It was Giedroyc's and Mieroszewski's great intellectual achievement to unite this acceptance of state borders with the prediction that communist would collapse,..."
Should be: communism, not communist.
Page 234: "would be a governed by"
Should be: "would be governed by"
Page 239: "Grzegorz Kostzrewa-Zorbas"
Should be: "Grzegorz Kostrzewa-Zorbas"
Page 249: "capital lines only forty kilometres"
Should be: "capital lies only forty kilometres"
Page 250: "with more far more antipathy"
Should be: ?
New words:
Solicitous - showing care and helpful attention to someone.