Interesting poll from the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue.
Causes of discord:
- History 74%
- Economics 34%
- Current politics 21%
- Current culture 11%
This suggests that the impasse in Polish-Russian relations may be resolvable, if Russia was to adopt my suggestion to adopt a “politics of memory” on the victims of Bolshevism.
It’s not like Warszawa, unlike Brussels or Washington D.C., gives a hoot about Moscow banning gay parades.
Perhaps a slightly bigger problem is that 44% of Poles identify the aircrash over Smolensk as a current political issue (whereas both Nord Stream, the war in Donbass, Katyn, and foreign policy issues generally are in the single digits). That the Poles don’t care about Donbass is great news. But how to maneuver around almost half of them crediting a weird conspiracy theory will require more creativity. Perhaps some kind of joint commemoration event, I don’t know.
FTR, these polls tally with my personal impressions. Poles don’t generally like Ukrainians more than Russians (AP’s well-meaning hopes regardless). There is, however, what would be to both Westerners and Russians strange degree of obsession with history – and, yes, Smolensk.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
As far as suffering because of backing the wrong horse goes, Poles are firmly in the third place (after Kurds and Ukrainians). That does not stop them from doing it over and over again.
Historically, Poland and Russia were the two big horses in the Slavic world, often vying with one another for primacy. Unfortunately, too often their differences would manifest themselves in violent clashes on Ukrainian territory. It’s too bad, that these close Slavic countries can’t evolve along the lines of their Scandinavian neighbors, that also have had their own historical serious problems, but have achieved a state of equilibrium and cooperation, with no one country dominating the others.
Poland seems content with its place within the EU, and Ukraine wanting to find less domination from Russia’s historic tight grip seems intent on following Poland’s lead. Russia seems intent on squeezing Ukraine militarily, an old method that will no longer work with Ukraine. It’s time to look for new approaches.
If Biden is elected, PiS cucks out
The present conflict between Poland and Russia is more about style than about substance.
For most of last several hundred years Poland and Russia had territorial claims against each other. Now they don’t. And they are not trying to overthrow each other’s government.
At the same time the style is ugly and will continue to be ugly. That’s because angry rhetoric is mostly for internal consumption. In Poland, patriotism is centered around grievances and a general sense of victimhood. In a democracy, there will always be opportunists who will try to exploit those feelings in order to win votes. My guess is that something like 20% of Poles are truly paranoid about Russia and sooner or later some politician will try to use this paranoia to win votes.
It seems like a lot of Russian hostility towards Poland is also for internal consumption.
Disclosure: I am a Pole living in the United States. I am mostly indifferent to Russia, though I am glad Holbrooke and McCain are dead. If they went ahead with their fantasies of trying to break up Russia, only one country would benefit from the conflict – China.
I detest communism as much as anyone here, but this is hilariously stupid idea from Karlin. Rewriting Russian history to appease the Polish Russophobes? LOLWUT? Is Poland really that important?
We can all be digging through history to find reasons to hate our neighbours. Poland is an indefensible flatland with historically shifting borders and previously a feudal empire in Belarus-Ukraine. Poles have caused their share of mischief to their neighbours – so why are they such obsessed victims?
It is a frustrated ambition and an insane itch to please the anglo world. Today Poles worship the anglo-saxons, before it was the Germans, Austrians and Vatican, French w Napoleon, etc… There is a pattern of unrequited love that has hurt Poland. They claim it is ‘nationalism‘, but true nationalists don’t do dirty work for others. It looks like emotional immaturity and a subconscious self-hatred.
If 44% of Poles believe that somebody in Russia would bother to stage a ‘Smolensk catastrophe’, well, it is one emotional and volatile tribe. You could probably sell them on almost anything. How would it work, what could possibly be the purpose? How would the recordings be faked? This worries me because it borders on insanity. We might get that war that some in Poland want, and that they so vigorously claim they oppose in public. But after a few drinks, ‘Russia moved east of Urals’ fantasies come out…
Fake peoples can’t suffer from history.
It strikes me that Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine all have the possibility to actually develop a sense of victimhood that would be as powerful as the holocaust – if only internally, and if only their elite decide to do so.
The reason is not so much that they have had a tragic history – they have – but that their Jewish population is sufficiently small enough to allow such a narrative to develop. But what if they abandoned their enmity and combined the narrative? With some strategic investments – one day, it might become a narrative even more powerful than the holocaust.
What is needed is a new Warsaw Pact – with a sense of grievance sufficient enough to go head to toe with globohomo. And the Chinese, if they are wise, will send advisors.
The problem with Poles (as with Kurds and Ukrainians) is that they are real, not fake peoples. However, their deep-seated inferiority complex makes them stick to victim narrative and generally behave like retarded teenagers, with plenty of emotions and no brains. As their self-defeating feelings and policies are ages old, there is no light at the end of the tunnel for any of them.
Have you seen this interview about the presence of Poles in Russian Empire? You can read it through Google Translate.
https://konserwatyzm.pl/swider-bez-polakow-nie-byloby-wspolczesnej-rosji/
Russia used to be a gigantic export market for polish industry. There is even a polish book about it titled “Lalka”/Doll. Also Bank Handlowy from 1870 was an intermediary between Russia and Western Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Handlowy
Those russian-polish ties were destroyed by bolshevism and nazism of course later.
In regards to Smolensk, why not have Russia fully cooperate with any investigation of this that the Poles will do?
Also, why exactly does Russia ban gay pride parades? After all, don’t gay children also need some inspiration? I’m pretty sure that someone like Masha Gessen knew that she was gay from a very young age and that banning gay pride parades wouldn’t have actually “fixed” her sexual orientation.
As Russians joke, looking at Masha Gessen or baroness Ashton one can easily understand why men become gay.
As to gay pride parades, if these are allowed, there should also be straight pride parades, pedophile pride parades, zoophile pride parades, gerontophile pride parades, necrophile pride parades, etc.
Gay parades, like rainbow flags, are a show of force; they are about controlling territory and being in-your-face. The point of having a gay parade isn’t about gays feeling included or validated. It is about closing down streets and interrupting traffic, about mobilizing in a show of force before urban politicians. Gays, like suffragettes, march because they want power. Once they get it – try to keep them out – they will be marching in every parade under their rainbow banner – every parade will become a gay parade. I’ve seen it happen firsthand to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston.
But there is much more than just parades at stake. Gayness is at the core of globohomo. It is the foundation stone in the push for diversity and replacement migration. Elevate gays and you take away part of the social ostracism that helps keep men masculine.
BTW, if you had ever seen a gay parade or heard an account of one, you wouldn’t speak about bringing children to them because they are not like normal parades – there is a great deal of obscenity on display.
We’re still waiting for Anatoly’s report about his trip to Poland.
By the way, several days ago Roosh V wrote about his sacred mushroom
experience in Poland a year ago, and how it helped him get over the
death of his sister, and (re)conversion to Christianity. He now admits
that he lived in Poland for many years because “Poland is such a nice
country,” although many of us knew it all along.
For those Russians who say, “Is Poland that important?”, they need to
remember that when they think of Poland they need to think of
(Poland+Hungary) as in many ways being a single entity, and the
essence of what Central Europe was around, say, 1590. But if so, then the
Russians should think of (Poland+Hungary+Czechia) as a single bloc
because Poland and Czechia have become much closer in recent
decades – that’s 60 million people, which for Europe is not insignificant.
That’s the basic mistake that Russians make – thinking of V4 or even EU
countries as isolated entities. Central Europe is a state of mind ruled by
the Aristotelian/Buddhist Principle of the Golden Mean, or moderation
in all things. That’s why it never bloodied its hands pursuing colonial
conquests and the transatlantic slave trade, and never got seduced by the
Germanic silliness involving the cult of war which dominated the German
culture in the decades preceding World War I. But then the Germans have
always been a silly people, ruled by the principle of rationality (i.e., science
and technology) in the service of madness or silliness if you like.
That people were already aware of this principle in the 19th century
is demonstrated by Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), one of the greatest American
novels ever written, and a warning to individuals and nations alike.
I don’t believe Poland had the ability to project power past the Atlantic states.
Are they? Poland is the biggest welfare queen in EU and they frequently clash with EU leadership, EU calls Poland undemocratic and Poland yells back at EU and claims sovereignty. Once welfare checks dry up, we will get to see how much Poland really cares for “European Values”. Same with Ukraine. Wanting to sell yourself for welfare money and investments is not the same as really loving it in the EU.
Funny story. Last summer I got to work in Switzerland (way overpriced, only slightly less Russians than Moscow, I liked St Petersburg more overall) on an industrial project and my crew was French and German commuters. They were dismissive of Russia (poor backward place) and America (eternally clueless), but they really really disliked Eastern Europeans and especially the Poles. Not just for being welfare queens but for pressuring the Germans to toe American line on NATO military spending. Germans were concerned that if they were to create a powerful army, the rest of real (Western) Europe would get scared and this would ruin the EU relationships.
Basically Germans viewed Poland as American Trojan horse to destroy EU, and that upset them because Poland wasn’t even a real European country. On that same note, whenever you read silly articles in the press, such as “haha, none of the German tanks work” – thats not an accident or incompetence.
Even more stupid than usual…
You worship Soviets. Not everyone is like you.
The dead people on the plane were anti-Russian politicians in positions of power. I do not endorse this conspiracy theory, but there was an obvious motive.
It’s a zero-risk endeavor though. So even if you consider closer relations with Poland a “low return”–and imo there is a lot to gain for Russia in doing so– it would still be worth it. Also there is no “rewriting history” involved, just countering the atrocious Soviet propaganda. A win-win.
It’s not a big difference, but they do prefer Ukrainians. Most recent poll, 2020:
https://www.cbos.pl/PL/publikacje/public_opinion/2020/03_2020.pdf
Ukrainians: 35% favorable, 28% indifferent, 33% unfavorable, 4% unsure
Russians: 26% favorable, 26% indifferent, 42% unfavorable, 6% unsure
In 2019 attitudes towards the two peoples were more similar, though Ukrainians were still preferred over Russians:
https://www.cbos.pl/EN/publications/reports/2019/017_19.pdf
Ukrainians: 31% favorable, 23% indifferent, 41% unfavorable, 5% unsure
Russians: 28% favorable, 25% indifferent, 43% unfavorable, 4% unsure
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The people whom Poles like most are Czechs, Slovaks and Italians.
Among Poles, only gypsies and Arabs were less popular than Russians.
I agree with the “shared victims of Bolshevism” narrative to try to lower the history number here. Another hilarious, though probably far-fetched, suggestion: publicly support Poland’s article 55a (criminalizing describing the Poles as “complicit” in Nazi death camps). Not only would this inspire some small measure of gratefulness in Polish citizens, it would also constitute a public repudiation of the “Russia gassed the Jews” faction in the West (since presumably Poles would be more complicit in helping their Soviet “liberators” than Nazi occupiers). And it just generally serves as a fantastic potential wedge between Poland and the U.S.
If Moscow really wanted to rile people up, it could even support the article 2a amendment condemning Banderists, though this has been invalidated by some kind of court I think.
Semi-related: wtf is up with Katyn being considered a “current political issue?” This is quite strange, we can’t even blame boomers for its inclusion because even they weren’t around yet.
Smolensk 2010 happened during the Obama-Putin honeymoon that began on Sept 17, 2009 when Obama decided to shut down the project of missile defense in Eastern Europe. The date of Sept 17 have a special meaning for Poles.
On April 8, 2010 Obama and Medvedev signed new START treaty in Prague. Polish prime minister Tusk (a political enemy of the Polish president) was there. Two days later Polish ‘patriotic’ faction of the government was decapitated in Smolensk. Two presidents of Poland, central bank president, five highest rank military NATO trained generals, bishops, many parliament deputies.
Polish officials received a text message that the catastrophe was an accident within an hour or so to establish the official narrative. Then came very tense two weeks. Though Obama played golf just like Khrushchev was being seen in Bolshoi during the Cuban crisis. Europe became the no-fly zone under the excuse of Eyjafjallajökull eruption. Very serious decisions must have been considered on the highest levels at that time.
No heads of NATO states showed up for the funeral of the Polish president. Though Medvedev came. Pro Russian gestures were made in Poland like lighting candles on Red Army soldiers cemeteries by celebrities and pro Polish gestures were made in Russia like showing Wajda’s film ‘Katyn’ on TV. And then everything came back to normal.
The US – Russia relationship remained good and did not begin to show strains until 2012. In Russia it seems that the power of FSB was consolidated at the expense of GRU and several GRU generals died under strange circumstances. Also in the US there was some cleansing in the military and the Air Force in particular. Nuclear weapons allegedly were lost or misplaced on flights from the Minot Air Force Base. Pro EU and pro Berlin and also pro globohomo faction consolidated power in Poland. The ‘patriotic’ faction was completely out for the next five years.
We can only speculate using the cui bono principle. Assuming the catastrophe was arranged was it about Poland or was Poland just a pawn and the Polish delegation with the president of Poland was just a very evocative theater prop? Having it done on Russian territory offered great benefit to Russians in covering it up but at the same time pointed at Russia as the possible culprit.
Was the objective to derail the US-Russia honeymoon behind the catastrophe? Who was not happy with Obama abandoning missiles defense system? Who was not happy with START? What about the Iran-Israel angle and how that supposed to work during the Obama-Putin honeymoon?
Was the objective of the operation to implicate Putin to turn Russia into the pariah state? This eventually happened four years after Maidan and Crimea when Putin became Putler and one could make any allegation against Putin and Russia. But nobody was making any noises about Smolensk. Why? Why not use Smolensk against Russia and Putin in 2014? What if Putin knew who was behind it and what was the objective and what if Putin had the evidence. So why Putin did not use that evidence in 2014 or later? Probably because it was also embarrassing to Russia.
What if the Operation Smolensk required involvement of some GRU outfit together with some Polish-Israeli outfit in Warsaw? Could it be possible that the same people who in Ron Unz’s theory are responsible for the Operation Wuhan were responsible for the Operation Smolensk? They are the crazy guys who do crazy things.
Well, “once the welfare checks” dry up we’ll see, until then, say la vie. 🙂
Lesbianism is about as real as Belarus
There are clear risks in rewriting history as our own people might stop taking official version of it seriously. History will become a source of confusion and endless political arguments, instead of something that can unite the nation around a common purpose.
Now, this might sound appealing to Unz.com readers, but from the government’s perspective I cannot think of a dumber move.
I reject this entire framing. Poland is the lesser country here, that has a relationship problem with Russia, which Poland needs to fix, by rewriting its history if it has to. From Russia’s perspective we should devise a system of sticks and carrots to guide Poland along our preferred path, instead of allowing such petty diplomatic considerations to influence our politics of national memory.
National memory is infinitely more important than relations with countries of Eastern Europe, wouldn’t you agree?
A couple of the victims went into the cockpit to pressure the pilots to land the plane under any circumstances, and as fast as possible. While the Russian air traffic control requested them to use another airport. (Because this was a military airport which was unsafe in bad weather, at least for such a civilian plane.)
So it required the victims to cooperate in their own demise.
I think Karlin’s idea is that the Sovok history is bad anyway, and by changing it, it will also help Russia repair its relations with the former Warsaw Pact.
Is that not the case already anyway?
I believe this is wrong. You don’t gain sympathy from people who hate you by going on an apology tour. These are two separate issues, and should be handled in isolation.
If I understand Karlins view is the Russians committed appalling crimes on the Polish, but get annoyed when called on it because the same regime also committed appalling (worse even ?) crimes on Russians ? Problems defining how “Russian” the regime that committed the crimes was ?
But he says that a generous and honest apology would help things. What do you thing ? Would it make ugly rhetoric for internal consumption less likely to be taken seriously?
These ties were destroyed first and foremost by Polish nationalism.
The dead people on the plane were drunken Russophobic nutjobs who insisted on landing in a dense fog and against the recommendations of Smolensk airport sky control team.
Why they did it?
1) They were literally drunk.
2) To them Smolensk airport people probably were “Russian scum”
3) Muh Katyn
1+2+3 = death on arrival and Darwin award.
Yes.
They refused the recommendations of Smolensk air traffic control.
They forced the landing in a very bad weather by ignoring the air traffic communications and pressuring pilots in the cockpit to land no matter what.
The records of the discussion during the incident strongly suggest some of the most important members of the delegation were drunk.
They did it to themselves.
The northern Irish military historian, Gordon Corrigan, who has a rather direct style, said that Poland had the misfortune to be sandwiched between Russia and Germany and the misjudgement to be rude to both, often at the same time.
That’s both true and overly simplistic. Towards the east of Poland is Ukraine and Belarus, not really Russia – and Poland has for hundreds of years attacked to the east, occupied huge territories, run most of it as a colony, etc… Yeah, Russia eventually prevailed, but only after Poles occupied Moscow and tried their stupid feudalism too far to the east. We agree that Poles are rude, in an emotional way…
Utu’s post is intriguing, but the recordings in this case are hard to dispute. As many other Polish catastrophes, this one was also self-inflicted.
When a disaster strikes Poles, they always look for someone to blame, become emotional and stubborn, and create mythological narratives – it makes them feel better about their own errors. The Warsaw uprising in 1944 was a similar error, badly timed, not thought through – so they ended up blaming others. Or Pilsudski offer to Hitler to jointly attack Russia. Or Poland joining Germany in Munich. Or marching with Napoleon on Moscow. The list is almost endless, but it doesn’t look like they will ever learn.
A close relative of my best friend from university (in the USA) was supposed to be on that plane but cancelled at the last minute. He was heavily involved in thwarting plans by foreign relatives of Jews from obtaining property of their murdered relatives in Poland during the Holocaust. In many cases these were distant relatives with little to no connection to the deceased (such as, grandchildren of a third cousin) but were the only remaining family. It would have meant a huge property transfer to people with no connection to Poland.
You forgot to mention Pilsudski offer to invade Germany in the early 1930s, rejected by Western allies. Why?
Wherever have I said I want Russia to go on an apology tour?
By framing 1917-1947 as the three decades of the Russian Genocide, if anything, it is we who will get to pressure apologies and guilt trip others.
Though that would not be its main purpose.
???
You are going to blame Poland for Russian Genocide? Is that your plan to improve relations?
Because I didn’t know about it. I know that my erudition strikes you as omnipotent, but there are more things I don’t know than things I know, as with most of us. Enlighten us.
Where Soviet and Ukrainian mythology comes together.
It’s a strange “occupation” when the supreme commander of the Commonwealth’s military forces in the war against Moscow was a devoutly Orthodox Rurikid Prince:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstanty_Ostrogski
This failure ended the prospects of an actual Slavic superstate. Ironically, because the Commonwealth was not a 20th century ethnic nationalist entity, it probably would have inevitably become dominated by Eastern Slavs.
It’s been years since I discussed this tragedy with Poles, but IIRC the Russians refused to turn over the tapes and to allow Polish inspectors to the crash site, allowing plenty of time to doctor the tapes.
I am not buying the conspiracy theory (in general I do not), but it’s not utterly implausible. It isn’t as crazy as many non-Poles claim it is, or as crazy as 9-11 being a hoax.
It is ridiculous to describe it as a colonial situation
Here’s an article:
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1652686
When I visited former German Silesia I saw some of the hastily-constructed defensive objects the Germans had built in 1933 in case of a Polish invasion.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Carowie_Szujscy_na_sejmie_warszawskim_Jan_Matejko_18_century.jpeg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Dolabella_Shuysky_Czars_before_Sigismund_III.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Hołd_carów_Szujskich.jpg
Unbefitting of a Emperor.
I know Poles too much to be tricked into talking about history with them (even had been living in the same house with a couple of Poles). If you avoid talking about politics/history, they don’t care about nationality – but if they talk about history/politics they have a very emotional, martyrological view of history without any interest in logic or a civilized objectivity. I.e. they are victims of strong nationalist indoctrination in their school.
Another more uncivilized nationalist thing to talk about politics or history with Poles, is an obsession about being Poles. People who say “As a Pole”. Or everything as “we Poles”. “The Americans abandoned us in Second World War”, etc – even though the war was 50 years before they were born.
As I understand, Poles’s political attitude to Russia and Russians, is not hate. It is just a kind of sympathetic pity and amused contempt for Russia and Russian culture. They didn’t like living with a larger country that they believe are losers, easily brainwashed, drunk, smelly, etc. On the other hand, with Germany, Poles have more a hatred or anger, because of the war events.
Poles’ attitude with Germany and Russia also has some element of a typical lower class, middle class, upper class triad as their perception is:
Russia – lower class
Poland – middle class
Germany – upper class
Their cultural orientation is just a bit of pity or contempt for Russia, but more like hatred of Germany.
Another thing I head from Poles about Russia is – “country pretends to be rich, when it’s poor”. (Which is true, but also a typical “middle class” snob view).
The easier thing for future relations with Europe, would be to improve on the Russian-German vector. Aside from relation with Germany, relations with Scandinavia, France, Great Britain etc .
Those in Poland who want the Smolensk crash to be an assassination complain that Russia refuses to turn over the wreck. Yes, the wreck is still in Smolensk but Polish investigators are free to access it. and to collect samples.
I am Polish but I am sorry to say that the Russian decision to keep the wreck is the correct one.
On the Polish side, the investigation (or the second part of it, after the current government came to power in 2015) was carried out in a Bolshevik manner. Instead of gathering the evidence and then drawing conclusions, the order was reversed. The outcome (Russia is guilty) was assumed at the beginning an then an attempt was made to fabricate evidence.
I know these people, they are quite willing to lie and if they got hold of the wreckage, they might plant residue of explosives.
There are people in Poland who are so obsessed with martyrdom that they are willing to create fake one, even though there was enough of real martyrdom. For example, some people invented a nonexistent concentration camp, read about this here:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n09/christian-davies/under-the-railway-line
or google “KL Warschau hoax.”
Stanislaw Lem was a 17 year old living in Lwow when the Soviets invaded. His impressions: “the Germans evoked only fear, at the Soviets you could also laugh.” He described them as “a terrible, gigantic ape.”
My impression from Poles is that they are aware of and hate Russians’ tolerance for Stalin and are angry at what they see as Russians’ indifference towards Soviet crimes (seen as Russian crimes). But they see Russians as human beings, there is a sort of affinity towards them as being fellow Slavs. Poles also appreciate Russian High culture but note the dramatic contrast between Russian high culture and what they see as the primitive Russian way of life.
In contrast, when Germans are perceived negatively by Poles, they are seen as inhuman evil automatons.
So you are saying that Polish complaints about Soviet occupation are nonsense because the heads of PRL were Poles?
The most pragmatic and efficient strategy would be for Russia to become a very wealthy, prosperous and stable country.
Poles would start forgetting their historic grievances (assuming most of them are able to articulate them coherently nowadays), look eastwards with much more interest and find plenty of common ground with their Slavic cousins, which is what they generally do when they meet as foreign immigrants in Western Europe.
This would also probably make most Ukrainians lean back towards Russia. And relations with the rest of the world should equally improve, especially in the absence of Skripal-tier stuff.
Incidentally, this strategy has universal value. For several decades I have been saying that all Spain has to do to reduce Basque and Catalan separatism to a phenomenon of diehard irredentists is just become as prosperous as Switzerland or Norway. They could even win back Gibraltar by virtue of making Llanitos more interested in belonging to wealthier Spain rather than to poorer UK. But they never listened to me.
What ever happened to Polish Perspective, anyone heard from him lately ?
One of the best commentors ever, sad to see him gone.
If the supreme commander of all Soviet forces was a proudly Catholic Pole, if Polish Communist Party members in Moscow were as powerful as Russian ones, if Poles steered Soviet foreign policy so that it followed their Polish interests (say, by causing a war to the West in order to grab more territory and power for the Poles) – than yes.
I wonder if you fit the litmus test that Chesterton devised for the Poland haters?
Materialistic politics? – Check
Slavery? – NO or rather not. Had no opportunity to have slaves yet.
But what about its close cousin servility? – Big YES
Magnanimity? – BINGO
Manhood? – Double BINGO
Sure we have heard of various things that were supposedly on the black boxes recordings that were decrypted in Moscow. Both Russia and Polish government wanted to burry the whole matter as quick and as deep as possible. Everybody wanted to keep the Obama reset policy on course.
LOL- considering that Polish contribution to Communism far outweighs its near useless contribution to every other thing ( science, maths, engineering, art, literature etcetera) that’s an idiotic comment – even by your standards.
Countless Polish individuals helped in the ideology and support of Bolshevism. Among many others, UkraineSSR was run by a pole upto the so-called Golodomor, and even you know who setup the Cheka.
Coupled with the extremely weak “resistance” to Russian rule and the first 30 years of Soviet rule, once again you are making dumb and fake comparisons.
HAHA – how much of a limp-wristed faggot does the Polish state have to be to claim to “believe” this assassination BS…… but somehow be too weak to put even nominal sanctions on Russia or Russian officials – even though these cretins did this to Russia over Ukraine?
It’s unheard of for a proper country to act so pitifully….. If they believe their head of state has been assassinated by another state.
The crash itself sums up this tragicomic state for the losers that they are – inept behaviour.
I have to confess: I never visited Poland. Likely never will: the world is big, and there is nothing remarkable Poland has to offer. I was in first-rate Europe (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Switzerland, even Spain, Portugal, and Greece) many times, so why would I want to go to a second-rate Europe?
I don’t live in Russia,. Last time I visited it was in 2019, and it did not seem poor at all (I mean not just Moscow, but some provincial cities, like Penza and Nizhni Novgorod). In my experience, Budapest and the rest of Hungary, as well as Zagreb, felt a lot poorer than provincial Russian cities.
The Poles I know are all scientists, so I guess my sample is not representative. They all seem normal. Then again, I never discussed politics or history with them, so they might be normal the same way schizophrenics are: fine until you touch the point where their screw got loose.
My experience with Germans (was there many times, collaborate with several German labs, even taught a graduate course in one German University) suggests that Russia does not need to do much in that direction: Germans have healthy respect for Russians and Russia. Same with France and the UK (although I have no collaborators there). Italians are even more pro-Russian and anti-US (collaborate with one lab there, visited several times). So, in my view, Russia just needs to ignore unimportant sub-standard hangers-on, like Poland.
Let me just give one example. Soviet “occupiers” created Gdansk shipbuilding yard (there was no shipbuilding in Poland before that). They supplied it with orders that kept it busy until the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. Gdansk shipyard was the birthplace of Solidarity that eventually won Poland and turned it away from Russia. The Gdansk shipyard does not exist any more under tender care of the EU. If that’s not poetic justice, I don’t know what is.
I liked your previous discourse about the Smolensk accident and the related events, but this one is just stupid. It is bottom-feeding with no value.
In my experience, people who shift to ‘you are haters!‘ shallow defence when someone disagrees with them are insecure, scared poseurs. Address the points if you disagree, but don’t hide. It doesn’t work, it looks silly and unserious.
I’m American not Polish but I have lived in Poland for many years (a great place to live once you figure out how things work).
This poll is fake if it identifies Smolensk as a major concern of most people.
Jarosław Kaczyński began distancing himself from the monthly ‘observances’ a couple of years ago and no one under the age of 25-30 cares.
It’s an issue for a small, mostly older mostly moderately or under educated and a few nuts.
On Polish Russian relations. Many years ago a Polish woman contrasted attitudes toward Germans and Russians that sum things up pretty well.
The Germans are kind of admirable but there’s no feeling of kinship with them.
With Russians there’s some kind of feeling of kinship but they’re not admirable.
I’ve seen popular attitudes toward Russia come and go. Many Polish people like various aspects of Russian culture, even the language (despite supposed dislike when it was required in schools). But political barriers prevent long term good relations. Anyone speaking Russian or Polish with an eastern accent is now assumed to be Ukrainian.
The presence of many Ukrainians working here (people are neutral to positive about only a tiny minority has a problem with them) will probably not make Poland any more pro-Russian.
A lot of the continuing differences come down to what seems to be to be a single cultural issue.
Russians (even AK) don’t seem to care much when Russian governments kill people, including civilians, for political reasons.
Poles do.
Maybe it’s a Roman Catholic vs Orthodox thing?
Your strategy is what I call geopolitical gold-digging. It works well with aspiring provincial girls looking to settle down and not think too much. It also works with wide-eyed slightly incompetent people who like to please and lack honor. And of course Poland.
The West in general, mostly US lately, has used it very successfully both on individual level and geo-strategically. Exploiting gold-digging is the main underlying dynamic of the current world. Previously, more manly motivations like plunder, honor and revenge dominated.
For others to offer themselves as the new gold-digging nirvanas is impossible in the short run. The emotional perceptions are deep and to change them requires massive cultural changes. Even actual revolutions don’t change cultures much, so a gradual material rebalancing won’t do it. Gold-digging is a willful and often happy exchange of self for an easier day-to-day life. It’s appealing because we are all a little lazy.
We have the world that sub-100 IQ people can live in comfortably. It was our grandparents’ choice after WWII, and it was probably the correct one. It comes with consequences like a gradual genetic devolution, bad architecture, massive spread of material yearning and ubiquitous gold-digging behaviour. We can’t change that. Maybe corona can.
Germans killed close to three million Poles – Roman Catholics all, I presume. That the Poles seem to admire them is among the most sick things imaginable. You claim that Poles ‘care when governments kill people‘ – are you sure? If they look in admiration at the people who tried to genocide them, to eliminate them as a nation, it is a strange way of caring. I have also not noticed much Polish caring about their betters in US-UK killing quite a few people around the world lately. If anything Poles eagerly volunteer to be allowed to join in. You must be missing something.
I am not saying that you don’t represent what you see around in Poland, but those attitudes are not very coherent. And incoherence leads to chaos.
After WWII Polish people were able to give full expression to what the nazis had done and there was some kind of compensation in terms of land.
And West Germans had done an admirable job in rebuilding their country into a decent place to live and a widely respected country.
The USSR remained…. what it was, and their version of Germany was surrounded by walls and machine guns to shoot people trying to leave.
But the admiration (not that overt but more subconscious) had more to do with the hundreds of years of material and intellectual achievement. Nazism was more of an aberration and not business as usual while the USSR was seen more as Russia being Russia.
On the other hand, not only were Polish people unable to express the wrongs committed by the USSR they had to publicly and cheerfully repeat pro-Soviet lie after pro-Soviet lie for decades in an unwanted economic, political and military ‘alliance’….
“US-UK killing quite a few people around the world”
Sounds like “А у вас негров линчуют”
No, and I don’t know where you got that bizarro idea either.
Here we go again, AnoninTN writing nonsense as always. This time about Poland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Werft
However, as the company lost both its main client (the Kaiserliche Marine) and its raison d’etre, in 1922 it had to be commercialised. It was turned into a joint stock company, with 30% shares held by French Groupement Industriel pour Danzig conglomerate, 30% by British Cravens company, and remaining 40% by local Danziger Privat Aktienbank and Polish Bank Handlowy (20% each).[1] The new company used the name of “International Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Limited”, but was most commonly referred to by its simplified German name: Danziger Werft (“Danzig Shipyard”)
It was not until the late 1930s when the shipyard finally recovered from the post-war crisis. New toolshop was built, along with new boiler plant, compressed air workshop, compressor plant and a new slip for vessels of up to 150 metres (490 ft) of length.[1] License production of MAN ship engines was also started.
Soviets destroyed it and rebuilt it.
Poland had its own shipyard in Gdynia.
It went bankrupt and then reopened.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/13/survival-skills-help-gdansk-shipyards-rise-post-communist-decline
Lifted out of the water, a huge blue ferry towers over the quay, its propeller suspended in mid-air above brick warehouses. Workers in overalls and red helmets scurry about, as cranes tilt and swing into action.
These shipyards were once written off as a historical relic, famous not for the ships they built but for the communist system they sank. As Poland embraced the free market, Gdansk went into steep decline.
But not any more. The yards have undergone a remarkable renewal, emblematic of the new Poland: successful, competitive, and outward looking.
Ships built here now ply seas from the Channel and the Minch to the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, with clients including Scottish Fisheries, Brittany Ferries, and BP. The Queen and Princess Anne are both “godmothers” to ships built by Gdansk’s Remontowa company, bestowing British royal patronage on ships made on the other side of Europe.
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Of course, this is a lot like the nonsense you write about the very city where you live:
Here is AnoninTN writing nonsense as usual:
“Funny when people who know nothing about the US use it as an example. There is NO official federal language in the US, period. NO official language in any state. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States#Official_language_status
… 32 states of the United States, in some cases as part of what has been called the English-only movement, have adopted legislation granting official status to English.
You live in Tennessee, one of the states that has English as an official language:
http://www.languagepolicy.net/archives/tenn.htm
English is hereby established as the official and legal language of Tennessee. All communications and publications, including ballots, produced by governmental entities in Tennessee shall be in English, and instruction in public schools and colleges of Tennessee shall be conducted in English unless the nature of the course would require otherwise.
ttps://www.unz.com/akarlin/donbass-or-death/?highlight=cars#comment-2499199
“Isn’t it curious that only Japanese (Toyota), Korean (Kia), and German (VW) cars are now assembled in the US, whereas “American” cars are now assembled in Mexico? ”
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/donbass-or-death/#comment-2499610
Everybody assembles in Mexico, but very few assemble in the US. There are no American car makers among these few.
Meanwhile in Tennessee:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Hill_Manufacturing
General Motors looks to expand the plant’s facilities and influence in the North American and Global Auto industries, and is currently the company’s largest plant in North America/
Germans did a genocide in Poland with close to 3 million killed. Russians didn’t, at most you can claim that up to 100k Poles died because of Soviets-Russians, about the same as a similar number that Poles killed in the east and in 1920 when they basically starved Russian POWs to death.
Your vague ideas about ‘expressions’ or ‘admirable’ make no sense. Nothing about Germans and Russians is comparable, Germans did a genocide and failed, Russians stopped the genocide and stayed too long. Not the same thing.
East Germany was not ‘surrounded by walls’, they travelled freely in Eastern Europe, actually most tourists in Czechoslovakia and Hungary were East Germans. You exaggerate, that suggests deep ignorance or an ideological bias.
“US-UK killing quite a few people around the world” is not about lynching.
I was specifically responding to a bizarre and unsupported claim that “Poles care when governments kill people‘. Do they? Have they ever said anything about killing by their allies? No, they have not – so you are making it up.
The person you are writing with is a Soviet apologist with a Soviet view of history. Related to this, he is also notoriously dishonest.
Liar.
1937-1938:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD
According to archives of the NKVD, 111,091 Poles and people accused of ties with Poland, were sentenced to death, and 28,744 were sentenced to labor camps; 139,835 victims in total.[18] This number constitutes 10% of the total number of people officially convicted during the Yezhovshchina period, based on confirming NKVD documents.[19]
Almost all victims of the NKVD shootings were men, wrote Michał Jasiński, most with families. Their wives and children were dealt with by the NKVD Order № 00486. The women were generally sentenced to deportation to Kazakhstan for an average of 5 to 10 years. Orphaned children without relatives willing to take them were put in orphanages to be brought up as Soviet, with no knowledge of their origins. All possessions of the accused were confiscated. The parents of the executed men – as well as their in-laws – were left with nothing to live on, which usually sealed their fate as well. Statistical extrapolation, wrote Jasiński, increases the number of Polish victims in 1937–1938 to around 200–250,000 depending on size of their families.[20]
In Leningrad, the NKVD reviewed local telephone books and arrested almost 7,000 citizens with Polish-sounding name with the vast majority of such nominal “suspects” were executed within 10 days of arrest.[21]
1939-1946:
It is estimated that at least 150,000 Polish citizens died during the Soviet occupation.[3] It is a conservative estimate confirmed by analysis, while the unconfirmed number proposed by Prof. Czesław Łuczak reaches 500,000.
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So at minimum, 270,000 Poles killed by Soviets although this number may be 100,000 or more higher.
One can get a good idea of where Polish-Russian tensions come from by watching an interview with Polish ambassador in Warsaw:
https://vod.pl/programy-onetu/onet-opinie-bartosz-weglarczyk-siergiej-andriejew-1602/d2fepgt
Both the interviewer (Bartosz Węglarczyk) and the ambassador (Sergei Andreev) behave professionally.
The ambassador is in fact fluent in Polish but in this interview, the journalist asks questions in Polish while Andreev speaks Russian. So a Russian speaker will understand the ambassador fully and the journalist partly.
One interesting moment is when they discuss the arrival of the Red Army in 1944-1945 and whether it was a liberation or not. The ambassador says:
“Если не освободили, тогда спасали”
i.e.
“If they (Soviets) did not liberate, then they saved lives.”
In my opinion, the ambassador got it right.
Whether other Russians would say the same thing, I don’t know. The problem Russians have is that the Soviet Union made the Great Patriotic War into a secular religion, which makes it very hard to speak of the Red Army as anything less than morally pure.
Let me add some personal anecdotes about the Red Army.
1) Before 1989. there were Soviet troops in Poland but they kept a low profile.
Most Poles (except those who lived near Soviet bases) never met a Soviet soldier in their lives.
This was very different from Czechoslovakia and Hungary where the Soviet presence was in-your-face. In Czechoslovakia they made themselves seen by jamming highways with long columns of trucks and armored vehicles.
One might say that Poland was treated slightly better than other so-called “fraternal” countries.
2) My father lived in a small town southwest of Warsaw and as a child, he witnessed the main column of the Soviet Winter Offensive of 1945 passing through. That meant an interrupted stream of men and vehicles for several days.
Like my father said, it was the biggest traffic jam he had ever seen.
3) I once spoke to a man who, in 1945 served with the Polish armed forces that were formed by the new pro-Soviet government. He commanded a small unit guarding the train station and his main adversary were Soviet marauders. On one occasion, he was in a deadly shootout against them and apparently the Soviet commanders had no problem with that.
Such incidents happened elsewhere but the sanitized version of history we learned in school excluded them.
That probably depends on how you ask the question.
Fortunately, most Poles have more important problems than Polish-Russian relations. Not only the Smolensk crash but Polish-Russian relations in general are not a major concern for Poles.
So if the Poles were asked to list all their concerns, Polish-Russian relations would not rank high.
But if the question already assumes that Polish-Russian relations are bad (which is true) and asks why, then the percentages will be different.
PS I like your blog.
You are very confused, 1937-8 in the Soviet Union is not what we are discussing here. People with ‘Polish names’ who were Soviet citizens, what the f..? what kind of a standard is that? If you use that standard then Jews with German sounding names from Hungary could be counted as victims as Jews, Hungarians, Germans, even Austrians and a few other places.
Even by your clearly exaggerated count based on ‘estimates’ by ideologues, you have 270k against 3 million – what is that, 1 in 10? And how many Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians and Jews did Poles kill? How many? 100k, or more?
You are proving my point.
It seems to me that Russians have a more realistic view of international politics than other nations. The sad fact is that international relations involve a lot of backstabbing and reneging on promises.
This may have something to do with Russia’s being a major power and having many opportunities to backstab and renege. Which is what all major powers do.
Smaller nations don’t have that kind of experience.
You lie after you lie.
270k is the absolute minumum number based on archival evidence. The “estimates” you claim are by “ideologues” and adds up to 500k to this number.
So to review. Beckow claimed up to 100k Poles were murdered by Soviets. Minimum number was actually 270k.
Ask the Soviets whom you love. They were the ones randomly executed people in Leningrad based on Polish-sounding names.
And just like that, Beckow brushes away his lying.
I’ve been in Warsaw for a couple of days, although just as weekend holiday with my parents in winter, and I don’t have very interesting memories from it. On the other hand, if I had ever been for more time and in the summer, perhaps I would have more memories and impressions.
Poles are distinctive and interesting people – people who often have a strong, attractive and charming personality; on the other hand, this country I find difficult to generate an interest in, despite its convenience to visit.
My view is similar – there are far too many amazing things in Europe for a lifetime in the first-rate countries, so why would you waste time in second-rate countries in Europe like Poland? unless you just like playing loto with a Schengen visa.
On the other hand, there exists an eccentric type of tourists, which are my parents, who prefer even third-rate and fourth-rate countries, and would argue they are better than the first-rate ones. Some of my parents' favourite recent countries now are Lithuania and Bulgaria.
After the coronavirus pandemic, I am just predicting they will discover the best place in the world is Montenegro or Northern Macedonia.
Same – I only know some educated people who are working like researchers and scientists. I think all Poles I have met are quite charming, friendly. and do not care about nationality.
On the other hand, if you hear statement about politics or history, from them, it will likely always be a radical nationalist interpretation.
All Poles you can meet, seem to hate their current government, and are a politically very liberal people. At the same time, they are radical nationalists, that seem to imagine Poland is a centre of world history and that the whole world is very interested in them.
LOL, Jesus, instead of this incredibly creepy,disturbing obsessing, scanning over and copy&pasting AnonFromTN’s excellent comments from months, years ago (WTF you sick loser?)….. and then deliberately distorting his comments anyway to make up further BS……
Perhaps a better use of your time (and my god, you have alot of free-time, if nothing else) would be to scan through and republish your infamous “language lecture” on Polish, Ukrop and Russian words. Each list of 3 becoming dumber and more self-exposing than the next one. You are taking about a wikipedia-brain function failure, compounding on this failure with more ignorant garbage…. and beingg so bad it went further than incompetence but fully exposed that you couldn’t have even flown though that part of the world, never mind even visited it! Sick and of course fraudulent.
You’ll do us the favour to repost or link your infamous, “lecture”?
OR if that’s too much for you I have a second Assignment :
I seem to recall you writing about this film called “The Deer Hunter” having Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian language scenes – even being as clueless to claim an everyday Russian greeting as “Ukrainian” LOL – straightforward fantasist ignorance, not even extreme svidomism.
Now, I haven’t seen the film this millennium, so I don’t know for a fact if it was Ukrainian or Russian spoken. The film wasn’t one I particularly enjoyed. But you should watch it to check, ….and we should see if you will reproduce your hugely self-discrediting comment on it.
Now think about what, again, it signifies it it turns out to be Russian. We are not talking about ignorance like me confusing Rocky 2 with Rocky 3 plot…… we are talking about a genuinely sad fantasist threat to society wackjob giving himself a fake backstory over millions of posts and never having visited russia/Ukraine trying to harras on Russian comment threads. WEIRD.
As for polish shipbuilding, by lowering myself to use Google, first result is :
https://www.euractiv.com/section/shipping/news/polands-shipyards-face-uncertain-future/
AnonFromTN’s match my impressions/knowledge and of 2 pals of mine who used to work in Gdansk…… your’s is based on absolutely zero knowledge before, endless scrolling through other sites that agree, only to eventually find a propaganda piece that says the opposite.
Not to mention the dumbness of claiming hundreds of years of not having much, if any if a navy, even with a sizeable coastline, merely taking over a German site after WW1, taking nearly 20 years to not even build a ship (LOL maybe if they had the ability to build ships for their navy, the British would have done something to help in 1939)…..is somehow “building ships before the Soviets” haha
Remember your assignment
The nicest city in Poland is Krakow. Poles themselves will not claim that Warsaw is a great or particularly interesting holiday destination.
Krakow is about as nice as Austrian cities. And less expensive.
Dumb stalker projects onto me.
Why don’t you. you seem to have more free time than me, based on your posts. Based on your claims it takes hours for you to find information, so you must spend hours doing so. Scenes from Deerhunter were filmed in Lemko Hall in a Ukrainian neighborhood in Ohio, and there was a Ukrainian-American actor.
Well, what does your link say:
A positive element in the Polish shipbuilding industry is the production and export of yachts and catamarans, produced in one of the world’s most modern yacht shipyards.
Poland is an important player in this area and in 2018 it reached 60% of the EU’s export value, which accounted for 395.8 million euro, twice as much as in 2014 (€184.8 million). Poland was followed by countries such as Finland (€60 million and 9.1%) and Italy (36.7 million and 5.6%).
However, ” the Gdańsk Shipyard, re-nationalised by Morawiecki’s government, and its sister company GSG Towers has posted losses..”
What stupid nonsense did Anon in TN write:
“The Gdansk shipyard does not exist any more under tender care of the EU.”
:::::::::::
So it exists, and you and AnoninTN are dumb failures as always. He, at least, seems to know something about the process scientific research and is just a clueless fool outside the lab. You, on the other hand, do not even know the Russia word for clock:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/god-truly-does-have-a-sense-of-humor/#comment-3472492
Your quote: “chas” is “hour” in Russian..i.e a period of time, or in a time, not to mention also meaning “watch/clock”
Latvian woman had to point out to you that the Russian word for clock is not chas but chasy.
:::::::::::
The one where you proved that you did not know the Ukrainian word for world and Russian word for clock? LOL.
I met AK when I was in Moscow.
You are a failed civil “engineer” in some provincial town, I stay up the street from the Kremlin and my russian friends and family are much better than you are. It’s ironic that I do better in Russia than you do.
Does that hurt you 🙂
As much as does the fact that all of those Banderists in America have several times the income of people like you:
Average annual household income of Ukrainian-Americans, 2016 US census:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income#By_ancestry
$72,449
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/russia/annual-household-income-per-capita
Russia’s Annual Household Income per Capita reached 6,533.936 USD in Dec 2019
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/19/half-working-russians-earn-less-than-550-usd-month-a66487
Half of Russian workers earn salaries of less than 35,000 rubles ($550) a month, despite a small increase in average monthly income over the past year, according to newly released official data.
Deep thoughts. I don’t know. Like I said, I was just trying to give some pragmatic advice. I don’t believe anything else will work.
I think that you’re agreeing that my proposed strategy has strong empirical validation. It’s what made basically all Eastern European countries (not just Poland) turn West as soon as they could, although some laggards are now trying to catch that train a quarter of a century too late. It also prevented Spain from having loyalty problems in its peripheral regions when it was a World Empire. It’s made people forget Japan’s atrocities of the past and look at them with respect if not admiration. It’s turning everyone’s perception of China from a backward place to a formidable nation… the list of examples would be very long.
But I never said that it is an easy or short-term strategy. It may even not be achievable and some people will have to learn to live with other people’s perceptions of themselves.
In any case, I see that AP is desperate to pick one of his boring, repetitive fights and poisoning the well. I better leave. I do have very interesting things to do this long weekend out here in the spectacular Far West.
PS- It is interesting to see how my impressions of Poles, formed mostly during the 90s, are very similar to those of Dmitry’s and other commenters’, even Cliff Arroyo’s to some extent, although your reply to him regarding Poles’ concern for civilian casualties of war was spot on.
For the other serial liar, pointing out lies = picking “boring, repetitive fights.”
Because falsehoods are interesting.
You are one weird puppy, AP, you probably need professional help. In any case, I am done with you. Take your pre-diabetes pills and calm down. You are nor rational enough to have a normal discussion. As others here have done, I am giving up on you.
It was analogous to the situation in Ireland with English landlords and government ruling over Irish Catholic peasants. Irish describe the situation as colonial all the time, why wouldn’t the same apply to the Polish feudal landlords and their Ukrainian peasants in the east?
I wasn’t interested in dialogue with you. I was just pointing out when you lie, and will continue doing so. It’s a public service. I will continue doing so.
It was not because for much of the time in the Commonwealth among the richest and most powerful people were Orthodox Rus magnates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstanty_Ostrogski
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micha%C5%82_Wi%C5%9Bniowiecki
These Rus magnates dragged all of Poland-Lithuania into war over their own interests.
In this case, you either prove your dishonesty or your historical ignorance.
I still don’t get where improved relations with Poland are supposed to come from? Perhaps, you were just trying to make your 23527th argument in favor of decommunisation and rewriting Russia’s history, but bringing Poland into this conversation actually hurts your effort.
Seriously, fuck AP! He is cluttering every comment thread with the copious amounts of хохлосрач.
Also aviation industry . Poland used to built own trainers , transport planes plus legendary AN-2 are built in Poland now aviation industry is non existent . They are building some UH-60 helicopters and that is all . PZL factory used to have 18.000 workers . Now they are free country with service economy . I have spent some time in Canada and my teacher was Polish guy . He spent more time talking bad about USSR and Russian people then actual teaching . As a person originally from Ex Yugoslavia(crazy Serb) I could not stand anymore his BS and knock him down . By the time now I ended up to have Polish colleague ex historian I told him if you say in front of me anything bad about USSR we going to have problem . 600.000 soldiers died for shitty Poland and they respect Nazis more now . There is still bitter taste in my mouth why Red Army liberate Poland they should be bypassed .
Hater or no hater but Poland rubs you up the wrong way. It is well established by your comment history not only by the most recent one where you did not comment about Smolensk but brought up Hitler, Napoleon and Warsaw Uprising which I told you before it take inordinate amount of Chutzpah for a Slovak bringing up WWII and more so Napoleon times when Poles had their national consciousness and interests while Slovaks were, well, were making bryndza.
Your Sovokism is one thing. Poland was instrumental in bringing down communism and USSR so for a Sovok person you may resent Poles and Poland personally and try to diminish their motivation in history by their stupidity, by being manipulated… A typical Sovok rhetoric when something went not as they hoped for.
But as Chesterton suggests the reason might be running much deeper. The cultural ethos for Poles is different than that for Czechs or Slovaks for historical reasons how the national consciousness was formed. In Poland it was top down as Poland had aristocratic elites so naturally the archetypes of chivalry and honor and bravery on the battlefield were transferred down. For Czechs and even more so for Slovaks the national identity and awareness were constructed as externally driven masonic project of nation-state construction, which was anti-elite because Czech and Slovak elites were Austrian and Hungarian, in order to bring down multinational monarchies in Central and Eastern Europe. The ethos of Czechs and Slovaks is what you might expect from cunning peasants. There is lots of pragmatism and cunning and not much room for honor, chivalry, magnanimity, or manhood. In terms of cultural memes and cultural and psychological archetypes which is not saying that there are no magnanimous and brave Czechs or Slovaks.
Poles, I think, would like to be a little bit more like Czechs as they recognize the value of pragmatism and Czech accomplishments. Poles, I doubt that they think much about Slovaks which is good for Slovaks that their Nazi past is not better known in Poland and in the world. I have heard that Czechs and Slovaks are one of the most liked nationalities in polls conducted in Poland. Czechs, otoh, do not care much for Poles but there are detectable undercurrents of some appreciations for the qualities Poles have that Czechs are lacking . You can find it in Czech literature like in Hrabal’s Closely Watched Trains with the pigeon breeds of the stationmaster.
Small country Slovakia has historically done about a million times more for humanity in terms of producing talented people than big country Poland has done in a millenium. It is cretinous for a Pole of all people to attempt to look down on or make them appear as primitive–Slovakia is a very prosperous country
In Ww2 how exactly could one country as Poland simultaneously be bloodthirsty, beggars, massacred, initiators, betrayed, dumb, cowardly and greedy all at once?
Of the microscopic number of poles who have done something useful- none of them did it in Poland ( frenchman Chopin, Curie and Copernicus)… even in modern day, exempting Lewandowski in football…. we see Poles useless at tennis, except from those whose family leave Poland – Wawrinka, Wozniacki, Kerber and even the inconsistent Lisicki.
BTW, Poland was nothing in ending Communism – the Russian world people were crucial. Poles on the other hand were a critical people in setting up and the functioning of Bolshevism
Let’s see:
Hitler going to Pilsudski-dickhead’s funeral and openly mourning him
It being typical Polish BS
Even though it’s BS, the concept of it would have occurred not at all for Nazi’s being Nazi’s but merely because Germany was going into transition from one system into Nazism and Polish clowns were hoping it would be a good time to attack – just as these opportunist, cowardly poles did in the aftermath of the Russian revolution
Polish prostitute Pilsudski one of the very first to sign agreement with Nazi’s
Western official recognition in 1933 of the Soviet Union would have made these Polish losers jump into bed with Hitler anyway
You are just proving Chesterton to be correct, as usual.
First person to mention Ukraine in the comments here was butthurt AnoninTN. I did so only to make corrections when others mentioned the country first.
For reasons known only to them Poles believed and still believe that they are supposed to the leading Slavic nation, and resent Russia firmly occupying this position for centuries. It never occurred to them that their Catholicism makes it impossible: a vassal of the Pope cannot be a leader of anything.
Russia was too generous to Poland at least twice. After Napoleonic wars, when Poles joined Napoleon and were crushed with him, Russia gave Poland autonomy, constitution, and even allowed it to have its own army. Poles forfeited all of it by staging a rebellion that was defeated by the Russian Empire. Soviet Union developed a lot of industries in Poland. Poetic justice is that now the EU ruined it all. Until recently, Poland was the welfare queen in the EU. However, this is drawing to the end: the EU does not have enough donor countries and has its own huge problems.
USSR liberated Poland probably not for its own sake, but because that was the only direct way to Germany. Same as Hitler occupied Poland not so much for its sake, but because it was a direct way to the USSR. Pilsudski tried to make Poland an ally of Hitler, but Hitler did not take Poland seriously, maybe taking into account Napoleon’s experience.
Anyway, now the only security guarantee that Poland has is that neither Russians, nor anybody else want it. In case of real war, the US would protect it exactly like France and UK did in 1939. If they believe otherwise, they are even greater fools than they appear.
Cracow is okay, but I’ve always liked other places more….
I’d say Wrocław has a nicer… vibe than Cracow and the combination of the German architecture and Eastern people (though need to know the country to recognize that) make it feel really unique.
The Tri-City of Gdańsk-Sopot-Gdynia is also just nicer than Cracow with a kind of buzz not found in other cities.
Cracow kind of rests on its laurels and I’ve always found the people less interesting and kind of unpleasant… (especially outside the tourist clogged old town).
Warsaw is more “a nice place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit there” kind of place.
“East Germany was not ‘surrounded by walls’, they travelled freely in Eastern Europe”
In other words they were allowed to travel to other countries surrounded by walls. The Berlin wall was built to keep East Germans in and not everyone else out…
West Germany was an admirable country that was imperfectly trying to come to terms with the past and (with a lot of help from other western countries, yes) had become prosperous.
East Germany was a police state that tried to kill civilians who wanted to leave (and often succeeded) without much else to recommend it either….
“aware of and hate Russians’ tolerance for Stalin and are angry at what they see as Russians’ indifference towards Soviet crimes”
that whole paragraph is exactly what I meant… are Russians in Russian really so indifferent or is it just when outsiders talk about it? Poles in Polish talk about some things differently than they do in English… (but that’s a whole different topic)
With Germans they admire West German post WWII accomplishments and respect(ed) Germany’s position in the EU (though that kind of ended with “Wir schaffen das”) but there’s no feeling of similarity or… kinship. German high culture is a hit or miss… (maybe more miss than hit).
“do not endorse this conspiracy theory, but there was an obvious motive”
Was there? I absolutely believe that Putin (as current tsar) would kill a bunch of politicians in that manner if he thought it could get away with it, but… there’s no real evidence that that’s what happened.
The motive was also weak, Kaczyński was unpopular and very unlikely to be reelected. Why risk that much to kill a politician who was probably on his way out?
On the other hand Russia doesn’t care about its international image at all, but… again no real evidence of foul play.
My wrath is received for the hubris of Jaroslaw Kaczyński (the mastermind of that dumb expedition in the first place). There was no excuse for that many dignitaries to be in a single plane.
Here we go again. The usual empty slogans.
Have you lived or spent more time in East Germany, which would make you a first hand witness of what you are saying?
I don’t dispute that there were people who were trying to flee to the west for all kind of reasons, not least in some kind of coordination with western secret services as those attempts made for a prime PR material. But that was but a tiny fraction relative to the population of East Germany.
Fact is that today, having experienced first hand the capitalistic ways, a clear majority of East Germans who did live in Eastern Germany, think that the previous system offered better quality of life, not in materialistic sense, but in a humane sense.
There are different ways one can describe any historical situation, it depends on your background. You – as I recall – are a bitter Sudeten leftover. I have my identity that you don’t understand. We will obviously not agree. What you call Polish ‘honor‘ we call Polish stupidity and servility. Only stupid people repeatedly die for the interests of others – that’s why I listed the events from Napoleon to their current anglo masters. Poles talk a lot, work little, and are generally known in these parts of Europe as shady and unreliable. But there are a lot of them and they always volunteer to be the cannon fodder for others’ interests. And they always seem to lose. Nothing heroic about any of that. But if you prefer their way, it’s your choice. We mostly just don’t want the out-of-control Poles to again pull us into their crazy and suicidial initiatives. The Smolensk affair is a potential emotional trigger, those in the past damaged this part of Europe.
That is incoherent nonsense. No ‘masons’, whoever that is for you. And how can a ‘project’ be simultaneously a masonic conspiracy and anti-elite?
I will leave the “Sovok” obsession to you. I have no idea what it means, and I don’t care. Don’t project on others, it is amateurish.
I have given up trying to argue with idiots spouting shallow propaganda. An idiot who says that East Germans lived in a ‘walled prison‘ guarded by machine guys, well, where would you even start with morons like that?
When you tell them that East Germans travelled freely over the eastern half of Europe, and lived quite well, their response is that it was all one big prison. Right, the way this planet is one giant prison.
I did not ever live in East Germany, did you?
I did travel through it by train and remember the border guards coming at the train with dogs and screwdrivers… and seeing the guys with machine guns…
I did know a Polish guy (part of a delegation) supposed to spend three months there and they all left after three weeks because it was seemed so… unfree (compared to communist Poland…).
If so few people wanted to leave then why build a wall? Why not let people travel to Italy or Greece?
How do you explain thousands of people seeking refuge in the West German embassy in Prague (1989)?
I’m sure some look at the past with rose colored glasses (you get those types in Poland too).
Is there any viable neo-DDR party? If not, then why not? If yes then how popular?
In case of a real war Poland would be simply destroyed, probably totally obliterated. That’s sad, although after a few hundred years of marching around with signs ‘Shoot here‘, one can almost understand it. The problem is that others who want no part in Polish idiotic obsessions would be hurt too.
You are probably right that USSR liberated Poland because it was on the way to Berlin. Although Soviets had some bizarre ‘internationalist‘ ideas, so who knows. What I have always asked my Polish friends is: if not the Russians, who would liberate Poland? Would anyone? They clearly couldn’t do it themselves – see the Warsaw uprising – and if they think that US-UK were about to lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers to ‘free Poland‘, they are even more stupid than they appear.
I’ve only been to Warsaw, Krakow and around Silesia; I haven’t seen Wroclaw or Gdansk. Warsaw struck me as a smaller, poorer version of Moscow but without the charming inner Moscow neighborhoods: a good place to do business, probably the place to go for theater in the country, but not much to look at. Krakow was really beautiful, if too touristy.
About 53% of Russians endorse a positive view of Stalin. This does not mean they like gulags and massacres and starving peasants to death – rather, it’s an idealized view involving victory in World War II and turning Russia into a feared and respected superpower (Ukrainian affinity to Bandera is analogous – his fans don’t support massacres of Poles but like him for his stance of uncompromising resistance against much more powerful foes).
Attitudes towards Stalin crimes vis a vis non-Russian complainers is basically – yes they were bad, but we suffered too, why do you make a big deal about it if we moved on? And besides Latvians, Jews and Georgians were mostly responsible anyways.
In contrast, of course, Germans do not admire Hitler (even a sanitized version of him) and are not indifferent to Nazi crimes. Thus the two peoples cannot be compared in terms of their relationships to history.
Yep, in case of war between big guys, vaudeville states like Poland or Baltics would be simply destroyed in the first hour. What’s more, none of serious combatants will even notice it. It’s bad to be a neighbor of such an idiotic entity with death wish, but we can’t change geography.
The last time Russia without Empire went to war against Poland things did not turn out well for Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
But good to know that the guy who writes so much nonsense believes this.
“The motive was also weak, Kaczyński was unpopular and very unlikely to be reelected. Why risk that much to kill a politician who was probably on his way out?” – Exactly. But what about being a patsy. What if Kaczynski and his delegation were just the theater props in the operation targeting Russia and Obama-Putin reset?
The difference between DDR and Poland was like between Canada and the US. DDR was quieter, grayer, more peaceful, more egalitarian, more orderly, seemingly superficially less free. Poland was more colorful, more hustle-and-bustle, more messy, more socio-economic extremes, seemingly more free. Still they were both communist. The standard of living was higher in DDR, probably the highest in the Soviet Block. Otoh Poland had more social freedoms, had larger private sector, travel to the West was much easier and most importantly it had strong and independent Church.
The only reason Ossies could not travel to the West was because of the West Germany. They could easily stay there, were welcomed there and received all social benefits and rights as German citizens. While Poles or Czechs to stay in the West had to go through the rigmarole of the defection, refugee status, finding which country would take them…
“How do you explain thousands of people seeking refuge in the West German embassy in Prague (1989)?” – By the time when Ossies began to stay in Hungary and Prague already hundreds of thousands of Poles left Poland during ten years since 1980. You are describing the final stage of the decomposition of the Soviet Block. It began in Poland in 1980 and took nine years in Poland with the grand finale in June 1989 election when the communists came to some sort of understanding with the opposition under aegis of KGB and CIA blessings, meaning they won’t be hanged, they will play the leading role in privatization scheme, the secret services of Polish state will find (already had) sponsors with CIA, Mossad and BND. Then in November 1989 was the end stage with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in Prague where the events seemed to be more spontaneous and spectacular only because there was no strong organized oppositions for communists to make a deal with to assure the smooth non bloody transition. In DDR it was easy because the West Germany took over and assured the smooth transition. But the comrades in Prague were confused and had to be prodded by Moscow. In the end it world well.
“No ‘masons’, whoever that is for you. And how can a ‘project’ be simultaneously a masonic conspiracy and anti-elite?” – “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
Historical processes that may seem organic need to be primed and steered. That various freethinkers and free mason which were anti-clerical and anti-monarchist organizations contributed to the events of late 18th and 19th centuries is a basic knowledge. Take American Revolution and French Revolution. There would be no Revolution of 1848 w/o them which however was not fatal. It took WWI and Bolshevik Revolution to destroy the order in Europe that made it possible for countries like Czechoslovakia to be established. The construction of minor nationalisms in 19th century Europe was a part of this process. Small Ethnic and regional groups were constructing their identity, inventing their history and legends and even constructing their language which existed only among the lowest classes like in Bohemia and Slovakia so the whole dictionary had to be written from scratch where words were invented and borrowed from more developed languages. You can’t find much what was organic or natural in this process. It was no different than what we observe now with globalization and all kinds of NGO’s working behind the scene. Masonic organizations were the NGO’s of 19th century. The fathers of Czech independence were all free masons.
Men try to steer, and still what happens has a logic and force of its own. You mostly see the steerers, I am more of a Tolstoyan. French Revolution was not a planned event and the way it played out was not to any side’s full benefit – masons as all others were only objects of history, not its managers. Nationalist movements were organic in the 19th century – they were an inevitable and natural expression of the new circumstances. Nobody had to construct Czech, Slovak, Hungarian or Polish identity: they were there, they were more real than all of your books or masonic lodges.
To know your history, you need to look at details, individual biographies, words in dictionaries, etc… None of that supports your masonic top-down idea. Languages spoken by what you call ‘lowest classes’ (would that be me by any chance?), were the only real languages, those were spoken by 90% of the population or more. The words were standardised, sometimes neologisms created, terms borrowed, but there was nothing artificial about it. It was no ‘NGO’s’, that’s a false analogy.
What you say is also the usual losers’ verbiage – things didn’t go the way you would prefer, so as in the old fable you have to call the grapes bitter. It changes nothing.
I agree with most of what you say, but you leave stuff out. Poland had no effect whatsoever on what happened in Czechoslovakia or DDR. Quite the opposite, Poles and their emotionalism were perceived as what not to do. The Polish Solidarity was a one-off, so was their Catholicism.
The comrades were not a united bunch. By 1989 they ranged from die-hard bolshies to Gorbachev-like ‘reformers’, to outright pragmatic elite ‘let’s privatise the damn thing so our kids can go to tennis schools in Florida’. Obviously, the last group prevailed. By 1980’s the post-WWII socialist systems in Eastern Europe were done, there was no way to keep them going as they were. They had a role after WWII in creating the necessary infrastructure and stability, and they were a lot more popular than most people today want to admit (Czechs voted 40% for communists in 1946). At the end the mulatto did his work, mulatto could go home.
Travel by 1980’s was restricted for East Germans – because of the W German co-citizen situation as you describe it – but Poles, Czechoslovaks and Hungarians could travel quite freely if they had money. Not all that different from most Westerners, maybe 10-15 years behind in terms of being able to afford it. The ‘wall’ propaganda is quite tiresome because it deceives Westerners into living a lie. It is ironic that they accuse others, but I suppose projection is always a way less smart people deal with self-esteem. There was a ‘wall’, and there wasn’t – too complex for most in the West to understand.
“Poland had no effect whatsoever on what happened in Czechoslovakia or DDR.” – More ill will and blatant lies form you. There were people in Poland, in fact millions, who believed what almost nobody else in the world believed that the Soviet Union and its power will come to an end. For Czechs this kind of belief was probably irrational that they could only attribute to crazy Polish Catholic messianism. The freedom was in the air and people could smell it. The wind of freedom was blowing from Poland not from Czechoslovakia or DDR. Polish opposition was meeting with Czech opposition ( totaling no more tow dozen) in Sudetes mountains. Underground literature was published in Czech language in Poland and smuggled into Czechoslovakia. Money and printing equipment was flowing from Poland to Czechoslovakia.
Czechs were cautious as usual and did the move only after everybody else did. And Slovaks did not want to make the move at all. Finally they made the move being prodded by Soviets who saw the light before the Czech and Slovak communist did. (Actually you exemplify those communist who did not see the light. Those who did not see the light till now are called Sovoks. ) With or w/o the prodding the move was possible only because Poles prepared the ground during ten years of active and high risk dissent. Poles being ‘irrational’ did it. Czechs being ‘rational’ waited until Poles did it. Slovaks being the most loyal (Союз нерушимый) were praying for the Red Army to rescue them as it did in 1968 so they would not have to do it.
“To know your history, you need to look at details, individual biographies, words in dictionaries, etc… “ – Yes, but first you need a written language, you need dictionaries. you need to know how to read and only then you can wonder who wrote the biographies and what was embellished and what was omitted in them. As I said the written Czech and more so Slovak languages and dictionaries were constructed in 19th century. A very successful project. Probably harder than turning Hebrew into a modern living language.
“Nobody had to construct Czech, Slovak, Hungarian or Polish identity” – Hungarian and Polish languages and identities did not need to be invented. They have a continuous existence since late Middle Ages. The languages were live and continuously evolving. Czech identity was interrupted in early 17th century and extinguished when its elites were wiped out and Slovak identity was never born until 19th century when it was constructed with the help of foreign NGOs.
Networks of masonic organizations of the 19th century are not just a perfect analogy of late 20th and early 21st century NGOs but they are almost exact replicas of each other.
I think that the disolution of the Soviet Union and the whole Eastern Block was, ultimately, brought about by the Russian nationalism of “Solzhenitsyn” type. To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn: “Russians must stop running to enter every fight in the world … while vast expances of Russia remain empty and unpopulated”.
Only now we are learning that even during the 70s, top Soviet leaders like Kosygin, Primakov possibly Andropov were, privately, mulling, if not outright disolution, then radical re-configuration of the Soviet Union (and the whole of the Eastern block) as it was an unsustainable drag on, primarelly, RSFRS’s expense. People in Eastern block countries had better standards of living than those in Soviet Union. Even worse, majority of Soviet republics, supposedly, had it better then RSFRS.
It is possible that this “wavering” within Soviet elites did not go unonoticed, hence the appearance of “Solidarity” in Poland at the beginning of 80s. Had such political movement been attempted during the 70s, it would have been, without a doubt, crushed.
Interestingly, something very similar takes place in USA now. The MAGA movement and the political forces (supposedly) behind Donald Trump, use arguments that are very similar to Solzhenitisin’s only in American context. They argue that the “Americal global empire” has caused the hollowing up of the American heartlends and, consequently, is detrimentall to the lifes of ordinary Americans. One significant difference being, Russians did not have major foreign “stakeholders” like USA does (Great Britain and Israel come to mind) to influence their historical course of action.
But, back to the topic. It is safe to assume that the fall of communism was initiated and brought about by forces order of magnitude greater then the “Solidarity” movement.
Too many people who grew up with the Western version of the Cold War mythology, repeat slogans like ‘freedom’ without understanding anything. They look at it from the outside, yearn for affirmation and simplicity, create silly, almost stupid, narratives about good and evil, walls and empires. They focus on a few, often misrepresented events that they are familiar with, Solidarity, 1968 ‘socialism with human face‘, Gorbachev and perestroika, 1956, and similar nonsense.
It was both more complex, and also very simple: socialism by 1980’s was done. Finished. It had achieved what masses craved after WWII, and it was unable to function within the realities of the 80’s. By the way, there was a similar abandonment of the ‘socialist’ principles in Western Europe, from Thatcher to Sweden, people felt secure enough to want more – to want property rights, to want to become rich, to stratify societies again.
Poland and its domestic emotional Catholic and anti-Russian manias played almost no role in it. Poland was poor and too religious, nobody in eastern Europe aspired to follow them. They were a joke, Czechs used to say that dogs eat in Czechia and go to bark to Poland. Solidarity was a weird quasi-leftist labor movement whose main goal seemed to be to put crosses everywhere and to wilfully disband Polish ship-building industry. They eventually achieved both. Polish intellectuals were so deep into their papist myths and desperate attempts to justify why Poland was so backward (hint: blame the big neighbours) that no self-respecting East German, Czechoslovak or Hungarian would take them seriously.
It was 30 years ago and the wheel of history is turning again. It is inevitable that new forms of ‘socialism’ will be reintroduced, probably with a strong nationalist bent. It is the way it works. All else is empty sloganeering that so many here hide behind. Ask yourself, who is a libertarian post-corona? Who is asking now for more ‘entrepreneurship?