Relations between the Poles and Russians are relations between two Slavic peoples with ancient state traditions, similar language, but different political guidelines. Poland sees in Russia more concern that demands foreign policy efforts than Russia in Poland. Analysis of the modern history of their relations helps better comprehend the obstacles that exist in the dialogue between Russia and the European Union and the so-called West in general. Director of the Moscow Institute of International Relations at the Russian foreign ministry Artem Malgin who is the secretary of the Russian part of the Russian-Polish Group on complicated issues told the Amber Bridge about the twists and turns in Russian-Polish relations.
How to build safe Europe?
Mr. Malgin, one of the fundamental problems in relations between Russia and Poland lies in different perceptions of the optimal architecture of international relations and security in Europe and of the role of Central and East European countries in it. How deep are the contradictions?
They manifested themselves at the threshold of the ’90s when the Polish leadership worked to accelerate to the maximum the withdrawal of Soviet (Russian) troops and to decide anew the security issue in the region after the disbanding on June 1, 1991 of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. It is characteristic that during subsequent many-year discussion about the eastward enlargement of the North Atlantic alliance Russian diplomats sent their arguments mostly to western countries while Poland was perceived as an instrument of geopolitical rivalry.
Due to geopolitical changes on the threshold of the ’90s Russia and Poland unexpectedly acquired new neighbors some of which were common for Moscow and Warsaw – Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania. For Poland the new neighbors immediately developed into an instrument of diversified foreign policy and an additional range for foreign policy maneuvers and enhanced positions in European affairs. For Russia they expanded the range of obligations and encumbrances related to a broad range of issues of succession from the former USSR to newly-independent states. The post-Soviet space swallowed up immense endurance, diplomatic and other resources of Russia in the first half of the 1990s. It does the same even today to a certain extent.
At the change of the epochs Russia and Poland chose western guideline as the general direction of public, economic, and foreign policy development. Each country followed most general parameters of western experience but reformed its own life like it deemed it necessary.
In 1991-1993 many people in Moscow thought the universal movement to a single development paradigm would drop all interstate and international contradictions. They were wrong as nobody has abolished national interests and they began to manifest themselves when the policy of new states became more detailed.
The difference in potentials in Russian-Polish relations inevitably results in asymmetry in reciprocal attention and mutual interest.
For the first time in modern history Russia attempted to formulate strategic international priorities in the 1993 Foreign Policy Concept. It became clear that the European guideline and European institutions occupied an important place in foreign policy values and tasks. The professional diplomatic community in Moscow made several principle steps while breaking through a web of tactical problems and tasks. They determined the vector in European policy which we are following at present.
The second wave of discussions of European institutional and political landscape emerged in 2004-2005 and determined to various extent the agenda of Russian-Polish relations up to now. The talk is about the interpretation of the deployment in Poland of missile defense elements which Polish and American authorities began to unofficially speak about yet in 2001. Poland viewed the agreement with the United States not only as enhancing the union with “the only surviving s u p e r p o w e r ” which will strengthen security in the region also from Russia, but as a possibility to receive additional assistance from the United States in reforming the Polish armed forces. Subsequent refusal of the Obama administration to build a large-scale missile shield triggered a wave of skeptical moods in the Polish elite regarding military cooperation with Washington.
Bilateral relations: economy or politics?
The scope of economic cooperation between Russia and Poland was considerable even in the years when interstate relations left much to be desired. There was an illusion that politics did not influence economy on the track. What does reality comprise?
A constant factor in modern relations between Poland and Russia is the ongoing difference in potentials determined by Russian supremacy in territorial, natural, military, and demographic resources.
However Poland is a member of a close integration entity – the European Union which surpasses Russia by all parameters except the military one. Therefore, it can mobilize EU capabilities in a critical moment.
Still the difference in potentials in Russian-Polish relations inevitably results in asymmetry in reciprocal attention and mutual interest. Poland spends on Russia a third or may be a half of all foreign policy efforts and concerns. In Russian foreign policy Poland will hardly ever get the same weight even for a short period of time.
Modern Poland and Russia are similar countries from the point of view of historic and foreign policy self-conscience and self-perception.
The classical bilateral relations which dominated for centuries between our countries disappeared in 1991 together with the loss of most of the common border. The Kaliningrad section of the border will never compensate for it. Modern bilateral relations will be increasingly based on a common (by the set of items) international agenda for both countries and mostly by the European agenda. Small Kaliningrad and sea border sections can serve as a litmus paper and a catalyst for relations in the framework of the “big agenda”.
In the 1990s Poland learned to use the “geopolitical rent”. The resource created yet in Soviet times began to operate. The first line of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline was constructed and Polish oil pipelines were used for the transit of Russian crude. As a result, 30% of Russian oil and 16% of Russian gas go through Poland. At that time Polish transportation companies became and remain the biggest road carriers delivering goods and food from Western Europe to Russia. It is necessary to remember that old infrastructure was mostly operated in the first decade of the market economy. The only exception were the new and old but reequipped border checkpoints.
Today we forget that in the 1990s, up to October 1, 2003, there was a visa-free regime between Russia and Poland. Everyone who has ever received a Schengen or American visa understands the level of freedom and openness which existed in relations between our countries at the grass-root level.
Warsaw succeeded in transmitting contradictions in bilateral relations to the European level. The policy paramount in May 2007 when Angela Merkel and Jose Manuel Barroso confirmed at the Russia-EU summit that the problem of Russian “meat embargo” was considered by the European Union as a problem of Russia- EU relations. Only an early election in Poland and the rise to power of the centrist team of Donald Tusk eased the situation. “The meat conflict” helped rethink mutual perceptions of each other. The German reaction helped many people in Warsaw comprehend the potential of the European component in the Polish policy towards Russia. The seemingly mystical “European solidarity” did work. The Russian elite realized, in its turn, the cost of bad relations with such a country, as Poland.
Today when a series of political problems in bilateral relations lost their acuteness a major problem in economic relations is non-organized Polish business that operates in Russia. There are no efficient bilateral structures for business cooperation. Polish businessmen often prefer to work in Russia under “an alien flag” and register their companies as German, Austrian, but not Polish. Except for energy sphere Polish authorities failed to create in Russia a viable system of promoting and insuring their businesses, as well as stable relations with government and public counterparts.
The situation with Russian economic presence in Poland is alike. Only energy companies properly operate there as they are satisfied with the minimum stability, feel the general political situation, and successfully place business projects which emerge in communications with Polish counterparts on the political agenda. Non-energy business is poorly organized on the Polish avenue. It is discrete and intentionally distanced from the general context of Polish-Russian relations and therefore cannot play a major stabilizing role in them. As a result, it often falls victim to the uneven and still emotional character of the relations.
Emotions on historic background
My personal experience in communicating with the Poles, also when I was a post-graduate student in the Moscow State University, allows me to state complete mutual understanding and the absence of problems. However it is not correct to extend people-to-people contacts to interstate relations.. .
Modern Poland and Russia are similar countries from the point of view of historic and foreign policy self-conscience and self-perception. The similarity results from stable ideologemes borrowed from history and stubbornly implemented in modern policy with an art worthy of a better course. Both in home and foreign policy. It also concerns bilateral relations.
The ideologemes determining similarity of Poland and Russia include: overstated perception of the own role in international affairs, perception of neighbors as countries demanding and thirsty for the patronage of Moscow or Warsaw, excessive and superlative use of such notions, as morality, spirituality, suffering, martyrdom, and heroism in relation to ourselves.
There are also deep-rooted historic myths-concepts similar in both countries which are only partially based on reality but definitely determine it. Among them is the concept of Sarmatism which explained to the Poles and Russians the necessity to develop “lost” lands and the presence of public and everyday customs and habits which are alien to other parts of Europe. There is also the concept of a bridge between the East and the West, and naturally the historic pride for the salvation of Europe from Tatar invasion. I would like to stress – all the ideologemes are common and equally important and even popular in historic self-conscience.
This is ancient history. What about difficult problems of the XX century?
To be brief, they have been dropped from the big policy agenda although the problem of Katyn has been a painful issue in bilateral relations for a decade.
“Historic policy” is not only a Polish phenomenon. However only in Poland it became for some time a part of the official political doctrine of the ruling party.
In general, Russia and Poland, as young states in their current life, are inclined to view history with the eyes of the state and explain various current actions by quoting a matching historic fact or historic interpretation.
Somebody can be skeptical about my assessments and would describe them as extremely straight interpretation of national conscience and grotesque which has nothing to do with the official position. But unfortunately, the grotesque and the absence of critical attitude to imposed historic stereotypes dominated relations between Russia and Poland for over a decade. Both parties were to blame for it in turn. In such periods similarities between Russia and Poland did not help rapprochement but promoted standoff like it happens between same particles. Paradoxically, the vanishing of (post) Soviet historic paradigm which interpreted Polish revolts through the prism of class and national liberation struggle by an oppressed nation diminished the objective pro-Polish stance of the Russian historic indoctrination and returned it to historic paradigms of purely “statehood” character. The Russian public opinion automatically returned to the previous perception of Poland which existed in tsarist Russia in the XIX century. The perception which was clearly unacceptable for the Polish political class also contained sentiments and cliches characteristic of Socialist Poland which in the opinion of modern Poland are operationally useless.
The most negative elements were clumsy propaganda attempts to pose Poland as an enemy in 2005-2007.
It is also to be stressed that the rejection by the Polish political class of the Socialist Poland (“unnumbered” Rzeczpospolita) gives nothing good for historic and foreign policy self-conscience of modern Poland. Such rejection deletes a whole historic layer and automatically turns Poland into a heir of faulty foreign policy concepts of the 1920-30s. People may object and say public thought of the post-war Polish emigration organically interlaces into modern conscience. However any objective observer can see that the mainstream mentality of the political class of Poland is unfortunately much more monochrome than the legacy of Jerzy Giedroyc or collective wisdom of Paris “Culture”. As emigrant thought returned to Poland in the difficult reform period of early 1990s it hardly won many supporters outside intelligentsia of the middle and older generations.
All the abovementioned added to the growing popularity in Poland of the “historic foreign policy” which flourished during the first two years of the political tenure of late Lech Kaczynski. In relation to Russia the “historic policy” mobilized all negative stereotypes that formed in decades or even centuries.
“Historic policy” is not only a Polish phenomenon. However only in Poland it became for some time a part of the official political doctrine of the ruling party and developed into “historically substantiated foreign policy”.
I want to repeat the situation has been overcome at present and history was returned to the hands of historians, or least has partially returned to them.
Can we say that after April 7, 2010 we dropped the problem of Katyn and all historic issues from the political agenda of bilateral relations?
Yes, if we take into attention the emotional and sincere gestures and words which have evidently demanded major spiritual effort from Vladimir Putin at the memorial in Katyn.
Yes, if we proceed from the fact that the prime minister of modern Russia reiterated the words of his predecessors, but did it brighter and more expressively .
Yes, if we proceed from the fact that two prime ministers were together at the memorial ceremony and confirmed an absolutely identical approach to the understanding who the victim is and who the criminal is.
Yes, if we investigate a broader rather than only the Polish aspect of the anti-Stalin pathos in the speech of Vladimir Putin.
Yes, because a Polish Catholic priest was present at the foundation laying ceremony of an Orthodox Church in Katyn.
Yes, because a ceremonial unit of the Polish Army participated in the Red Square parade in Moscow on May 9, 2010 and thus reminded to everyone that our countries were allies in the fight against common enemy.
The new tragedy near Smolensk – the air crash on April 10, 2010 that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and several dozen state and public figures of the country – shocked Russia. Public attitude to Poland and the Poles included compassion, sympathy, a feeling of solidarity and brotherhood in grief.
It seems nothing in twenty years has caused such good feelings of Russians to the Poles. However without the words of truth voiced by the two leaders who joined each other in common memory for the victims in Katyn on April 7 the reaction to the air crash on the 10th could be different.
Alexander Chechevishnikov,
for Amber Bridge