journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

8
Ania Krok-Paszkowska and Jan Zielonka
Poland is an old state and an old nation. Both notions can of course be
questioned. One may argue that the rise of a Polish state and nation is a late
eighteenth century phenomenon and that during the past two centuries Poland
hardly had an independent state and if it had one, it was very multi-ethnic.
Nevertheless, some form of a Polish state has existed between 966 and 1795, 1918
and 1939, and since 1944/45, although its form, size and geographical location has
varied. 2 Poland’s history has been marked by change and fluidity, affecting
Poland’s economic and demographic character up to the present day.
The distinction between nation and state has been a particularly salient one in
Poland’s history. A nation requires some sort of internal identification or a sense of
collective identity on the part of people who comprise it, but it does not necessarily
require the organisational characteristics of a state. 3 A nation is thus not necessarily
congruent with the boundaries of a state. Moreover, concepts of nation had been
muddied by the fact that in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (16th to 18th
centuries) different ethnic groups, differentiated by both language and religion,
were often distributed and distinguished according to social roles and status rather
than compact territory, i.e., Poles and polonised Lithuanians were landowning
nobility and gentry, Germans and Jews were burghers and merchants,
Byelorussians and Ukrainians were peasants. Thus the nation during the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was defined on the basis of social standing; the
szlachta (gentry) rather than ethno-linguistic groups formed the nation. However,
following the partitions of Poland (1772/95 and 1918), and much influenced by the
Romantic Movement, a strong Polish ethno-cultural identity emerged. The binding
factor was a keen sense of common ethnic identity based on common memories,
myths, language and religion.
The problems of reconciling nationalism with federalism in a newly
independent Poland had already been a subject of debate during the partitions. 4 In
some cases, the coexistence of different cultures and multilingualism were seen as
enriching and even defining the particularities of a nation. For instance, in interwar
Poland, Józef Piłsudski’s vision of a multi-ethnic spiritual community united by
culture and history drawing on an admittedly idealised memory of the former
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth contrasted sharply with Roman Dmowski’s
ideal of an ethnic Polish nation-state. In interwar Poland, national minorities
formed a third of the total population. In the five Eastern provinces they actually
formed the majority.
Poland indeed has various pasts to choose from. To this day, attitudes to the
European Union are coloured by two enduring myths about Poland’s place in
2. M. TYMOWSKI, J. KIENIEWICZ and J. HOLZER, Historia Polski, Editions spotkania,
Warszawa, 1991.
3. K. POMIAN, Europa i jej narody, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warszawa, 1992; also
published in French as K. POMIAN, L’Europe et ses nations, Collection “le Débat”, Gallimard,
Paris, 1990.
4. P. WANDYCZ, The Polish Precursors of Federalism, in: Journal of Central European Affairs,
12(1952/53), pp.346-355.