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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.
Poland’s Road to the European Union 9 Europe. Kristian Gerner 5 has referred to the dichotomy between a Piastian alternative (from the early medieval Piast state with boundaries largely similar to that of present-day Poland) influenced by Western Europe and West Christian civilization and a multinational Jagiellonian alternative (from the 16th century union between Poland and Lithuania, a pagan state three times its size) facing eastwards, with Polish hegemony over non-Poles and non-Catholics. Throughout Poland’s existence, historical consciousness and identity has vacillated between a conviction that Poland should take on foreign, “enlightened” European models and a desire to adhere to the traditional home-grown customs and values of the gentry nation. 6 Polish traditionalism and sense of a divine mission were strongest in the periods following the partitions (1772, 1792 and 1794) and the November 1830 and January 1863 uprisings. While the 19th century Polish discourse was very much about re-gaining Poland’s role among the family of European states and nations, the 20th century discourse was also linked to the notion of modernity: Europe as a symbol of it. 7 This latter aspect is present today in the enlargement discourse among so-called EU-specialists (negotiators with the EU, officials responsible for implementing the acquis, professors specialised in European integration). The present Polish state, the Third Republic, continues from the interwar Second Republic, but with boundaries based on the post-war 1945-1989 Polish People’s Republic (PRL). The thrust of PRL interpretations of history was to underline the centuries-old “Polishness” of the Ziemie Odzyskane [the regained territories] to the West and to ignore the fact that they had not been part of a Polish state since the late 14th century. Mass resettlements in 1945 turned Poland into an ethnically homogeneous state. The recent historical Polish role in the Eastern borderlands [Kresy] of interwar Poland (1918-1939), and especially the cities of Lviv [Lwów] and Vilnius [Wilno] was overlooked. In the years since 1989 there has been greater recognition by the Poles of the long German history of the Western territories and a reassessment of Poland’s relationship with Germany. Germany is now seen as one of Poland’s main supporters in its efforts to rejoin Europe. At the same time, there have been efforts by Poland to play a similarly supportive role with respect to its former Eastern territories. Poland supported Lithuania’s application for EU membership and has been an advocate of closer relations between Ukraine and the European Union and NATO. Leszek Kołakowski 8 points to the political crisis of March 1968 as finally liberating Polish culture from ties with the Communist system and its ideology. The violence and repression that followed student protests against censorship was 5. K. GERNER, op.cit. 6. J. JEDLICKI, op.cit. 7. In particular: J. KUROŃ, Polityka i odpowiedzialność, Aneks, Londyn, 1984. See also A. MICHNIK, Z dziejów honoru w Polsce, Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, Warszawa, 1991 and A.MICHNIK, Polskie Pytania, Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, Warszawa, 1993. 8. L. KOŁAKOWSKI, The Intelligentsia, in: A. BRUMBERG (ed.), Poland: Genesis of a Revolution, Vintage Books, New York, 1983, pp.54-67.
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