Why Poles hate. Where are the origins of the dislike of the Polish nation for the Russians

A meeting was held at the Sakharov Center with Andrzej Paczkowski, a Polish historian, a member of the Council of the Warsaw Institute of National Remembrance. He gave a lecture on the relationship between Russia and Poland, which for many centuries have seen the key moments of their common history in different ways. What is described as heroism in the textbooks of one country is presented in the textbooks of another as shame, betrayal, defeat.

Warsaw, a passer-by is searched by the Russian police, 1906

relationship curve

What does the history of relations between Poles and Russians look like from the point of view of Polish historians? It goes back to ancient times, at a time when there were no our states and the Russians and Poles had a poor command of writing, and therefore left little evidence. From rare sources of the 10th century, information about dynastic marriages and wars for territory has come down to us.

At some point, the Russians took away a piece of border land from their neighbors, in response, the glade (these are not Poles yet, but a tribe of glades) went east. The Polish prince even visited Kyiv, but failed to resolve the conflict. The struggle for the disputed land - the Cherven cities (today they would be called a region) - continued for many years. It was interrupted by the invasion of the Mongols, from which the Rus suffered more. They were forced to transfer the capital to Vladimir, and then to Moscow.

In the middle of the XIV century, more than 300 years later, these Cherven cities (Chervonnaya Rus) were captured by Poland and became part of the Polish Kingdom. The conflict with the eastern neighbors for a long time concerned not the Poles as such, but the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, since until the middle of the 16th century Poland did not border on Russian land. The principality had its own leaders, it led its own policy.

Only in the middle of the 16th century, when a union was concluded between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, within which the latter received Kyiv and the former Russian lands, did Poland become a partner in the fight against the Russian state. Activity in the eastern territories is associated with the dominance of Stefan Batory in Poland, who fought rather fierce battles for them.

At the same time, Ivan the Terrible was trying to move the borders to the west and gain access to the Baltic Sea. With his death, a period of destabilization of the Russian state began, which the Poles tried to use. They proposed to Moscow a personal union: to create a confederation between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland and the Russian state (1600).

A delegation arrived in Moscow, headed by an Orthodox Pole - Prince Sapieha. Part of the Russian elite agreed to the union, but they demanded that the Polish king accept Orthodoxy. This turned out to be impossible. After the unsuccessful mission of Sapieha to Moscow, the Poles tried to influence the course of unrest in Russia and supported False Dmitry I, who was crowned in 1605-1606 with the help of the Polish army and received financial support from the Poles. It is worth noting that this was not a state activity, but an initiative of the Polish elites. It is well known how it all ended.

After the death of False Dmitry I, the Poles began to wage war, trying to seize the throne of Moscow. In 1610, the Polish army under the command of hetman Stanislav Zolkiewski entered Moscow, occupied the Kremlin and tried to put the Polish king Vladislav Vaza (son of King Sigismund III) on the throne. It ended with the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow. Today, on this occasion, Russians celebrate a national holiday.

Poland successfully competed with Russia. It was important for the Poles that this rivalry took place not on the territory of Poland, but on the territory of Russia and the Inflants (Livonia). An important context of those territorial conflicts was the confessional differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, which strengthened it. That is, it was not only an economic interest or the political ambitions of the monarchs, but also a confessional, and sometimes even a civilizational difference.

First partition of Poland: territorial disputes between Catherine the Great (Russian Empire), Joseph II (Austria) and Frederick the Great (Prussia)

Catastrophe

In the middle of the XVII century the situation changed, Poland was on the verge of disaster. The uprising of the Cossacks on the Dnieper, then the invasion from the North (the so-called Swedish flood), which led the country to collapse. In addition, Russia joined the conflict with the Cossacks, supporting Bogdan Khmelnitsky. As a result, the Commonwealth lost the Smolensk region and the territory east of the Dnieper along with Kyiv. This was Moscow's first territorial victory over Warsaw.

Peter the Great, who not only modernized Russia, but also skillfully waged wars, dotted the i's. Since he received real power (since 1696), Poland has been losing its subjectivity in international relations. Peter turned Russia into a European power, and thanks to him, Russia began to lead in the East.

This became apparent at the beginning of his reign, during the Northern War between Russia and Sweden, which took place on the territory of Poland, although the latter did not participate in it. The troops passed through the country without the permission of the Poles. Why was Poland so weak? She was unable to respond to the challenges that the era posed: all her neighbors - Prussia, Austria - were absolute monarchies, and gentry democracy was cultivated in Poland, an ineffective instrument of state policy.

Poland remained a sovereign state with a Sejm, a king, with its own coin, but it lost its influence in international relations. The Polish king did everything that he was ordered from Petersburg. The republican gentry tried to resist this state of affairs. Then the Bar Confederation was created, and in 1768 the first anti-Russian uprising broke out. It lasted several years, was suppressed, several dozen Confederates died. More than 10 thousand people were exiled to Siberia. The concept of "Siberia" from now on in Polish history will be synonymous with martyrdom.

Liquidation of Poland

In 1772, three states - Russia, Prussia and Austria - divided part of Poland. An act to this effect was signed in St. Petersburg. Catherine the Great is considered the main architect of this section (although, of course, the rest of the states were not passive beneficiaries). Only then did the Poles make feverish attempts to get out of this situation, which resulted in the creation of a constitution adopted on May 3, 1791. But all the attempts of the Poles were in vain, because in response to them, Russia and Prussia annexed some other Polish territories.

After that, another uprising led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko took place, which ended in defeat, and in 1795 the Polish state was liquidated. The main part of ethnically Polish lands was occupied by Prussia and Austria. Warsaw, for example, was part of the Prussian Empire.

After Napoleon

Under the command of Napoleon, the Poles actively fought against Russia, although it is worth noting that they also fought the Austrians and Prussians. However, what was created under Napoleon also failed. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Russia, having defeated Napoleon's army, received most of the former Prussian and Austrian territories. It is worth remembering this date, because at that time Russian sentries were stationed 250 kilometers from Berlin (that is, the Russian border lay near the center of Europe). And if we remember that Vladislav Vaza was the Grand Duke of Moscow 200 years ago, then one can imagine how big changes have taken place during these years in the balance of power in Europe.

Vladislav Vasa

The densely populated former center of Poland, now owned by Russia, became the site of two of the largest anti-Russian uprisings. This is the November uprising of 1830 and the January 1863. National Polish uprisings in the Prussian and Austrian territories also happened (in 1846 and 1848), but they were not so successful. Two anti-Russian uprisings still shape the Polish historical landscape. Sacred for Poles, the events associated with these uprisings were not even affected by the education reform that took place in Poland after 1995. No one dared to throw them out of the history books. These anti-Russian uprisings were brutally suppressed: thousands were killed, exiled to Siberia and emigration.

chief gendarme

Most Poles considered Russia to be the main oppressor, since the order in the two Western empires, Austria and Prussia, had been liberalized since the middle of the 19th century, while Russia remained an autocratic state. Who did the Poles go against when World War I began, which romantic poets described as a great war of nations? Naturally, against Russia. This was the result of both past uprisings and the fact that Russia occupied the main territories of Poland.

The Poles formed legions under the command of Jozef Piłsudski. They considered this another Polish uprising and called themselves the successors of the Polish army. The Poles believed that they had a legitimate right to refer to the Bar Confederation, to the November and January uprisings.

When the Romanov dynasty fell, the way was opened for the resurrection of the Polish state. A war began with the Ukrainians for Eastern Galicia, but already in January 1919, skirmishes between the Polish self-defense and the Red Army took place in the Vilna land. This conflict with the already Bolshevik Russia became a key one for Poland. At that moment, one chapter of Polish-Russian relations ended and Polish-Soviet relations began, which lasted for more than 70 years.

Panorama of Marcin Zaleski "The Capture of the Warsaw Arsenal". Polish uprising, 1830

Until now, the biggest triumph of the Polish rati, which is cultivated in the Polish mentality and public life, is the victory in the Battle of Warsaw in 1920, when we managed to push back the Bolshevik invasion. The victory made it possible to restore the lost territories, but did not inflict a military defeat on the Soviet regime.

Many in Poland were not serious about Soviet Russia. Piłsudski in 1919 believed that the counter-revolutionaries, that is, the whites, were worse than the Bolsheviks, because they did not recognize the independence of Poland, while the Bolsheviks did. There is an opinion in Poland that Piłsudski helped Lenin defeat the White Army because he stopped the Red Army offensive in Europe.

So the war of 1920 can be considered a return to the state of the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th century, when the Commonwealth fought with Russia on an equal footing and achieved favorable terms for a truce. Therefore, the year 1920 has a special significance for Polish thinking. The "Miracle on the Vistula" - as this battle is sometimes called - became one of the fundamental myths of the second Commonwealth, and the image of a Bolshevik, a terrifying peasant with Jewish, Asian features, already depended on the artist's resourcefulness. He entered the Polish notions, the national resource of stereotypes. This victory was considered revenge for the defeat of the national uprisings of the 19th century.

There was no agreement among the Poles on the strategic goals of the struggle against Soviet Russia. The most developed was Pilsudski's idea to create a federation of the states of Poland and Russia under the auspices of Poland. This idea had many opponents, part of the Poles believed that it was necessary to restore the country within the borders before 1792 with the border on the Dnieper.

Polish trenches near Milosna, August 1920

Outwardly, such ideas were not successful. In Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, the Poles were considered oppressors and were not considered reliable allies. Of course, in Poland there were also supporters of Russia, and among the Russians there were many people who sympathized with Poland. There were also pro-Soviet Poles, but they were usually members of the underground Communist Party. Despite the hostile attitude, Poland did not prepare for hostilities on the territory of the USSR.

It was difficult to imagine an event that would further worsen Poland's attitude towards Russia, but the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a real shock. Like the liquidation of Poland by the Third Reich and Soviet Russia on September 17, 1939, and then the Katyn massacre and deportation. Employees of the NKVD organized raids in Polish villages and forests, and the fighters of General Chernyakhovsky (there was a lot of noise about the demolition of his monument recently) disarmed partisans of the Home Army near Vilna, with whom they had fought for this city two days earlier.

World War II was an unprecedented cataclysm, not so much because of the hostilities themselves, but because the occupation regimes were total. The regime introduced by the Third Reich was incomparably more cruel than the Soviet one. It operated on Polish lands longer than the Soviet occupation, and from June 1941 covered the entire territory of the Second Republic. Its main victim was the Jewish population, and two million ethnic Poles were killed.

The hope of victory over the Reich was great, and from the summer of 1943 it became obvious that the Red Army would be the first to drive the Germans from Polish lands. The problem was that the conflicts with the Cherven cities, the Poles in the Kremlin remained in the collective, institutional memory through literature and cinema, and what happened since 1939 refers to living, individual memory, transmitted directly by the witnesses of these events.

Everyone understood that the Red Army was defeating the Wehrmacht and threatening the independence and lives of many Poles. This duality deepened as the Soviet fighters marched through the Polish lands. Since August 1944, tens of thousands of Home Army soldiers have been arrested. The troops of the NKVD, not to mention the Red Army, stood in Poland until the spring of 1947. It was obvious to the communists that they could not hold on to power without the support of the Red Army, the NKVD and Stalin as an umbrella in international relations.

Soviet tank rides through the streets of the city of Rakov. Poland, 1939

Until 1956, the Soviet presence in Poland was not hidden. The regime was completely dependent on the USSR, which oppressed not only the people, but also the Polish communists themselves, who wanted to be more independent. However, the events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 showed the boundaries of what was permitted. Many Poles were annoyed that the history of Polish-Soviet relations (and in some respects even Polish-Russian relations) fell under official taboo. About September 17, it was impossible to write about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact for several decades. This froze a state of hostility, aggravated by a sense of powerlessness, that lasted until 1989.

The conflict of memory has existed and exists, but it has some autonomy. This is not only an intellectual, ideological construction, it is based on real events. It follows from a clash of interests, the contradictions of which are manifested in a direct clash - in a war or other aggression. The victors and the conquered remember the same things in different ways.

Therefore, if we are to overcome the current conflict of memory, we must take care to end the conflict of interest. A memory that is not fed by an actual conflict of interest loses much of its power. This does not mean that she is gone, but there is a chance that she will become more of a memory of something than a memory directed against someone.

I have always admired Zbigniew Brzezinski. He was the head! Unlike our dependent and independent political scientists, he played and won on different chessboards. He was the most successful opponent of Russia's imperial statehood in all its forms. He perfectly knew its political skeleton: not skin, not meat, but a skeleton, on which both meat and skin are replaced from time to time, but the essence of this does not change.

Russia many times rushed at the Poles with cries of Slavic love. In fact, she did not let the Poles leave her, not because she loved, but because she wanted to get closer to the core of Europe with her special imperial feelings at their expense. For the sake of absorbing Poland into itself, Russia was ready for anything, up to Katyn.

Poland's hatred of Russia was selective - anti-imperial.

Russia responded with hatred to the hatred of the Poles: with a stream of lies, up to allegations that Poland unleashed the Second World War.

The Soviet army liberated not the state of Poland, but the territory that once belonged to the empire and strengthened itself here as the creator and ruler of an artificial regime. This is the difference between the liberation of France by the Allies.

Busily, without foam on his lips, he identified the weaknesses of the Soviet regime and hit them with precision

Some part of the Polish intelligentsia believed Stalin for a very short time. Still, some kind of Poland reappeared on the map. But it soon became clear: a political freak appeared.

Brzezinski lived far away from such a freak. For many years he held senior positions in the American administration and various international commissions. Busily, without foam on his lips, he identified the weaknesses of the Soviet regime and hit them with pinpoint accuracy. These were not abstract battles. Brzezinski saw the opponent as an aggressive, often mediocre and stupid government, insisted on bureaucracy, corruption, cross-fear, ignorance of international realities.

It was he who created the "third basket" of the Helsinki agreements of 1975, the basket of human rights, into which the Soviet government fell, breaking its neck in the fight against dissent.

It was he who pushed the USSR to a deadly war in Afghanistan, an analogue, in his opinion, of the Vietnam War for America.

It was he who contributed to the development of the arms race, which the USSR could not withstand, losing the Cold War.

It was he who criticized the countries of the West, who did not realize that the collapse of the USSR would cause revanchist sentiments that would give rise to a meme about the biggest catastrophe of the 20th century: the death of the USSR. Here, however, no one listened to him, deciding that history had already ended and totalitarianism had been finally destroyed. But, when the West caught on, it contributed to the advance of NATO to the East, which actually threw Russia out of Europe.

Brzezinski considered Marxism the ideology of the future, accidentally falling into the hands of a political businessman from the communist utopia Vladimir Lenin

But here's the paradox! Criticizing Soviet Russia, Brzezinski paid tribute to Marxism. He knew him deeper than the Soviet philosophers who turned Marx into a dogma. Brzezinski actually considered Marxism the ideology of the future, accidentally falling into the hands of a political businessman from the communist utopia, Vladimir Lenin. In any case, he considered Marxism an excellent tool for economic and philosophical analysis. At the center of American political life was a genuine Marxist!

The history of Poles' relations with Russia is full of paradoxes. Here, for example, is the first Chekist, the Pole Dzerzhinsky. In Russia, there are still many of his fans, especially among fellow security officials. Why not erect a monument to Dzerzhinsky? But if you look closely at the activities of Dzerzhinsky, he will turn out to be the most radical destroyer of the foundations of Russia. An internationalist Bolshevik, he despised Russian values.

Compared to Dzerzhinsky, Zbigniew Brzezinski is simply a passionate admirer of Russia!

Summarize Brzezinski's ideas and you will see that they echo rather than refute the political dreams of Russian culture. Russian culture in most cases sympathized with the revolt of the Poles against Russia. Sometimes there were misunderstandings when Russia was perceived (or should have been perceived?) as a country, and not a source of totalitarian values (Pushkin's case). But the vector of anti-imperial criticism was most often general and uncompromising. Everything ended, however, as always badly: the intelligentsia hated the imperial regime so much that they went too far and gave birth to the Bolsheviks, who were reborn into super-imperial Stalinists.

Brzezinski believed in us, the inhabitants of Russia, often more than we believed in ourselves. And he knew us more often than we know ourselves

Polish thought, judging by the position of Brzezinski, cuts Russia in half. She hates the regime that imposes its values on her up to the complete destruction of Polish self-identity. But it feeds on the creative revelations of Russian culture and enriches itself with it in order to fight the Russian empire.

Brzezinski believed that Russia's way out of the historical crisis is impossible without rapprochement with the democratic systems of Europe. This does not mean the loss of independence of the Russian mentality. This is a meeting with its own, strengthened and dying, and again resurgent independent ideology of Russia, which has so far proved unable to manifest itself in long-term everyday politics. Yes, and in the opposition this ideology is torn to pieces in internal disputes and mutual accusations.

In short, Brzezinski believed in us, the inhabitants of Russia, often more than we believed in ourselves. And he knew us more often than we knew ourselves. Why? Yes, because analytical thinking from the very beginning of his activity was impeccable. A Pole, born in a diplomatic family either in Kharkov or in Warsaw, educated in Canada and the United States, Brzezinski showed that Russia can be understood with the mind, but it cannot be understood with stupidity.

He died without waiting for the restoration of relations between Europe and Russia. Perhaps he was overly optimistic, and this recovery will never come. In the forms and boundaries that exist today. Enemy-optimist, this is a special Polish title.

Together with John Paul II, Czesław Milosz, Andrzej Wajda and other brilliant thinkers, Brzezinski pulled Poland out of the grave of Soviet pseudo-socialism

Brzezinski was certainly not alone in his respect for Russian culture and hatred of the empire. He belonged to that Polish galaxy of reasonable critics of the eastern neighbor, who contributed to the destruction of imperial values, and with them the political regime. Together with John Paul II, as well as the poet Czesław Milosz, the director Andrzej Wajda, the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski (I knew and loved these three creators), and other brilliant thinkers, Brzezinski pulled Poland out of the grave of Soviet pseudo-socialism.

Poland went forever to the West. And Kremlin Russia went into itself. And groans of happiness. From this strange prison happiness.

With the support of the Yegor Gaidar Foundation, a meeting was held at the Sakharov Center with Andrzej Paczkowski, a Polish historian, a member of the Council of the Warsaw Institute of National Remembrance. He gave a lecture on the relationship between Russia and Poland, which for many centuries have seen the key moments of their common history in different ways. What is described as heroism in the textbooks of one country is presented in the textbooks of another as shame, betrayal, defeat. Lenta.ru recorded the main theses of his speech.

relationship curve

First partition of Poland: territorial disputes between Catherine the Great (Russian Empire), Joseph II (Austria) and Frederick the Great (Prussia)

Image: public domain

Catastrophe

Liquidation of Poland

After Napoleon

chief gendarme

Panorama of Marcin Zaleski "The Capture of the Warsaw Arsenal". Polish uprising, 1830

Image: public domain

Polish trenches near Milosna, August 1920

Soviet tank rides through the streets of the city of Rakov. Poland, 1939

* * *

Oh, it's a long story. Very mysterious. There are so many factors...

I’ll make a reservation right away, the Poles don’t like Ukrainians even more, but for a different reason. I know many wonderful Poles who treat both Russians and Ukrainians very well. But the general moment of hostility is present.

Poles love their history very much, and there were many different moments in this history.

If you remember, they did not want to recognize Ivan the Terrible as Tsar, but continued to call him the Grand Duke of Moscow, which gave rise to conflicts. And these trips to Moscow... They sat in the Kremlin, as if at home. The Poles even today believe that the Russians treacherously violated the obligation in which they recognized the right of the Polish king to the Russian kingdom.

They stood so cool, and then suddenly everything was gone. The uprising of Khmelnitsky, as a result of which they lost the entire Left Bank of the Dnieper. Further more. All these sections of Poland, turning it into a Russian province. The suppression of repeated uprisings by the Russian troops (by the way, one of them was suppressed by Suvorov). And so on and so forth. They went with Napoleon - hoping to regain what was lost. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, dictator Piłsudski gave them new hope. He promised to revive the Commonwealth from sea to sea. And in 1920 he began to realize the promise. When, in response, the Cossacks of Budyonny went to Lvov, and Tukhachevsky to Warsaw, the Poles were so offended ...

And the 39th year? Russian invaders! For some reason, it never occurred to anyone that Poland was only returned to the borders of 1918, fixed by the Brest Treaty. For some reason, no one remembered that before that Poland had exactly the same agreement with Germany and chopped off a piece of the Czech Republic by agreement with the Germans.

Finally, 1945. The Russians are right here. Invaders again!

We will not analyze the validity of their position, it's just that these are the reasons for hostility. Russians are bad, they are barbarians, they are aggressive, rude and cruel. They oppressed and destroyed the Polish people! And the Ukrainians, among other things, are also cattle, who used to serve them.

Why love them, these Russians?

But if you ask some Polish professor Janos Tazbir: why don't you like Russians? He will answer very nicely and with arguments

POLISH-RUSSIAN WAR

Conversation with Professor Janusz Tazbir

Why don't we like Russians?

You need to start with the fact that the nearest neighbors do not like at all. The French do not tolerate the English, and the Spaniards - the French, etc. I read [Andrzej Bobkowski's] Feather Sketches - memoirs from World War II - and it shows how ambivalent and contradictory the attitude of the French was towards the [Hitler's] raids on Great Britain, and some even wondered who their enemy was more - the Germans or the British . Once I asked the Czechs what kind of people they like. I was told, half in jest, half in earnest, that they were New Zealanders, because they were very far away. Secondly, if one state takes away part of the territory from another and tries to destroy the indigenous population and deprive them of their national image, then it is difficult to count on Poles to love Russians. In turn, the Russians did not like the Poles, in particular, due to the fact that they are arrogant and look down on others. Take, for example, the memoirs in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead. There, the exiled gentry are proud of their torments and turn up their noses, because they suffer for their homeland, in other words, for a just cause.

Maria Dombrovskaya has a very interesting statement in Nights and Days - the heroine reads Gogol, Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and she likes their works very much, but then she says: “Why are you oppressing us, if you are like that?” - means "wonderful".

It seems to me that now there is a clear change, and in Poland the stereotype of the Russian is changing. At the 10th anniversary stadium, you can buy Soviet orders or hats with a star. It can be seen how the empire is selling off all sorts of remnants, and this means a large-scale detente of those complexes that have accumulated over many years. One Russian living in exile in Paris told me: "I hate Bolshevism, but I have experienced so many humiliations from the French that, seeing their fear of the Soviet army, I rejoice - for me this is some kind of satisfaction."

The Russians in the 18th century deprived us of our territory and sovereignty, but what was our idea of a Russian person and attitude towards Russia before the divisions of Poland?

So much has been said about our entry into Europe. This is bullshit. We have never left any of Europe. Europe as a single military community has never existed. And as an economic community - also no. On the other hand, it existed as a cultural and moral community, and we belonged to it, since, for example, we studied at the same universities as the French, Italians or Germans. But Russia, as well as Turkey, which now wants to join the European Union, was not included in this community. Russians were considered barbarians. It was even denied that the Orthodox are Christians. Consequently, the Russians were looked at very "from top to bottom" and treated with extraordinary disdain.

- And how did the Russians see us at that time?

The Russians believed that, perhaps, there was freedom in the Commonwealth, but, as they told the Poles: “We have only one tsar, who manages both our throat and property, and whatever your boyar is, it’s a tyrant.” The 17th century in Russia is a period of contempt for Poland, and on the other hand, admiration for our achievements. Polish interventionists, invaders, adventurers - they were all people who knew Western culture, who brought Latin books with them to Moscow, and it was they who helped establish the first any kind of strong cultural contacts between Russia and the West. But this does not mean at all that the stay of the Poles in the Kremlin is one of the glorious pages of our Polish history.

Alexander Bruckner remarked very curiously in his time that every time Russia established cultural contacts with the West, it meant the end of Polish cultural influence. Under Peter I, the Russians were in direct contact with France or England, while under Gorbachev they no longer needed that window on the world, which was quite wide open in Poland, because they opened the doors for themselves.

In Russia it is hard to believe this, but in the XVI century. only 17 titles of books were printed there - and all of them were ecclesiastical. During this period, six thousand books were published in Poland. The Russians translated our writings, and they were distributed among the local elite. At the Russian court in the second half of the XVII century. the Polish language played the same role as the French language - in the same period at the Polish court. In Russian historiography - no longer Soviet - the thesis is now accepted that the entire Russian Baroque was a belated Renaissance, nurtured and built on Polish roots.

- But after all, the Soviet Union was already proud of the gigantic number of books published.

In the Soviet Union, some books were printed in 50-100 copies and distributed among members of the Politburo. With my own eyes I have seen such an edition of my favorite book, a kind of pamphlet on the French Revolution - Anatole France's The Gods Thirst. The revolution is presented there in such a way that it looks like a laughingstock, and it generates too many associations with terror and constant celebrations to publish this book in a large circulation. It was only after Stalin's death that this book began to be published in a larger circulation.

The wheel of history turns in an interesting way. When in the 17th century King Sigismund III wanted to get rid of the anarchist gentry after the rebellion of Mikolay Zebzhydovsky, then court propaganda pushed the latter to participate in the conquest of Russia. At the same time, it was said: "The Muscovites are more numerous, but they are barbarians, and you will cope with them in the same way as the Spanish conquistadors coped with a crowd of Indians." The end of the 18th century comes, the partitions of Poland, and at that time we say about the Russians that they are the conquistadors who conquered us and treat the Poles as if they were Indians.

At one time, in the 1920s, one of the murderers of Nicholas II and his family [P.L. Voikov] was appointed head of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Warsaw. The Polish Foreign Ministry protested against this. Then Chicherin - by the way, an aristocrat who played the role of the Bolsheviks' foreign minister - said: “After all, you wanted to kill tsars throughout the 19th century. So what's the deal now?"

- Who was the first to dislike the second ones - are we Russians or are they us?

Simultaneously. The subject of the dispute and clash between us was Lithuania. Russia was weak, and Lithuania seized those Russian lands that it had previously owned. The rivalry continued, and against this background it was bound to come to conflicts.

In Russia, we have dealt (and perhaps still have) with the sacralization of power, while in the West a system of control of power has been developed. Perhaps it is not so strange that the Poles, who had the golden freedom of the gentry, did not feel much sympathy for the people who endured the yoke of despotism?

The Russians believed that golden liberty was anarchy. The fundamental difference was that in our country the political opposition has always been considered a civic virtue, while in their country it is a crime. A person who opposes authority must necessarily be a madman. Tsar Nicholas I ordered that Chaadaev be declared insane. The writer was put under the supervision of his personal physician, who visited him once a month. This happened a hundred years before the Soviet Union started pushing dissidents into psychiatric hospitals. In my opinion, it was not without reason that the USSR did not make a special fuss around the Watergate scam in its time. What does the phrase mean for Russians: "...illegal eavesdropping equipment has been installed at the headquarters of the opposition"? After all, this opposition is illegal, and everything is allowed to the authorities!

Has one mentality of power and subjects been formed in Russia for all time, and another in Poland? Perhaps it is precisely this difference that forms the foundation of mutual hostility?

I'll give you another example. In Poland, the profession of an executioner was universally despised. He was supposed to live outside the city walls, choose his wife from among the condemned, and so on. But if in Russia (up to the time of Catherine II) there was a public execution, then the executioner could at any moment pick up an assistant from the crowd who had gathered to look, and he could not refuse. Such a disgusting detail is documented. Once someone wanted to refuse, and Ivan the Terrible noticed this. Then he ordered that a person who did not want to participate in the execution should cut off the genitals of the condemned man and eat them himself.

Not only the Poles looked with horror at Russia and the Russians. Marquis Astolphe de Custine, in his book Russia in 1839, which was distributed throughout Europe in hundreds of thousands of copies and translated into many languages, wrote about despotism, pervasive fear, insanity, atrophy of creative approaches and spoke with sympathy about the fate of the Poles. He was so sympathetic to us that he did not want to return to France through the Kingdom of Poland, so as not to encounter our shortcomings, which, in his opinion, we should have had.

Yes, but Custine was an exception. Adam Mickiewicz wrote about such a compliant and servile attitude of the French government towards Russia that, in his opinion, things could come to the point that the Cossacks would again camp on the Champs Elysees. Already in the XVIII century. bribed encyclopedists glorified the reign of Catherine II. When Voltaire was reproached for writing so flatteringly about the despotism of kings, he replied: “Yes, but I am such a cold person, and she sent me a magnificent fur coat.” 18th century philosophers were so fascinated by Russia because the tsarina misled them, appearing to be a person of the Enlightenment. And they believed that there was an ideal case when a powerful ruler in a barbarian country is able to put their ideas into practice. It should also be noted that the French showed little interest in Polish problems. When at the end of the XIX century. there was a solemn reburial of Mickiewicz on Wawel [in Krakow, then belonging to Austria-Hungary], the newspaper Le Figaro wrote that the tsar softened his policy towards Poland, allowing the remains of the great anti-Russian writer to be buried on Wawel ... near Warsaw. And when, after the end of World War I, the first French ambassador went to Poland, he was convinced that the majority of our population speaks Russian.

But was Russian hostility towards Poland an integral element of their hostile attitude towards the West in general? In addition, the Orthodox also saw in the Catholics the perpetrators of the schism of universal Christianity.

It has to do with my favorite conspiracy theory, which I don't believe in, but which I study. So, we are pleased to consider ourselves so powerful that a conspiracy is being plotted against us. According to Orthodox propaganda, the main goal of Rome has always been the destruction of Orthodoxy. Meanwhile, more books were printed in Cyrillic in the 17th century Rzeczpospolita than in Russia. And when these books were confiscated at the border, they were burned. At the same time, it was argued that although they were spreading the Orthodox faith, they were actually infected with the “Latin heresy”. The second factor of hostility was that the Russians knew perfectly well that we were ruining their reputation in the West. And the third reason: people generally do not like those who have been offended and who have been harmed, and those who are offended also make some claims.

Few people know, but we just started to spoil the opinion about Russians in the West. Stefan Batory was the first of the Polish kings who came up with the idea that when he goes to war, he needs not only hussars, infantry, powerful siege engines, but also a field printing house. There he printed all sorts of papers, and not only in Latin, where he portrayed his victory in the east as a triumph over hordes of monstrous barbarians.

- What did this barbarian look like in such propaganda publications?

Cruel, ruthless, unenlightened. The gentry, as we have already said, could not have respect for those who so easily allow themselves to be subdued by tyrannical power. Like those Tatars who say at Sienkiewicz that they should be hung up as soon as possible, otherwise Kmititz gets angry.

Maybe it was just a certain dislike for Russians that Pilsudski learned from his youth that led to the fact that he did not help the “whites” and did not save Russia and the whole world from Bolshevism?

To this day, the question remains unresolved whether it was Pilsudski who sealed the victory of the Bolsheviks by refusing to help the White generals. I don't know if these generals were that honest or just that stupid. The Bolsheviks promised everything in the world and did not intend to keep a single one of their promises. When Piłsudski asked the White generals what would happen after he helped them, they replied that after the victory, the Constituent Assembly would decide on this, but they themselves could not promise anything. The Finns were also ready to strike at Petrograd in 1918, but the generals also did not want to give them specific promises.

- Do you think that if they promised, then Pilsudski would help them?

Would help. He knew one thing: if red Russia starts attacking him, then he can count on some kind of help from the West, but if white Russia is the attacking side, then no. We were given to the Soviet Union in 1945. We turned out to be perhaps the first state in history that fought on the side of the winners, but after the victory came out of the war with territorial losses and having lost sovereignty. Moreover, we would have been given to Russia then, in 1920.

Let's take a closer look at what, perhaps, unites us with Russia - at that special situation in which both Poles and Russians begin to believe that God has assigned them a unique mission.

Russia considered itself the Third Rome. None of us have gone that far. Russians, like us, saw themselves as a stronghold and stronghold of the Christian world. In 1980, on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kulikovo, the poet Yevtushenko wrote that if the Russians had not then defeated the Tatars, there would have been no Eiffel Tower and the culture of the Renaissance, and that they had saved the culture of Europe. The same argument emerged that we had in Poland in the 19th century: "We could not develop culture to the same extent as in the West, because we had to protect it." In this regard, the Russians believed that when they defend culture, Orthodoxy, and we fight them, we thereby violate Slavic solidarity and drive a “knife in the back” into them.

They also saw in us the Judas of the all-Slavic cause, a springboard for treacherous Jesuit traitors, for those who, instead of creatively kindling the Slavic primary element in themselves, follow a superficial, facilitated path and imitate the West like a monkey, although for their own good they must stick together with Russia. Fortunately, there were also - what we know from Mickiewicz - "Russian friends", such as the Decembrists.

The noble Bestuzhev, the same one from Mickiewicz's poetic message "To Russian Friends", in reality was eager in 1831 to fight the Poles, who, in his opinion, would never be sincere friends of the Russians. “Their blood will flood, but will it be forever? God bless," he wrote. And he regretted that he was sitting in Siberia, because he would have willingly fought with the "virtuous gentlemen." The Decembrists advocated "Great Russia" and democratic in its own way, but they were hardly friendly towards the Poles.

We also have another literary prophet - Zygmunt Krasinsky and his poem "To the Muscovites". Here is a quote from there: “If I could strangle you all in one embrace / And plunge everyone into the same abyss, / Then after your overthrow into hell I would like to become ...” [subscript translation] The lyrical hero does not distinguish between the oppressed and the oppressors, but only hates all Russians.

We do not like the Russians, because they defeated us both politically and militarily, and we tried to somehow compensate for this complex of the defeated and broken side. In addition, the Russians did not have something with which they could particularly impress us. Meroshevsky, one of the pillars of the Parisian "Culture", made a well-aimed remark about how lucky we were that the Cadets did not win in 1917, because if they were the ones who introduced democracy and prosperity, the Poles would have turned out to be very susceptible to Russification.

- And yet a certain Russification took place.

Yes, but it was hampered by the memory of armed conflicts, and most of all, in my opinion, by repressions. Add to this our sense of cultural and moral superiority over the Russians.

However, in Moscow in the first years of the XVII century. did terrible things. “Not only boyars, men and girls were flogged, but even babies were cut in two at the mother’s breast.” This is a fragment of the Polish report.

Yes, there were constant references to the past. The year 1612 represents one of several most important dates in the minds of Russians - along with 1812, 1917 and the Patriotic War of 1941-1945. The Polish occupation of the Kremlin and the atrocities committed then served and often continue to serve as a justification for the acts of violence that the Russians perpetrated on the Poles for three centuries. Even the massacre of Prague [right-bank district of Warsaw, 1794] was considered just retribution. Alexander Pushkin wrote: "And you used to feast / the Kremlin's shame and royal captivity, / And we beat the babies of Prague on the stones of the fallen walls." Just like today, when we start talking about Katyn, the Russians remember the supposedly 60-90 thousand prisoners of war who died in Polish captivity in 1920.

When can we, speaking about non-sovereign Poland, talk about cooperation, and when can we talk about collaborationism? And in general - does such a word make sense here?

There is no need to look at those times only through the prism of those who died and suffered. It has been established that for half a million exiled Poles, there were thousands of those who made a fortune and a career there. They were parallel currents. In native Russia, in order to go up the steps of the social hierarchy, it was not necessary to convert to Orthodoxy, as in the Kingdom of Poland.

Did they know about these Polish careers and fortunes in the territory of the Kingdom? What was the attitude towards them? Did such Poles face ostracism?

They were known about them, but they tried to hush up what was happening or morally doubt it. The Poles were convinced that those who made a career and a fortune in Russia were apostates, renegades, morally suspicious figures. Stendhal said that a novel is a mirror that is carried along the high road of life. I affirm that our literature has walked only along the paths of national martyrology. In Poland, Petersburg quarries were not demonstrated for didactic reasons. Ostracism, perhaps, is out of the question, because these rich Poles did not spend their fortunes on girls of easy virtue and luxury goods, but very often helped with scientific institutions in the Kingdom of Poland. For example, the Warsaw Scientific Society lived on income from crude oil produced in the Caucasus. Who knows, perhaps some of this kind of rich wanted to dispel a little remorse caused by such luck in the Russian service. It must be said that, while earning such often fantastic fortunes, no one lost the opportunity to be a Polish patriot.

- What do they learn in Russia from history textbooks?

Some historians take a position not even Soviet, but tsarist. Undoubtedly, young people learn to praise kings and glorify their victories. What really affects the masses is, for example, such films as "The Barber of Siberia" by Nikita Mikhalkov, with its unconditional nationalist orientation.

When you read modern news from Russia, you see nationalism coming to life - by the way, they also interpret events in Poland in the same way. How do you think the Russians cope with the realization of the collapse of their empire?

They are terribly worried about it. They have been told for so many years that if you have to stand in lines, then the whole world is afraid of them, because they have an atomic bomb, they fly into space and fight for a better world. Before the emergence of the Soviet Union, there was no such empire in history where the population of the metropolis would live worse than in the colonies. But this is exactly the situation that existed in Czechoslovakia, even in Poland. Many people told me in Moscow: “It was bad for us, because we had to support you, because you did not organize collective farms ...”

It seems to me that in Russia to this day there is confidence in our ingratitude. And if earlier we, the Poles, by rebelling, “betrayed the Slavic cause,” then now we are doing something similar, in their opinion, when we enter the European Union and, even worse, NATO. Do you agree that we can talk about a certain continuity, the continuity of the Russian perception of Poland?

Yes, and in addition to this, the Russians believe that by the shed blood they somehow gained the right to the land they liberated.

And how are the calculations of Russian citizens with their own Soviet past proceeding? When Ann Applebaum published The Gulag: A History, it turned out that no publishing house in Russia was interested in publishing it.

After the period of perestroika and glasnost, when a lot was written about communist crimes, some fatigue may have set in. Although we must remember that the camps were mostly Russians. Therefore, they - quite rightly - feel like victims and so far do not want to return to this topic. This is somehow understandable. According to Solzhenitsyn, the Bolshevik revolution was such a disgusting thing that the Russians could not arrange anything similar to their fellow tribesmen. That is why, from his point of view, the leading role in it was played by "foreigners": Jews, Latvians, Poles or even Chinese. There is such an anecdote about Dzerzhinsky, which is explained to a compatriot: “What are you accusing me of? Who killed more Muscovites? Our rebels in the 19th century or me?”

Interviewed by Tomasz Dyatlovitsky

relationship curve

Image: public domain

Catastrophe

Liquidation of Poland

After Napoleon

chief gendarme

Image: public domain

It was difficult to imagine an event that would further worsen Poland's attitude towards Russia, but the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a real shock. Like the liquidation of Poland by the Third Reich and Soviet Russia on September 17, 1939, and then the Katyn massacre and deportation. Employees of the NKVD staged raids in Polish villages and forests, and the soldiers of General Chernyakhovsky (there was a lot of noise about the demolition of his monument recently) disarmed partisans of the Home Army near Vilna, with whom they had fought for this city two days earlier.

Portal for the student. Self-training

relationship curve

Catastrophe

Liquidation of Poland

After Napoleon

chief gendarme

relationship curve

Catastrophe

Liquidation of Poland

After Napoleon

chief gendarme

* * *

relationship curve

Catastrophe

Liquidation of Poland

After Napoleon

chief gendarme

* * *

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