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treaty – –, having watched the Polish parliament ratify the treaty earlier
the same day by a vote of –.
POLAND, 1992–1993
The unanimity of the Polish vote is striking. Lithuania had pursued an unusual
foreign policy toward Poland; the fate of the Polish minority in Lithuania had
aroused parliamentary interest on both the right and the left; Poland was re-
nouncing all claims about the special status of Poles in Lithuania; Poland was fi-
nalizing an eastern frontier that was a Soviet creation; Poland was renouncing
all claims to Wilno. The – vote and the standing ovation that followed
bear witness to the prevalence of political calculation over patriotic nostalgia in
the Polish parliament, and to the channeling of Polish nostalgia toward the sup-
port of modern Lithuania. This was part of the Kultura grand strategy, as im-
plemented by Skubiszewski.
Between and , during Skubiszewski’s four years as foreign minister
in center-right governments, he lost only one parliamentary vote, and that on a
question of no practical significance. To say that Skubiszewski served during
three national electoral campaigns and in four coalition governments is to un-
derstate the extreme fluidity of the environment within which he worked. In
this light, the general insulation of foreign policy from domestic politics is
striking.
41
Given the controversies in the Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belaru-
sian parliaments over these countries’ rapprochements with Poland, it is extraor-
dinary that Poland itself pursued the policies of two tracks and European stan-
dards with no meaningful parliamentary opposition. History was no more
forgotten by Polish than by Ukrainian, Lithuanian, or Belarusian public opin-
ion: Ukrainians remained the most feared of Poland’s neighbors, and Polish
schoolchildren still learned the first line of Pan Tadeusz, “Lithuania! My father-
land!” by heart.
42
The apparent separation of eastern policy from domestic politics was in fact
a conscious recognition of the difference between state interests and national
memories. Even as the Solidarity movement of the s fragmented into rival
parties, the s traditions of solidarity with eastern neighbors held.
43
This
consensus embraced all of the center-right post-Solidarity parties that governed
between and , with the exception of the Christian-National Union
(which gained . percent of the vote in , and which participated in gov-
ernments until ). Deputies and ministers from this party were the only
ones to challenge Skubiszewski’s eastern policy. Christian-National Union pol-
The Reconstructed Polish Homeland
274
iticians advocated “reciprocity” in relations with eastern neighbors: that Poland
demand concessions on the basis of Polish perceptions that Polish minorities
abroad were treated worse than minorities within Poland, that Poland suspend
relations with Ukraine until the Ukrainian state apologized for the actions of
the UPA in the s.
44
These would have been obvious contraventions of the
policy of European standards.
45
The notions that Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania were equal nation-states,
that the existence of these states was in Poland’s interests, that future interests
should be placed above historical disagreements, that Poland should apologize
as well as seek apologies, dominated parliamentary debates. The number of
times a deputy with roots in Poland’s lost eastern territories made special claims
based upon personal experience can be numbered on the fingers of one hand.
The Polish Right generally supported the independence of Poland’s eastern
neighbors.
46
Although the parliament’s lower house, the Sejm, was slow to pro-
duce legislation on minorities, Jacek Kuron´ (then the most popular politician
in Poland) acted as informal representative of their interests.
47
When necessary,
Foreign Minister Skubiszewski could treat eastern and minority policy as flow-
ing naturally from western policy. When Polish parliamentarians pressed for
more aggressive protection of Polish minorities abroad, Skubiszewski scolded
them for not knowing European standards. Since the goal of joining European
institutions was shared across most of the political spectrum, and among most
(if not quite all) ministers of the Solidarity governments of and , this
argument was very effective.
48
Skubiszewski enjoyed the support of five prime ministers and two presi-
dents: Wojciech Jaruzelski and Lech Wale˛sa. Jaruzelski, president until Decem-
ber , was not only the communist general who had implemented martial
law in , he was also an old soldier who had helped forcibly resettle Ukrai-
nians in . In office, his neutrality in questions of Polish foreign policy was
part of his impressive contribution to Polish democracy after . Solidarity’s
leader, Lech Wale˛sa, was president for the rest of Skubiszewki’s tenure. Al-
though Wale˛sa threw a wrench in the works with his proposals for a “second
NATO” and his untoward contacts with Moscow, he exploited none of the na-
tional issues which might have undermined the Skubiszewski’s policy. Wale˛sa
worked to keep the Ukrainian issue out of domestic elections, and in the criti-
cal parliamentary elections of supported a Ukrainian candidate as local
communists played the national card. In visits to Lithuania, Belarus, and
Ukraine, President Wale˛sa stressed that Poland had no territorial claims, and
told Polish minorities to regard themselves as citizens of the countries where
European Standards
275
they resided.
49
Since presidents elsewhere in postcommunist Europe—Yu-
goslavia and Russia most notably—used the issues of borders and diasporas to
consolidate their power, this is worthy of note.
Although Skubiszewski was not a charismatic figure, none of the major me-
dia treated him as a target. To some extent, one can even say that his eastern
policy was supported by the press. Gazeta Wyborcza, which began as an elec-
toral newsletter for Solidarity in , became the most popular newspaper in
Poland. Its editor, Adam Michnik, was an ally of Jerzy Giedroyc, a student of
the Kultura program, and a friend of Ukrainian and Lithuanian national move-
ments. As the leading figure in the Polish media, he favored compromise and
forgiveness. Although Michnik’s approach was often rejected, his newspaper
set the parameters of debate. As with the press, so with the Roman Catholic
Church. While (for example) the Serbian Orthodox Church was calling upon
its believers to fight for territory, the Polish Church followed a more peaceable
course. True, throughout the s Roman Catholic parishes destroyed the
remnants of Ukrainian settlement in southeastern Poland, and popular clerics
spread anti-Semitism and xenophobia from the pulpit and over the radio. Yet
the ultimate head of the Polish Church, both in the formal hierarchy and the
hearts of believers, was the Polish Pope, Karol Wojtyla, John Paul II. Wojtyla,
like Michnik, had been engaged in eastern reconciliation since the s. His
papal message of love and toleration, although not always heeded, was patiently
expressed. As the first Slavic pope, as the first pope to pronounce sermons in
Lithuanian, Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian (as well as Polish), John Paul II
set an example which was difficult to follow but impossible to misunderstand.
By the end of Skubiszewski’s term in late , the elite consensus for an east-
ern grand strategy was the popular wisdom as well, as Poles distinguished be-
tween lost national territories and present state interests.
50
With the right pol-
icy in place, it proved entirely possible for large elements of Polish society to be
nostalgic for the Lithuanian fatherland, fearful of the Ukrainian borderland,
while concerned most of all for the security of a Polish homeland. The consoli-
dation of such attitudes was tantamount to the success of a particular variety of
modern Polish nationality, concerned not with extending Polish power, spread-
ing Polish culture, or restoring Polish statehood, but with preserving a Polish
nation-state within its present frontiers.
The Reconstructed Polish Homeland
276
Chapter 14 Envoi: Returns
to Europe
277
Along with Poland’s geographical position, reconciliation with Ger-
many, and domestic reforms, its eastern policy prepared the way for
integration with European and Atlantic institutions. The first clear
signal that NATO would admit new members was provided by U.S.
President Bill Clinton’s visit to Prague in January . The Clinton
Administration began to campaign for enlargement in autumn .
The European Union openly considered an eastward enlargement at
the Essen Summit of the European Council in December . In
both cases it was understood that Poland would be among the first
states considered for accession. This redefinition of Poland’s interna-
tional position by the West altered its image in the East. Between
and , when Poland offered its eastern neighbors recognition, all of
them were interested. In and , when Poland offered Euro-
pean standards, some were more interested than others. When, after
, what Poland had to offer its neighbors was Europe itself, the
split widened. Those among Poland’s eastern neighbors which had be-
come more or less clearly defined nation-states with European aspira-
tions reacted positively (Lithuania and Ukraine), and those that had
not reacted negatively (Belarus and Russia). These orientations were due to the
domestic politics of these four countries, over which Poland and other outside
actors exerted decreasing influence.
1
The late s and early s were a special moment in European history,
when Polish diplomats and intellectuals could believe that their model of liber-
ation and development could serve their neighbors. When the issue was na-
tional sovereignty, Poland did provide such an example. Once the issue became
success in particular political, economic, and cultural transformations, the anal-
ogy with Poland weakened.
2
Poland’s postcommunist governments of –
failed to respond to these changes, which also limited the reach of more am-
bitious Solidarity governments after .
3
After , Poland’s eastern policy
became an extension of its western policy. The problems of this approach were
most evident in relations with Russia.
RUSSIA AND BELARUS
Events of had transformed the image of Russia in Poland. President Yelt-
sin, having condoned Poland’s NATO’s candidacy in August, changed his
mind in September. In October, his troops stormed the Russian parliament.
This caught the attention of Poland’s postcommunist socialists, who had just
won a democratic election and were about to form a parliamentary majority. In
December, Vladimir Zhirinovskii’s nationalist Liberal Democratic party won
more votes in the Russian parliamentary elections than any other. Zhirinovskii
was known for his anti-Polish rhetoric (“whore of NATO,” which had a heady
career, may have been his coinage). This caught the attention of Polish society
as a whole. In January , percent of Poles surveyed believed that Russia
posed a military threat to Poland, the highest number since , and signifi-
cantly higher (for the first time) than the comparable figure for Ukraine.
4
Yeltsin’s Russia, which had never developed a policy toward Poland, treated
Poland within the rhetorical categories of the NATO propaganda war. Until it
became clear that NATO would enlarge despite Russian opposition, Moscow
essentially ignored Warsaw. This attitude changed only after the U.S. Senate
gave its advice and consent to NATO enlargement on April . At that
point, Russian-Polish relations returned to life. Foreign Minister Bronislaw
Geremek (– ) and President Aleksander Kwas´niewski were both greeted
with considerable decorum in Moscow in .
5
A Russian foreign minister
visited Warsaw for the first time in . Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin,
travelled to Poland in . Opposition to NATO enlargement had been a
The Reconstructed Polish Homeland
278
matter of elite rather than public opinion in Russia, so such a volte-face was
easy for Russian authorities. NATO enlargement did not even change the basi-
cally favorable attitude of the Russian populace to the United States.
6
There
was no great hostility toward Poland or its membership in NATO among Rus-
sian voters. In the late s, Russians ranked Poland as the most stable state in
Eastern Europe, and a stunning percent believed that Poland should be in-
vited to mediate in ethnic conflicts within the Russian Federation.
7
Poland’s
eastern policy and domestic successes had changed the perceptions of the Rus-
sian people.
Like official Moscow, official Minsk resisted Polish overtures after .
Stanislau Shushkevich, the compromising Belarusian patriot, was pushed from
power. Even during his period as speaker of parliament, most policy was set by
the communist Prime Minister Kiebich, the country’s leading newspaper was
called “Soviet Belorussia,” and the local KGB not only still acted like the
KGB, it was still called the KGB.
8
Both Shushkevich and Kiebich, along with
the national activist Zyanon Pazniak, were crushed in Belarus’s July pres-
idential elections by a young and inexperienced anticorruption activist, Alek-
sandr Lukashenka. This was the work of democracy: Lukashenka was not the
candidate of the communist establishment, and his decisive defeat of Kiebich,
Shushkevich, and Paznyak demonstrated that Belarusians wanted someone new.
President Lukashenka destroyed the democratic institutions and the na-
tional symbols of the young Belarusian state. In April , he expelled nation-
alist deputies from the parliament, encouraged the others to ratify a treaty with
Russia, and invited Russia to protect Belarus’s border with Poland. In May
he won a national referendum, making Russian an official language of the Be-
larusian state and removing Belarusian national symbols from state insignia.
His bodyguard removed the Belarusian colors from the presidential com-
pound, tore the flag into pieces, and gave them away as souvenirs. In Novem-
ber Lukashenka won another referendum, thereby extending his own rule
and disempowering the legislature and judiciary. This plebiscite was carried out
in farcical conditions, and provoked a joint appeal from Poland, Lithuania, and
Ukraine. Nevertheless, its results reflected the preferences of most Belarusians
for a neo-Soviet order. Lukashenka’s domestic policy of Russification did not
make him a Russian, but it did create immense problems for aspiring Belaru-
sian patriots. When he was elected, percent of first-graders studied in Be-
larusian; three years later, the figure had fallen to percent.
9
By the end of the
decade, there was only one Belarusian school in Minsk, the Belarusian capital.
This was a president who whitewashed Stalinist terror, banned the use of
Returns to Europe
279
schoolbooks printed after the Soviet period, tore up contracts between Belaru-
sian firms and Western investors, and “spit on the International Monetary
Fund.” As he said himself, “I will not be leading my people to the civilized
world,” since “Belarusian values have nothing in common with Western val-
ues.” He called Belarusian patriots “fascists,” the sort of people “who will break
into your homes and rape your wives and daughters.” He imprisoned his oppo-
nents, and then began to make them disappear.
10
He appealed to religious
themes as an “Orthodox atheist,” and opposed foreign “Western influences”
such as Roman Catholicism, the religion of two million Belarusians or a fifth of
the population. Lukashenka portrayed Poland as both a traditional Catholic
threat, and as the vanguard of NATO. He claimed that Solidarity and the CIA
were planning a coup in Minsk. He promised not to let western Belarus, where
the Polish minority was concentrated, become a second Yugoslavia, and
claimed that Polish aggression necessitated a Slavic union with Russia.
11
Luka-
shenka’s foreign policy was pro-Russian, in the sense that he wished to gain as
much as possible from the idea of a union with Russia.
Polish policy engaged the society more than the state. The beleaguered Be-
larusian national movement, anti-Polish at the beginning of the s, was pro-
Polish by the end of the decade. The Polish example taught oppositionists to
think in terms of the rescue of a nation-state, rather than a revival of historic en-
tities. After Solidarity’s return to government in , Warsaw engaged the Be-
larusian opposition, while trying to avoid the isolation of official Belarus from
Europe. This was a return to the two-track policy of –, this time on the
scale of Belarus rather than the entire Soviet Union. It included the quiet third
track of informal contacts, which included aging Solidarity activists and dozens
of new Polish nongovernmental organizations. While Belarusian activists had
regarded this approach with suspicion the first time around, by the late s
such initiatives were welcome.
12
Whether they made any difference in the con-
solidation of Belarusian nationality is another question.
POLAND AND BELARUS
Although most Belarusians do not accept a modern form of the national idea,
its future political success is certainly possible. The Belarusian population is not
Russian, even if Russian is the language of power and culture. According to the
Soviet census, percent of the adult inhabitants of the Belorussian SSR
called themselves Belarusian, percent Russian, and percent Polish. The
census carried out by the Lukashenka regime found the proportion of Belaru-
The Reconstructed Polish Homeland
280
sians had increased to percent, while the proportion of Russians had fallen to
percent. The share of Poles remained about the same.
13
It is not Belarusian
self-identification, but the modern unions of “literary language-folk language”
and “language-nation-state” that Belarusian citizens find alien. We have at-
tended to some of the limitations of Belarusian national politics. Since the
nineteenth century, Belarusian national activists have seen themselves as the in-
heritors of the territorial center, the language, and the traditions of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. As we have seen, the traditions of the Grand Duchy were
altered beyond recognition by Lithuanian and Polish national movements, as
well as Russian imperial and Soviet states. They have changed least perhaps in
the lands we now call Belarus. This loyalty to tradition is the problem.
Nationalism claims to be about continuity. In fact it must involve a recon-
struction of early modern political traditions sufficiently radical to allow the
masses to understand and wish to enter a redefined political community. Na-
tionalists maintain that old ethnic groups become modern nations, but the Be-
larusian case proves that political action must rework political tradition for ei-
ther notion to make sense. If we believe in “ethnic groups,” we must accept that
Belarusians were the “dominant ethnic group” of the old Grand Duchy of Lith-
uania. In a majority of individuals within the Grand Duchy spoke what we
would call Belarusian dialects. In the same can be said of the five Belaru-
sian provinces of the Russian empire, and in for the Republic of Belarus.
Nevertheless, this “group” never became the vehicle for modern national poli-
tics. Modern Lithuanian and Polish nationalists have shown us that national
ideologies succeeded insofar as they transformed the Grand Duchy’s legacies.
They took Lithuania’s name in vain, a sure sign of the mixture of reverence and
forgetfulness characteristic of modern nationalism. The reorientation of Be-
larusian national activists toward the nation-state in the late s therefore
bodes ill for the generational continuity of early modern Lithuanian traditions,
but well for the arrival of a third modern nationalism on early modern Lithua-
nian territories. Where modern Lithuanian and Polish nationalism have suc-
ceeded, modern Belarusian nationalism might eventually succeed as well.
Political action requires the right institutional, social, and cultural circum-
stances. Belarusian activists of the s said, anachronistically, that the Be-
larusian nation “lost” assets such as the independence of the Grand Duchy in
the sixteenth century; the Chancery Slavonic language in the eighteenth; the
Uniate Church and poetry of Mickiewicz in the nineteenth; the city of Vil’nia
and the very name “Lithuania” in the twentieth. If we drop the teleology and
keep the contingency—drop the word “bad” but keep the word “luck”—we
Returns to Europe
281
see the importance of events beyond the control of national activists and local
populations. These “losses” were junctures where circumstances did not favor
the consolidation of a modern Belarusian national idea, movement, or state.
Yet the most paradoxical “loss” is one that no national activist will mention:
that Belarus did not enjoy the advantages of partition.
National histories present partition as a dismemberment of the national
body. In fact, national activists divided by a state boundary enjoy certain ad-
vantages. Partition creates the possibility that one empire will use a national
movement against another with the unintended consequence that the national
movement prospers. Partition allows activists of the same nation but different
empires to share ideas. A national movement within one empire may copy the
tactics of other national movements within that same empire, then transfer
them to conationals across the border. As we have seen, the division of Lithua-
nians and Ukrainians among nineteenth-century empires allowed for conver-
sations with immigrants, visions of unification, and smuggling of books. Dur-
ing the nineteenth century, all of what is now Belarus was part of the Russian
empire. Only for two decades in the twentieth century was Belarus divided: be-
tween Poland and the Soviet Union, between the world wars. Even though
Stalin exterminated the Belarusian intelligentsia, and Poland closed every Be-
larusian school, this time of partition was a moment of national achievement.
Modern nationality involves the unity of the literary with the vernacular lan-
guage, which in Eastern Europe means the education of the peasantry and the
reorientation of the intelligentsia. The site for this convergence is the city, ide-
ally a growing national capital. Belarusians’ desired capital Vil’nia became a
Polish Wilno in when Poland won a war with Bolshevik Russia; it became
a Lithuanian Vilnius after Stalin granted the city to Soviet Lithuania in .
Belarusians’ eventual capital Minsk, historically less important to the national
cause than Vil’nia, became Soviet after Poland declined to incorporate it in
. Under Soviet rule Minsk became the one Belarusian city of any size, and
after the Second World War a locus of Russification. Belarusian activists sorely
missed medium-sized cities, the usual testing grounds for national revivals not
yet ready to play in “deracinated” capitals. Modern nationality also presupposes
a world of nations, each with a distinct high culture and a distinct name. As
part demonstrated, the early modern politonym “Lithuanian” became a mod-
ern ethnonym, and the Romantic poet Mickiewicz became a bard of modern
Polish and (to a lesser extent) Lithuanian nationalisms. The Lukashenka
regime of the s was pleased to celebrate Mickiewicz as a vaguely Belarusian
figure, just as the Soviet regime once endorsed him as a friend of Pushkin and
The Reconstructed Polish Homeland
282
the toiling masses. Only when Mickiewicz is (falsely) presented in Minsk as a
modern Belarusian, as he is today portrayed (falsely) in Warsaw or Vilnius as a
modern Pole or Lithuanian, will we have a sign that Belarusian nationalism has
arrived.
The historical maneuvers that build modern nations are carried out by elites
created in definable institutional circumstances. Here we recognize the most
serious barrier to a Belarusian national revival: the scale of destruction in Be-
larus during Stalin’s purges of the s and during the Second World War.
Stalin murdered most of the Belarusian intelligentsia in the late s. One in
four inhabitants of the territory of the Belorussian SSR in was dead by
. The Germans destroyed Minsk, its university, and its academy of sciences.
Minsk was rebuilt in an era of Russification, its astonishing postwar growth cre-
ating a massive Russophone capital. There was one telling move in the opposite
direction: the incorporation of formerly Polish territories in .
14
The west-
ern expansion of the Belorussian SSR encompassed millions of people with dif-
ferent political experiences, and thousands of people with distinct connections
to traditional institutions. The Uniate Church, for example, was established
under the old Commonwealth in . Although there was no Uniate Church
in Soviet Belarus, it had been reestablished in interwar Poland. Thousands of
Neo-Uniates from western Belarus became Soviet citizens after . Just as
many Belarusian activists in the s and s were of Roman Catholic back-
ground, so in the s and s many had some connection to these formerly
Polish territories. Pazniak, the leader of the Belarusian National Front, was the
grandson of a Belarusian politician active in interwar Polish Wilno. Pazniak’s
grandfather was among the hundreds of thousands of Belarusians murdered at
Kuropaty and similar sites. Pazniak’s ideas of Belarusian nationalism were con-
sistent with an elite tradition, but alien to the Belarusian population educated
in Soviet schools.
15
Here a comparison between Soviet Belarus and Soviet Lithuania is instruc-
tive. Postwar Soviet policies allowed for an ethnic Lithuanian nation, while
pushing rival Belarusian conceptions toward oblivion. Right after the war, an
interwar Lithuanian communist took the reins in the Lithuanian SSR, and a
Lithuanian-language university was established in Vilnius. The Belarusian
Communist Party was meanwhile Russified, and wartime suffering became the
basis of standard Soviet Belorussian history. By , when a modern narrative
of Lithuanian history was thoroughly institutionalized, national history had all
but disappeared from Belarusian curricula. By , when most schools in Vil-
nius taught in Lithuanian, not a single school in Minsk taught in Belarusian.
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