Victims of Their Own Making

The Victim Complex

For a number of years now there has been a growing trend within right-wing Polish politics which is particularly perplexing. Right-wing politics is often equated with patriotic and nationalist sentiments, glorifying past (and present) achievements as well as demonstrating the greatness of one’s nation. However, attitudes within right-wing (and liberal) circles in Poland seem to be advocating a different approach. This approach reached its apex when Law and Justice (PiS) came to power in 2005.

The Christ Nation

Together with the far-right League of Polish Families (LPR) and populist Self-Defence (Samoobrona), this approach became entrenched and particularly visible in Polish foreign policy during the PiS years. Polish politics (heavily influenced by the Catholic church at the time) embraced an almost ‘Christic’ and/or ‘martyrological’ approach to their own history. Poland was seen by these politicians to be both the saviour and martyr of Europe, the ‘Christ’ of European nations.

The German Invasion

When arguing for Poland’s God-given right to have more votes in the EU’s then new system of voting, one of the Kaczyński brothers said that had it not been for World War II, Poland’s population would be greater and so they deserve more votes in the EU. This attitude continued throughout their term in office and continues today. Certain politicians feel Poland ‘deserves’ more because it suffered so much. This attitude of Poland being the ‘eternal victim’ is extremely dangerous for a number of reasons.

The Destruction of Self

Firstly, with it comes a large whiff of misplaced arrogance which, to the outside world, is particularly irritating when the only arguments that can be heard coming from the Polish camp are that Poland deserves more because it had to live though both Nazism and Communism. Secondly, when such a victim complex becomes entrenched its proponents begin to genuinely believe it. So much so that extolling the virtues of being a victim turns into a form of flagellation or even historical and political self-mutilation.

The New History

Recently, there has been much talk about historical revisionism. Russia particularly has been found guilty of practising the re-writing of history. However, is Poland’s victim status also a form of revisionism? Believing that Poland is forever Europe’s martyr is useful as it absolves the nation of crimes previously committed, such as Jedwabne or Operation Wisła. How can the victim have ever been the tormentor?

When East Becomes West

The Heart of Europe

Are we witnessing a gradual westward cultural shift in Europe? Are we facing a post-modern crisis where identities increasingly overlap and blur? Is the definition of Western Europe the same now as it was in 1945?

Mitteleuropa Revisited
An even trickier question is what (or where) is Central Europe? The geographical centre of Europe (not the European Union) is laid claim to by at least five towns, all of which lie in what is conventionally not thought of as Western Europe, but rather Eastern Europe. These towns are: Purnuškės, Lithuania; Polotsk, Belarus; Suchowola, Poland; Rakhiv, Ukraine; and Krahule, Slovakia. Interestingly, these places form an area partly overlapping Poland’s semi-mythical Kresy (more info here). If this is the case then our definitions of Central Europe need to be redefined. Central Europe is Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Slovakia, and perhaps also Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. To the west of this area, Western Europe begins: Germany, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. However, as we are all aware, calling Serbia a part of Western Europe is odd. There is more to west and east than points on a compass.

Neither East Nor West

Europe Redefined
The chief problem with defining what is central, east and west is our notions of these terms and the connotations they all carry. Most people think of Western Europe as the UK, France, Germany, Benelux, Spain and Italy. But what about Greece? What of Finland? Most of the territory of Poland, all of the Czech Republic, and the afore-mentioned Serbia lie in Europe’s western half yet most Europeans would not call them ‘western’.

Culture Remade
Most recently, communism helped delimit Europe into two halves but with communism gone it can be argued that Europe has shifted west. Russians often claim Poles are westernised traitors to the Slav cause. Poles and Slovaks believe Czechs are no more than Germans speaking a Slavonic language. Perspective is key to our interpretation of east and west. We cannot deny the fact that ‘western’ culture (whatever that means) has permeated the new EU states. Popular urban culture is something familiar to people both in Warsaw and Walsall; you can get a Starbucks in Bucharest and Buckingham, a Big Mac in Bratislava and Bradford and a Burger King Whopper in Burgas and Burnley. The so-called ‘eastern’ countries have increasingly more in common with the ‘western’ ones to such an extent that any discussion of Eastern and Western Europe is little more than academic. So where is this mythical West?

Black Madonna

Faith & Family

Many thanks to my good pal Jim for giving me the heads up about this text. It’s a great piece about the life of the post-war Polonia, that is the Polish people who came to the United Kingdom after World War II (as part of the UK Polish Repatriation Act) as opposed to those Polish people who have come to the UK post-EU accession. I’m ‘posting’ the text in full (copyright The Guardian 2009):

As a child growing up in Derby in the 60s I spoke Polish beautifully, thanks to my grandmother. While my mother went out to work, my grandmother, who spoke no English, looked after me, teaching me to speak her native tongue. Babcia, as we called her, dressed in black with stout brown shoes, wore her grey hair in a bun, and carried a walking stick. She was the hub of our household – she could cook Polish delicacies, play Chopin on the piano and make paper storks. I adored her.

My father, Jerzy, had escaped from Poland after the Germans invaded, travelling on foot across Europe to England, where he became a pilot in the RAF. At the end of the war, he met my English mother at a dance organised by my maternal grandfather to help lonely young Polish pilots. In 1957, he arranged for my grandmother, Maria, who was living in a tiny flat in Warsaw in increasing distress under the privations of communism, to come to the UK.

Like other Polish families in the area, we spent our weekends in the vast Polish club that kept our community’s culture alive. My father helped to establish Dom Polski (Polish House) in the 1950s and it was known as the air force club because the founders were pilots. It provided a focus for all those old comrades and their history. I remember one woman at the club who had a concentration camp number tattooed on her arm, and another whose husband and daughter got off the train transporting them to Siberia to buy bread, only for the train to leave without them. She never saw them again. There were people who had been taken east through Russia as slave labour, others who were taken west to provide a workforce for German farms and factories.

The walls of the club were covered with black-and-white photos of Polish pilots, and a huge propeller from a Spitfire was fixed to one wall. On Saturday mornings my sisters and I would study Polish at the school it ran, and on Saturday nights, my parents would go dancing. On Sundays, we played tombola there over lunch.

But my love affair with Polish culture began to fade when I was five – the year Babcia died. We had been so close that when she was dying, her last words were to ask that I should be looked after. I couldn’t believe she was dead, and went from being confident and cocky to a very quiet child.

Without Babcia’s childcare, my mother had to give up her full-time job and take part-time work in a school across the road. I was placed in the reception class and, accustomed to being at home alone with Babcia, I hated it. I don’t remember making a conscious decision, but in shock I refused to speak Polish until I saw Babcia again.

My sisters and I continued to go to Polish school, but the language would not return. Despite the efforts of my father, even a family trip to Poland in 1965 could not bring it back. When six years later my father died too, at just 53, our Polish connection almost ceased to exist. I left Derby and went to university in London. I never spoke Polish, never ate Polish food nor visited Poland. My childhood was gone and almost forgotten.

Then in 2004, more than 30 years later, things changed again. A new wave of Polish immigrants had arrived and I began to hear the language of my childhood all around me – every time I got on a bus. I saw Polish news-papers in the capital and Polish food for sale in the shops. The language sounded so familiar yet somehow distant – as if it were something I tried to grab but was always out of reach.

In Derby, Dom Polski had closed down. The building was decaying and up for rent; the old soldiers and air force men were almost all dead, and the second and third generations too busy to worry about it. But my memory had been jogged. I began to write a novel about a fictional Polish family and, at the same time, decided to enrol at a Polish language school.

Each week I went through half-remembered phrases, getting bogged down in the intricate grammar and impossible inflections. When my book was published, it put me back in touch with schoolfriends who like me were second-generation Polish. And strangely, in my language classes, I still had my accent and I found words and phrases would sometimes come unbidden, long lost speech patterns making a sudden reappearance. I had found my childhood again.

Joanna Czechowska

Her book, The Black Madonna of Derby (or Goodbye Polsko) is published by Silkmill Press.

The First ‘European’ Union

The First 'EU' Coat of Arms?

The 1st July 2009 marks the 440th anniversary of what was perhaps one of the first (in retrospect) ‘EU’-style unions on the European continent. The Union of Lublin (1st July, 1569) is often seen as a natural predecessor to the Maastricht Treaty (7th February, 1992). The Union of Lublin was a union of two states – the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The actual signing of the Union of Lublin may have been a defining point in history but it was only one moment in a whole series of acts of union and treaties that saw the eventual creation of a federal state.

EU Parallels
Not only is the Union of Lublin seen as a precursor to the Maastricht Treaty, but the state that the Union of Lublin created is often seen as analogous to the modern European Union. Does this mean that the member states of the European Union will follow the same path as Poland and Lithuania prior to and after the Union of Lublin? Can the respective histories of Poland and Lithuania give us valuable insights into what might become of the European Union? In order to answer these questions or even attempt to answer these questions, it is useful to look at what happened before and after the Union of Lublin with the help of a simple timeline…

Lublin Union - Maastricht Predecessor?

Union Timeline
1385 – Union of Krewo (Grand Lithuanian Duke marries Polish Queen);
1401 – Union of Vilnius-Radom (relating to issues of royal authority);
1413 – Union of Horodło (uniting the nobilities of both states);
1432 – Union of Grodno (saw increased ties between the two states);
1499 – Union of Kraków-Vilnius (was a political-military alliance);
1501 – Union of Mielnik (renewed the personal dynastic union);
1569 – Union of Lublin (created a ‘Commonwealth’ – two states with one ruler, government and foreign policy);
1791 – Creation of a unitary state (and abolition of the two states);
1795 – The ‘Commonwealth’ disappears off the map (with the Partitions of Poland).

EU Destiny
Will the European Union follow a similar path? We may argue that the deterioration of the Polish-Lithuanian state prior to the Partitions could well happen to the EU. The social collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth opened the gates for the Partitions. Perhaps this is already happening in the EU? Rising bureaucracy, a growing feeling of dissatisfaction, a general feeling of apathy. Are we witnessing the start of the collapse of the  European Union or does Maastricht still have another 200 years left?  Could the EU also end up on the rubbish heap of history?

A History of Unions
If we count the start of the development of Europe’s first ‘Union’ to have been 1385 and the end 1795 then 410 years is not a bad result, although in reality we should count the Union of Lublin as the Union’s inception date. In any case 1569 to 1795 still gives us 226 years. The Scandinavian Kalmar Union lasted from 1397 to 1523 (a ‘mere’ 126 years). The British Acts of Union began in 1707 and still exist (which gives 302 years and counting). In any case, these three examples – the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the United Kingdom and the Kalmar Union – demonstrate that the European continent has a history of unions and this is, by no means, something foreign to us. Why did the Commonwealth and Kalmar Union fail? Why is the United Kingdom still going? Two questions that may prove to be important for the future of the European Union.

Who actually Won the War?

GERMAN Nazis

The events of the last few days have led me to ask the question: “Who actually won World War II?” Noises from the political elite in Germany and an even greater hoohah in Poland have got me thinking about two issues: (1) the necessity for Germany to feel responsible for the Holocaust and the slaughter of so many innocent lives in World War II, and (2) the growing rise of negationism, or rather historical relativism.

German Revisionism
The surprising news that has come out of Germany is that the two political powerhouses, the CDU and CSU, have called for the European Parliament to back a decision to condemn all forms of forced repatriation. Without such a joint EU declaration, Germany has intimated that it will not agree to further expansion of the European Union. This is all well and good and indeed forced repatriating should be condemned but this issue deflects away from the causes of the last forced exodus in Europe. As we all know, the forced repatriation of millions of European citizens was a direct result of the Nazi attack on Poland in 1945. The CDU and CSU have also added that all laws and rights violated through repatriation need to be reversed. This appears to be a call to give compensation to those Germans who were forced out of Poland after the war, a war the Germans began!

Polish Oversensitiveness
This has caused an almighty explosion of outrage in Poland. The first to respond to Germany’s call was Jarosław Kaczyński who has called upon PM Donald Tusk for his Civic Platform (PO) to leave the the European People’s Party-European Democrats (EPP-ED) political group, the group to which both PO and the CDU and CSU belong in a mark of protest against this German revisionism. He has also called the PO “weak” in the face of German brute force and expansionism. Germany has also stated that it wishes the German language to be stronger within the EU. There’s no getting away from the fact that Jarosław Kaczyński made these statements for political gain but he’s not all that wrong about Germany trying to deflect away from the cause of Europe’s most recent forced bout of repatriations.

European Problems
Yes, Poland is oversensitive. But wouldn’t you be a little touchy if you had experienced what the inhabitants of Poland experienced during the war. Not only was Poland’s Jewish population wiped out but its other citizens also faced humiliation, torture and death at the hands of the German Nazis. Any calls for a re-evaluation of the facts will unsurprisingly cause a stir. Two things need to happen for Europe to take a good look at itself and grow up. Firstly, not only Germany and Poland but ALL of the EU’s member states need to sit down and talk, not only at the ministerial level but at the level of local communities to see how these issues still affect us all today. Secondly, Europe needs to learn the true meaning of solidarity and the meaning of ‘being European’, whatever that means.

Right-Wing Strikes Back

Eating Pie?

PiS head Jarosław Kaczyński has announced that the European Parliament will bear witness to a revolutionary change following the upcoming European elections. During a meeting of the party’s political council, the Law and Justice (PiS) leader announced that it had been decided that PiS will take part in a  project to create a new conservative grouping in the European Parliament.

MEPs Unite
Jarosław Kaczyński announced that MEPs of Law and Justice will be joined by Czech and British conservative MEPs to create this new right-wing organisation. The conservative group will come into being after the June elections to the European Parliament. Is this the start of something new? Of a change in national and European politics? Will we witness a shift to the right in some sections of the Euro-parliament? Does it matter?

Defenders Defend
The Law and Justice leader believes that in order to defend the national interests of one’s country within the EU, politicians need to be independent and be free of any outside pressure. He feels that the creation of a new conservative group will give these ‘defenders of national interests’ this much-needed independence. He also believes that this new group will not only be a significant player in Brussels but will be also keep a beady eye on what MEPs are really doing.

Eurosceptics Divide
Eurosceptics can perhaps be put into two groups. Those that will do anything to stop Brussels having a greater say in local matters and block any erosion of sovereignty, and those that will do anything to get as greater slice of the European pie as is possible. In Poland, the greatest Eurosceptics were members of Andrzej Lepper’s Self-Defence, who appeared to belong to the first group but once in power magically turned into the second. We all know that PiS advocates Euroscepticism; the question is whether this party (and the new conservative grouping) will advocate the first or second kind of Euroscepticism.

Revisionist Museum

Erika on a Mission

The news that Erika Steinbach has decided not to stand as a member of the council for the the new museum dedicated to Germans expelled from their homes after World War II has come as a relief to the majority of Poles, Czechs and Jews but it does not solve the problem that this museum is being built in the first place.

Revisionismus
Steinbach is president of the Federation of Expellees (BdV), an organisation that seeks to represent the interests of all Germans who were forced to leave their homes in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II. Steinbach is known for her controversial views and there are hints of revisionism in her attitude to Germany’s part in the Second World War. She seeks to focus on the plight of German expellees after the war rather than looking at the plight of all expellees and the reason behind these expulsions. What is more, Poles note the fact that Steinbach voted against the act reconfirming modern Polish-German borders in 1990. The Czechs, on the other hand, remember the fact that she was a vehement critic of the implementation of the Czech-German Declaration in 1997.

Goldenes Zeitalter
The amount of ill feeling caused by the Centre Against Expulsions and the proposed museum is unsurprising. Rather than discuss the whole problem of expulsions in a wider context, the Centre Against Expulsions eagerly lists the history of each expelled German ‘tribe’ (together with coat-of-arms) as well as listing how many people from each particular nation were expelled and by whom (which country). The attitude here is one of lost tribes, a glorious past as well as finger-pointing and the shifting of responsibility for the expulsion of Germans away from the country that instigated World War II. It is not therefore surprising that most Central and Eastern European citizens find the idea of such a museum repulsive.

Graue Eminenz
With Erika Steinbach being at the forefront of this shift in attitude to the outcomes of, reasons and responsibilities for World War II, the sigh of relief that she will not be a part of the council for this museum can be heard across Europe. The museum council numbers thirteen members of which three have been allotted to members of BdV. With the resignation of Steinbach, the council, curiously, will only number twelve with no one taking her place which leads to the suggestion that her resignation is probably only temporary and that she will soon be back leading the fight for the construction of the museum. In the meantime, behind the curtain, she will be pulling the strings anyway.

A New Federation

Kashubia & Silesia

The year is 2108 and the European Federation (EF) is successfully implementing its regional autonomy policy, the aim of which is to decentralise power and “hand it back” to the people. The EF has pinpointed several regions which have been earmarked for “independence” allowing for the complete “dismantling of imperial and hegemonic power to make way for a new European freedom and era of local awareness”. EF President Hans-Lukas Tantalum also announced on the 11th November that two more autonomous regions are to be established in the Central Zone of the EF, namely Kashubia and Silesia.

Lechosław’s Last Stand
Many in the Region of Greater Poland have been dismayed to hear that the EF plans to carve up their historical territory with the head of state, Polish Commissioner Lechosław Kiszański, making an embittered plea in the Federation capital Brussels: “We helped forge the Federation, it was with the minds and hearts of Greater Poland that the Federation was able to become the power that it now is. Without the Region of Greater Poland, the Federation would never have secured the new regions of Greater Ukraine and Greater Turkey. We implore you to consider again this attack on our resources and people”.

Surprising Support
Few believe that Commissioner Kiszański’s words will do anything to change the minds of MEPs, although in a surprising turn of events last week, the Commissioners of Bavaria, the Helvetian Pact and Greater Austria all made declarations in support of Greater Poland, perhaps in a pre-emptive strike against the partitioning of their regions. However, the Commissioners of Rhine-Waal, Jutland-Schleswig and the Alps-Mediterranean Region have been vocal in their support of President Tantalum’s policy of increasing autonomy. Greater Poland’s fate seems to have been decided.

New Regions – New Chance
According to President Tantalum, the new Region of Kashubia will give greater linguistic freedom to a large community that has for centuries been downtrodden and disrespected. “The EF is the guarantor of individual freedom and collective consciousness,” Tantalum added. Silesia, on the other hand, has always vied for independence and the new Region of Silesia, which also takes large bites out of the Greater Czech Region and Saxony Region (much to the disappointment also of these two regions), will “provide a platform for increased autonomy and local consciousness,” Tantalum announced.

Greater Poland, 2108

Body Blow
Commissioner Kiszański, however, will not give up and has already been shoring up support in various quarters. The afore-mentioned Regions of Bavaria, the Helvetian Pact, Greater Austria, Greater Czech and Saxony are all giving full support to Greater Poland with possible declarations of support also coming from the Regions of the Black Sea, Trans-Carpathia and, surprisingly, Wales. Should Greater Poland create enough unrest to block the Federation Parliament in its seemingly inevitable decision to create these two new regions, it will be the most serious parliamentary stalemate since the constitutional crisis of 2079.

Who the Duck Do You Think You Are?

Egg on Your Face

Lech Kaczyński is doing everything he can to get noticed much to the chagrin of most of Poland’s political elite, journalists and tired citizens. He began the week by making a bold, mighty declaration stating that Russia should withdraw its armed forces from Georgia. The plan, instigated by Kaczyński, was to collect the signatures of a large number of well-known and influential world leaders. The declaration was signed by Kaczyński and… the President of Lithuania. To make matters worse, Lech Kaczyński failed to inform Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

EU Boob
The week rolled on and Kaczyński went from blunder to bungle. When PM Donald Tusk realised that Kaczyński will be yet again gate-crashing yet another EU summit Tusk decided that he won’t force himself to go through the embarrassment of being patted on the back (again) and patronised by a meddling Kaczyński.  Tusk will not be travelling to the summit. The PM’s decision is both ridiculous and emotional and one cannot help feeling that somehow, somewhere Poland’s interests have been cast aside in this catty bickering between the two politicians.

Congratulatory Goof
But by far the biggest boo-boo made by Kaczyński this week was his congratulation letter sent to Barack Obama in which Kaczyński twice writes: “the President of the United States of Northern America”. Apparently, the original draft of the letter containing the correct title, written by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was later ‘corrected’ by Kaczyński’s own office. Not only has Kaczyński managed to make a fool of himself, make a fool of his countrymen, insult the President-Elect of the most powerful nation in the world but also, quite incredibly, invent a brand new country. Impressive.

President Go Home

Heading to Brussels

Yesterday’s news (see here) that President Kaczyński will also be making his way to the upcoming EU summit comes as a surprise for all of us, both here in Poland and in the rest of Europe. Lech Kaczyński seems to be a man unaware of his position and capabilities, a little Napoleon set on crusading through Europe and the world, even though there have been no crusades for generations. The man seems to be set on creating the world in his own image, an image shared only by himself (and perhaps his more pesky twin brother).

No Heads of State
Little Miss Kaczyński has got it into his head that he is too important not to attend the EU summit. The problem is that this is an inter-governmental summit and not a meeting of heads of state. Will Queen Elizabeth be there? Juan Carlos of Spain? President Sarkozy of France? No. Each country is set to be represented by its Prime Minister and in Poland’s case also the Finance Minister. Besides, the President does not possess the know-how to discuss the financial machinations of the current economic downturn and future escape packages for Europe.

Opposition to Kaczyński
In a remarkable show of solidarity, Poland’s opposition politicians (bar PiS, headed by Lech’s twin brother) have all come out on the side of Prime Minister Tusk who has reiterated that Lech Kaczyński should under no circumstances travel to the summit. Even malcontent, former PM Leszek Miller has put the full weight of his support behind Tusk claiming that the current PM is “utterly in the right and has done no wrong” (Tok FM).

Lithuania or Bust
Kaczyński is so eager to stamp on Tusk’s fire and cause mayhem that the idea was even mooted that he would travel with the Lithuanian delegation. Does that mean Kaczyński’s aides have been ‘phoning round’ to see who the President of Poland might piggy-back with. Very swish, very elegant. After meeting Tusk, it now seems that Kaczyński will be travelling in the official plane to Brussels albeit the day after Tusk and the Finance Minister go. However, the question needs to be asked: why on earth did Tusk back down?

Mission Impossible
Sadly, Lech Kaczyński has become a political pest. He has no regard for accepted etiquette (i.e. the above summit) and is dead set on proving to the world he is a ‘great leader’. If this was the case, he would perhaps  be a little more cautious with where he travels and more restrained with what he says. He seems to forget that he is the President of the Republic of Poland. He represents the people and not the party of his twin brother. His mission is to present Poland in a good light rather than spend all his energies on promoting himself.