Polish-Russian Relations—Past and Present

By Oscar Halecki

T T IS a terribly responsible task to write on Polish-Russian relations

at the present moment. It is a moment of dangerous tension in these
relations, perhaps even of decisive crisis. Therefore, everything should
be avoided that could contribute on either side to excitement which
would be equally harmful to the two countries concerned and to the
United Nations as a whole. Since the reciprocal misunderstanding has,
to a large extent, historical bases, the more realistic approach to the
problem would seem to be simply to forget the whole historical back-
ground and to look for an entirely new start.
Such a start has been tried in the Polish-Russian agreement of July
30, 1941. Since that date, which was supposed to be a turning point in
the relations between the two parties, so many things have happened
and are happening almost every day, that a study strictly limited to
contemporary issues could easily become entirely worthless through
another unexpected change in the situation, even before the study could
be printed. And if the writer of articles prepared for the daily papers
can hardly avoid such a danger, a contributor to a quarterly magazine
has to consider much more seriously the limiting of his study to current
events.
Such a danger, however, is not the only reason why in this case, as
in so many others, we cannot escape history. Polish-Russian relations
have a history of almost a thousand years.1 The same basic problems of
' I have discussed that history from the merely territorial point of view, in my
article "Poland's eastern frontiers 981-1939," Journal of Central European Affairs, I.
No. 2 (July 1941), 191-207, and No. 3 (Oct. 1941), 325-338, where some biblio-
graphical references can be found in the footnotes. As far as the origins of Polish -
Russian relations are concerned the outline by Frank No wale. Medieval Slavdom and
Rise of Russia, New York, 1930, is very helpful. For the last two and a half centuries,
The Cambridge History of Poland from Augustus II to Pilsudsfyi, Cambridge, 1941, pp.
630, is particularly important. Some basic problems of Polish-Russian relations are
admirably explained in R. H. Lord's remarkable work. The Second Partition of Poland,
Cambridge, 1915. A collection of documents on Polish-Soviet Relations 19/8-1943 has
just been published by the Polish Information Center, New York, 1943; some of these
documents are reprinted there from official Russian publications. In my recently pub-
lished History of Poland, New York, 1943, pp. xiv-336, the eastern problems received
special attention.
322
 POLISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS 323

these relations are appearing again and again; and even today the
modifications which transformed them many centuries ago are still
contributing to a confusion whose causes are apparent to the historian,
but which can be badly misinterpreted, if the historical background is
neglected altogether. Nothing is more instructive, from that point of
view, than the very origin of Polish-Russian relations as recorded by the
earliest Russian chronicle.
It might seem almost absurd to go back as far as 981 when, accord-
ing to that chronicle, the Russians first attacked the Poles and took
from them a border region which now is disputed again and which
included a castle whose name, Przemysl, became quite famous during
World War I. But the historian must recall this starting point not to
emphasize the continuity of that local controversy, and still less to
support the Polish claims by arguments taken from the tenth century.
There is a much more important issue involved, one that includes the
greatest complication in the relations between Poland and her eastern
neighbor.
On the Polish side, there is an uninterrupted continuity and a
complete identity between the country called Poland a thousand years
ago and the Poland of today. On the contrary, early mediaeval Russia,
Rus, as it then was called and has nevfr ceased since to be called by
the Poles, is something entirely different from modern Russia, may it
be a Tsardom or a Soviet Republic. And, at the same time, old mediaeval
Russia was much less different from her Polish neighbor than is the
Russia of contemporary history.
The frontier dispute between Poland and old Russia—which in
order to distinguish it from the modern Russia can be called the Kievan
State—after having started as early as 981, continued through several
centuries. There were frequent changes in the position of the contro-
versial territory, which was almost identical with the present Eastern
Galicia. But all these troubles were hardly more serious than many
similar problems of boundaries which were arising between almost all
neighbor countries. The same thing can be said of the occasional inter-
ventions of Polish rulers in the internal affairs of the rapidly disintegrat-
ing Kievan State, and vice versa, of those of Russian princes in the
struggles among the members of the Polish dynasty. And although
324 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

the Russian dynasty was descended from Norman conquerors, it soon

became as Slavonic as its neighbor since both people spoke very similar
languages.
It is true that when both, within an interval of not much more than
twenty years, received the Christian religion, the Poles received it from
Rome and the Russians from Byzantium; but that was before the final
schism of the Western and the Eastern Church. Even later, when these
Churches already were separated, the relations between Poland which
remained Latin and Western, and old Russia, which never entirely
severed her ties with the West, were not too seriously affected. Both
remained members of the same Christian community, although influ-
enced by two different centers of Christian culture. Reiterated discus-
sions of a possible union of the Churches facilitated political coopera-
tion as well as frequent intermarriage between Polish and Russian
princes.
A first radical change in that situation which impeded, although it
did not entirely interrupt, these normal relations of neighboring states,
resulted from the Tartar invasion in the middle of the thirteenth cen-
tury. Both Russia—the first victim—and Poland suffered cruelly, but
while the latter was never occupied by the Asiatic conquerors and was
only raided from time to time, almost the whole of Russia came under
Tartar domination and thus under an influence which necessarily
estranged her from the Western countries, including the immediate
Polish neighbors.
At the same time the Tartar conquest accentuated the difference,
notable from the outset, between the original territory of the Eastern
Slavs—more or less corresponding to the area of the Kievan State—and
the new colonial territory where some of the East Slavonic or Russian
tribes had settled among an originally Finnish population. Being nearer
to the center of the Tartar Empire, without any traditions of cultural
ties with Western Europe, the colonial Russia of the Volga basin
accepted the control of the Tartars whose rule was to last there until
the end of the Middle Ages, after the old Russia of the Dnieper basin
had already been liberated.
It is true that this liberation from the Asiatic invaders was at the
same time a close connection of these territories with two neighbor
 POLISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS 325

countries, Poland and Lithuania, which, after having been rivals in their
Russian policies, eventually united and in 1386 created a federal system
which included almost the entire old Russian territory. And at the
same time Moscow, one of the principalities of the new Russia in the
Tartar controlled Volga region, started uniting these north-eastern
territories under her hegemony.
Such a definite division of the whole of the European continent
east of the German border into two spheres of influence was to have
far reaching consequences, not only in politics, but also in culture,
especially in the formation of the eastern European nationalities.
The western tribes of the Russian people had always been different
from the north-eastern tribes, especially from the linguistic point of
view. These Ruthenians, as the western tribes were called in order to
distinguish them from the Great-Russians or Muscovites, now entered
a stage of development which made them a separate nation, or rather
two nations, because the White-Ruthenians in the northwest soon devel-
oped some distinctive linguistic and ethnic features which loosened their
bonds with the Ruthenians of the southwest, called sometimes Little-
Russians and eventually Ukrainians. Both of these western groups,
however, having been from the fourteenth century intimately associated
with the Poles and the Lithuanians, and having formed with them a
Commonwealth with a parliamentary form of government, participated
from 1434 in the privileges and liberties of these federated states, and
also in a cultural movement which brought all the general trends of
western European civilization to the farthest limits of the union.
These limits thus included a large territory where all the above
mentioned nationalities were living together and influencing each other.
In some important regions they were entirely mixed, while Polish influ-
ence became predominant especially among the gentry and in the cities,
many of which, like Lwow and Wilno, were leading centers of Polish
culture. Soon after a final strengthening of the political union in 1569,
a religious union concluded in 1596 reconciled the Ruthenian Church
with Rome.2 This resulted in new contacts with the West, but safe-
2 Not all Ukrainians and White Ruthenians accepted the Union at once, but on
the eve of the partitions most <yf them, as far as they still remained within the frontiers
of the Polish Commonwealth, were Uniats. Those, who after the partitions came under
Russian rule, were later forced to return to the Greek-Orthodox Church, so that only
the Ukrainians of Austrian Galicia remained Catholics of the Oriental Rite.
326 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

guarded at the same time the oriental rite which, together with the
language of the large masses of the population, promoted the national
consciousness of the Ukrainians.
The eastern frontier of the Commonwealth, a boundary not only
of a state but also of constitutional government and of Western culture,
was moreover for almost three hundred years an ethnogiaphic limit
corresponding more or less to the border between the Ruthenians—both
White-Ruthenians and Ukrainians—and the Russians in the modern
sense of that name—the Muscovite Great-Russians.From the end of the
fifteenth century, however, i.e., from the moment when the rulers of
Moscow had freed themselves from Tartar overlordship and decided to
make their country a great European power, there was an almost unin-
terrupted warfare along that border line. There were also from time to
time discussions with a view to settling the relations between the two
rival powers by a union which would have federated the Polish Repub-
lic—itself a federation of Poland proper and Lithuania including the
Ruthenian provinces of both—with what was since 1547 the Russian
Tsardom. The constitutional and cultural differences between that Tsar-
dom, as created by Ivan the Terrible, and its western neighbor were,
however, so profound that all such schemes, whether suggested by the
Poles or by the Russians, proved entirely impracticable.
Thus the Polish interference in the Russian troubles at the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century resulted only in the recovery of some
frontier districts and the Russian revenge during Poland's "deluge" in
the middle of that century—in a compromise which was the basis of
the armistice of 1667, became a "permanent" peace in 1686, and was to
last until the partitions of Poland one hundred years later. Besides
some border districts of White-Russia, the whole eastern part of the
Ukraine, including Kiev, was then ceded to Moscow. The Ukrainian
Cossacks, who through an insurrection against Polish rule had hoped
to gain full independence, eventually lost, under the rule of Great-
Russia, even the promised autonomy.
That compromise, which was a serious attempt to appease modern
Russia, first seemed to improve Polish-Russian relations. But as soon as
Peter the Great made Russia an Empire with a strong military force,
she desired to play a leading part in general European policies. Thus,
 POLISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS 327

it became one of Russia's main objectives to destroy the independence

of Poland which was in the way and was hindering Russia's expansion
and her direct contact with the Western powers.The issue ceased to be
a frontier dispute, as Russia could achieve her aim only through two
alternatives: by bringing the whole of Poland under her control, or by
partitioning that country with Prussia.
The simultaneous rise of Prussia's power in Poland's western
neighborhood, of a power equally interested in the destruction of
Poland, was only one of the tragic circumstances that favored the
execution of Peter the Great's designs, which was inherited by his succes-
sors. Another factor was the decline of Poland's own strength at the
very moment when the pressure of two aggressive neighbors assumed
such threatening proportions. Not only did it prove impossible for her
to appease at least one of them, but they themselves both opposed the
internal reform movement which, from the middle of the eighteenth
century, tried to save Poland through a general national revival. Her
marked progress in the direction of democracy was one more pretext
to justify her dismemberment by imperialistic autocracies.

Russia and Prussia have an equal share of responsibility in the parti-

tions of Poland. For merely geographical reasons it so happened that
Russia took the eastern part of the country where most of the rural
population had remained Ukrainian or White-Ruthenian. There lived,
however, in that same section of the Republic not only many Lithuani-
ans who never had had anything in common with Russia, but also, in
a much larger number, Poles who for four centuries had promoted the
cultural development of that border land of Western civilization. And
how little Russia cared for ethnic considerations when fixing the new
boundaries is clearly shown by two significant details: one of the first
provinces she claimed was the Polish part of Livonia, while she agreed
that Eastern Galicia should be given to Austria.
The territory annexed by Russia in the three partitions under
Catherine II had all been connected with Poland from the fourteenth
century. It had never belonged to Muscovite Great-Russia, and had
developed in such an entirely different direction that the Ukrainian
and White-Russian people of that region had much more in common
328 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

with their Polish fellow-citizens than with the new conquerors and their
policy of artificial Russification.
Before that policy could achieve any serious results, the fourth
partition of Poland at the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, once more
changed the basic aspect of the Polish-Russian problem. Although
Alexander I did not succeed in uniting the whole of Poland with
Russia, he gained most of it, including the central part with Warsaw,
the capital. The fiction of a "Kingdom of Poland," autonomous, but
limited to a small section of the country and inseparably tied to the
gigantic Tsardom which incorporated the eastern part of Poland, did
not last more than fifteen years. And for a hundred years the Polish
independence movement was naturally directed in the first place against
the power which held the main part of Polish territory and most stead-
ily persecuted everything Polish.

Of course, that independence movement never forgot the smaller

parts of the country which, even after 1815, remained under Prussia
and Austria. And while in the latter the oppressive Metternich regime
was followed by an era of autonomy, in Prussia a particularly dangerous
and systematic persecution of the Poles started soon after Bismarck's
creation of the new German Empire. As a result, just as on the eve of
the partitions, the Polish nation had again to face the dilemma of decid-
ing whom she was to consider her chief adversary, a dilemma which
became particularly urgent when, in 1914, a war broke out between the
partitioning powers.
Again, however, it became apparent that it was hopeless to appease
either side, and that only the western democracies of Europe and Amer-
ica could support a nation pressed between two equally implacable
neighbors. There was indeed a moment, immediately after the first
Russian Revolution of 1917, when a democratic regime, established for
the first time in Russia, seemed sincerely to recognize Poland's right to
independence, although the territorial issue remained in suspense and
a military union of both countries was anticipated. It is true also that
the second revolution which resulted in the Sovietization of Russia,
recognizing in theory the right of secession of all the non-Russian
nationalities of the former Empire and specifically annulling the treat-
 POLISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS 329

ies which had partitioned Poland, seemed to favor a satisfactory solution

of the Polish-Russian problem. But as in reality the relations between
the two nations rapidly deteriorated, it is worth while looking for the
deeper reasons for such development, especially since these deeper
reasons directly lead to a better understanding of the present situation.
One of these reasons might appear to be something entirely new,
adding another difficulty to all the historical obstacles of Polish-Russian
reconciliation and cooperation. It is the fundamental difference, and
even opposition, between Communism, which became the leading prin-
ciple of the new Russia, and the way of life in Poland, old and new.
Historically, however, that problem is nothing but a new form of the
lasting differences in the whole evolution and in the basic conceptions
of two nations, differences which unfortunately always proved more
important than their common Slavonic origin—just another example
that culture is more important than race.

Opposing in this case, as in so many others, two different cultures

does not mean raising any question of superiority. It would be a great
mistake and a hopeless undertaking to discuss, especially at the present
moment, whether Poland or Russia has made or is going to make greater
contributions to human civilization, and in general, to compare the
values of their respective cultures. What really matters and can be
stated quite objectively is the mere fact that from the early origin of
Muscovite Russia her culture developed on entirely different lines from
the Polish one. And though the two countries later became neighbors,
the Poles always had much less in common with the Russians than with,
for instance, the more distant French.

For Polish culture, in spite of its Slavonic background, was strongly

Latinized already in the Middle Ages and, since the Renaissance, is a
synthesis of Slavonic and Latin elements, while Moscow, untouched
by the mediaeval and humanistic trends of the West, only much later
started a process of "westernization"which never ceased to be challenged
by many Russian leaders and which never reached the greater number
of the Russian people. Two other differences, closely connected with
the first one, are hardly less important. In Poland, the whole way of
life was inspired, through all ages, by the idea of individual liberty,
330 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

sometimes pushed even to the extreme. In Russia that idea always was
subordinated to collective forces or to the almost unlimited power of an
autocratic ruler. And while the former country never had any revolu-
tion and was developing through evolutionary methods, revolutionary
changes, from whatever side they came, are one of the distinctive fea-
tures of Russian history since Ivan the Terrible.
The latest Russian Revolution has not only made all these differ-
ences more stt iking than ever before, but added another one. The
former religious difference between Polish Catholicism and Russian
Orthodoxy, important as it was because of the political association of
the Orthodox Church with the Tsarist Government and Russian
nationalism, might almost seem insignificant if compared with the
contrast between the deeply religious character of Polish culture and
the materialistic philosophy and aggressive atheism of the Bolsheviks.

For all these reasons, the war between Poland and Soviet Russia
which immediately followed the first World War undoubtedly had an
ideological character, especially since Soviet Russia openly aimed in
those years at a world revolution, or at least at a Communist settlement
in the defeated countries from which she was separated by the restored
democratic Republic of Poland. Without, however, enlarging that aspect
of the whole campaign and of the battle of Warsaw in 1920, it must
be pointed out that a victory for Communism in Central Europe would
have meant the almost immediate disappearance of the newly regained
independence of Poland. Whenever Soviet Russia succeeded in estab-
lishing a Soviet Government in one of the countries which had separ-
ated themselves from the Tsarist Empire, such a country practically
returned under Russian control and eventually had to join the Soviet
Union, completely dominated by the enormous Russian Soviet
Republic.
In the case of Poland, particularly opposed to both Russian rule
and Communism, such a solution would have been possible only after
a complete victory of the Red Army. Consequently, it was only in the
summer of 1920, when such a victory was anticipated, that this ultimate
danger became openly apparent. However, from the very beginning of
the Polish-Soviet controversy the frontier problem which from times
 POLISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS 331

immemorial troubled Polish-Russian relations, appeared in its whole

gravity: not as a limited local dispute as in the mediaeval relations with
the Kievan State, but as an issue concerning the destiny of the whole
eastern part of the Polish Commonwealth.

When Poland was restored at the Paris Peace Conference, the ques-
tion of her eastern boundaries was left open, not only in the Versailles
Treaty, which after having fixed her western frontier in article 87
reserved for "the Principal Allied and Associated Powers" the right
later to determine the eastern one, but also in the decision of December
8, 1919, of the Supreme Council which is usually so seriously misinter-
preted. That decision, which authorized the Polish Government to
organize at once a normal administration for the formerly Russian
territory as far as a line running from Grodno to the upper Bug, did
it "without any prejudice as to the decision which later would definitely
fix the eastern frontier of Poland," and in the last paragraph made it
clear that "the rights of Poland to the territories east of that line . . .
are specifically reserved."

The provisional administrative limit of December 8, 1919, was later

called the "Curzon line," because the British Foreign Secretary Lord
Curzon suggested it on July 10, 1920, as a line which, after the conclu-
sion of the proposed Polish-Russian armistice, should separate the two
armies, it being understood that the Red Army should stop 50 kilo-
meters east of that line. As no armistice was concluded and the Soviets
crossed the suggested line, it never was more than a provisional project
which neither side accepted. It was never even supposed to be a final
political frontier.
Such a frontier was fixed, after the Polish-Russian war, in the peace
treaty signed in Riga on March 18, 1921, by the representatives of
Poland and of the Russian, White Russian and Ukrainian Soviet
Republics. It was a line of compromise, accepted by the Poles in spite
of their military victory.

It remained far west of what was Poland's eastern frontier before

the partitions in the eighteenth century, leaving to the Soviets all that
Russia had annexed in the first two partitions and restoring to Poland
332 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

only Russia's share in the third partition, as well as Eastern Galicia

which never had been Russian. Poland renounced the idea of reestab-
lishing, in a modernized form, her historic federation with the whole of
Lithuania, White Ruthenia, and the Ukraine. What Poland received was
only a border region, including the Polish cities of Wilno and Lwow and
an ethnographically mixed territory, indispensable to her security, where
even after more than one hundred years of Tsarist rule Polish culture
had remained predominant.
The Riga settlement was to be, according to the preamble of the
treaty, "a final, lasting and honorable peace based on mutual under-
standing." During the next eighteen years it was never questioned by
either side. On March 15, 1923, the Conference of Ambassadors, repre-
senting the principal "Allied and Associated Powers," referring to
article 87 of the Versailles Treaty, recognized the boundary line as
determined by that direct agreement between Poland and Russia, as the
eastern frontier of Poland. Thus the matter was definitely settled from
the point of view of international law and a basis had been found for
establishing between the two countries the normal relations of neighbors.
On that basis serious attempts were made to improve further these
relations and thus to promote the maintenance of peace in eastern
Europe. With other neighbor countries of Russia, Poland signed the
Moscow Protocol of February 9, 1929, putting into force, between these
countries and the Soviet Union, the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928 for
the renunciation of war before it could come into force between all the
signatories. Poland likewise signed the Convention of July 3, 1933,
supplementing this Pact by the clearest possible definition of aggression.

On the other hand, when trying to achieve security by bilateral

treaties with individual countries, Poland concluded her first non-
aggression pact with the Soviet Union, on July 25, 1932, almost two
years before signing a simitar non-aggression pact with Germany. And
after the conclusion of the latter, in order to make it quite clear that
nothing had been changed in Poland's sincere desire to continue her
friendly relations with Russia, another Protocol was signed in Moscow,
on May 5, 1934, deciding that the Polish-Russian non-aggression
Treaty, first concluded for three years only, should remain in force
 POLISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS 333

until December 31, 1945, later to be automatically prolonged for succes-

sive periods of two years.

Faithful to that engagement, Poland always rejected any German

proposal to participate in an aggression against Russia. She did this
even in the years when, realizing that the western powers were not pre-
pared to fight Hitler, she had to maintain herself good relations with
Germany; and she did it also in the critical moments of January, 1939
when it was obvious that the reiterated refusal to cooperate with Hitler
against the Soviet Union would hasten the German aggression against
Poland herself.

That aggression did no.t, however, materialize before the Soviet

Union, which as early as 1922 had inaugurated her participation in
general European politics by the famous Rapallo Treaty with Germany,
gave Hitler a formal guarantee that Russia would not oppose him if he
would undertake a "warlike action." It has been said again and again
that World War I could have been avoided, if Britain had announced
in advance that she would fight. When World War II threatened to
break out, it was in vain that Britain as well as France made such an
announcement in time, because Russia not only did not join, but made
an announcement in exactly the opposite direction.

The Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty of August 23, 1939, followed

within nine days by the German invasion of Poland, must have been
accompanied by a German-Russian plan of cooperation against that
country, a cooperation which found its open expression on September
17. What then happened has been briefly described by Molotov himself
in his report to the Supreme Soviet on October 3 1 : "One swift blow to
Poland, first by the German Army and then by the Red Army, and
nothing was left of this ugly offspring of the Versailles treaty which
had existed by oppressing non-Polish nationalities."

The question of these non-Polish nationalities, more especially of

"the kindred Ukrainian and White Russian people, who live on Polish
territory," had been raised already in the Russian note of September 17
which, claiming that the Polish State had "ceased to exist," announced
the crossing of its frontier by the Red Army. Using the fate of these
334 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

populations as a pretext, the note did not, however, complain of their

oppression, but only of their being "left defenseless." But instead of
defending them against the Germans, Soviet Russia immediately started
negotiating with Hitler about the partition of Poland.
At first, it was decided that the dividing line should run through
the very heart of Poland, permitting the Red Army to reach the
Vistula and to occupy even the eastern suburbs of Warsaw, east of the
river. The purpose of totally destroying Poland appeared clearly in that
agreement. This agreement was altered slightly a few days later in the
German-Russian Treaty signed in Moscow on September 28. Even
then, however, the Soviet occupation was not at all limited to the terri-
tory east of the so-called Curzon line, but included regions whose purely
Polish character had never been questioned by anybody. The whole area
occupied by the Red Army was more than one-half, exactly 51.6% of
Poland, with 37.3% of her population, i.e., more than 13 millions of
people. Of these people, almost 40 % (exactly 39.9) were Poles who,
counting more than five millions (about 5,274 thousands) formed the
relatively strongest group among an ethnographically mixed popu-
lation.3

After having ceded a small part of the occupied territory, about

4%, including the Polish city of Wilno, to Lithuania4 which soon was
to be annexed altogether as another Soviet Republic, the occupying
authorities organized elections on October 25 to local Soviets which
under the pressure of the armed forces of the invaders "asked" for the
3 The statistical figures for the other groups are (in thousands) 4,529 Ukrainians
(34.47r); 1,123 White Ruthenians (8.57r) ; 1,109 Jews (8.490 ; 134 Russians (V/c) ;
89 Germans (0.7c/r) ; 84 Lithuanians (0.69O- 711 thousands, replying to the question
of their mother-tongue, simply declared to speak the "local" language; they obviously
have no sufficiently developed national consciousness, but most of them might be consid-
ered White-Ruthenians or Ruthenians. See Concise Statistical Year-Boo^ of Poland—
September 1939-June 1941, London, 1941, p. 9, where both the figures of the 1931
census and an estimate for August 31, 1939, are given.
4 Without discussing here the Lithuanian claims for Wilno, it must be recalled that
this city which first appears in the twenties of the fourteenth century and then was the
capital of a large Lithuanian State including many non-Lithuanian populations, was
from the Polish-Lithuanian Union of 1386 the second capital of the federated Common-
wealth. The very next year the Poles founded there a Catholic Bishopric and in 1579
the second Polish University with the famous Polish writer Peter Skarga as first Presi-
dent. From these days Wilno was one of the most important centers of Polish culture.
In 1931, out of its 195 thousand inhabitants 128.6 thousand, i.e., almost two-thirds, were
Poles, 54.6 thousand Jews, and only two thousand Lithuanians.
 POLISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS 335

incorporation of the territory into the Soviet Republics of White

Russia and Ukraine. At the same time systematic deportations were
started which, during the twenty-one months of Russian occupation,
transferred at least two millions—probably two and a half—of Polish
people to remote parts of the Soviet Union, where many of them were
put into jail, while the others had to work in labor camps.
These mere facts will suffice to show how difficult it was for the
Polish Government, which from the outset had strongly protested
against them, simply to forget the whole past and to make with the
Soviet Government a friendly agreement as soon as Russia, after
almost two years of cooperation with Hitler, was treacherously invaded
by him herself. Such an agreement was signed, however, on July 30,
less than six weeks after the German aggression against Russia; and on
December 4 of the same year of 1941, still before the formation of the
United Nations, this agreement was made a formal alliance between
Poland and the Soviet Union, "imbued with the spirit of friendly
concord and fighting collaboration."
This courageous and generous step was taken under a twofold
assumption. First, it was understood by the Polish Government and the
Polish people, that article 1 of the treaty of July 30, in which the Soviet
Government recognized "the Soviet-German treaties of 1939 as to terri-
torial changes in Poland as having lost their validity," meant a return
to the legal situation as it existed before the aggression of September
1939, i.e., to the settlement of the Riga treaty. It may be added that
even in practice the arbitrary arrangements of 1939 had lost their signifi-
cance since Hitler's aggression against Russia in 1941: that aggression
after a few weeks of fighting on the territory of eastern Poland, which
was suffering for a second time the destructions of total warfare,
brought that territory under the control of the Germans who now are
occupying and persecuting the whole of Poland.
Secondly, the Poles had a right to expect that the protocol attached
to the Polish-Russian agreement of July 30, 1941, though rather "euphe-
mistically" worded,'' would put an end to the sufferings of all the Polish
r
•> Thai wording where the Soviet Government called the liberation of Polish citizens
an "amnesty" and said that they were detained on Soviet territory "on sufficient grounds"
was the main reason of the criticism of that agreement by many Poles who otherwise
would have welcomed a reconciliation of the two nations.
336 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

people deported to various Soviet republics and guarantee the immedi-

diate liberation of all of them.
Unfortunately, as to the first point, the Russian side was very soon
to raise, first through a steady propaganda campaign, and, eventually
through official notes of the Soviet Government, formal claims to the
whole territory annexed after September 17, 1939. It was only then,
after a long silence dictated by a sincere desire not to trouble the rela-
tions among the United Nations, that the Polish Government and the
Polish National Council, supported by the unanimous opinion of the
whole nation, had to reply by the declarations of February 20 and 25,
and March 5, refuting these claims but expressing once more their
hope to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union.
These relations suffered, however, at the same time from the difficul-
ties which handicapped the liberation of the deported Polish citizens.
Without entering into details, it will be sufficient to recall that until
the present moment not more than 50,000 Polish civilians have been
successfully evacuated. It is true that with them about 100,000 Polish
soldiers, former war prisoners, succeeded in leaving the Soviet Union
and in joining the Polish forces in the Near and Middle East. But it
was not the fault of the Polish Government that the original plan of
making all the former Polish war prisoners fight with the Russians
against the German invaders, could not be realized. Even the official
Soviet comment on that failure makes it quite clear that it was closely
connected with the territorial problem: Poles could hardly be expected
to advance with the Russians into eastern Poland with a view to making
these territories, including the homes of many of them, part of the
Soviet Union.
But the problem of liberating the victims of the September invasion
of 1939 is also connected with the tragic story of the 15,000 Polish
officers who disappeared after having been among these war prisoners.
Their fate alarmed the Polish Government and people long before
German propaganda had taken advantage of that issue, for it had
proved impossible to obtain from the Russians any information about
the fate of these officers. When Poland's comprehensible wish to see
the matter impartially investigated served for the Soviet Government
 POLISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS 337

as a pretext to interrupt its relations with the Polish Government and

to try to interfere with the composition of that Government, an
even more alarming question reappeared: the fundamental question of
Russia's ultimate aim in her relations with a country whose very exist-
ence as an independent nation she had tried to destroy, not only in a
remote, but in a very near past. And the recent revival of Russian
nationalism in the Soviet Union makes her foreign policy even more
alarming for the Poles.

Without, however, discussing here these latest developments which,

as stated at the beginning of this article, may possibly undergo further
changes before its publication, it is time to draw some general conclu-
sions, connecting the historical background of the problem not only
with the present situation, but also with the prospects of post-war
reconstruction.
It certainly is highly regrettable that two of the United Nations:
the one which was the first to fight Hitler and the one which is fight-
ing him most successfully, are separated by a deep-rooted misunder-
standing.

That misunderstanding is, to a large extent, rooted in history, and

in a historical experience of such a gravity and continuity that it can-
not be simply disregarded by the present generation. Moreover, within
the last four years the most painful experiences of Poland in her rela-
tions with Russia have been repeated, after having been started, as so
frequently happened in the past, by Russian-German cooperation against
Poland. And if one of these two United Nations has to fear for her
security even after victory, it obviously is not Russia, but Poland.

Were it only for that reason, Poland is deeply interested in good

relations with her powerful eastern neighbor and would welcome a deci-
sive change for the better in their mutual relations. But Poland did not
reject the German claims for a "revision" of her western frontier only
to accept the Russian claims for half of her territory in the east. She
did not oppose Nazism, without producing any "collaborators," merely
to accept another form of totalitarianism. And she did not challenge
the racial myth of Pan-Germanism and the German pretensions to
338 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

leadership on the European continent, merely to be merged in Pan-

Slavism under Russian leadership.
The fundamental differences between Poland and Russia exclude
any closer union between these two individual nations, but they certain-
ly do not exclude their peaceful cooperation in the universal international
organization which ought to result from World War II to make a third
one impossible. The possibility of such a cooperation depends on
Russia, because she, and not Poland, is raising claims against her
smaller neighbor. But it also depends on the other United Nations,
especially the British Commonwealth and the United States of Amer-
ica: if they support a world order based on the principles of the
Atlantic Charter and of democracy in international relations, no nation
will be menaced in its existence by any other and no territorial change
will be enforced by violence. For these principles Poland decided to
fight on September 1, 1939, has suffered more than any other country,
and is going to suffer until victory. She has a right to hope that after
a victory of the United Nations both fighting for national survival and
suffering for individual freedom will really come to an end.