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Polish-Russian Relations—Past and Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Oscar Halecki
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Extract

It 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 background and to look for an entirely new start.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 1943 , pp. 322 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1943

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References

1 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 (07 1941), 191–207Google Scholar, and No. 3 (Oct. 1941), 325–338, where some bibliographical references can be found in the footnotes. As far as the origins of Polish-Russian relations are concerned the outline by Nowak, Frank. Medieval Slavdom and Rise of Russia, New York, 1930Google Scholar, is very helpful. For the last two and a half centuries, The Cambridge History of Poland from Augustus II to Pilsudsfyi, Cambridge, 1941, pp. 630Google Scholar, 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, 1915Google Scholar. A collection of documents on Polish-Soviet Relations 1918–1943 has just been published by the Polish Information Center, New York, 1943Google Scholar; some of these documents are reprinted there from official Russian publications. In my recently published History of Poland, New York, 1943, pp. xiv–336Google Scholar, the eastern problems received special attention.

2 Not all Ukrainians and White Ruthenians accepted the Union at once, but on the eve of the partitions most of 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.

3 The statistical figures for the other groups are (in thousands) 4, 529 Ukrainians (34.4%); 1,123 White Ruthenians (8.5%); 1,109 Jews (8.4%) 134 Russians (1%); 89 Germans (0.7%); 84 Lithuanians (0.6%). 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 considered White-Ruthenians or Ruthenians. See Concise Statistical Year-Book of Poland—September 1939-June 1941, London, 1941, p. 9Google Scholar , 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 Commonwealth. 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 President. 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.

5 That 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.