Today Poland plays an extraordinarily supportive role in Ukraine's existential war against an invading Russia. Although this may surprise some historians (given the many difficult historical issues that still divide Poland and Ukraine), it should not surprise anyone familiar with Polish history. When Ukraine declared independence in December 1991, Poland, along with Russia (!) and Canada, was the first to recognize it. In fact, Poland's support for Ukraine's independence traces all the way back to the 1920s. It is certainly wrong to assume, as many western scholars of Russia under the influence of persistent propaganda by Moscow seem to, that Poland maintained a historical claim to its former Rzeczpospolita lands, including Ukraine. In fact, after the Soviet-Polish war of 1920–21, Warsaw devised an ambitious political plan to help the non-Russian national groups to break up the Soviet Union and to liberate themselves from the Soviet yoke, a goal that Warsaw deemed essential to Poland's survival. Ukraine occupied the most important place in the plan, which came to be known as Prometheanism (Prometeizm). This excellent book by Zaur Gasimov examines the history of Prometheanism from its inception to its demise.
Extremely jealous of its independence achieved in 1918 after 123 years of subjugation to Russia, Germany, and Austria, Poland sought to protect itself from the future menace from without, especially from the east and the west. It was not without reason, as in 1939 Poland was once again destroyed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1926, Warsaw, under Józef Piłsudski, designed a scheme whereby Poland would be able to protect itself from the Soviet menace by assisting non-Russian minorities (“oppressed or conquered peoples in the Soviet Union”) to become independent (in other words, the destruction of the Soviet state into independent states along ethnic lines). Although similar ideas had long existed in Poland, it was after Moscow crushed the independent states of Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and other national movements (including Crimea, Central Asia, Tatarstan, and Kalmykia) and reconstituted the Russian empire as the Soviet Union in 1922 that Warsaw made a fundamental shift in its geopolitical strategy. In the Polish scheme, the east free from Russia, in particular an independent Ukraine, would become a buffer state and a guarantor of Polish survival. Many representatives of the oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union, in turn, found the most reliable political support in Warsaw, which both France and Great Britain implicitly supported.
Poland financially and organizationally provided the underpinning for the Promethean activities, including the publication of periodicals and the academic studies of the non-Russian lands controlled by Moscow. Warsaw became a “mecca for Sovietology” (211) in the 1920s and 1930s. The Prometheanists set up three major centers in Warsaw, Paris, and Istanbul, and its activities spread across Europe (Prague, Bucharest, Helsinki, Berlin, and beyond: Tehran and Harbin, for example). Gasimov convincingly demonstrates that Prometheanism was not only anti-Russian, but also anti-imperialist, anti-communist, anti-totalitarian, and pro-liberty (symbolized by its slogan, “For your freedom and ours”). It fostered transnational political and intellectual dialogue and mutual influence.
Within this larger framework, as might be expected, controversy, rivalry, and conflict plagued the Prometheans. In the 1930s Poland, France, and Turkey explored cooperation with the Soviet Union against the rise of Germany and Italy, and Prometheanism began to lose momentum and direction. From the very beginning, the Soviet secret services engaged in subverting it from within and without (324). Moscow was always “one step ahead of Warsaw” (119) and had some key Promethean figures (such as the Georgian émigré politician Noe Ramishvili) assassinated, and recruited some others (like Tadeusz Kobylański, a Polish diplomat) as Soviet agents. After Piłsudski died in 1935, Poland tried to reconstitute Prometheanism (including closer links with Japan) but failed to compete successfully with rival movements (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Haidar Bammat's “Caucasus” group, and others). With the destruction of Poland in 1939, Prometheanism itself dissolved.
Although Prometheanism failed, its long-term goals were partially realized with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In emigration after WWII, former Prometheanists and affiliated Polish “Orientalists,” such as Jerzy Giedroyc, carried the torch of Promethean ideals. It was they who worked to prepare Poland for eventually accepting the loss of Galicia and Wolynia to Ukraine in 1945. Without hesitation Poland promptly recognized Ukraine in 1991. In this and many other respects, Prometheanism was critical to the generally peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. Now Moscow has resumed its fight against Prometheanism by challenging the establishment of an independent Ukraine that it recognized in 1991. Gasimov's rich and timely work should be read widely if we are to understand the pivotal role Poland plays in countering Vladimir Putin's unprovoked and relentless attack on Ukraine's sovereignty today.
