some notes on poland
the country that's been weaponized by empires throughout history is in the spotlight because of war in ukraine.While American liberals lost their minds under Trump, Poland’s government is way crazier
I want to touch on Ukraine briefly, but how it relates to Poland, that solemn land caught between East and West. Most of my family lives in Poland. My mother fled communism only to be introduced to another con: capitalism. She never thought she was poor until she saw American advertising.
Since opening up its border, Poland has taken in almost 2 million Ukrainian refugees, more than the population of Warsaw. It’s a full-blown humanitarian crisis not seen since WW2. There are really no refugee camps. People are offering up their homes and schools. My uncle said refugees have already migrated to his area, which is pretty far from the Ukrainian border.
Most of my family lives in the so-called Suwalki Gap, between Belarus and Russia that is a big strategic weakness if Putin ever wanted to invade. Most recently, they dealt with the Belarusian border crisis, which is only a few miles from their home. So history is not lost on Poles. This is all a trigger for them too. No country understands the Russian threat more than Poland. If Ukraine falls, Russia will be at Poland’s doorstep.
Poland, like Ukraine, has throughout modern history been a tool of empires, whether it’s been the Soviet Union/Russia, western neoliberalism, or say, the Catholic Church. After all the upheaval, I still wonder what exactly is Polish identity. Before it was ideologically flattened by Russia, Poland was a superpower, and it was a peaceful one. But because Poland never had an imperialist mindset and largely kept to itself, it was taken advantage of. It was carved up multiple times, obviously most notoriously when it was partitioned by Russia and Germany at the start of World War II. Today there’s a bit of déjà vu. The whole world is watching as a bitter dictator is crushing a small nation. Sound familiar? America sat back as literally all of Poland was leveled.
Poland and Ukraine then became authoritarian states for the next 45 years. It’s hard to get Americans to really understand how different things were over there. Even striking up casual conversation with strangers was dicey, because people would immediately act suspicious and think you were a party official. Bribing doctors for health care was normal. My family had to learn Russian even though there were barely any Russian people in Poland. They had to learn Russian history, which taught everything was Poland’s fault.
Then the Soviet Union ended, and the markets were liberalized. That time period—the nineties to the early aughts, was sort of a wild west in Poland, much like it was for Russia. That’s when I spent a lot of time there, before places like Warsaw became Chicago. I’m still not used to seeing glossy, American-style ads in Polish. It just feels wrong. During this period, Poland didn’t feel like the Soviet Union, and it didn’t feel like America.
But just as Poland was starting to have its modern moment after the fall of communism, the country was hijacked by ultra right wing nationalists who saw communism everywhere. They fired a lot of judges, logged ancient forests, eroded abortion rights, and established anti-LGBTQ zones. At one point, the Polish president promised to build Fort Trump. If you want to get a sense of Poland’s growing pains, I wrote about it a few years ago for The Outline (RIP).
Tension between the two countries continues today. In 2010, Poland’s president and basically the entire government died in a mysterious plane crash over Russian territory. Polish prosecutors believed Russia was behind it. Weirdly enough, the crash happened at the site of the Katyn Massacre, where Russian soldiers executed 22,000 Polish citizens in 1940.
Poland is a hero now because of the refugee crisis, but it’s by no means run by a benevolent government. While American liberals lost their minds under Trump, Poland’s ruling Law & Justice party was doing way crazier shit. Its leaders flat out said being gay was “a disease worse than communism,” even though Communism killed 100 million people. In 2015, the country’s leader, Lech Kaczyński, warned at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis that migrants carried “very dangerous diseases long absent from Europe.” Poland didn’t let anyone in. You’re hearing none of that now with Ukraine. The gates are open.
Just a few days ago, one of the leaders of a far right confederation in Poland said Ukrainian refugees in Poland were becoming “too privileged.” Journalists refused to cover their press conference. So there’s been a heavy nationalist streak running through the former eastern bloc territories, including Viktor Obran-led Hungary, that is a direct reaction to EU global politics.
Anyway, me writing about this isn’t meant to take away from what Ukrainian people are going through. But there is a lot of confusing stuff going on. People—the Washington press corps especially—were terrified of Trump starting World War 3, and now they want it badly under Biden. And there are other places we’ve bombed recently, like Yemen and Syria, that don’t get the same media attention because of things like race and politics. Obama seemed chill, and only killed people with cool looking drones, so he doesn’t get branded as a war monger.
War brings people together in a bad way. Things become black and white. We’re seeing a lot of Russian xenophobia similar to what Muslims experienced during the Bush era. There are pleas by politicians to kick Russian students out the U.S. Ridiculous. We gotta remember that citizens are often not reflective of their leaders.
Thanks for reading my book report. Anyway, I’m supposed to be going on my honeymoon to Poland soon. Hopefully the end of the world can wait.