Every now and then, Russian media effort to either scare Ukrainians with “Polish imperialism” or encourage us to occupy Western Ukraine. The full communicative looks alternatively like an component of the information war, not something serious, but nevertheless – it is worth taking a position and justifying it.
There is any unusual belief in us that our size is measured by the number of square miles under our control. In fact, there is simply a correlation between territory and state power. However, this is not enough. It is not so that as shortly as we take any land, Poland will be “greater”.
Poland is not an empire
Let us look at the “great” states of this world: Russia, China, the United States, India or Brazil. They are all characterized not only by large territory and a large number of people, but besides by its diversity. Language, racial, class or religious. Russia is 2 large religions, a fewer minor, different skin shades, from white Slavs, to somewhat darker inhabitants of the Caucasus, to mongoloid minorities. But they all think of themselves as “Russian”. In China, contrary to appearances, these divisions are not missing either. Uighurs, different local languages, and even different national traditions. beautiful rich in different mosaics. What about the Paradise Country? Whites, blacks, Latinos; Protestants and Catholics; Anglophons and Hispanophons. Everyone sings "God Bless America". India? Social castes, Hindus, Muslims, and for the addition of Tamils – the largest nation in the planet without its own state. And finally, Brazil: whites, mulattoes, and gross class differences illustrated by favelas and immense estates.
How is Poland doing? No way. We don't realize that reality. We're not an empire. Not just territorial, but in our heads. Since 1945, we are practically a monoethnic nation. Everything here is Polish. Language, dominant faith, a uniform sense of continuity of history. Regional identities? Very weak, being alternatively online memes, alternatively than something appearing in the empires of “nations in the nation”. We don't know this and at the Polish prayer we imagine the full world. It's no wonder we're yet increasing up in this kind of environment, but let's have the back of our heads that we're totally not joining the plan of any empire.
Imagination of the Republic
After 1989, the vector of the construction of identity through historiography turned around, and again we began to mention to the tradition of the Republic of Both Nations, or to any another imperial forms (though actually: protoplasts) of Polishness, if they were returned with a sword to the East. The reasons for this should be written a separate text, or even an investigation. Let's leave it temporarily. Anyway, even the name of this thing doesn't tell us much. Well, we imagine RON as specified modern Poland, only somewhat larger, reaching for Dniepr, etc. but it's a fairy tale. In times without developed national consciousness, outside the linguistic community, there were no more developed forms of community than today. The serf's peasant didn't even announcement the change in boundaries, due to the fact that he served the Lord anyway. You've changed at most. He lived his life, from dawn to dusk, from Monday to Saturday in the field, on Sunday to the rectory and that's all. The Polish empire manifested itself in him only a variable degree of exploitation, i.e. the amount of work which he had to put into this life and "put away" on His Lordship. It was simply “worse” and “better”. Unfortunately, for RON he was only getting worse due to the fact that the backward Polish nobles did not realize the request to invest capital in modern means of production and thus led the country astray, having almost full power over it.
A contemporary Pole, raised in a simple image of the time, identifies himself with a noble warrior, a faithful country, carrying silverware and Catholic religion to the world, but considering the estimation of probability – respective times more is the chance that he would be a specified undernourished half-slave, bowing in the belt to the heir in his possessions. This does not mean that the Polish statehood of that time was someway impaired in relation to the right one, but it is good to have an thought of who you are and where you come from. due to this questionable quality of the “Registership of the Republic” our east neighbours know rather well about this and, among another things, their reluctance and misunderstanding.
So the Polish empire, for those nations that entered them, did not sign up for anything they would like to return to today. "Husaria" is ethnically Polish today. Lithuanians, Belarusians or Ukrainians do not see her as their own. Yes, this can be dropped on the back of russian historiography, which flattens the task of the Republic for “colonialism” in general, while the USSR is no longer 30 years old, and someway the ULBs do not sing the First Brigade. So why should today's Poland even mention to this project? In the name of the wider borders? Is it a statistic that we're covering about a 1000 square kilometers more? And the price?
Marcin Marcin taught
In the name of what should we occupy Western Ukraine or Belarus today? Are we truly so good with Oder and Bug that we truly want to share this with our neighbors? possibly it's about any Polish. ‘Lebensraum’? Were there 10 million Poles born and we are not within our own borders? due to the fact that it seems to be the opposite. It's funny, but to see Polish architecture today, we gotta go to the Belarusian Grodno, due to the fact that from Polish cities we made greenhouses like fresh York City. In the name of the Polish heritage, therefore, we are not afraid of Belarus.
And let's not pretend that these fliers Andrzej Duda to Ukrainians changed anything in their opinion on possible integration with Poland. An component of the OUN-UPA cult in Ukraine is the story of fighting for ‘single’, fights besides against Poland and Poles. Any desire of the authorities in Warsaw would so be treated as an announcement of the business and would lead us to the brink of civilian war, especially given the presence of millions of Ukrainians in Poland. The Ukrainians will not become Poles if we put the border posts behind them with an eagle.
Under the current conditions, any foolish ideas about rebuilding the Polish empire would only cost us. We'd gotta invest quite a few money in keeping order in busy areas. Terror, of course, or otherwise. We have no Siberia of our own to be able to carry out strategic, mass resettlement. In addition, we would lose the position of a national state, uniform and all the benefits that we have most likely forgotten a small bit about. Let us make Poland large within its current borders, not by making the neighbours happy with their discopol diplomacy.
Tomasz Jankowski
