The solidarity of war with Ukraine was not adequate to prevent the increasing tensions on both sides from returning in the form of paroxysms – open, violent bursts of emotion – anger, resentment and regret – by prisms which are defined by national interest.
As a consequence of the accumulation of historical, schizophrenic and false friendships, yet of outrage and social frustration caused by harmful acts of the Ukrainian side, there is simply a political and media debate in Poland, after which 1 should anticipate a revision of the existing policy principles towards Ukraine and a halting of the processes of Ukrainianization harmful to the state and society.
Political and media turmoil around flagrantities Ukraine restores the sense of discussing nationalism and accompanying aberrations in the form of xenophobia and populism. They besides exposure the massive negligence of the Polish side, which, based on supposedly common strategical interests, based on hostility towards Russia, missed this historical minute erstwhile a state infected with ominous ideology developed in the south-eastern borders of the Republic.
Ignore flagism
For many years Polish pseudo-elites have been blinding the institutionalization of the flag nationalism. The fundamental fact was ignored that criminal ideology cannot be interpreted selectively. If for the purposes of the defence war it was pointed to its anti-Russian character, then it was impossible to forget that its blade was besides directed against Poles. The Ukrainian State has never cut off from the criminal heritage of the CNS-UPA formation, which on the Polish side should be the subject of continuous categorical demands. However, acceptance of the vulgar “national fascism” became the basis of a “ rotten” compromise, the essence of which is the disgrace of the memory of the Ukrainians murdered and cowardice and submission to solve current problems.
Nationalism as an integration and recognition ideology of national communities is able to master imagination and exert a strong influence on the lives of millions of people. Even in tribal communities, even in African countries, nationalism is simply a strong origin in group consolidation. This is expressed, for example, during sporting events (football matches), erstwhile fans from different tribes identify with their national-state representation (for example in Cameroon, Senegal or Ivory Coast). The mention to the national community in specified cases is not determined by either cultural origin or culture. The nation is simply a community of citizens, or demos, and is defined primarily by the state.
There are besides nations characterized by the prism of ethnos, or common ethnicity, language and culture. These include, for example, Kurds or Catalans who do not have their own state but have a strong sense of national identity. They are stateless nations or seeking independence. Through specified a phase the Central and east European nations went through the 19th and 20th centuries, in which nationalism emphasized cultural purity, treating the nation as a homogenous collective. For its establishment and defence, it was justified to usage force against strangers, including crime and terror. Modern Ukraine, negating its past within the russian Union, unfortunately refers to the phase of cultural nationalism, recognizing it as an ideology of political legitimacy. Its essence is the apology of national heroes, guilty of cruel crimes, and throwing work for the incorrect done on others.
For respective centuries, the most crucial institution based on nationalist expression is the national state. Its basis is the civic community – demos. This model was practically adopted on the full globe. This is simply a political factor, not a cultural-ethnic factor, which determines national identity. In this sense, nationalisms are strictly political ideologies, which form the binder of the political organization of society. Ethnically or culturally uniform states are an exception. In fact, there is simply a deep discrepancy between the number of states and the number of nations. fewer countries, specified as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Brunei, and Afghanistan, mention to spiritual legitimacy, putting it above demos. They can be called spiritual dictatorships.
The essence of nationalism
The literature of the subject is dominated by the belief that nationalism is simply a phenomenon transferred from the West and in fact highly complex. It can focus on creating a state based on cultural identity or loyalty to specified a state already existing. It can focus on what unites people in a given territory, or on discrimination and alien exclusion. It can besides take a peaceful and aggressive form. Although prominent experts of the issues – Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner – attributed a key function to language and culture in building national identity, in fact the emergence of a national state as a consequence of the Atlantic Revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries (England, USA, France) was a consequence of the conflict for legitimacy of power. Ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences did not play an crucial role.
In time, institutions were developed to strengthen the national state from within, but not by the ideology of nationalism, but by democratization of structures, improvement of electoral process, enlistment into the military, centralization of state bureaucracy, individual property rights, legal equality of citizens and secular education.
When the nation state became the norm in the West, its model adopted nationalist movements in another parts of the world. At the end of planet War I, it began to inspire anti-imperial activists in colonies to request independence. The apogee of triumph for national liberation movements occurred after planet War II. It is worth noting that the dissemination of nationalism as a desire to have a national state was not a consequence of a linear process of modernisation. The modernity of economies, the expansion of infrastructure or the advanced degree of alphabetization did not necessarily find the universalisation of the national state. Its complicated past is inactive being rediscovered, given the current pressures of Eurocentrism (cf. Eric Storm, “Nationalism. A planet History”, Princeton 2024).
The exception, and even anachronism, was to combine a national state with an empire. It is simply a paradox that most Western European modern national states have long been in the form of colonial empires. besides today's top powers, like the United States, China and Russia, are nominally national, but they do not avoid imperial practices. 1 might even hazard saying that, from the position of cultural minorities and indigenous peoples, most of the existing national states inactive constitute multinational empires in which residents, who usage their language, another than the language of the majority, are treated in practice as second-class citizens.
The emergence of national states was the consequence of a fewer centuries of transformation, and the accompanying nationalisms had an intense impact on human consciousness. The national position in the era of romanticism powerfully determined cognitive processes. The nation was then reified as an entity having its history, identity and canons. This resulted in the dissemination of views about the uniqueness of a given nation, its separate improvement way and its distinctiveness against others. To this day, we are trapped by the excessive focus on individual events and their mythological interpretations, alternatively of trying to realize the genetic, structural and functional impact of nationalism on the knowing of the identity of the civic community (demosu).
Nowadays, national identity policies, in opposition to the processes of globalisation, transnational integration or expanding immigration, increasingly scope nationalisms, contaminated by another -isms, especially populism and exclusiveism. This is accompanied by an intensified "nationalisation" of public space. It is expressed in the institutionalization of national memory, monumentdom, toponymity (place names). Standard representations of national identity, reflected in handicraft products, folklore, culinary and professional branding of products originating in a peculiar country, are being promoted. In this way, common associations between national identities, the physical environment and various aspects of everyday life have undergone a kind of basm (Michael Billig, “Banal nationalism”, Krakow 2008) and have become a natural thing for people around the world.
It has long been noted that a brand specified as “nation” sells well, as people look at the global strategy through the prism of particularism. Food products or tourist attractions are associated with their country of origin, and commercial and social media not only depict a globe divided into separate national states, as something obvious, but besides openly fuel nationalist sentiments (dude, uniqueness, missionaryity, belief in superiority, historical mission, arrogance towards the weaker, civilizational and cultural distances).
The Face of Ukrainian Nationalism
It is worse erstwhile nationalism refers to its most extremist form of integral nationalism, in which a nation in the sense of blood community constitutes the highest and absolute value. The creator of this concept was Charles Mauras and the Action française movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It assumed a combination of national ideas with monarchism and militarism. In the 1920s and 1930s, this thought inspired authoritarian and fascist movements throughout Europe. It exerted a strong influence on the evolution of the ideology of Organizations of Ukrainian Nationalists (CNS). The creators of the theoretical foundations of Ukrainian nationalism included Mikołaj Michnowski (manifest of the "10 Commandments" of the Ukrainian People's Party, 1903; Dmytro Doncow, "Nationalism", 1926; Stepan Łenkawski, "Decalogue of Ukrainian Nationalist", 1929; Mikołaj Sciborski, "Nationalist", 1935).
Ukrainian nationalism in the modern edition so has something to relate to, and has not appeared as "grass after the rain". He was favored by the identity policy of Ukrainian presidents – from Viktor Yushchenko, through Petra Poroshenko, to Volodymyr Zelenski. The "Cieplarnia" atmosphere for the national thought has put a national state task based on the construction of demos. alternatively of taking as its starting point the ethnic, linguistic, spiritual and cultural complexity of Ukraine to make any form of a complex state (federalized, or at least decentralized, based at least on the British model of revolution), the state was put on a uniform national, referring to ethnos. Although he believes that Rogers Brubaker's problems have now lost part of his mobilization possible to religion, attacks on Russian-speaking Ukrainians, as well as the Ukrainian Orthodox Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, have shown for many years that the political government has chosen ethnocentric alternatively than civic legitimacy of its rule.
By adopting the ideology of flag nationalism, the parent of which is Western Ukraine, or Halyczyn, the authorities in Kiev have created an unconditional criterion of self-determination in patriotic terms: who does not fit the appropriate template of "member of the national community", deserves the designation of traitor and exclusion. It is so not amazing that specified blackmail and the threat of exclusion (including physical elimination) decided to consolidate Ukrainians in a confrontation with Russia.
In the face of Russian aggression, it was easiest to scope to the historical resources of hostility and hatred, embodyed by nationalists, from the Fascist CNS, to the steeped OUN ideas of the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA). So the demons of evil returned to the common discourse and the imaginarium (the last fashionable word). Nationalism with a brown pedigree was not subject to reassessment either in terms of applicable usefulness for the modern Ukrainian state, aspiring to European integration structures or due to the fact that it was directed not only against the Moscals and Soviets, but besides Lachom, Jews, Czechs and Madzirom (all foreign).
The deficiency of knowing for the sensitivity of another nations, as well as pride and arrogance, that in the light of the conflict for identity with Russia, presented as the most aggressive and imperialist state in the modern world, all the moves are allowed, proved to be destructive to the national strategy of the Kiev authorities. Inability to separate heroism from genocide by UPA troops disqualifies Ukrainian rulers in the eyes of global opinion. It weakens its image and seriously complicates further war solidarity on the part of Poland. Ukrainians, however, trust on the knowing of the German, French and British authorities, which seem little delicate to the Renaissance of criminal ideologies, as they themselves have never rightly accounted for the unsavory ideas and practices of their states and colonial empires.
The peculiarity of modern Ukraine is to adopt existing external borders as inviolable and permanent. This is 1 of the paradoxes of Ukrainian negationism towards the russian era, erstwhile the Ukrainian Socialist russian Republic existed within the USSR within the limits of Lenin and Stalin. By adopting the inheritance of the territory and the form of the borders in accordance with the rule of ‘uti possidetis iuris’, Ukraine has cut off from setting fresh borders, according to cultural or linguistic criteria. Where, then, did the revisionist tendencies and the insane wave of fantastic narratives about the historical pedigree and past of the Ukrainian empire come from? (War) Who of the Polish politicians, who are zealously supporting Ukraine, will so guarantee that further governments in Ukraine, toughened up in battles and having at their disposal 1 of the strongest armies in Europe, do not tempt to reconstruct "status quo ante", that is, return to the mythical large Ukraine from the nineteenth century dreams and swarms of the first nationalistic dreamers?
It is worth noting that Ukrainian nationalism, referring to the sources of the bander, is not able to erase the complexity of modern Ukraine, its national, linguistic and spiritual minorities, immigrant populations and "mixed descendants", specified as the Russian, Jewish, Polish or Hungarian community. Polish diplomacy should point to this complexity, while defending the Polish national minority, which has been completely forgotten in fresh years.
Deception of dialogue
Nationalism is surely a spontaneous expression of people's sense of belonging to a peculiar community. But his public expression always rests in the hands of political leaders, organizations and public institutions. It is up to them that their professionalism and intellectual maturity depend on how they express their national interest and specify relations with another countries. So far, Ukrainian leaders have shown no peculiar sense of historical cognition or sensitivity. After either side, there was no dialog which would let for the diagnosis of the current state of relations, without the historical burden that should be left to many historians. There was no desire to build a rational, emotion-free and paroxysm-based position of common respect for cooperation. Following the politicians of both sides, it can be felt that they are improvising alternatively than implementing a conscious and calculated strategy of common benefit. On the Polish side, they show acts of humility and submission, alternatively of willful and intellectual determination to defend historical truth.
In order to keep Ukrainian-Polish partnership and even a strategical alliance, it is worth to be cautious and aware of the dangers associated with methodological, terminology and normative nationalism, thanks to which politicians, historians and Ukrainian commentators will proceed to want to play Polish partners in proving their right and defending the imagination of winning and triumphant Ukraine.
In Polish-Ukrainian relations there is simply a large asymmetry in the instrumentalization of nationalism to justify the right of each party. For Ukraine, nationalism is simply a means of mobilising in defence of the state and its identity in the ongoing war. The Polish side, on the another hand, focuses on the symbolic sphere, historical claims and the demands of "resolutions", which abstrate from the military dependence of safety on Ukrainian resistance. All this indicates that the crises caused by Ukrainian gestures of commemoration of "heroes", economical disputes or statements of politicians will stay a permanent component of Polish-Ukrainian relations, even with the continuation of strategical cooperation against Russia.
Only the wisdom and prudence of politicians will depend on whether there will be a long-lasting winter in common relations, or whether there will be a sobering tendency to build any "modus vivendi", a temporary solution before the conditions for building relationships, based on a fair and critical assessment of the tragic past. Hopefully, it will not turn out that the feeding of nationalist sentiments on each side will service to strengthen the imperial tendencies of Russia, which proves that in solving hard national issues power always takes precedence over the law.
Prof. Stanisław Bielen
Think Poland, No. 25-26 (21-28.06.2026)
