Attila Demkó: The Hour of the Poles – the importance of Warsaw has increased even more because of the war.
In April, spring in Poland is two weeks behind Hungary. The winter has been warmer than usual and the climate differences between the two countries are smaller than before, while political differences are greater than ever. On the streets of Warsaw, Ukrainian flags, collections and posters show what is happening in the neighbourhood this is also Poland’s war.
During our stay in Poland there were intense days at the front, and the Poles followed these events much more closely than in Hungary. Even in professional circles discussion about the chances of the Ukrainian offensive it was more a matter of emotion than of cold analysis. Warsaw cheers – both in the good and bad sense of the word.
We must understand that Poland is really concerned. She is not a puppet of the US, nor does she have complete faith in the Biden administration, and she would have even less faith in a potential Republican president. Warsaw is ahead of Washington: it often tries to dictate rather than follow. But Poland is not crazy, it just sees a different future and different threats than Hungary. Logically, it is hard to believe that Poland, a member of NATO, would be the next victim after Ukraine. It would be suicide for Russia to attack all of NATO, even if the campaign in Ukraine was an easy success. Nothing will come of it, even in the best case, Russia will end this war – who knows when – weakening its army with significant losses.
But questioning the Polish fear is exactly like claiming abroad that Hungary’s concern for the Transcarpathian Hungarian citizens is behind someone else – namely Moscow.
The Polish trauma towards Russia is very deep – just as our traumas are very deep. But the Poles don’t know, even some security policy experts don’t know how Transcarpathian Hungarians got to Ukraine. It is very important for Warsaw to understand. Poland is practically the only country in Europe that has positive relations with Hungary that go beyond self-interest. This importance should not be underestimated, even if each state is primarily guided by its own interests. However, sometimes, occasionally, there is room for emotions.
Warsaw celebrates its anniversary on the day of our arrival. The city center has been beautifully rebuilt from the ruins, including in places where even the walls no longer stand, but now you cannot say that the building is only 70 years old. In the Gothic Cathedral of St. Jana, the elite of Polish public life gathered on this Sunday afternoon. There is the President of the Republic of Poland, the Prime Minister and a great figure of Polish politics, Jarosław Kaczyński. They remember his twin brother, President Lech Kaczyński, who died thirteen years ago, along with part of the Polish elite, on April 10, 2010 near Smolensk. We follow the mass from the outside, thousands of people watch it on huge screens.
The crowd as a man sings the national anthem. The ignorance of their own national anthem would make such a scene unthinkable in many western capitals. Poland has strength and dignity that many European countries lack.
Nearby there is a flower-strewn monument dedicated to the victims of the tragedy and a monument to Lech Kaczyński. In the sprawling square, which also caused German destruction in the urban fabric, is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the statue of Józef Piłsudski, the founder of modern Poland.
This place is the heart of Warsaw, where we probably experience the most destruction and rebirthwhich is so characteristic of Polish history. Hungary was divided into three parts and then dismembered in 1920, but it was never wiped off the map like Poland was in 1795-1918 or 1939-1945. What the Third Reich and the Soviet Union achieved in the 20th century was devastation on the scale of the Tatar invasion, which killed nearly six million Polish citizens, mostly civilians, nearly twenty percent of the population. About half of the victims were Jews, and the ghetto is now mostly high-rise. Huge buildings are clearly visible from the square, but you don’t realize that until you reach the place it used to be a beautiful downtown. Some Art Nouveau buildings could have been kept, but Stalin decided that the Palace of Culture and Science should be built there as a “gift from the Soviet Union”. The palace was not a gift but a humiliation, a sight of it in Warsaw is hard to avoid even today, now that modern skyscrapers have been built around it – as a sneer – to hide the palace. To this day, many locals believe that Russia not only invaded Poland, but wanted to liquidate the Polish nation.
There is no really good Hungarian comparisonbut let’s imagine that in Trianon Hungary is completely divided, Romania gets not only Transylvania, Banat and Partium, but also Budapest, and in Arad instead of one martyrdom there are a dozen, and then in the middle of our capital get a “gift ” in the form of a 240-meter-long Romanian Orthodox cathedral, dwarfing all other buildings.
Hungary has the Trianon syndrome and in Poland the memory of the Russian-German division is alive. These comparisons are very simple, but it is possible that this is the only way to understand why many Poles only see the Russo-Ukrainian war in black and white.
For Poland, Ukraine is important today in many ways, since last year the Ukrainian nation is a “brother” more important than an unrelated, but beloved Hungarian “cousin”.. Understandably, Hungary and Polish-Hungarian cooperation were much lower on the list. But has not disappeared. There is a common interest, there is sympathy, misunderstandings and even conflicts of interest can be cleared up. And this is more Hungarian than Polish interest.
Poland is a medium-sized power in the region and the war has only increased its importance. Even before 2022, the relationship between the two countries was not a relationship of equals, and after the end of the war it will be even less so. That’s the reason Hungary must continue to follow its own path in its own interest, but with respect for what Warsaw sees differently.
Attila Demkó is a well-known Hungarian international business analyst, publicist and commentator.
The article was published on the pages of the Hungarian portal Mandiner.hu
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Source: wPolityce