Both Poland and Russia belong to the Slavs, originating in the Vistula River Valley in modern Poland, but in the Great Migration of European Peoples triggered by the invasion of Europe by the Nomadic peoples of Central Asia in the 4th century AD, the Slavs migrated in three different directions, to the west to the modern Poland and the Czech Region, known as the West Slavs; to the south to the present-day Balkan Peninsula, known as the Yugoslavs; to the east became modern Russia, Ukraine, belarus, known as the East Slavs. Among them, Russian-Polish relations have always been sensitive and sharp, and both countries once regarded each other as enemies and stumbling blocks to the development of the country, and the dark clouds above the polish heads were basically related to Russia.
◎Accumulation of historical grievances
The Slavic brothers generally accepted Christianity at the end of the 10th century, then fell into feudal division in the 12th century, began the unification process in the 14th century, and then began to expand abroad in the 16th century, but when they expanded abroad, they became the only direction of expansion between each other, and a series of wars brought shadows and hatred between the Slavic brothers.
In the 18th century, the Russian Empire united with the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, and between 1772 and 1795, it divided all the territory of Poland on three occasions, and Poland was destroyed for the first time. In the process of dividing Poland three times, more than 460,000 square kilometers of land were pocketed by the Russians, accounting for more than 60% of the former Polish territory.
During the Napoleonic Wars, with the support of France, Poland was briefly restored and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw was established. After napoleon Bonaparte's defeat, it was again divided by Theopés, and Poland was destroyed for the second time.
In 1917, the October Revolution broke out in Tsarist Russia, and the nascent Soviet power announced the abrogation of some of the aggressive treaties signed during the Tsarist Russia period, including the three partitions of Poland. The other two countries involved in the partition of Poland, Austria and Germany, also tended to collapse in World War I. Against this background, Poland was restored in November 1918.
Newly restored Poland was immediately coerced into participating in the siege of the nascent Soviets by the capitalist world. Faced with the danger of losing 3/4 of its territory, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party called for "everything for the front" and pursued a "wartime communist policy". The newborn Soviet regime, in a bad situation of only 50,000 Red Army, internal and external troubles, and isolation and helplessness, became more and more courageous in the Vietnam War, not only defeating foreign intervention forces, but also defeating the white bandits such as Golzak and Denikin. In 1920, after quelling the rebellion in the country, the Soviet Red Army began to march to Europe, and directly hit the city of Warsaw, and the nobles and capitalists of the whole of Europe trembled under the iron hooves of the Red Army, but unfortunately, under the city of Warsaw, the Red Army at the end of the crossbow was counterattacked by the Poles, and the Soviet power lost the opportunity to liberate all of Europe for the first time. This war once again exacerbated the contradictions between the Polish and Russian nationalities.
After the outbreak of World War II, in order to recover the territory lost in the Polish-Soviet War, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, and in 1939 Poland was divided, and Poland was destroyed for the third time.
The education of modern Poles is that every time the country is destroyed in history, every time there is Russian leadership or participation, it can be described as a blood debt.
◎Control and counter-control of the CPSU-Poland Communist Party
Fortunately, at the end of World War II, the 11 countries of Eastern Europe were liberated from the Soviet Union's sphere of influence and Poland was rebuilt. Although a series of events such as the Katyn Forest Massacre and the Soviet Union's observation of the Warsaw Uprising took place in World War II, they were temporarily covered up by the cooperation between Poland and the Soviet Union under the Warsaw Pact after the war. As a free-rider price for the restoration of the country, after World War II, Poland's key departments were basically controlled by Soviet forces and became a satellite state of the Soviet Union.
Influenced by the 20th Congress of the COMMUNIST Party of the Soviet Union, workers at the Stalin Locomotive and Rolling Stock Factory in Poznan, Poland, demanded higher wages and lower taxes in June 1956. Due to the accumulation of heavy burdens, small things become big things, and big things become kings and explosions, which eventually lead to riots. On 18 July, the Seventh Plenum of the Polish Communist Party resolved to implement the line of socialist innovation (multi-party parliamentary democracy, mixed economic system). On October 19, when Poland was holding its Eighth Plenum, Khrushchev arrived uninvited and forced the Polish Communist Party to return to the Soviet model. The Soviet Union forced the integration of Eastern Europe and the division of labor among countries, and Poland was always positioned by the Soviet Union in an awkward role in the production of agricultural products.
In December 1980, in order to suppress solidarity in Poland, the Soviet Union announced that the Soviet army would conduct a military exercise code-named "Union-81" on Polish territory, and the Warsaw Pact army, mainly Soviet troops, entered Poland from the east, south and north. The Polish army belonged to the Warsaw Pact, everything was under the control and unified deployment of the Soviet Union, the Polish government itself did not have the power to mobilize the army, the survival of Poland depended on the eyes of the Soviets, the Soviet Union often used the army to warn the "satellite countries", and the maintenance of obedience was a condition they had to comply with.
These practices seriously stabbed the dignity of the Polish nation, and the shadow of the Warsaw Pact overwhelmed them, so the biggest dream of the Polish army was independence, and there was a saying in the army, "The enemy of the country is not the people but in the east (referring to Moscow)", and the "Polonization" of the armed forces was very loud at the end of the 80s, and what they dreamed of was to be the "defensive force of the motherland".
During the upheavals in Eastern Europe, Poland immediately emerged from the control of the CPSU and, at the end of 1989, quickly embarked on a path of political parliamentary democracy and economic privatization-based market economy.
◎ Rushed into Poland, the center of the Russo-Ukrainian War
After the end of the Cold War, Poland became a member of NATO in 1999 and formally joined the European Union in 2004. This meant the complete end of the Post-World War II Yalta system. Poland's role has changed completely, sending combat troops in every NATO operation, and Poland has sent 2,000 troops to Afghanistan and 2,600 troops to Iraq, making it the Eastern European country with the largest troops to these two places.
In 2010, Polish President Kaczynski participated in the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre when a plane crashed. In the face of the strange events, the Poles were furious to the extreme! Kaczynski believed that the victory of 1945 did not really mean liberation, but only the replacement of the occupiers, and that 1989 was the real end of World War II, and eastern Europe was just back on the same path.
After the 2014 Ukraine crisis, Russia imposed counter-sanctions in the face of Western sanctions, including restrictions on the import of Polish apples. Poland is the world's largest apple exporter, and the people launched the "Eat Apple Gas Putin" campaign to vent their emotions. In 2018, the Polish president publicly said that he was willing to pay 2 billion out of his own pocket to invite the United States to establish a permanent base in Poland. Nor did Russia have been invited to the 2019 commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II in Poland. In 2020, Polish Prime Minister Mikhail Morawiecki said he hoped that some of the U.S. troops withdrawn from Germany would be stationed in Poland to ensure the security of NATO's eastern part and purge military generals with Russian backgrounds at home.
On the occasion of commemorating the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, Putin published a long article on the presidential website, accusing Poland of reversing black and white, falsifying history, denying the contribution of the Soviet Union, taking Russia as an enemy everywhere, and currying favor with the United States without a bottom line. Putin warned Poland that sooner or later the superstitious Western countries will be unlucky, and polar bears are not obedient bears. Russian Defense Minister Shoigu said that if there is a war, the nuclear weapons deployed by the United States in Poland will be destroyed first. Poland said that Russia still believes that it is in the period of Soviet hegemony, eager to wake up like a bear after hibernation, addicted to the "glory" of the old times, and from time to time want to "show muscles" to Eastern European countries, reminding them of their great power status and that this region is its "privileged interest area"! This trick "obsolete" doesn't work.
Tit-for-tat confrontation is not the case. In 2021, France and Germany proposed to hold a Russia-EU summit with Russia, Poland took the lead in opposing it, and with the support of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, Poland successfully disrupted the situation, which made Putin very angry. On the issue of Nord Stream-2, Poland is also an anti-Russian vanguard, and even sent warships to interfere with the laying of the Nord Stream-2 pipeline.
Dark clouds do not accumulate in a day. The 2022 Ukrainian-Russian war will detonate the world like a powder keg, and if Russia wins, it will only change the geopolitical pattern of Eastern Europe; If you lose, what will change is the whole world pattern. From the very beginning, Poland rushed into the center of the whirlpool without hesitation, because as long as it was an enemy of Russia, Poland fully supported it! Ukrainian refugees were even more heroically welcomed in Poland, with many locals volunteering to help the refugees and thousands volunteering to provide shelter for the refugees.
The war is now in a stalemate: Russia's war process is not as expected, the Ukrainians are stubbornly resisting, and the United States and the West are imposing all-round sanctions on Russia. Russia and the West have sacrificed the "nuclear bomb threat" to each other, and the two have entered an unprecedented period of danger. In the face of an infinite escalation of war, the more Poland resisted Russia, the thicker the dark clouds would become above its heads. On March 12, 1999, ten years after the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Poland joined NATO. On March 12, 2022, Poland, with the dark clouds of the Russo-Ukrainian War overhead, reached a critical moment.
A few days ago, Ukraine's ruling party made a statement on the country's neutrality for the first time, saying that Ukraine is unlikely to join NATO in the next few years. Is this a sign of a détente in the strike or a calm before the fission?