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Text | Zhang Runchen
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introduction
One of the hottest events in the world today is the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. And this Russian-Ukrainian conflict is still fermenting, on our domestic Internet, there are many so-called "Russian factions" and "Ukrainian factions", support Russia or support Ukraine, seems to have become a position issue.
In the eyes of ordinary people, if it rises to the state, supporting Russia or supporting Ukraine is really a matter of position. Among the EU countries, the most determined Ukrainian faction must be Poland, which provides training bases and arms and equipment to the Ukrainian army, all of which Poland can do.
However, Poland, as the easternmost point of NATO's eastward expansion, as a front-line country close to Russia's power, why did it jump so much? What kind of hatred and grudge between Poland and Russia can make Poland so willing to oppose Russia, this has to start from ancient times.
1. Wrongdoers from the same lineage
The Polish nation and the Russian nation are, in fact, two peoples of the same line, and this so-called "same origin" is actually the Slavs we know as it.
In fact, the Slavic peoples are a very historical people, as early as the time of the Roman Empire, there were already records of the Slavs. In the history books of the Roman Empire of that year, there were three barbarian tribes in Europe, namely Germans, Celts and Slavs.
These three barbarian tribes, from the north, east and northwest, threatened the rule of the Roman Empire. Among them, the Celts were the least threatening, in fact, the Celts referred to by the Romans were only the Pickmans, the ancestors of the present-day Highland Scots, who could only threaten the British province of the Roman Empire.
(Roman Army)
The Germans were present in parts of present-day Germany, and the Slavs threatened the Roman Empire from Poland to northern Greece.
In fact, there is considerable overlap between the Slavs' living area and the eastern territories of the Roman Empire. Therefore, there are actually many Slavs in Rome, and the Slavs are also the people most deeply bound to the Roman Empire.
Many people today subconsciously think that ethnic Russians are Slavs, or that the Slavs originated in Russia. In fact, this statement is incorrect, although Russia is indeed the best mixed among the Slavs. But the real origin of the Slavs is in the Vistula Valley in present-day Poland.
At the end of the 1st century AD, ancient Rome had already recorded a people called the "Veneds", and this so-called "Venedians" was in fact the origin of the Slavic peoples. In the 4th century AD, the "Wieds" began to move out of Poland and formed a tribal confederation system, which gradually evolved into the three branches of today.
(Slavs)
East Slavs, West Slavs and Yugoslavs. The so-called Eastern Slavs are today's Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians.
The Yugoslavs are already well known, the Bulgarians are actually one of them, and the West Slavs are the "Veneds" who stayed in Poland and went west to the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
At the same time, the Romans also began to rename the "Venedians" in official documents as Slavs, and the name Slavs was thus determined.
(Slavs)
Second, the formation of feuds
In fact, the original Poles and Russians were not feuds, because before the ninth century, neither Poles nor Russians had a so-called "concept of state". The Slavs fought with each other, fought back and forth without knowing what they were fighting, could not talk about how friendly they were with each other, and at the same time could not talk about any grudges.
In the ninth century, Eastern Slavic states began to form a number of more unified states. But the first state in the East Slavic lands was not founded by the Slavs. In 862, Vikings from Sweden in Northern Europe established a more unified Rurik dynasty in East Slavism, and in 882 the Rurik dynasty was settled in present-day Kiev.
Since the rulers of the Rurik dynasty were Vikings, and the Latin branch that would enter Central Europe was called "Rus", which actually means "people who travel far by boat". So this country is also known as "Kievan Rus". This "Kievan Rus" is the origin of today's Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
(Rurik)
The Western Slavs founded the state a little later, and in the 10th century the Piast family of the Polish tribes unified Poland and established the Polish Piastian dynasty. But the time of Polish unification was very short, and for more time Poland remained a state of princes, as did Kievan Russo, but the concept of a unified Poland had been formed.
The feud between Poland and Russia began with the Mongol invasion, and before the Mongols came to Europe, there was not much separation between the Slavs. But in 1235, Genghis Khan's grandson Badu led the Mongol army into Europe and swept through all of Kievan Rus, and only 5 years later Batu established the Golden Horde.
Batu's army also attacked Poland, but was unsuccessful, so the Mongol Empire stopped at West Slavic. The western part of Ukraine, and part of present-day Belarus, was not under the rule of the Mongol Empire. "Russia" is actually what the Mongols call "Rus", in fact, today's "Russia" is "Rus" with a Mongolian accent.
(Mongolian)
And the so-called Belarus, in fact, is "white Rus", which means that the Rus who did not intermarry and mixed with the Mongol nation, before the Mongol invasion, in fact, everyone was the same Rus. The Mongols ruled Russia for 262 years, and it was not until 1502 that Russia finally gained independence and Russia as we know it today.
But although Russia became independent, the Poles occupied a large amount of the territory previously in the concept of "Kievan Rus", and even Kiev was under the rule of the Poles at that time. And the local Ukrainians, in fact, are actually the "Polonized" Rus, who profess Catholicism, abandon Orthodoxy, and at the same time form their own Ukrainian language.
In order to reclaim its former homeland, the nascent Russian Empire had a long-term confrontation with Poland, which was in full swing at the time, and conquested each other. In fact, in the early days of the confrontation, Poland actually had a certain upper hand, and even in 1610, the Poles even occupied Moscow, the capital of Russia, and burned the city.
(Romanov dynasty)
However, the Poles' move also had a side effect, that is, the end of hundreds of years of Rurik control over Russia, and the Russian royal family became the Romanov family. In 1654, Tsar Alexei declared war on Poland, and the focus of the attack was on Ukraine, and Ukraine on the eastern bank of the Dnieper, including Kiev, was occupied by the Russian Empire.
In the same year, the de facto ruler of Ukraine, the Cossack chief, signed the Treaty of Pereyaslavl with the Russian Empire, and Ukraine was formally annexed to Russia, and a "Kievan Rus" dominated by Moscow rather than Kiev was formally formed.
It rained overnight, and in 1655 the Kingdom of Sweden reached its peak. King Gustav of Sweden tried to annex Poland, and the First Northern War began. Then the Russian Empire declared war on Sweden, and Poland was forced to side with Russia. In the decades that followed, Poland became weaker and weaker, and was forced to become a Russian protectorate.
(Gustav I)
From 1655 to 1795, Russia completely annexed Poland in a hundred years and three "partition treaties" with Prussia and Austria, and Poland officially became part of the Russian Empire.
Third, modern grievances
But the feud between Russia and Poland does not end there, in fact it is only the beginning. The modern grudge between the two countries is in fact the main culprit of the current tension between Russia and Poland, and it is also the main reason for the Polish nation's "Russian fear".
In 1916, in the middle of World War I, Hohenzollern Germany had advanced to Ukraine on the Eastern Front, and Poland was largely occupied by German troops. At that time, Hohenzollern Germany took a fancy to the Polish Zionist tendencies, so it allowed Piłsudski of the Polish Socialist Party to lead and establish an independent government of Poland, and Poland was basically restored.
in Piłsudski
After the October Revolution, Comrade Lenin, the leader of Soviet Russia, proposed the "right of national self-determination", indicating that all ethnic minority areas in the Russian Empire had the right to decide their own stay. Poland also seized this historic opportunity and successfully restored its country, and by 1919 the Allies recognized Poland's legal status.
But Piłsudski envisaged not only the independence and restoration of Poland, but the restoration of the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Therefore, in the context of the strangulation of the nascent Soviet Russian regime by Western countries, Poland also intervened, and the Soviet-Polish War broke out. The war began to turn Russians and Poles against each other, and became the beginning of the confrontation between the two peoples in modern times.
Although Russia failed to take Poland in the Soviet-Polish War, it was eventually able to negotiate peace with Poland in 1920. But Poland's restoration lasted only a short 20 years, and after the start of World War II, the Soviet Union and Germany partitioned Poland for the fourth time....
(Partition of Poland)
If it is just the occupation of Poland, then this matter is actually "nothing", after all, Germany has done similar things, and the Poles today have forgiven Germany. But the Soviets did four more things that made Poland's fear of Russians to the extreme.
The first was the Cayenne massacre, a systematic massacre by the KGB of more than 22,000 elite Polish society from all walks of life, including officers, teachers, government officials and even academics. The Soviets intended to directly erase the national culture of eastern Poland.
The second thing was the so-called "Order 00485", under which the Soviet Union arrested all surviving Polish prisoners of war during the Soviet-Polish War, as well as all Polish-speaking people, including Polish refugees, Polish migrants, Polish sympathizers and even members of the Polish Communist Party. Nearly 140,000 people were arrested, more than 110,000 of whom were executed by the Soviets.
(Cayenne massacre scene)
Third, the Soviet Union seized eastern Poland at the beginning of World War II, and this territory also refused to be returned to Poland after the war. Eastern Poland was later divided among Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, while Poland could only take parts of eastern Germany as its own "reward."
(Stalin)
The fourth thing is that after the end of World War II - for decades before the collapse of the USSR, the Polish people lived in the terrible shadow of the USSR. The national feud between Poles and Russians, which was never resolved during this period, on the contrary became more acute. Because the Soviet Union never regarded the socialist countries of Eastern Europe as an independent state, but as part of the gears of the Soviet Union.
Although Poland no longer borders Russia, the fear of Russia is still buried deep in the heart, and stopping Russia and not letting Russia get close to it is Poland's greatest hope.
Resources
WANG Songting. Historical Collections, 1991(3):9.DOI:CNKI:SUN:SHXZ.0.1991-03-011.
WU Wei. The Soviet Union and the "Polish Question"[M].World Knowledge Press, 2002.