Polish History Part II: The XX Century

In order to restore Poland, a very unusual thing had to happen: Russia, Austria, and Germany had to fight each other, and they all had to lose the war. Oddly enough, that’s exactly what happened in World War I, and one of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points was the restoration of an independent Poland. The Poles pressed their case at Versailles, obnoxiously so, according to some of the delegates, and they got a new Polish republic, which is part of the reason there is an Aleja Wilsona in Warsaw.

But what were the borders to be of the new Polish state? This was quite unclear, particularly considering that the regions of Pomerania and Silesia, as well as the port of Gdańsk, had significant numbers of Germans and Austrians in them who did not want to belong to Poland. There were also disputes as to where the line between Poland and the newly-formed Czechoslovakia were supposed to be drawn. This lead to controversial plebiscites marred by violence and a lingering mutual resentment between the Czechs and Poles that was to prove most unhelpful in the crisis of 1938. 

On the Eastern side of Poland, the newly-formed Soviet Union got into some territorial disputes with the new Polish government, as well as coming into conflict with the inhabitants of modern-day Belarus. In February 1919 the Polish-Soviet War broke out, and early Polish offensives met with considerable success. However, Polish logistics were poor, the army outran its supply lines, and the entire Polish front was thinly held. The Red Army also benefited from the diminishing threat of White Russian forces in the Russian Civil War, allowing more troops to be used against the Poles. The Soviets launched a series of devastating counterattacks that would ultimately see Russian troops a mere 13 kilometers from Warsaw. The Soviets then committed a fatal mistake. The rapid advance of Red forces had opened a large gap in the line between forces in the north that were attacking Warsaw and forces in the south that were attacking southwards towards Lwow (or Lviv if you're a Ukrainian). Polish intelligence and radio intercepts found this hole, and Marshal Józef Piłsudski was able to send a newly-organized force right through it. That force then wheeled to the north, cutting off the Red Army forces threatening Warsaw. This regained Polish momentum and threw the Russians into disarray. The front moved eastward, yet both sides decided that the exhausting struggle should end, with a definitive peace in place by March 1921. 

The Polish-Soviet war is most significant in perhaps two regards. First, there was a lingering resentment in the Soviet Union of Poland, which was made somewhat personal by the fact that the commissar of the Southern army that had made the disastrous turn towards Lwow happened to be Josef Stalin. Second, the war cemented the reputation and influence of Josef Pilsudski, who was to be a very important figure in the Second Polish Republic (1919-1939). 

Marshal Józef Piłsudski can in some ways be considered the Juan Peron of Poland. Though his formal title for much of this time was Minister of Defense, as an elder statesman he had considerable power and influence, enough so that he can be considered a virtual dictator of Poland. Part of his influence can probably be traced to the fact that the government of Poland between the wars was very unstable, and faced continuing pressure from both the far-left and the far-right. There were also serious economic problems, not only during the worldwide depression of the 1930s but also in the early 20s before the government had really figured out how to manage important things like monetary policy. Most governments only lasted a year or so, the first Polish president (Gabriel Narutowicz), was assassinated, and Piłsudski led a successful coup in May 1926. Piłsudski was sort of the great constant in the life of the Republic until his death in 1935, and his legacy is very mixed.  While he did bring a measure of stability to Poland at a chaotic time, and while he stood against antisemitism and while ethnic minorities were better treated under his rule than before or after it, some of Piłsudski's methods were fascistic in nature. There is also some debate as to whether Piłsudski stood in the way of modernization of the Polish armed forces, placing too much faith in cavalry and not enough faith in airplanes. Personally, I think that he may have believed too much in cavalry largely because unlike on the Western Front of World War I, cavalry had been quite effective on the Eastern front of the same war, as well as during the Polish-Soviet war. The decision to keep cavalry was not stupid, it was just based on a different set of assumptions. Also keep in mind that tanks in, say, 1933 were still primitive, generals are always fighting the last war, and Piłsudski was no exception. As to the air force: the Polish planes of 1931 were actually among the best in the world when they were released, enough so that Willi Messerschmidt himself was allegedly caught snooping around a Polish airbase. At any rate, Piłsudski remains a controversial figure today, though in many circles he's considered a national hero, complete with statues and streets named after him (there's one of both here in Krakow, for instance).

Polish foreign policy at this time also had to be somewhat adept, and as events were to prove the policies followed by Foreign Minister Józef Beck were unsuccessful. Poland was engaged in squabbles with Lithuania over Lithuanian independence and how much land that new state was to possess. Gdańsk (Danzig) was a free city under League of Nations administration, which meant that Poland had to build a completely new port city at Gdynia. However, the Polish Corridor to the sea had the effect of slicing Germany into two pieces, the main part and East Prussia, the area around present-day Kaliningrad that included a considerable slice of what is now Poland. Both the division of Germany and continuing tension over Gdańsk would be a source of constant friction between Berlin and Warsaw, and Nazi Germany used these sorts of tensions as part of its rationale for invading Poland in September 1939. 

Beck attempted to maintain Polish neutrality between, or at least reasonably good relations with both Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, while trying to quietly undermine the latter. Non-aggression pacts were in fact signed with both powers. Another keystone of foreign policy at this time was a military alliance with France, as well as improving relations with Britain. Interestingly enough, the Nazis at one point had floated the idea of an anti-Bolshevik alliance with Poland directed against Moscow, but this idea gained no traction because of Beck's long-maintained neutrality policy. 

Much as I would love to talk about the Second Republic, this could take up a whole book, and indeed it has. I strongly recommend Bitter Glory by Richard Watt for more information about this era, as well as The Kings Depart by the same author, with the former book detailing the history of the Polish Republic and the second one discussing the Versailles Conference that made it possible.

I'm not going to discuss the Second World War extensively, as most people already know how that turned out. I just want to highlight a few things here that you don't hear about in school: 1) at no point during the war did Polish cavalry charge tanks. The footage of them doing so is in fact from a German propaganda film. There was an engagement or two where Poles were surrounded by tanks, and the cavalry had to run past the tanks in order to escape encirclement. 2) The Soviet Union attacked Poland on September 17, 1939. Full stop. While many know about the German invasion, the Soviet one is very seldom discussed. Worse is, after the war, the Soviets got to keep the land they had conquered in this fashion! 3) The Polish Army was hindered in part by the fact that the Germans struck as the Polish army was trying to mobilize. The severe damage done by the Luftwaffe to the Polish railway network meant that a good half of the Polish Army never got to its assigned assembly points. Poland had actually tried to start mobilizing several days earlier than they did, but were dissuaded from doing so by France and Britain. Had mobilization been completed, Poland may have held out a little longer. 4) The Polish Army seriously bloodied the Wehrmacht. Granted, it went a lot worse for the Poles than the Nazis, but there's a reason Germany didn't strike France until May of 1940. The way that the war was taught in school, the Germans attack, lose about five guys, and goosestep through Warsaw. A little bit like Desert Storm, complete with guys named Schwarzkopf. In fact, the Luftwaffe in particular was damaged seriously in the campaign, as the Polish air force was not, in fact, destroyed on the ground, and the Germans took about 45,000 casualties, with several divisions having to rest and refit extensively after the campaign. 

During the occupation, there was an extensive resistance movement, led by the Home Army or Armia Krajowa (AK). These were the folks who brought you the Warsaw Uprising, which led Hitler to order Warsaw completely blown up and burned to the ground after it was put down. Stalin also didn't like the AK, so after the Soviets came into Poland a lot of these guys either got killed, sent to Siberia, or figured out some way to get out of Poland and go put roofs on houses in Chicago or something. 

After the war, two things happened. First, the Soviet Union effectively took over Poland. This happened in part because FDR and Churchill believed Stalin when Stalin said "oh sure, I'll allow democratic elections in Poland" at Yalta. Unfortunately, once Churchill saw that this wasn't going to happen, he was unable to talk sense into FDR. When FDR started to have doubts about this he promptly died, leaving Harry Truman dazed and confused about Poland because nobody ever really told him anything. Churchill got booted out of office for good measure shortly after the war ended, and so at Potsdam Stalin got to do pretty much whatever he wanted in Poland. 

The second thing that happened was equally traumatic. Poland was effectively shifted to the west: the eastern provinces of what had been Poland fell under Soviet control, provinces which today make up Belarus and Ukraine. A bunch of Poles were resettled to other parts of Poland, like the new western provinces of Poland that were once part of Germany. The Germans in those provinces got kicked out and settled forcibly in other parts of a shrunken German state. In this way, Poland was given control of cities such as Szczecin (Stettin) and Wrocław (Breslau), as well as Gdańsk (Danzig) and East Prussia. The shift was extremely traumatic, and I understand that in places like Szczecin the Polish occupants don't really feel a connection to the city as they never really wanted to be there in the first place. 

Communist Poland, or the Polish People's Republic (PRL, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) is a time that I think very few people remember fondly. Again, there are whole histories about the Eastern Bloc, and I don't want to bore you with details about what Władysław Gomułka did or didn't do. Let's fast-forward to everybody's favorite part of Communism: the end of it.

The election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II helped galvanize opposition to communist rule, partly as it cemented the Church as powerful opposition to the State. The state had never managed to smash Catholicism in Poland. Though it did try its ready best to undermine the influence of the Church, moving directly against the Church in an overt matter was ground that the Politburo was not willing to tread. In September 1980, striking shipyard workers in Gdańsk organized Solidarity (Solidarność), a labor union that became a political party that at one time counted a third of the working-age people in Poland as members. By the end of 1981, Solidarity was making so much noise that General Wojciech Jaruzelski, then-premier and commander-in-chief, felt compelled to declare martial law on December 13th, a state which lasted until July of 1983.

The period of martial law (Stan Wojenny, literally "State of War") is perhaps the most-discussed and most controversial period in Polish history. Jaruzelski claimed that he had to declare martial law as things were slipping out of control in Poland. Had he not declared martial law when he did, he maintains that Soviet troops would have invaded Poland and put Solidarity down in an entirely ruthless campaign much like that in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. Others maintain that there was no Soviet threat, and that Jaruzelski was just trying to maintain his personal power. Some have urged prosecuting Jaruzelski as a criminal and tyrant for his declaration. Others say, he's old and he chose the lesser of two evils. He also didn't get fabulously wealthy as a result of his position, and was just a soldier doing his job. I'm curious to read about this more when the anniversary rolls around again.  

However, martial law was not enough to get rid of Solidarity. The government of the PRL was looking increasingly shaky, as was the Polish economy, wracked by inflation and shortages. In 1989 the government threw in the towel, held free elections that were won by Solidarity, the first Warsaw Pact country to have a non-communist government. This proved a catalyst for the unwinding of communism all over the Eastern Bloc, and in a way that nobody in their right minds would have predicted: a more-or-less peaceful rusting away of the Iron Curtain.

In this way, Poland had come full circle, from an independent country to dominated by foreign powers to a free republic, the Third Republic. I also stop the narrative here because it is very difficult to analyze anything from a historical perspective that is younger than I am. Now that we have an exhaustive and exhausting brief history, it's time to consider what it all means.

Poland and History part I: World Power to Partition

When we were in Toruń, we had an extensive set of lectures about Polish culture. What struck me was just how much history seems to inform current attitudes and conditions. So at this point, I think that it is appropriate to provide some of the context surrounding my living arrangements. The States have a short history by European standards. While this is belaboring the obvious, and while anyone who’s been to Rome has marveled at 2000 year-old ruins, without further perspective it is hard to truly feel how long history in Europe truly is. For the first example of perspective, I’m going to have to handle Polish history in three parts. In the first part, I’ll talk about the general scale of history and do a general summary of relevant points up to the Third Partition of 1795. In the second part, I’ll consider Poland in the 20^th century. In the last part, I’ll talk about what it all means. As each of these three topics is a book in itself, I ask the gentle reader’s kind forbearance, for it is a topic worth an exploration at some length. A fellow Fulbrighter put it best when he said that the history of Poland is a perfect representation of almost every aspect of the human condition: triumph, tragedy, farce, short-sightedness and/or downright stupidity, endurance, resistance, crushing cynicism, exile, loss, hope, stubbornness, tolerance, narrow-mindedness, nationalism, the list goes on.

Let us consider the history of Poland on a familiar timescale, that of the United States. 400 years ago, the castle at Malbork was as historical to those living in the area at that time as West Point is to the residents of upstate New York or USS Constitution is to the residents of Boston today. I was humming a few bars of Thomas Tallis during our tour of Malbork because it seemed appropriate, imagining what the place must have been like with knights in it. But then I realized that that makes about as much sense historically as singing Elvis while imagining Washington at Valley Forge. In 1612, Jagellonian University in Krakow had already been around for 250 years, longer than Princeton, Penn, Pitt, Oberlin, Northwestern, or Michigan have been around in our own time. Wawel Castle had been a royal residence for 600 years, so the average Pole would have regarded the initial settlement on Wawel Hill as we would regard Cahokia Mound or Tenochtitlan today. In present-day America at that time, the settlement at Jamestown was barely holding on and had just managed to survive the winter of 1611. Without a constant influx of immigrants, that settlement would have died out at this time. The Pilgrims would not land at Plymouth for another 8 years. Blackbeard and Henry Morgan had not been born yet, and tales of Buccaneers on the Spanish Main were still 50 years in the future. St. Augustine in Florida, the oldest continuously-occupied European settlement in the continental U.S., had been founded 47 years previously, which is about the current age of the John Hancock Center in Chicago or what Florida is now most famous for, Disneyworld.

Modern Poland came together as a kingdom in the mid-10^th century AD, with an important date being 966 when Mieszko I converted to Christianity and brought in his territory with him. I will confess that between this date and 1386 my Polish history is rusty, but it looks pretty chaotic. Of note was Casimir the Great’s edicts of toleration towards Jews, which were very progressive at the time. Poland was in fact for a long time among the least anti-Semitic countries in Europe, though this varied from time to time. Indeed, Kazimierz, a district of Krakow, was granted to the Jews by Casimir and remained the Jewish quarter until the Nazis conquered Poland and murdered most of the inhabitants.

In 1386, Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania, married Queen Jadwiga of Poland.  Jagiełło was crowned King of Poland, and thus were laid the roots of what would become the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, which was for some time a major world power. The Poles and Lithuanians engaged in a major war with the Teutonic Knights (or krzyżacy in Polish) from 1409 to 1411, partly fought over the control of Danzig (currently known as Gdańsk). Disputes over Gdańsk would show up again and again in history, including in World War II: historically, the city was a major Hanseatic League port and German in nature. However, as the most important port in the general vicinity, it had great strategic and economic importance to Poland.

The Battle of Grunwald (also called Tannenberg) in 1410 was a major Polish-Lithuanian victory that seriously weakened the Teutonic Order. The allies laid siege to the Teutonic stronghold at Malbork (Marienburg), but were unable to take it by force. In fact, a Polish cannonball can still be seen in the wall of the summer court of the castle today. The war was ended by the Peace of Thorn (or Toruń), though the Teutonic order would continue to irritate the Poles until 1521, after which the Prussians paid homage to the Polish crown. This is important background because 1) I visited both Toruń and Malbork, which I hope to write about shortly, 2) it kicks off the “Golden Age” of Poland, 3) Grunwald is particularly important in Polish lore, not least because it was one of the times the Poles got to beat up on some Germans.

Poland-Lithuania is probably one of the most powerful countries you never heard of unless you grew up in a Polish family, in which case you’ve probably heard about little else. At its height, it spanned from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and in 1609, Polish troops captured Moscow.  Granted, that went about as well as Napoleon’s capture of Moscow in the long run, but hey, a win is a win.

What was particularly unusual about the dual monarchy was that in the 16^th century, the king was elected by all members of the szlachta (nobility) who wished to vote. Since at its height the szlachta consisted of about 10-15% of the Polish population this was actually a pretty extensive franchise, more extensive, for example, than that of England in the 18^th century. The king was also responsible to an assembly of nobles called the Sejm (which is the sejm name as the lower house of the Polish Parliament nowadays), and the szlachta would occasionally claim the right to rebel against the king if he stepped on too many toes. In a way, Poland has almost as long a semi-republican tradition as the United Kingdom does, and on 3 May 1791, Poland adopted the second written constitution in the world.

Unfortunately, the szlachta had very sensitive toes, and parts of the system were really stupid. For example, there was this crazy idea called the liberam veto: any member of the Sejm could prevent the passing of legislation by simply standing up and saying “I don’t allow it.” So, as you can imagine, this made the U.S. Congress seem extremely productive and harmonious by comparison. Indeed, I understand that in German the expression “Polish Parliament” has the same meaning as the American expression “Chinese Fire Drill,” an extremely noisy, confusing, and unproductive mess. After a lengthy period of this kind of nonsense, the Commonwealth was in serious trouble. In 1772, the First Partition of Poland took place, where parts of Poland were taken by the Prussians, Russians, and Austrians. There was a second partition in 1793. Following Thaddeus Kosciusko’s rebellion of 1795, there was a third partition and Poland ceased to exist as an independent state. Kosciusko had been a prominent officer in the American Revolution, designed West Point, and has quite a few counties and other things named after him in the States. He’s an important figure for a lot of Americans of Polish extraction for this reason.

The end of the Commonwealth brought 124 years of statelessness to the Polish people. During this time, conditions varied greatly depending on which power was occupying a particular region. The Russians deliberately tried to stamp out the Polish language and identity. The Prussians were a bit more conciliatory, but not much more. The Austrians, holding down a polyglot empire, were generally much more relaxed. By the start of the 20^th century, the Austrians were even allowing Poles to organize rifle clubs that were effectively paramilitary groups! The hope for an independent Poland certainly remained alive: Chopin was an ardent Polish patriot, as were other prominent Polish artists and intellectuals. Poles fought for Napoleon in Russia and elsewhere, and there was a formation of Polish lancers at Waterloo, largely because Napoleon had promised Poland an independent state and established the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Bonaparte is certainly not regarded as the Corsican Ogre in these parts. However, an independent Poland looked extremely unlikely for a long time, which is another theme in the history of this place. And yet, somehow, it just happened as a result of World War I….

Concert in Bydgoszcz

We went to Bydgoszcz on the night of Friday the 21^st of September in order to hear the Filharmonia Pomorska directed by Takao Ukigaya and joined by soprano Olga Pasiecznik perform the Mozart concert arias “Ah, lo previdi!” (k. 272), “Chi sa, chi sa, qual sia” (k. 582), and “Vado, me dove, o dei” (k. 583). The orchestra also performed the overture from The Marriage of Figaro (k.  ),  and Beethoven Symphony no. 3, “Eroica”, in E-flat minor, op. 55. I had not heard any of the Mozart arias, to my knowledge, though one of them did sound suspiciously familiar. The program took place in Artur Rubenstein Hall of the Ignacy Paderewski Concert Hall. 

The concert hall itself definitely had an Eastern Bloc feel to it, but it represented probably the better tendency of that period of time towards monumental public architecture. The hall itself was actually rather small: I would estimate the full house at around 600-800 people, and there was only orchestra-level seating, with no balcony. The lobby at the back end of the hall was clearly intended to hold smaller recitals, and the lobbies in general were well-apportioned with portraits of famous composers, abstract tapestries, and sculptures. It really was a fine public space, and the lobbies were fairly well-designed for their purpose of letting people see and be seen during intermission. Granted, the staircases were not especially grand, but they did not clot up either. The acoustics of the hall itself were unremarkable, either good or bad, but the small size of the hall rendered this a mostly moot point.

What was also noticeable was that there were differences in the performance conventions between this concert and most every concert one might attend in the States. For one thing, there were no paper programs. The program notes were done instead by two speakers who talked for 10 minutes. Also noticeable was that I saw no evidence of corporate or other sponsors, which is typically underscored back at home. Based on what I saw, it seemed to be that the philharmonic was underwritten by the Voivodeship government as well as the national Ministry of Culture. At 30 PLN (about $10), I don’t know how much my ticket was defraying costs, especially considering that my seat was in the eighth row. 

When the concert began, the stage was entirely bare, and the orchestra walked out to take their seats to the applause of the house. The concertmistress did not walk out separately to her own round of applause. Both of these are entirely different in the States, where the orchestra is seated before the concert begins, except for the concertmaster who steps out separately. While the concertmistress did lead the tuning as she would have in the states, the oboist actually played three notes rather than just an A. The concert A was also noticeably higher than it is in the States, and might have been more like 470 Hz compared to what we’re used to hearing at 440 Hz. While this is probably not very interesting to non-musicians, it was quite noticeable to me. 

The Mozart arias were quite delightful, unmistakably written by that composer from a stylistic standpoint. There was some terrific writing for oboe, flute, clarinet and bassoon, sometimes individually and sometimes in combination. While some might argue that Mozart is easy, it is the very simplicity of his works that leads to great difficulty as all mistakes are noticeable and some pieces are fragile as glass: if not extremely well-performed, the shortcomings become obvious.  I will confess that Eroica is not my favorite Beethoven symphony, but once the secondary theme is introduced at about 4 minutes into the first movement it’s still a great piece of music and an important stepping-stone between the Classical and Romantic periods.  

The performance itself was somewhat mixed, with the second half of the program (Eroica) being generally better executed than the first. In the top half of the program, the violins had a number of intonation issues and did not sound clean. It almost lead me to wonder whether or not the strings had tuned thoroughly. Furthermore, the entrances of the strings were at times a bit shoddy, and at one point during the Figaro overture the violins and woodwinds were about half a beat ahead of the rest of the orchestra. The soloist herself was quite good, with a crisp tone, good phrasing, a light tone appropriate for Mozart and a small hall, and a good dynamic range. The orchestra had a much more successful second half, after the smaller setup of the first half (a Mozart-type orchestra) was augmented by additional players. The main issue in the second half was, somewhat surprisingly, balance, with the woodwinds and brass occasionally being a bit too soft. There was also the occasional issue with the French horns, particularly in the third movement where they have a prominent set of duets. Mr. Ukigaya’s interpretation of the piece was also noticeable for striking a balance between the excessive romanticism of certain conductors and the businesslike approach of others. In general, the tempo was kept relatively steady in each movement, and certain rests which tend to be extended in many interpretations had a somewhat “clipped” quality to them in this one. It appeared to me that the conductor was not trying to impose himself excessively upon the piece, which was appreciated.

In general, a fine time was had by all. What was surprising was the great range of experience that our group had with classical music and concert-going in general. A few of us probably are at the symphony every weekend, a few of us (myself included) go only from time to time but listen to a fair number of recordings, and I would not be surprised if this was the first symphonic concert for at least a couple of us.

I realize that I have skipped ahead a considerable bit in the chronology of my time here in Poland. I haven’t even written about Malbork Castle, and that took place a week ago. However, I did want to let my loyal readers know that I am getting a full dose of culture here in Poland, and write about the concert while it was still fresh in my memory. The stale crumbs of my remembrance of the rest of the week will follow shortly.

Some Geopolitics

Other than "everything", what do people argue about in Poland these days? At the Warsaw Welcome, there was a particular stress on a couple of issues that I've definitely heard a lot about. There's kind of an information backlog/torrent, a lot has been happening these last few days! So I'm not going to be quite chronological with the next few posts, but rather roughly thematic.

The Warsaw welcome was an interesting experience, both to hear what the Embassy officials said and what they did not say. Ambassador Feinstein specifically talked about two hot-button issues, the Katyn Massacre and visas to the United States. Both of these have some new developments.

The massacre in the Katyn Forest is something seared into the collective consciousness of most every Pole or person of Polish descent I've ever met. When the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17th, 1939, at the same time as the Germans were striking from the west, a bunch of Polish officers, intellectuals, priests and assorted other anti-Communists fell into the hands of the Red Army. The NKVD and Stalin decided to get rid of them. About 20,000 officers and civilians were brought into the Katyn Forest near Smolensk and other locations in 1940 and shot en masse. When the Germans invaded Russia, they uncovered the mass graves in the forest and broadcast news of this discovery far and wide as a propaganda coup. Except for once, Goebbels didn't actually have to lie that much. When the government-in-exile in London requested an investigation into the matter, the Soviets severed relations with the London Poles. The official Moscow line for a long time was that the massacre had been perpetuated by the Nazis, who then tried to pin it on the Soviets. And for a long time, that was the official Western line as well. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the truth came out...yet not the entire truth. U.S. records relating to the massacre have just been declassified and are available at the National Archives, so we'll finally be able to know how much the Roosevelt administration really knew about what really happened, and how they reacted. The opening of the Archives has been relatively big news in Poland.

The second hot-button issues pertains to visas. American citizens can come to Poland as tourists without applying for a visa, yet Polish citizens going to America have to go to a U.S. Embassy or Consulate (which means either Warsaw or Krakow), pay a fee, get interviewed, and maybe they get the visa, maybe no. If they don't get the visa, the fee is not refundable. This causes a great deal of outrage among Poles, particularly considering that the Polish military is heavily engaged in Afghanistan and played a large part in Iraq and holders of many other national passports can travel freely to the U.S. Pan Kowal points out that this kind of policy is short-sighted from the U.S. perspective, too: Polish nationals can travel freely in the Schengen Area. So, who really wants to be a tourist in the U.S. anymore? Ambassador Feinstein assured us that legislation is pending in Congress to remedy this situation, and apparently the Obama administration supports it. Unfortunately, I think that everyone on Capitol Hill has other things on their minds right now. And I fear that in many other ways the U.S. is neglecting its relations with Poland and thereby losing a lot of the goodwill we have over here. Now, the Ambassador took the Atlanticist view that Poland drawing closer to Europe is good for U.S. relations because we are close to the Europeans. I would note that the Europeans are a quarrelsome lot, and the EU does not really have a coherent foreign policy and tends to stumble in 27 separate directions. As such, hoping to influence Eastern Europe through the EU seems like not as good a bet as influencing this part of Europe directly.

According to what we were told at the embassy, crime has also steadily been on the decline in Poland, particularly violent crime. Apparently, right when the wall came down the U.S. Embassy considered the security situation "critical" as it related to crime. Yet now, that particular worry ranks as "low." Prof. Kowal noted that in general, theft of personal equipment like cameras and laptops and cell phones is not a big issue here, largely because odds are the crooks have a better laptop than you do anyway. The cell phone point is especially germane in my case as I got mine for 60 PLN or about 20 bucks. You do have to worry about pickpockets and cash, however. Those guys are apparently quite good, and everybody loves getting their hands on the almighty zloty. The fact that there was a news story on a major national network about how drunks were falling over in the street in Wroclaw and getting into medical problems was encouraging. No, it isn't encouraging for the drunks, but it does suggest that that's the biggest mayhem the network producers could think up that night. Of course, the embassy staff stressed, and they are absolutely correct, that this does not constitute license to just tune out completely. Like in any urban environment, there are also neighborhoods that it's best to avoid. But in general, so far I've felt reasonably safe walking the streets. 

Finally, and on a happier note, Poland has been increasingly active in democracy promotion around the world, as an example of a country that transitioned from totalitarian satellite state to more-or-less parliamentary democracy. The Economist has generally noted that Poland is probably just about the most successful state in the old Warsaw Pact, and now Poland is increasingly sending people to places like Tunisia to lecture about how to do the whole freedom thing in an orderly fashion. I'm sure the Poles do this in their own inimitable style, and if you have known any Poles you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It's also pretty obvious that things are in a state of flux here in Poland. You see construction and remodeling almost everywhere, and even since I've been here last (May 2011) I can see changes. For example, Krakow Glowny, the main train station in Krakow, has a new train shed that could be in Switzerland someplace. The Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Polytechnika Krakowska had a very "Wschodni Blok" or eastern bloc look to it last year. Now that the building has been re-painted and spruced up a bit, it looks almost Western, with the elevators (the three-man "box of doom" with no dedicated elevator door, just the exterior door on each floor that you must open by hand) giving away the fact that you're in Eastern Europe. You also see certain kludges peculiar to this part of the world, like a Fiat towing a Mercedes around attached only by a piece of nylon rope. If you've visited Eastern Europe, you've probably seen a lot of this.

In general, I haven't even seen much evidence of that notorious Polish fatalism. I did encounter some not particularly friendly people in Warsaw, but they have a reputation for being the New Yorkers of the nation. Granted, I've only been around for a week, but on first impression this is not a country full of depressed people. And why should they be? As I was walking through the square in Torun today, the sun shone, the town buzzed with activity, there were bright colors, and the old song "John Barleycorn" was firmly on my mind.