pleading for military aid last century, Ukraine employs in making the case for IMF funds and diplomatic support today. The (Polish-born) American Sovietologist Zbigniew Brzezinski writes that ‘without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.’ The bottom line is that ‘Russia can either be an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both.’ 19 If Ukraine does not stay independent, in other words, Russia will not remain a democracy, so Ukrainian independence is as much for Russia’s good as Ukraine’s.
Russians, of course, have some difficulty taking this concept on board. Just as the Polish risings turned even diehard anti-establishmentarians like Pushkin into raging Slavophiles, today’s independent Ukraine brings out the empire-builder in the best of Russian liberals. ‘When you look at nineteenth-century Russian treatments of the Polish problem,’ says Roman Szporluk, head of Ukrainian studies at Harvard, ‘you really think you’re reading all those Moscow think-tankers today on Ukraine.’ 20
Today, Polish-Ukrainian relations are rather muted – surprisingly so given their long and scratchy common history. Polish and Ukrainian presidents exchange visits, and Polish economists turn up at Kiev conferences on free-market reform. Numberless Ukrainians do private trade across the border, heaving suitcases full of smoked sausage and tacky clothing on to trains going west, and returning with car parts and kitchen-ware. In Lviv, near the Polish border and a Polish city before the war, Ukrainian yuppies like to assert their Western credentials with a Warsaw-style kiss to the hand. But aside from Ukrainian resentment at the missionary activities of the Polish Catholic Church, the relationship, on the Ukrainian side at least, is a curiously bloodless one. Despite centuries under Polish rule, Ukrainians have none of the fierce love-hate for Poland that they have for Russia – probably simply because Poland no longer affects them much. The number of ethnic Poles left in Ukraine is tiny, and Poland has no leverage over Ukrainian affairs. Whereas Khmelnytsky tried to play off Muscovy against the Poles, today’s Ukraine balances Russia against America.
Ukraine may have ceased to care about Poland, but Poles have not stopped caring about Ukraine. Ukraine might be an economic joke, a place to make cracks about, but it is also a vital buffer-state. With Ukraine independent, the Russian border stays 600 miles to the east and Poland can convincingly call itself part of Central, not Eastern, Europe. Were Ukraine – or more likely Belarus – to lose its independence, Russia would be back glowering over the frontier wire, and Europe’s centre of gravity would shift away westwards. Solidarity sent representatives to the founding conference of Rukh, the opposition coalition that took Ukraine to independence, and Poland was the first country to give Ukraine diplomatic recognition, the day after the independence referendum of 1 December 1991.
In 1883 the young Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz published his best-selling epic By Fire And Sword. A Hollywood-ian drama set during the Khmelnytsky rebellion, the book is not historically accurate. Never having visited Ukraine, Sienkiewicz based his descriptions of the Dnieper on his travels up the Mississippi, decorating its banks with mangrove swamps and ‘vast reptiles’. Nevertheless, it perfectly sums up the mixture of nostalgia, condescension and self-interest with which Poles view their erstwhile borderlands. The novel has two parallel story-lines: Khmelnytsky’s war with Wisniowiecki for Ukraine, and the battle between a savage Cossack otaman and a relentlessly virtuous Polish knight for the hand in marriage of a Ruthenian princess. The Pole ends up getting the girl, but the Polish army does not end up getting Ukraine. Instead the country descends into chaos: the book’s notorious final
Russians, of course, have some difficulty taking this concept on board. Just as the Polish risings turned even diehard anti-establishmentarians like Pushkin into raging Slavophiles, today’s independent Ukraine brings out the empire-builder in the best of Russian liberals. ‘When you look at nineteenth-century Russian treatments of the Polish problem,’ says Roman Szporluk, head of Ukrainian studies at Harvard, ‘you really think you’re reading all those Moscow think-tankers today on Ukraine.’ 20
Today, Polish-Ukrainian relations are rather muted – surprisingly so given their long and scratchy common history. Polish and Ukrainian presidents exchange visits, and Polish economists turn up at Kiev conferences on free-market reform. Numberless Ukrainians do private trade across the border, heaving suitcases full of smoked sausage and tacky clothing on to trains going west, and returning with car parts and kitchen-ware. In Lviv, near the Polish border and a Polish city before the war, Ukrainian yuppies like to assert their Western credentials with a Warsaw-style kiss to the hand. But aside from Ukrainian resentment at the missionary activities of the Polish Catholic Church, the relationship, on the Ukrainian side at least, is a curiously bloodless one. Despite centuries under Polish rule, Ukrainians have none of the fierce love-hate for Poland that they have for Russia – probably simply because Poland no longer affects them much. The number of ethnic Poles left in Ukraine is tiny, and Poland has no leverage over Ukrainian affairs. Whereas Khmelnytsky tried to play off Muscovy against the Poles, today’s Ukraine balances Russia against America.
Ukraine may have ceased to care about Poland, but Poles have not stopped caring about Ukraine. Ukraine might be an economic joke, a place to make cracks about, but it is also a vital buffer-state. With Ukraine independent, the Russian border stays 600 miles to the east and Poland can convincingly call itself part of Central, not Eastern, Europe. Were Ukraine – or more likely Belarus – to lose its independence, Russia would be back glowering over the frontier wire, and Europe’s centre of gravity would shift away westwards. Solidarity sent representatives to the founding conference of Rukh, the opposition coalition that took Ukraine to independence, and Poland was the first country to give Ukraine diplomatic recognition, the day after the independence referendum of 1 December 1991.
In 1883 the young Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz published his best-selling epic By Fire And Sword. A Hollywood-ian drama set during the Khmelnytsky rebellion, the book is not historically accurate. Never having visited Ukraine, Sienkiewicz based his descriptions of the Dnieper on his travels up the Mississippi, decorating its banks with mangrove swamps and ‘vast reptiles’. Nevertheless, it perfectly sums up the mixture of nostalgia, condescension and self-interest with which Poles view their erstwhile borderlands. The novel has two parallel story-lines: Khmelnytsky’s war with Wisniowiecki for Ukraine, and the battle between a savage Cossack otaman and a relentlessly virtuous Polish knight for the hand in marriage of a Ruthenian princess. The Pole ends up getting the girl, but the Polish army does not end up getting Ukraine. Instead the country descends into chaos: the book’s notorious final