An East wind

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Leszek Miller was in Washington, D.C., meeting U.S. President George Bush to cement Poland's strategic relationship with the United States. Last week, together with President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, he was in Warsaw welcoming Russia's President Vladimir Putin in what was the first visit by a Russian head of state in eight years. The topics of conversation were as broad and strategic as the ones between the Poles and the Americans, and the public expressions of friendship no less effusive than those in Washington. Inevitably, observers were asking where the stronger links lie: in the West, or in the East? Casual visitors to Poland often find it difficult to understand the paradoxical attitudes Poles have toward their Eastern neighbors. Amazingly, it can be said that the last decade has been the first period for over 200 years when Poles have not automatically perceived the Russians as enemies. Recall that Poland was partitioned in the mid to late 18th century by imperial Russia, which in the 19th century pursued a cruel policy of deportations and cultural warfare against Poles. The 20th century saw a war between Poland and the Soviet Union in the 1920s, tensions between the wars, and effective occupation and domination by the Soviet Union after 1945. On the other hand, there remains a curious affinity between Poles and Russians on the basis of their common Slavic roots, and the two nationalities get along famously with each other when drunk. Although communism ended in both countries 10 years ago, it is only now that relations at the state level are flourishing. Why? And how securely? Eight years ago, two very different Polish and Russian presidents met. Poland was then run by Lech Wałźsa, and Russia represented by the then still-healthy and dynamic Boris Yeltsin. Both in different ways were anti-establishment figures, and both had contributed to the collapse of the communist system in their own countries. Wałźsa had done so through Solidarity, and Yeltsin - although he was a former senior communist official - through disassembling the Soviet Union from within, as Mikhail Gorbachev looked on helplessly. Although under their presidencies former Soviet troops finally left Poland, and the first steps to reconciliation between the two countries taken, the progress made on real relationship building was unsatisfactory. In economic terms, trade between Poland and Russia has suffered as a result of the ruble collapse in the 1990s, and Polish exports to Russia are only at 30% of their early 1990 levels. In political terms, many Poles feel that Russia has yet to make the sort of public atonement for its crimes against the Polish nation over years of history, on a par that Germany has already made toward Poland, or - to use a more dubious analogy - that today Poles are being demanded to make toward Jews. The last four years were marked by especially frosty relations, with the Russians having no compunction in displaying their dissatisfaction with the government of Jerzy Buzek, which they perceived as undermining their economic and political interests in Poland. Buzek's government, although occasionally ambivalent, was generally staffed by politicians who felt that it was high time Poland finally turned her back on Russia to look westward. Now, in a curious retreat of history, Poland and Russia are ruled by men who are much more children of the Soviet system than their immediate predecessors. Vladimir Putin was a long-serving operative of the KGB, advancing in his career to finally head the Russian intelligence services. Miller, for his part, spent his entire career in the Polish Communist Party, and in the early 1990s was regarded as being close to Gennady Yenayev, who headed the anti-Gorbachev coup in Russia in 1991. Yet together with Kwaśniewski, a former communist youth activist, the three men have spent the last 10 years successfully distancing themselves from their communist past, and are now re-establishing relations between Poland and Russia on a new basis - that of economic interest. Doing deals was indeed the overwhelming theme of Putin's stay in Warsaw and Poznań last week. One of the most crucial topics of discussion was resolution of the long-standing dispute between the two countries over gas supplies through a strategic pipeline to Western Europe, as well as the issue of ultimate control of the link. Buzek's government had done much to try to leverage the pipeline link out of Russian control, and ultimately failed. Now, Russia and Gazprom may well be able to reassert their dominance. Poland agreed to increase its investments in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, and the two presidents agreed to create a joint Russia-Poland business council to promote trade between the two countries. Is that enough to signal a real reconciliation between the two countries? Most people would feel truly comfortable if consensus were reached on the difficult things in life, rather than the easiest one of making money together. And there was much unsaid during this visit. Despite gestures of wreath-laying, Russia has yet to accept responsibility and express apologies for the suffering that it has wrought on the Polish people over the last centuries. There remains the huge question of Ukraine, and the fact that in strategic terms Poland and Russia have competing interests toward that great country: Poland wants to see a strengthened and independent Ukraine slowly being bound with the European Union (EU) and NATO, while everything points to Russia seeking to vassalize it through economic dependency. And Poland has chosen to remain silent about human rights abuses in Chechnya, although in this regard it is no better than the West. All that means that despite all the superficialities of rapprochement, Polish-Russian relations remain on thin ice. On the basis only of business links and political personalities, they will be subject to the vicissitudes of economic and political circumstance and competition. To survive in stormy weather, those relations need to be built on deeper foundations: foundations that Putin's visit to Warsaw, ultimately, failed to establish. Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl