It is said that after a fruitless 10-year siege of Troy, the Greeks left a huge wooden horse outside the gates of the city and seemed to have sailed away. The occupants of Troy brought the horse into the city, only to find that night that it was full of Greek soldiers who opened the city gates so that the Greeks could take the city. Just as the occupants of Troy brought a poisoned gift into their city, the EU welcomed in Poland (2003), Romania (2007) and the Baltic states (2004). What they did not understand is that they were welcoming in states with elites (especially their diasporas) that have a searing visceral hatred of anything Russian and are happy US vassals. Any thought of a new Ostpolitik of the 1970s or the European friendship that Gorbachev wished for was off the table. In addition, the concurrent accession of these states into NATO broke the repeated promises of the West not to move NATO closer to Russia, negating the possibility of a zone of neutral peace.
The history of Poland (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1569-1795) and Russia is one of repeated wars. At its peak in the seventeenth century, the Commonwealth included most of what is now the Baltic States and Belarus and western Ukraine. In 1795 it was put to rest as what was left of it was dismembered between Austria, Prussia and Russia. Poland came back into being as part of the WW1 settlement, which also created the states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (as well as Finland). Poland invaded Russian territories during the Russian Civil War (Polish-Soviet War 1918-1921) in an attempt to rebuild the Commonwealth. This included the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918-1919 against Ukrainian nationalists, with the latter forced into alliance with Poland. After being pushed back to Warsaw and nearly defeated, the Poles won the Battle of Warsaw (1920), and the Peace of Riga (1921) was signed that gave large areas of what is now western Belarus and Ukraine to Poland; areas that were predominantly Slavic not Polish. In 1939, the Soviet Union took back these territories, as well as the Baltic States, as part of its agreement with Germany. The territories taken back by the Soviet Union played a critical role in its survival of the 1941 German invasion, by moving the start line for that invasion (Barbarossa) hundreds of kilometres west. The Soviet Union had also forced the Finns to modify their border with the Soviet Union, to move it away from the Leningrad area. Poland, the Baltic States and Finland were all seen as putative allies of Germany in any invasion of the Soviet Union. At the time Poland was a majority peasant society, ruled by an authoritarian military regime (“regime of the colonels”) that was supported by the aristocracy and the landowning gentry. As Korbonski notes:
Romania had gained Bessarabia after the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1918, but was forced to give it, as well as Northern Bukovina (the combination of which became the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic), to the Soviet Union in 1940. After the collapse of the Soviet Union these areas became the new nation-state of Moldova. This territorial change also pushed back the start line for Barbarossa, which Romania took an active part in as an ally of Germany. Pre-WW2 Romania was a majority peasant country, ruled over by a fascist dictatorship. Lithuania was a fascist one-party (Lithuanian Nationalist Union) authoritarian state, Latvia an authoritarian nationalist dictatorship, and Estonia a right-wing one-party (Patriotic League) authoritarian state.
I include the historical background above to combat much of the recent historical rewriting that serves to paint these nations, and their pre-WW2 leadership in as positive a light as possible. At the end of WW1, the new Soviet Union was “punished” by the other Allied nations through the taking of Russian lands to create Finland, the Baltic States and Poland; in addition to Western invasions of the Soviet Union in an attempt to crush the communist government. Poland and Romania also seized through wars of aggression other pieces of Russia. None of these states were democracies at the start of WW2, they were all highly antisemitic, and enemies of the Soviet Union. In 1940, the Soviet Union took back the lands taken by Poland and Romania, extinguished the Baltic States created from its territory at the end of WW1, and pushed back the Finnish border away from the critical Leningrad area. Without these moves, the Barbarossa offensive may have taken both Moscow and Leningrad in 1941 and Hitler may have gained his lebensraum. What would Eastern Europe and Russia look like today if that had happened? Those that wish to demonize the Soviet Union, and its progeny Russia, ignore and suppress these historical realities.
After WW2, the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe as a buffer against Western aggression, a position fully supported by the many European and Western attempts to subjugate Russia and then the Soviet Union. The historical enemies of Poland and Romania would be kept well under control, but not extinguished. Finland also had to accept some additional border changes but was not occupied by the Soviet Union. The Soviet-backed government of Poland was not the disaster many now claim, as it carried out land reform, eradicated illiteracy, provided universal healthcare and education, and established rapid industrialization and urbanization. The population of Poland doubled between 1947 and 1989 and many lower-class Poles had opportunities that they would never have had under previous administrations. The Polish crisis of the 1980s was the result of massive borrowing from the West in the 1970s that lead to severe economic conditions, even rationing, as Western interest rates rose as part of the Volcker Shock. This was the exacerbated by the economic disintegration of the Soviet Union toward the end of that decade. The Romanian experience of communism was much more brutal, but the extremes of the Ceausescu regime were due to the mass austerity imposed to pay off loans from the West; impoverishing the population.
In recent times, Romania has become a deeply corrupt state run by a kleptocracy, which is governed by a US and Western comprador elite and acts as a NATO forward base against Russia and pushes for integration with Moldova (recently with a “strategic partnership”) to reclaim the “lost” Bessarabia. A friend of mine recently visited Bucharest during a diplomatic summit and noted the difference between the modern rich center that the world tends to see and the sea of poverty that it sits within. An example of the deep corruption in Romania, not much has changed in the past few years since:
The Baltic States are led by right wing nationalist anti-Russian parties, have limited the political rights of ethnic Russians, generally have declining populations (in contrast to gains during Soviet times), and act as NATO forward bases against Russia. They also celebrate many national “heroes” who collaborated with the Nazis and were involved in the extermination of the Jews; with knowledge of such history actively suppressed. There are many, many parallels between the Baltic State and Ukraine. The Lithuanian Prime Minister directly attacking Putin and smearing his mental health:
The Prime Minister of Estonia, who seems to have transferred her hatred of the Stalinist regime that deported her mother to Siberia onto President Putin. She is the daughter of an ex-President of the country and of the European Commission; a family dynasty in the making.
The Latvian President lying about the causes of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict and equating German tanks rolling over the Ukrainian steppes as a march forward for democracy and “defending Europe”.
The Law and Justice ruling party of Poland is an authoritarian right-wing nationalist party that plays on the historic “greatness” of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and historical grievances against both Germany (calling for reparations) and Russia (reclaiming Western Ukraine and the Soviet “crimes” in Poland); with the Soviet Union treated as an equal of Nazi Germany. In 2018 a law was passed banning any mention of Poland’s complicity in the holocaust. Poland is heavily aligned with the US and has called for the stationing of more US troops on its territory. This interview with the Polish President is indicative of the Polish elite’s attitudes toward Russia:
The US is happy to manipulate historical grievances, real or mythical, to use these nations as frontline states in its ongoing undeclared war with Russia. The heavily right-wing and anti-Russian diaspora of these nations, who settled in Western nations, are happy to help this process. Those diasporas include the descendants of the Polish elite banished by the Germans and Russians (who remember the Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia, members of their elite). With this Trojan horse deep within the EU, the US can stymie any chances of an independent European foreign policy or a regional defence force that would undermine the pre-eminence of the US dominated NATO. At the same time, they can block any attempt at a de-escalation of the Ukraine proxy war with Russia. The other EU nations may also be considerably vassalized by the US, but it has an extra insurance policy with Poland, Romania and the Baltic States against any EU attempts at independent thought. No matter how much the French leader talks about some independence within EU foreign policy it will never happen; the US has made sure of that.
Of course, the path that the EU is on is ruinous as it cuts itself off from cheap Russian hydrocarbons and becomes increasingly negative toward its biggest trade partner China, which is also the recipient of much EU investment. The economists Radhika Desai and Alan Freeman discuss how the Western sanctions have only led to a deepening of the Russia-China-Iran alliance and the replacement of Western goods with those from China. The discussion starts at 7:10.
Korbonski, Anrzej (1988). Civil-Military Relations In Poland Between The Wars: 1918-1939. Armed Forces & Society 14 (2).