Only ‘brute force’ can compel draft-age Ukrainians in Europe to go home and fight: ‘Sputnik Globe’ interview
I was delighted to be invited by Sputnik Globe to comment on Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s radio appeal to EU member states to ‘encourage’ draft age Ukrainian men living in their midst to go home and fight for their country.
For those who never knew or who have forgotten, Sikorski is a prominent bearer of what I would call the ‘Polish nobility syndrome,’ by which I mean visceral hatred of Russia and less than humane feelings for Ukrainians. He is also the husband of one of America’s best-known Russia-bashers, the historian and journalist Anne Applebaum.
The syndrome can be traced back at least four centuries to the age of nonstop Russian-Polish wars over control of East Central Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea. There was a brief interlude in 1610-12 when the Poles took advantage of a dynastic crisis in Muscovy and gloried in holding the Russian capital captive, but that joy was short lived. It was followed by periodic outbreaks of warfare which in the mid and late 18th century resulted in Russia’s joining Austria and Prussia in carving up Poland so that the country disappeared from the map for 120 years or so. During that period of non-existence, Poland’s ruling class nonetheless put up 100,000 Polish soldiers and officers to fight within Napoleon’s Grande Armée that invaded Russia in 1812. Many or most stayed behind in unmarked graves. Then there were several unsuccessful Polish revolts against their fate as subjects of the Russian Empire in the 19th century which led many to spend the remainder of their lives enjoying the very special climate of Siberia. Dostoevsky wrote about them disparagingly in his House of the Dead.
The twentieth century brought back Poland to the European map following WWI and gave it the force to engage the Red Army and fight for its eastern borders with some notable success. But, alas, WWII was very unkind to the Poles and when it ended, they found themselves on the wrong side of what became the Iron Curtain. They were given several decades including a spell of martial law to bite their tongues and suffer the humiliation of Communist rule under Russian sway.
This is the sad background to the revanchism we see in the parties that have run Poland since its resurrection as a sovereign state in 1988-1989. Mr. Sikorski is a proper standard bearer of Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party that is beloved by the European Institutions for being Europe-friendly in contrast to their main opponents, the Law and Justice Party, who season their Russophobia with a dash of Europe-skepticism. However, I am doubtful that many European member states will heed Sikorski’s call to ship out Ukrainian refugees to Kiev against their will in order to re-fill Zelensky’s depleted army units.
For those who wonder about my remarking the ‘less than humane feelings for Ukrainians’ among Polish leaders, I recommend perusing Gogol’s Taras Bulba or looking closely into the ongoing Polish-Ukrainian disputes over the mass murders of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia committed by Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators during WWII. These spats even get mention in the Western mainstream press if you pay close attention.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024