White Spots – Black Spots. Difficult Matters in Polish-Russian Relations, 1918–2008. Ed. by Adam Daniel Rotfeld / Anatoly V. Torkunov. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. XI, 666 S. = Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. ISBN: 978-0-8229-4440-9.

Table of contents:

http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/exlibris/aleph/a22_1/apache_media/SXG4NSNR813NS122N3RARSXHUF3BQY.pdf

Few historical subjects are as complicated and fraught emotionally and politically as Polish-Russian relations. In the modern era, Poland has been a victim of Russian and Soviet aggression. One of Moscow’s unfortunate responses to this has been to create in 2004 a new national holiday (the Day of National Unity) for 4 November in memory of the “liberation of Moscow from Polish-Lithuanian invaders” in 1612. Both Moscow and Warsaw take history seriously and disagree passionately with each other in its interpretation. In this context, it appears admirable that Poles and Russians seek to understand each other better through dialogues.

The present volume represents the result of a series of “dialogues” between Polish and Russian historians from 2008 to 2010. The English edition is an abridged version of the Polish and Russian editions, with two historiographical essays and all bibliographical references removed. Unfortunately this reduces the scholarly value of the present volume. Specialists are encouraged to consult the original Polish and Russian editions. The Polish and Russian editions are supposed to be identical (except for the order of the essays). Yet disturbingly, as will be discussed later, this is not the case. The present English edition seems to be based on the Polish version. There are fifteen sections (in addition to the editors’ introduction) with the two sides contributing different essays for each: The Beginnings, The Interwar Period, The Cause of World War II, Poland between the Soviet Union and Germany, 1939–1941, The Katyn Massacre, World War II, 1941–1945, The Postwar Decade, 1945–1955, The Thaw, The Dissident Movement, The Soviets and the Polish Crisis, Regained Freedom and Sovereignty, Assistance or Exploitation?, Russia versus Sovereign Poland, Continuity and Change and Heritage in Archives.

Although many essays make for a good read, the book does not constitute dialogues. Rather it is a parallel history. The reader gets no idea of what kind of discussion might have taken place in the “dialogues”. There are several reasons for this. The “dialogues” were initiated and organized by an inter-governmental organization, “The Group on Difficult Matters in the Light of Polish-Russian history”, whose true purpose may lie elsewhere. Although the group worked in search of the truth, the truth proved evasive. The editors quote the then Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin’s famous saying, “Truth purifies [Pravda ochishchaet]” (p. 1), which, unfortunately, sounds hollow in this book. As the two essays on archives make clear, Moscow still severely restricts access to its archives and hence truth. Moreover, Moscow refuses to return “trophy archives” from World War II (including archives from Poland) to their original owners, a position in contravention of the international agreements to which Moscow is a signatory. Ignoring international law, Vladimir P. Kozlov states that the issue will be resolved “in accordance with Russian law” (p. 640). In fact, Moscow allows its favorite historians exclusive access to its closed archives (the archive of foreign intelligence, for instance) and publishes their “research” to suit its foreign policy. Ironically, such a publication appeared in Russia during Putin’s visit to Poland on 1 September 2009 (that is during the work of the “Group on Difficult Matters in the Light of Polish-Russian history”) which purported to show that Poland was responsible for World War II for allegedly conspiring with Germany against the Soviet Union!

Conceptually, the volume leaves much to be desired. Most importantly, the period under question concerns mostly not Russia but the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, obscuring the difference between the Soviet Union and Russia helps the Russian side muddy the water. Nikolai I. Bukharin argues in this book, following Putin, that today’s Russia “cannot accept all the sins of the Soviet past” (p. 610). Yet the Russian side appropriates “Soviet” as “Russian” when it suits it. For example, Moscow has long pointed to the Polish treatment of the Soviet POWs from the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920 as the Polish equivalent of the Katyn’ massacres. Gennady F. Matveyev mysteriously inflates the number of deaths in the Polish camps so that it exceeds the number of Soviet executions of Poles in 1940 (p. 57). This is not merely unfair, because the deaths of Soviet POWs in Polish camps (like the deaths of Polish POWs in Soviet camps during the same period) were due mainly to epidemics, malnutrition, and other factors. They are simply not comparable to the Katyn’ massacres, which were executions by the order of the highest organs of the government. This sort of deliberate manipulation of historical facts does not lead to a meaningful dialogue and only deepens distrust.

Far more disturbingly, as the Polish historian Andrzej Nowak has pointed out (see http:/www.miesiecznik.znak.com.pl/6732011andrzej-de-lazari-andrzej-nowakpolska-rosja-trudny-dialog/), the Russian side deliberately altered the text of one contributor, Andrzej Przewoźnik. He wrote about Moscow’s limited efforts to seek the truth about Katyn’: “Yet, it was the arbitrary legal qualification of the crime adopted by the Russian military prosecutors – divorced from morality and justice – that has caused the greatest pain to Poles. That decision has evoked impatience and irritation in Poland, as it is fully congruent with efforts to conceal and falsify the truth about the Katyn murders, and it has been undertaken since 1990 by historians and writers connected with the ruling circles of the Russian Federation” (p. 245 of the present book and p. 332 of the Polish edition). The Russian edition replaces the last two words (“Russian Federation”) with “Republic of Poland” (p. 335 of the Russian edition), altering the meaning completely! Who changed Przewoźnik’s text? The Russian editor Torkunov? This question should be pressed to the Russian side. Przewoźnik was killed in the plane crash in Smolensk in April 2010 along with the President of Poland and many other Polish high officials. Someone on the Russian side appears to have taken advantage of his death and deliberately altered his text with impunity, callously dishonoring the dead author. Here one can hardly see any room for a sincere dialogue.

By contrast, Natalia S. Lebedeva, a Russian historian who has contributed a great deal to the search for truth on Katyn’, has written a very readable essay on it, forcefully condemning her compatriots who still insist on the Kremlin’s innocence by claiming that the Katyn-related documents unearthed by her and other historians are forgeries.

The book as a whole clearly demonstrates that the Russian side is on the defensive. It need not have been so, if it had indeed wished to engage in a dialogue. The Russian participants as a whole appear so concerned about their reputations and righteousness that they are more interested in finding other culprits than seeking the truth. Writing on the World War II period, Valentina S. Parsadanova, for example, rightly notes that Britain and the United States ultimately accepted Moscow’s subjugation of Poland. She does not realize that this does not lessen Moscow’s responsibility. Moreover, discussing the Warsaw uprising, she insists incredulously that “the main responsibility for the deaths of two hundred thousand people in Warsaw rests on those Polish politicians who masterminded the uprising and urged Poles to fight without coordination with the Soviet command” (p. 304). The overwhelming bias of her essay and many other Russian essays is that of the Great Power to which smaller nations are inevitably and rightly subject. They lament the perceived weakness of today’s Russia in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Bukharin has written: “although the Soviet Union disappeared, russophobia outside of Russia grew larger in scale, amplified by the relative weakness of present-day Russia” (p. 613).

By contrast, the tone of the Polish contributions is generally fair and sober and even restrained here and there. This makes the present volume extremely uneven, and the result is far from fruitful. It would appear difficult to change this state of affairs without some kind of breakthrough. One of the most important steps would be for Moscow to de-classify all classified documents after, say, fifty years, and make them available to everyone. Until then, suspicions linger that Moscow continues to hide vital information unfavorable to itself, making a true dialogue difficult.

Hiroaki Kuromiya, Dover, MA