“What should one consider appropriate Polish politics?”, one of our readers in the United States asks me. Then he adds, “Is it possible to formulate an unambiguous answer to this question?”.

In theory, answering is not difficult. An appropriate Polish politics means a politics that best serves the Polish interest under the circumstances.

And “Polish interest” should be understood as the position of the Polish state in Europe and worldwide. Personally, I believe that the Polish interest, as opposed to matters of the political system, should be considered from a non-partisan perspective and evaluated according to strictly pragmatic criteria. In contrast to the English-speaking countries, Poles do not have a tradition of non-partisan foreign policy. Here, each party or formation has its own concept of foreign policy.

Contrary to our tradition, we must learn to approach political issues unceremoniously and from non-partisan positions. Poland is incomparably larger and more significant than all our parties, both historic and contemporary. I am not against democratic political parties but I believe that very few of those represented in the diaspora stand a chance of being reborn in a future Poland. For now, émigré parties are, at best, merely depositories of tradition and therefore do not attract the young. It is difficult to expect a twenty-year-old, raised and educated in London, who has never seen a Polish peasant and could not tell rye from wheat, to join one of the factions of the People’s Party. The same is true for the other parties. The representation of Poles abroad will undoubtedly change because the political parties constituting the Council of National Unity will disappear from the stage. Even now, Poles in the diaspora can be divided into only two groups–those in favour and those against the regime. All other divisions are insignificant.

Much as we emphasise our belonging to the West, pragmatism has never been our forte. Despite all our loathing for the East, we exhibit an irresistible urge to work according to ideological criteria, a distinctly Eastern characteristic.

For a pragmatic politician, only the interest of the state and the nation are permanent and invariable. Everything else depends on the situation and is subject to change. Allow us to illustrate this point with real-life examples. The January issue of Esprit quoted my article published in the March 1964 issue of Kultura. In the article I expressed the view that if Russia were to embark on an alliance with Germany, Poland should seek ties with Beijing.

Of course, for reasons that will be discussed further in this text, I am an advocate of a Polish-Russian alliance to replace the status of being a satellite. If, however, the Russians were to adopt a policy of closer ties with Germany, then any irreconcilable enemy of Russia would automatically become our ally. Chinese communism is even more totalitarian and repulsive than the Soviet version. In this case, however, neither sympathies nor antipathies are relevant, as only one thing would matter, i.e., an anti-Russian stance.

Pragmatic as we are, we are neither pro- nor anti-Russian in Kultura nor pro- nor anti-German—we only endeavour to be steadfastly Polish.

During the Korean War, it was not our patented “Dauntless” but Kultura that came forward with the suggestion of establishing a symbolic Polish military unit. At that time, the roll-back policy had all the appearances of a real programme. I did not believe in a world war, but I was convinced that the United States' positive demonstration of power could significantly change the arrangement in Eastern Europe.

Nowadays I do not encourage anyone to go to Vietnam to fight the communists. Does that mean that we have changed our beliefs? No. We have only changed our policy and tactics because the international situation has radically changed.

I have picked two clear examples to demonstrate what the “zigzags” of Kultura’s politics are about. If we were dogmatic anti-communists like our “dauntless”, we would be saying the same thing over and over again for twenty years. Our politics would have no zigzags and it would make no sense.

We are staunch opponents of judging the national interest using ideological criteria, regardless of whether the ideology in question is communism or anti-communism. Evaluation according to ideological criteria inevitably leads to identifying the interests of ideology with those of the state, which means subordinating the raison d’etat to ideological reasoning.

We represent the view that the Polish raison d’etat is sovereign and superior in relation to any ideology. Those who advocate the primacy of ideological postulates, those for whom crushing the Soviets and abolition of communism are more important than the present and future interests of Poland, should seek an alliance with Germany, as that is the most powerful and most anti-communist nation in Europe. There are some among us who think along these lines and it is only fear of public opinion that keeps them from courting the Germans.

As Kultura takes the same position regarding the border on the Odra and Nysa rivers as the Polish communist press: the Deutscher Ost-Dienst of January 20th this year called me ein nichtkommunistischer „Gomulkist” (non-communist follower of Gomulka). For the gentlemen at the Deutscher Ost-Dienst, any Pole defending the border on the Odra and Nysa is a collaborator of the communist regime. I would only become anti-communist in the eyes of the Ost-Dienst editors if I publicly announced that the lands along the Odra should belong to the Germans.

We are opponents of communism, as can be easily read from the columns of Kultura, but we are also pragmatic in this matter. In fact, the Americans are equally pragmatic anti-communists. From the roll-back policy to containment to diversified “coexistence”, the chart could hardly be more zigzagged. Americans fight and die in Vietnam even though free elections in that country would almost certainly give the communists a majority. On the other hand, they did not extend support to Budapest, even though a free election in Hungary would lead to a landslide for the opponents of communism. President Johnson makes the judgment that defending South Vietnam is in the interest of America, but President Eisenhower believed that an American intervention in the Hungarian uprising would threaten the interest of the United States in Europe. One may agree or disagree with these decisions, assess them positively or negatively, but in both cases both presidents were solely guided by a pragmatic understanding of the interest of the United States.

An assessment of interests is subject to error. Nonetheless, a pragmatist who is not looking through the lens of ideology stands a better chance than a doctrinarian of noticing a mistake and changing the policy in time. A need to change an aspect of policy does not terrify a pragmatist because he knows that the only invariant in this game is the national and state interest. Everything else must be variable and moveable depending on the circumstances because that is the only way to properly cater for and secure the national and state interest.

To prevent being accused of promoting the principles of “right or wrong–my country”, “the ends justify the means”, etc., allow me to note that ethics and moralising do not fall within the scope of politics. Moral arguments are always proposed by the defeated. Winners very rarely mention morality and ethics. It should also be emphasised that ethical criteria, even in old and stable religions, are subject to significant change. Charłamp believed that having slain so many heretics, Wołodyjowski pleased the Lord Jesus more than a priest with his sermons. In that day and age this was a popular view. If Wołodyjowski arose from his grave, he would believe that a crusade should be organised against the godless communist powers. He would be most disappointed to find that the Pope would be the first to oppose such a project.

The goal of politics is to define the state and national interest, and to seek ways to satisfy and secure it to the greatest extent possible. Mixing political and ethical interest ill serves both politics and ethics. The citizens, however, have the right to demand the appropriate moral and ethical standing of their political representatives. In democratically governed countries, the ethical standards of politicians generally correspond to the average standards of that society. The higher the average standards, the higher the standards of the political representatives. A country in which fraud, bribery, and disdain for the rule of law prevail, cannot expect that free and democratic elections will suddenly bless it with a government of just and honest politicians.

Years ago, in one of the first episodes of the Notebook of a Leisurely Passer-by (Pol.: Notatnik niespiesznego przechodnia), in describing his travels in Germany immediately after its surrender, Paweł Hostowiec noted a rebirth of the Iliad among the surviving anti-Hitler German intelligentsia. Amidst the rubble of old Europe, German intellectuals wanted to reach the source and reinforce themselves with a sense of continuity of Western European culture.

Human physical adaptability is astounding. When the traditional social viewpoints on which they were raised collapse, the same human that easily accepts the state of weightlessness in a spaceship will grasp at the Iliad or the Holy Bible, or even the Books of Pilgrimage or Kraszewski if they are Polish.

Kultura is not quite an exception to this. When I browse copies of our magazine from past years it seems to me that we reacted slowly, that it was not very often–in fact, too rarely–that we changed the political form, that we did not always catch up intellectually with the speed of change in situations, and we preferred to reach for the Polish Iliads rather than drafting plans based on an analysis of cold reality.

Towards the end of World War II, the bottom fell out of the world of which the First and Second Commonwealth were component parts. Dmowski’s and Piłsudski’s concepts–not to mention older ideas–lost their frames of reference and became the history of bygone times. Germany and Russia exist as they did before, but both of those countries became parts of completely transformed European and global systems.

For any Polish political concept the frame of reference was Europe. Even when we were not on the map, Europe was the frame of reference for everything we did. Unfortunately, the Europe of our leaders, politicians, and thinkers no longer exists. The Berlin Wall separates American soldiers from the Russian soldiers, who symbolise an occupation turned into a system.

Many Poles do not realise that if you wish to restore the meaning of those very recent political concepts, you first need to rebuild the European frame of reference, i.e., evacuate the Americans and Russians and reinstate the situation from 30 years ago. This is a task beyond the capability of Europeans. Our super-partners, i.e., Russia and the United States, show no desire at all to restore an autonomous Europe from 1939 with the Russians at the border.

At the same time the axis of the global conflict has shifted from Europe to Asia. I am inclined to believe that in the next few years we are in for a series of Asian, rather than European, wars.

I wish to reemphasise the exceptional character of the situation in which it has befallen on our generation to live. We have lost not just our independence but also the Europe within whose framework we could win and rebuild our independence. All Polish political concepts and doctrines became anachronistic, not because they were false but because they have lost the frame of reference upon which they were founded.

I am convinced that Poland and the countries of Eastern Europe will regain independence in some form. I do not believe, however, that our continent will return to a situation comparable to the arrangement in 1939. Consequently, I do not believe in the political applicability of any Polish political doctrines or concepts arising from the arrangement before September 1939.

We are not the only ones who have found ourselves in such a predicament. England may not have lost its independence, but the frame of reference of its traditional politics collapsed along with the world that ceased to exist in 1939. In English politics, traditional, anachronous views clash with efforts to seek new solutions. England has not yet found either its position or a new heading on the map of the post-war era.

In historical and political thinking, it is extremely difficult to escape the enchanted wheel of memories and analogies. For most émigré Poles, the possibility of the downfall of the Soviets evokes images of the situation in 1918. The Soviets occupy all of Eastern Europe, and consequently the collapse of this occupant giant in one form or another would necessarily bring liberation and independence.

Alas, no analogy whatsoever exists between the downfall and decomposition of contemporary Soviet Russia and the situation that arose near the end of World War I. From the Polish perspective, 1918 marked not only the dismantling of the tsarist Russia but also the military defeat of imperial Germany and imperial Austria. The coincidence of the fall of the three occupiers in the partition [of Poland] engendered exceptional circumstances.

It is difficult to imagine a situation that would somehow be analogous to 1918. Even if a war with the Soviets, or with the Soviets and China, were to break out, as the principal European ally of the United States, this time Germany would be on the right side of the firing line.

Why is a war against the Soviets in Europe unlikely? On June 10th this year, photographs subtitled “US Navy” appeared in the American press. Those official photographs, made by reconnaissance aircraft of the US Navy, present nuclear Soviet submarines on permanent patrol along the Eastern and Western coasts of America. According to the published information, the Soviet nuclear submarines are equipped with 3-6 nuclear missiles with a range of 350 miles.

Amid the reports and photographs from the theatre of war in Vietnam, the information did not cause any reverberations or comment. Yet it is a return to the “Cuban” situation of October 1962, because the USA has once again found itself within the reach of medium-range Soviet nuclear missiles. In practice this also means that if the United States struck first and destroyed intercontinental missile silos, airfields, ports etc. in the Soviet territory, they would still not avoid nuclear retaliation by the Soviets. In this way the scales of the balance of terror have been evened out.

In my opinion the Russians would not use nuclear weapons first. What use have they for a Europe turned into radioactive rubble? In relation to Western European countries, the Soviets have a significant superiority in conventional warfare and they would count on victory without total destruction.

I cannot imagine the president of the United States (whoever it may be at the given moment) ordering the nuclear bombardment of the Soviets in order to halt aggression in Europe that was initiated with conventional warfare. Such a decision, which would cause prompt retaliation and consequently the destruction of American cities, could only be undertaken in two cases; either against an opponent incapable of nuclear retaliation (China) or against Russia if it resorted to nuclear missiles first.

Overall, the security of Western Europe relies not only and not specifically on the American nuclear “umbrella”, but rather, first and foremost, on an authentic pacifist attitude of the Soviets on that front. The Soviets do not plan to occupy France, Belgium, or the Netherlands. They have their hands full with Eastern Europe, and Moscow’s attitude towards the West in Europe is purely defensive.

Of all the possible military conflicts, an American-Chinese armed conflict is the most likely. An American defeat in Vietnam may only precipitate the conflict. Americans will not lose the battle of Vietnam in Vietnam, but if they do lose it they will do so at home. A defeat in Vietnam and, most of all, the snowballing ramifications of such a disaster would convince public opinion in the United States that the vital interest and the security of America are at risk. The French could withdraw from Indochina, even from Algiers: Americans cannot withdraw from the Pacific. The alternative to American global politics is chaos.

If an American-Chinese armed conflict was ever to erupt directly or indirectly, then I believe the Soviets would remain de facto neutral. For the purpose of propaganda they would scorn the American “aggression”; they would offer China technical aid on terms that were difficult for Beijing to accept and that would be it.

The Russians would exploit America’s involvement in Asia to strengthen their position in Europe. Perhaps in confidential talks they would demand that Washington, as a condition of its neutrality, acknowledges the status quo in Europe, including a waiver on the matter of German unification. The greater the American engagement and difficulty in Asia, the higher the price for the Soviet neutrality would be. Undoubtedly the Soviets would gain nothing by significantly supporting China, but such neutrality would only bring them benefits.

The purpose of the above discussion is to demonstrate that in Europe there are no indications towards war, demonstrations of power, or any actions aimed at undermining the position of the Soviets. The Yalta status quo in Europe is epitomised by the “German issue”. All the Western allies of Germany, including America, bemoan the division of Germany yet none will risk ten bucks to change the status quo. Likewise, everyone bemoans the satellite status of Eastern Europe but in practice no one will lift a finger to change this situation. A provisional arrangement has turned into a system that, for the world powers, has the advantage that it can be continued without risk. Any other system would need to be worked out, perhaps even fought for.

If the analysis presented above is correct we are left to our own resources, both today and in the near future. The evolutionist program, which Kultura proposed two years ago, stems from a similar assessment of the situation.

To what extent have our predictions and expectations from the time been proven right?

The situation in the Soviet Union is neither evolutionary nor revolutionary; it is only a crisis. It is not evolutionary because there is no commonality of goals between society and the leadership; neither is it revolutionary as the pressure is still too weak and too peacefully restricted in proportion to the means of coercion that the party has at its disposal. Widespread dissatisfaction and deep ferment among the intelligentsia (even the technical intelligentsia) would have been enough to produce a revolutionary situation within tsarist Russia. The modern communist dictatorship, however, is in a different league.

In his secret paper presented at the 20th Congress, Khrushchev quoted Voroshilov's statement: “Whenever Stalin invited me for dinner, I was never sure if I would return home or to prison.”

A return to Stalinism would be a deadly threat to the lives of not only the Sinyavskys and Daniels, but also for the Kosygins and Podgornys. Far more outstanding and honourable communists than Kosygin and Podgorny died in the dungeons of Stalin’s NKVD. The Stalinist type of terror must be total; it must affect a street sweeper equally well as a member of the Central Committee. If it were possible to apply absolute terror to second-category citizens while ensuring safety to the elite, Soviet Russia would have had such a political system long ago. This is impossible, however. Absolute terror can be realised only by an absolute ruler–an autocrat, a dictator.

Destalinisation was not an expression of caring for the common man. Rather, it was guided by the interests of the ruling elite. Mrs Khrushchev, Voroshilov, Kosygin and others wanted to be assured that–figuratively speaking–they would return home from dinners and receptions rather than to prison. Departure from the absolutist autocratic dictatorship meant giving up total terror. The Soviets are a police state, but no one has it in their power now to act as Stalin did.

The essence of the Soviet crisis is that the forces of social pressure are still too weak to cause a definitive transformation, but the apparatus of violence directed by the governing elite is too weak to squash the ferment and silence opponents.

Party leaders think it is possible to have an economy that is simultaneously both semi-pragmatic and a fully doctrinally driven sociology. They also think that it is possible to fully rehabilitate the motive of profit and a market mechanism in an industrial economy while conducting purely doctrinally driven agriculture.

Where opponents are too weak and too few to cause real change and the ruling elite is too weak to eliminate ferment and opposition, neither evolution nor revolution are realistic propositions. The only outcome of such a situation can be a deepening crisis, overall anarchy, and chaos. This picture can be completed with a nationality issue and the increasing isolation of Russia. The court proceedings and the ruling on the Sinyavsky and Daniel case were met with critical opinions from Western communist parties. For the first time in history, the entire left wing in the West, including the communist parties, opposed the Soviet system in solidarity. On the part of the Soviets this was not just a crime but a disastrous political error. The modern Soviet model is neither the Chinese nor European one. In essence, it is a conglomerate of communities that cannot last long in its present form.

The decomposition of the Soviet Union as a result of mounting internal troubles would engender a situation similar to that of 1918, but such a decomposition would be no good omen for us.

Extreme nationalism, revisionism, and neo-Hitlerism are presently unrealistic in Germany and hence enjoy little popularity. The dissolution of the Soviet Union would result in chaos all over Eastern Europe. Real and specific prospects would suddenly open for German nationalism, revisionism, even neo-Hitlerism. We would lose not just the Recovered Territories but a lot more.

I realise that the views I wish to formulate go against the grain of the traditional opinions of most Poles. The majority, however, never has a monopoly on being right.

All our political concepts have lost their frame of reference and become useless. In the present world system, which is vastly different from the arrangement before 1939, Polish policy for independence needs to be redefined.

The “superpower” arrangement–meaning “neither with Russia nor with Germany”–is unrealistic both now and in the foreseeable future. The last echo of the “between Russia and Germany but neither with Russia nor with Germany” was disengagement and the neutral belt project in Central and Eastern Europe. We supported this project for as long as there was even a one-in-a-thousand chance of its implementation.

The idea of a Polish-Czechoslovakian-Hungarian confederation, which Kultura has always supported, seems less and less realistic as a result of German politics. Neither Czechoslovakia nor Hungary wants to tie itself to Poland, which has a feud with Germany. The Federal Republic of Germany would have to officially recognise the borders on the Odra and Nysa and to waive any revisionist pretensions in order for the idea of a Polish-Czechoslovakian-Hungarian confederation to take shape as a realistic project.

I believe that the USA’s military and economic engagement in Asia will grow in the years to come, regardless of the outcome of the Vietnam campaign. The division of the world into the rich and the poor determines the politics not only of the poor, but also of the rich. Soviet Russia and the United States, as highly industrialised superpowers, have a factor in common that determines their politics, and this factor is stronger than ideological divisions. In confrontation with the poor and weak, the powerful always share a common line of action in some areas, notwithstanding the flag or ideology. The Chinese understand this perfectly well. It is just the Polish politicians in Poland and abroad who cannot figure it out.

In a world ruled by a rich and powerful United States there would be a place for a rich and powerful Soviet Russia. In a world ruled by the Chinese, Soviet Russia would drop down the ranking of powers to a lower position and the fate of Russians would be dire.

It is difficult to expect evolution, liberalisation, or democratisation from the Russians if we, their closest neighbour, do not exhibit the slightest willingness to eschew prejudices and change our traditional attitude. In his recent discussion on British-American relationships, John Grigg, one of the most intelligent columnists of The Guardian, wrote:

“Due to the size of the United States and the psychology of the Americans, the so-called ‘special relationship’ can only be one of a master and servant”.

Grigg’s description is unobjective and filled with bitterness. Still, I think that, while Poland’s geopolitical situation is one of the most difficult in the world, it has many specific parameters that would allow it to build its ‘special relationship’ with Russia on a basis other than that of a master and servant. We are the largest Slavic nation with a Latin and Western culture. To some extent, we potentially represent–in a less outlandish, more brotherly form–the very things the Russians are lacking.

We are unable to build a special relationship with Russia or with the West. The attitude of Communist Poland (PPR) to Russia is a typical relationship between servant and master. Relationships between the PPR and the West are simply non-existent.

We would only capitalise upon our extremely challenging geopolitical placement if, in the future, we convinced the Russians that we could be the main intermediary between Moscow and the West. At the same time we would need to convince the West that Poland is the key to Russia.

Terts, Arzhak and many others, whom we need not mention by name at this point, have addressed us by choice, not by accident. Those people are righteous Russians and did not want to commit treason. They have not committed it. In turning to us they knew well that they are not addressing enemies of Russia and of the Russian nation. On the contrary, they were sure that they were establishing contacts with a freedom-oriented Polish institution that promotes the idea of closer ties and agreement between Poland and Russia. This agreement becomes a realistic proposition when a major percentage of Poles agree with Kultura’s views on the matter, and a majority of Russians agree with the attitude of their anti-Stalinist writers and underground activists.

I am profoundly pragmatic, which leads me to posit that this is not “wishful thinking”. Even in the second half of the 20th century, with all the sputniks and hydrogen bombs, the word is the chief instrument of political action. In printing Terts and Arzhak and making their writings available to the world we have done more, in a purely political sense, than all Polish émigré institutions over the last 25 years.

The word is the chief instrument of political action because, all in all, to be victorious means not to conquer but to win over. To win over means to convince. One can only win someone over, not force anyone to achieve true cooperation.

We must always remember that the Russian communism is a special issue. Russian intellectuals, even those with the most critical attitude towards communism, take the idea of a “capitalist siege” as a fact and are convinced that all assaults on Russia came from the West.

In his excellent book Russia and Germany – a Century of Conflict, Walter Laqueur writes that one day, during his stay in the Soviet Union, when driving through a Moscow suburb he noticed a small column. Intrigued, he asked his fellow passenger what the monument meant. He was told that the column marked the furthest point reached by the Germans in November 1941.

The Germans were also anti-communist and remain so to this day, maintaining their revisionist pretensions. Anti-communism, which is equivalent to a programme of taking Russia apart into pieces and significantly weakening it in relation to Germany–not only fails to deepen the ferment in the Soviets but largely quenches it. One cannot be an anti-communist if anti-communism is equivalent to betraying not only ideological but also national interests. Such are the lines of the Soviet propaganda–those of us who promote the need to pull apart the Soviet Union play in the hands not of the Arzhaks and Terts’s but of their judges and prosecutors. Soviet Russia must be reconstructed into a true confederated union or a looser commonwealth–but the generation of Kosigins will not make that happen. At the moment, the fight is not for the redesign of the Soviet Union but for the redesign of communism, i.e., full destalinisation.

Communism certainly evolves, but so far it has evolved within the confines of the doctrine. In Stalin’s times, Terts and Arzhak would have been executed and Western communist parties would have outdone each other in slinging mud at both of the ill-fated writers. A lot has changed, and this should be appreciated as these are very important changes. However, it will not be possible to answer with authority the question of whether communism is capable of evolution before the tenets of the doctrine are revised. Nowadays, any criticism–even of the most anachronistic rudiments of Marxism–is considered counter-revolutionary propaganda.

We propose an evolutionary program for two reasons. Firstly, the situation in the European eastern bloc is conducive to evolution. In this struggle between the forces of social pressure and the police apparatus of the party, the chance of success is undoubtedly on the side of the opponents. The extent of the ferment can be broadened and deepened, and the social pressure can be intensified, but it would be extremely difficult to respond to the intensified pressure by restoring Stalinist methods. If the pressure grew, the party would begin to fall back. If one begins to withdraw, sooner or later you reach a point of no return.

An evolutionary, peaceful approach also seems to us to be most compatible with the Polish interest. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and chaos in Eastern Europe are certainly not in Poland’s best interest.

Eastern Europeans, and above all the Poles, could play an important role in the process of the “Europeanisation” of Russia. A prerequisite for that, however, is to convince and assure the Russians, in particular the Russian intelligentsia, that by Europeanisation we understand only the abolition of totalitarianism, not the removal of Russia as a superpower.

Kultura 1966, no. 4/222

English translation by Piotr Sut