I don’t know what happened.
All I know is that explanations go from atmospheric mist to ideological mist, from engineering malfunctions to xenophobic pathology.
This is what happens when historical memory is regarded as an attempt to get even.
Putting an end to this squaring of accounts appears quite simple. Aleksandr Torshin, first deputy chairman of the Council of the Russian Federation, suggested that Russian and Polish politicians close the Katyn subject over the coffins of the Polish leadership — and then, on May 9, under Stalin’s portraits.
Therefore, the Katyn subject appears to have just been broached.
I don’t know what happened. What I know is that the Polish elite was once again killed by hatred, as in 1794 when Kosciuszko led the rebellion, as during the November 1830 and January 1863 uprisings. The Polish elite was destroyed by official — and not only official — Russia’s hatred of freedom-loving peoples, peoples aware of their national identity and with a sense of dignity.
Long before Katyn, Poland was repeatedly forced to maintain its “lasting friendship” backed by Russian bayonets. “Poland destiny’s been solved,” wrote Pushkin and promised Europe: “Poland will no longer lead you; / You will step over its bones!…” The liberal Vasili Zhukovsky, who played a major role in Taras Shevchenko’s life, eulogized [Russia’s] occupation of rebellious Warsaw in merry verse: “What do we care about your palisades? / We won’t have to use ladders. / We’ll sink our bayonets into your walls /And climb your walls on them.” Tyutchev solemnly described the death of Warsaw: “We dealt grief-stricken Warsaw a deadly blow, /We had to pay this blood-shedding price / For solid Russia’s peace and quiet.” And added: “Trust the Russian people’s word: / We shall hold precious your ashes…”
After the Orange Revolution (tagged as a Polish-US conspiracy), Russia instituted a new holiday: National Unity Day — an allusion to the liberation of Moscow from Polish troops in 1612, during the Time of Troubles. “Russian marches” brandishing swastikas and red banners are staged on Russian city streets, under slogans calling for destroying “all this scum, all those Latvias, Polands, Ukraines, and Georgias.” Ruthless sociological studies point to five main enemies of the Russian people: the US, the Baltic states, Georgia, Ukraine, and Poland.
The recent Kremlin-financed multimillion budget blockbuster 1612 [full Russian title: “1612: Chronicle of the Time of Trouble”] portrays Poland as emissary of a hostile Europe that attempts to Catholicize Russia, which remains true to “divine Orthodoxy.” The peak of political indecorousness is the usage of Polish that sounds like a hissing snake. In a scene where this subject is discussed a black snake slithers across the screen while an Orthodox parish priest reads the Bible with a ladybug innocently sitting on its cover. This movie is said to have been made in retaliation for Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn.
In recent years an increasing number of publications have appeared in Russia, accusing Poland of using the Katyn subject to create a “national propaganda and ideological system,” and of bolstering allegedly anti-Russian moods within society.
Suffice it to recall Yurii Mukhin’s book The Katyn Detective Story (reprinted in 2003 under the title “Anti-Russian Meanness”), in which the author tries to prove that the Polish officers were massacred not by Russians but by Germans who thus staged a “propaganda show” (sic). And that because of this show the “Polish szlachta scum,” and “Polish scoundrels emerged as ‘champions of the struggle against totalitarianism,’ despite the fact that it made Poles looked increasingly stupid in the eyes of the entire world.”
Europe is also described with affection: “…the European hyena is gnashing its teeth, waiting for a tasty morsel.” Russian film critic Denis Gorelov, on the contrary, condemned Stalin and even went so far as to call him a jackass for ordering the Polish army elite shot, because “it wasn’t an army, just as a landscape with spurs.” He ended on this note: “A Pole walking down the scaffold cuts a comical figure.”
I am horrified to read Internet forums commenting on the tragic death of the Polish leadership. Whereas Ukrainian websites mostly express solidarity and understanding of the horrible loss, the Russian and Russian-language ones in Ukraine sound triumphant: “This is a clear signal to all Russophobes on the planet, especially the Poles: Stop your policy or you will be buried with honors or in parts… There will be many shows, for they haven’t realized that Katyn is a place of sacrifice, like the grave of Tutankhamen: try to open it and it will bury you. In fact, the FSB has shown top-notch professionalism, liquidating a gang of Russophobes without a trace of incriminating evidence… Ridding this world of all kinds of scum has been the age-old duty of the Russian people… Hey, folks! Kaczynski lived like a dog and died like one. Let’s better discuss soccer!… I don’t give a damn about this mourning! Yanek (i.e., Yanukovych — Author) appears to be getting stupid, staging this mourning over a bunch of Polacks… This circus is driving me nuts (signed Beria)… What Susanin left unfinished was finished by God! How long can one let Poles trample on the Smolensk land starting from the 17th century? (also fittingly signed Achtung)… they had it coming… the grim symbolism of this plane crash is that sooner or later Polish warriors meet their end in the Russian land. That’s what happened during the Time of Troubles, including at Smolensk… Kaczynski, together with the top military of Poland, head of the secret police, Russophobe historians from the Institute of National Memory, wanted to stage a celebration of victory over Russians in our land. Well, it didn’t work.”
Why it didn’t work? Because “There is God and He is on our side!” History goes in circles. One is strongly reminded of Gott mit uns, a Teutonic motto later carved on Wehrmacht soldiers’ belt buckles.
Aleksandr Dugin, an ideologue of neo-Eurasianism, said once: “Even a crime committed by us is unsurpassably above someone else’s virtue.”
Thank God, there are other publications. Naturally, these belong to the opposition, the last bulwark of European Russia.
Even assuming that [the tragedy occurred because of] the fog, that the stubborn Kaczynski refused to land in Minsk because the ethnic Polish community was persecuted by Lukashenko, or in Moscow because he had received no invitation from Putin, the sad fact remains: Russia is tragically backward despite Leontiev’s assurances that it will become a “supercivilization” and the “nucleus of the new world.” With a military airfield in the same condition as during WW II, with a Polish president flying on board of an old Soviet jet because he does not steal money from his people, unlike Ukrainian and Russian politicians who use the world’s most expensive Western car and aircraft models while criticizing the West in all ways possible.
That is why this systemic hatred of Poland against the background of this tragic incident is a manifestation of [Russia’s] weakness, not strength, as well as provincial backwardness. A truly strong country behaves in a more decorous and considerate manner.
Under the Soviets there was a crude joke: “If you regard a trip to Poland as a trip abroad, then pigs can fly.”
Poland today is more abroad for us than France or Spain because its wounds are still open, because Poland remembers, because its European identity is alive, dramatic, dynamic, and because Poland is an advanced European country. Analysts say it will shortly take a big step forward, toward prosperity.
Poles are mourning for the dead, but as in centuries past, Poland will pull itself together and become even stronger and more determined.
However, the disintegration of the Slavic world will continue, as will that of the Orthodox world. All peoples in the European East are either members of or headed for the EU, at times having to overcome aggressive resistance — as in the case of Ukraine — on the part of Russia and its allies, the most backward fragments of the Soviet Union.
Back in 1963, John F. Kennedy proclaimed, Ich bin ein Berliner. This winged phrase was meant in support of the residents of the city and Germany after the Soviets built the Berlin Wall.
When the Orange Revolution was in full swing in Ukraine, Europeans said, “We are all Ukrainians.”
All of us people of good will who believe in a democratic future of our country must tell ourselves, “We are all Poles!”
And to the Poles: Za wasza i nasza wolnosc! For your freedom and ours!
And for your memory and ours.
Oxana Pachlovska is a lecturer at the La Sapienza University of Rome, a leading research fellow at the Ukrainian National Academy’s Shevchenko Institute of Literature
