European and Regional Integration Concepts in Poland (1789–2004)

Abstract

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of the largest states in early Modern Europe. Its internal public law structure was complex and had several federal features. The existence of different levels of autonomy was no stranger to him. Many nations and denominations (churches) were mixed in this state, which ceased to exist at the end of the 18th century, but the ideal of independent Polish statehood lived on. In the 19th century, several Polish independence uprisings broke out, mostly against the Russians, but none of them were successful. Various concepts were born among Polish politicians; these often dealt with a Central and Eastern European federation with Polish leadership. In the first half of the 19th century, the Poles held Slavic solidarity concepts that sought to reconcile Slavic Poles and Russians. These concepts were popular mainly among the conservative and romantic intellectuals. In time, however, Slavic solidarity took a back seat. In the second half of the 19th century, the Polish socialist movement was born, which sought more moderate national politics toward the Belarus, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian national movements and wanted to unite some nations of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in a fairer federation. These ideas were also close to Józef Piłsudski, under whose leadership Poland again became an independent state at the end of 1918. He arrived from the Polish Socialist Party, and during the First World War, he organized the Polish legions. At a similar time in tsarist Russia, the Polish National Democratic Party was the second important political movement in the early 20th century. This nationalist movement was born in tsarist Russia and propagated the rebirth of Poland in the form of a smaller but more Polish national state. Roman Dmowski, a leader of the NDP, had a conflict with Piłsudski that was an important conceptional problem of the second Polish Republic in the interwar period. The new Poland was big state with regional ambitions, but it had two dangerous neighbors—Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Polish leaders therefore had to think about various federal alternatives, most of which revolved around solidarity in Central and Eastern Europe. Such were the Intermarium or Jagellonian plans. The Polish tragedy during the Second World War and Soviet dominance after 1945 only reinforced these ideas. Many Polish intellectuals began to see the future in European unity, although such ideas existed as early as the 19th century. Some of the Polish emigration to Paris worked to reconcile them with the peoples of Eastern Europe (Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Belarusians). The journal Kultura played the crucial role in this process. Poland after 1989 again plays an important European role in three regional contexts: Central Europe, the Baltic Sea, and North-Eastern Europe.