Poland and Russia: The Perennial Question

Abstract

greater than her actual power would seem to have warranted. At St. Helena, Napoleon spoke of Poland as a ccle de voute' of the European edifice, belatedly admitting that he should have made fuller use of this country in furthering his plans. In the twentieth century, the Polish question rose to the centre of European politics on several occasions. In the First World War, as a German historian put it, 'Poland was [for Berlin] not only a war aim, but also the key to Germany's hegemony in Europe.51 At the height of the Polish-Soviet war, Winston Churchill called Poland the 'linchpin of the Versailles Treaty,' and France's premier Alexandre Millerand wrote that the future of European civilization was 'at stake on the banks of the Vistula.'2 Be it at the Congress of Vienna, the Paris Peace Conference, or at Yalta, the Polish problem occupied a crucial place in the debates among the powers, provoking conflicts and tensions. How do we explain this phenomenon? The pre-partition Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, which was one of the largest European countries, did not bask in the limelight of international controversy. Paradoxically, the partitioning of Poland by the three powers, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in the late eighteenth century in a sense created the 'Polish Question' which has ever since1921-39 being somewhat of an exception plagued international relations like a ghost that refuses to be exorcized.3 While the importance of the partitions is still not fully perceived by many authors of western history textbooks, their long-range impact on European developments can hardly be over-