Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999, by Timothy Snyder. 2003. Yale University Press, New Haven and London

Timothy Snyder: Some Kresy-Related Events Involving Poland

The author, a historian, discusses many topics. I focus on some of his more insightful comments.

POLAND HAD A RIGHT TO VILNIUS (WILNO, VILNA) IN 1920

Timothy Snyder has an excellent grasp of this subject. He writes, “Back in 1920 Lithuanian national activists knew perfectly well that there were almost no Lithuanians in Vilnius. Their claim to the city was historical and political. It took the education policies of interwar and Soviet Lithuania for people to ‘learn’ that Vilnius was an ethnically Lithuanian city when it was seized by Poland in 1920. Likewise, in 1920 Pilsudski and Zeligowski annexed Wilno not as nationalist Poles, nor as enemies of Lithuania, but as Polish Lithuanians. They were operating not within the paradigm of ‘ethnic’ nation-states, but imagining that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania could be resurrected as a federation. Seven decades later, these motives and identifications are forgotten.” (p. 271).

SOVIET ARCHIVES UNDERSTATE THE 1939-1941 DEPORTEES

Traditionally, the number of deported Poles was put at 1.0-1.5 million. However, Soviet archives admit only 330,000. While Snyder stops short of explicitly recognizing Soviet archives as falsified, he realizes that as many as hundreds of thousands of other Poles were not counted in the Soviet archival figures. Thus, Snyder writes, “A minimum figure of 330,000 is now certain on the basis of Soviet documents: the question remains as to how many more tens or hundreds of thousands were deported outside the major actions, as prisoners of war, forced labor, etc.” (p. 322).

THE OUN’S PRE-EXISTING FASCIST-EXTERMINATIONIST IDEOLOGY CAUSED THE 1943-1944 GENOCIDE OF POLES

Snyder uses the weasel words “ethnic cleansing” in place of what it should be called–genocide–but otherwise understands the fact that the Ukrainian mass murder of mostly-civilian Poles was unilateral, and in no sense a “Polish-Ukrainian war”, which only came later. He comments, “But the preemptive strikes against Poles envisioned by the OUN-Bandera in early 1943 were not military operations but ethnic cleansing. As we have seen, even before the war the OUN accepted a totalistic form of integral nationalism, according to which Ukrainian statehood required ethnic homogeneity…” (p. 168).

RUSSIAN CLAIMS AGAINST POLAND’S FORMER KRESY WERE AND ARE BOGUS

Author Timothy Snyder comments, “In philosophy, the Polish approach was strikingly different from the Russian presumption that Ukraine and Belarus are stray ‘Russian’ lands because all three ‘descend’ from Kyivan Rus’ [Kievan Rus]. By now we know that there is no historical basis for such a view: the lands of contemporary Belarus and Ukraine were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1289-1795) and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795) after the disintegration of Kyivan Rus’.” (p. 261).

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For reviews of other books by historian Timothy Snyder about Poland, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/ukrainians-exploited-by-poles-debunked-snyder/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/genocides-of-poles-summarized-snyder/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/polonophobic-memes-repeated-by-snyder/