Frants Charnyshevich

The historical experience of a nation is an interesting thing. It is impossible to build the national identity and to comprehend your place and purpose in space and time without it. At the same time this experience may become a source of many phobias which can significantly limit nation’s opportunities for further development. Belarusians are not an exception to the rule in this case.
Fear is proper to the human being, as well as to communities in which people unite. Fear to lose resources accumulated over long years or fear to be stripped of one’s own identity by foreigners generates a number of ghosts in public mind, many of which, as this skeleton in the closet, hid in the same historical experience because memory about some threats is passed on from generation to generation.
Some phobias are proper to some groups of population only; others penetrate all strata of the society. One of our long-playing nationwide ghosts is the “Polish issue”. Not only Moscow-oriented and loyal to the authorities Slavophils-easterners suffer from polonophobia, but also some part of the independent society, even those who belong to Europe-oriented supporters of the Belarusian language and culture and periodically receive support from Polish sources. The struggle for the independent European Belarus in a remarkable way does not preclude them from reminding to themselves and their fellows from time to time about the “Polish intrigue”. Inexperienced visitor of many Internet-forums may believe sometimes that the ghost of Marshal Piłsudski planes somewhere nearby.
We are neither the first ones nor the last ones to go through testing by our neighbors. When I read some comments on the Net I remembered the famous sapper Vodicka from the immortal novel by Hašek with his star sentence: “You do not know Magyars at all, bro, how many times I have told you this! You must keep your eyes open with them.” Within the Austro-Hungarian Empire such attitude towards Hungarians was proper for nationalists-mladocechy as well as for those who every morning was reading with pleasure the “gip” – this is how the main official newspaper of the empire was called among the people. That phobia, i.a., disappeared after the Czechs created their own State, unlike polonophobia which continues to clutter up the brains of our citizens after 1991.
Do political elites and common citizens of Poland indeed nurture wicked designs of returning their former “kresy”, even after having joined the united Europe? During the recent meeting of Belarusian journalists – winners of the contest “Poland 89 – Belarus 91: inequivalent changes” organized by the Warsaw Center for International Relations (CSM) this question – with some dose of irony – was asked on repeated occasions. And the answer was given repeatedly as well: the situation differs from how we see it from the other side of the eastern border. Sentiments are sentiments, but they are nothing more than mere words: the majority of Poles – common men of the street, politicians, and businessmen – are knowingly oriented towards the West, and not the East.
A certain role is also played by historic ignorance of the young generation, the very generation that will possess the country in fifteen to twenty years. According to Marek Ostrowski, one of the editors of the influential Polish weekly Polityka, if one goes out to the streets of Warsaw or a provincial town like Pacanów and asks about Belarus and its historic connections with Poland, only a handful of young people will have a good grasp of it.
In the opinion of Polityka’s journalists, in the last years the movement of Poles to the West assumes a really popular character. It is not merely the migration to the Great Britain, the United States or Ireland. Polish citizens literally occupy depressive near-border German regions, some areas of which were abandoned in favor of the western part of the country by up to forty per cent of the working-age population. “Kresy” is nothing when in former GDR towns one can buy an accurate German house with flowers at the price of a one-room apartment in Wroclaw or Zielona Góra. And places of fortunate owners of German real estate are taken by unlucky fellows from near the “eastern wall” – this is how the border with Ukraine and Belarus is called by Poles. Our Brest and Hrodna do not have even theoretical prospects for any migration from Poland.
Amputated legs and hands surely ache after anesthesia goes away but the pain passes off over time and finally a moment comes when the person forgets at one point the absence of one or another extremity. Poles do not feel the pain of that loss anymore, probably with exception of radicals from the marginal League of Polish Families or regular listeners of the ultraconservative Radio Maryja. This is why if our country simplifies the visa and trade regimes to the maximum extent no “creeping expansion” to our western regions would happen. But everybody would be with profit. Local budgets would be replenished due to nostalgic and business tourism which is impeded by the visa regime. For a Pole who forgot already that a travel abroad means getting a visa the only thought about a visit to the Belarusian Embassy is discouraging from traveling in our direction.
Every subsequent visit to Poland strengthen me in my conviction that the polonophobia is an illness from which we, Belarusians, suffer totally in vain because, in fact, long since we do not have to be afraid of a harsh mustached man in the quadrangular cap. All the T’s were crossed long time ago in our relations with Poland. They were crossed during all our common history, sometimes by mutual blood and hatred, sometimes by miscommunication and unwillingness to listen to one another. Probably it was impossible to get round this period. Every nation, when it is being formed, opposes itself to the neighboring nation according to the formula “we are not them, they are not us, so who are we?” Belarusians know that they are not Poles and will never become them. So what do we continue to suffer for?
The experience of ancestors inoculated Belarusians well against Polonization. It is worth to have a closer look at how our compatriots from Białystok region, who have many more reasons to fear the loss of their identity, feel about it. An interesting fact: during the last population census a civil organization appealed representatives of national minorities to get registered in the following way: “I am Ukrainian – I am Pole, I am Belarusian – I am Pole, I am Jewish – I am Pole, etc.” Many agreed, only Belarusians refused. Their answer was simple: “We’ve been there already”, because the formula “gente Lituanus, natione polonus” is known to Belarusians since the times of King Stanisław Poniatowski.
Probably, right are those who speak about the role of phobias in sustaining institutes and values which are present in the society. The Russian sociologist Gudkov reaffirms that “fear in this case becomes one of the manifestations of a more general mechanism of the negative self-identification, an evidence of conviction in the idea that a normal life is only partly controlled by an individual, that it can be much worse than now”. Fear of a deceptive unpredictable Future provokes a desire to support the one who will secure you against its negative consequences – the mighty State, the emperor, the “father of nations”, etc. This is why resiliency of the Belarusian social model is impossible without existence of numerous phobias. When fear disappears, the need in the State patronage disappears as well. This is why the Soviet (and not only Soviet) propaganda tried to sustain historic fears of Belarusians on the adequate level, so that they knew who was able to protect them from potential “bloodthirsty invaders”.
As for Poles… We are not them, and they are not us. The T has been crossed. The reboot of relations is inevitable. We only have to be ready for it, and not to spoil the moment by awkward phobias, because less we have them, more we are a nation.