A Polish Tragedy At The Heart Of Europe's Crisis

I know I’ve referenced Polish Youtuber Ania K on a number of occasions, and have probably embedded a few of her chats with the guys at The Duran. It appears that Ania is a somewhat conflicted Pole. She freely admits that she had never really considered herself a Polish patriot—until she left Poland to live abroad for 17 years. No doubt she encountered the Western attitude that Poles are subhumanly stupid—Untermenschen, so to speak. On the other hand, now that she’s embraced her Polish patriotism she is also finding herself trying to come to terms with some of Poland’s past—and present.

Earlier this week she hosted a quite lengthy Youtube discussion with the two Alexes from The Duran. The topic she really wanted to get into was the Smolensk air disaster. I’ll quote Wikipedia at some length (but only a small part of a very long and very informative article), to provide some succinct background. I’ve bolded the link to the “Katyń massacre” article because it’s crucial to understanding the significance of what happened at Smoleńsk for Poles. First Katyń:

The Katyn massacre^[a] was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by German forces.

The order to execute captive members of the Polish officer corps was secretly issued by the Soviet Politburo led by Joseph Stalin.^[1] Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the remaining 8,000 were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents and gendarmes, spies and saboteurs, former landowners, factory owners and officials".^[2] The Polish Army officer class was representative of the multi-ethnic Polish state; the murdered included ethnic Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and 700–900 Polish Jews^[3] including the chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, Baruch Steinberg.

As you can surmise, the intent of the mass executions—which were conducted on what could be termed a production line basis—was to decapitate Polish society in the Soviet occupied zone—to kill off the leadership class as a source of possible opposition to Soviet rule. The Germans followed the same policy early on, as well—killing off many educated Poles as a matter of policy (that was the initial function of the Auschwitz camp). The focus on officers followed from the fact that in Poland at that time university graduates were automatically drafted into the army as officers—they were ipso facto part of the “intelligentsia.” Therefore, beyond constituting a horrific atrocity, Katyń represents, in the Polish psyche, the Russian and Communist desire to extinguish Polish culture and Poles as a nation with a self conscious identity.

Now Smoleńsk:—the flight to Smoleńsk was en route to commemorate the Katyń massacre and on board the flight were many of the Polish ruling elite:

On 10 April 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft operating Polish Air Force Flight 101 crashed near the Russian city of Smolensk, killing all 96 people on board. Among the victims were the president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, and his wife, Maria, the former president of Poland in exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish Government officials, 18 members of the Polish Parliament, senior members of the Polish clergy, and relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre. The group was arriving from Warsaw to attend an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the massacre, which took place not far from Smolensk.

The pilots were attempting to land at Smolensk North Airport — a former military airbase — in thick fog, with visibility reduced to about 500 metres (1,600 ft). The aircraft descended far below the normal approach path until it struck trees, rolled, inverted and crashed into the ground, coming to rest in a wooded area a short distance from the runway.^[2]

Both the Russian and Polish official investigations found no technical faults with the aircraft, and concluded that the crew failed to conduct the approach in a safe manner in the given weather conditions. The Polish authorities found serious deficiencies in the organization and training of the Air Force unit involved, which was subsequently disbanded. Several high-ranking members of the Polish military resigned following pressure from politicians and the media.

Various conspiracy theories have been circulated alleging that the plane had been deliberately brought down by the Russians in an act of political assassination, with these theories also typically alleging that the 2011 investigations constituted a cover-up and that the Polish government of the time — primarily controlled by the Civic Platform party as opposed to Lech Kaczyński's Law and Justice party — was complicit in or aware of the plot or at least aided in the efforts to cover it up.^[3] While neither of the 2011 investigations reported any evidence supporting these claims, with the Polish investigation also examining whether Russian air control failures were a contributory factor in the crash,^[2] the conspiracy theories are regularly promoted by the Law and Justice party and its supporters in general^[4] and by party leader Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of Lech Kaczyński, and deputy party leader Antoni Macierewicz in particular, and were given an official veneer following the 2022 conclusion of a further investigation by the Polish government, which by then was being led by the Law and Justice party. The new report did not produce any evidence that could conclusively challenge the 2011 reports, and was later indicated to have been the subject of tampered evidence.

The conspiracy theories described by Wikipedia are completely absurd, but are widely believed among Poles. Ania herself candidly admits that, until recently, she accepted these claims. The reality is that, as Alexander Mercouris points out, that the commemoration of Katyń was supremely important for Russia and represented the climax of Putin’s years long concerted effort to effect a national reconciliation between Poland and Russia. The motive is obvious—by effecting some degree of reconciliation, by admitting the legitimacy of Polish national grievances that had long been denied by Russians, Putin hoped to establish friendly relations and thereby weaken Poland’s ties to NATO. You can read all about Polish and Russian reactions to the tragedy, which initially brought about an outpouring of good feeling between the two nations. Until the Law and Justice party, led by Lech Kaczyński’s twin brother Jarosław Kaczyński, set out to poison relations. Kaczyński himself, who has a long history of open antagonism toward both Russia and Germany, is neither president nor prime minister—he’s a bit too hot to handle for the Polish public, but leads the party.

The result of this disappointingly successful campaign to persuade Poles that Russia was behind a devilish plot to once again decapitate the Polish leadership—Smoleńsk as a repeat of Katyń—has been to greatly strengthen Polish Russophobia, support for war, and for the policy of placing all of Poland’s national security eggs in the basket of total reliance on US security guarantees. Poland is not Spain. Poland is on the front line with Russia, it sits in the middle of the North European Plain. It is at the heart of everything that’s going on in Ukraine. According to Douglas Macgregor there could be as many as 20,000 Poles in the Ukrainian military and, as we all know, Poland is the conduit for Western military supplies to Ukraine. Every passing day seems to bring yet another Polish government statement intended to outrage Russian opinion, although there are signs of growing unrest in Poland with the war (there will be elections in November). The current Polish government, however, is like the Neocons in the US—they can’t stop themselves.

With all this in mind, from about 38:00 to 44:00 of the video:

The tragedy in Smolensk 13 years later, who to blame? w/ @TheDuran

Alexander Mercouris presents an excellent explanation of the real tragedy here—and its importance for Poland and for Europe as a whole:

[38:35] Ania: What would be different now, in Polish relations with Russia, if the plane had actually landed safely in Smolensk?

AM: At the time I thought that it was obviously an accident because nobody in Russia would want to murder Lech Kaczyński, the president of Poland, the entire military leadership of Poland, so many people from Poland, and especially not in a commemoration at Katyń. I believe, by the way, that Putin himself and Medvedev ... were intending to participate in this commemoration. So that tells you how important that event was for them. It's inconceivable that they would be involved. I was sure that everybody would realize that and, eventually, after all the mourning and the investigation that established that it was an accident, Russia and Poland would put it behind them and move forward--and that the accident might actually act as an even more important bridge between the Russians and the Poles.

So I actually think ... that Smoleńsk was a major turning point, because we were heading towards some sort of reconciliation, some kind of reckoning with history, in Russia--and on the Polish side, too. I've spoken about the things the Russians have done to Poland. The Russians will no doubt come up with their own things--things they said Polish officers did during the Soviet-Polish war (1919 - 1920). I'm not going to go there, I don't know the history, but a reckoning of history between Poland and Russia, and I thought it would come. Had it come, had Poland and Russia come to an understanding then, we would not have a war in Ukraine today. It [Poland - Russia] is the single most important relationship for stabilizing Europe. This is a thing that many people don't understand.

In Poland today there seems to be race between various Polish politicians to be friends with the Neocons--which is ... a disaster. It's a disaster for Poland because it's going to tie Poland to Neocon adventures that always turn out bad. The Neocons, for their part, will want to use Poland because, as far as they're concerned, [Poland] is just another piece on the chess board. In the meantime, the relationship between Poland and Russia will be further inflamed and exacerbated. Whereas, a good relationship between Russia and Poland would be an extraordinarily important stabilizing factor in Europe.

Just imagine--if Poland and Russia had been on good terms, how they could have worked together to defuse events in Ukraine which took place in 2013 and 2014. [Reconciliation between Poland and Russia] is as important for Europe as the reconciliation that took place in the 1950s and early 1960s between Germany and France. Today it is even more important than that. I hope and believe and pray that one day that reconciliation will happen. We came as close as we have ever done to achieving it in 2010. It's receded now. That's a tragedy and a disaster, and if Jarosław Kaczyński played the instrumental role in wrecking it--which I suspect he did, by the way--then he deserves severe condemnation by history. But I hope for the benefit of Russia, for the benefit of Poland, for the benefit of Europe, that it will one day come. [44:00]

So, there you have it. I will close by adding that I actually believe that if the war can be ended, Putin and Lavrov may yet attempt another outreach to Poland.