Marek Cichocki: The Darkest Pages of Polish History

After 1989, the new, democratic Poland existed long enough for a completely new generation to fully develop, for whom the current reality is the only conceivable, personal experience. Therefore, other possible situations that shaped us as a collective in the past have become more abstract for most contemporary people. Meanwhile, the historical experience of Poles is deeper and reaches beyond the ordinary, current political or economic reality.

The double death of a nation Polish

Someone rightly observed that Poles, as a nation, experienced their own death twice. Once in 1795, when the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth finally took place. And again after 1939, when Nazi Germany and communist Russia decided to physically annihilate Poland. In the first case, the cause of the decline lay in a failure to recognize deadly external threats and a loss of will to exist. In the second, it was the lack of a chance to escape a hopeless geopolitical situation.

Today we live in the 21st century, but those experiences of double death remain with us and resonate in our imaginations, especially now, as we enter a world of great crisis in a time of utter chaos. Faced with these new, real threats, we have only one true option for salvation and protection—our own state. Therefore, what we do with it becomes an existential question.

Defensive ability its own citizens is a key task of the state

Given those past experiences and the impending chaos, it becomes clear why having a state capable of defending its citizens is crucial today. Is Poland such a country, where governments fear the lobbies of developers, banks, and foreign companies? Where citizens see no point in seeking justice in national courts? Where those in power are willing to completely destabilize the state system for short-term political gains? And where, for decades, it has been impossible to build even a single nuclear power plant?

We are now preparing for another chapter of internal political struggles that have so far yielded no breakthrough. Let's hope the costs don't prove painfully high.