Polska myśl słowiańska w okresie drugiej wojny światowej

Abstract

The Polish Slavophile concepts at the time of the Second World War were part and parcel of the general tendencies and suggestions based on the assumption that Poland’s future, political power, and safety will be guaranteed through the tightening of its links with other states of the East-Central and Southern Europe. The said territories were predominantly inhabited by the Slavs, who found themselves in the war time under threat of losing the very foundations of their national and political existence, so it was, in a sense, natural that many theorists and publicists representing various political orientations saw the ethnic affinity of the Slavs as an important factor in bringing together the nations of Central Europe. This did not have to imoly any deep theoretical consequences, but, as in the past, the historical affinities, and the sense of an ethnic solidarity inspired the creation of political programmes and entire historical and philosophical systems based on the utopian conviction that the blood relationship and the cultural and linguistic links will enable the Slavs to unite politically, economically, and even spiritually and to form, together with some non-Slavonic but culturally close nations, akind of Central European community (a federation, a confederacy, a union, an empire etc.), which would also give some new quality to the dvilisational development of the whole international community. Such convictions, based on the myth of the Slavonic unity, could be found in the thought of all the main ideological and political currents of Poland’s independence movement, apart from the socialists and the last remnants of Pilsudski’s followers, and in many circles existing on the margins of the main political formations. Various political forces had their different, depending on their ideological colouring, models of the Slavonic community and saw differently its tasks, possibilities, and character. The political and military groupings which represented the nationalistic, or national Catholic, orientation, such as the „Secession” National Party, The National Armed Forces, the Confederacy of the Nation, saw the Slavonic ethnic unity as a chance to construct a Greater Poland, and multiply the power of the nation through links with other nations seen as „close in blood and spirit”, i.e. mainly the West Slavonic ones. Similar conceptions could encountered among the Christian Democratic, or rather national-Catholic circles (such as the Union, or the Party of Labour) with the difference that they put more emphasis on the reconstruction by the civilisationally still immature Slavonic nations of „the ideals of liberty and Christian ethics”, and of international and interpersonal relations based on the Christian morality. For the political forces representing the peasants’ movement (the „Roch” Popular Party, the „Orka” Union of the peasants’ Labour) the Slavonic idea was a natural completion of the concept of the union of the Saving nations of East-Central Europe, whose population was largely composed of peasants, on the basis of agrarianism. The theories about the dvilisational backwardness of the Slavs combined here with a fascination with the peasantry; and with the belief that the peasants, representing the healthiest, morally and spiritually, part of the nation, and being intimately linked to the soil, can understand better than others the ideals of freedom and democracy. The attitude of the democratic political forces, mainly the Democratic Party, to the Slavonic idea, was, on the other hand, usually devoid of elements of mysticism and exaltation; and might be called the most rational. In this case, the Slavonic community, based naturally on the linguistic and cultural affinities, was to be ideologically founded on the Slavs’ understanding of the community of interests, especially with regard to the safety of the Central European region. In the case, however, of the Polish Workers’, the Union of Polish Patriots in the USSR, and later the groupings connected with the National State Council, the Slavonic idea was understood as the safeguarding of Poland’s interests and those of the other states of the region by means of an alliance and close co-operation with the Soviet Union and the Slavonic nations that inhabited it. It is worth emphasising that the Polish concepts of the Slavonic co-operation from the period of the Second World War only rarely postulated that the Slavonic nations should „merge” into one biological and spiritual whole. Instead, we have to do with proposals to form a more or less integrated confederate state or a union of states.