Jerzy Giedroyć and the Rebirth of Poland

Giedroyć in 1987

Jerzy Giedroyć (1906-2000) was a Polish intellectual. In the 1930s he devoted much energy to promoting peace among the Poles, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians who found themselves within the post-Versailles borders of Poland. He avoided the Polish catastrophe of 1939 because he was serving in the Polish embassy to Romania. From there he eventually made his way to British Palestine, where he joined the Carpathian Rifles and fought with the British at Tobruk. After that he worked as a diplomat and propogandist for the Polish government in exile.

After the war, Giedroyć moved to Rome and founded the first in a series of emigre Polish cultural institutions, a publishing house. He soon moved on to Paris, where he co-founded a journal called Kultura that became hugely influential among Poles both within and outside Poland.

In Kultura Giedroyć laid the foundations for a post-communist Polish foreign policy. Giedroyć asserted, first, that Soviet communism would collapse within his lifetime, and second, that Russia would remain a militaristic, expansionist state. Poles, he wrote, must prepare for a post-Soviet world in which their main foreign policy challenge would be asserting their independence in the face of Russian imperialism.

Giedroyć posited two pillars for such a policy. First, Poland must have good relations with all of its neighbors. It must, therefore, recognize its post-1939 borders and accept the loss of huge territories to Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. In the 1950s this was heresy among Polish exiles, for whom restoration of Poland as it existed in the 1930s was a key goal. Giedroyć argued that this was nationalist, myth-besotted folly. Poland needed friends more than it needed territories now occupied by non-Poles. But Giedroyć did not just advocate for friendship with Poland's neighbors. He wrote that Poland must become a friend and advocate for all nations resisting Soviet or Russian imperialism.

The second pillar must be friendship with America. European allies were great and Poland must seek them, but WW II had convinced Giedroyć that France, Germany and Britain were not reliable defense partners. Only US friendship could secure Poland's independence. Poland must, therefore, seek membership in NATO.

All these things that Giedroyć wrote of in the 1950s to 1970s have come to pass. Soviet communism collapsed, but Russia remained the greatest threat to Poland. The post-communist Polish government adopted Giedroyć's policy of accepting its borders and pursuing friendship with its neighbors. They very much pursued friendship with the US, for example supporting our dubious invasion of Iraq. They are members of NATO. And the have consistently spoken up for all nations under attack by Russia, most prominently Ukraine.

And to think that I never heard of Giedroyć until yesterday.

wikipedia, longer article at culture.pl, 13-minute video from Kraut.