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72 Beyond Ukraine. EU and Russia in Search of a New Relation “forgive and ask for forgiveness” – the chairman of the Polish Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Józef Michalik, and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in 2012 signed a joint Message to the Polish and Russian nations. Despite these attempts at reconciliation – especially with respect to a common, difficult history – current political events, situating Poland and Russia on opposite sides of geopolitical disputes, led de facto to the cancellation of all joint activities of this kind. Moreover, according to Rydel: “the objective was not achieved, as the aforesaid religious act was prepared according to an explicitly political order, and the ‘Message’ was signed in circumstances more fit for an international agreement than an act of goodwill and reflex conscience” 2 . A sign of collapse of the joint historical policy based on the principle of Polish-Russian reconciliation and forgiveness was, among others, the return of Russia to the traditional – i.e. Soviet or even Stalinist – geopolitical interpretation of the origins and consequences of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 23 August 1939, which resulted in a Soviet alliance with the Third Reich (1939- 1941), and for the Poles meant the invasion of the Red Army on 17 September 1939 and a ‘fourth partition’ of Polish territories, leaving the Polish East under Soviet control. While Western Europe, but also Poland, does not negate the USSR’s contribution to the victory over the Third Reich, the interpretation of the origins of the world conflict, especially the issue of the current Russian view of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, encounters debate and sometimes firm opposition. In March 2015 Polish historians decisively criticized the wording of a joint German-Russian history textbook about the XXI century, which upheld the former Soviet thesis on the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact stating that in 1939 Stalin “had no choice and was forced to enter into a pact with Hitler”. A critical opinion of the Russian stance on this was expressed on the Polish side by Łukasz Kamiński, President of the 2 J. Rydel, Polish historical policy towards Central and Eastern Europe, International Scientific Conference “Italy, Poland and a new Eastern Europe”, Pedagogical University in Kraków, 2015.
Russia, Poland and the “New Europe”: Inevitable Clash? 73 Institute of National Remembrance, stating for the portal Interia.pl that: “attempts at falsifying facts of this kind are very worrying” 3 . In this context it seems important to cite Timothy Snyder, who argued that Russia’s ‘historical policy’ is directly linked to its foreign policy, aimed at destabilization of the international order 4 . Energy security issue in bilateral relations A general evaluation of Polish-Soviet economic relations is not easy, all the more so that it cannot be detached from ideological or geopolitical disputes. There is no doubt that a number of economic links – especially in the energy sector – have survived the collapse of the Soviet system and still affect, often negatively, contemporary economic relations between Poland and Russia. For contemporary Poland an issue of considerable economic, but also geostrategic and geopolitical, importance is energy security. It is widely viewed as being both internal – aimed at diversifying the sourcing of energy and power development as a strategic sector of the economy, but also external – aimed at attracting economic partners in mining and the transport and distribution of energy resources. Energy security is one of the major issues in the relations between Russia and Eastern Europe. The Eastern European countries have traditionally been more dependent on Russian oil and gas than their Western neighbours. The Baltic States import their entire gas supply from Russia. Russian gas amounts to 99 per cent of the Czech Republic’s imports and to 89 per cent of 3 Historycy oburzeni niemiecko-rosyjskim podręcznikiem do historii [Historical overview on German-Russian History Books], www.interia.pl, 15 March 2005, and A. Kazimierczuk, “Niemiecko-rosyjski podręcznik historii: spór o pakt Ribbentrop-Mołotow” [German-Russia history book: Discussion on Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact], Rzeczpospolita, 11 March 2015. 4 T. Snyder in the Conference organized by the EEP Group in the European Parliament, “War and Peace 1945-2015”, 6 May 2015. Russia’s position has been reconfirmed by president Putin during his press-conference after the meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on 10 May 2015.
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