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CHAPTER VTHESLAVS1. Russia and PolandFOR the last six hundred years the three major facts inthe history of the Slavs have been the Ottoman conquests,the German expansion and power, and the struggles,military, religious, and cultural, dividing the Russiansand the Poles. Until the eighteenth century the otherSlavs meant for the Russians almost solely the Poles,who were their only immediate Slav neighbours. Forboth Russia and Poland their long and deep estrangementhas been hitherto of greater weight than any ofthe various ties linking the Slav peoples together.Since July 1941 Russians and Poles have been fightingin the common cause against Hitlerite Germany. Neverbefore in history has it happened that all Russians andall Poles have been joined in struggle against a commonfoe. " Certainly,'' as a Soviet writer has put it (1941),"it was not easy to bridge the gulf which for ages dividedRussians and Poles," but "the Russian people have adeep respect for sorrow and still more for courage."May this feeling, with its consequences, be reciprocatedby both peoples.What has thus divided the two countries in the past?Two different civilizations; disputed territory; thepartitions of Poland and loss of independence (1795);subjection of the majority of Poles to Russian rule for acentury since 1815. The last two causes after 1919 werememories, but bitter and long-festering memories, andin 1939 the Soviet-German partition transformed oneof them into an actuality again. The first two causes ofdivision have never ceased to be operative.The Polish magnates and gentry, who together withthe church shaped and controlled Poland, implanted onher a proud consciousness of being the bastion ofCatholicism and European culture against what to themwas a half-Byzantine, half-Asiatic barbarism. Thisfeeling of representing superior civilization was fused197