WARSAW, KRAKOW, WROCLAW, POLAND — Try to gather a few dozen neighbors who don’t really like each other, had several bloody fights in the past but can’t afford to move out. Then shut them in a room together. What do you get? Today’s Europe.
Or at least that was what I saw during my 12 days at the First International School “Poland and Central and Eastern Europe” within the College of Eastern Europe, together with 27 other participants from Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Germany, Austria, France, Moldova, Romania, Albania and other countries.
First, it was hard to stay calm during the discussions. I found out that despite the fact that an actual war is taking place right now on their continent, our neighbors still do not care much about Russia’s attack on Ukraine, being too busy with their own problems.
Marcin Kedzierski from the Jagiellonian Club political think tank, based in Krakow, told me on Oct. 6 that if I asked “an ordinary Giuseppe” from Italy or any other country in Europe about the war in Ukraine, he would say that all that he cares about are migrants, his job, and food on his table.
“Why do you (Ukrainians) fight with Russia in the war you just cannot win?” Klevis Gjorni, a participant from Albania, asked me. “Why don’t you just forget about Crimea and Donbas and move on?”
At first, I was outraged, but then I tried to understand those people – including our Polish guide in Krakow who said: “Sorry, Ukraine, you were our colony, which we lost because of our own stupidity.”
Occupation, shifting borders, nationalist conflicts and two world wars left all of us, the European continent countries, deeply traumatized.
Our conflict past has become a strong tool in the hands of the far right and populist politicians, who use the old and proven technique: divide and rule.
Fortunately, civil society, journalists and historians are still open for the dialogue. But it is hard to start a conversation. Despite the wars and genocides that devastated our continent, and happened because of the lack of understanding and common interest among our ancestors, we still pretty much do not care about each other.
I was in Poland when the Parliamentary Assembly fo the Council of Europe condemned Ukraine’s new education law that obligated public schools to teach in Ukrainian and outraged neighboring Romania and Hungary.
While Hungarians were furious by the present, Poles couldn’t move on from the past conflicts – Volyn Tragedy and Stepan Bandera’s glorification in Ukraine.
Moreover, they do not know how to react to the more than a million labor migrants from Ukraine working in Poland.
Past tragedy
Despite being one of the main advocates of Ukraine in the European Union, Poland still can’t forgive and forget the difficult pages of the common Polish-Ukrainian past.
Although the new ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), as well as our hosts from the College of Eastern Europe, stated that Poland is open for a dialog, it seems that it is hard for them to accept Ukraine’s perspective.
Jan Parys, the head of political cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland on Oct. 2 in Warsaw told me that Ukraine wouldn’t build the successful relations with Poland and won’t be accepted in European society as it denies that the Volyn Massacre was genocide of Polish population.
“Not only Poland but also the rest of Europe would not accept you with such a view on history,” Parys said.
The Polish official said that Ukraine has denied the ethnic cleansing of Poles in 1943-1944 and didn’t react at all when I told him that it wasn’t true.
While the conservative Polish ruling party and the government keep stating that Ukrainians started the massacre and Poles acted in return, Ukrainian historians stated that both sides were to blame for killing more than 100,000 Poles and from 10,000 to 20,000 Ukrainians.
The current narrative of the Polish ruling party PiS is that Ukraine has never apologized as well as commemorated properly the Volyn events.
However, in December 2014 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko during his speech in front of the Polish Seym quoted the famous letter Polish bishops wrote to their German colleagues after the World War II “We forgive and ask for forgiveness”, referring to the Volynya events.
In July 2016, the same year that Polish parliament recognized Volyn as a genocide of Poles by Ukrainians, Poroshenko kneeled in front of the Volyn Victims’ monument during the commemoration ceremony.
“I asked Poles what else do we, Ukrainians need to do to move forward? When will you be satisfied? But got no response,” Olga Chrebor, president of the Kaleidoscope of Cultures NGO and the member of Ukrainian minority in Wroclaw, said during a lecture on Oct. 10.
Current problem
Chrebor’s organization is helping migrants to integrate into Polish society. The Polish government refused to accept Syrian migrants, saying that Poland already sheltered more than a million Ukrainians.
However, less than 60 Ukrainians got the refugee status since the war in the Donbas started in 2014. Others have been moving to Poland as workers, taking the least attractive and low-paid jobs.
“Most of the politicians, even those who are against Ukrainians, admit that without Ukrainians, who usually work in construction, call centers and even IT, Polish economy would collapse,” Chrebor said.
While Poland also exports 11 percent of its labor force to Western Europe, Poles not always welcome Ukrainians.
More than 60,000 Ukrainians live in Wroclaw, a city in southwestern Poland with 600,000 total population.
Frequently Polish nationalists even violently attack Ukrainian migrants, demanding justice for Volynya Tragedy.
“And it is hard for them to understand, that Ukraine is a big country with an active war. Young people coming from Central and Eastern Ukraine sometimes do not even know about Volyn and can’t understand the aggression against them,” Chrebor said.
Not saint
Our neighbors Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary claimed that Ukraine prejudices their national minorities’ rights by the new education law.
“Do you really think that forcing people to study Ukrainian will integrate them into Ukrainian society?” Hungarian journalist Szablocs Voros asked me during a discussion.
I responded that for now, forcing minorities to study the national language, Ukraine is trying to protect its integrity from possible attacks in future.
As previously many representatives of Russian national minority, who weren’t fully integrated into Ukrainian society, invited the aggressor and helped Russia to invade our territories.
Unfortunately, we can integrate minorities only by forcing to learn Ukrainian. We just can’t offer the same goods and services and can’t compete any other way with EU members Hungary and Romania, who has been giving our borderland inhabitants dual citizenship, encouraging them to work, live and study abroad.
“When I come visit Zakarpattya from Hungary, I sink into depression after seeing how poor people live there,” Voros said.
Ukraine with $2,185 per capita gross domestic product can hardly provide the same conditions as Poland with $12,372 GDP per capita, Hungary’s $12,664 and Romania’s $9,474.
A few days after our talk Hungarian radical party Jobbik launched a protest for the self-determination of Zakarpattya Oblast and its independence from Ukraine near Ukrainian embassy in Budapest.
Good signs
While politicians keep fueling the hatred between the neighboring nations, people, fortunately, can still find the way to understand each other.
Despite Kedzierski’s claims that no one really cares about Ukraine’s war in Europe, in the end of my studies, I discovered that European youth do care.
A young historian from the Czech Republic Martin Babicka was stressed about the awful labor conditions Ukrainians sometimes get in the Czech Republic and Poland and at the same time worried about the rise of Ukrainian radical nationalism.
Michael Lambert from France stated that only corruption really undermines Ukraine’s strengths as a future major economy of Europe.
As a Ukrainian, who was previously confident that all European countries owe us more active support than anti-Russian sanctions, I understood my western neighbors.
Migrant and economic crisis undermined Europe strongly, caused the rise of the radical and conservative political forces, who kept pushing the painful spots of the nations.
Democratic forces have made a lot of good promises but didn’t rush to fulfill them. While radical parties like PiS brought simple goods to their people, like 500 zloty for every second and third child in the family. Recently Poland even declined the $9.5 billion IMF loan, saying that its economy is in the good shape.
