Poland and European Integration: The Ideas and Movements of Polish Exiles in the West, 1939-91

Poland and European Integration

Also by Thomas Lane: VICTIMS OF STALIN AND HITLER: The Exodus of Poles and Balts to Britain LITHUANIA: Stepping Westward SOLIDARITY OR SURVIVAL? AMERICAN LABOR AND EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS, 1830–1924 BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF EUROPEAN LABOR LEADERS (Edited, 2 vols) EUROPE ON THE MOVE: The Impact Of Eastern Enlargement on the European ” Union (Edited with Elz˙ bieta Stadtmuller) POLAND AND EUROPEAN UNITY: Ideas and Reality (Edited with Marian Wolan´ski) THE BALTIC AND THE OUTBREAK OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR (Edited with John Hiden)

Also by Marian Wolan´ski: EUROPA SRODKOWO-WSCHODNIA W MYSLI POLITYCZNEJ EMIGRACJI POLSKIEJ 1945–1975 SRODOWISKA EMIGRACYJNE W LONDYNIE I PARYE A KWESTIA STOSUNKOW POLSKO-NIEMIECKICH (1949–1972) STUDIA POLITOLOGICZNE (Edited with A Jablonski and K Paszkiewicz) STUDIE NAD WSPOLCZESNA MYSLA POLITYCZNA (Edited with C Lewandowski)

Poland and European Integration The Ideas and Movements of Polish Exiles in the West, 1939–91 Thomas Lane Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Department of Languages and European Studies, University of Bradford, UK

Marian Wolan´ski Professor of Political Science, Institute of International Studies, University of Wroclaw, Poland

© Thomas Lane and Marian Wolan´ski 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–22937–2 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 18

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Eneko, Michal, Krzysztof and Hugo /

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Contents Acknowledgements

viii

Introduction

1

1 Concepts of Europe in a Polish Political Tradition

6

2 A Fine Idea

18

3 A Predictable Failure

35

4 Creating a Movement

58

5 Great Expectations

78

6 Thwarted Plans

99

7 The Union of Polish Federalists

122

8 European Ideas of Polish Political Parties

143

9 Liberation, Détente and European Union

168

10 War of Ideas

192

11 Poland’s European Policy after Communism: Continuity and Change

214

Notes

235

Bibliography

275

Index

298

vii

Acknowledgements The authors and publishers wish to thank owners for permission to publish Chapters 3 and 7 in an extended and amended form. Acknowledgements are included in the Endnotes to each chapter. We also wish to thank Taylor and Francis for permission to include a map of Eastern Europe 1945–91 from R.J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, Routledge, 1994, and the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London, for permission to use a photograph of General Sikorski and Count Raczyn´ski on the book cover.

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Introduction

Poland joined the European Union in 2004. Her decision to seek membership was based in part, but only in part, on the economic and security advantages that would accrue. Nor was the application to join a consequence of a recent conversion to the idea of European unity. In fact Poland’s links to Western Europe are deeply rooted in history and culture, and the Poles’ ideas on the future of Europe and Poland’s place in it were vigorously debated and publicised in the half century following the outbreak of the Second World War. Furthermore, Polish exiles were in the vanguard of the movement for European integration. They rank with the so-called founding fathers of European unity for the fertility and suggestiveness of their ideas. For every Monnet, Spaak and Spinelli there was a Raczyn´ski, Retinger and Ciolkosz. One motive for writing this book then was to ensure that the ideas and ideals of these ‘Eastern’ founding fathers became better known. Their activities and their contributions to the European Movement are almost completely absent from the conventional historiography of European integration, with the result that the originality and sweep of their ideas have been obscured. A distinguishing mark of Polish federalist thinking which this book emphasises was its sharp awareness of Europe’s cultural unity, and the certainty that the Iron Curtain was a temporary barrier. Western historians and political scientists tended to assume that Europe meant the states of the European Community. But Europe, the Poles insisted, did not end at the Elbe. Consequently, in their discussions of European integration, the Poles always looked beyond the immediate present to ask how Central East Europe could achieve unity and how it could then relate to the West European community of states which was rapidly evolving during the Cold War. The Poles also confronted the widely held idea that federalism is a mortal threat to the nation state. They /

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dealt explicitly and without apprehension with the federal idea. Their own historical experience of a quasi federal state disabused them of the bogey held in some Western quarters that federalism involves mindless centralisation and the destruction of national cultures and individualities. For the Poles, federalism was not the bête noire of the Eurosceptics but a solution to the very problems which they identified – insecurity, economic backwardness and internecine strife. This book demonstrates why this was so. Two other distinguishing features of this book should be emphasised. It places the movements of the Poles in the broad context of international relations during the Cold War. Our earliest intention was to study Polish federalist thinking and we have devoted several chapters of this book to that purpose. We found, however, that we needed to broaden our perspective including, but going beyond, the world of ideas. The Poles discovered early on that ideas need movements to project them, and movements in turn need significant allies if they are to succeed. Ideas could not be divorced from the activities of the Polish government-inexile, nor from the organisations and movements created by the exiles to influence opinion among their compatriots and in the host nations. Consequently we discuss the interaction between the Polish organisations and major Western governmental and private institutions working for European unity. For example, Polish exiles joined the West European federalist movements and took a significant part in The Hague Congress in 1948 to discuss the future organisation of Europe. A Polish exile, Józef Retinger, was, for a brief time, Secretary-General of the major pressure group for European unity, the European Movement. A Central and East European Committee of the Movement had a large number of Polish exile members including Edward Raczyn´ski, a former Polish Foreign Minister. At the same time Polish exiles were invited to join the NonRepresented Nations Committee of the Council of Europe, where they hoped to influence opinion in favour of their compatriots back home and to break the hold of Moscow over their timorous left-wing colleagues from Western countries. We also show how the Poles responded to growing Western indifference to their cause, epitomised by the European Movement’s concentration on the integration of the West European states, thus betraying its original mission of working for the unity of the whole of Europe. The next distinguishing mark is the book’s scope. Its chronological coverage is broad, delimited by two critical events in the history of Poland, namely the onset of the Second World War and the fourth partition of the country on the one hand, and the end of the Cold War and

Introduction 3

the creation of the first post-Communist government in Poland on the other. No other work, certainly in English, uncovers the roots of Poland’s Europeanism so comprehensively and then follows the growth of her European plant over so long a period, before reaping the harvest in 2004 with Poland’s entry into the European Union. Methodologically the book also offers something new. It relies not only on Polish, French and English manuscript and printed sources in archives in London, Paris, New York and Wroclaw but on interviews conducted with leading political figures in post-Communist Poland and with prominent persons in the exile community. These include a former Polish president, Lech Walesa; a former prime minister, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki; two former foreign ministers, Krzysztof Skubkiszewski and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski; a former president of the National Bank of Poland, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz; a chief EU negotiator, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski; and a prime ministerial adviser, Zdzislaw Najder among others. The purpose of these interviews was to assess the influence of Polish federalist ideas on Poland’s European policy after Communism, and to consider the validity of the exiles’ claims to be representative of Polish public opinion on Poland’s place in Europe. In discussing the influence of Polish exiles on Polish public opinion we were conscious that almost immediately after the end of Communism in 1989 the new Polish government decided that Poland should aim to become a member of the European Community. This seemed like a bolt from the blue since under the Communist governments there was virtually no discussion of the place of Poland in Europe except for a brief period at the end of the 1970s when a small number of dissenting journals were published clandestinely. We can therefore only explain the decision of 1989 by hypothesising a subterranean evolution in opinion, dating from as early as the war years, which had been masked by the subsequent major preoccupations of Poles, namely to survive economically and to withstand government oppression and martial law. ‘Did the exiles contribute to the formation of these subterranean changes?’, is one of the questions we pose. We concluded that if the exiles had influence it must have been exerted in a variety of ways, such as personal contacts through an increasing number of visits in each direction, by the smuggling into Poland of various exile journals, by radio broadcasts and by the activism of certain United States agencies such as the Free Europe Committee and the Assembly of Captive European Nations. It was the U.S. State Department and the CIA which sponsored and promoted the work of Radio Free Europe, which had a major influence in disseminating information and /

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shaping opinion in Central East Europe. The Polish journal Kultura, edited in Paris, was the most influential of all the exiles’ journals in helping to preserve Polish culture and in reflecting on the country’s future in a postCommunist world. Each of these organisations was engaged in a ‘war of ideas’ with the Communist rulers of Poland, and Polish exiles were prominent in all of them as broadcasters and translators, editors, writers and political activists. The creation and development of the European Economic Community (EEC) gave a new focus to the activities of the exiles. In the 1960s they began to consider the EEC as the nucleus of a united Europe which would include the states of Central East Europe after the end of Communism. In the same period they confronted major challenges to their cause arising from attempts by sections of Western opinion to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict by supporting neutralism, peaceful coexistence and détente. This flirtation with fashionable themes, as the Poles saw it, revealed a dangerous willingness to accept the permanence of the Iron Curtain and an assumption that the liberation of Central East Europe would be deferred indefinitely or abandoned altogether. This was a body blow to the exiles since liberation was a precondition for the integration of Poland in Europe. The most striking characteristics of the exiles were tenacity and hope – hope against hope, never hope abandoned – hope in a future for Poland in a united Europe, and tenacity in the day-to-day struggle to keep that vision alive. The exiles’ tenacity was remarkable since their commitment to the cause extended over half a century. The roots of this commitment lay in the memory of the pre-war world and in the experiences of the Second World War. At the onset of the war and the invasion of Poland by the combined forces of Hitlerite Germany and the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of Poles escaped through the Balkans and eventually ended up first in France and then in Britain. At the end of the war another hundred thousand or so Polish combatants released by the Soviets, having joined the British army in North Africa and Italy, were given sanctuary in Britain. Among these exiles were many highly educated people, writers, academics, journalists, diplomats, lawyers, politicians, army officers and engineers. For these exiles it was a major catastrophe for Poland first to be occupied, and then to be consigned to the Soviet sphere after 1945. In the midst of their personal and collective tragedies they refused to accept their fate passively. They engaged in strenuous discussions about the future of their country when Soviet control ended. For them, as for members of the Resistance in France, Italy, the Netherlands and other European countries, it was impossible to separate the future of their countries from the fate of

Introduction 5

Europe as a whole. Poland’s geopolitical position between Russia and Germany had been precarious for centuries. Its future security, economic development and political stability depended on a close association with other European states. Their hope and tenacity helped them overcome, or at least to endure, the apparent indifference of most West Europeans to their circumstances. In the research for this book we have accumulated many debts. First we wish to thank the British Academy and its International Collaborative Programmes/Joint Projects scheme, the British Council Warsaw and KBN (the State Committee for Scientific Research) British–Polish Research Partnership Programme, and the M.B. Grabowski Fund of London for their indispensable financial support. Our frequent research visits to archives in London and Paris and regular travel to conduct interviews in Warsaw, Gdansk, London and The Hague would have been impossible without their help. Grateful thanks are also due to librarians and archivists in a number of libraries: the chief librarian and her colleagues at the Polish Library and Cultural Institute (POSK) in London; the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London and its archivist Andrew Suchcitz and its former archivist Waclaw Milewski; the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust in London; the Ossolineum Library in Wroclaw; the Józef Pilsudski Institutes in London and New York; the Polish Library in Paris; the National Archives in London; and the British Library. As usual the staff of the J.B. Priestley Library of the University of Bradford were models of helpfulness. We also wish to offer our warmest thanks to leading figures in the first post-Communist governments in Poland for agreeing to be interviewed and to share with us their reflections on the influence of the exiles on Polish politics and the emergence of Poland’s European policy after 1989. We were also very fortunate to receive kind cooperation from members of Polish exile organisations in London. Our special thanks go to Kazimierz Mochlin´ski for invaluable discussions about the federalist groups which were established in London after the Second World War, of which he was a member, and for arranging interviews with colleagues who were prominent in those groups. We are very grateful to Professor Elzbieta ˙ ” Stadtmuller of Wroclaw University for her invaluable advice and her liaison work between two authors whose understanding of each other’s language was highly imperfect. We would also like to thank Dr. Nick Lane and Dr. Ana Hidalgo for taking time from their busy schedules to read some of the chapters in draft and to offer valuable comments. Our wives were as usual very supportive and very tolerant of our frequent absences, for which we are most grateful. Of course, we hold no one responsible but ourselves for the final version of the text. /

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1 Concepts of Europe in a Polish Political Tradition

The idea of a united Europe has been an important element in the Polish political mind for several centuries. The underlying reason has always been the conviction that national freedom could only be achieved and safeguarded within wider international associations. It was assumed that the basis of relations between countries should be organised cooperation and not violence. Polish concepts of European unification have taken various forms and have evolved in response to the many and continuous changes taking place in Poland and Europe since the mid-eighteenth century. The tradition of a union based on equality and freedom found its first expression in the Rzeczpospolita, or the United Republic of Poland-Lithuania (sometimes referred to as the Commonwealth of both Nations), which was called into being by the Polish nobility and Lithuanian princes in the Treaty of Lublin in 1569. Since ideas of equality and freedom have evolved since the middle of the sixteenth century it is impossible to assess this Commonwealth in the light of modern criteria. This can only be done by comparing it with conditions in other European countries at that time. In the Rzeczpospolita the rule of equality and respect for the rights of the weaker were fully adhered to. The enhanced power of the Crown did not tempt it to interfere in the internal affairs of Lithuania. Similarly, the identities of Courland or Livonia were respected when they were joined by the act of union with the Republic of Poland. The different languages and local laws or privileges remained inviolate. The Constitution of 3 May 1791, drawn up during the heady days of the French Revolution, did not mention the United Republic. In fact, it abolished the union between Poland and Lithuania and established a national homogeneous Polish state. Created under the influence of the 6

Concepts of Europe in a Polish Political Tradition 7

Enlightenment the Constitution was indifferent to ethnicity. Nonetheless, the tradition of ‘the equal with equal and the free with the free’ remained.1 The first Polish political writers who discussed the subject of union or a European federation did not invoke the native model. Promoting the idea of unity they cited the French thinkers, Maximilian Sully and Charles de Saint-Pierre. The latter was one of the three French plenipotentiaries to the peace conference in Utrecht (1713). In 1728 he suggested setting up a European League of 18 independent states. The League would take on a confederate form; its role would be to keep the peace of Europe which had been repeatedly threatened by the rivalry between Austria and France. He proposed that the rulers of the independent states should create a ‘European Society’, nominating delegates to a ‘constant’ Congress or Senate. According to this plan the monarchs should undertake to keep the status quo in international relations. War would be banned. Any economic disputes would be settled by the ‘Trade Chamber’. Saint-Pierre approached religious problems from an ecumenical perspective. At first his project was regarded as purely theoretical, even utopian, but in the course of time it became an inspiration to politicians and theoreticians, Polish ones included. Among the first of these Polish theoreticians was Stanislaw Leszczyn´ski who, in the second half of the eighteenth century, prepared a plan for a European Alliance.2 This discussed ways of making wars less frequent and more dangerous for the aggressor. Leszczyn´ski suggested the creation of a Union of Republics in which France would be the arbiter in the case of disputes. He believed that one of Saint-Pierre’s main ideas, namely the creation of a Christian Republic, was impossible to achieve. Establishing one universal government would encounter huge obstacles which would be difficult to overcome owing to the drive of states for territorial expansion at the cost of their neighbours – the reign of power over the rule of law. Consequently Leszczyn´ski proposed a completely different idea.3 He recommended that France should maintain its supremacy as the strongest power in Europe but at the same time withdraw from any conquests. This would permit her to appear as the arbiter in conflicts between other powers, and at the same time protect the weaker countries against aggressors. Leszczyn´ski’s analysis divided all countries into kingdoms and republics. France, Austria, Spain, Prussia and Russia belonged to the first group. The criterion for assigning countries to the republican group was not the form of government in these states but the level of freedom enjoyed by their citizens. Consequently, he assigned to the republic group countries with different governmental systems, such as England, Poland, Genoa, Switzerland, Sweden, Holland and Venice. For /

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Leszczyn´ski the great advantage of a republic was that it would not start a war, citing as an example the United Republic of Poland-Lithuania. In his scheme France as the arbiter would be required to ensure peace and to keep the balance of power in Europe between monarchies and the group of republics. Its ruler would renounce imperial politics and lead the other powers into a union benefiting from eternal peace. Leszczyn´ski hoped to initiate talks to form a Union of Republics, and to enlist in its membership the maritime countries of England and Holland. This Union would be responsible for solving all inter-state disputes among the republics and would assist any of the weaker countries subject to acts of aggression.4 Almost 20 years after Stanisl aw Leszczyn´ski’s memorandum a Piarist Professor at the Polish Collegium Nobilium, Stanisl aw Skrzetuski, published in Warsaw a book entitled Project – Arrangements for Uninterrupted Peace. The author discussed what he called ‘The European Republic’. He proposed an ‘eternal and irrevocable’ League of Kings and Countries of Europe. Delegates to the league would be granted substantial powers and form a parliament meeting regularly once a month. The latter, a European Congress, would act as arbiter to settle disputes. If any country refused to apply the league’s laws, made preparations for war, conspired against the league or resorted to force against its decisions, it would be considered a ‘public enemy’ and joint action would be taken against it. Skrzetuski harboured no illusions about the success of his project. If it was not adopted it was not because it was unrealistic but because politicians would not want to apply it, preferring to mask ‘shameful deeds’ by proclaiming noble emotions.5 The Partitions of Poland in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the demise of the Polish Republic did not prevent the further development of Polish ideas about the unification of Europe but rather gave them a new quality. Ideas of regional federalism were more frequently discussed, embracing so-called Slavism. This juxtaposed the idea of united Slavism, which appears in the writings of Adam Czartoryski and other activists of the democratic bloc, against Russian Pan-Slavism, according to which all Slavic rivers merged into one ‘Russian Sea’. Among a number of plans for a continental federation, there appeared a project, edited by Stanisl aw Staszic, on the unification of Europe under the aegis of Russia.6 But Czartoryski’s proposals for a European league are more interesting. During his time as Foreign Minister of Czar Alexander I of Russia during the first decade of the nineteenth century Czartoryski instructed Russia’s ambassador in London to propose that in the forthcoming Anglo-French peace treaty a statement should be inserted setting out /

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Concepts of Europe in a Polish Political Tradition 9

the rights and responsibilities of nations. According to this the signatories would be required to exhaust all mediation options before going to war. A league would guard the peace, and a breach of the code of international law would trigger a punitive reaction from the league’s joint military or police forces.7 In the 1830s Czartoryski found himself in exile in Paris. There, in his essay on diplomacy (Essai sur la Diplomatie), he carried out a detailed analysis of the system of international relations as it had developed historically. He emphasised the importance of supranational criteria by arguing that a universal society was on a higher level than national societies, an assertion that had been widely accepted on occasion. Czartoryski conceded that nationality was the basis for state formation, but at the same time the nation was not a goal in itself. Rather, it was subject to the laws of nature – which were a complex of universal norms. He raised the questions of a European federal pact and a European law, which would justify intervening in countries’ internal affairs. Discussing previous projects for a European league, especially Sully’s ‘great plan’, he spoke with approval of the concept of international arbitration.8 He was optimistic that most governments, ‘having experienced the dangers of a precarious or illusory independence’, in Kukiel’s words, would be keen to be members of a league which could guarantee their security.9 One of the more interesting Polish projects of European integration was that of Wojciech Jarzembowski, a scholar and a participant in the Polish uprising in November 1830. He predicted the formation of a certain type of pan-European union. A congress consisting of representatives from all European countries would enact laws and ensure their execution. The congress would be held in a different capital every year. Aggression against one country would be considered as aggression against the union as a whole. Jarzembowski was perhaps the first to propose a radical disarmament plan and at the same time the formation of a single European army. He envisaged that weapons held within the boundaries of Europe would become the property of all European countries. A decade or so later Stanisl aw Worcell devised a federal system based on regional associations. He called for the formation of a regional association between Poland, Hungary and Romania, but located within the European union. Sl awomir Kalembka characterised the federal ideas which were being generated among the exiles. ‘In the eyes of many’ he wrote, ‘the function of Poland as the bulwark of Europe facing the despotic, eastern barbarity was transformed into the role of a populariser of democracy in this part of the continent.’ In fact the principles of the future foreign policy of a reconstructed Poland, formulated /

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in exile, were connected with this democratising concept. ‘The latter’ Kalembka continued, ‘was intended to prevent nations’ reactionary and contradictory aspirations being realised in Central and Eastern Europe and to weaken the reactionary Eastern great powers. These principles were also designed to serve the liberated nations, to utilise Slavism and to oppose Russian Czarist pan-Slavism. In the distant future the policy was intended to create an alliance system involving Poland and the other newly-liberated nation states.’10 Among other exiles calling for the creation of a union of European countries was Adam Mickiewicz. He contended that all European countries were only different fragments of a ‘European people’. This brotherhood could find its most appropriate political form in the ‘common European federation’. Mickiewicz awarded France the decisive role in unifying Europe. Bohdan Urbankowski drew attention to Mickiewicz’s support for the ideals of ‘Christian Europe’ despite his anticlericalism.11 He explained that the Polish Romantics, being unable to find their homeland in the materialistic world, identified it in the ‘world of values’. This latter world would be the salvation of the nation. ‘Love of historical tradition’, the superior value, meant that in a world without countries, in a world of justice, there was no room for hostility. Such an attitude had an effect even on relations between the Poles and the Russians and led to an affirmation of those values shared by both sides. Hence, Mickiewicz’s notion of freedom, as the specific Polish value, was given the role of bonding values together, ‘bonding the nations together at the same time’. ‘The propagation of freedom’ Urbankowski argued, ‘would equal propagation of a certain (peaceful!) attitude to values, would equal the propagation of love, the creation of brotherly Europe and the Holy Covenant of People. The new Christianity would, for Mickiewicz, be socialism.’12 In the 1870s Stefan Buczyn´ski, a member of the Skills Academy, published in Kraków a book entitled America and Europe. An Historical and Financial Study. He contrasted the backwardness of Europe with the spirit of freedom in the USA, and recommended Europe to follow the American model and create a United States of Europe. This united Europe’s institutions would include a monarchy, a Council and a Supreme Tribunal.13 At around the same time (1878), Bolesl aw Limanowski published The Programme of Polish Socialists. Containing federalist as well as socialist ideas, his programme advocated the idea of a country, a republic, based on the ‘cooperation’ of what he called ‘independent districts’ or territories, and predicted the formation of a federation between these territorial units. These units would establish ‘more or less close international connections’ with one another.14 The combining of districts would be /

Concepts of Europe in a Polish Political Tradition 11

determined by geographical and economic factors, and by ‘reasons of a moral, aesthetic, national and ethnographical nature’.15 In practice this meant recreating the Rzeczpospolita within the historical borders, and was based on Limanowski’s conviction that it was vitally important to support the renaissance of the Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Byelorussian peoples. This future federated Rzeczpospolita would have the pre-1772 (i.e. pre-Partition) borders of ‘historic Poland’ and would be organised on a cantonal basis reflecting the Swiss system.16 The realisation of the Rzeczpospolita idea constituted the key feature of Limanowski’s work, and historical and ethnographical research would, he believed, offer support for his supranationalist ideas. As a scholar (sociologist and historian) he argued that the multi-ethnic heritage of the Rzeczpospolita should be considered a major reason for the independence aspirations of Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians and Byelorussians. The Poles were to coexist ‘in the same agreement, and with joint benefits, with the Latvian, Lithuanian, Byelorussian and Ukrainian peoples which were united by history, geography and economic interests’. However, Limanowski’s unconvincing and unrealistic assumption was that such a community would be an effective counterbalance to the two great powers of Russia and Germany.17 His views were burdened by the heritage of the Lubelska Union (the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth) and by his conviction that different nations in a federal state could co-exist peacefully.18 The regaining of Polish independence after the First World War and the post-war international situation directed the Polish political mind on to new tracks. In the discussion between federalists and so-called incorporationists the dividing line between them coincided with the division between the Pilsudski and the Dmowski blocs.19 The federal idea was expressed by Pil sudski’s ‘Appeal to citizens of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania’. In it he declared: ‘I want to give you the possibility of solving internal, ethnic and religious matters according to your wishes without any violence or pressure from the side of Poland.’20 The motto of the former United Republic ‘the equal with the equal, the free with the free’ was revived. This meant combining the principles of voluntary federation of the former Rzeczpospolita nations with simultaneous respect for the right of national self-determination.21 Promoted by Pilsudski between 1919 and 1920 the federation programme contained two alternatives: the minimal and maximal variants. The first of these was based on the Swiss model with a cantonal structure involving the Polish (Warsaw), the Lithuanian (Vilnius) and the Byelorussian (Minsk) cantons. The second variant envisaged the extension of this union to Ukraine (Kiev) and Latvia (Riga). Either variant would be incorporated /

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in a larger European federation, a Union of European Federations.22 At the same time Ignacy Paderewski suggested the formation of a bloc of countries between the Baltic and the Adriatic.23 These scenarios were to experience a revival during and after the Second World War. But these ideas had their weaknesses. The idea of a Polish federation, comprising Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Baltic States, was mainly used as a weapon to complete the ‘neojagiellonian’ expansion to the East24 and ultimately to dismember Soviet Russia. The ideas behind the revival of the Rzeczpospolita did not take into account the most important bond which should unite the nations emotionally, namely the sense of belonging to the common family of Western culture. It was not a true federation idea that was being proposed but a temporary political plan. In fact, this plan was elaborated in government and academic circles in 1919. One of its authors was Wlodzimierz Wakar. Born in 1885 in Tambov in Russia, he arrived in Warsaw in 1903. He was an economist, statistician and publicist and lectured in the Higher School of Business.25 In relation to Central East Europe he presented the idea of the so-called Isthmus in a book entitled The union of the emancipated people (regional policy). The union referred to was to be an association of countries located between the Aegean, the Mediterranean and the Baltic Seas. If the union were to be achieved Poland, he believed, would have to make various concessions to win over neighbouring states, notably waiving the right to the contested territory of Zaolzie (the western part of Teschen [Cieszyn in Polish] Silesia) in favour of the Czech Republic, and agreeing to Lithuania co-governing Vilnius county. Another justification for the proposed union was advanced by Jan Grzegorzewski, an orientalist and slavist, who studied the history of relations between Poland and the Balkan States with the countries of the Islamic East. He contended that the East European plain was an organic entity based on the main river systems in this area. He tried to prove that ‘in the areas between the Dvina and the Vistula Rivers on the one hand, and between the Dnieper and Dniester Rivers on the other . . . Poles together with Latvian, Lithuanian and Finnish tribes were the earliest tribal elements, the oldest autochthons’.26 These assumptions were partly adopted in the government’s proposals. They assumed the possibility of political cooperation between a number of Baltic countries (Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia) and part at least of the countries of the Black Sea basin. A number of combinations were considered – the Baltic countries plus Hungary, the Baltic countries plus Romania but without Hungary, the Baltics plus both Hungary and Romania. There was even the possibility

Concepts of Europe in a Polish Political Tradition 13

of including Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. On the whole, Poland as the largest and most developed country and, moreover, the initiator of the rapprochement, was proposed as the leader of this bloc. The concept of ‘the Isthmus’ (i.e. the bloc of middle and small countries in Central East Europe) was one of the most important sources of good relations between the Rzeczpospolita and the Baltic States. They had all been a part of the Russian Empire and regained their independence after the First World War. In January 1920, the first Baltic conference involving some of the Isthmus countries took place in Helsinki, and ministers from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland participated. The aim of Polish diplomacy was to determine a common policy towards Russia. In this it failed. Even before the Conference had taken place Estonia had signed a peace treaty with Russia, and Finland and Lithuania were not won over to the idea. It is accordingly impossible to talk about a common policy towards Russia.27 The concept of ‘the Isthmus’ was in conflict with the agreement between Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania inspired by the French, and constituting the Little Entente. In Polish political circles there were two opposing views about the Entente. One of them was represented by politicians and publicists connected with the National Democratic Movement of Roman Dmowski. They argued that Poland had been drawn into isolation unnecessarily and the way to overcome it was to join the Little Entente. The second option was proposed by supporters of ‘the Isthmus’, who argued that the Polish-Czechoslovak dispute should have been prevented. However, Czechoslovak politicians took the view that because Czechoslovakia did not advance territorial claims during the Paris peace conference, German revisionism endangered it less than Poland. Although an agreement was concluded in Prague between Poland and Czechoslovakia on 6 November 1921 it did not include arrangements for a common defence against German aggression. Its most important clauses included: (1) a guarantee of the borders determined by the Treaties of Versailles and St Germain, (2) acceptance of neutrality in the case of attacks from neighbours, (3) obligatory arbitration, (4) a commitment of Poland to resist any attempts to restore the Habsburg Dynasty in Austria and Hungary. Despite this compact, the Czechoslovaks opposed Polish membership of the Little Entente.28 The main aim of the diplomacy of the Second Polish Republic after Versailles was the attempt to win over Romania to the ‘Isthmus’ concept. But this could only be achieved when the conflict between Romania and Hungary came to an end. An agreement was finally reached in November 1920 during the visit of Take Ionescu, the Romanian Foreign Minister, to

14

Poland and European Integration

Warsaw. He wanted to convince Polish politicians that the Little Entente pact should be enlarged to include Poland and Greece. Meanwhile, the Poles proposed that Romania’s dispute with Hungary should go to mediation, and raised the question of the Isthmus alliance. Ionescu showed no interest in either idea. Consequently a minimalist goal was agreed in the form of a Polish–Romanian covenant outside the Little Entente bloc and also outside the Isthmus idea. This alliance was signed on 3 March 1921 and a few months later Romania joined the Little Entente.29 The inter-war period inhibited the development of the federal idea at government level. The unbridled nationalism and economic autarky heightened the impression that any idea of European union was utopian, an idealistic dream which had no realistic possibility of implementation in international life. There were, it is true, many idealists but the reflection of their projects in the minds of the European nations was weak. Yet their ideas should not be ignored because they had no immediate results. On the contrary they reinforced a theme in Polish intellectual life which found expression both in the writings of enthusiasts for closer associations of states and among opposition parties. Consider the examples of two such idealists, Emmanuel Malynski and Józef Retinger. Malynski’s writings on the future of Europe were shaped by the First World War and by the necessity for a radical reconstruction of the European state system if future wars were to be prevented. He thought that the peace settlement, inspired by the wrong-headed idealism of Woodrow Wilson, was a disaster, creating within itself the seeds of future conflict. It divided central Europe into unmanageably small independent states in an area of vital strategic interest to the great powers on its flanks, Germany and the Soviet Union. In his book of 1922, How to Save Europe, Malynski implied that the approach of the pioneering thinkers of European unity in the 1920s would not succeed since it was based on the existing state system. He believed that unity was impossible without a pre-existing solidarity, an absence of hostility, and a high degree of mutual confidence. These conditions simply did not exist, as was later demonstrated by the failure of Aristide Briand’s plan for a form of federalism in Europe. So, he concluded, what was required was a system which satisfied all the members of the European community of nations, leaving none embittered or revisionist. Reconstruction was therefore a pre-condition of solidarity, on which in turn the creation of a successful European union depended.30 Malynski did not offer a set of practical proposals which might steer Europe towards unity in the circumstances of the 1920s. Rather, he presented a series of radical and, many would say, impossible ideas which

Concepts of Europe in a Polish Political Tradition 15

could only be seriously considered when the existing political order in Europe broke down totally. Nevertheless, among his wilder fancies and extremely impractical proposals he advanced some fruitful notions which found an echo among later generations. These included ideas about regional blocs (for example, a great Danubian federation with access to the sea and a customs union replacing the fragmented market created by the policy of national self-determination), the necessity for Europe to unite in face of its relative decline in economic and military power, some doubts about whether Russia should be considered as part of Europe, and the need for a federal system in Germany to contain the sources of militarism. As for Poland, Malynski reverted to a modified idea of the Rzechpospolita. Poland should turn its eyes away from the Baltic towards the south-east, an area which in association with Lithuania it had ruled for much of its history. It should have a port on the Black Sea, control of the territory of western Ukraine as far as the Dnieper River but, unlike the Rzechpospolita, it would not embrace Lithuania which would go to Germany. The several regional centres created by Malynski’s plan would find it in their interest to combine in a new political organism in the face of new global challenges. To defend itself against external economic competition Europe should establish a system of free trade, combined with external tariffs against foreign goods. The powers of Europe should then conclude defensive military alliances preparatory to the gradual development of a European federation. This in turn would have a unified fiscal and monetary policy and a single currency. A supranational parliament would be established alongside a permanent executive council. The underlying objective of Malynski’s proposals was to achieve a universal and durable peace in Europe, in contrast to the post-war reality where almost every state had an actual or potential casus belli with another state or states. The Poles who were influenced by federalist ideas in the inter-war period seem to have disregarded Malynski and instead became followers of Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and his pan-European movement. For example Aleksander Lednicki, a prominent Polish lawyer and statesman, was Poland’s main spokesman for the pan-European movement, and among his fellow Poles who supported Coudenhove-Kalergi’s ideas were Stanisl aw Estreicher, Rector of the University of Kraków and Stanisl aw Posner, a socialist member of the Polish Senate. Federalist student groups at Kraków and other universities were formed in the 1920s under the inspiration of Coudenhove and Briand. At the official level August Zaleski, the Polish representative on the Commission of Inquiry for European Union chaired by Aristide Briand, supported /

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Poland and European Integration

regional economic agreements as stepping stones to a European customs union. As Lipgens notes, from 1932 onwards the agrarian parties of Eastern Europe held congresses and discussed plans for the federation of the whole or part of Eastern Europe.31 Yet these ideas were out of tune with the dominant Polish nationalism, though they were to have increasing resonance after the outbreak of the Second World War. The domination of Central East Europe by the Nazis generated a widespread revulsion against the world of capitalism and nationalism which had produced them, and a determination to create a federation as a means of ensuring security and economic development. Illustrating this was a meeting of representatives of all Polish Underground groups in the spring of 1941 which demanded ‘a new and better order in a Europe reconstructed as a Union of Free Peoples’.32 One individual who linked the pre-war world, the wartime period and the post-war world was Józef Retinger. Retinger’s influential role during the Second World War and after will be discussed in the following chapters but his pre-war activities and ideas are worth a brief discussion now.33 His inspiration in the 1920s was leftist thinking in Britain and Poland, and his political friends were usually on the left: in Britain Arthur Henderson, Hugh Dalton and E.D. Morel, who interested him in ideas of world government; in Poland members of the Polish Socialist Party and the trade unions. He was, in addition, an important adviser and gobetween for General Sikorski, Prime Minister of Poland for a short period after the First World War, whose interests in international problems he shared. Their fruitful partnership began in 1916, developed through the inter-war period and reached its full flowering after Sikorski became prime minister of Poland (in this case the Polish government-in-exile) for the second time in 1939. Throughout the inter-war period Retinger kept true to his conviction that Europe must unite if wars were to be prevented and economic problems solved. Above all he was concerned for the security of Poland and other Central East European states. The only way to achieve this was by the closest political and economic collaboration between neighbours, not go-it-alone nationalism. The new union must enter into a community of free states in a reformed Europe. Sikorski in turn wrote in 1936 that the ‘vital interest of the Republic demands today that Poland take the initiative in grouping around itself the weaker states of Central and Eastern Europe. This is a matter of life and death for them and will greatly strengthen our position in Europe.’34 Three years later both Sikorski and Retinger were in exile. In the midst of many and pressing demands and with the painful knowledge that their country had been partitioned for the fourth time at the onset of

Concepts of Europe in a Polish Political Tradition 17

the Second World War they continued to emphasise the importance of finding ways to unite Central East Europe and to connect that regional ‘federation’ with an all-European union. They, along with many of their compatriots, were able to draw on the tradition of federal association in the Polish Republic of Poland and Lithuania, and equally on the rich source of Polish federalist thinking in the previous two centuries. As a result the Polish exiles made an immediate contribution to federalist thought and practice in Britain and the United States and, after the war, in Western Europe. The nature of that contribution will be the subject of the next and subsequent chapters.

2 A Fine Idea

On 17 June 1940 a British plane from London landed at Bordeaux. On board was Józef Retinger, Counsellor to the Polish Prime Minister, General Wladyslaw Sikorski. His mission was to contact Sikorski and other members of the Polish government-in-exile who had fled from their seat of government in Angers when German forces overran northern France and the Low Countries. Retinger was carrying an invitation to Sikorski from Winston Churchill to travel to London and re-form his government on British soil. Sikorski’s journey to London coincided with the dramatic exodus of Polish personnel to Britain from many ports in mainland Europe. This was how a Polish population of soldiers, sailors and airmen, government officials, and refugees relocated to Britain to form with the British an island outpost of resistance to Hitler. This resistance was ideological as well as military since it was among these exiles that ideas for a very different kind of Europe from Hitler’s took root. There were, of course, already several generations of Polish emigrants in Western Europe and the United States, but the overwhelming majority of these were economic migrants who had left their homes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were now to be joined by this new group, political refugees and defeated soldiers who had been driven out of their homeland by the double invasion of Germany and the Soviet Union. The attack on Poland by German military forces in September 1939, followed just over two weeks later by a Soviet invasion from the East, was a consequence of the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939. The Pact also provided for the absorption of Polish territory by the two aggressors. The cost in human casualties and suffering of the three weeks of conflict was enormous. Estimates suggest that Poland’s losses in the campaign were 200,000 men killed or wounded, 400,000 taken prisoner by the Germans and 230,000 by the Soviets. Some 90,000 were interned, /

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A Fine Idea 19

only temporarily in most cases, in Romania, Hungary and Lithuania after escaping over the borders. Members of the Polish government such as ´ President Mo´scicki and the Commander-in-Chief Marshal Smigl y-Rydz also found a haven in Romania though they too were interned.1 At the end of September 1939 there were some 40,000 Polish troops in Hungary, 32,000 in Romania and around 14,000 in Lithuania. The numbers increased as the result of late arrivals, many of whom had crossed the frontier by mountain routes, and the numbers were also reinforced by some 17,000 civilians who escaped to Romania and by a further 15,000 in Hungary. Possibly some of these ‘civilians’ were soldiers who had dispensed with their uniforms.2 The objective of most of these men was to reach France or French colonial or mandated territories since the French government had already offered to receive evacuated troops. With the help of diplomatic missions, and in some cases on their own initiative, a large proportion of them managed to leave Romania and Hungary and travelled to France through Yugoslavia and Italy, or by ship to Marseilles before that route was blocked. Some 43,000 reached France by these methods.3 On arrival they found that a Polish government-in-exile had been established under Article 24 of the Polish Constitution of 1935 which conferred emergency powers on the President to appoint a successor. Under this Article President Mo´scicki had transferred his presidential powers to Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, a former minister, then residing in Paris. He in turn appointed General Wladyslaw Sikorski, who had travelled to France via Romania, as Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of Polish forces. By the onset of the German attack on France in May 1940 Sikorski had under his command over 80,000 soldiers and some 7500 members of the Polish Air Force. Around 40,000 Polish troops took an active part in the battle for France.4 When French and British resistance was swept aside, Churchill agreed to help as many Poles as possible cross the English Channel and some 20,000 Polish soldiers reached Britain from the beaches of Dunkirk or from the French ports of La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Brest and St. Malo. Some of the Polish troops crossed into Spain and around 3000 were able to reach Gibraltar. Others followed clandestine escape routes using special evacuation posts in unoccupied France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa and eventually joined Polish units in Britain, North Africa or the Middle East. Most of the Polish troops arriving in Britain ultimately formed the First Polish Army Corps, numbering some 51,000 men in 1945. Add to these some 3000 Polish civilians who arrived in the early summer of 1940, mainly family members of military personnel or government employees.5 /

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Poland and European Integration

The Polish government-in-exile now relocated to Britain and obtained recognition from the British government. On arrival in London Sikorski wasted no time in re-establishing his government and making friendly contact with Churchill. His first priority was to offer as much military assistance as possible to the Allied cause, both by creating an effective fighting force out of the Polish military personnel now in Britain and by securing the release of as many as possible of Polish troops and deportees held in captivity in the Soviet Union. But Sikorski and his colleagues looked further into the future and set about planning for the post-war world. Though a major priority was economic reconstruction, political reconstruction was even more important. He and his governmental colleagues envisaged the creation of a new Europe, free from war, insecurity, want and inter-ethnic rivalries. Like the Resistance movements in France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland itself, the shock of war produced revolutionary thinking, a reshaping of mentalities and a determination not to return to the economic and political conditions of the interwar period. ‘The present war differs from all others in its character of a general revolution’, wrote the Belgian envoy to the Polish government in London. ‘This is a war of nations, races, of philosophical and social systems, which leads inevitably to the emergence of a new order based on the greatest human values.’6 For many it was essential to complete the task which the peace settlements after the First World War had begun. Whilst the principle of self-determination had been widely applied then, the weak point was, in the words of a Polish resistance newssheet in 1940 ‘the disproportion between the mass and strength of the newly-created states and the overwhelming power of their two neighbours’.7 Little had been achieved to overcome this disproportion in the way envisaged by Thomas Masaryk, the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia. After the achievement of independence, he believed, it was for the free and liberated nations to organise themselves into greater units. ‘A real federation of nations’ he wrote ‘will be accomplished only when the nations are free to unite of their own accord’.8 Federations or confederations were at the heart of the thinking of Poles in exile too, both in Britain and in the United States. Federations represented collectivity, mutual assistance and friendly cooperation between the member states, almost the exact opposite of the situation during the 1930s when inter-state rivalries, frontier disputes, economic protectionism, military aggression and ethnic conflicts were the norm. ‘What seemed a utopia...before 1939 acquired the status of the only rational and highly hopeful solution.’9 Although Sikorski spoke the language of federalism or confederalism (his personal preference was for the former) and wanted to construct a

A Fine Idea 21

new structure for interstate relations, his was not a Damascene conversion as a result of the war. According to Retinger he had been persuaded of the necessity for close associations between states during the 1930s, a decade when he was far from political power in Poland.10 War and political leadership gave him the opportunity to apply his ideas. He was not convinced that formal treaties between states would solve the problems of interstate relations. The experience of the 1930s persuaded him that only the yielding of state sovereignty in certain agreed areas of national life, such as foreign policy, defence and economics, would create the conditions for security and prosperity. It would be misleading to imply that Sikorski and his governmental colleagues stood alone in fostering the idea of a close association of the states of Central East Europe after the war. There was in fact a close correspondence between the policy initiatives of the Government and public opinion among the exiles. It is true that the number of exiles both in Britain and the United States was quite small, and paled into insignificance compared with the numbers of Poles remaining in occupied Poland. Nevertheless the exiles were extremely resourceful, informed and fertile in their ideas about the future of Central East Europe after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and were energetic in propagating them. They not only supported their Government’s approach but also developed a theoretical basis for a close association between states, discussing in depth the rival claims of federalism and confederalism. They asked, for example, why a federation (or for some a confederation) was necessary in the post-war world; should there be more than one federation in the region and what relation should it have to federations elsewhere in Europe; should a European regional federation be part of a system of world-wide federations leading ultimately to world government; finally, what were the most propitious circumstances for creating a federation and ensuring it was successful. Just as the Government derived considerable strength and confidence from the active support and initiatives of the exiles, they in turn were strengthened in their beliefs by their awareness that the representatives of the home population in the Underground had developed very similar ideas. There was indeed, as Feliks Gross, one of the early pioneers of federalist thinking among the exile populations, commented, ‘a cross-fertilisation between the official activity of governments, the peoples under occupation and the centres of federal thinking abroad’.11 The energy and resourcefulness of the exiles is exemplified in the journals they established, the clubs and associations they founded, and the lobbying they engaged in.

22

Poland and European Integration

One of the earliest organisations of Polish exiles was the American Committee on European Reconstruction, established in the summer of 1940 by a group of Poles, Czechoslovaks and Austrians, with the blessing of Jan Masaryk, the Foreign Minister of the Czechoslovak Provisional Government, and Count George Potocki, then Polish Ambassador in Washington. It was the Polish membership of the Committee which founded, in December 1940, an influential journal called New Europe edited from 1942 by Feliks Gross.12 A little later, in April 1941, the Journal of Central European Affairs began publication and it too advocated federalist ideas. Similar support came from Robotnik Polski in the United States, and Robotnik and Nowa Polska in London. The Polish Information Center in New York published the Polish Review which kept its readers informed about the activities of the Polish government-in-exile in London and supported the government’s advocacy of federation for Central East Europe. The London government put out the Polish Fortnightly Review, again as a means of informing the readership of the activities of the government and supporting federalism. Complementing this official publication was the West Slavonic Bulletin published in London which advocated the union of all western Slavs to form a confederation, the first stage in the process of achieving unification.13 An influential organisation which had its roots in the International Labour Organization conference in New York in 1941 was the Central and East European Planning Board (CEEPB), which was formally created in January 1942 at a meeting of Polish, Czechoslovak, Greek and Yugoslav representatives, including the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk and the Polish Minister of Labour, Jan Stan´czyk. The CEEPB was therefore a semi-official intergovernmental organisation, its other members being scholars, planners and representatives of peasant, radical and socialist parties. Entrusted with the study of federalism, among its plans for reconstruction it included a clear-cut endorsement of a confederation for Central East Europe. In May 1942 it declared: ‘Our countries are rich in natural resources, manpower, energy. We occupy a large and significant territory. Our efforts should be combined and utilized in such a way as to ensure the highest possible standards for a peaceful and constructive development of our peoples. . . .’14 It went on, ‘We agree on the essential need of close collaboration among peoples and governments of the small nations of Central and Eastern Europe . . . The East European region has its own problems and those must be handled and solved by mutual consent and friendly collaboration of the respective nations.’15 A similarly wide-ranging plan was espoused by the Danubian Club of London which embraced all the countries of Central East Europe. The

A Fine Idea 23

club was composed of exiled democrats and anti-fascists headed by Michael Karolyi and Adam Ciolkosz, prominent Hungarian and Polish socialists respectively, and unlike the CEEPB was not linked to exile governments. It endorsed the view that an alliance or entente was incapable of bringing in a new order and that a federation or a confederation was essential if effective union was to be achieved. Accordingly it proposed a ‘Central and South-east European union in the form of a detailed draft constitution for a federation of the region’. It included representatives not only from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Greece and Yugoslavia but also exiles from Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Romania.16 The close association between these private voluntary organisations and government is illustrated by the contributions of government members in these journals. Government officials and private citizens in exile confronted the same problems and tried to answer the same questions. Their answers were remarkably similar and there were few dissenters from the vision of the future which the exiles, whether in or out of government, projected. As we shall also see, this vision was shared by Polish political representatives and members of the Home Army in occupied Poland. Shaken by the events of the recent past but remaining confident that Germany would eventually be defeated the exiles tried to imagine the shape and contours of the post-war world. Their first conclusion was that Central East Europe could not go back to the status quo ante but had to be radically reshaped in the form of one or more confederations or federations. The reasons for this radical development combine disillusionment with the capacity of the nation state to solve political, economic and social problems, and awareness that the war gave the opportunity for a radical restructuring of interstate relations with all its concomitant advantages. In calling for a closer association of states in the Central East European region the proponents of this idea did not engage in disputes about whether such an association should have a federal or confederal character. Of course, individuals had their preferences and some set out their ideas in detail, but most preferred to leave this issue to be settled in the future. Federalists were often prepared to accept the idea of confederation as a step in the right direction, in the belief that experience would ultimately show the superiority of the federal form in solving practical problems. Confederalists, on the other hand, believed that though there was widespread support for closer association between states, public opinion would prefer to limit restrictions on national sovereignty until a clear case had been made for further limitations. Neither side in the discussion forced the issue during the war, preferring to emphasise the advantages of /

24

Poland and European Integration

a rather ill-defined ‘closer association’ of states. In essence the federalist preference was for the establishment of joint institutions between states in which decisions would be taken by majority vote, while the confederalists hoped to achieve a form of government where, in joint institutions, there would remain a veto for one or more of the participants or, if the veto were to be removed, the removal should apply to a very restricted area of government, for example the economy. The point to emphasise is that the participants in the debate agreed that the state system of the prewar period had to be radically changed if the sufferings of war were to be avoided. For convenience the following discussion will use the term federalism in the general sense of ‘any body politic composed of various constituent parts’ except where more precision is required.17 The numerous journal articles, government statements and the manifestos of voluntary organisations of the period showed the extraordinarily broad rationale for the rejection of the existing state system and its replacement by a new form of associated government. Perhaps the greatest advantage of a new governmental system as outlined in the numerous discussions of the war period was its capacity to enhance independence and security. Evidently the state system of the interwar years had failed to defend the independence of states against the aggression of the major powers. The massive spending on armaments as a proportion of national income proved incapable of offering the anticipated security.18 The inevitable preoccupation of people driven out of their countries by war was how to preserve peace in future. Everyone agreed that ‘a peaceful international order was incompatible with the maintenance of the principle of national sovereignty.’19 Henryk Strassburger, Finance Minister of the Polish government-in-exile, said that each of the countries of Central East Europe taken separately had been too weak to resist German aggression. ‘By pooling resources, complementing their industry and aggregating their territory they will augment their strength for the defence of peace.’20 Feliks Gross added that since nations as sovereign powers were unable to maintain peace, ‘some vital functions now performed by the nation state should be transmitted to other institutions which are better fitted to perform them’. These views were mirrored in the Polish Underground. The Polish Socialist Party which, like the Peasant Party, was strongly in favour of a federal solution, claimed that a federal authority was necessary to safeguard the federated peoples from external aggression, and to ‘suppress all attempts to create internal dissension through excessive nationalism’.21 Some writers invoked the emphasis in the Atlantic Charter on the freedom from fear, claiming that federalism would be the means of removing the fear based on insecurity, the fear of war and fear of

A Fine Idea 25

the internal abuse of power. Instead of existing in a state of fear and ploughing a large proportion of national resources into ultimately ineffective defence spending, populations within a federal system would be able to develop the potentialities of their nations knowing that their external security was safeguarded.22 Other writers focused more explicitly on the major source of insecurity in the recent past and a probable source in the future, namely Germany. Central East Europe had traditionally been an area for German expansion. The view was widely shared that Germany’s aggressive spirit and its military power could be broken only by denying her the possibility of conquering this region again. Moreover, Germany’s success was built not simply on military might but on her ability to exploit the differences and divisions among the states of the region.23 A federation for the area could end this division and be strong enough to resist future German aggression. Another very important advantage was that a federation would have the economic strength to negotiate economic agreements with Germany and other powerful states on more equal terms than in the past, with resulting benefits.24 Poles in exile could not, of course, forget that their country had also been invaded by Soviet forces in the recent past, but it is remarkable how few of the exile writers invoked a federal system as a means of defence against the Soviets. This was probably a reflection of the political situation after the signing of the Polish–Soviet Treaty of July 1941, when relations between the Soviet Union and Poland became, overtly at least, friendly and co-operative. If there was distrust of Soviet intentions in the long term this was concealed beneath an attempt to reassure the Kremlin that a federation in Central East Europe was not directed against the Soviet Union. Quite the contrary – a federation in the region would act, in Sikorski’s words, ‘as a natural rampart of protection for Soviet Russia, always so concerned about her Western security’.25 There was no question of the creation of another cordon sanitaire. Yet fear of Soviet intentions in the area could not always be suppressed. In December 1942, at a time when Polish–Soviet relations were rapidly deteriorating, and when it was becoming increasingly clear that Moscow was opposed to federations in Central East Europe, the Polish government submitted to Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, President Roosevelt, and the American State Department a memorandum outlining its views on the problem of the region. If German power in the region were to be broken, the report noted, it did not follow at all ‘that the “leadership” in that part of Europe should be left to Russia. Such a solution would be as harmful as acquiescence to German ambitions . . . There can be no independence

26

Poland and European Integration

under the “leadership” of Russia – a great power which pursues a policy aiming at the introduction of the communist system in the neighbouring countries, with the purpose of incorporating them into the Soviet Union.’ Independence of the countries in that part of Europe could be achieved mainly ‘by their own endeavours’, specifically by ‘uniting their economic, political and military resources’.26 Unsurprisingly a Polish government official, Jan Wszelaki, in a talk to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, also emphasised that if Central Europe were not de-balkanised, ‘there will be forces other than Germany willing to exploit her helplessness for their own particular purposes. An integrated bloc is intended to preserve it from exterior menaces – both Hitlerite Germany and imperialist Russia.’27 Equally, insecurity for states in Central East Europe emanated not only from external menaces but from conflicts internal to the region. Federalist thinkers believed that these conflicts could be mediated far more effectively inside a federation than outside it. Wszelaki commented that ‘frontiers are less important when there is an association of states than when not. To settle disputes between Slovaks and Hungarians is far easier inside an association than outside it.’28 ‘An integrated bloc’ he added ‘would produce an equitable and practical solution’ to the conflicts of the area which would be easier to achieve than in any alternative structure.29 Milan Hodˇza, a former Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, agreed that nationalist outbursts between the Central European nations ‘would have been mitigated if common interests and affairs had outweighed clashes and rivalries such as frontier claims and minority problems’.30 The Socialist Party of Poland, summing up this point of view, stated that the object of a federation ‘is solely to harmonize and reconcile the interests of all the federated countries so as to prevent war’, by which it meant internecine war.31 Supporters of a federation also emphasised the economic security that would result from it. The newspaper of the Polish Home Army, Wiadomo´sci, argued that there were two main causes of poverty in the region. The first was the low level of education and civilisation of the masses due mainly to many years of subjugation and a series of wars. The second was the fragmentation of nationalities ‘which stood in the way of political and economic consolidation’. To overcome this backwardness state sovereignty had to be restricted so that Central East Europe could be organised as one great economic area.32 The Polish government, in the previously noted memorandum submitted to the British and American governments, claimed that this region would be very important owing to its size (around 100 million people), mineral

A Fine Idea 27

wealth, and geographical position linking East and West Europe. If uniform economic legislation and a unified system of transport were introduced, and if there was free movement of the factors of production, this region could become a dynamic part of the European and world economies. The planners gathered together in the CEEPB believed that systematic, planned economic development would be stimulated and facilitated by an economic union of states.33 A federation would also correct the ‘pernicious tendency’, so strongly evident in the pre-war years, by which each state sought economic autarky and followed ‘beggar my neighbour’ policies to the detriment of European economic prosperity. A dynamic fast growing region could ensure more effective defence spending to the benefit of its military security. Equally important, more rapid economic growth would reduce poverty and raise the general standard of living of the population of the area.34 If state sovereignty was to be restricted in the interests of economic consolidation, at the same time proponents of a closer association between states were adamant that within a central European federation every nation should preserve its national individuality and culture, and organise its religious, political and social life in accordance with popular wishes. Totalitarian states attempted to suppress or destroy the national cultures of small states so it was all the more important that a putative federation should offer them protection since they had proved incapable of defending themselves. The distinguishing characteristic of Europe was the diversity of its cultures; somewhat paradoxically, this diversity could best be preserved and enhanced in the interest of Europe as a whole by means of a close association of the individual states.35 A federation would protect and nurture national cultures and national rights just as it would protect the human rights of individuals. Respect for human rights and the rights of nations went hand in hand. Some writers such as Gross and Kohanski pointed out that while a federation might be capable of offering protection to national cultures, by which was generally meant the cultures of the nation states of the region, it was not made explicit how it would protect the rights of minorities and minority cultures within the nation states. Minority issues were some of the most acute and intractable in the pre-war world, and the nation states in Central East Europe had often failed to find satisfactory solutions to them. Not one of the Central European states ‘proved capable of bridging the complexities of nationality problems, especially minorities problems’.36 Some war-time federalists offered ideas as to how this problem might be solved. One organisation, the Independent Central Europe Federal Association, claimed that the enforcement of the German language in Nazi

28

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Europe had demonstrated to the nations of the region ‘the shamefulness of the denationalization of minorities’ which was widely characteristic of the pre-war world. ‘We must’ it continued ‘investigate the possibility of building a structure that will ensure to all nationalities...full cultural and national sovereignty and free linguistic and cultural development to the national minorities’.37 How was this objective to be achieved? Feliks Gross suggested equal rights and opportunities for minorities by means of territorial and cultural autonomy for each national group in mixed areas.38 For a federalist such as Gross, there was no contradiction between the greater centralisation involved in a federal system and the increased decentralisation which would be involved in an effective minorities programme. Federalisation, admittedly, brought a larger unity but the powers of the federal government would be constitutionally specified and limited. All other governmental powers, as Corey argued, would be held either by the states composing the federation or, on the same principle of subsidiarity, by local governments or local cultures within the states.39 Gross coined the phrase ‘democratic integral federalism’ to mean the extension of the federal principle to the internal politics of states, introducing federalism ‘to every corner of social life’. He appreciated that this meant a new attitude to political and economic problems. In the particular case of national minorities, it involved creating new structures of rights to meet the needs of each ethnic group within society. ‘We must’ he wrote ‘introduce a whole system of federal principles...within each state, national culture, social relations and economies’. This ‘inner federalization’ would provide for territorial autonomy for ethnic minorities, where appropriate, and where not, for cultural autonomy. Gross seemed to believe, though he did not state this explicitly, that the introduction of the principle of federation in interstate relations would facilitate its application in the internal politics of individual states.40 He assumed that the introduction of federalism between states would nurture a ‘new attitude’ to political problems. Vojta Beneˇs, the brother of the Czech President, seemed to agree with Gross’s analysis, remarking that the ‘historical mission’ of federalism was to create a union ‘for the defence of language, culture and spiritual values’.41 Kohanski explicated the new attitude to which Gross referred. In a federal system, he argued, national groups would lose their present definition of national minorities within a state and become ‘partners in a common federal enterprise’.42 State frontiers would diminish in importance as minorities in one state would realise that their fellow ethnics in the new federal structure were majorities in other member states. Taking this to its logical conclusion, the federation could become a federation of national groups rather than one of states. This

A Fine Idea 29

remained an implication rather than an explicit statement in the discourse of the war-time exiles. But the general conclusion remained: the introduction of federalism in Central East Europe would help to solve one of the most difficult problems of the pre-war years, that of national minorities. The idealism of federalist thinkers was subject to criticism not only by writers in the West (Gross’s book for example was severely criticised when it came out in 1945) but also by some exiles from Central Europe. Szerer, for example, accepted the desirability of federations in Europe, especially in economic matters, but cast doubt on their ability to solve political and social problems. For example, war between federal blocs remained a possibility. If the avoidance of war required wide-ranging understandings and agreements between federal blocs why, he asked, could they not be reached by individual states? Why should the will to peace be present in federations if it did not first exist in states composing them? He seemed to miss the point that it was that very will to peace that led to the formation of federations in the first place.43 Other critics argued that national pride and a commitment to national independence would not be superseded by a new patriotism for a federalist homeland, and hence a federal system would not be created. Federalism therefore was not a practical proposition since it did not command the support of the majority of the peoples concerned.44 These critics do not appear to have had the support of the majority of the exiles or of the populations of the home countries. While there was widespread agreement among Polish exiles on the desirability of a federal system in Central East Europe there were wide divergences of opinion about which states should combine together. Should all the states of the region participate in one federation, or should there be two or more associations? The official Polish position was that there should ultimately be two unions collaborating with each other. The Poles envisaged a north and central union comprising Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Lithuania, and a southern union made up of Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and possibly Turkey.45 The Poles, coming from the largest state in the region, were conscious of the need to have several countries in each federation to avoid the impression of predominance by one country.46 They were very suspicious of the Czechoslovak preference to include Austria in any Central European federation on the grounds that it would constitute an outpost of German influence. Equally, the Poles were hostile to a Danubian union embracing the lands of the former Austria-Hungary but excluding Poland and the Baltic states, since this would provide Austria with opportunities for sponsoring Hungarian revisionism and

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might become the instrument of a revived German imperialism. The Poles had no objection to the two blocs becoming one economic area.47 Writers outside government shared a wide variety of opinions about the desirable federal structure for Central East Europe, but they agreed on one important factor, namely that a federation would only work effectively if its members were bound together by a genuine community of interest, based on geographical contiguity, ethnic and cultural affinity, similarities in economic and social structure, and shared religious and other traditions and historical experiences.48 Everyone agreed that another essential component of community was a shared commitment to democracy. As Thomas Masaryk had argued, close association between the states of the region would only come about when there was a genuine popular sentiment in its favour. For that to be expressed democracy had to exist in each of the participating states, and it was inconceivable that two or more democracies forming a federation would reject the very democratic forms for the federation which existed in the member states. Gross believed that any union must be based on ‘the mutual interests of the common people’ if it was to endure. ‘A lasting settlement cannot be achieved by diplomatic measures alone but only through the will of the people and by a definite democratic process.’49 He did not believe that a movement driven by elites but without wholehearted popular support could succeed. Federalist thinkers asked whether there were enough common interests among the potential member states to form a federation of all the countries of Central East Europe. Some like Gross and the members of the Central European Federal Club in 1945 were sure that Central East Europe formed a ‘natural geographic and economic entity’ with mutual interests and similar cultures. Hence the states of the region could enjoy a close association.50 Similarly, W. Kulski, a senior Polish government official, argued that the war would make the populations of the region realise ‘the essential community of their political and economic interests’, surrounded as they were, and now occupied, by Great Powers.51 However, the majority rejected this view, spokesmen like Jan Wszelaki contending that differences of race, religion, traditions and standards of living in Central East Europe were too great to achieve any lasting association and hence it was necessary to form sub-regional associations between states which had a great deal in common. This was the case, argued Zóltowski, for Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary; the Balkan area should not be brought in because ‘its immediate interests are too different and its sphere of action too remote for it to be practically possible’.52 As a practical starting point, however, negotiations between four of the states in this /

A Fine Idea 31

area in 1940–42 resulted in declarations creating two confederations, the Polish–Czechoslovak, and the Yugoslav–Greek, which might ultimately merge politically but would certainly create a close association for the purposes of economic development.53 Indeed, virtually all federalist thinkers, whatever their differences about the states to be included in various federations, agreed that there should be one economic area, and that for two reasons. Firstly, the states, apart from Czechoslovakia, had very similar economic structures; a large majority of the populations were engaged in agriculture, there was a greater density of population on agricultural land than in Western Europe, and industrial development was in its early stages.54 Secondly, the problems of employment and agricultural reform could best be coped with in larger units than in the small states of the region. A customs union could be established in stages with a common external tariff and a gradual removal of internal tariffs to create a free trade area. The development of mass production called for the creation of large economic units transcending state boundaries.55 Another common assumption was that associations of states in Central East Europe would link up with other associations in Europe such as the Scandinavian and the West European (which it was assumed would be created) to form, in the first instance, a confederation of European states. This in turn would be part of a world commonwealth constituted as a world union of regional unions.56 In this respect, these thinkers were reflecting the then common understanding among federalist groups in Britain and in the Resistance movements in other European states, that the ultimate purpose of federalisation was the emergence of world government. Without it, Gross believed, the regional organisations could not guarantee peaceful progress to their citizens.57 For most of the war there was a widely held belief among the exiles that after the German defeat they would be able to return home. Indeed this belief survived for several years after the war, on the assumption that the Soviet Union would ultimately withdraw from Central East Europe. Federalists in exile were naturally very interested in currents of opinion among their fellow nationals under occupation. Would the home populations be as enthusiastic for a closer association of states in the region as the exiles were? We noted earlier that there was scepticism in some quarters about this, and scepticism was not absent even among the closest supporters of the exiles in Britain. Hugh Dalton, then a member of the British government, recalled in his diaries a conversation he had had with Adam Ciol kosz, a Polish socialist in exile and editor of the journal Robotnik during the war, and Jan Stan´czyk, Polish /

32

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Minister of Labour. ‘They may say’ he wrote ‘that they “represent” this, that or the other pre-war Polish political party, but we cannot take for granted that the Poles in Poland, when liberated, will take quite the same view.’58 The British Ambassador to Poland, Sir Horace Kennard, who was sceptical about the Polish–Czechoslovak confederation idea, reported to the Foreign Office in January 1941 that Sikorski could not count on strong support in Poland. ‘Up to now’ he wrote ‘we have absolutely no evidence how the public in Poland is reacting to the Polish–Czech rapprochement in this country’.59 His colleague at the Embassy and an expert on Central Europe, Frank Savery, suggested that the Polish government be asked about the reactions of the Poles at home to rapprochement, adding waspishly: ‘Whether they will tell the truth or not is another matter’.60 Kennard’s successor, Sir Cecil Dormer, less sceptical than his predecessor, nevertheless reported in May 1941 that the Polish Foreign Minister, August Zaleski, when asked if the Poles at home realised the necessity of Poland combining with other Central European states after the war, cautiously replied that if the war were to last for several more years they ‘would certainly realise the truth’, though opinion was ‘moving in the right direction’.61 The problem for the British government was that they wanted the Polish–Czechoslovak confederation proposal to succeed but had no independent means of assessing opinion in Poland and thus were in the hands of the Poles. The latter bombarded them with evidence of popular support, and some Foreign Office officials were ready to believe it. William Strang and Frank Roberts, both senior officials, minuted that the proposed rapprochement between Poles and Czechoslovaks was being well received by people of all shades of opinion, and that the Polish public favoured co-operation with the Czechoslovaks.62 Robert Bruce Lockhart passed on the news from Sikorski that representatives of the four leading political parties in Poland had fully approved the idea of a Polish–Czechoslovak commonwealth.63 Dormer sent Eden a copy of a pamphlet entitled ‘Towards a New Poland’ produced by the Polish Underground and transmitted to the Polish National Council in London by representatives of the Polish Socialist Party and the Peasants’ Party. This expressed the willingness of Poland to participate in a commonwealth of the free peoples of Europe.64 There seemed, indeed, to be masses of evidence that three of the main political parties in the Polish Underground, the Socialists, the Peasants and the Christian Democratic Workers, were enthusiastically behind the London government’s stance on federations.65 It is not necessary here to lay out in detail all the supporting material – a small sample should

A Fine Idea 33

suffice. Lipgens, who published examples of this material, commented that documents of the non-communist resistance in Poland reached London in great quantities during the war. Some of this documentation was published in New Europe.66 A Polish Underground paper, Nowe Drogi, wrote that ‘a federated Europe must be composed of federated regions’ and a Central East Europe confederation was a step in this direction. The programme of the Polish Underground (the four parties constituting the political representation in Poland) advocated a confederation of states, the nucleus of which would be a Polish–Czechoslovak union, as one of its four peace aims. Federation was also supported by Przebudowa (Reform), Wiadomo´sci Polskie and Freedom. Ropp reported that of 110 Underground publications in occupied Poland, 62 gave Sikorski’s policies unqualified support, 37 gave them full support until the end of the war, and only 11 were opposed.67 The Council of National Unity, which acted as an Underground parliament, supported the idea of a federation for Central East Europe. The Polish Home Army (AK), while supporting an association of Central East European states, rejected a federalist United States of Central Europe as premature. It preferred a ‘comparatively loose association of states pursuing an agreed foreign and military policy, complementing each other in the economic field, and able to create conditions for genuine cultural co-operation but preserving the essence of state sovereignty in their own affairs’.68 Malinowski summarised one of the clandestine pamphlets published for discussion by the Underground Labour Movement in 1943. Its attitude to international post-war problems emphasised the right of every nation to independence and to voluntary federation. Individual nations must yield some of their sovereign powers to their respective federations. ‘Within each federation, the member nations, if they are to enjoy the benefits ensuing from sincere and genuinely democratic collaboration, must relinquish all desire for economic and political supremacy. . . .’ Each federation within Europe would be a member of a world federation.69 There is little room for doubt, as Wszelaki argued, that in 1943 most of the political groups and parties in occupied Poland (he added, ‘the broad masses’ as well) were convinced that their best hope for the future lay in the integration of Central East Europe. For the first time in their history, he believed, the people of Central East Europe were ‘psychologically and emotionally prepared’ for union even though they knew that this meant a sacrifice of some of their sovereignty.70 Yet, despite this air of public confidence, there remained some doubts about how far the exiles’ federal plans really represented the masses of occupied Poland though there can be little hesitation in saying that they represented the political parties

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and the intelligentsia. The Poles had to concede to Edvard Beneˇs’s view that there could be no final agreement on confederation between Poles and Czechoslovaks until the exiles had returned home and engaged in democratic politics again. Beneˇs at this point was probably playing for time but he had a point. Until free elections were held in the countries of this region no one could be absolutely sure about popular attitudes to a close association between the states. All we can say with certainty is that it seems there was a strong disposition in favour of federation, probably in a loose form. We can add that the arguments advanced in favour bore a marked resemblance to those of the exiles. Federalism was, in Franklin Roosevelt’s words, ‘a fine idea’ (a comment he made during Sikorski’s first visit to the United States in early 1941), and his approval in principle was shared by those who favoured peaceful and constructive relations between states, economic development, and a solution to minority problems. Whether that idea could be transformed into practical solutions both for interstate and intrastate problems could only be determined by events. As we shall see in the next chapter, the initial optimism of 1940 was soon succeeded by the demoralising realisation of failure.

3 A Predictable Failure1

There was a very widely shared idea among the Polish exiles in Britain and the United States that, after the defeat of Germany, a new order should be established in Central East Europe to enhance the region’s security, economic development and social progress. A number of organisations and pressure groups were established by the exiles to promote this idea. At least as important in this respect was the wholehearted commitment, during the Second World War, of the Polish government-in-exile under Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski to bring about a new supranational authority in Eastern Europe to protect the region from the imperialism of its neighbours, Germany and the Soviet Union. From the Polish perspective, this regional federation would comprise one of the building blocks in a postwar federation of the whole of Europe. It seemed preferable to construct a number of regional federations first rather than to create at the outset an all-European entity. All that the states of Central East Europe could do initially was to build up their collective economic and military strength in order to deter any future German ambitions in their region. Obviously it would be impossible to create an East European federation until all the states of the region had reclaimed their independence and were free to decide on their future. Nevertheless some progress could be made in the interim by initiating discussions between the London governments-in-exile of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Although there was a very strong disposition on the Polish side to reach agreement with the Czechoslovaks, the latter’s response was, for a number of reasons, far more ambivalent. One of the major sources of this ambivalence lay in the attitude of the Czechoslovak President, Edvard Beneˇs. By contrast Sikorski remained totally committed to the cause of Central East European unity based on a federation between Poland and Czechoslovakia. His so-called éminence grise, Józef Retinger, claimed that he had been instrumental in /

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Poland and European Integration

converting Sikorski to the cause of federalism in the late 1930s and was, according to Laptos, the ‘de facto author of what was called in émigré circles, the Sikorski Plan’.2 Retinger remained loyal to this European ‘religion’, as he called it, for the rest of his life, working unceasingly and in different contexts for the achievement of this ideal.3 Hugh Dalton, who knew both Sikorski and Retinger, commented that Retinger was completely in the Prime Minister’s confidence.4 Whatever the precise influence of Retinger, there is little doubt that Sikorski was expressing federalist views from the autumn of 1939 onwards, urging a federation of Central East Europe within a federation of Europe as a whole.5 In an interview for Le Petit Parisien in the spring of 1940 he observed that ‘one of the most certain causes of the terrible disaster which has struck Warsaw and Prague is to be found in the disagreements which have divided the Slav nations in the past’. These could be overcome by an economic and political union of the states of Central East Europe, entering in due course into a united Europe.6 The creation of a ‘politically solid block of Slav states extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Adriatic’ was hardly a novelty in Polish thinking. Indeed it had solid historical experience behind it dating from the Commonwealth period in Polish history.7 It differed in two respects from this tradition, however. It extended the federation from the northern to the southern part of the Central East European region taking in the Balkans, and it attempted to create this block in close co-operation with the Czechoslovaks. Such a ‘cohesive and concordant co-operation’ of states, according to Sikorski, ‘would arrest the German drive to the East’.8 It would be misleading to imply that Sikorski and Retinger were the sole driving forces behind the federalist campaign in the Polish governmentin-exile. The Government was united in its objective although there were differences of opinion about tactics. And, as we shall see, important differences might have emerged between Sikorski and his cabinet colleagues if he had survived the plane crash in July 1943. Until his death, however, Sikorski presided over a government united in its ambition to advance the cause of federalism in Central East Europe. Edward Raczyn´ski, for example, the Polish Ambassador in London and later Foreign Minister, was totally committed to European unity. He advocated the construction of ‘a centre of power in Europe (a block in the intermarium area)...for maintaining the European balance free from hegemony and oppression’. The Polish–Czechoslovak confederation, he believed, would act as a centre of attraction for other nations in the region owing to its economic importance and geographical position.9 These ideas were supported by General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, the deputy Prime Minister, and August Zaleski, the /

A Predictable Failure 37

Foreign Minister, before their resignations in July 1941 over Sikorski’s conclusion of an agreement with the Soviet Union. Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, who succeeded Sikorski as Prime Minister, also committed his government to the federal cause.10 Even so, there is abundant evidence that Sikorski, with Retinger, was the driving force behind the policy and that it was he, along with Beneˇs for the Czechoslovaks, who controlled the Polish–Czechoslovak negotiations, setting out the principles and the broad strategy to be adopted. Sikorski put the machine in motion and when it ground to a halt (or when he allowed it to grind to a halt because of other preoccupations) it was he who was instrumental, with Beneˇs, in starting it up again. Behind Sikorski was the British government, until it became inexpedient for it to continue its support, and behind Beneˇs was the looming presence of the Soviet Union, which ultimately wrecked the Poles’ ambitions. If Sikorski and Beneˇs were the decisive figures in the negotiations it is natural to trace the ebb and flow of the Polish–Czechoslovak relationship from their particular perspectives. There was little natural sympathy between them, and it is probable that Sikorski would have found it much easier to deal with Jan Masaryk, the Czech Foreign Minister, whose western sympathies brought him closer to Sikorski, whereas his chief tended to look towards Moscow for political support, much to the irritation of the Poles. Sikorski said that he could collaborate with Masaryk 100 per cent but only 52 per cent with Beneˇs. The Poles also believed that Beneˇs’ commitment to a close association with the Poles was superficial and based on expediency. Zaleski, who had worked with Beneˇs in Geneva in the late 1920s, commented that Beneˇs was only paying lip service to the idea of federation to impress the British government. When he and his Czechoslovak National Committee were seeking recognition from France and Britain as the Government of Czechoslovakia in the early stages of the war, he was prepared to agree in principle to a close association with the Polish government-inexile.11 So long as the Soviet Union remained the ally of Germany, Beneˇs recognised that the Poles and the British were his strongest support. However, after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 Beneˇs saw the possibility of an alliance with the Soviets. While ever the restored Soviet–Polish relationship (after July 1941) remained relatively strong, Beneˇs continued to negotiate with the Poles for an association between the two countries. When this relationship weakened in 1942 and 1943 he distanced himself from them, and concentrated instead on trying to conclude an alliance with the Kremlin in which he was successful. This led to bitter complaints from the Poles /

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about Beneˇs’ opportunism. ‘In retrospect’ Borsody claimed, ‘the suspicion arose that Beneˇs availed himself of a Czechoslovak–Polish rapprochement for opportunistic purposes only in order to strengthen temporarily the international position of the Czech exiles.’ That he was misguided Beneˇs himself acknowledged at the end of his life, when he rued putting his trust in Stalin.12 Yet even before the division between the Poles and Czechoslovaks widened to the point of irreparability, there were significant policy differences between the two governments. While they shared the desire to raise a barrier to future German expansion they differed in their policies to the Soviet Union and in their preferred methods for containing Germany. It was these differences in approach which contributed, almost as much as the machinations of the Kremlin, to the failure of the Poles to achieve their federalist ambitions for Central East Europe. For example, Sikorski believed that the form of association which had the best chance of containing Germany was a tightly integrated union of states, a Bundesstaat, on the model of the United States federal government rather than a Staatenbund (or confederation). Accordingly the Polish–Czechoslovak federation should take the form of a political, military and monetary union, with common institutions (for example, it would have single ministers for foreign affairs, defence and economic matters and even a single Assembly) as well as a common economic policy.13 Writing to Beneˇs on 3 December 1940 Sikorski argued that the Union must begin with ‘total solidarity in war and peace’, which required the relinquishing of national sovereignty in the common interest. In emphasising the high degree of integration required, Sikorski drew attention to the federation’s political character. At the same time, he was not so enthusiastic about an economic union. A common economic policy, which he favoured owing to its potential for improving the standard of living in the region, did not imply a customs free zone, at least initially, since the Polish economy was severely damaged by the war and would need a period of reconstruction and recuperation. Moreover, the Czechoslovak economy was more diversified and its manufacturing base was far stronger than its Polish partner’s. Inevitably the post-war Polish economy would be unable to compete with the flow of manufactured articles from the less damaged Czechoslovak economy. Consequently tariffs or other controls on imports from Czechoslovakia would have to remain, at least in the early stages of the federation. The Poles stressed, rather, the necessity for the closest possible political unity. When it became clear that such a tight integration would be to Poland’s benefit owing to its larger population and therefore greater representation in common institutions,

A Predictable Failure 39

the Polish negotiators were sensitive enough to suggest modifications in representation which would favour the Czechoslovaks. Wszelaki commented that the Polish cabinet had made, ‘as its point de départ to abandon any idea of dominating’ the Czechoslovaks. Yet the Polish ambition to restore Poland’s pre-war frontiers would have resulted in a much larger state with an even greater differential in human and material resources and a greater capacity to dominate. Hence the Czechoslovaks advocated a looser confederation in which they would have a veto on decisionmaking, and looked forward to enlarging the community to reduce the predominance of a single country.14 It was apparent that Beneˇs, though employing the rhetoric of unity, was quite far from Sikorski’s position. His secretary, Edvard Táborsk´y, wrote that Beneˇs conceived the idea of a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation and put it to Sikorski in November 1939, adding that Sikorski’s conception was the same. This is doubtful. When Beneˇs referred to the necessity for ‘the closest degree of co-operation between small states’ and argued that it would be in the interest of Central East Europe to create ‘a large political formation of a federative type, militarily powerful, with great political, economic and cultural possibilities’, his language may have sounded similar to Sikorski’s.15 But Mastny convincingly shows that Beneˇs ‘never contemplated more than a loose association’, a kind of Central European Commonwealth on the analogy of the British Commonwealth. Hubert Ripka, a Foreign Ministry official and acting Foreign Minister for a time during the war, described this as ‘a conservative association of independent states’. Beneˇs in turn called this a sui generis confederation, stressing that its political and legal framework would not necessarily resemble any of the already known forms of state confederations.16 His preference was to establish a ‘relatively supple machinery’ which would allow for a closer union if the need arose. Meanwhile the sovereignty of each state should remain intact except in the economic field, where the Czechoslovak economy would have an advantage post-war. He emphasised this point in a memorandum to American Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles in March 1940, suggesting that the proposed confederation should be based on a customs union and a common trade and financial policy.17 In political and military affairs, however, only a system of consultation between ministers was proposed. Nonetheless, in the perspective of the inter-war years this was in itself an advance since Beneˇs was advocating a foreign policy for the proposed confederation which was ‘parallel in fundamental principles and directives’, and a coordination of government policies to ensure peace and economic prosperity.18 Sikorski ultimately accepted these

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reservations and conceded that the common institutions of the two states should reflect Czechoslovak preferences for a type of confederation. There were, however, a number of other serious and not-so-serious differences between the two sides which proved impossible to overcome. Among the former were the questions of frontiers and relations with the Soviet Union, among the latter doubts about the states to be included in a wider association of Central East European countries, the degree of support for the proposed association among the populations of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the need to postpone any final decisions until that was clarified. The Soviet Union became an increasingly important participant in the discussions about a new Central East Europe though she was slow to make her position clear. When she did, her intervention was decisive. She exercised her influence through discussions with Beneˇs and through her growing hostility to the Polish government from early 1942 onwards. Sikorski’s negotiations with the Soviet Union were constrained by some strong reservations among his government colleagues, the Polish exile community in Britain and the personnel of the Polish Second Army Corps in North Africa and Italy. They were convinced that Sikorski should not have negotiated with the Soviets in July 1941, even though he was pressed hard to do so by the British Government. In the negotiations, his critics argued, he made too many concessions and failed to demand that the Soviets accept the pre-1939 Polish eastern frontier. But Sikorski was aware that an agreement with the Soviets would strengthen Polish–Czechoslovak relations. A confederation in Central East Europe would constitute a barrier to future German expansion, which was a major preoccupation of the Czechoslovaks, and a follow-up alliance between the confederation and the Kremlin against Germany would contribute to the peace and security of both Europe and the Soviet Union. This, he believed, would meet the Soviet demand for ‘friendly states at its western border’. There was no intention of recreating the inter-war idea of a cordon sanitaire.19 On the other hand the Poles suspected that when Germany was defeated the Soviet Union might attempt to bring about a communist revolution in Central Europe. Hence, a solid Polish–Czechoslovak block was also necessary to guard against this possibility.20 Even if the Soviet Union were victorious, though, it might be so weakened by its efforts that it would have to accept British–American domination, and yield to Western pressure over Central East Europe.21 From the perspective of the Kremlin the Poles’ position was ambivalent. On the one hand they considered the confederation to be an

A Predictable Failure 41

advantage to the Soviets in that it formed a counterpoise to German power in Europe. On the other, they saw it as a barrier to Soviet expansion. Poland’s refusal to negotiate on its eastern frontiers convinced the Kremlin of the Poles’ expansionist ambitions while the Poles themselves considered the demand for its pre-1939 frontiers (settled at the 1921 Treaty of Riga) a simple and just return to the status quo before Soviet aggression in the area. Sikorski himself was probably more flexible on this issue than many of his government colleagues, including his Foreign Minister, Raczyn´ski. Beneˇs said at one point that both he and Sikorski knew that Poland would not be able to restore its pre-1939 frontier but that Sikorski could not admit this to his people.22 In public, though endorsing the Riga frontiers, Sikorski preferred to defer settlement of the frontier issue in accordance with the Soviet–Polish treaty of 1941, which stipulated that consideration of frontier problems should be postponed until after the war. With reference to Poland’s post-war frontiers the British Foreign Office learned about a proposal which Sikorski hoped to present to the Kremlin as a basis for negotiation. This envisaged that Lithuania would be incorporated in Poland while Poland would support a Soviet claim to Latvia and Estonia. The Polish–Soviet frontier would be settled on the basis of a modified Curzon Line (a frontier some 200 kilometres west of the pre-war Polish–Soviet border) with Lwów going to Poland and all Polish territory east of the Line going to the Soviet Union. An exchange of populations would accompany this frontier arrangement. As compensation for Poland the Soviets would support Polish claims to East Prussia including Koenigsberg and perhaps other areas controlled by Nazi Germany, such as the German Baltic coast as far west as Stettin.23 This possibility was broadly consistent with Sarah Meiklejohn Terry’s controversial argument, based on a memorandum sent by Sikorski to Roosevelt on 5 December 1942, which suggested a westward movement of Poland’s frontiers to control the mouth of the River Oder in compensation for the loss of the Riga frontier in the East. This strategy had a two-fold purpose: it would set the scene for friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and it would strengthen the foundations of the Polish–Czechoslovak confederation by guaranteeing a direct outlet to the Baltic Sea through the Oder waterway, with its concomitant economic advantages. It is arguable that if Sikorski had lived beyond July 1943 there might have been negotiations with the Soviet Union which, in return for Polish concessions on the Riga frontier, would have accepted a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation located further to the West.24 However unlikely this seems given the intransigent Polish mood after Katyn, it cannot be ruled out completely.

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Yet one cannot be sure, as Walawender pointed out, whether the policy adumbrated in the documents was a realist one, actively pursued, or whether it reflected mere ‘lofty ideals thought up in times of desperation’.25 In any case, it is difficult to see how Sikorski, assuming he was actively and determinedly pursuing such a policy, would have been able to persuade his colleagues in government of its wisdom. Persuading Beneˇs of the wisdom of Polish policy towards the Soviet Union proved impossible. As early as November 1939 when he was still counting on Polish help in gaining Allied recognition for his Czechoslovak committee, Beneˇs insisted to Raczyn´ski that Poland must give up all her territorial ambitions in the East beyond ‘her strict ethnographic frontiers’. Later, after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Beneˇs considered it tactically important for the Poles to make concessions on the frontier question and not leave negotiations until the Soviets re-occupied the territory they had taken in September 1939. Unlike Sikorski, Beneˇs always stressed that the Soviet Union would come out of the war victorious.26 The necessity for Polish concessions reflected Beneˇs’ view that Soviet acceptance of the proposed Polish–Czechoslovak confederation depended on agreement between Moscow and the Polish government on Poland’s post-war Eastern frontiers. Without Soviet acceptance the confederation would not be feasible since, as he put it: ‘There would either be friendship between the Polish–Czechoslovak Federation and Russia, or there will be no Polish–Czechoslovak Federation.’ He assured Ivan Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador to Britain, that an association with Russia would have priority over any other Czechoslovak plans, especially since he had found support in Moscow for the restoration of Czechoslovakia as a ‘homogeneous’ Slav nation state.27 In a conversation with Molotov in London on 9 June 1942, Beneˇs agreed that a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation would depend on the Poles agreeing to satisfy Soviet territorial demands. In return he gained Soviet recognition of the pre-Munich frontiers of Czechoslovakia, despite the fact that this issue had been reserved for settlement between the Poles and the Czechoslovaks.28 There was irritation in the British Foreign Office at Beneˇs’ action in supporting Soviet claims against those of his own partner. Moreover, the United Kingdom had been careful to reserve its position on the Eastern frontiers of Poland, and Czechoslovakia should have done the same.29 Beneˇs justified his policy on a number of grounds. Firstly, he distrusted the Western powers after Munich and placed greater faith and reliance on Moscow’s support. Not having had the Poles’ experience with the Soviet Union in the previous two decades which had produced two wars and an occupation, Beneˇs had no reservations about seeking

A Predictable Failure 43

Soviet support. He was confident that there was no danger of Soviet interference in the domestic affairs of its smaller neighbours (the Soviet Union, said Hubert Ripka, ‘will promote and ensure the existence of the small democratic countries in Europe’ and Beneˇs agreed with this) and anticipated that an independent Czechoslovakia would have a nonCommunist government and serve as a political bridge between East and West.30 He did not believe that Central East Europe could or should be organised without the participation of the Soviet Union, and he was convinced that a successful barrier to the German Drang nach Osten could only be erected in association with the Soviet government. He did not wish to see Moscow isolated and marginalised as it had been after the First World War because, without Soviet participation in the affairs of Europe, German influence in Central East Europe would be restored. In other words, Beneˇs was not convinced that a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation on its own would be strong enough to counter-balance German economic and military power.31 Hence the best outcome for the restoration of East European equilibrium would be an agreement between the Soviet Union and the Polish–Czechoslovak confederation which would produce ‘an anti-German outpost leaning on Russia’ A firmly-unified East would demonstrate to Germany that any imperialistic attempts in the region would fail.32 If the ‘real difficulty was Russia’ in the Polish–Czechoslovak relationship, and hence the major obstacle to the successful achievement of a confederation between the two states, a lesser obstacle, though an important one, was the frontier question. In the early stages of Polish–Czechoslovak discussions Beneˇs was bitterly outspoken about the actions of the inter-war Polish governments which had to take the blame for bad Czechoslovak–Polish relations. The new Polish government of Sikorski dissociated itself from Poland’s pre-war policies and the mistakes of the previous regime, especially towards Czechoslovakia.33 In doing so they were hoping to begin with a clean slate. Unfortunately the highly sensitive question of Zaolzie (the western part of Teschen – Cieszyn in Polish) inevitably obtruded itself and remained a stumbling block in Polish–Czechoslovak negotiations. Sikorski’s government, although repudiating the pre-war Polish government’s policies, could not agree to cede Cieszyn, which had been seized by Polish troops at the time of Munich, to Czechoslovakia. The Poles believed that this was justly Polish territory which had been wrongly awarded to the Czechs by a commission of the League of Nations in 1920. In the early stages of the Polish–Czechoslovak negotiations from 1939 to mid-summer 1941 it was agreed to leave the Cieszyn dispute to one side while the proposed

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new confederal structure was being created. It was Sikorski who raised the issue again in June 1941, asking for a speedy resolution of the dispute to prevent its being a continuing source of tension and a reminder of the psychological mistakes made ‘by both parties’ between 1918 and1938. Once the issue was raised Beneˇs’ had no option but to demand the preMunich frontiers. Furthermore, his self-esteem was injured by Sikorski’s reference to ‘mutual mistakes’ since Beneˇs had been in power in Czechoslovakia in the inter-war period and took this reference personally. Rather than accept the possibility of mutual mistakes he demanded that the ‘original fault’ must be established and ‘just retribution’ offered. Beneˇs made constant reference to pre-war Polish–Czechoslovak relations, blaming the pre-war government of Poland for the animosity between the two countries and using history for his own political purposes.34 A British Foreign Office minute regretted that Benes ‘refutes the slightest hint of criticism and claims to be universally right – this is wearing to his wouldbe allies’. This was not a good augury for Polish–Czechoslovak relations.35 Indeed, during the remainder of 1941 and in 1942, as the Czechoslovak position in international relations strengthened, Beneˇs never wavered in demanding Cieszyn for the Czechs, and succeeded in the summer of 1942 in obtaining Soviet recognition of Czechoslovakia’s pre-Munich frontiers. In further negotiations with the Poles Beneˇs insisted that a proposed Polish–Czechoslovak treaty could not be signed unless the Cieszyn question was settled first since he did not believe that there would be any will to solve the problem once the treaty was concluded. He vetoed Polish suggestions for a condominium or for arbitration.36 The differences between the two sides on this politically sensitive issue were a significant obstacle to an agreement on confederation. There were a number of other reservations, too, which illustrated the gap between the partners. For example, it was argued on the Polish side that a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation on its own would lack the economic and military potential to offer effective resistance to a revived Germany in Central East Europe. Consequently it would be necessary, the Poles believed, either to conclude a defensive alliance with Great Britain and other Western allies, or to include other countries in the proposed confederation. In Wszelaki’s opinion, most Poles would favour an association between the Polish–Czechoslovak confederation and Hungary, Lithuania and probably Romania. Leaving Hungary outside would create the risk that she would once again be attracted to Germany. As for Lithuania, the Poles were seeking some form of ‘reinstated union’; for them it was an ‘indispensable corollary’ of a settlement with Czechoslovakia.37 On a

A Predictable Failure 45

visit to Washington in December 1942 Sikorski told Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador, that he looked forward to a ‘federate’ bloc which would include Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Poland and possibly Hungary in close alliance with a Balkan bloc extending to and including Greece.38 Beneˇs agreed that the Polish–Czechoslovak confederation should be enlarged and have a close relationship with a Balkan bloc but he disagreed about the membership of the northern association. He excluded Lithuania, being willing to consign all three Baltic States to the Soviet Union (Sikorski was prepared for Estonia and Latvia to fall into Soviet hands) and like Sikorski he tended to favour the inclusion of Romania. But Beneˇs disagreed with the Poles over the exclusion of Austria. The Poles felt that the latter would be a Trojan horse for German influence; the Czechoslovaks argued that if the Poles wanted to include Hungary it would be essential also to offer membership to Austria in order to strike a fair balance between industrial and agricultural interests. They were conscious that Poland and Hungary, less industrialised than Czechoslovakia, could outvote them on crucial economic issues.39 Three other questions divided Sikorski and Beneˇs. The first was Beneˇs’ insistence in December 1942 that no final decisions about a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation should be taken until independence for the two countries had been restored and the electorate had had the chance to express its opinion – ‘without the direct voice of the people and the constitutional institutions in each country, nothing final can be decided by a government-in-exile.’40 This could have been an attempt by Beneˇs to play for time, or it could have represented genuine uncertainty about public opinion in the Czechoslovak lands during the war. By contrast, the Polish government in London was in close touch with political parties, the Underground government, and the Home Army in Poland, and was convinced that public opinion supported the government’s attempts to form a confederation with Czechoslovakia. Beneˇs’ second reservation concerned the social and political structure of Poland which, in his opinion, was dominated by large landowning gentry and aristocratic families to the disadvantage of the rural and urban poor. Czech society was more middle and working class. Some Poles disputed this claim, countering that the war had eliminated many aristocratic estates, and Poland post-war would be far more egalitarian than in the past. Beneˇs remained to be convinced, maintaining that the first requisite for building a successful Central European bloc was for the partners to have an approximately similar social structure, which

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quite demonstrably they did not have towards the end of the war. Whether this would have been a real stumbling block if there had been no other conflicts between the two sides is impossible to say. Probably the gap in social structures, narrowing as it was, would have been overcome if there had been an overwhelming desire on both sides for a confederation to be created.41 A third fundamental difficulty in Polish–Czechoslovak relations was the Czechoslovaks’ deep-rooted Russophile feelings. Sikorski said that the Czechs had a sentimental attitude towards the ‘Russian brother’ and seemed to regard the Russians as their first friends in Eastern Europe. He chided them for subordinating their Polish to their Russian policy.42 Masaryk responded that it was impossible to convince the Poles that the Czechs were not ‘entirely in the hands of the Russians’. The Czechoslovaks were, he reiterated, in favour of a confederation but were not prepared to push this through in face of direct Soviet opposition.43 Behind the issue of frontiers and the different attitudes towards the Kremlin lay a rather strong antipathy between rank-and-file Czechoslovaks and Poles. The disagreements over frontiers and Soviet relations brought to the surface the mutual suspicions and hostility which had characterised the inter-war years. The fact that ordinary Czechs took the Soviet side over the Katyn incident was a dismaying illustration of the divisions between the two peoples.44 Despite the substantial differences between the two leaders which became increasingly apparent between 1940 and 1943, there was, initially, sufficient political will to conclude an agreement. Discussions began in earnest on 18 September 1940 with a meeting between Raczyn´ski and Kulski for the Poles and Ripka and Slavic on behalf of the Czechoslovaks. There was consensus that it was time to end former disputes and to initiate the close co-operation which would be required after the war. The British interest in the success of these discussions was shown by the presence of senior officials at a high level Polish–Czechoslovak meeting on 9 October.45 The Czechoslovak position in these discussions was outlined in a letter from Beneˇs to Sikorski on 1 November 1940. The subsequently agreed Declaration of 11 November 1940 (which was widely celebrated at the time) should be read in the light of Beneˇs’ letter, in which he tried to avoid entering into definite commitments but accepted in principle ‘some form of Federal Union’, stressing that ‘a simple alliance seemed to be insufficient’. He also hoped that it would be possible in future to find some modus vivendi with Russia. The Declaration, which was welcomed by Winston Churchill in the House of

A Predictable Failure 47

Commons, bore the stamp of ‘Czech circumspection’, as the following extract makes clear:46 The two Governments consider it imperative to declare solemnly even now that Poland and Czechoslovakia, closing once and for all the period of past recriminations and disputes, and taking into consideration the community of their fundamental interests, are determined on the conclusion of this war, to enter as independent and sovereign States into a closer political and economic association which would become the basis of a new order in Central Europe and a guarantee of its stability. . . . The two Governments are resolved already now to cooperate closely for the defence of their common interest and for the preparation of the future association of the two countries.47 The Poles would have preferred some ‘bolder and more definite undertaking’ with a higher degree of political integration including ‘common decisions on essential issues’48 However, they were unable to include even the term ‘confederation’ in the Declaration and had to accept, as the price of agreement, the words ‘closer political and economic association’. They hoped that the idea of ‘association’ could be fleshed out in the forthcoming negotiations in the light of the then political situation, and in a sense more favourable to Polish conceptions. The primary impact of the Declaration was to commit the two governments to close co-operation.49 Discussions began in January 1941 and continued on and off during the year and into 1942. A joint committee was established in December 1940 and held its first meeting on 10 January 1941 when it adopted the title of Committee of Coordination.50 It met only four times by between January and November 1941. A number of sub-committees or mixed commissions were formed, whose activities were directed by the Coordination Committee.51 In addition the Poles created a Committee of the Council of Ministers whose function was to prepare a draft Constitution for the Czechoslovak–Polish Union, which it completed by 21 May 1941. For a variety of reasons very little further progress was made until the autumn. The key to progress was the relationship between Sikorski and Beneˇs, and already in January 1941 there were signs of disagreement over the question of frontiers. The raising of the frontier issue puzzled British officialdom since it had always been said that the delimitation of frontiers would be the very last problem to be tackled, if only because it lacked ‘all sense of reality until the war had been decided’. This was confirmed by Wszelaki, who revealed that the negotiators had agreed to postpone discussion of more difficult problems, such as Cieszyn, Hungary or Russia, since only

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some of these theoretical problems would materialise.52 Despite their differences of opinion, the two leaders at this stage were ready to compromise, agreeing to create a new political structure in Central Europe ‘irrespective of what the final boundaries of our countries will be’.53 Another reason for slow progress was Sikorski’s absence in the United States in the spring of 1941; even on his return, when more rapid movement might have been anticipated, he vetoed publication of the Polish proposals for a Polish–Czechoslovak constitution, pronouncing them to be premature. There was further delay in July when the Polish–Soviet negotiations led to the resignation from the Polish government and from the Coordination Committee of the three very senior figures. However, the Polish–Soviet treaty of 30 July improved the climate between Poland and Czechoslovakia and led to a rapprochement over the Polish–Czechoslovak border.54 On the anniversary of the publication of the Declaration, 11 November 1941, the Coordination Committee decided to proceed with a detailed elaboration of the principles of the ‘confederation’, which now replaced ‘association’ as the preferred term to define the relationship between the states.55 Shortly afterwards the Coordination Committee met to consider two drafts of proposed constitutional arrangements. The first of these, the Polish Draft Constitutional Act, proposed a complete scheme of union in line with the earliest Polish preferences. It envisaged a Supreme Federal Council (composed of heads of state and delegations from each Parliament) with very wide powers in the political, military and economic spheres based on the principles of absolute equality of member states and majority voting. The Executive body, called the Council of State Secretaries, comprised prime ministers and at least four senior ministers, for foreign affairs, defence, economics and finance. The Legislature or Federal Assembly was to be elected on universal suffrage, one representative for each half a million inhabitants; this would decide issues by majority vote. Budgets, legislative powers and control of the government were vested in this Assembly. There was to be complete unification of decision-making in foreign policy in the sense that all treaties had to be negotiated and completed by the common institutions of the Union. The federal government had very wide powers too in defence matters. As regards the economies there was ultimately to be complete unification but this had to be achieved gradually in view of the differences in economic structures. Far-reaching unity of decision-making was extended also to communications, social policy and banking. Sikorski described this draft constitution as ‘the boldest attempt in the history of our region to set up an organic union between the two states’.56 Tytus

A Predictable Failure 49

Komarnicki observed that this draft ‘was the only draft of its kind to be worked up by a government organ of any state during the war’.57 In response the Czechoslovak side submitted the ‘Fundamental Principles of the Czech–Polish Confederal Union’. As its name implied, this proposal represented an intergovernmental approach, embodying the coordination of policies rather than a joint policy subordinated to supranational organs.58 ‘Foreign policy as well as policies concerning military, economic, trade, monetary and transport matters were to be conducted separately, but according to common principles . . . ’ There were to be no joint executive organs though common customs duties were to be established with regard to outside countries. The Council of the Confederation composed of senior ministers, was to be the supreme consultative body, but meeting only twice a year.59 Considering these two sets of proposals the governments published an agreement on 23 January 1942, of which the major elements were as follows: – the proposed Confederation should be open to the membership of other European states with which the vital interests of Poland and Czechoslovakia were linked. – the purpose of the Confederation was to assure a common policy in foreign affairs, defence, economic and financial matters, social questions, transport, posts and telegraphs – the Confederation would have a common General Staff and, in the event of war, a unified supreme command – the Confederation would co-ordinate foreign trade policy and harmonise customs tariffs with a view to concluding a customs union – the Confederation would have an agreed monetary policy and would co-ordinate the financial policy of the states, especially tax policy – there would be a common plan for educational policy.60 The Polish side may have been disappointed with this outcome since the agreement did not embody federalist principles. On the other hand Laptos’s comment that ‘the end result was a mouse’ ignores Beneˇs’ characterisation of the proposed relationship between the states as a ‘confederation sui generis’, or Barrell’s similar opinion that the arrangement was ‘on the verge’ between a league and a federation. Evidently the individual states retained a veto on decisions and there was no formal transfer of sovereignty. On the other hand the agreement was extremely wide-ranging covering large areas of government responsibilities: war and peace, foreign policy, economic affairs, monetary and tax policy,

/

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education and communications. It involved not simply the coordination of policy but rather the joint formulation of policy and its implementation by joint institutions, in which politicians and officials of both states would be represented. The Czechoslovaks could be satisfied that their freedom of action would not be restricted, and the Poles could interpret the agreement as the first step towards a more federalist arrangement. Beneˇs himself saw the agreement as being capable of organic growth should circumstances permit or demand. In a broad chronological perspective the agreement represented a distinct advance on the relations between the two states in the inter-war period, and had the potential to develop into a deeper bond. This agreement was actually the high water mark in Polish–Czechoslovak relations. From the beginning of 1942 Polish–Soviet relations began to worsen and Czechoslovak–Soviet relations steadily improved (indeed, the latter was a consequence of the former), culminating in a formal treaty in late 1942. Asked to make a choice between the Poles and the Soviets Beneˇs came down on the side of the Kremlin. ‘While fully realising the interests of the Polish nation’ the Czechoslovak Council of State ‘also respects the vital requirements of the Soviet Union’ which included the incorporation into the Soviet Union of the pre-war Polish eastern territories and also the incorporation of the Baltic states and Bessarabia into the Soviet Union.61 The Poles in turn were unable to compromise on their Eastern frontiers. Before the conclusion of the Anglo–Soviet treaty in May 1942 the Soviet government seemed prepared to accept a clause approving of a federation in Central Europe. But when the British refused to recognise Soviet territorial annexations in Central East Europe the Kremlin withdrew its assent to the federal clause.62 Neither side was prepared to give way on the Cieszyn question. When, in April 1943, the question of Katyn led to the Soviet Union’s breaking off diplomatic relations with the Polish government, the agreement between the Poles and the Czechoslovaks was seriously weakened and remained in a comatose state after the death of Sikorski in July 1943. Given the sensitivities about Central East Europe among the Great Powers it would be surprising if they were not deeply interested in the Polish–Czechoslovak discussions and did not attempt to influence the direction they took. As host to the two governments the British were very directly involved and had considerable, though not decisive, influence in sponsoring the talks, encouraging progress and attempting to smooth over misunderstandings and difficulties. The Soviet Union’s position evolved from cautious welcome to the confederation proposal to definite hostility. The United States was opposed to any federal or confederal arrangements which had the potential to check or obstruct

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the Americans’ main goal of shaping the peace by means of a world organisation. Soviet co-operation in this American endeavour was imperative, and it was impolitic to support any development, such as a Central East European ‘federation’, which the Soviets opposed. Given the opposition of two of the Great Powers, how much support did the Poles receive from the British government for their federalist ambitions? Could the British have done more? Did they disappoint the Poles in this respect as they did over Yalta? The British at first offered firm support for the Polish–Czechoslovak efforts to create a close political and economic relationship between the two states. It seemed unimportant to the Foreign Office whether this association was described as a federation or a confederation: the important thing was to create a working association which would meet the needs both of the partners and of Britain’s own foreign policy. From the beginning of the war until mid-1942 the interests of British and Polish governments were in harmony. As the British told Stalin, a confederation in the region would ‘strengthen the smaller countries of Europe so as to put them, economically and strategically, in a position to resist successfully pressure by Germany’, thus strengthening stability in a notoriously unstable region, and diminishing the risk of future conflicts.63 Admittedly there were some sceptics in the British Foreign Office who were unconvinced that this proposed confederation would be strong enough to provide ‘any greater barrier to German expansion eastwards than the small states set up under the 1919 settlement’.64 If so, the Soviet Union would inevitably claim a predominant interest ‘in the settlement of affairs of Eastern Europe’.65 It followed that if the Soviets were to be induced to retire behind their own borders after the war, any possible threat from Germany had to be nullified – hence British support for the 8th Article of the Atlantic Charter which postulated a completely disarmed Germany. This was designed to allay Soviet fears that Britain would promote a balance of power policy in Eastern Europe between the Soviets and a revived Germany.66 Nevertheless, majority opinion in the Foreign Office and the Cabinet continued to favour a confederation in Central East Europe as an extra insurance against a resurgent Germany. Foreign Minister Anthony Eden was careful to deny that the British government envisaged the proposed confederation as a barrier to Soviet expansion as well. Eden publicly endorsed the 23 January agreement as marking ‘a further important stage in the development of closer relations between these two allies’.67 At a time when relations between the Czechoslovaks and the Poles were cooling later the same year, Eden reiterated British support for the

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confederation in a speech at Leamington. Inside the Foreign Office Frank Roberts, Robert Bruce Lockhart and Roger Makins agreed on the importance of the proposed confederation – ‘the ideal’ wrote Roberts ‘of Polish–Czech co-operation is clearly an excellent one’.68 Lockhart commented that it was the first task of the British government to support and encourage it ‘with tact, patience and perseverance’ until it could stand firmly on its own legs, especially as British influence was strong given that the exiles were ‘guests in our country’. Roberts added that ‘in private conversations we have always impressed on the Poles and the Czechoslovaks how desirable the process is and how gratified we are at the progress being made.’ On the other hand the British were aware of the risks of too much interference.69 Nevertheless interference was necessary since the Czechoslovaks were perceived as ‘backsliders’ who had to be chivvied to show more commitment. Makins noted that negotiations between the Poles and the Czechoslovaks were proceeding smoothly before the Czechoslovak government got full recognition, which ‘went to Beneˇs’ head’. When the Soviet Union entered the war Beneˇs allowed Polish–Czechoslovak relations to deteriorate, which was the ‘purest folly’ since ‘the principal hope of a satisfactory settlement in East Europe lies in a really close relationship between Poland and Czechoslovakia’. He added that Eden should firmly discourage Beneˇs from angling for a Czechoslovak–Soviet treaty and tell him that the first and most important task was to reach a proper understanding with the Poles before venturing further afield.70 The Czechoslovaks should also stop leaking information to the Kremlin since this made it easy for the Soviets to play the two sides off against each other.71 The British were also exasperated by the determination of the Poles and the Czechoslovaks to keep bringing up the question of frontiers. Although ‘both sides behaved disgracefully over this issue’ it was Beneˇs who was subject to the most severe criticism since he rejected the argument that Cieszyn should be left over for settlement in the more favourable atmosphere following a Czechoslovak–Polish treaty. To allow the treaty to fail over Cieszyn would surely show ‘a lamentable lack of any sense of proportion’. Lockhart thought that Eden should emphasise to the Czechoslovaks on all suitable occasions the ‘unreality’ of the frontier issue in comparison with the supreme consideration of national preservation.72 The Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Sir Orme Sargent, introduced a cautionary word for his younger colleagues. On the evidence available he did not think that Beneˇs’ behaviour alone was likely to ‘torpedo’ the Polish–Czechoslovak confederation. The reality was that unless the

A Predictable Failure 53

Poles and Czechoslovaks could gain the goodwill of the Soviet Union, what he called ‘a reasonable degree of Soviet benevolence’, there would be little chance for a confederation since the Kremlin could destroy it. In this sense Beneˇs was correct in making further progress in the negotiations dependent on Soviet good will.73 Attempting to acquire this good will in discussions with Moscow the British showed the limits of their own support for the confederation. At first they did all they could, especially at the time of the signing of the British–Soviet treaty in 1942, to persuade the Kremlin to agree to confederations in Central East Europe, short of accepting Soviet demands for the Curzon Line as the Polish Eastern frontier. They extracted a promise from Moscow to act in accordance with the principles laid down in the Atlantic Charter, such as no territorial aggrandisement and no interference in the internal affairs of other states.74 But when Eden raised the question of confederations at the Moscow conference of Great Powers in October 1943 Cordell Hull, the American Secretary of State, opposed them on the grounds that priority should be given to reaching agreement on a broad set of principles capable of world wide application. Molotov also criticised confederations as harmful to European stability, and a reminder of the old cordon sanitaire against the Soviet Union. In the face of this opposition Eden backed down. It would seem that he had no choice. But inevitably this cast doubt on Britain’s commitment to a confederation in Central East Europe and raised suspicions among the Poles that Britain was a fair-weather friend. Wandycz is very critical of British policy. In offering an unreserved welcome to Soviet participation in the war the British failed to emphasise sufficiently strongly the importance they attached to the Czechoslovak–Polish confederation. On the contrary, they placed Sikorski under enormous pressure to come to terms with Moscow in July 1941 at the price of splitting his government. This was a policy set from the top. Churchill subordinated his feelings towards the Soviet Union to the necessity of winning the war, despite his public support for regional federations in Europe.75 He relied on Soviet good faith and did not insist on any written guarantees for the future. It was imperative to cultivate the Soviets in the life and death battle to defeat Hitler. Moreover, the Western allies were placed on the defensive in their relations with the Soviet Union by their failure to open a second front. This made it more difficult to challenge the Kremlin on the question of Central East Europe. This was reflected in discussions in the Foreign Office where it was thought unwise to raise delicate matters like the proposed confederation ‘until we are taking a more

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active part in military operations’. ‘We are not in a position’ wrote William Strang ‘to press the Soviet government hard on this point at the present stage of the war’.76 From a Polish perspective it appeared that the British were ready to help in every possible way to support the establishment of a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation, short of insisting to the Kremlin that this was a priority of British policy. The British priority was to keep the Soviet Union in the war, not to support confederations in Central East Europe if the Kremlin opposed them. The great fear in London was of a Hitler–Stalin agreement, leaving Hitler with the opportunity to concentrate his forces in the West, which had to be avoided at all costs. By the time a second front was finally opened in 1944 relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government in London had been severed, and Stalin was well on the way to establishing a government of Soviet puppets in Warsaw. At this point the British had to accept the inevitability of Soviet paramountcy in Central East Europe and the futility of continued support for a no-longer-practical confederation. The Poles in London felt let down, with some justification, but Beneˇs was in any case not prepared to continue with the federation project in the face of Soviet opposition. The British acknowledged that their failure to insist on confederations in Central East Europe reflected the limitations of British power and influence in a world now increasingly dominated by the two superpowers. As for the Soviet position on the confederation proposal, for some time after the German attack on the Soviet Union the Polish Government was under the impression that the Kremlin would not oppose confederations in Central East Europe, and there was some evidence to support this. But policy-makers in both the Polish and Soviet governments could not forget that until the Nazi–Soviet conflict the two countries had been in a state of war, and that they held diametrically opposed positions on the question of Poland’s Eastern frontiers. Their treaty, sponsored by the British government, did not resolve the issue of future frontiers, but for a time, from July 1941 to early 1942 when Polish–Soviet relations entered a more cordial phase, Polish hopes of Soviet acceptance of a confederation were high. There were reasons for this optimism. In August 1941 Vyshinsky expressed his personal approval of closer unions of countries on the Soviet Union’s western border. In the course of the Stalin–Eden conversations in Moscow in December 1941 Stalin said that the Soviet Union would have no objection if some European countries wished to federate, and a month later Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador to Britain, repeated this assurance.77

A Predictable Failure 55

This initial optimism was dampened when it was learned that ‘Soviet circles’ believed that the Polish–Czechoslovak ideas ‘ran ahead of events’ and did not take a realistic view of the future.78 Bogomolov, the Soviet Ambassador to the exile governments in London, criticised any co-operative plans in Eastern Europe which excluded the Soviet Union. During the negotiations for an Anglo–Soviet treaty in April 1942 the first draft made prominent reference to the federation idea. At first the Soviets rejected this draft but later Molotov was prepared to accept a reference to strengthening ‘the economic, military and political independence of all European countries’ and added: ‘This should be done in suitable cases by means of regional understandings and confederations on the basis of friendly relations towards the USSR and Great Britain’. This draft clause later disappeared when the British would not recognise Soviet territorial annexations in Central Europe.79 By the summer Soviet equivocation was replaced by outright opposition, Bogomolov being the bearer of bad news in talks with Masaryk in July.80 Later in the same month he asked Ripka why it was necessary for the Czechs to bind themselves so closely to a nation (Poland) ‘which is doing all it can to make trouble for the Russians’.81 When Soviet forces began to turn the tide of the German advance and to drive the Axis armies out of the Soviet Union, Soviet criticism of the confederation idea became more virulent. The confederation was attacked as a Polish idea directed against the Soviet Union rather than Germany.82 As Polish–Soviet relations steadily deteriorated a Soviet journal War and the Working Class attacked the ‘anti-democratic and semi-fascist elements’ which were striving to prevent the participation of the USSR in the organisation of the post-war world, and setting up plans hostile to the Soviet Union, ‘namely federations, confederations and regional blocs’. If these projects went ahead, they added, there would be no hope of friendship and collaboration between the USSR and its allies in the post-war period.83 Molotov denounced confederations in October 1943 as ‘harmful not only to the interests of small states but also to the general question of European stability’.84 Moscow had a profound mistrust of Polish post-war intentions, something which the openly expressed anti-Russian feelings in Polish papers did nothing to allay. Maisky told Eden in March 1943 that although the Soviet Union was ‘not enthusiastic about the proposal for a future federation of Europe’, whether the Kremlin welcomed a Polish–Czechoslovak federation would depend on whether or not Poland had a government friendly to the Soviet Union.85 The Kremlin also had suspicions that the British might be glad to see the Soviet Union destroyed or seriously weakened in the process of victory, enabling the

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Anglo-Saxons to shut Moscow out of the post-war settlement. In short, a confederation or federation in Central East Europe headed by people who were not pro-Soviet would obviously be an obstacle to Soviet ambitions to dominate the region after the war.86 What chance was there that a putative confederation could be led by governments that were pro-Soviet? The Czechoslovaks believed that Moscow’s opposition could be overcome if Poland came to a ‘friendly neighbourly understanding’ with the Soviet Union. A central element in reaching agreement, as we have seen, was a Polish concession on the Polish–Soviet border. Ripka thought that Sikorski should have taken up Stalin’s offer in December 1941 to discuss frontiers – after all Stalin had offered the Poles Lwów on that occasion.87 This was a view shared by Lockhart in the British Foreign Office who argued that a Polish–Soviet agreement on frontiers could have been reached when the Soviet Union had its back to the wall during the early months of the war with Germany. He also criticised the Poles for assuming that the Soviet Union would either be defeated by Hitler or would be so exhausted at the end of the war that it would be unable to impose terms on Eastern Europe.88 The Poles would be ‘the victims of their own miscalculations’.89 The British diplomat Nichols agreed. He emphasised that the success or failure of the confederal project depended mainly on the struggle between Poland and the Soviet Union over frontiers.90 Christopher Warner, also of the Foreign Office, observed that there would be no Soviet consent to confederations unless ‘we [the British] inform the Poles at once that they must agree to the Curzon Line’.91 It was suggested earlier that Sikorski seemed to recognise this but his capacity to carry his government with him is open to doubt since he was under attack from many quarters for his Soviet policy.92 Even if the Poles had conceded on frontiers would not Stalin have preferred a Moscow puppet government in Warsaw to one led by one of the London Poles, given his determination to have absolute guarantees of security on the Soviet Union’s western frontiers? There was a probability that any confederation in Central East Europe would have looked West, in a political and cultural sense, and cast in its lot with putative federations in other parts of Europe. If the only enemy for both Poles and Czechoslovaks had been Germany there was a strong chance that a confederation would have come to pass. But Polish enmity towards the Soviet Union, for understandable reasons, could not be disguised, nor could Soviet determination not to yield over the question of frontiers when it was clear that Germany would be defeated. Ultimately the confederal idea became the victim of Great Power politics: the Americans,

A Predictable Failure 57

under the leadership of Roosevelt, were indifferent since they feared regional associations as a danger to their favoured world organisation; the British placed good relations with the Kremlin ahead of their objective of regional associations in Central East Europe; the Russians were determined to control their Western approaches and had the power to enforce their will in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, although this particular confederal project was suffocated, the federal idea itself remained stubbornly alive and flourished among the Polish exiles in Europe and the United States in the post-war period.

4 Creating a Movement

Although the projected Polish–Czechoslovak confederation never came to fruition the federal idea among Polish exiles survived. Some of the exiles made good use of the opportunity to work with the federalist organisations which sprang up in Western Europe after the war, and we shall discuss this collaboration in the next chapter. Others devoted their energies to creating a federalist movement among the exile communities in Britain, other West European countries and the United States, forming organisations of various kinds to promote this objective. As a result they were able to develop the concept of a federal or confederal association of states for Central East Europe, which had many advantages over the existing state system in the region. In discussing this putative federation they accepted that there would be major difficulties to overcome, for example hostility between Poland and Ukraine, the fate of the former Soviet republics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (which they anticipated), and the problem of Germany. They recognised that they could not depend totally on the support of the federal associations of Western Europe in their aim of unifying the Central East European region, not least because their Western colleagues tended to favour a one-level federation (i.e. a federation for the whole of Europe with individual states as members) rather than, as the exiles wanted, a multi-level federation in which a number of regional units would be bound together in an allEuropean assemblage. There were, some thought, serious obstacles to creating a federation in Central East Europe, not least the cultural, historical and territorial disagreements between the states of the region, but most observers emphasised the commonalities they shared. Disagreements also existed about the degree to which national sovereignty should be limited in favour of a supranational body. Despite these inhibitions and complexities a lively federal movement was created which formed the foundation 58

Creating a Movement 59

for subsequent and more influential organisations pursuing unity in Central East Europe and in Europe as a whole. The federal movement among Polish exiles began life during the Second World War. Federal Clubs were the pioneers in this movement and were later supplemented by federal research associations. The first of the clubs was established in London in 1940.1 It formulated the idea of a federation for Central East Europe immediately after the arrival of Polish exiles in Britain. The idea was presented to Prime Minister Sikorski on the eve of his departure to the United States in the spring of 1941. The club emphasised that it wanted a federal union in which state sovereignties were merged rather than a union of states, that is a confederation. In January 1946 the club issued a leaflet entitled ‘To our Fellow Countrymen’ which was distributed to various other federal associations on the Continent. The leaflet identified the growing communist danger, and the necessity to federate the territories between Germany and the Soviet Union in order to secure a lasting independence for the states of the region. In memoranda to the Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers in 1946 the club emphasised that a regional federation in Central East Europe should be the first component in a future European-wide and world federal system.2 At around the same time, in August 1945, a Federal Club of Central and Eastern Europe was set up in Rome, with J. Poniatowski, a former Polish Prime Minister, as vice-president.3 Starting in 1946 the Rome Club published The Intermarium Bulletin to promote the idea of federalism; during its five years of existence 15 issues of this bulletin were published. Poniatowski’s ideas for a federal association in Central East Europe were publicised in The Free Intermarium Charter, which in due course became the basis of the programme of other clubs.4 In October 1946 a Central and East European Federal Club was established in Paris.5 Its programme was outlined in a publication entitled Projekt Konwencji Pan´stwo Intermarium (the Convention Draft of the Intermarium States) in 1948.6 A few months later, at the beginning of 1947, a Polish Federal Circle was also formed in Paris. Jerzy Jankowski, who later became the leader of the Union of Polish Federalists and the editor of a prominent federalist journal, was appointed secretary of this Circle which set itself two major tasks: on the one hand to acquire expertise in the current problems of Central and Eastern Europe and to study federal issues, and secondly to establish contacts with French federal organisations such as La Fédération and the French Union of Federalists.7 The Polish American Congress linked up with Lithuanian and Serbian associations to establish the Federation of Americans of East and Central

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European Origin in April 1946, with its permanent headquarters in Washington, DC.8 In the years 1947 to 1949 there were also three other clubs established in Europe based in Brussels, Frankfurt-am-Main and Innsbruck.9 The Frankfurt Club, founded on 30 August 1948, proved to be the most active. In the western zones of Germany there were substantial numbers of political refugees from East European countries – former prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps, demobilised soldiers and deportees to forced labour camps. The Frankfurt Club had many members during 1948 and 1949, but later it became less dynamic as its membership declined following the re-migration of many members to other Western countries, mainly the United States and Canada.10 Apart from its secretary K. Hrabyk, there were other Poles involved in the club’s activities.11 In addition to the clubs, specialised research bodies were created to study how a federation could be created in Central East Europe. One of these was the Polish Scientific Institute for Issues of European Federation with its headquarters in Fryburg, Switzerland. This institute created a documentary record of the activities of federal movements in Western Europe.12 In September 1946 a second research organisation, the Polish Institute for Research on International Issues (PIRII), was established in London. Its mission was to deepen interest in, and understanding of, international affairs.13 Three sub-committees were set up to conduct research into Soviet, German and European issues, respectively. August Zaleski, a former Polish foreign minister and then head of the Polish government-in-exile in London, was elected president of the institute.14 The institute published several issues of a journal called Sprawy Mie˛dzynarodowe [International Issues]. In January 1948 a special Research Bureau of Central and Eastern Europe was formed as part of the PIRII. It was headed by J. Starzewski, a former member of the Polish foreign ministry, who later became a leading figure in the Polish federalist movement in exile and a journalist of note. This Bureau tried to establish close contacts with other centres of federal research as well as offering research materials to The Intermarium Bulletin and such emigration periodicals as Orzel Bialy [The White ˙ lnierza [The Polish and Soldier’s Eagle], Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Zo Journal], Wiadomo´sci [The News], Kultura, Kronika or Trybuna. The Bureau submitted all significant problems arising from its research to the Committee for Central and Eastern European and Federal Issues of the PIRII, headed by Ambassador Lukasiewicz. The Committee’s decisions were regarded as binding.15 By the autumn of 1948 over 40 experts’ opinions had been prepared, including analyses of the /

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following topics: the organisational assumptions of the Intermarium project; European federal movements and the attitude of Western public opinion to the idea of a union of Central and Eastern Europe; the economic foundations of Intermarium; the attitude of the nations of Central East Europe to the union of the states of the region; and Soviet politics in relation to these countries.16 Members of the Federal Clubs always emphasised the importance of precisely defining the Intermarium project. They believed that, to be convincing, the project had to include quite detailed organisational and legal proposals so as to avoid allegations of superficiality and sloganeering. Proposing detailed plans would give time to the various exile associations to consider the proposals in depth and decide whether or not they were acceptable. The intention was to determine as accurately as possible the potential benefits or disadvantages of membership in a federal or confederal association in Central East Europe. Consequently a quite precise image of the Intermarium union was projected even in the first programmes of the federalists dating back to 1945. For example, there was a clear outline in the declaration of the London Club entitled ‘Our Aims’, in the Free Intermarium Charter, and in a document entitled ‘Po ustaniu dzialan´ wojennych’ [‘Following the Cessation of War Activities’] published by the Rome Club. However, it was the Paris Club which provided the clearest vision of the community of Central and East European nations in its Projekt Konwencji Pan´stw Intermarium of 1948. This proposed that the Intermarium Union should comprise the 16 countries or nations of the region, namely Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia (the Czech Republic), Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Hungary. All the Federal Clubs agreed with this proposed membership; this meant that the Union would be composed of national groups, not simply the pre-war states of Central East Europe. The clubs differed, however, over the question of Austrian membership, which the Rome Club opposed despite the fact that Austria had geopolitical and historical connections with Central and Eastern Europe.17 There were barriers that were impossible to overcome, namely the nostalgia of Austrian society for the lost Habsburg monarchy, Austria’s pro-German attitude, and its clear ambition to become a member of the European Community after the Austrian peace treaty was signed.18 Federalists assumed that a vital prerequisite for creating an association of states in the Central East European region was a certain commonality, a shared history and traditions, common values and attitudes. They observed that /

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The community of inner life emerges from a similar cultural development and comparability in social relations. Deep traditions and religious feelings connected with Western culture as well as achieved democratic rights constitute vital features of our community. In the social structure of our nations the village was predominant and it increased its share in national life with the progressive development of the modern village and the emergence of the free farmer and citizen. Therefore, the Central European nations, related by their analogous geographical situation, historical past, civilisation, and social structure, and, at the same time, threatened by surrounding imperial powers, should choose the logical solution and create political unity in order to defend themselves and to ensure common development.19 For the Federal Clubs it was axiomatic that Intermarium should be a voluntary organisation. This stress on voluntarism was designed to avoid a situation when, after the liquidation of one imperial power in the region, there would emerge another, the Intermarium, which would compel reluctant neighbours to become members. Compulsion would sow the seeds of disintegration. Rather, Intermarium should comprise a group of democratic countries in which all citizens had equal rights and duties, and each nation had guaranteed rights to protect its own identity, culture, religious beliefs and customs. Federalists wanted approval for this voluntary association from its neighbours, but at the same time the association itself would have to try to maintain good relations with its neighbours, in particular with Germany and Russia. The basis of the new order was to be a legal framework deriving from Latin civilisation and founded on standards deeply rooted in the Intermarium communities such as loyalty, mutual help and respect, moderation, justice and solidarity. As a result the confederation would become a stabilising factor in Europe because interstate, internal and external relations would be based on strictly defined rules. The union would, consequently, have a strongly pacifistic character.20 As an example of the precision demanded the policy papers of the London and Rome Clubs provided for the central institutions of the community to be responsible for foreign and defence policy, the management of common economic affairs, and cultural development. Foreign policy would be formulated by a Council, which would consist of an equal number of representatives from each of the member nations, using French as its official language. An Executive Committee of the Confederation would coordinate administrative functions. It would deal, inter alia, with cultural cooperation, and create institutions especially for this purpose. The

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Interparliamentary Union consisting of delegates from the member parliaments would have the power to initiate legislation, but any draft resolutions or acts adopted by the Interparliamentary Union would have to be ratified by the parliaments of the member countries. The constitutions of the member states would guarantee their citizens freedom of religion, speech and political beliefs, and the right of peaceful assembly.21 Member countries would be required to assist any member subject to external aggression, and a General Staff would be created to coordinate the military response and to have overall command of the joint armed forces of the Confederation. The growth and development of the armed forces would depend on the financial contributions of each of the member countries. The forces would consist of various national elements subject to a centralised command, guaranteeing that they would not be used for aggressive purposes. In peace time the armed forces would serve as a ‘school of confederate patriotism’, teaching the member nations about each other and drawing them closer together.22 The programme of the London Club postulated that the community would form a single economic area, stimulating the rapid economic development of the smaller member states which would be impossible if they acted separately. Intermarium would be a customs union, but every effort would be made to safeguard the vital interests of its members. The community should establish close economic cooperation with countries outside the federation in order to promote trade, overcome the reluctance of western capital to invest in Central East Europe, and stimulate the economic development of the member countries. The development of communications would provide a similar stimulus.23 At the same time economic development would create jobs by stimulating investment in privately owned small-and medium-sized businesses. Similarly the agricultural system would be based on individual farm ownership, which would entail liquidating state properties in some of the member countries.24 The proposals contained in the Convention Draft of the Paris Club leaned towards diplomatic and military union.25 The functions and legal framework of the community were similar to those outlined in the earlier proposals of the London and Rome Clubs. The Draft envisaged, for example, that the community should have the capacity to represent and defend the interests of the member states in international relations and to have responsibility for their collective defence. Specifically the community would conclude political and economic agreements, declare war and make peace, and appoint a unified command in case of war. In addition, the union would attempt to coordinate economic relations

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between the member states and protect human rights. Contrasting with the Free Intermarium Charter, however, the Draft transferred to the community the power to arbitrate in all disputes between the member states, to cooperate with other countries ‘in order to create a world-wide peace organisation’, and to participate in the unification of Europe.26 The Draft’s other proposals are similar to those in the earlier documents, but more precise and detailed. For example, the armed forces of the member states, their weapon production and trade, were to be supervised by the community.27 In the Convention Draft the counterpart of the Interparliamentary Union was called the Assembly of Union Countries, consisting of an equal number of delegates from each country. The Draft provided for an executive branch but, unlike the earlier proposals, it also proposed a president to represent the community, receive envoys of foreign countries, nominate persons to serve in diplomatic posts, appoint and dismiss the chairman and other members of the executive, and appoint an inspector-general of the armed forces. The president would himself be commander-in-chief.28 The Draft also provided for the creation of a judiciary. This would involve the establishment of at least two supreme courts, the Arbitration Tribunal for the resolution of disputes between the member states, and the Constitution and Administrative Tribunal to consider alleged infringements of the laws of the union or the rights of union citizens.29 On the important question of the creation of a multi-level federation in Europe, the Free Intermarium Charter envisaged that the Intermarium would enter a continent-wide organisation.30 Later, the Rome Club supported the idea of a ‘broad confederation’ for the whole of Europe, embracing more strictly organised systems such as Yugoslavia and a putative federation of Baltic countries.31 Experts from the PIRII agreed, suggesting that the programmes of the regional federations and the confederation for the whole of Europe should complement each other.32 The adoption of looser or stricter forms of unification by the countries of the region was made contingent upon the extent of the power vested in ‘The European Union’ and ‘The Global Organisation’.33 The Research Bureau of the PIRII proposed another variant of a multilevel federation. The best structural solution would be one based on the idea of ‘four concentric circles’. The components of the individual circles would be, successively, independent countries, regional unions, continental unions and a world organisation. ‘The associations’ they claimed ‘would obviously be different in their nature, aims and targets, but, together, they would provide the greatest guarantee of peace, order

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and stable development of the world’.34 The Bureau believed that the pressing problems of small countries, their lingering and long-lasting animosities and their minor but troublesome disputes, would be resolved with the aid of regional unions. As a result the great powers would no longer have an excuse for setting up zones of influence or for competitive involvement in the internal affairs of these small states. Regional unions represented ‘a synthesis of balance-of-power politics and the politics of international idealism’. The Bureau saw regional unions as a reaction against the practice of powerful states disregarding the rights and interests of small countries. This reaction was part of a universal drive towards the improvement of world systems and the ‘achievement of harmony between “the politics of historical realism and the politics of nations” rights’.35 Regional unions need not be created everywhere, though in some parts of the world their existence was necessary, as in Central and Eastern Europe. ‘In this case’, one of the studies read, ‘the solution is irreplaceable to a far greater degree than it would be in Western Europe. It constitutes an alternative for the development of a large number of nations, whereas no one provides, and perhaps cannot provide, another solution. The pressing and obviously indispensable character of the Union of Central and Eastern Europe is clearly visible in the reasons for its establishment.’36 The Federal Clubs were warned against exaggerated optimism in forecasting the future course of events. Tytus Komarnicki advised them to beware of the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon powers which would impede the formation of a confederation in Central East Europe unless the United Nations became vigorous and controlled the world by implementing the principles of law and justice. It was important to decrease the involvement of the Anglo-Saxon powers in the affairs of the region. If the United Nations remained weak, Komarnicki argued, the best form of cooperation between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe would be economic. During the very early stages of creating the federation the members would have to agree on a uniform foreign policy which, in turn, would impel them to resolve their disputes with each other.37 In this context, Komarnicki considered the detailed plans of the clubs to be premature. For him it was critically important to understand the proposed functions of the union; later on the institutions could be devised to administer those functions. As far as the executive power was concerned Komarnicki considered two possibilities, namely the establishment of the office of president based on yearly elections, or the creation of a Union Council chaired successively by heads of government of the member countries. As regards the legislature, Komarnicki

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opted for a two-chamber parliament with one chamber chosen by popular election and the other composed of equal numbers of representatives from the member countries. According to the Research Bureau the consolidation of the community would depend on its effectiveness in foreign affairs. ‘The Union will either pass the examination on foreign affairs successfully’ they said ‘and present a united face to the outside world in the decisive early period or it will disintegrate, and even the most stringent written documents will not save it.’38 The federalists did not ignore nationality conflicts within the Intermarium. The effectiveness of their proposals, they claimed, would transform ethnic problems into internal problems of the community. The introduction of arbitration proceedings would be the quickest way of making final decisions in inter-ethnic disputes. The role of the supreme judiciary and the special tribunals appointed at the federal level was the resolution of these disputes in the interest of the community as a whole. They suggested various solutions to problems arising in areas where there were mixed ethnic groups, particularly where such areas were adjacent to borders. These included the establishment of cantonal self-government, the isolation and independence of free cities under the supervision of community institutions and, in extreme cases, balancing the number of members of ethnic groups on each side of the border.39 Federalists accepted that there were obstacles in the way of realising these objectives. For example, the ‘excess of national feelings’ was a serious difficulty in inter-community relations in Central and Eastern Europe. However, these obstacles could be overcome if the sovereignty of individual nations over their spiritual identity and culture was reinforced, and if the exclusiveness of their culture could be protected. In addition, the internal borders within the union would have to be reliably drawn (with the possibility of leaving ‘islands’ of one culture in the territory of another), and liberal minority legislation adopted.40 On the proposal that the entire Intermarium area become a customs union federalists’ attitudes were quite ambivalent. Conceding that a customs union was necessary, they were afraid of the consequential tensions and disputes that would arise. At the same time they were aware of a possible variant, namely the creation of a customs union for the whole of the European continent to accelerate its integration as a one-level union. They firmly opposed this for ideological as well as political and economic reasons. It would lead, they believed, to the weakening of the Central and East European economies and to the decline in the ability of the region to defend itself against competition from highly developed countries. What they dreaded most was German dominance.

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‘Even a seemingly harmless clause in the statute of the International Trade Organisation’ it was remarked, ‘and the waiver of discrimination against the origin of invested capital, would, in certain circumstances, open the way for Germans to conquer one weaker neighbour or another, especially if the method of financing a considerable part of Europe by the United States through the agency of Germany were to be re-introduced.’41 Apprehension about this possible threat was sufficient to induce the nations of Intermarium, despite their reservations, to accept a customs union within the federation. Even so, such a union would necessitate complex economic reforms, the success of which would depend on a close correlation between the economic policies of the member states and of the federation itself. It would also depend, federalists believed, on the less developed countries giving up the greater part of their economic sovereignty to the federal government. Polish federalists were well aware of other problems which could imperil the European stability they were seeking. Coming into this category were Polish–Ukrainian relations (on the assumption that Ukraine would become independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union) which, for historical reasons, were volatile and sensitive. Some believed that antagonisms between Poland and Ukraine might be resolved by decisions taken at a federal level. Although he knew the sensitivity of Ukrainians in this respect, J. Ponikiewski, one of the founders of the Frankfurt Club, believed that the concept of shared sovereignty was becoming more widely understood. He tried to show that ‘unlimited sovereignty is a source of weakness and impermanence, and not a foundation of strength and immutability’.42 Ukrainian politicians differed sharply. P. Kotowicz, a social democrat, opted for a form of regional union in which the individual identity and character of each nation would be protected. ‘We should strive’, he wrote, ‘for every nation to suffer the least possible consequences from the existence of a union or federation and, instead, exist as if it existed in its own country. I do not think that Ukrainians are afraid of Polonisation, nor do the Poles fear Ukrainisation. However, differences and psychological complexes should be eliminated before closer relations can be established. The nations must confide in each other.’43 This way of thinking did not commend itself to Poniatowski. While admitting that Ukraine would be a much desired and useful member of the federation, he was convinced that the Intermarium could be established without Ukraine’s participation. Neighbourly disputes between nations, he asserted, could only be resolved on the basis of ‘the principle of the law superior to all’. This meant that disagreements between neighbours should be settled by arbitration proceedings under

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the umbrella of the union. These contrasting opinions showed that there was nothing in the attitude of Polish federalists towards the solution of disputes between neighbours that could satisfy the Ukrainian side.44 Meanwhile, Ukrainian exiles were developing alternative ideas to those contained in the Intermarium concept. Three organisations were mainly responsible for proposing these ideas: the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations (ABN), the Freedom International and Prometheus.45 They were based on, and grew out of, the Anti-Bolshevik League of Liberation of Nations (ALON) established on 1 December 1947 in the Western zones of Germany.46 It was no secret that the leaders of the ABN wanted to create a new alignment of forces in Eastern Europe centred around Ukraine. They opted for an even broader concept than that of Intermarium, taking into account all the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia. The Freedom International shared the same ideas. On the other hand, followers of Simon Petlura,47 while not rejecting the creation of Intermarium, proposed instead that it should be broadened to include the Cossack and Caucasus territories. Other Ukrainian groups, such as the Ukrainian National Council, regarded Intermarium as correct in conception but impossible to realise. For this reason they proposed a smaller association made up of the nations of the northern part of Central and Eastern Europe, namely Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, with the possibility of Czechia (the Czech Republic) and Slovakia also joining.48 When ALON entered a period of stagnation in the summer of 1948, and divisions arose between Ukrainian nationalists, Polish federalists in West Germany seized the opportunity to establish their club there and managed to win over some of the ABN activists, including a group of Ukrainians.49 They also established contacts with the Freedom International and Prometheus. As a result the Frankfurt Club proposed that the Intermarium should exist side by side with Prometheus, that is to say, with the Turkish, Caucasus and Cossack federation. This proposal was a definite tribute to the Promethean idea.50 Besides Ukraine the future of the Soviet Union offered another problem for the supporters of federalism, who concluded that the reconstruction of relations in Central and East Europe depended on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which was assumed to follow its withdrawal from Central and Eastern Europe. However, the inevitable question suggested itself – what would be the fate of Soviet territory, its various nationalities and its political and economic system? The expectations of federalists in this respect were very diverse. At one extreme was a demand that Russia should submit to a re-education process, and be confined within its ethnographic borders. If the Russian nation did

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not ‘learn to respect and appreciate its own and other nations’ freedom’, ran one comment, ‘and as long as it does not develop a fundamental feeling of law and justice within the European meaning of the terms’, she should not be admitted into the process of shaping the destiny of post-war Europe.51 By contrast, the federalists of the Paris Club adopted a more balanced position. At a conference in Paris in December 1947 to discuss possible solutions of ‘the Russian problem’, they assumed that the division of Europe and the world into spheres of influence was provisional, and that this state of affairs could not be sustained for a lengthy period. They criticised the Western powers for their sluggishness in constructing the ‘new Europe’. They assumed that a strategy for liberating the countries under the Soviet heel should be based on two cardinal principles, namely, the voidance of territorial acquisitions gained by the USSR, and the guarantee, in accordance with the Atlantic Charter, of the right to independence and freedom of all nations subject to Soviet control. The liberated nations would be able to associate with each other as they chose and to regulate border issues freely among themselves.52 In this context the emancipation of the Caucasus and the Middle Asia countries had a major role to play. ‘Russia’ wrote T. Schaetzel ‘is neither East nor West, just as it is in neither Asia nor Europe. It is its own world for itself . . . the attitude of the Eastern peoples towards the effects of Russian expansion on politics and culture was even more conscious and resistant than the attitude of the Western nations.’53 Hence the Caucasus and Turkestan federations were considered to be the most reliable defences against the solidifying of Russian power. The former would function as one of the pillars of the new order in Europe, becoming the closest allies of the Intermarium countries. The Caucasus federation was exactly modelled on the ideas of the Polish Promethean movement in the 1930s. These ‘Russian assumptions’ envisaged the reconstruction of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR) to enable a democratic system to be introduced into Russia which would guarantee to all its citizens personal, religious and national freedoms, free elections and the freedom of press. The role of the international community was to guarantee Russia a favourable economic exchange, economic development, and an increase in the welfare of its citizens. In return the Russians must come to understand that ruling other nations caused Russia itself to become ‘a slave of its own authorities’. Russia’s future lay in a federal system modelled on western examples and the granting of a wide autonomy to its various nationalities and ethnic groups. The proposed economic reforms should restore individual property in agriculture,

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establish small and medium-sized industrial plants, and encourage the development of crafts and trade. The conference agreed that ‘the time left for the Stalinist regime was working against world security and the true interests of the Russian nation’. Western governments must build up their defences against possible invasion by the USSR.54 The ‘Russian assumptions’ aroused wide interest and agreement among all sections of the federalist movement. In a meeting of the Committee for Central and Eastern European and Federal Issues of the PIRII two points of view emerged in the course of the discussions: one completely supported the assumptions, the other called for amendments to the section on the RSFSR.55 There was no disagreement that the constituent union republics of the Soviet Union should be granted independence. It was more problematic to determine whether or how far the right of self-determination could be exercised by nations existing inside union republics or by autonomous districts in the Russian Federation. Would all such nations or peoples be entitled to this right? The Committee thought they should be on the grounds of equal opportunity, concluding that the Paris Club should reconsider its position on the federal system in Russia. It recommended that ‘the future organization of the country (the RSFSR) should be based on the same rules for the self-determination of nations and their voluntary association as exist in the USSR as a whole.’56 The view was shared by the Committee for Soviet Issues of the PIRII. The Committee listed the following nations with developed aspirations to independence: the Volga Tatars, the Kalmyks, the Baskhirs, the Crimean Tatars as well as Chechens and Ingushetians. Though the right to self-determination should be exercised unrestrictedly nonetheless the federation and even the union character of the Russian state should be preserved.57 S. Karski was even more cautious about predicting the future fate of nations forming the USSR. He wrote in Le Monde: ‘Any change of the system in Russia would obviously result in a period of riots and chaos, which would without doubt completely transform the map of this part of Europe. As hard as it is to believe that countries such as eastern Ukraine and Belarus, which were annexed to the Russian empire a long time ago, could permanently separate from the empire, at the same time the western areas of the USSR should still maintain enthusiastic bonds with their Polish and Danubian neighbours as well as with Moscow.’58 Federalists thought that the German problem was easier to resolve than the Russian/Soviet one. In the early post-war years they formulated a quite coherent strategy which resembled the French plans for the dismemberment of Germany. The Intermarium Bulletin suggested

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that the type of relations between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe was contingent upon the decentralisation and democratisation of the future German state. Hence ‘the return of the German nation to Europe’ would be conditional on the Western powers introducing a re-education programme which should be sacrosanct and immune from tactical considerations, what the exiles called ‘a game with Germany at stake’, in which tactical considerations would assume greater importance than fundamental questions of education. The dismemberment of Germany into small countries was intended to ensure that reliable re-education effects could be achieved.59 The exiles’ proposal was in conflict with the policy of Anglo-Saxon powers which aimed, in the first place, at the reconstruction of a democratic Germany.60 The proposals of the London Club dating from December 1949 are probably the best example of this dismemberment strategy since they determined the federal movement’s position on a peace treaty with Germany.61 The German problem, the Londoners believed, could be resolved without violating the common interest of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Referring to territorial and border issues the club stated that the line of the Oder and Neisse rivers constituted ‘the greatest possible shortening of the western border of Poland’, adding that, ‘at the same time, it perfectly diminishes the surface of friction between the whole of Central Europe and Germany’. Moreover, international acceptance of the Oder–Neisse border would enable the Central East European region to strengthen its integration by constructing the Oder and Danube canal which would be an essential link in the Baltic and Black Sea water route.62 The club assumed that the best organisation of ‘a new Germany’ would involve the creation of a federation consisting of eight to ten German regions or provinces which would resemble the proposed structure for the Intermarium.63 Similar structures would arguably help in the process of stabilising mutual relations and improving cooperation precisely because both communities could become part of a continental union composed of regional federations. This German federation would have a loose character and its central government would have limited powers, notably to regulate the common currency, and to be responsible for the postal system, communications, customs and diplomatic representations. It would not be permitted to create a federal army. The responsibility for national security would remain with the occupation troops and the state police for several years.64 The London Club emphasised that the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and Germany complemented each other, the former supplying foodstuffs and raw materials, Germany manufactured products. The club

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accepted there was a risk that the Intermarium would become economically dependent on Germany. This could be avoided if, (and here the club could be accused of wishful thinking), there was ‘mutual cooperation between the member states in each of the federations’.65 The success of these proposals for the German problem depended, the club reiterated, on the Western powers’ approval of the Eastern boundary of Germany at the Oder–Neisse line, and the ‘federalisation’ of the German occupation zones.66 Turning to political strategy, Polish federalists hoped that they could call on the cooperation of federal movements in Western Europe in their ambition to form a regional union in Central and Eastern Europe. Between 1945 and 1948 several ‘federalist’ organisations emerged in Western Europe. These were of two types, those opting for the creation of one federal European state, so-called integral federalists, and those who proposed a loose union of countries. The largest integralist movements included the European Parliamentary Union of Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi and the European Union of Federalists. The proponents of a loose federation included the Socialist Movement of a United Europe, the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI), the European League for Economic Cooperation, and the United Europe Movement led by Winston Churchill.67 The federalists in exile from Central East Europe made contact with West European federalists at the Hertenstein conference in 1946 through a representative of the London Club. Having listened to a number of debates he reported that the proposals of their own Federal Clubs and Research Institutes were, at that stage, more advanced than the ideas of their West European counterparts.68 The attention of Polish exile circles was drawn, first of all, to Churchill’s ideas in his famous Zurich speech of 19 September 1946 and in an article published in The Daily Telegraph on 30 December 1946 in which he called for the formation of a community of European states with a regional structure, what he referred to as the United States of Europe. The first major step in this direction, he argued, would be the establishment of a European Council, which would introduce free trade and ‘economic harmony’ between the member states, and strive for a common form of defence to ensure order and security.69 Polish federalists thought Churchill’s ideas were contradictory. On the one hand he seemed to suggest uniting the whole of Europe and not limiting unification to the West European countries, on the other he stipulated that ‘perhaps not all nations will be able to become “club” members at once’. His reference to the term ‘pillars of the world edifice’, meaning the United States, the British Empire and the Soviet Union with its

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‘Slavonic fraternities’, seemed to rule out the participation of the Central and East European countries in a united Europe.70 Other criticism from Polish federalists followed. J. Steficki, a leading expert of the London Bureau of Research, understood the name ‘the United States of Europe’ to mean a one-level association. Like many federalists, his preference was for the continent to be united by binding together a number of regional federations, that is a two-level federation. He absolutely ruled out adopting the American federal system as a model since the differences in culture and economy between the European nations were more profound than those between the American states. By contrast, a two-level structure would strengthen the principle of equality between member countries and give greater significance to the votes and demands of smaller states. Steficki was, however, realistic enough to understand that any plan for the unification of Europe in immediate post-war conditions would be impossible to achieve.71 His views were shared by other activists in the London Club. The Soviet Union’s influence in Europe was the great stumbling block, and reduced the chances of creating a regional union even for countries outside the iron curtain. One-level unification projects should be treated cautiously; they offered publicity for various political aims which were not always made explicit, such as the rapid restoration of the German state. Consequently some federalists in exile did not welcome Churchill’s ideas. They believed it was impossible to create a European federation in the face of Soviet power. Moreover ‘. . . if created without Great Britain and based on regenerated German power, [it] would be undesirable and dangerous for the freedom of European nations’.72 The exiles established closer contacts with West European federal movements at The Hague Congress in May 1948. The London and Rome Clubs sent a memorandum to the Congress stressing how important it was to protect the interests of Central and East European countries by treating Europe as a whole.73 In the Political Committee’s resolutions and in its ‘Appeal to Europeans’ the Congress called on European nations to renounce part of their sovereign rights in favour of a common political and economic programme and for the better use of resources in common. The European community, it was assumed, would be open to all democratic nations which undertook to respect the Charter of Human Rights.74 Evaluating the results of The Hague debates, Polish federalists assessed the various strategies for the unification of Europe, and concluded that the evolutionary and empirical method favoured by the British was predominant. This proposed the immediate creation of a number of European institutions with priority being

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given to the establishment of a parliamentary assembly. The exiles also reflected on the meaning of ‘Europeanity’: did this mean ‘oneness in plurality’, in which case would it not inevitably lead to a weakening of national sovereignty?75 Some of them were disappointed by the failure at The Hague to take a clear position on East European issues and to give full support to the idea of the unity of the entire continent. Their disappointment was felt more keenly by the alleged failure of Churchill to distance himself from the idea of unifying Europe without including the Soviet Union’s ‘Slavonic Fraternities’. These were clear misperceptions since the Congress called for the unification of the whole of Europe and Churchill supported this.76 Analysing events at The Hague, E. Strauch, chairman of the Polish Federal Circle in Paris, wrote that the East European federalists had acted too slowly and found it difficult to adjust to the new solutions being proposed. If they wanted to defend the Intermarium, he believed, they would not get very far by relying on help from international opinion.77 As the federal movement’s agenda continued to expand its members saw the need for greater coordination. Furthermore, the clubs were eager to gain support for their ideas from other organisations of exiles. As early as the spring of 1946 the Rome Club persuaded political, social and governmental organisations representing the nations of Central and Eastern Europe in exile to combine together to promote the idea of Intermarium.78 Federalists issued similar appeals on a number of subsequent occasions. These touched on the need for an umbrella organisation whose task would be to coordinate the programmes and activities of the clubs and to work with ‘all those forces striving to liberate the nations of Intermarium’.79 Poniatowski was far more ambitious in allocating responsibilities and tasks to this proposed umbrella organisation, proposing a centre which would coordinate and cement together all the political associations of the emigration. In allocating functions to this centre he wrote: ‘The movement must spare no effort in trying to unify the political forces of our nations.’ As regards policy, the movement would have to call for unity in the approach to the outside world, that is in respect to the Anglo-Saxons, Western Europe and the Soviet Union. It should work to unite the policies of official governments in exile, help create reliable substitute national centres where appropriate, and assist them in coordinating their activities and policies.80 But the federal movement organised in the clubs was unable to shoulder the varied and demanding responsibilities called for by Poniatowski. The London Club was well aware of this, and in its own proposal confined itself to calling for the creation of a common programme. A special

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congress would need to be held to establish a supervisory Central European Federal Movement whose functions would be mainly of a coordinating nature.81 Strauch, the chairman of the Paris Club, wanted a radical reconstruction of the entire movement since, in the new environment Federal Clubs were incapable of advancing the federalist cause, despite their considerable merits. They should form national centres (such as Polish or Czechoslovak organisations), and then, with these as a base, create wider associations both in their host societies and in an international setting. ‘National federal circles’, Strauch wrote, ‘should, first of all, constitute a tool for promoting the idea of Intermarium among their own and foreign nations.82 These ideas formed the basis for establishing the Union of Polish Federalists in 1949. Meanwhile, the Brussels Club called for the creation of a representative body or assembly composed of exiles from Central and Eastern Europe which would be a coordinating and opinion-forming organisation with a parliamentary character. The club expected this new body would be in permanent contact with the future Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe. It was suggested that the exiles should name this ‘parliament’ the Congress of Central and East European Nations. Other clubs did not go as far. In October 1948, the Paris circle’s more modest appeal was for the establishment by the most important exile centres of a Coordinating Committee consisting of delegates from each of the nationalities. Again, the circle raised the question of standardising foreign policy and insisted on the adoption of the Intermarium project.83 The concept of a regional union as proposed by the various Federal Clubs was approved by most exile politicians, including the leaders of governments-in-exile, political party leaders, other representative bodies, the London Bureau of Research, and the Committee for Central and Eastern European and Federal Issues. Only the Polish National Party continued to oppose the idea. General Wladyslaw Anders, one of the most important leaders of the exile Poles in Britain, was a convinced supporter of regional union. He hoped that a federation would soften national antagonisms and resolve territorial disputes in the region. He attached the highest importance to establishing barriers to German and Russian imperial aggression.84 Federal Clubs were active in developing their ideas as early as 1946 but as time passed the leaders of the movement fretted at the difficulties in promoting the concept of Intermarium. Politicians in the West were reluctant to endorse it. Some exiles suspected that Western countries preferred to deal with weak and submissive partners in Central and Eastern Europe rather than with fully independent ones.85 Westerners, /

/

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they believed, did not wish to consider the area of the Intermarium as one integrated whole, and showed little interest in the plans for a regional union. In the face of this Western indifference the exiles again called for a common political organization, composed of representatives of the stronger national sections in exile, which would attempt to break the isolation of the clubs in the international arena.86 Federal Clubs adopted two contrasting attitudes towards the idea of establishing ‘local federations’ which was promoted by nationalist groups who opposed regional unions. The term ‘local federation’ meant the assembling of a number of smaller countries around one ‘initiating nation’. The clubs’ leaders condemned this idea since it implied a leadership role for ‘initiating nations’ such as Poland, Hungary, Serbia and Ukraine. The idea was obviously associated with the imperial ambitions of the elites in exile. However, the clubs also pointed the way to a possible compromise, namely that the supporters of ‘local federations’ should agree to ‘secondary relations’ covering the whole area of Central and Eastern Europe, ensuring a common defence and foreign policy. Such broader associations would evidently be coterminous with a regional union.87 In the years 1950 to1952 the Federal Clubs were gradually going into decline. First to be dissolved was the Federation of Americans of East and Central European origin in the summer of 1949.88 A year later, the Frankfurt, Brussels and Innsbruck Clubs were dissolved and only the three largest remained active. The Paris and Rome Clubs combined their activities and jointly published The Intermarium Bulletin. The last issues of the bulletin edited by Juliusz Poniatowski appeared in Paris in August 1950 and May 1951. At that point the Federal Clubs did not advance any innovative ideas. Only one document offering policy guidelines was published, namely the declaration adopted at a meeting of club activists in Paris on 25 April 1951. This document was an abbreviated version of the Convention Draft, discussed earlier in this chapter.89 The movement, of which the clubs were the central pillars, came to a complete end by late 1952. Some of the members joined the Union of Polish Federalists, while others continued to champion the Intermarium idea through their participation in political parties.90 The most orthodox followers of Intermarium ideas were members of the League of Poland’s Independence.91 The ideas which the clubs had promoted received a major endorsement on 11 February 1951. The so-called Philadelphia Declaration gave new impetus to the federalist movement among the Central East European exiles. This Declaration was an affirmation by all the Central

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European national committees in exile in the United States that their nations wished to participate in the developing West European movement for unity, and it concluded: ‘The Central European nations wish to establish among themselves a strong federal union and to take part in the creation of a united Europe.’ This Declaration offered a great stimulus to the formation of new organisations among the exiles to sustain the movement created by the Federal Clubs.92 Some of the exiles threw in their lot with political pressure groups or international organisations working for European unity, while others created successor organisations such as the Union of Polish Federalists which emphasised support for the formation of the European Communities and affiliated themselves to the European Union of Federalists. They had great expectations of the European Movement and the Council of Europe. They were initially convinced that these bodies would work assiduously to support the emergence of a federation in Central East Europe and help to tie in that federation with other regional federations to create a united Europe. In the next chapters it is worth looking in more detail at these expectations and the reasons for the exiles’ subsequent disappointments.

5 Great Expectations

After the Second World War Polish exiles in Britain and other West European countries had broadly two choices if they wished to work for European unity. They could promote the cause of federalism inside their own communities, attempt to persuade sceptics of the rightness of their cause and try to create federalist organisations across ethnic lines, drawing in converts from other Central and East European exile communities into joint organisations. By putting out leaflets, writing articles for the press and holding conferences they would hope to influence public opinion in their host countries. The Federal Clubs and research centres were good early examples of this tendency. The alternative approach was to join political associations formed by native Britons, Belgians or other West Europeans to propagandise and lobby for European union. These alternatives were not necessarily mutually exclusive since there were examples of individuals, such as Edward Raczyn´ski and Adam Ciolkosz, who pursued both approaches. In the case of two leading European institutions, the European Movement and the Council of Europe, the exiles not only became members or close associates, they also played an active role in their creation. Here we propose to examine the activities of Poles and other Central East Europeans in these broader European organisations. But before we do it is worth making a number of observations. First of all, there was no clear dividing line between the war-time activities of the Poles in Britain and their post-war participation in organisations supporting federalism. There was, in fact, a continuum since a number of the important figures in Sikorski’s war time administration who had supported his federalist objectives became prominent members in post-war Europe’s federalist organisations. Secondly, these active participants in West European federal associations were, for around a decade after the war, remarkably /

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optimistic that their ideas for a New Europe could be implemented. They were sure that their home countries would be liberated from Soviet control and would be free to join other European states in a federal association. They were also enthused by, and placed great faith in, the new institutions which had been created to bring about European unity, the Council of Europe and the European Movement. Moreover, the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the success of the Marshall Plan gave them confidence that Western Europe could not only be defended but could build on solid economic foundations for future prosperity. In advancing their ideas for a European union, then, the exiles had the strong impression that the tide of opinion in Western Europe was running in their favour and that they could also count on a groundswell of support among their compatriots at home. The continuity between the war-time and the post-war activities of Polish federalists is perhaps best exemplified by the much-discussed figure of Józef Retinger. As Sikorski’s aide and counsellor he was deeply involved in the negotiations with the Czech government in London. He took an even more prominent role in the discussions initiated by Sikorski among other exile governments based in London during the war, the Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, Free French and Luxemburgers as well as the Czechoslovaks, Greeks, Yugoslavs and Romanians. A very great deal has been written about Retinger, much of it speculative and unauthenticated.1 He was, it was often said, a man of the shadows (homme de l’ombre), who, in the words of the inter-war Polish Peasant Party leader Wincenty Witos, ‘lurked about several [Polish] parties and ministries [in the inter-war period] and was used by them for various unofficial missions, especially to the West’.2 During the First World War he undertook several semi-official tasks in Britain, France and Austria on behalf of his partitioned country. He was a Polish patriot whose efforts were directed to re-establishing his country’s independence. His compatriot Joseph Conrad admired him for his energy and political commitment – ‘Retinger’s activities go on at white heat – personal success immense, political what it can be and indeed better than one would have thought it possible in the hopeless state of the Polish question’.3 At the end of the War he was influenced by Arthur Capel’s ideas of world government but later scaled down his objectives to a European government presiding over a European union. As to methodology, he confessed that he thought European unity could be achieved in the same way as in the first quarter of the nineteenth century: ‘big problems were dealt with by a kind of Mafia and an open

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conspiracy of people in different countries – setting up a clandestine organisation working for the unity of Europe.’4 European unity, he believed, was the only way to solve economic problems and to prevent wars. Moreover, it was the surest method of preserving Poland’s recently re-acquired independence. Only in a united Europe could any country live without fear, and only in such a Europe could Poland live at all.5 So, during the inter-war years, he became a committed and passionate believer in European unity, and claimed to have persuaded Sikorski to share his views. There are two themes which dominate his political career during and after the war: among all the confusion about what kind of a man he was and who he was really working for, he was first of all a committed European and a Polish patriot and the two were closely connected. Secondly he retained his faith, if not in Mafias, at least in political elites, making Europe by persuading political leaders of the necessity for European unity, and believing in their ability to draw their countries closer together. In this he was not dissimilar from Jean Monnet. A cosmopolitan in upbringing and education who spoke a number of European languages, a Roman Catholic who drew inspiration from the unity of Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages, a liberal in economics who believed in a continent without economic divisions which permitted the free movement of the factors of production, and a patriotic conservative who was opposed to nationalism, these characteristics can explain his motivation and long-term commitment.6 It is notable that he was widely distrusted by the Polish exile community who were suspicious of his ‘excessive’ influence on Sikorski.7 At the same time he was highly praised by certain British people who worked closely with him and who testified to his ‘selfless dedication’ in bringing together men whom he believed would share his ideals’. Edward Beddington-Behrens, a prominent English supporter of Central European federalists who knew him well, recalled, in a speech in Paris in 1963 after Retinger’s death, ‘l’extraordinaire clairvoyance de cet homme aux dons prophétiques’. He was in short a political promoter, helping his ideas along from the sidelines, a ‘stage director and stage prompter’, never putting himself forward but content to identify men who ‘would work to further his creative political conceptions’.8 Retinger provided the key connection between the activities of the Polish government-in-exile during the war and the post-war federal or confederal movements in Europe. Although Sikorski’s preoccupation, when considering the future of Central East Europe after the war, was Polish–Czechoslovak cooperation he was also interested in promoting a Europe composed of regional federations, which would ultimately merge

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to form an all-European association of states. As a first step towards this goal he promoted the idea of a united Europe among Allied circles in London. By this means he hoped not only to increase Poland’s prestige but also to gain moral and political support for his country from the states of Western Europe. He was encouraged in this ambition by the widespread recognition among the small states of Western Europe, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, that they would be unable in future to guarantee their own defence and security unless they were part of an association of states. In this context Sikorski asked Retinger to take soundings among exiled government leaders in London about the possibility of forming a European union. Approaching the Belgians first, Retinger found a ready response from Marcel-Henri Jaspar, a former minister and a Liberal, PaulHenri Spaak, Foreign Minister and a socialist, and Roger Motz, a deputy from the Liberal Party. Later Retinger discovered that a former Prime Minister Paul van Zeeland, a Catholic and an economic liberal like Retinger, who had just returned to London from the United States, was equally keen on the European idea. A key development took place on 7 February 1941 when Sikorski invited Hubert Pierlot, the Belgian Prime Minister, Jaspar, Victor Cazalet, Churchill’s liaison officer with the Polish government-in-exile and Retinger to lunch to discuss his proposal to call a conference of all Allied governments in London with the aim of discussing their war aims and post-war problems. Van Zeeland was the first to propose carefully thought-out ideas about European unity. A man with close connections both in the academic world and high finance, he was interested in uniting small European states inside a broader union. His emphasis was on an economic union composed of regions which would reduce or remove obstructions to trade, investment and the movement of labour, and would establish a monetary union under a federal political authority.9 No further progress was made for several months since Retinger was actively involved in Polish affairs. But at the beginning of 1942 he renewed his discussions with Allied governments in London and found support for his and Sikorski’s ideas among the Dutch and Luxemburgers, particularly from Pieter Kerstens, the Dutch Minister of Commerce, who was also a Catholic and a liberal in economics.10 At Retinger’s suggestion Sikorski proposed regular meetings between the Foreign Ministers of the London governments-in-exile. The first of the meetings of this so-called Inter-Allied Committee took place on 22 October 1942 under the chairmanship of Edward Raczyn´ski, the Polish Foreign Minister. The aim of these meetings was to exchange views on the common problems which would arise after the war. The Committee met

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regularly between 1942 and 1944 in the offices of the Polish Prime Minister, with the Poles providing the secretariat. The Poles went out of their way to disarm criticism from the Great Powers, giving an assurance that no action would be taken without the Powers’ approval and that full information about the results of their meetings would be disclosed. The sole object of the Committee was to make known to all the Allied nations the views of the occupied countries on the future of the Continent. This seemed very innocuous but nevertheless aroused suspicions in London and Moscow, in London because the British feared the initiative would have an adverse effect on Anglo–Soviet relations, in Moscow because it was believed that this was a Polish scheme (and by that very fact suspicious), and that, despite their denials, the Poles were building defences not only against a resurgent Germany but against the Soviet Union too.11 At the root of the problem was the apparent determination of the small states to have a voice in the reconstruction of Europe after the war. An important example of this was Sikorski’s proposal for a declaration of post-war solidarity by the exile governments, showing a determination to ‘maintain community of outlook after the war on political, economic and possibly on military matters’. A draft declaration was drawn up in the summer of 1942 in which the signatories agreed to adopt all measures ‘to make it impossible for aggressors to abuse their economic potential and disturb the peace’. They would therefore ‘establish between them close and mutual collaboration’ and form commissions to determine how their aims could be achieved.12 One of these commissions raised a particularly sensitive issue, and fragmented the very solidarity which the Committee’s Polish leadership was trying to achieve. In December 1942 van Zeeland, on the invitation of the Committee, produced a report suggesting the creation of a regional group of European states based on a customs and monetary union and an in-depth study of European economic reconstruction.13 This proposal was aborted by the Belgians themselves who were very much aware of the discomfort of the Czechoslovaks and their fear of displeasing Moscow. Moreover the Belgians were unhappy with the ‘excessive Polish zeal’ and thought that economic plans should not be made until political problems had been solved.14 In short there was a general agreement both among the Great Powers and the smaller Allied governments in London that some aspects of the Polish strategy, which was largely the brainchild of Retinger, were premature. John Pomian, who edited Retinger’s memoirs, believed that the ‘underlying idea’ of the meetings of the Inter-Allied Committee ‘was to prepare for the unity of Europe’, but it became very clear that the Great Powers thought this idea

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intruded on, and anticipated, the process of shaping the post-war world which they reserved for themselves. The Americans saw in the InterAllied Committee the potential nucleus of a European bloc. In their minds schemes for regional unity ran counter to Roosevelt’s objective of setting up a world organisation.15 The Katyn disclosures, the severing of Polish–Soviet diplomatic relations and the death of Sikorski in July 1943 took the steam out of the Inter-Allied discussions in London, and they petered out in the next year, particularly after Retinger, their moving spirit, left the Polish government and went on a mission to occupied Poland. But they left behind a very important legacy which provided one of the most significant elements in the post-war movement for European unity. As Pomian argues, after the war people were ready to listen to new ideas (or old ideas restated), and the ideal of European unity would command increasing support in view of the discrediting of nationalism. On his return from his mission to Poland Retinger concluded that he could best serve his country by working for European unity in association with Western friends and associates. A new international order restoring Europe’s power and influence in the world would provide a structure within which Poland could one day find its security and economic prosperity.16 In his lecture at Chatham House in May 1946 entitled ‘The European Continent’ he revived the wartime idea of regional blocs in Europe ultimately uniting in one single European association. According to Retinger he then contacted van Zeeland and other Belgian friends with a view to resuscitating the movement for European unity. Meanwhile in 1945 van Zeeland had already looked at the possibility of gathering economists together to consider the technical problems of a European economic and customs union and had circulated a letter to prominent figures in all sections of public life appealing for European Union as the only possible solution to post-war problems in Europe.17 Both van Zeeland and Retinger would have been aware of the various federalist movements in different parts of Europe, and in September 1946 there came Churchill’s ringing call for European unity in his Zurich speech. Perhaps the timing of van Zeeland’s meeting with Retinger in Brussels on 17 September was determined by their awareness of rival movements and their wish to lay down a marker for their own vision of Europe’s future. They were also keenly aware that the small states had very little voice in the discussions which were currently shaping the future of their continent. Van Zeeland was a creative thinker who, according to Dumoulin, had the style of a magician or conjuror, ‘a man of hushed rooms, salons and clubs where he could nourish and develop his chosen contacts’.18 One

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can imagine that the activist and fixer, Józef Retinger, who was used to, and accomplished in, the role of prime ministerial aide, was welcome to van Zeeland since he could relieve him of the many menial tasks involved in setting up a voluntary organisation with ambitions to shape public opinion on a Continental scale. Retinger also had an enormous network of contacts at high political levels in a number of countries. It would appear that he and van Zeeland complemented each other and combined well to achieve their agreed ends. They shared a preference for dealing with the political and economic elites of modern liberalism, Dumoulin commenting that van Zeeland wanted to act on ‘l’attentive opinion’, not on the masses.19 Van Zeeland preferred to seek unity through economic processes in the first instance. Retinger was less interested in economics than in literature and high culture, but he was prepared to take any route to the chosen goal of European unity. His intellectual contribution to the discussions with van Zeeland may have been to bring into the economic debates the necessity of incorporating Central East Europe into any plan for European unity emanating from van Zeeland’s fertile brain. Nevertheless, the ideas which formed the bedrock of the organisation which the two men formed, the Independent League for Economic Cooperation (LICE), later renamed the European League for Economic Cooperation (ELEC) were almost entirely van Zeeland’s. He posited a universal league or world association, beneath which would be two types of organisation. The first he called vertical or functional, carrying out functions which transcended frontiers, such as the Court of International Justice. The second were regional organisations functioning on the base of a customs and monetary union. In Europe there would be one or several such organisations. Retinger wrote that he and van Zeeland never considered the unity of Europe, especially in the economic field, as being limited to the western part of Europe. Indeed Retinger and most Poles advocating European unity believed that Western Europe would never be economically prosperous if it remained cut off from the agricultural products and raw materials of the East. At the time, 1946/early 1947, before the announcement of the Marshall Plan, this argument carried conviction.20 It was immediately obvious that if the League were to be influential it would require elite membership in as many European countries as possible, as well as in the United States. Retinger made use of his many contacts in Britain to bring in Sir Harold Butler, formerly head of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Edward Beddington-Behrens, an industrialist, one-time associate of Butler in the ILO and an enthusiast

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for European Union, Harold Macmillan, Peter Thorneycroft and David Eccles, (all holding office in Conservative governments in the 1950s), and Roy Harrod, the distinguished economist. Thirteen MPs were members, all but one from the Conservative Party. In France the leading figure was Daniel Serruys who helped to bring in François Poncet, Michel Debré, Giscard d’Estaing and André Noël. In the Netherlands the leading member was van Zeeland’s and Retinger’s old colleague from London days, Pieter Kerstens. Sections of the League were also formed in Luxembourg, Italy, Austria, Sweden and West Germany. In Belgium the committee was Catholic and liberal in orientation, and included Roger Motz, Louis Camu and Etienne de la Vallée Poussin In the United States Retinger gained the support of Adolf Berle, formerly a senior figure in Roosevelt’s war-time State Department, David and Nelson Rockefeller, John Foster Dulles and Alfred Sloan, and a proposal of help from the State Department.21 The recruits, a mixture of politicians, economists, trade unionists and businessmen, were convinced by Retinger and van Zeeland that the organisation they were joining would combine pressure group and research functions and would lobby for ‘a European union on a liberal base’.22 Hostile to socialist economic planning, they supported free trade and European unity, but not federalism. In fact most of the British MPs also became members of Churchill’s United Europe Movement which was emphatically not a federalist organisation.23 Their aim was to influence opinion by proposing constructive solutions to contemporary economic problems. An example of this was their proposal for the convertibility of European currencies which became the blueprint for the European Payments Union. Even more important was a memorandum from van Zeeland, Retinger, Butler and members of the British Committee of LICE in response to the Marshall Plan, in which they accepted the necessity for a European Planning Board to administer the Plan and to remove commercial and customs barriers to intra-European trade.24 Clearly, the League had the stamp of van Zeeland’s ideas on it, but Retinger took on the role of organizer-in-chief, becoming the organisation’s Secretary-General. By 1947 LICE was firmly established but was only one of several organisations working for European unity. These included the European Parliamentary Union inspired by Coudenhove-Kalergi, the United Europe Movement led by Churchill and directed by Duncan Sandys, the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI ), with a strong base in Belgium and France, the Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe and the European Union of Federalists (EUF), whose President was Hendrik Brugmans with Alexandre Marc as its General Secretary. It was at the Montreux Congress

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of the EUF in July 1947 that Sandys and Retinger, who attended as observers, decided to develop a Coordinating Committee of all the organisations working for European unity in order to launch a large-scale campaign throughout the Continent.25 They agreed to devote all their resources to preparing a grand Congress of Europe which would draw together in one place as many eminent Europeans as possible who shared the vision of a united Europe. Retinger became Secretary-General of this so-called International Committee of the Movements for European Unity and shouldered a major share of the responsibility for the organisation of the Congress in The Hague. Although most of the financial and other support came from the Dutch government and the United Europe Movement, Retinger’s arduous and devoted work made a major contribution to the success of the Congress.26 In May 1948 some 800 people attended the Congress, a number of former Prime Ministers, 29 ex-Foreign Ministers and several ministers in office among them. There were Parliamentary Deputies of all shades of opinion, churchmen, industrialists and trade unionists, jurists, economists, academics, artists and authors. The Congress could claim to represent all elements in the varied life of Europe. When Retinger and Sandys conceived of a Continental-wide campaign, they intended that the states of Central East Europe should also be represented, not by delegates from the Communist governments of the region as some western Socialists preferred, but by eminent representatives of the exile communities. Retinger, working with westerners for a united Europe, was able in this way to create the opportunity for his fellow exiles, who had been promoting a united Europe within their own communities, to participate in the international European movement. This was not achieved without a fight. Sandys’s speech was persuasive: ‘. . . as evidence of our sincere desire to unite the peoples, not only of Western Europe but all Europe, the political committee express the wish that Europeans from all countries which have been invited to this Congress should, in the further proceedings of this Congress, enjoy a status of complete equality’.27 As a result 51 observers from Central East Europe were granted the status of full delegates on equal terms with every other participant. These included a number of exiles who were to be prominent in the European Movement in the following years – Raczyn´ski from Poland, Gafencu from Romania, Ripka from Czechoslovakia, Dimitrov from Bulgaria and Auer from Hungary. Other Polish delegates, most of whom worked assiduously for European unity, included T. Bielecki, F. Bial as, Z. Zaremba, R. Pil sudski and T. Romer. Their presence symbolised that a United Europe would always be open to the countries of /

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Central East Europe when they were free to join, that is when they became democratic. In the words of the Political Committee of the Congress, ‘the barrier which separates the free nations from the others cannot be considered definitive’.28 In organising the Congress at The Hague, Sandys and Retinger, supported by federalists and unionists alike, aimed to demonstrate the widespread support for the cause of unity throughout the free countries of Europe, to debate the issues involved making practical recommendations to governments, and to provide a fresh impetus and inspiration to the international campaign.29 For Denis de Rougemont, a leading figure in the EUF, the Congress ‘was the living synthesis of the four traditional themes of union’ namely, peace through federation, the suppression of the anarchy of the sovereign state system, the achievement of prosperity by means of an economy both free and organised, and ‘the spiritual community gathering together the living forces of culture’.30 It was a major achievement of the Congress to propose most of the policies which were subsequently adopted by the campaign for European unity. Its Economic and Social Committee headed by van Zeeland proposed an economic union and free trade in order to guarantee economic independence and social progress in Europe. Its Political Committee called for a European Consultative Assembly, the opening of the Union to all democratic European nations, and the protection of fundamental human rights to be guaranteed by a European Court of Human Rights. A European Cultural Centre was also to be set up.31 But, overarching all these discrete aims was the key recommendation of the Congress, namely that it was ‘the urgent duty of the nations of Europe to create an economic and political union in order to assure security and social progress’. The delegates did not shirk the means of achieving this ambitious end: they recognised that European nations would have ‘to transfer and merge some portion of their sovereign rights’ to secure common political and economic action.32 The terminology in these various resolutions was far from precise. A minority of the delegates, those drawn from federalist organisations, were in favour of a supranational association, whereas the majority preferred a much looser ‘unity’. The majority were also extremely cautious about giving up their ‘sovereign rights’, though they were prepared for a modest cession of these rights in the economic and defence fields. Harold Macmillan provided a good example of this kind of thinking. Believing strongly in the need for a close association of the states of Europe he nevertheless abjured federalism and the creation of a European state.

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As the delegates dispersed they left with a great feeling of enthusiasm and confidence that the goals they had set themselves would be realised. Throughout the Congress, wrote Pomian, one felt the ‘infectious zeal’ of the participants, and ‘their recognition of the importance of the occasion’. For that enthusiasm to be sustained, however, there had to be a mechanism for implementing the resolutions of the Congress. The International Committee of the Movements for European Unity, now to be renamed the European Movement, considered itself to be mandated by The Hague Congress to promote the unity of Europe. While the militant individual member organisations such as the EUF would continue to be the spearheads of the campaign, the directorate of the European Movement would derive its authority not only from the member organisations but also from bodies of a widely representative character in the participating countries. In each country a National Council was to be formed, composed not only of delegates of the organisations working for European unity but also leading representatives of democratic public opinion there.33 The Hague Congress and the resolutions it proposed were inspiriting for the Polish and other Central East European exiles. Their nominees were made full members on the same terms as the other delegates. This promised them equality in the movement for European unity which was about to created. Furthermore they had been promised full membership in any European Assembly when their homelands were freed from Soviet control and democracy was restored. Thirdly, representatives of the federalist organisations of the exiles could now be integrated into a broader European movement, giving them greater influence in shaping policy towards Central East Europe. This would return to them a portion of the legitimacy they had lost when Western governments offered diplomatic recognition to the communist governments of their homelands at the end of the war. They now believed that the day when the two halves of Europe would be re-united had come noticeably closer. Their next objective was two-fold: to obtain membership in the European Movement on the basis of equality; and to try to become members of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe which was about to be created. Though they failed fully to achieve either objective they came sufficiently near to success, at least in the early history of these two organisations, to maintain the spirit of optimism and faith which they had ingested at The Hague Congress. This optimism derived both from the statements of policy enunciated by the founders of the European Movement and from the organisational structure which the Movement adopted. These statements were

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unequivocal in supporting the aspirations of the Central East European members. Winston Churchill could always be relied on to offer grandiloquent oratory on their behalf. At the International Council of the Movement on 25 February 1949 he said that the members ‘received with warmest feelings of sympathy the representatives of European countries which are at present held in the grip of a tyranny more permanently and deeply devastating than that of Hitler. Our hearts are with them, our ultimate purpose is their deliverance.’34 He reminded the delegates that there were a number of ancient and famous European states which were no longer free ‘to take their stand for those human rights of which they have so great a need’. Raczyn´ski expressed a widely held view at the time that the Movement must try in every possible way to ensure that fellow Europeans living in the satellite states would one day be united with the West.35 Harold Macmillan said that it was an article of faith for the Western world that Central East Europeans had the right to enjoy personal liberty and national freedom.36 The barrier dividing the free states from other European nations where the Charter of Human Rights was not recognised could not be accepted as permanent, according to a resolution of the Movement, which added ‘Our aim is the union in freedom of all the peoples of Europe’.37 These were certainly encouraging statements of support. Perhaps even more reassuring for the exile members of the Movement was the guarantee of ultimate membership in a united Europe for their homelands if they accepted certain fundamental principles contained in the Charter of Human Rights. The West European members of the Movement assumed that the Central East European states shared in the ‘true spirit of Europe – the love of freedom, the search for truth and the glad recognition of diversity’ and were committed to democracy and the rule of law.38 Raczyn´ski welcomed this guarantee, noting later that the ‘final goal’ of the European Movement was the ‘re-establishment of the unity of all of our Continent’. The ‘fraternity of the European peoples’ he continued ‘is older and stronger than the political incompatibility between the states’. He believed that the two halves of a Continent arbitrarily cut in two could be reintegrated, provided that the Free World ‘while respecting the status quo devotes its efforts to the re-establishment of the liberty and dignity of man across the whole of the Continent’. This effort would succeed if, as de Gaulle remarked, ‘we have no illusions but do not lose hope’.39 It was imperative that in any relations between the West and the Soviet Union ‘nothing should be admitted which might prevent or retard the establishment of freedom in Central East Europe in accordance with the freely expressed wishes of the people’.40

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Sandys conceded at the Brussels conference of the European Movement in 1949 that the action of Western governments vis-à-vis the totalitarian countries was unavoidably restricted, but the Movement, in its independent and unofficial position, was not obliged to show the same caution. He used dramatic language to describe its role: it should engage in a ‘momentous crusade’ for the unity of Europe. ‘We have a duty ceaselessly to proclaim our determination to see all the peoples of all Europe united in freedom’.41 Raczyn´ski agreed, adding that in the 1950s the focus of discussions among the exiles was how to liberate the Central East European countries, since liberation was a precondition of attempts to bring about a federal association in the region.42 Another reason for the ‘great expectations’ of the exiles during the formation of the European Movement was the decision to create an organisational structure which would integrate them in ways which would allow their voices to be heard. Sandys’s promise that means would be found of associating the peoples of Eastern Europe in the Movement was adequately kept. National Councils were established in every OEEC member country composed of delegates from organisations working for European unity as well as leading representatives of democratic political opinion.43 Representatives of each Council in proportion to population became members of the International Council of the Movement, whose task was to formulate general policy. In respect of Central East European countries and Spain, exiled national committees (not councils) were established which nominated two representatives each to the International Council. But whereas the International Council members from the democratic states elected their representatives to the Executive Committee (which undertook the day-to-day direction of the campaign), the Committee’s members from the East European states were co-opted by the Council itself, taking into account the wishes of the group concerned. Raczyn´ski was the first representative of the Polish National Committee on the International Council, and Retinger became Secretary-General of the Executive Committee, with Sandys as Chairman.44 Retinger felt that still more could be done to help the exiles have closer links with western leaders and with the various sub-committees and study sections of the Movement. He explored the possibility of a Commission for Central East Europe at a lunch in London with Randolph Churchill, Edward Beddington-Behrens and five or six exiled leaders. They envisaged the Commission’s role as being to propagate the idea of European unity behind the Iron Curtain, to strengthen the participation of the exiles in the work of the Movement, and to provide a suitable political platform for

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the exiles in Western Europe. At the Brussels Congress of the Movement in 1949 it was agreed to establish this commission, Macmillan becoming its President, and John Pomian, a Polish assistant of Retinger’s, its secretary. The Executive Committee proposed that the Commission should be composed in part of West European personalities and partly of Central East Europeans.45 Over the years a number of Polish exiles participated in the work of the Commission, including S. Gebhardt, J. Kulakowski, G. Morawski, G. Rencki, A. Stypulkowski, F. Bialas, T. Bielecki, R. Pilsudski, J. Zdziechowski, and A. Dargas.46 The Commission followed the instructions of the resolution which constituted it: that it should ‘lay the foundation for the unification of the nations of Central East Europe into a regional union as soon as these nations became free, turning this area into a region of peace and harmonious co-existence’. To achieve this end the Commission was deputed to institute expert studies and to undertake research.47 In the early years a number of conferences took place to establish and re-endorse the broad policies to be followed by the Movement.48 From the point of view of this study the most important of these conferences was the one on Central East Europe at Westminster in January 1952, organised by the Central and East European Commission. Raczyn´ski pointed out that this was the first international occasion since the Russian occupation ‘where the fate of captive nations could be publicly discussed together by exiles and Western leaders’. Much of the detailed work of preparation was undertaken by the exile communities themselves. There were 130 representatives from the exile communities in attendance and 40 personalities from Western Europe, including a number who were to be prominent members of the Commission in the 1950s and 1960s including Senators Wistrand from Sweden and de la Vallée Poussin from Belgium. The conference was followed by a mass rally in the Albert Hall attended by some 7000 people and addressed by, among others, the leader of the British Liberal Party, Clement Davies, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Randolph Churchill, Edward Raczyn´ski and Adam Ciol kosz.49 Macmillan spoke on behalf of the British government. ‘The conference’ he said, ‘was an act of faith’ to ‘demonstrate to the world that Europe is a single unit and cannot be dismembered or divided...’. The political resolution of the conference concluded that no real peace was possible in Europe while the continent remained divided. After liberation it would be the duty of the states of the region to strengthen the bonds which linked them together in the wider framework of a united Europe. A common theme of many of the speeches, including that of the Chairman of /

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the conference, Julian Amery, was that the ‘enslaved countries’ were an integral part of Europe, bound to the West by a shared history, a common culture and the interdependence of their economies.50 The early years of the European Movement offered enormous encouragement to the exiles. The Movement did not belie its name; it pursued with zeal and enthusiasm a great ideal, taking care to incorporate the political exiles in its mission. With Stalin still alive and the Iron Curtain as impenetrable as ever it was indeed an ‘act of faith’ to keep the vision of a united Europe before the public and to offer the exiles support, not only in conference speeches but by incorporating their representatives in the administrative structure of the Movement. The ‘strange driving passion’ behind the early conferences which de Rougemont referred to, showed the exiles that their cause was not forgotten during a critical period of Western history which saw the adoption of the Marshall Plan, the formation of NATO, the undertaking of the Berlin airlift and the onset of the Korean War. It was encouraging for the exiles that while the West was fighting for its own survival it did not forget the fate of Moscow’s satellites.51 The European Movement made another great contribution to European unity in the immediate aftermath of the Congress at The Hague. It took the initiative in establishing a European Assembly in line with a resolution of the Congress. During the remainder of 1948 and in the early part of the following year it was the moving spirit behind the political negotiations between the five Brussels Treaty states which culminated in the creation of the Assembly within the Council of Europe in May 1949. In a letter to Macmillan Raczyn´ski, on behalf of the exiles and ‘our people at home’, warmly welcomed the creation of the Council. It was an expression, he said, of the resolve of the free world to resist communist aggression, and had given fresh hope to ‘sorely oppressed peoples’ by showing its concern for the return to the European Community of those nations kept out of it by force.52 However, this Assembly was not the organisation envisaged by the members of the European Movement. During the negotiations the British government took a very negative view of this Assembly. It was determined to deprive the Assembly of real power, insisting that there should be a Committee of Ministers from the Member states with the power to control the Assembly’s agenda and to veto its resolutions. Robert Boothby, a British Conservative MP and enthusiast for European unity, accused the Labour government of ‘almost unveiled hostility’ to the Council of Europe, placing most of the blame on the Foreign Office which ‘clings with fanatical tenacity to the medieval belief that all the things that really

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matter should be decided by a limited number of gentlemen talking quietly in corners, if possible in whispers and of course in secret’. Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, expressed his own hostility with one of the finest of all mixed metaphors: ‘If you open that Pandora’s box you will find it full of Trojan horses.’ The public rationale for this arrangement was expressed in the Council’s Founding Statute which determined that the Committee of Ministers would develop cooperation between the member governments while the Assembly would express the aspirations of the European peoples and keep the governments in touch with public opinion.53 In theory this meant that the Assembly was freer to take a ‘European’ view since its members were nominated from the parliamentary representatives of the member states and not obliged to reflect the views of their governments. The Statute was a major source of tension between the Committee of Ministers and the Assembly. For some time the Assembly could not reconcile itself to a passive and somewhat sedate role. It was very conscious of its origins in a popular movement of impressive strength which had demanded that the governments create it. Moreover, at the first meeting of the Council of Europe nearly all the key functions in the Assembly were held by members of the European Movement, and of the 185 delegates or substitutes, 99 were ‘in one way or another’ members of the Movement.54 Many of them assumed that the policies to be pursued by the Council of Europe should reflect the ideals and opinions of the Movement and the resolutions of The Hague Congress. They soon realised that this aspiration could not be met; the British had been too effective in neutering the Assembly. Even so, there remained a widely shared belief that in due course it might be possible to amend the Statute and redistribute power between the Committee and the Assembly. Paul-Henri Spaak, the first President of the Assembly, was one of the first to see that this was a forlorn hope, and resigned in anger and frustration. Similar disappointment was experienced by the exiles from Central East Europe as a result of the Assembly’s decision not to grant them representation either in the Assembly or in its committees. It was generally agreed that the Statute did not permit this since members of the Assembly had to be parliamentary representatives from democratic countries. But could not means be devised, Raczyn´ski asked Macmillan, of co-opting representatives of the exiles to the Assembly ‘if the hopes of millions of men and women are not to be disappointed and if the work of the Council of Europe . . . is to proceed on lines that are truly all European’? The Council rejected cooptation, as well as a request for

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observer status. The question was then raised that if the Assembly was simply an advisory body what objection could there be to Central East European representatives participating in debates? This proposal was also turned down. It was finally proposed that empty chairs should be left in the Assembly to symbolise the absence of East European representatives and the commitment to accept them when their countries became democratic.55 This, too, was rejected. To begin with the only concession to the exiles was to invite some of their representatives to participate in some committee meetings as experts. These various rejections contrasted very unfavourably with the proceedings of The Hague Congress and the structure of the European Movement itself. Then, in August 1950, Harold Macmillan, a member of the Assembly, proposed a body with the cumbersome title of ‘The Special Committee to watch over the interests of European nations not represented in the Council of Europe’ (sometimes referred to as the Watchdog Committee). By its record this Committee came to be seen as the ‘true trustee’ of a hundred million silenced Europeans. As a later Chairman of the Committee, Peter Kirk MP remarked, the Committee acted as the ‘bad conscience’ for public opinion in the West and a source of hope for peoples on the other side of the Curtain.56 Prominent Central East Europeans who participated as experts in this Committee included Auer of Hungary, Gafencu of Romania, Raczyn´ski and Pil sudski of Poland, and Ripka of Czechoslovakia. In terms of participation in the Council of Europe the ‘great expectations’ of the exiles were dashed by the limitations imposed on them by the Statute. However, they were encouraged by resolutions passed by the Assembly in 1950 and 1954 inviting them to collaborate with the Commissions of the Assembly to help the Council achieve its objectives. For some time the exiles hoped that the Council, aware of its origins in a great all-European movement and committed to the support of democracy and human rights, would act to support the aspirations of Central East Europe. Although the record of the Council was uneven in this respect, the exiles could take satisfaction from a number of the resolutions and recommendations which emanated from it. For example, in September 1952 the Assembly recognised the unity of Europe, and anticipated the day when the subject nations would become an integral part of the European community. It agreed to explore ways and means of publicising the work of the Council in the Communist states of the East.57 The well-known Resolution 47 of 1954 reaffirmed the Assembly’s belief in the unity of the whole of Europe and expressed its conviction that ‘full independence and /

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democratic freedom for these subject nations . . . are common aims of the peoples on both sides of the Iron Curtain and a primary condition for a genuine and lasting peace in Europe’. Even more important was the pledge of the Assembly to use all its endeavours ‘to help to create an international political and diplomatic situation which will enable this aim to be realised’. The Committee of Ministers lent weight to this resolution by approving it in December 1954. There was an immediate opportunity to implement this resolution before the Geneva conference of 1955 in response to a report from François de Menthon. The report concluded that the West ‘cannot accept as definitive any rule which would sanctify the suppression of national independence and political liberty for a great number of people in East Central Europe’. Acceptance of the status quo, it continued, ‘would imply the abandonment of democratic principles by the very countries which claim to defend them’. It asked the Western Great Powers to insist on the re-establishment of independence and political liberty in the occupied countries. Resolution 87 of the Assembly adopted de Menthon’s report, and the Committee of Ministers emphasised that collective security was impossible while the Continent remained divided, and agreed that the creation of a united Europe was indispensable.58 Another opportunity to implement the resolution occurred after the Poznan´ uprising in Poland in 1956 followed in the autumn by the Budapest revolt and its brutal suppression by the Soviet army. In October an Assembly resolution urged the Western powers to demand that ‘freedom of decision by the people, guaranteed by free elections, should be restored’ in Central East Europe. Governments of the member states should uphold the principle of self-determination, and should consider bringing the question of human rights in the occupied countries before the Security Council of the United Nations. ‘The free countries represented in the Council of Europe’ it continued ‘must hold themselves responsible for the future of those members of the European family now subjected to Soviet rule.’ In 1958 the Assembly gave an assurance that would have gratified the exiles who were increasingly anxious about international developments and about the possibility that, in the interests of détente, some recognition of the status quo in Central East Europe would be forthcoming from Western governments. It was at this juncture that the Assembly reaffirmed the right of the Central East European peoples to choose their own political regimes, and emphasised that no settlement of the European problem should be regarded as final until that had occurred.59

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If, then, the agreed aim was to effect the unity of the whole of Europe, how was that objective to be brought about? What should the distinctive role of the Council of Europe be? The Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN) thought that the choice of means should be largely determined by reliable information about what was happening behind the Iron Curtain. But many exiles believed that the Council’s most fruitful strategy was to concentrate on questions which fell naturally within the scope of its ‘uncontested and uncontestable’ activities under the Statute, namely to ensure the minimum rights of the individual to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and assembly embodied in the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. They felt that the persistent defence of captive peoples’ rights to these freedoms would be the most effective means of creating the international political and diplomatic conditions to enable the captive nations to become an integral part of the free European community. The catalyst for many of these resolutions was the Watchdog Committee. It also held a watching brief over the discussions and recommendations of the other Assembly committees to ensure that they did not propose policies which ignored the interests of the occupied countries or strengthened the Soviet grip. The Committee saw itself as the embodiment of the principle of European unity, urging the Western states never to become reconciled to the partition of Europe. Some of its Western members, including Deputy Goedhart of the Netherlands and Senator Wistrand of Sweden, were passionate supporters of the return to the European Community of the Central East European states. They were ably assisted in their work by expert advice from the exiles who ensured that their knowledge, expertise and documentary material were made available to this Committee. As a result, Parliamentary representatives and their constituents throughout Western Europe should have had no illusions about the activities of Communist governments in the other half of Europe, and about the unenviable situation of their oppressed populations.60 In reviewing the activities of the exiles at the Congress of The Hague, or their role in the European Movement and its various committees, and as expert witnesses in the Watchdog committee of the Consultative Assembly it is difficult to agree with Idesbald Goddeeris, that for most of the exiles ‘legitimacy and presence were more important than real participation and influence’. Goddeeris’s focus was on the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI), and perhaps his conclusions in respect of the exiles in that organisation are justified, namely that they contented themselves with ‘numerous expressions of sympathy and records of

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their existence’ and were obsessed by their legitimacy and recognition. Still, Goddeeris recognised that there were others who were active outside the institutions of the exile communities and made diverse and productive contacts with leading political figures on the national and international scene. This review of the work of the exiles in the ‘European’ institutions suggests that there was a significant number of such people who integrated well with leading political figures in Western Europe, and were listened to with interest and respect for their special knowledge and particular insights. They made an energetic and important contribution to the work of the organisations of which they were members or advisers, and succeeded in keeping alive the vision of a liberated Central East Europe joining the West in a united Europe.61 From the Congress at The Hague throughout the decade of the 1950s they fought to ensure that no concessions would be made to the Soviet Union which would reinforce the status quo in the East. On the contrary, they argued that the West should take appropriate measures to weaken the Soviet grip and accelerate the process of liberation. In the changing circumstances of the 1960s they attempted to strengthen their influence in 1964 by re-organising the Polish Committee for the European Movement under Raczyn´ski’s presidency. Two local committees were formed, in Paris under the presidency of former Ambassador Kajetan Morawski and in Brussels under Professor Stefan Glaser. The latter two and Adam Ciol kosz became Vice-Presidents. Jan Starzewski was Secretary-General of the Committee and the other committee members included A. Dargas, S. Grocholski, S. Lis, K. Sabbat and F. Wilk. In all there were 56 members, drawn from all ‘the principal currents of our social and political life’ who were united in re-stating the principles of the Polish exiles, namely /

1. to cooperate in the work of the European Movement in its goal of uniting Europe, 2. to maintain at the heart of the European Movement the idea of the freedom of Poland and her union, economically and culturally, with the rest of Europe, 3. to support action in Western Europe in favour of the participation of Poland in a united Europe, 4. to propagate the European idea in Poland and the free world.62 Some Polish exiles were sceptical about these principles and the likelihood of their being acted on. Also in 1964 Juliusz Mieroszewski, the London-based writer for the Paris exile journal Kultura, though

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advocating the creation of a regional union of Central East European countries, at the same time doubted that the exiles from the region could reach agreement among themselves about the scope and character of such a union. His observations show that opinion among the exiles was more divided than some of the promoters of a united Europe would allow.63 The period from the end of the War to the early 1950s was one of hope and expectation for the exiles from Central East Europe. True, from around 1950 onwards, there were criticisms of the Council of Europe and the European Movement but at first these criticisms were relatively muted. There remained a strong feeling that these two organisations would support the aspirations of the exiles and work for the liberation of their countries as a prelude to close associations between them. As it happened the euphoria of 1948 and 1949 could not be sustained in the light of events, but confidence remained for some years afterwards. Later the exiles had to counter the attempts by Western countries to establish closer relations with the Soviet Union in the interests of their own security. To the refugees from Central East Europe it seemed that their interests were being sacrificed to the West’s increasing acceptance of the status quo in Eastern Europe in return for a diminution of international tension. This approach seemed to them to be dangerously near to appeasement of Moscow. If it succeeded it would destroy the prospect of the liberation of Central East Europe and with it the unification both of the region itself and the whole of Europe.

6 Thwarted Plans

It was inevitable that federalists in exile from Central East Europe should focus their efforts on the liberation of their countries since this was the precondition for unity. However this was not their exclusive focus, and there was a continuing and exhaustive debate among the exiles associated with the Council of Europe and the European Movement, about how, after liberation, European unity might be achieved. Should the states of the region join the emerging Europe of the Six, or should they first form a regional organisation preparatory to joining? Should unity be based on a federal or confederal system? Should it be founded on states or nations? Would unity be hastened if the exiles could show it was to the economic advantage of the West? These were some of the questions which occupied the minds of the exiles in the European Movement and on the fringes of the Council of Europe. At the same time, however, it became increasingly clear that these plans could not be realised in the foreseeable future. The great expectations which accompanied the foundation of the Council of Europe and the European Movement were dashed, and by the end of the 1960s the exiles’ hope and trust in these two bodies had almost vanished. Some had lost confidence, even by the mid 1950s, in these organisations’ ability and willingness to fulfil the expectations placed on them at birth. However, though they were disillusioned with the international organisations the exiles continued to devise plans for the future of Central East Europe. Planning for what seemed to be an increasingly remote future was perhaps a form of consolation for the dreary and depressing prospects which confronted them. When discussing the future of Central East Europe post-communism, the exiles overwhelmingly favoured a regional grouping of all the Eastern bloc countries, despite the wishes of a minority for smaller units 99

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such as a Danubian federation (which was reckoned by its critics to be too weak militarily and economically to meet the security and developmental needs of its members).1 There were powerful arguments for one regional body: the states of the Central East region, with a population of more than 100 million, would be strong enough in combination to resist aggression from the great powers. Moreover, they were drawn together, it was argued, by their geographical position, economic interests, affinities, traditions, history and cultures, what Slawinski called ‘compatriotism’. This commonality had been intensified by their shared experiences under the Soviet-controlled one party state, where their political, legal and economic structures had been transformed into similar patterns. As a result of communist industrialisation policies the economic structures of the states had become more comparable than in the inter-war period.2 The Philadelphia Declaration of 1951, signed by 200 exiles, recognised the principle of regional organisation in Central and Eastern Europe ‘as a step along the road to the indispensable organisation of the free world as a whole’.3 The Polish exile journal Kultura devoted much space in the early 1950s to the idea of federalising Central Eastern Europe popularised by the Czech philosopher and politician Hubert Ripka.4 It was imperative, he argued, to prepare for the re-organisation of Central Europe after its liberation to prevent powerful nationalist feelings unleashing new feuds and quarrels. Moreover, only a re-organisation on federal lines would be capable of stymieing the attempts of the superpowers to secure spheres of influence in the region.5 Additionally a federal government for the region would eliminate or limit border disputes between the states. He divided the area of Central East Europe into three regions: Polish–Baltic, Danube and Balkan. Rejecting local solutions he preferred a federation of eight countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania.6 Aware of the complexity of this plan and the complications in putting it into effect Ripka offered an alternative – a plan for a Polish–Danube union which would cover Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Romania.7 Juliusz Mieroszewski, the London-based writer for Kultura on international issues, was sceptical that Ripka’s proposal would be approved by political circles among the exiles. He therefore preferred to promote a ‘more modest union’, the Polish–Czechoslovak confederation, which Ripka had earlier advocated. He proposed that preparation of this confederation should be undertaken by a ‘federal society’ composed of Polish, Czech and Slovak politicians in exile.8 But why did most spokesmen for the exiles insist on a regional organisation in preference to joining an all-European organisation? Many /

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accepted that membership in a Europe-wide association was the ultimate goal, but it would be preferable if these countries were to enter it as a single unit, and even remain as a separate entity within it for a period of time. It would be impractical to neglect the variety of interests peculiar to the different parts of Europe by forcing states which were so dissimilar, economically, politically and socially, into ‘a melting pot of a general European Union’.9 ‘While preserving the principle of the indivisibility of Europe the European Federation should take into account the special conditions of the Continent . . . and for this purpose it should not be . . . a uniform and centralised body but a federation composed of both smaller regional federations and individual nations.’10 There were powerful economic arguments, too, for a regional federation. Economically the two parts of Europe showed marked differences. In Central East Europe per capita incomes were at most half those of Western Europe. There was a surplus of manpower in agriculture, lack of effective demand and slow capital accumulation. The creation of a unified free market for the whole of Europe would perpetuate or even increase these difficulties since the free market tended to maintain, or make more pronounced, existing differences in economic development and disparities in levels of income. Integration in Central East Europe would create a larger market, making possible a rational division of labour, the modernisation of technical processes and the mobility of capital and labour.11 This would have the effect of speeding up economic development, raising the standard of living and narrowing the gap between this region and Western Europe. Raczyn´ski concluded that a regional association of the states of Central East Europe would make them better customers and suppliers of Western Europe than they would be, either separately or as direct members of the West European community.12 Additionally, a new complication entered the debate with the development of the Europe of the Six. The institutions of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC) were much more tightly integrated than the Council of Europe, and would demand severe adjustments, political, economic, social and financial, on the part of potential new members. As time passed it was expected that the consolidation of the West European economic area would become still more advanced and the adjustments required by new applicants even more demanding. Consequently it would become more difficult for the former Communist states to negotiate entry individually. If, however, they were to combine into a regional association first, they would be able to negotiate from a position of relative strength

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and could cushion the serious political and economic effects while taking greater advantage of the new opportunities.13 Raczyn´ski was aware of another potential problem to threaten the creation of a regional union, namely a reaction against it as a result of the captive nations’ experience of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA).14 The reaction might take the form of an increase in nationalism which might induce the liberated countries to reject even a confederal organisation. In such circumstances he recommended that the objective of a regional organisation should be approached indirectly with the aim of finding cooperative solutions to particular problems rather than trying to achieve a fully fledged economic union from the outset. The example of functionalism, that is the unification by sectors as in the ECSC, was quoted as a possible model in this respect.15 What Raczyn´ski and others were contemplating here was a worst case scenario. They believed, and this was another of their great expectations, that the peoples of Central East Europe would draw the correct conclusion from their historical experience, namely that if they remained divided and isolated they would find their interests neglected in international forums and, in the worst case, become an easy prey for the great powers on their flanks. They argued also that a regional organisation would facilitate the solution of long-standing interstate conflicts which had bedevilled relations in the region for many years.16 While acknowledging that the first demand of the populations behind the Iron Curtain would be for national independence, the exiles believed that the next step would be to recognise that an association of the states of the region would be indispensable for economic and military reasons. From their knowledge of their homelands they claimed that popular opinion in the region was ready to accept the necessity for integration, albeit of a loose and flexible kind. Despite the existence of a number of federalist organisations among the exiles, notably the Union of Polish Federalists,17 there was broad agreement among those of their representatives most closely associated with ‘European institutions’, that integration did not mean a federal system, at least not initially. So-called integral federalism was premature since the psychological pre-requisites were lacking, although in the long term it might become more widely acceptable. There were strong economic and military reasons, however, for not being isolated, and for seeking an association with other countries, at least on the confederate principle, in order to safeguard independence. Integration on a functional basis at the economic, military and diplomatic levels would provide the indispensable guarantees of security which were required. Arguably a union for defence and economic development would not

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destroy the individual characteristics and autonomy of the member states.18 ‘We do not wish to alienate the least bit of sovereignty’ wrote Starzewski, adding that the union would be ‘sufficiently decentralised not to give birth to a new collective imperialism’. But could national self-determination and allegiance be reconciled with the coordination of the policies of individual states? The usual answer to this conundrum was that coordination, or even some pooling of sovereignty, would enhance the capacity of the member states to defend themselves and improve their economies without compromising their identities. To maintain total autonomy would be the surest way to lose it. As the European Movement’s Central and East European Commission remarked, ‘The best patriots are also the best Europeans.’19 Although throughout the 1950s the regional confederation idea remained the preferred option among the exiles, it was becoming clear that from around 1953 a growing number were considering the possibility of joining existing West European organisations. The Free Europe Committee commented that the means of economic integration being adopted in the West was ‘of such a nature that they could be adhered to by countries in East Central Europe’. Moreover, the choice of the economic sphere maximised the benefits that members could gain at minimum cost to their independence.20 The journal Polish Affairs also advocated the integration of the liberated countries into a united Europe while maintaining close cooperation between them based on common interests.21 The increase in interest in direct membership of the Central East European states in West European institutions after liberation was undoubtedly the result of the increasing prosperity and ‘resounding success’ of the European Communities in Western Europe compared with the failure of the CMEA. The emergence of the EEC had a major impact on East European opinion by showing the tangible benefits of integration obtained in freedom.22 Central Europe would draw strength from membership in such organisations, not least in the areas of soft security and economic development. Adam Romer summed up the case for membership in the EEC by affirming that any European ‘convinced of the necessity of European political unification must be in favour of using the existing EEC as the natural nucleus of a united Europe’.23 There was some debate among the exiles in the 1950s as to whether the freedom of the individual, which would be an essential element in the post-liberation states of Central East Europe, should not be paralleled by the freedom and equality of all the nations of the region. Majority opinion suggested that the establishment of a federation in the strict sense would help to solve the problem of minorities. Others,

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like some of the Hungarian exiles and the Central European Federal Movement, believed that, while a federation would attenuate the problems of minorities, those problems would still remain. Hence the states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia should be disaggregated into the nations of Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats and Serbs.24 The Hungarian National Council resolved in 1949 that the European federation ‘should be built as far as possible not on states but on nations which are the true living realities’. Joseph Mikus argued powerfully that the convulsions which shook the region from time to time were due to conflict between the national and the statist criteria. The struggle on the part of the statists, he asserted, were entirely futile ‘because history has shown that a nation of Central Europe, however small, never abdicates its individuality in favour of another neighbouring nation, however great the assimilating effort of the latter . . . .’ The coordination of the national minorities in a federal structure instead of their subordination in state structures offered the only chance of protecting them and stabilising Central East Europe. But there were powerful opponents of this line of thought, not least the Polish federalists and the Council of Free Czechoslovakia in Washington which were opposed to the territorial break up of Central East Europe in the name of national self-determination. A federation alone, they argued, would largely solve the question of minorities, whereas the fragmentation of existing states would weaken stability, regional defence and security, and entice Germany to intervene again in the affairs of the region.25 The passage of half a century since these pronouncements suggests that those who advocated a federation of nations rather than states saw more clearly how to protect minorities and to strengthen European security.26 One other factor entered the thinking of those exiles who were closely associated with the European Movement and the Council of Europe. They were convinced, during the late 1940s and early 1950s, that Western Europe would welcome the accession of the liberated states of Central East Europe into their organisations for the economic advantages this would bring. The Central and East European Commission of the European Movement argued that the economies of Eastern and Western Europe were complementary. Each side could produce much of what the other required; for example, the great food producing areas of Europe were behind the Iron Curtain, and scarce dollars had to be spent importing food and raw materials from elsewhere in the world. If they did not unite neither of the regions could attain full prosperity. If Europe ended at the Elbe it would in the long run be incapable of surviving

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economically.27 As late as 1954 Raczyn´ski was asserting the indispensability to Western Europe of the Central East European countries. In 1951 the volume of exports from Western to Eastern Europe was about two-thirds of the pre-war total while exports from the East were only one quarter of pre-war. An article in Polish Affairs in 1953 calculated that a major increase of coal, grain and timber exports from East to West might involve a saving in Western Europe’s dollar imports of 300 million annually. Furthermore, Central East Europe would be a good market for some of the products which Western Europe found it difficult to sell on dollar markets. No doubt these articles were written with the intention of winning over Western opinion to the economic attractiveness of a close association between East and West Europe after liberation. However, as western economic recovery accelerated in the 1950s as a result of the Marshall Plan, the reduction of tariffs, and the establishment of the European communities, so the incentive for West Europe to join with the East diminished. Even so, the exiles continued to believe that the wider markets for western producers, the investment opportunities, and the supply of eastern commodities to Western Europe would still be economically advantageous for both parts of Europe and provide an inducement to collaboration.28 Without liberation, however, these plans had the character of dreams. Still, in the early 1950s there remained a strong feeling among the exiles that the Council of Europe and the European Movement would vigorously support the aspirations of the exiles and work for the liberation of their countries as a prelude to close association between them. However, the great expectations which accompanied the foundation of the Council of Europe and the European Movement were dashed by the end of the 1950s, and during the following decade the exiles’ hope and trust in these two bodies had virtually disappeared. The surge of vigorous activity in the Council of Europe after the rising in Poznan´ and the revolt in Budapest in 1956 did not last, and the Council soon became passive and defeatist. The organisation which had been the inspiration behind the Council’s foundation, the European Movement, also ceased to pressure the Council into taking a more militant stance on the question of the ‘captive nations’. This inevitably produced a great deal of bewilderment and disillusion, even hostility, among the exiles in the West. Not surprisingly many began to place their trust in the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN), formed in the United States in 1954, in the belief that with American backing this Assembly might be able to create an impression on the institutions of Western Europe. Soon after its foundation the

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ACEN went on record in supporting the burgeoning European community. The ‘political independence, military security, economic prosperity and social stability of the European nations’, the ACEN observed, ‘can no longer be secured by individual national units but can only be attained by close unity among them’. The ACEN was committed to a more aggressive policy towards the communist states of Central East Europe and their Soviet masters, and demonstrated a more robust belief in the ultimate unification of the whole of Europe, faith which the Council of Europe and the European Movement had either lost or placed in cold storage until such time as Soviet control of its satellites began to crumble. In a recommendation to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 1959 the ACEN demanded that in negotiations with the Soviet Union western states should lay stress on the rights and interests of the peoples of Central East Europe. Furthermore, no settlement of the European problem should be regarded as definitive before the peoples of the region had the opportunity to decide about their future by means of free elections.29 Despite extensive discussions about the federalisation of Central East Europe during these two decades, the major focus of the exiles was still on the ways and means of liberating their compatriots back home. Their major complaint was that the Council of Europe and the European Movement failed to adopt dynamic policies which would help to free their countries from Moscow’s grip. Instead, these bodies seemed to accept the premise that Western rapprochement with Moscow, as the Soviet Union evolved politically and economically, would lead to a greater sense of security in the Kremlin and increased prosperity and freedom for the peoples of Central East Europe. The outcome of this process might be neutralisation and/or denuclearisation in Central Europe, and the possible withdrawal of the satellite states from the Warsaw Pact. These developments, the precise nature of which could not be determined at that point, would improve the conditions of life for the peoples behind the Iron Curtain and create fluidity in the political situation which might ultimately lead to the end of Communist control. Critics of this process of evolution, among whom the ACEN was the most prominent, thought it amounted to an acceptance of the status quo in Eastern Europe. To accept things as they were was to reject the philosophy which had animated the delegates to The Hague Congress and inspired the creation of the Council of Europe itself. It is worth examining the exiles’ critique of the Council of Europe and the European Movement; why were these two bodies tempted to follow an acquiescent and passive policy, which seemed to be a denial

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of their raison d’être; and why had they allowed the unity of the whole of Europe to become only a remote possibility instead of being the urgent necessity it had been in 1948–49? First, the exiles took literally the statements contained in the resolutions of The Hague Congress and in the founding Statute of the Council of Europe. Many prominent persons who had attended The Hague were delegates to the first session of the Council of Europe in the summer of 1949. They believed it was their task to create the European union they had voted for in May 1948.30 However, between The Hague Congress and the first meeting of the Council in Strasbourg, the Founding Statute of the Council of Europe had been agreed between the member states. This Statute could be interpreted narrowly so that it applied only to the members, or broadly to include non-member states such as those under Moscow’s control. The Statute’s Preamble expressed the Council’s faith in ‘the spiritual and moral values which . . . are the true source of individual freedom, political liberty, and the rule of law . . .’. Article One gave the aims of the Council as being ‘to achieve a greater unity between the Members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles [authors’ italics] which are their common heritage . . .’.31 Similarly, Article Four stated that ‘Every member . . . must accept the principles of the rule of law and of the enjoyment by all persons within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedoms’.32 Under a narrow interpretation these statements may be taken as exhortations to the member states to protect human rights and individual freedoms within their jurisdictions. But a broader interpretation would argue that if human rights and freedoms are indivisible, and if the Council of Europe was essentially an association pledged to ‘the principles of individual freedom, political liberty and the rule of law’, as the Assembly affirmed on a number of occasions, it would have been perverse and invidious for the Council to have confined its supportive activities to member states alone. If the broader interpretation is correct, the Assembly would provide a means through which the aspirations of all the European peoples might be realised.33 Although, as we shall see, the Assembly’s formal powers were limited vis-à-vis the Committee of Ministers, it nevertheless had the capacity to act as spokesman for the European peoples since it could claim to represent parliamentary and public opinion, albeit imperfectly. Moreover, its sessions were given more than adequate press coverage and publicity, and therefore the potential to shape public opinion.34 More than that, the captive nations were entitled to think that the Council of Europe would not only express aspirations but would

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become a driving force for the reunion of the whole of the European Continent.35 Indeed, this interpretation was reinforced by Resolution 47 of the Assembly in 1954 which looked forward to the day when the ‘subject nations’ might ‘become an integral part of a free European community...’ and pledged ‘to use all its endeavours to create an international political and diplomatic situation which [would] enable this aim to be realised’.36 Similarly, after the events of 1956 the Consultative Assembly declared that ‘further action should be taken, since the events in Central Eastern Europe are a special responsibility of the Council of Europe’. Accordingly, the Western Powers had the right to ask that ‘freedom of decision by the people...should be restored there’. Two years later the Assembly concluded that the West must remain faithful to the principle that ‘all peoples, including the nations of Eastern Europe, have the right to choose their own political regime’.37 Despite these statements of support for the subject peoples criticism of the Council grew steadily among representatives of Polish and other East European exiles in the West, apart from a brief interlude following the events of 1956. Edward Raczyn´ski remarked sadly that ‘certain dangerous topics and in large number those connected with East and Central Europe were either avoided altogether or dealt with on compassionate grounds only’. Before 1956, he added, an atmosphere ‘somewhat reminiscent of a sick room prevailed in the house of Europe’.38 There was little effort to speak to or contact the populations in Central East Europe. Virtually the only information about the West and the Council of Europe itself was transmitted by radio broadcasts, but these, the critics believed, lacked the authority which attached to the official documents of the Council.39 In addition, the Council tended to confine its debates and discussions to the situation in Western Europe.40 At a session of the Consultative Assembly in 1958, for example, recommendations of items for the agenda of the forthcoming summit conference included the problem of German reunification but failed to mention the situation in Central East Europe. When an amendment was moved to correct this omission it was rejected by the powerful Political Commission of the Assembly, confirming that the omission was not a simple oversight. Another grievance of the exiles was the way in which declarations in favour of Eastern Europe, instead of standing alone, were swallowed up in composite motions on a variety of subjects, with an obvious reduction in their impact. Alternatively, motions strongly criticising Soviet domination over the nations of Central East Europe were watered down by the Political Commission. On one occasion the British MP Peter Kirk moved that in no case should the Western Powers ‘accept recognition

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of Soviet domination over the nations of Central and Eastern Europe’. The Political Commission forced the withdrawal of this amendment in favour of a more bromidic utterance that the West ‘cannot renounce their support of the aspirations of all the nations of Europe to independence and freedom’. As the ACEN reported, the atmosphere of the meeting was rather depressing; there was a mood of appeasement in the air, and a fear of doing anything which might compromise the forthcoming Four Power meeting. Obviously, apprehension about Soviet intentions lay at the forefront of the representatives’ minds.41 Again, as a delegate of the ACEN reported, members of the Assembly were more concerned about the future of the Assembly itself, particularly after the formation of the ECSC and the EEC, than they were about Central East Europe. The dominating question seemed to be the future relationship between the Council and the new functional authorities.42 When it discussed ‘general issues of foreign policy’ including how to deal with the Soviet menace, the Assembly concentrated on finding ways in which Western Europe could adapt to changes in Soviet policy. As a former Polish Finance Minister G. Zdziechowski exasperatedly remarked, ‘Let us think about making Europe’ instead of always being dominated by the ‘Soviet obsession’.43 The content and tone of these discussions was far removed from the promises of 1948–49 for ‘a relentless crusade’ for the unity of Europe, and from Sandys’ exhortation ‘ceaselessly to proclaim our determination to see all the peoples of all Europe united in freedom’.44 Realpolitik had ousted the crusading mission of the early days. This generalisation could not be applied, however, to the Non-Represented Nations Committee (the ‘Watchdog Committee’) of the Assembly.45 It was described in the 1950s as a ‘tireless advocate of the rights of our nations’ and acted as the ‘true trustee’ of 100 million silenced Europeans. It seized every opportunity to remind the Assembly that the task of the Council of Europe would not be complete if it only embraced a limited part of Europe.46 It was therefore a combination of dismay and anger which greeted a proposal from the Assembly to abolish this Committee in 1966 and to transfer its competences to the Political Commission. With justification this proposal was seen as another step in the appeasement of the Soviet-bloc regimes and was vigorously opposed by exile organisations who regarded it as a grave psychological and political error. For Paul Auer it was a ‘regrettable symptom of the evolution of western politics to Eastern Europe’, showing the capitulation of the west towards the east.47 As the conscience of Western Europe, the Committee was regarded in the east as a symbol of liberty, and its destruction could only result in a loss of confidence in the moral

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superiority of the west.48 Finally, in 1968, almost two years after the proposal was floated, it was decided to leave the Special Committee as it was, but not before the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Peter Smithers of Great Britain, was subjected to a corrosive attack by the Assembly member, F. J. Goedhart of the Netherlands, a long-standing member of the Committee and a passionate supporter of the freedom of the nations of Central East Europe and of the unity of Europe as a whole. Referring to Smithers’ recent visit to Warsaw, Goedhart conceded that the visit could do some good if its aim was to give publicity to the principles, ideals and ways of functioning of the Council of Europe, and to offer the regimes a chance to adhere to certain Council of Europe conventions. But, in promoting such a policy, there was absolutely no need for Smithers to engage in horse-trading with Warsaw over the organisation and methods of work of the Assembly’s committees, which he allegedly did. Goedhart stressed that the Communist regimes were embarrassed by the existence of the Non-Represented Nations Committee which produced objective reports of the situation behind the Iron Curtain and showed ‘our constant interest in the fate of the peoples of East Central Europe’. This task had to continue and was not a matter of negotiation with Warsaw and Prague. He also found it astonishing that Smithers should have asked the governments of the member states ‘to bring influence to bear on their Parliamentary representatives with a view to liquidating our Non-Represented Nations Committee’. Summing up the Council’s relations with the regimes of Central East Europe he concluded: ‘Peace, yes; capitulation no. Closer contact with the peoples of East Central Europe, yes; apologising for our democratic principles, no. A real détente, yes; but fooling ourselves, no.’49 This formulation illustrates very well the reservations about the Council of Europe held by people who remained committed to its original objectives. When most of the exiles found their patience with the Council of Europe running out and their frustration with its passivity growing, they turned to the ACEN in the hope that it would be able to ‘counter the defeatism’ of the Council and persuade it to adopt more forceful and appropriate policies. The ACEN was not short of ideas and suggestions, indeed it had a whole host of them which it freely offered to the Council during the latter’s regular annual meetings in Strasbourg. It was very clear, first of all, what the Council should not do: It should not support security pacts with the Soviet Union since these would condone Soviet aggression and inflict a serious blow to the morale of the captive nations;

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It should not maintain an artificial distinction between the re-unification of Germany on the one hand and the restoration of freedom to the captive nations on the other; It should not assume that the captive nations would automatically escape the tutelage of Moscow owing to an ‘inherent urge to freedom’ since this would not happen; It should not wait for a change of heart in the Kremlin which was equally unlikely; Finally, it should do nothing to weaken the morale of the subject peoples and increase the prestige of the puppet governments.50 Having warned the Council what to avoid, the ACEN turned to a raft of positive proposals. At the centre of these was a question of attitudes. The Council should become a driving force for self-determination, democracy, the rule of law and unity. This should not be based on solemn declarations and good intentions, although these had a role to play, but on concrete initiatives which should be developed and recommended to member governments with the aim of ‘breaking with the Maginot Line mentality’ in the west. The west ‘must go into battle for political victory’, and refuse to accept the status quo in Eastern Europe. A good starting point should be the so-called Potomac Declaration issued by Eisenhower and Churchill on 29 June 1954, which no other European government had seen fit to endorse. ‘As regards formerly sovereign states now in bondage’, the Declaration affirmed, ‘we will not be a party to any arrangement or treaty which could confirm or prolong their unwilling subordination’. From this starting point the Council of Europe should adopt a programme of political action on behalf of the subject peoples. Its Consultative Assembly was urged to proclaim the right of the captive nations to free elections, to be preceded by the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The use of these troops to influence the internal situation and to crush opposition among the Central East European states, as in Hungary in 1956, was inadmissible and contrary to international law. At the centre of this programme should be an all-European peace plan based on the right of self-determination and representative government. Such a plan should be ‘unremittingly advertised and promoted’ to exert so much pressure that the opponent might gradually be worn down and made amenable to true negotiations. Above all, the Council should abstain from any actions which might give respectability to the satellite regimes or imply that the West had reconciled itself to the status quo in Central East Europe.51 On the contrary the West should pursue a dynamic

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policy using ideological, psychological, political, economic and diplomatic methods to achieve its objectives. Another line of attack was for the Council to persuade its member governments to place the denial of self-determination to Soviet-bloc states on the agenda of the UN. It should seek an examination and enquiry into the situation of the captive nations, and insist that the UN declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries of 14 December 1960 had universal scope and validity, and hence should be extended to the Captive Nations. Violations of the UN Charter by the Soviet Union or its satellites should be brought before the Security Council.52 A key element for the Polish exiles in particular in developing a correct approach to the problem of Central East Europe was the question of the western boundary of Poland. This rested de facto on the line of the Oder and Western Neisse rivers between Poland and East Germany, but it had never been formally accepted by West Germany, nor by the western powers. Indeed, there was pressure from German expellees from Poland’s western territories for revision of this frontier and for the re-acquisition of the German territory forcibly transferred to Poland by Stalin in 1945. Until the Oder–Neisse border was recognised, Ciolkosz argued, Poles would consider Soviet ‘protection’ to be ‘a deplorable but inevitable evil’. On the other hand, recognition by Western governments ‘would effect a political break-through in Poland and create a changed climate of opinion’. It would assure Poland that it would not be menaced by Germany, the only western nation it feared. At the same time it would reduce Polish dependence on the Soviet Union for defence against German revanchism and would end the inertia which had delayed moves for the extension of freedom in Central East Europe. On the other hand, putting off recognition would help to consolidate the status quo of communist dictatorship and dependence on Moscow.53 In addition to these geo-political initiatives the ACEN had a number of suggestions for practical help for the captive countries. Fear of the corruption of national cultures by communist ideology raised the question of how these cultures could survive. The ACEN proposed that financial assistance should be given to the exile communities to support their national cultures by means of scholarships to exiled intellectuals, and help for young people in exile to study their national language, history and literature. This would convey to their compatriots at home that in the West there was sympathy and respect for their national heritage. Similarly, subsidies should be made available for the translation of major literary works by Central East European authors into the languages of /

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the Council of Europe’s member states. Even more important was a programme of supporting East European scholars, writers, artists and students by offering bursaries and exchanges to strengthen their links with the West. The Council of Europe should also ‘insist’ on the freedom to distribute western books, periodicals and journals in Central and Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on scientific, technical and economics publications published since 1939. Finally, economic assistance offered by means of trade and aid would help break the Soviet economic monopoly and diminish eastern bloc dependence on Moscow. Taken together these positive measures would weaken the captive nations’ suspicion that the west was guilty of opportunism in its relations with the Soviet Union and its satellites.54 There was obviously a marked contrast between the attitudes and behaviour of the Council of Europe and the approach of the ACEN. But the disillusionment of the exiles with the Council was more than matched by their indignation, even despair, at the pusillanimity of the European Movement itself. After all, the Movement was, from its foundation, the ‘animator and precursor’ of popular support for a united Europe. It should never cease to proclaim, argued Raczyn´ski, that the continent of Europe was a unity and that the Central East European countries were part of it. He recalled that the Movement was established to direct the European campaign, to coordinate the activities of all organisations working for unity and to promote the idea of European unity behind the Iron Curtain, providing a suitable platform for the exiles to represent the various countries of the east in the western media. The Movement would become a laboratory of ideas on the problems of Eastern Europe. But, most important of all, it would lead a ‘momentous crusade’ for the unity of Europe as a constant reminder to the west that there was no Europe without its eastern half.55 The exiles’ hopes for the European Movement were dashed by events. The Polish Committee of the Movement criticised its timorousness. They said it hesitated ‘to frighten the timid ones’ by stating unequivocally that Europe was a unity, and that the countries of Central East Europe were part of it.56 In 1971 Raczyn´ski wrote to the then President of the Movement, Walter Hallstein, to deplore the fact that the countries of Central East Europe were ‘completely forgotten’ at the previous meeting of the Movement in Berlin. What was the point of the Movement if it did not act as a driving force for European unity? ‘The fear of provoking the ill humour of oppressive communist regimes implanted in our countries by Russia’ he suggested ‘cannot constitute the dominant motive for a movement such as ours’. The countries of Central East Europe were

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listening for words of encouragement ‘in the struggle for a common ideal’ but instead there was silence and indifference. The emphasis on one of the Movement’s recent documents on European unification was entirely on Western Europe and the ‘organization of a new power in the West’.57 Similarly Edward Beddington-Behrens, a former Chairman of the Central and East European Commission, reported that at a Munich conference in the early 1960s58 with 1000 delegates in attendance, only one delegate from the west referred to the problem of the satellite states. The conference’s entire focus was on the enlargement of the EEC. This omission, he believed, was ‘contrary to all the traditions of the European Movement which has always proclaimed its final objective to be the union of all Europe’.59 Beddington-Behrens’ comment was not totally accurate since this concentration on the unification of Western Europe was not a recent development. As early as 1952 Retinger resigned from his position of Secretary-General because the Movement had begun to break away from the general principles of The Hague Congress. He criticised it for supporting the ECSC and the proposed European Defence Community (EDC) to the almost complete exclusion of all other activities. There was no propaganda or information put out ‘which had any bearing on Europe as a whole’. ‘We must return’ he said ‘to the general programme and tactics of 1948.’60 In 1956 he remarked that his earlier opinion had been confirmed by events. He was not alone in his views. ‘During the last three years’, wrote the Estonian National Committee, ‘the European Movement has devoted all its energy and an essential part of its resources to the propagation of the idea of Little Europe, leaving aside Europe as a whole. The great idea of 1948 has been sacrificed.’ It concluded that the Movement was following the same practical policy pursued by some European states in the Council of Europe, despite the fact that it was meant to be a proselytising organisation.61 The divergence from the original ideals of the European Movement was highlighted by Jerzy Jankowski, editor of Polska w Europie. The failure to discuss East European affairs at congresses of organisations working for the unification of Europe was, he said, attributable to a lack of political imagination. West Europeans were primarily concerned with their own European unification problems – the completion of the Common Market, the admission of the United Kingdom into the EEC, the technological gap with the United States, and the Fouchet Plan.62 From time to time resolutions containing clichés on ‘entire Europe’ were passed but the frequency of such resolutions was diminishing. East European matters were relegated to groups of scholars or special commissions whose

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work had little influence on public opinion. He compared these typical conferences unfavourably with a meeting of the Action Européenne Fédéraliste in Brussels in 1967. This organisation had long shown an interest in East European problems. One of its four plenary sessions took place under the chair of an East European. Hendrik Brugmans, a committed federalist with a long-standing interest in Central East Europe, asked a series of fundamental questions rarely heard in the European Movement: how could the organisation contribute to the process of liberalisation going on in the satellite states; how could it support their desire to move closer to Western Europe; how could they be offered some practical instruction in federalism; and could the organisation help in the construction of a common market among the communist countries. Other speakers showed that they, too, had a positive attitude and active interest in the problems of Eastern Europe.63 There was a striking contrast between this approach and that of Walter Hallstein who, on the occasion of his election to the Presidency of the Movement in January 1968, delivered a speech which scandalised the Central East European members of the Movement and irritated all those exiles who looked to the Movement for leadership in the struggle to unite the whole of Europe. It seemed to him ‘inopportune’ to formulate long-term plans or even to engage in speculations. Better to establish multiple contacts with the peoples behind the iron curtain in order to give them, above all, a feeling of solidarity. As for the rest ‘our house will be more attractive if we have constructed it well. Also the bonds that we have established between us will be solidified and moreover the political conversations will one day be easy.’ There followed a sentence that the exiles considered particularly objectionable: ‘Let us prepare then for a meeting of all European countries after 1980 and be happy each day as we approach that time.’ In an Open Letter to Hallstein in Polska w Europie, February 1968, headlined ‘Que faire jusqu’en 1980?’ Jankowski responded that the exiles felt deceived and anxious. After all, you had to take account of what might happen in Europe between 1968 and 1980. Under Hallstein’s predecessor, he wrote, the affairs of Eastern Europe were always confined within the modest limits of the Central and East European Commission and were not part of the major debates in the European Movement as a whole. Consequently the exiles had placed great hopes in Hallstein, having watched his career as President of the European Commission with interest and admiration. But now those hopes were dashed; ‘to fix the rendez-vous after 1980 is going too far ahead. 12 years of waiting! What is the use of contacts . . . if there are no plans or speculations? The house

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of Europe is already attractive but it is dumb and the people behind the iron curtain look at it like children looking through Christmas windows.’ Jankowski’s fears were realised when despite the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Poland in 1970, Hallstein’s strategy of ‘do nothing’ remained unchanged.64 It seemed to the exiles that they were fighting an uphill battle against concessions, indifference and compromise in the very organisation that they believed should be serving their best interests. Another example of a bitter fight occurred in January 1964. Senator de la Vallée Poussin of Belgium, the Chairman of the Central and East European Commission, raised the question of the West’s policies towards Central East Europe, given the changed circumstances of the early 1960s. The possession of nuclear arms by both sides meant that there were no means of preventing Russian domination of the peoples of Central East Europe. Discussions about the possible entry into a united Europe of the captive nations were ‘vain speculations’. The West must have the courage to recognise that ‘the iron curtain is a line politically uncrossable . . .’. Hence the West ‘cannot promise to the captive nations either military action or positive political action in favour of their emancipation’. Rather it should take advantage of the increasing ‘polycentrism’ in the Communist bloc by avoiding unrealistic extremist positions and supporting the most favourable developments among the subject nations. For example, it should offer ‘an economic and cultural politics responding to their needs and desires’. There was an assumption that relations with Central East Europe would become easier if the West focused on improved trade relations, and that the outcome of these greater contacts would be a ‘certain liberation’ since all co-operation ‘implies a little of liberty’. Yet the speaker contradicted himself by admitting that trade and cultural exchanges did not by themselves lead us much nearer ‘our objective’, but this was ‘the best we can do today’.65 When these ideas were incorporated in a political report to a Brussels conference of the Commission there was vigorous opposition from the representatives of the exiles. Morawski called the report an example of ‘tactical defeatism’. Opponents managed to water it down by convincing the other delegates that exchanges between East and West would only serve the cause of the West if they were treated as offensive weapons to break down the iron curtain.66 The ACEN in turn concluded that de la Vallée Poussin’s ideas revealed a tendency to unconditional economic and cultural collaboration with the Communist regimes on the basis of the status quo. This was anathema since neither self-determination nor the rights of man were mentioned. What was on offer was a naïve belief

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in a slow evolution of the Communist world which would be generated by Western friendliness and good will.67 The delegates were successful in holding the line against de la Vallée Poussin’s initiative but attempts to diminish the influence of the Central East European exiles in the European Movement continued. The significance of these events was seen very clearly by the exiles who judged that the weakening of their influence would allow the Movement to jettison its evangelical character and become nothing but a pragmatic political organisation with a clear West European focus. This accounted for their spirited response to a 1965 proposal to re-organise the Central and East European Commission, providing for the choice of delegates from among the exiles to be made by western members of the Movement.68 Two years later the proposed new statutes of the Movement downgraded from members to ‘associate members’ the national committees from each of the exile communities in the West. This drew a distinction between the Councils of the Movement and the Committees which had hitherto enjoyed the same status. The symbolism of this was not lost on the exiles who saw in this downgrading a willingness to accept the division of Europe and a diminished commitment to unity. The acceptance of the status quo in Europe was also symbolised by the willingness of some delegates including de la Vallée Poussin to extend an invitation to individuals from the Iron Curtain countries to attend various meetings of the European Movement as observers. Raczyn´ski was able to convince the authors of this proposal that the presence of such observers would be incompatible with the official representation of national committeesin-exile in the Movement.69 Nonetheless the exiles could see, in these various initiatives, which way the wind was blowing, and despaired at the willingness of western members of the Movement to compromise with the Communist regimes, to accept the status quo, and to jettison the ideology which had inspired the creation of the European Movement in the years after the Second World War. Why had this occurred? The exiles offered the explanation that the early militants were steadily replaced in the Movement by politicians who were temporarily out of office but were ambitious to return to official circles in their own countries. This explained why the Movement, including even its Central and East European Commission, had lost the taste for striking at or shaking up western governments. The ex-ministers did not want to compromise themselves by supporting resolutions which demanded self-determination for the countries of Central East Europe. Hence the Movement ceased to be a meeting of militants with a vision of a united Europe but consisted, in the main, of groups of people who were

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‘on leave’ from their countries, regarded the Commission as their private perquisite, and were reluctant to diverge from official policy at home by committing themselves to liberty and self-determination in Central East Europe.70 The obvious next question is why both the Movement and the Council of Europe were ready to go down this particular road. The constitution of the Council of Europe, the Statute, bears some responsibility. When the Council held its inaugural meeting in 1949 a high proportion of the delegates to its Consultative Assembly had participated in The Hague Congress and had initiated the process of creating the Council. They came in the understanding that they ‘owned’ the Council. Meanwhile, the Statute which had been hammered out by the member governments severely restricted the powers both of the Committee of Ministers and of the Consultative Assembly; the British government in particular was opposed to the transfer of any significant power to the Council. Consequently, recommendations of the Committee of Ministers to member governments required unanimity of members present and voting, and a majority of representatives entitled to sit on the Committee. The Assembly was clearly designated as a deliberative organ with the power to make recommendations to the Committee but only if they commanded a two-thirds majority. Representatives in the Assembly could act on their own responsibility since they were not delegates of the member governments and were therefore much more free to take a ‘European’ point of view but the Statute ensured that they had no power. Attempts were made to give the Assembly ‘limited functions but real powers’ but these efforts were abortive. These restrictions, which the British imposed as the price of membership, succeeded in neutering the Assembly and limiting the ‘European idealism’ of most of its members, who recognised that the chances of carrying out the mandate of The Hague Congress were exiguous. Inevitably the Assembly turned most of its attention to other matters where it was more in tune with the views of the governments.71 But a more important factor in determining the direction taken by the Council and its Consultative Assembly was public opinion in the West which was largely indifferent to the plight of Central East Europe except when particularly brutal acts by the Communist authorities or the Kremlin stirred up western emotions and revived notions of solidarity. But the source of this indifference lay in the geopolitical situation of the decades of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The Cold War created a great fear of nuclear annihilation. Public opinion opposed any international initiatives which might irritate Moscow and bring down retribution on

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the West. Nothing must be done which might trigger Armageddon. Hence it was dangerous to interfere in the Soviet sphere of influence in Central East Europe for fear of possible consequences. Fear and apprehension produced acceptance of the status quo, and this in turn created an indifference to the fate of the Central East Europeans who lived under Moscow’s fiat. This western indifference was characterised by Adam Ciolkosz, a wellknown London-based writer, a Socialist and a federalist, as a combination of ‘inactivity, hollow promises and no deeds, words with no meaning behind them’.72 After Budapest in 1956 the action of West European countries remained ambiguous and limited to ‘solemn and ineffectual declarations’. Brugmans wrote that the West Europeans looked westwards and were ‘not seriously concerned with the fate of those who expect our leadership’.73 Western Europe was too pre-occupied by its own problems, such as the unification of the West European states, relations with the Soviet Union, and the re-integration of West Germany into the West European community, to pay much attention to the eastern half of the Continent. In signing the Bonn Treaty, which regulated relations between the Western Powers and West Germany, the West, according to the Polish Political Council, ‘absolved Germany from her whole past’ and obtained her return to the world arena. The West also showed interest in the unification of Germany but seemed indifferent to the unification of the two halves of Europe.74 This indifference resulted from a combination of self-interest, narrowness of vision, and sheer ignorance. It rested on two erroneous but contradictory assumptions. The first was that the fate of these lands was settled once and for all. George Kennan accepted that there was ‘a finality for better or worse about what has now occurred in Eastern Europe . . .’. His fellow American, Walter Lippmann, described by one East European as the ‘technician of defeatism’, accepted Soviet conquests in Eastern Europe as ‘durable’.75 In his memoirs Jean Monnet made hardly any reference to Central East Europe, making it absolutely clear that his most urgent task had been the unification of (Western) Europe. He recognised the necessity for peaceful co-existence (which meant coming to terms with the Soviet Union and accepting the status quo in the East) and for extending the privileges enjoyed by the peoples of the Common Market to the under-developed countries, by which he did not mean the states of Central East Europe.76 Hallstein’s few references to Eastern Europe in his autobiography discussed the EEC’s trade policy towards the region and to the CMEA.77 The second error was the result of wishful thinking – that the problem of Central East Europe would find an automatic solution under the /

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influence of the inherent urge to freedom. However, these two errors had the same effect, namely to create a state of ‘immobilism’ among West Europeans and a strong tendency among those of them who were supporters of European unity to accept that there was no alternative to stalemate in Central East Europe.78 Western proposals to international conferences, for example to the two Geneva conferences in 1955, postponed to an indefinite future the solution of the most urgent problems of the region including the final ratification of Germany’s eastern boundaries. Polish exiles commented that this attitude was the product of poor knowledge of the history and present conditions of the area.79 For a long time after the Second World War western statesmen accepted that the new regimes in Eastern Europe were perhaps the best solution to the problem of political and economic instability and inter-ethnic conflict in the region. If the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was undesirable it at least had the advantage of guaranteeing stability and peace. With this kind of thinking it is not surprising that the reaction of the West to oppression in Central East Europe was ‘negligible’, and that the people of the region felt like ‘forgotten allies of an abandoned cause’.80 From the perspective of Central East Europe there was another important reason for Western indifference to the region. At a ‘Geneva Meeting of Intellectuals’ in September 1957 Polish participants who included Leszek Kolakowski and Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz debated with André Philip, Paul-Henri Spaak and Max Born, among others, on the idea of Europe. The Poles suggested that the main intellectual representatives of the idea of Europe in the west confined their idea arbitrarily to the Mediterranean lands or the area of the Six. They argued that this arbitrariness had its roots in the nineteenth-century history of Europe, in the tendency to treat all the nations of Europe which did not participate in the colonial division of the world as non-representative of Europe. They claimed that the idea of Great Europe (i.e. East and West Europe combined) was, for many Westerners a negation of the supremacy of Germanic and Romance countries. ‘Little Europe’ ideas of Europe acknowledged only the right of German and Romance nations to organise and represent Europe. These historical roots could explain part of the indifference to, and neglect of, the Central East European states in the movement for European unity in the decades after the War.81 It was the indifference shown by many West Europeans to the plight of the captive nations which was as discouraging to the exiles as the timorousness of official organisations. As an article published by the Polish League for Independence put it, in the early post-war years /

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‘when European unity was a hope and an idea, its supporters considered it obvious that the Central and East European countries could not be excluded’. But when the idea of the community took institutional shape and common economic and defence policies began to emerge ‘the countries left outside gradually faded from the preoccupation of political leaders’. Leadership groups and public opinion were mainly exercised by current economic and defence interests. Without a vigorous and robust public opinion there was no popular pressure exerted on governments and political parties.82 Hence there was little opposition from this direction to the tendency of governments to take the line of least resistance, namely, to accept the longevity of the Iron Curtain, to try to make constructive agreements with the eastern bloc countries, and to accept the status quo in the East for fear of nuclear confrontation. Many West Europeans were afraid that some act on their part would irritate the Kremlin and jeopardise Western Europe’s prosperity and security. Without popular pressure, then, there was nothing to compel the Council of Europe and the European Movement to take a more forceful line, both with the member governments and with the captive nations. Clearly, therefore, public opinion had to be better informed and persuaded so that it could bring pressure to bear on governments. This could be done by exile organisations persuading newspapers to write about the problems of Central East Europe. Books and pamphlets should be published, effective radio broadcasts transmitted, conferences and exhibitions organised, and permanent fruitful contacts maintained with political parties and organisations.83 It was this caution, apprehension or timidity which lay behind the policy of détente in the 1960s and 1970s. The fear of mutually assured destruction persuaded many in the West that the only alternative to nuclear war was some kind of accommodation with the Kremlin. The development of ideas of rapprochement and détente, the response of the East European exiles to these initiatives, and the impact of these policies on their dreams for unity among the states of Central East Europe are subjects for discussion in a later chapter. Meanwhile the Polish and other East European exiles in the West developed their own ideas about how their homelands could become part of a united Europe.

7 The Union of Polish Federalists

The previous chapter focused on the disappointment felt by the majority of Polish federalists in exile at what they saw as the ineffectual and misguided activities of the Council of Europe and the European Movement. The Union of Polish Federalists (UPF), under the dedicated leadership of Jerzy Jankowski and the journal he edited for around two decades, Polska w Europie (Poland in Europe), adopted a different and more pragmatic approach. From quite early on, it placed its confidence in the new European communities which emerged in the 1950s, seeing them as the future of Europe in embryo. In this it was ahead of other Polish supporters of a united Europe who came to recognise the centrality of the European Economic Community (EEC) comparatively late. In the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the EEC and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAC or Euratom) the UPF saw the possibility of achieving its ambition, a European federation with political as well as economic powers.1 The UPF outlined its vision of the new Europe as early as 1951 when it sketched in the major contours of the European federal community. Essentially this was part of a multi-level system, starting with the European states (or in some versions the European nations), moving to European sub-regions (the Central East European region being one), then to the European region and finally to a world organization. Not least among the advantages of this multi-level structure for the UPF was that it would ‘deprive Germany of its belligerent nature’, something which the Poles were naturally very sensitive to. But it also would liquidate the domination of the superpowers over Europe by limiting state sovereignty among the European states, and by creating common European foreign and defence policies. The programme which the UPF developed in the 1950s was modified and refined in certain important 122

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respects during the succeeding three decades. Although its final goal of a federal Europe remained unchanged, the methods by which this goal could or should be attained were adapted to changes in international relations and to developments in the European communities. A federation for the whole of Europe would necessarily depend on the liberation of the countries of Central East Europe from the control of Moscow. The UPF’s distinctive contribution in this respect was its conviction that a strong federal Europe based on the foundation of the European Communities would offer the best prospect of setting Poland and the other satellite states free from the domination of the Soviet Union and Germany. How this would happen in practice was not made clear; there was a simple assumption that the achievement of a polycentrist world in which the EEC would join the United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers would somehow raise the iron curtain and return Central East Europe to its western roots. Perhaps they relied on the assumption of Juliusz Mieroszewski that all empires eventually disintegrate, and the Soviet Union’s would be no exception. Mieroszewski perceptively observed that the success of federal plans would depend on their rapid application before the ‘new Russia’ could re-assert its influence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This regional union would have to become an economically independent ‘multidimensional unit’ within which border disputes would be settled and the ‘historical-superpower heroics’ of larger nations would be nullified. Only then would Central East Europe be able to base its relations with Russia on principles of complete equality and independence. Moreover, a strong united Europe, on a comparative level with the other superpowers, would be in a favourable position to usher the former satellites under its wing.2 In calling for a federal Europe the UPF did not intend to destroy the nation states, which had important functions to perform. Under the principle of subsidiarity the states would retain all the responsibilities which could best be carried out at state level. Moreover, they were the guarantors of the preservation of national traditions and cultures, and the upholders of one of the essential characteristics of Europe, its diversity. It was not the states per se which the federalists detested, but what they called ‘the egotism of the nation state’ which excluded international cooperation and created inter-state conflicts. What was equally distinctive about the UPF was its continuous commentary on developments in the European communities, its urging of particular courses of action and its focus on widening and deepening the EEC. It encouraged every trend which might bring a political federation

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into being. It welcomed the Rome treaties, for example, since it believed that economic integration would lead to political integration. In its objective of making the EEC more democratic and responsive to popular wishes, it consistently championed direct elections to the European Parliament. In its search for efficiency it argued for the merging of the three communities, which was achieved in the 1960s. It welcomed the creation of the European monetary area in the early 1970s as a step towards the creation of a supranational Europe, and warmly approved of the proposal in the same period to institute regular meetings of Foreign Ministers. In fact the UPF responded positively to any development which seemed to lead to the establishment of federalist political structures in the European communities. For this reason it opposed the Gaullist vision of Europe and rejected it, too, on the equally compelling ground that it would not save Central East Europe from ‘Soviet slavery’. The UPF introduced other ideas into the debate which were not primary topics among other Polish federalist groups. It commented on the protection which a federal Europe could offer to human rights, the right to work, and the social conditions of the European people. It raised the possibility of ‘internal federalism’ being introduced into member states, and it described in some detail the institutions of a federal Europe and the processes by which the ideal of a federal Europe could be brought into being. Over the course of three decades its objective remained the same as it had at its foundation in 1949, a federal Europe with political and economic institutions; and the methods by which it could be achieved focused unremittingly on the evolution of the EEC. It should be seen as a gadfly, encouraging and stimulating the right kind of change, deploring and opposing any retrograde tendencies. As it happened it correctly identified the institutions which led the way to a united Europe. The establishment of the Union of Polish Federalists in October 1949, therefore, marked a new era in the history of Polish movements promoting European unity. The organization was founded in Paris by Polish exiles in France and Britain. The history of the UPF can be divided into two phases: the ‘London phase’ and the ‘continental phase’. During the London phase part of the headquarters of the Union was based in Great Britain, where it tried to associate itself with the activities of London political groups. The composition of the UPF board changed according to inter-party arrangements. According to Jerzy Jankowski it was ‘a sort of cooperation of a certain group of parties. It mattered little whether the programmes of these parties included the objective of Poland’s accession to the European Community, or whether their representatives on the UPF

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board were familiar with the problems of European unification’.3 A group of activists from the Polish Liberation Movement ‘Independence and Democracy’ (NiD) headed by Rowmund Pilsudski were the leading figures in the Union. One of the key features of their programme was a plan for the federalization of Europe by means of a ‘multi-level union’.4 It was in the London phase, during the UPF Convention in London (December 1951), that the ‘Principles of Central-East European Policy’ were set out, these being the basic guidelines for the future organization of a free Central East Europe.5 By federation the delegates meant a union of nations and states that would give up part of their sovereign rights to common institutions exercising power over the whole area of the union. Sovereign rights which were not clearly ceded to the central federal authorities were assumed to remain with the member states. In particular, these states kept control over domestic legislation provided that their proposed laws did not violate federal legislation. A federal supreme court would be established to adjudicate disputes within the Federation. These general principles for the creation of federations are to be found in all subsequent UPF programmes. According to the ‘Principles’ the Union proposed the creation of a world federal system to ensure security and other appropriate conditions for the free development of individuals and peoples. It was accepted that the superstructure of the world system would rest on the regional federations which composed it. Such a structure would guarantee the maximum degree of freedom, replacing centralization, and dividing power between federations at different levels. The federal principle would permit the greatest degree of freedom for particular nations, multinational states and regional unions. Accordingly, the world federal organization, the intercontinental and continental unions (e.g. the European Federation) and the regional federations (e.g. the Federation of Central-East Europe) were not exclusive but complementary. However, the absence of a federation at the higher level would not stand in the way of creating a federation at the lower – a principle adopted from the NiD programme. Hence, to guarantee the interests of nations inhabiting the area between Russia and Germany, the guidelines recommended the establishment of a regional central East European federation. Economic integration in this region was intended to promote rapid industrialization, maximize employment and reduce the over-population in rural areas. The guidelines advocated the inclusion of the Central East European federation in a larger continental federal system which alone could create conditions for the permanent liquidation of the German threat. At the same time the world federal organization would be responsible for solving /

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the Russian problem in Europe and Asia. Regional federalism required making a choice a priori whether members of the federation should be nations or states, leaving it open whether nations would join the federation directly or through binational/multinational states. Refusal to join on the part of some nations, it was argued, should not become an obstacle to the establishment of the federation. The ‘Principles’ assumed that the federation of Central East Europe would succeed, provided that the Silesian industrial base and the Oder waterway to the Baltic ports were included within its boundaries, with the Oder River being the western border of the whole area. After the London meeting, interest in the UPF and European issues declined among some Polish politicians. By the end of 1953 even the London group of members of the UPF board ceased to be active. Accordingly the second, continental, phase in the Union’s history began. Jerzy Jankowski wrote: The Action of the Polish federalists was based mainly in France, though it was not restricted to that area. They debated whether the UPF should be mass or elite-oriented, whether it should be intelligentsiagrounded or have a wider popular base, should it be an organization for refugees or émigrés, or for all Poles in the free world, should it be oriented to Central East Europe or Europe as a whole and did it want unity or union as its future structure? Finally, should it be restricted to international problems or should it work for the rebuilding of society?6 In 1952–1953 the UPF emphasized social goals and the role the federation could play in achieving them. This was not a common stance among federalists. Every citizen, regardless of his confession, nationality, gender and class, had the right to work in a profession of his choice on condition that this did not violate generally accepted law and morality. Accordingly, one of the roles of the federation was to protect freedom of professions and the workplace. The Union believed that religious and cultural issues, education, administration, roads, building and trade would be solved by groups of federalized nations. It was believed that federation would protect the diversity of national traditions and assist in the development of national cultures.7 The UPF leaders considered a federal model to be an antidote to totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. They blamed ‘overweening nationalism’, as in Nazi Germany, and unqualified statism for inter-state conflicts and for the lack of jobs. In the UPF doctrine, the principle of

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national independence was accepted, but was criticized for the way it was used to justify the ‘egotism of the nation-state’ which excluded international cooperation. In this connection the false theory of ‘unlimited state power, i.e. sovereignty’, came to the fore, and this hampered close co-operation between states. Even if nation states were not at war with each other, they fought in secret, that is by diplomatic means, by economic, tariff and communication wars, and by ‘dividing the world with borders, currencies, taxes and various contradictory regulations.’ Unavoidable rivalry between nation states with unlimited sovereignty found its release in wars. The perception of Hitlerism as degenerated nationalism, and communism as a degenerated state impelled European societies to apply federal concepts after the Second World War. Equally the fear of a third world war and an arms race, and economic difficulties caused by the world’s population increase made a federal Europe more urgent. Working in the same direction were technological progress which made exploitation of natural resources easier but destroyed the environment, and the example of the United States, which managed to federalize a society of different origins and to organize economically the whole continent.8 Federalism was intended to liquidate the domination of super-powers over weaker nations by limiting state sovereignty. Equally important, however, was the voluntary principle – large and small nations alike would decide about their political destiny since ‘federalism is a voluntary union of independent nations’. Fighting for the liquidation of states’ egotistic political and economic goals, federalism would abolish political and economic wars, liquidate monopolies, destroy artificial customs barriers and separate monetary systems, and abolish limits on population movements. The UPF, therefore, challenged the omnipotence of the centralized state’s bureaucracy in order to set free the creative skills of individuals in a ‘free co-operation of volunteer associations and self-governed unions’.9 The UPF was concerned by the rejection of the European Defence Community (EDC) which they considered to be a defeat for federalism. On the other hand the Western states were mistaken in putting defence issues at the top of the integrationist agenda. ‘Though defence was particularly important’, it conceded, ‘the priority given to military issues undermined the logical sequence of actions, and weakened the support of public opinion for federal solutions. By the same token, it facilitated sabotage by communists and neutralists.’10 By the end of 1956 the mood among Polish federalists was improving. They believed that the bloody suppression of the Hungarian uprising and the military intervention of Great Britain and France in Suez had convinced Western Europe

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that the construction of a united Europe was one of the most urgent political tasks. Creation of the Common Market and Euratom was considered to be the first step on the way to stable relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the European democracies. In addition, the FRG’s accession to the European Community would lead to ‘a significant easing of the Polish geopolitical situation’.11 The leaders of the UPF aimed to spread the idea of unification in Europe in general and in Poland in particular. At the General Meeting which took place on 14 March 1957 in Paris, Jankowski assured members that after the October changes Poland was taking big steps towards freedom and democracy.12 ‘When we speak to people who come from Poland, the majority of them, say: “Unification of Europe is the path to our freedom!” since they realize that a united Europe will deprive Germany of its belligerent nature, and deprive the Soviets of the case for keeping Poland in the Eastern block. They know that the Soviets can hope for victory in Europe only as long as they can influence the politics and economics of individual countries on the continent.’13 Jankowski detailed the UPF’s methods of strengthening its popularity in Poland after 1956 but these did not include attempting to organize or recruit members or set up branches. Its activities were restricted to providing information on European problems, the progress of European unification, the difficulties in the way of creating a ‘political Europe’ and the activities and achievements of the UPF. The dissemination of this information focused on two levels and two types of consumers. For the intelligentsia, who could read political literature in foreign languages, books were sent to libraries, academic institutions and serious magazines. The UPF worked with several foundations, publishing houses, authors and the Department of Information in the European Communities. This type of activity produced an exchange of letters with home institutions. A couple of magazines advertized books published by the UPF and Poles travelling abroad were informed about these publications. Contacts with them, and especially with the new generation, were also beneficial to UPF members since they provided information about Polish reactions to the process of European unification. The rest of the Polish public could be influenced by means of radio broadcasts. The UPF tried to use Radio Free Europe which produced programmes of a ‘popular’ nature and were not addressed to intellectuals. This wider audience had to be informed more often about the difficulties and progress of European unification.14 To make the idea of federalization more popular in Poland, Jankowski thought it imperative to clarify the UPF’s stance on the German issue. The solution to the German

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problem involved more than a simple confirmation of the Oder–Neisse line. Poland’s thousand-year experience as Germany’s neighbour offered important insights into the German problem and how to deal with it. Jankowski believed that ‘not close and solemn pacts between two sovereign states but exclusively a European federation with a common foreign policy can save Poland from the new temptations of German nationalism, and prevent a new “Rapallo politics” which is part of Khrushchev’s programme. If we want to set our nation free from the necessity of choosing between Russia and Germany we have to aim at a united and federal Europe.’15 In addition to the many advantages of a federal system for Europe there was also a case for introducing into Poland what was referred to as ‘internal federalism’. Jankowski was sure that the Polish people did not want communism, but at the same time he was certain that the pre-war political system could not be reconstructed. A third solution had to be found. He believed that the federal principle created possibilities which would fill the gap in Polish political ideas and move the debate away from the virtues or otherwise of the so-called liberation policy pursued by some American politicians.16 The idea of internal federalism was taken to mean the organization, on federal principles, of a country in which a number of nationalities resided. This idea was supported by German, French, British, Belgian and Dutch federalists, with particular support in France. Here there was a proposal that the Polish national group and other national groups in French society should be ‘federalized’. This would mean inhibiting the process of assimilation of Poles in French society. The federalization of Poles in France or in any other European country would be achieved by a ‘stable federation – from the bottom’. In a united Europe membership would include not only Poland but the Polish minorities abroad.17 In the post-war period, federalism was, according to the UPF, the only western concept of internal social organization and international order which did not damage human rights. It was ‘dynamic and constructive’ because it gave the highest priority to the individual and offered citizens the widest range of opportunities. Only the federal idea offered a powerful alternative and opposition to the ideology of world communism. Federalism as conceived by the UPF was one of the three main approaches to European unification: the first – a pseudo-revolutionary concept – emphasized ‘European people’, regardless of culture, national traditions and identity; the second – ‘Europe of the states’ – was based on state sovereignty; the third, federalism on the UPF model, meant a Europe in which particular nations could have broad autonomy,

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especially in the field of culture, and where the federal government and the federal parliament would stand above state governments. Federalism would enable a united Europe to adjust to the economic and technological realities of the modern world and increase the effectiveness of its military defence against external aggression.18 With great hopes for the future, Polish federalists welcomed the Rome Treaties. They saw that a large market would be created, embracing about 170 million people, equal to the internal market of the USA. According to the UPF, economic integration would inevitably lead to the political integration of the ‘Europe of the Six’, just as in the bigger economies every significant economic problem became a political issue. It was axiomatic that an economically and politically united Europe had to be democratically governed through an executive body and a parliament, the latter to be chosen by popular votes using the Rome Treaty article on the election of the legislature. Popular voting would constitute an essential element in the transition from an ‘economic Europe’ to a ‘political Europe’.19 In January 1957 a federalist conference on problems in the CentralEast European states was convened in Paris.20 Lithuanian, Latvian, Czech, Croatian, Hungarian and Romanian federalists along with a group from the UPF took part in the discussions, and Zbigniew Rapacki delivering a speech on behalf of the UPF. Analyzing the situation in Central East Europe after the events in Poland and Hungary he argued that revolts in both countries demonstrated the attachment of the peoples of the region to European civilization. He believed that the young generation wished to take responsibility for building a new order in their societies and were ambitious to become members of a ‘free federation of all European states’.21 Brugmans’ 1958 ‘Theses for the political integration of Europe’ were warmly welcomed by the Polish federalists. Brugmans contended that the ‘Europe of the Six’ would become a federation and expected it to be open to Central East European countries after their liberation. In Thesis 15 Brugmans defined this openness as follows: one of the basic goals of federalism is to strengthen European freedoms in order to increase their “radiating power” outside. Therefore our business card is a charter of human rights. We do not intend to impose solutions on nations which will be free to choose when they regain freedom. Nevertheless, in the meantime, it is our duty to think it over, together with representatives of the federalist and democratic emigration, and to state clearly that our goal is free integration of

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those countries in Europe and not to return to the pre-1945 system. We should add that, in our understanding, the regimes are distancing themselves from the nations and even opposing them; we should fight the regimes and invite the nations into a fraternal union.22 The UPF’s direct comment on ‘Brugmans’ theses’ was embodied in its own ‘Theses of the UPF with respect to the political plan of Central East Europe’, presented at a conference in Wiesbaden. The starting point of these theses was that European unity was a very powerful idea and the only one generally accepted by Central East European nations. However, it was imperative that the West should accelerate the process of its own unification on federal principles and clarify its policy towards Central East Europe. The crucial question was how it proposed to develop relations between a Europe organized on federal principles and the countries of the European East.23 It is worth discussing the international activity of the UPF from its establishment in 1949. At the very beginning the Union affiliated to the biggest federalist organization in Europe – the Union of European Federalists (UEF). In the autumn of 1950 it took part in the UEF Congress in Strasbourg. When the UEF changed its programme the UPF’s contacts with it became weaker. It did not approve of the UEF’s idea that unification should be based on the ‘European people’ because the concept of ‘the European people’ negated the role of nations in Europe. This concept was quite incapable of popularizing the federal idea in Poland itself since it was difficult to ‘sell’ the idea of ‘the European people’ in a country which had struggled for years to defend its national identity. The European Federalists’ Action (EFA) was another central organization for European federalists to which the UPF was affiliated in the mid1950s. The UPF’s president became a member of the EFA as a delegate for East European affairs. As a result, the association of the UPF with similar organizations established by other East European exile groups became possible. Its representatives took part in various meetings of particular national federalist organizations. For example, delegates of the UPF played an active role in an important Congress of the EFA in Luxemburg 12–13 October 1963.24 Two documents were adopted: the ‘Resolution’ and the ‘Declaration’ whose recommendations were binding on the UPF. The ‘Resolution’ stated that ‘the European Communities [were] the basis on which the United States of Europe could be built, which is the goal of Federalist action’. The Congress assumed that ‘Only a federal

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Europe equipped with political power would have the ambition to play the role for which it is destined.’ Effective political power required the strengthening of existing institutions through the fusion of their governing bodies. The Congress also supported the democratization of these bodies, which was in any case supposed to result from the enlargement of the powers of the European Parliament and its selection by direct popular voting in elections. According to the ‘Resolution’ it was necessary to work out a ‘common general policy of the Community by extending its powers into the fields of foreign policy and defence issues’. This should be done in stages, as in the creation of the Common Market. A precise agenda would allow a seamless transition from ‘ordinary diplomatic and military coordination’ to common foreign and defence policies. Because the final goal was the creation of the United States of Europe, the federalist groups, united in the EFA, planned to campaign in their home countries where they would lobby trade unions, local communities, schools and universities.25 The ‘Declaration’ in its turn stressed the need for the political unification of Europe. Robert Schuman and other ‘founding fathers’ were admired for their work in ‘constructing Europe’, culminating in the establishment of a federal political system. The transformation of the Community into a ‘true European federation’ depended on the creation of a common foreign and defence policy. This would solve all Europe’s problems and challenges, notably the enlargement of the ‘Europe of the Six’ to other democratic European countries, the establishment of loyal relations between Europe and the United States on the principles of solidarity and equality, the return to ‘the community of free nations’ of the East European countries, and the establishment of cooperation with all nations that aimed at social progress.26 The UPF established close relations with the French federalist organization ‘La Fédération’, some of whose proposals for creating a United States of Europe it adopted in its own plans for a European federation. For example, it proposed that the federal government should encompass a bicameral parliament (the House of People and the House of States), and a Supreme Court which would protect the Charter of Human Rights and Communities. The ‘Europe of the Six’ would be strengthened by a fusion of the individual communities (the EEC, the ECSC and Euratom), and the European Parliament would be granted greater powers of supervision and initiative. The executive branch would consist of a supranational commission, a council of heads of state and government, a council of ministers, and a permanent secretariat. The role of the Commission lay in the preparation of legislative

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proposals for the council to consider and to administer those that were agreed. Important to these federalist proposals was the principle of subsidiarity, according to which the higher authority was not given powers to act if an issue fell within the competence of the lower.27 The UPF also pursued its own political initiatives, sending a memorandum on Polish concepts of European unification to the High Authority of the ECSC. Some of the ideas were incorporated by Jean Monnet in his speeches. When a Commission chaired by the Belgian Senator Fernand Dehousse was asked to prepare elections to the European Parliament, the UPF addressed a note to Dehousse requesting the right to vote in these elections for refugees from Eastern Europe. Its stance was backed by a number of political personalities from several countries, including Robert Schuman. In 1961 the UPF applied to the Council of Europe, via the UEF, for the abolition of visas for refugees in various European countries, and Jerzy Jankowski was called by the Council as an expert witness. The Assembly of the Council then passed a recommendation to the Committtee of Ministers to support the UPF’s motion. An important element in the activity of the UPF was its press and publications. Initially it published a Newsletter, which first came out in November 1952 – ‘The UPF News’. At the beginning of 1963 this became a journal with the title of Polska w Europie, which was distributed in 29 countries and to 50 big libraries in Europe and the United States. Polska w Europie bound the Polish federalists together. It was the only journal of East European federalists that was published on a regular basis. It also comprised an international page for non-Polish readers. The magazine published articles of foreign contributors either in their own language or translated into Polish. The editors organized translations by volunteers from Polish into foreign languages.28 The UPF encountered considerable difficulty in promoting its ideas within the European Movement, leading it to criticize the lack of activity of the Central and East European Commission of the Movement, which was generally regarded as the ‘conscience’ of the West in its activities on behalf of Central East Europe.29 Similar criticism was leveled at a resolution of the Council of Europe’s International Council adopted on 26 January 1963 which stated that the ‘European Community should be open to all democratic European countries which accept the regulations of the Rome Treaty’.30 This completely ignored the problem of Central East Europe, and implied that the Council would take no initiative to bring Central East Europe’s subservience to Moscow to the attention of Western public opinion. The UPF’s dilemma was whether to work out its

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own integrationist concepts in cooperation with international European organizations on the assumption that Poland would ultimately become a member of the European Communities, or wait until others developed such projects. Unable to act in the framework of the European Movement, the UPF turned to co-operation with ‘La Fédération’ and the AEF.31 In December 1963 Polish federalists witnessed another crisis in the construction of a ‘political Europe’. They believed that when the EEC began to regulate important areas of the economies of member states, supranational political structures would be required to eliminate nationalism in particular states. Of course Europe should be built ‘on the basis of love for one’s own country, but nationalism [was] an enemy of unification’.32 The UPF supported the plan of Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak for the establishment by the governments of the Six of ‘a commission of wise men’ to pursue further European integration. This commission, independent of the national governments, would prepare proposals to establish ministries for foreign affairs, defence and culture in consultation with the governments of the individual states. Spaak envisaged that after three years of practical experience a formal treaty establishing the European Political Community would be arrived at. While the UPF approved Spaak’s plan, it did so without great enthusiasm; the best that could be said about it was that it ‘did not ‘remove Europe from the political agenda of diplomats in our continent’.33 Polish federalists believed that a ‘bridging’ solution between ‘economic Europe’ and ‘political Europe’ could be a fusion of the three executive bodies of the European Communities: the ECSC High Authority, the EEC Commission and the Euratom Commission. Wide coverage was given to this issue by Polska w Europie after the Committee of Ministers of the European Communities decided to merge the three executives on 3 March 1965. The decision was welcomed by the UPF which observed that ‘during the last fifteen years European institutions were not established according to a logical plan but according to political possibilities’. The Commission of the Communities was intended to be a big European Economics Ministry, with the power to ensure cooperative policies in the fields of industry, agriculture, trade, energy, communication, finance and social issues. It would prove that ‘Europeans could plan common affairs together, take common decisions and together control their implementation.’ Polish federalists believed that a new model of ‘political Europe’ would be built on these foundations. In the 1960s Polish federalists often compared their concepts of unification with de Gaulle’s vision of a Europe of the states or fatherlands.

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When de Gaulle advocated the idea of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals they responded that a dividing line should be drawn between ‘certain visions of the future’ and French policy. They agreed with critics that de Gaulle’s conception of a ‘broad Europe [was]. . . conditioned by so many “ifs” that it is difficult to predict when that vision could become real’. They concluded that de Gaulle’s criticism of federalist concepts of European integration, which would include a supranational parliament and government, was a delaying tactic. But, from the Gaullist point of view, supranational institutions could inflict policy on France that would be against French interests, such as, for example, opening the door to Britain’s entry to the Common Market.34 It became clear that the essence of Gaullist policy was to organize cooperation between governments, and these would ‘maintain full rights’ i.e. sovereignty. According to de Gaulle, everything that was not part of national governments such as the European Parliament in Strasbourg had an exclusively advisory or technical nature.35 For the Polish federalists de Gaulle’s policy was the biggest obstacle to the political integration of Western Europe. Furthermore, de Gaulle paid no attention to the principle of Atlantic cohesion. On the contrary, he believed that Europe was and should remain a collection of sovereign states that were not dependent on the Anglo-Saxons. The UPF drew a distinction between the ideas of de Gaulle and Monnet. The latter was definitely in favour of the unification of a democratic Europe, and supported its close cooperation with the United States, based on the principle of equality.36 Polish federalists believed that the lack of support for de Gaulle’s idea of European unity (based on the loose and pragmatic cooperation of governments) was partly connected with his policy of drawing closer to the East, mainly to the Soviet Union. In their opinion, the launching of integrationist processes in the east required intense background preparation if there were to be federal solutions. They argued that ‘ the political idea of a united and organized Europe will be able to save east European nations from the Soviet house of slavery, but a Europe based on a new game of wide nationalisms (i.e. the Gaullist conception) would not.’37 De Gaulle’s visit to Poland in 1967 was assessed from that point of view. It was assumed that if he had gone there, not as a spokesman of France but of the European Community, much could have been expected from the visit. But first the European Political Community had to exist since ‘the only possible superpower on the old continent could be the European Community.’ This was the message that Europeans from all parts of the continent expected to hear from statesmen who claimed to speak on behalf of Europe, as de Gaulle was claiming to do. It was he

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who suggested a ‘European Europe’. On the contrary, the Polish federalists wanted this Europe not to be a Gaullist blend of apparently sovereign states but a Community equipped with European institutions that were capable of effective action.38 The Polish federalists developed a counter-idea to the Gaullist concept of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, namely the necessity for polycentrism in international relations. It was assumed that as long as a new power of a similar weight to one of the ‘Greats’ was not constructed, the United States and Russia would decide the world’s future. The Poles saw Europe as that new power, ‘finished in the field of economy and constructed on the political level, i.e. in the field of foreign and defence policy’. This was a Europe made by all the member states, since a Europe built on the principle of one country’s leadership could not be stable.39 How to transform Europe into an independent super-power preoccupied the participants, including the UPF, in the AEF Congress in Brussels on 18 and 19 November 1967. The AEF invited representatives from the European Commission, from national governments and from national parliaments from several countries to participate. The following statement became a slogan: ‘There is no European policy without political Europe’. Two presentations were the subject of discussion: one given by Hendrik Brugmans on European policy, and the other presented by Dieter Roser on the organizational frameworks within which that policy should be pursued.40 Brugmans presented a vision of enlargement after the fusion of the executive bodies. Roser proposed the creation of a broad framework for the most important European decisions concerning a common foreign and defence policy. To this end he suggested that a fourth European treaty, on foreign and defence affairs (in addition to the ECSC, EEC and Euratom) should be signed by the current member states with the exception of France. Roser emphasized the need for the democratization of European institutions including the European Parliament. But neither Brugmans nor Roser mentioned the need to establish an interim directing institution until the European Political Community’s executive body was set up.41 At the end of the 1960s the real state of affairs regarding the establishment of new European institutions was very different from the plans of the federalists. In 1968 Polska w Europie noted how insignificant were the effects of the existing Communities’ activities. Some member states shifted programmes to state institutions that should have been administered cooperatively, for example the reorganization of the coal and steel industries. In addition, the EEC was unsuccessful compared with the USA in various fields, including technological innovation. The European Commission could not solve problems such as the transition from the

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customs union to the economic union, Europe’s enlargement, and the creation of a ‘political Europe’ which could establish precise decisionmaking procedures. In conclusion the UPF wrote: ‘At the end of this year everyone can and should draw a simple and clear conclusion: in the second half of the 20th century the serious problems of every country can be solved only by means of organized and permanent co-operation between states, and a European federation is an institution that can and should organize that co-operation.’42 On 22 January 1972 Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Norway signed treaties of accession to the European Community.43 This widening of the Community was complemented by its deepening in the form of the European monetary area, created on 1 July 1972, which put the EEC on the path to supranationalism in the monetary field. Notwithstanding this progress the Polish federalists maintained that without ‘political Europe’ it would be impossible to solve any serious problem of the Community in the long run. They believed that every problem on the level of governments ceased to be technical and became political44 and stressed that the deepening and enlargement of the EEC was recommended by the conference of the heads of state and government as early as 1969 in The Hague but little progress had been achieved since then, particularly in regard to deepening.45 European Community structures were inadequate to respond to, or to shape, the changes in power relationships in the world, Polish federalists contended. At the same time, however, everyday practice in the EEC exceeded the powers granted in the Rome Treaty, proving the correctness of the political perspectives set out in the treaty. For example, the introduction of regular meetings of foreign ministers (every six months) and heads of the political departments of their ministries was a step towards the establishment of political structures. These meetings would increase the chances of reaching agreement on foreign policy among the member states and open the door to establishing regular meetings of ministers for European affairs as well as a permanent political secretariat, both proposals of President Pompidou. But, in the view of the UPF, ‘none of the areas (. . .) of cooperation will be correct and stable if there is no political authority’.46 A summit of the heads of government of the Six took place in Paris on 19 and 20 October 1972. The agenda was wide-ranging including a number of economic projects such as the creation of the European Monetary Cooperation Fund, the introduction of a common policy for consumer protection and the beginning of common energy policy. Political questions for discussion included the establishment of ministries

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for European affairs, the enlargement of the rights of the European Parliament, and elections to the Parliament by direct voting. Social affairs including the introduction of a European regional policy were also brought into the discussion. An order to abolish immigration controls at the internal borders of the Community was adopted, and a directive on the introduction of European citizenship, giving political rights to the citizens of member countries residing in other EEC countries. The final declaration of the Paris summit defined the methodology for strengthening Community institutions and creating the European Union. In discussing economic and technical problems the Article on Economic and Monetary Union was of key importance. By contrast the small sections on political subjects offered some ill-defined promises, notably the promise to create the European Union, comprising ‘all relations between member states’, which was to be achieved before 1980. In short, the Paris summit identified the building of a united Europe as a top-down process, but preferred to take action in the economic field. The Polish federalists concluded that these decisions were neither completely satisfactory, nor completely without value. At least dates for the economic and political union of Europe had been agreed.47 After the summit the UPF drew attention to its own federalist ideas on the future of the European Union and discussed proposals from organizations with which it was associated. A special commission, ‘La Fédération’, tried to work out a method of creating ‘political Europe’ by forming political bodies of the ‘Nine’.48 Keeping up the momentum towards the political union of Europe meant rejecting the principle of ‘all or nothing’ and the promotion of doctrinaire theses (federation or confederation). Instead the commission proposed arriving at a European federal agreement in two stages. In the first stage a Committee of Wise Men, independent and competent persons with experience in high European positions, should be appointed by the Committee of Ministers and the European Commission. In the second stage, the Permanent Secretariat, set up by a separate treaty, would be created. After 18 months a special commission should work out proposals for a federal pact. Under the leadership of the President of the ‘Committee of Wise Men’ the commission would consist of the head of the European Commission, the speaker of the European Parliament, and the head of the European Economic and Social Council. It should gather the opinions of all political, professional, ideological, local, regional and national and international organizations interested in European construction. It could invite experts and independent people to participate in its meetings as well as creating its own research commissions. After no more than 18 months the commission

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should present its proposals for a federal constitution and set out the timetable for the establishment of a supreme court, a European executive, a legislative assembly elected by direct vote, and an advisory federal senate representing territorial entities. These proposals should then be presented to the heads of state and government. If the constitution were adopted it would be signed by governments and ratified, within an agreed period, by methods appropriate to each member state. After that the Permanent Political Secretariat would be dissolved.49 In the first half of 1970s the contrast between a ‘federal Europe’ of the kind described and unification by means of the ‘community method’ became more marked. After the presidential elections in France when Giscard d’Estaing was elected, Paris insisted on accelerating the movement towards integration. In December 1974 at a summit of the Nine in Paris it was decided that meetings of the heads of state and government should take place regularly. These meetings, however, did not evolve into an executive body equipped with appropriate competences, nor did they result in the establishment of a permanent political secretariat. For federalists that meant that ‘things would stay as they were’. Moreover, the manner in which day-to-day problems were solved by the European Commission showed clearly that decision-making in the EEC was not transparent. Federalists believed that only a supranational body, i.e. the executive organ of the Community, could introduce a clear division of roles and responsibilities. The election of the European Parliament set for May 1978 inspired great hope among the federalists. Polska w Europie published the following commentary: Let’s hope that in the first Sunday of May 1978 millions of Community citizens will elect 355 members of the European Parliament. It is high time because the great machine of the European Commission begins to rust and frighten even omnipotent technocrats, called ‘Eurocrats’. They have become convinced that even they will not be able to build a united Europe by sitting at their desks, and that...everyday contact with those for whom a united Europe is being built, is needed.50 The European Parliamentary elections were expected to be the first step on the way to a ‘political Europe’ because opponents of a federal Europe would be beaten at the polls. They admonished supporters of the Gaullist vision for Europe on the grounds that a ‘Europe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Urals’ could only be Soviet and claimed that a united ‘political Europe’ was the only possibility of peacefully liberating Poland from the Soviet ambit.51

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Another feature of the UPF’s thinking on European affairs was its advocacy, dating from the mid-1960s, of the idea of European citizenship. It believed that the so-called Convention of Settlement, promulgated by the Council of Europe and implemented on 23 February 1965, was very important. It gave the citizens of the ratifying countries various rights including the right to settle in other countries for a long period or permanently, to enjoy the civil rights of that particular country, and to have the rights to work and study.52 ‘European citizenship’ meant that every level between the smallest village and the Continent as a whole had its own particular roles and responsibilities. It proposed that ‘Genuine democracy is on the bottom and not on the top of the state ladder’, in other words democracy should grow from below. Polish federalists made a distinction between the functions that belonged to the people at lower levels, and those that belonged to the state at a higher level. From the mid 1960s the UPF promoted the concept of a ‘Europe of neighbours’ since a ‘Europe of alliances’ belonged to the past. It recommended the building of another Europe based not on absolute sovereignty but on organic unions. Only the European federation could be such a union. Defending the idea Polish federalists claimed that ‘Geography is unchangeable but history is influenced by people. If we do not want to provide future Polish generations with a third world war, most probably an atomic one, we should think about improving relations with neighbours, with all neighbours! And it is better to do that today rather than tomorrow and better tomorrow than the day after tomorrow. Of course, our neighbours have similar obligations towards us.’53 In this connection it was expected that the European Federation would improve Polish–German relations since it would eliminate the possibility of recreating and intensifying German nationalism. A future ‘European patriotism’ and ‘European spirit’ would contribute to that, as would the support of German federalists, who supported Polish–German co-operation. Furthermore, in the framework of a federation, Germany would not be able to impose its own national goals on the rest of its partners. As far as the Polish–German border was concerned, the Polish federalists contended that the problem would solve itself, though its regulation would be essential since ‘The border between two states that belong to the Federation cannot be of the same nature as a border between two sovereign states’.54 The concept of a ‘Europe of neighbours’ was publicized by the UPF in the period before the first direct elections to the European Parliament. It asked what conditions would have to be met if a ‘solid attempt to normalise relations with Poland’s neighbour-nations’ were to be successful.

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These conditions, it argued, could be achieved in a federation (a union state), a confederation (a union of states) or, an indirect solution, a community model. Which version should be chosen would depend on the international situation. Moreover, the citizens of East European origin who lived in the European Community states should participate in the building of a political Western Europe.55 Campaigning for participation in the European parliamentary elections was considered to be the main obligation of every Polish federalist. For the first time citizens of Europe, and not only governments, could take a stance on the question of unification.56 It will be clear from this discussion that the programme of the UPF was developed in the 1950s but within the following two decades important modifications were made connected with changes in international relations and dependent on the way in which the European Community was created. The final goal remained unchanged – the creation of the European federation. In the opinion of the UPF leaders, this was a ‘guiding concept’ for the Polish nation, which would guarantee security for Poland. It rejected the existing system of satellite states dependent on Moscow.57 These federalists abhorred any form of nationalism, and were convinced that a united Europe could not be ‘a sum of nationalisms’, which would obviously prevent the continent from achieving stable unification. The idea of sovereignty was considered to be an instrument ‘in the sphere of the state’ and references to it were negative. The Polish federalists felt themselves to be patriots, but the limit of their patriotism was the ‘good of a wider community’.58 In the mid 1970s the UPF put forward its fully developed conception of a European federation. This corresponded to the proposals of federalist organizations in Western Europe. In the federal system, a state rejects lawlessness and subordinates itself to the suprastate legal system, to principles of justice, and to legislation adopted by the federal parliament. In a political system based on federalist principles, the struggle for the egotistic interests of states with ‘unlimited sovereignty’ would disappear, and ‘nationalist temptations of one nation to rule over another’ would not arise. The goal of federalism was a union state. European countries were expected to give up part of their sovereignty in the interests of the federal government, which would have power over foreign and defence policy and the monetary system. On the basis of the federal constitution, precisely defined powers would be transferred to the European government, parliament and supreme court. At the same time Polish federalists emphasized respect for the rights of member states, for national distinctiveness, and for the freedom of citizens. Big and small nations alike

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were partners in deciding the future of the Community. The European federation would constitute a European region, which was defined as a group of states that solved common problems – examples were the Scandinavian, Balkan and Central East European regions. The Polish federalists were against centralization. They opposed the omnipotence of an anonymous bureaucracy in a centralized state, and supported multi-level self-government connected with local organizations. They considered nations to be at the highest level of a social hierarchy, and therefore they must be free to create a united Europe.59 They assumed that an association of west European states, gradually deepening their mutual relations to become an increasingly powerful political actor, would ultimately be able to expand eastwards incorporating the satellite states of Central East Europe. This was an act of faith which other Polish exiles who observed various western initiatives to conciliate the Soviet Union, culminating in détente, found it difficult to share. Conciliation would, they feared, postpone the liberation of Central East Europe into the indefinite future and all the anticipations of the UPF for a regional federation encompassing the whole of Europe would come to nothing. Hence the problems caused by coexistence, neutralism and détente had to be faced squarely. Their resolution could not be achieved by focusing attention solely on the evolution of the EEC. The UPF was characterized by a deep interest and involvement in movements for European unity rooted in Western Europe. In this aspect it differed from most Polish political parties or groupings in exile. These were generally far more inward looking. Though they were interested in Poland’s place in Europe and in proposals for Europe’s future in a world dominated by the superpowers they did not integrate to the same extent with federal organizations in Western Europe. As parties they offered a broad prospectus to their fellow exiles, and prospectively to a Polish electorate after the liberation of their countries from Soviet domination. Inevitably these prospectuses embraced foreign and domestic policies for an independent Poland; how Poland would relate to the new Europe that was emerging was only one plank in their platforms. Obviously they could not be as single-minded as the UPF. It is clear that these often tiny parties were aware of developments in both Western Europe and the world as a whole and tried to accommodate their policies to these new realities. It is therefore worth examining their European policies in some detail in order to convey something of the complexity and the variety of these approaches.

8 European Ideas of Polish Political Parties

The Polish parties in exile discussed a range of ideas about the future of Central East Europe, its relations with Western Europe, and even how it would fit into the ‘global country’. Although these parties differed over the details of their plans, there was a broad agreement in principle. The consensus which held for most of the post-war period included a belief in the necessity for Central East Europe to unite (in one or more regional associations), to associate with other regional associations in Europe, and ultimately to create a pan-European entity which could take its place among the world’s great powers. This outcome would ensure the security and economic growth of the Central East European region. The parties differed over the structure and composition of this regional organisation, and whether the pan-European association should be part of a global federation. The ideas of the parties, and the debates within and between them, offer a rich source of information about the thinking of the Polish exiles in the four decades after the end of the Second World War. There were eight main Polish political groups active in exile in the decades after 1945. The term ‘group’, not ‘party’, has been chosen deliberately. It is true that some of these groups were formed before the Second World War and could legitimately be termed parties. These included the ‘historical parties’ such as the Polish Socialist Party, the Polish Peasant Party and the National Party. In the years 1945–1989 they functioned as entirely independent and legitimate political bodies but only in exile. Other groups were established outside Poland during and after the war entirely from scratch. They were formed mainly by people who had not previously been members of any parties. They included the Polish Liberation Movement ‘Independence and Democracy’, the League of Poland’s Independence, the Independent Social Group and the Peasant Party ‘Freedom’. The Democratic Party which existed both inside Poland 143

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and in exile was an exception. The term ‘political group’ seems to be a more precise and useful term since it does not compel us to define the term ‘party’ in emigration conditions. The federalist ideas of these groups between 1945 and 1989 offer quite contrasting perspectives. It is worth providing some basic information about these groups, their origins, their ideas, the composition of their management committees, their newspapers and periodicals, and the key dates in their evolution, before discussing their ideas about the political order in Europe after the liberation of their countries.1

1. The Polish Liberation Movement ‘Independence and Democracy’ A week after the Yalta conference held on 19 February 1945, a constituent meeting of the Polish Liberation Movement ‘Independence and Democracy’ (NiD) was convened. Its first mass meeting was held on 30 April. The name and structure of the organisation were agreed at a General Assembly in London on 20 July 1945, when the first Council was elected. The group consisted mainly of young people who were former activists in a number of organisations. The Council elected the Presiding Board chaired by Andrzej Pomian, and Rowmund Pil sudski became president of the Central Executive Committee, a position he held for an extraordinary 37 years. Jan Jankowski and Jerzy Lerski became vice-presidents.2 The group formulated its basic programme in October 1945, and from May 1947 published a journal Trybuna somewhat intermittently.3 NiD produced the most sophisticated and well-thought-out concept of a multi-level confederation, and it is therefore worth noting how this concept evolved. As early as 1945–1946, when they began to develop their ideas, the leaders of the group confined their attention to European issues, thinking that the solution to the problem of security for the countries of Central East Europe was to be found within a broader political system. They saw only two possibilities: one was the consolidation of the Soviet Union’s hegemony, and the other was the construction of a system of political unity in Europe based on spiritual and cultural unity. Though the choice was obvious, the term ‘European unity’ needed clarification. The leaders of NiD were apprehensive about the economic and political domination of Germany in any system organised on the basis of individual states’ membership. Accordingly, they opted for creating several regional groupings of European countries, each of which would constitute a kind of counterbalance to /

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German power. One of these groups would be the federation of Central and East European countries. The new European system would function on the basis of cooperation between these regional groups, which would be a natural method for solving Polish problems.4 This aspect was emphasised in NiD’s first policy paper: ‘We still have to remember that the Polish nation, both as regards its history and civilisation, constitutes an organic part of Europe and it is only in the framework of a European community of free societies that it can preserve its personality, which will never be possible if it is outside the community’.5 In 1947 NiD took the idea of European unity somewhat further by proposing a three-level union. As before it called for the creation of regional federations (Latin, West European, German, Scandinavian and East European) but these federations would then join together to form an internally well-balanced ‘European confederation’. This confederation, in turn, together with other extra-regional groups such as the United States, the British Commonwealth, the USSR and China, would become the foundation of a future ‘global country’6. In a resolution adopted by NiD’s first Congress in December 1947 the delegates set out the principles underlying the future international order. They recommended that nationalistic ideas be replaced by a universal commitment to ‘the world’s independence’. The aim of the new international order, they argued, should be to guarantee the independence of all nations as members of political and economic communities. The delegates affirmed that ‘an independent nation is the one which can decide its own fate in the system of equal rights for all nations’.7 This universalism, as understood by NiD, would be embodied in a voluntary extra-national, decentralised and multi-level international organisation with the characteristics of ‘a union of regional unions’. The world system would include ‘the European federation’ consisting of regional unions at the lower level, where ‘the federation of the Central and East European countries’ would find its place. The nations bound together in this way would retain their independence, but with some restrictions in favour of ‘the global federal organisation’. NiD argued that the global organisation would have responsibility for the maintenance of general security and peace, for the preservation of national freedoms, for guaranteeing respect for law and justice in international relations, for disseminating the blessings of civilisation, and ensuring fundamental human rights.8 The concept of ‘the global country’ was most fully expounded in the work of Zbigniew Jordan, a philosopher and publicist, and one of the main ideologists of the movement. He created a code of rights which

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set out the forms of international co-operation to be practised in the global country. Certain common institutions such as a global parliament, a global executive and a global police force would be indispensable. The task of the global government was to establish the rule of law between nations and to free humanity from the fear of war. The government would base its authority on the maintenance of order and on the achievement of an increase in living standards for all nations by promoting world trade through the removal of protective tariffs. This would ensure the more profitable exchange of goods and raw materials. Jordan conceded that these developmental functions would have to be postponed until regional and continental communities could function more efficiently. In the meantime a global police force would maintain law and order and prosecute criminals, and global courts would resolve disputes between nations. In this way global government would discredit the prevalent idea that force had priority over law in international relations.9 NiD emphasised the dangers arising from the existence of nuclear weapons at a time when the world still depended on old political structures. Jordan predicted that unless the world modernised these structures, nothing would save it from its final fall into the abyss.10 Until now the proportion between physical space and the power wielded in that space reduced the potential for the permanent exercise of power. Exceeding ‘the maximum space’ determined by this proportion finally led to the fall of empires including the Roman and Napoleonic empires and the 3rd Republic of Poland. According to Jordan, the nuclear age annulled this condition and created ‘a fatal threat for all mankind’.11 Moreover, political borders, starting from the period of the industrial revolution, ‘were becoming an even more vivid absurdity’. Nationalism was in opposition to industrialisation; where industrialisation required economic integration, nationalism introduced political divisions reflected in protectionism, the establishment of customs barriers, and the conclusion of bilateral arrangements. Clearly there was a fundamental conflict between economic factors forcing countries to integrate and political factors stemming from nationalism which impelled countries to divide into smaller units. However, after the Second World War, the global situation became even more complex. The regional division in Europe resulting from the Iron Curtain was a consequence of the relative military potential of the superpowers, which randomly marked out the geographical limits of each bloc of countries. This division, moreover, broke up the earlier economic regions. As spheres of influence emerged, Jordan feared, all countries in a

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given zone might be entirely exploited by a dominant power.12 However, he argued, somewhat controversially, that integration processes resulting from the scientific and technical revolution would still continue, regardless of any political divisions. ‘The economic integration of the world proceeds using the force of mutual inertia, which, if once set into motion, will never come to a halt by itself until its impetus is exhausted “in one world for all”’.13 Jordan assumed that the global country, by placing limits on the ‘lawlessness’ of nations, would not be depriving those countries of their sovereignty, nor would it require them to waive what had already been acquired. Rather they should create something for which there was a real demand, for example the nurturing of national cultures and traditions within the framework of the global country. He did not consider the restriction of the absolute sovereignty of nations as ‘their annihilation’. The ruling elites would cease to be groups oriented towards aggression and acquisition. World government would come into existence, not to interfere with the internal affairs of the nations or to control their development, but to ensure that their coexistence would not be threatened by military conflicts and acts of aggression committed by the strong against the weak. As Jordan put it, ‘in the world in which nations will only become centres of culture and national tradition, many factors limiting inborn human rights will disappear.’14 Regarding his vision of continental unions, Jordan claimed that even in the periods of the severest depression, the feeling of extra-national unity of the continent did not entirely leave the consciousness of the nations. Consequently this feeling would be revived when antagonisms and hatred brought about by wars ceased.15 He saw that the secret of resistance by the European nations to any attempts to organise Europe ‘on the basis of imperial principles’ lay in their awareness that the balance of power was the most reliable instrument for achieving security. Jordan professed the idea that national feelings arising out of an attachment to a nation’s distinctive forms of life and culture had created among European societies a variety of lifestyles, customs, hierarchies of values and ‘a special code of conduct’. However this development did not simply create differences between the nations since, alongside differentiation of the form went the crystallisation of the common content. This determined the creation of a common European consciousness. Jordan defined this consciousness as ‘the consciousness of aims and values common to all nations, but only realised in different ways’. These aims and values made up the idea of European culture, a sense of belonging to a broader community which entered the mind of each human being on

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the continent. This process resulted in the shaping of the personality of ‘a good European’. ‘A Renaissance man’, he claimed, ‘is still a living and eternally reviving ideal in Europe.’16 Jordan believed that there were three motors driving the unification of the continent: Europe as a geographical entity, where special forms of culture and civilisation had developed; Europe as a political entity with a special vision of its destiny – a community of nations aware of their independence and, at the same time, bound by loyalty and responsibility in relation to the whole; and Europe as an economic entity with a great human and industrial potential as well as natural resources. Successful unification in Europe resulting from these motors would become a trigger for establishing other continental unions.17 Jordan’s opinions may be construed as a reaction against a possible outburst of nationalism of the kind experienced by many nations in the 20th century, and a response to the fear of fanaticism and wars. A Roman ideal of general and eternal peace runs through his opinions. The idea of the global country also has its roots in the Christian universalism of the Renaissance. Jordan’s principle of the universal essence of a human being assumed a logical political shape, the ideal of a universal human community. In his thinking the idea of the global country does not totally conflict with the idea of a national country. Nevertheless he expresses a preference for continental countries which weaken the ‘vices’ of national countries, such as their ruling elites’ tendency to prefer collective interests to individual interests. Other leaders of the Polish Liberation Movement also conceived the idea of the multilevel union which, they perceived, would be very beneficial for Poland since it could ‘be itself’ only within a broader international order, that is to say, one which took into account all the common characteristics of countries and balanced egocentric against integrating tendencies. Only a regional community could protect the Central and East European countries against dependence on Germany. At the same time, a broader European federation would also protect the nations of this area against Russian imperialism.18 NiD’s ideas and proposals might have seemed interesting, were in fact interesting, but they lacked the support of other political centres of Central East European emigration.19 It seemed that some other leaders in exile preferred direct incorporation of the Central European countries into a continental federation rather than the plan of a three-level union, and they also feared excessive restriction on the sovereignty of small nations.20 NiD’s earliest ideas were not modified significantly by many new concepts in the 1950s. The group continued to support the establishment of

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a regional organisation in Eastern Europe which would become one of the foundations of a new European political structure.21 In order to unify Polish federalist activity and to attract other exile groups to cooperate, the members of NiD established the Union of Polish Federalists in 1949 (see Chapter 7). NiD’s participation in the work of the European Union of Federalists and in European Federalists’ Action enabled it to propagate its ideas in an international forum. It persistently promoted the concept of multilevel federalism as opposed to so-called federal centralism, a federal structure for the whole of the European continent.22 The concept of establishing ‘a crystallising centre’ for the regional union which would include three countries from Central Europe was supported by NiD. The resolution of its 3rd General Assembly in October 1956 stated: ‘The fact that on the territory of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary there is an industrial base for this part of Europe makes these countries a natural crystallising centre for the federation of the whole area. Therefore, these countries should, in the first place, establish a federal union among themselves. This Federation of Central and Eastern Europe would only be viable if it contained the entire Czech and Sudety industrial basin of Upper and Lower Silesia, as well as the Oder waterway to the Baltic ports.’23 This proposal did not exclude the possibility of reaching an understanding with Russia. Rowmund Pilsudski claimed that cooperation between the federation of Central Europe and the USSR could have a ‘factual’ and ‘formal’ character, meaning that Russia would gradually lose its satellites in the region. This unlikely proposal was advanced during the period of growing animosity between the USSR and China in 1966. A Central European federation, he argued, would strengthen the states to the west of Russia and hence consolidate Russia’s western boundaries, a particularly valuable development in the event of complications in the Far East. Russia would recognise that a confederation on her western borders would be much more significant than if the three component states were to act individually and be dependent on Moscow.24 However, Pilsudski did not see this plan being effected in the near future. It was unrealistic to suppose that the union could be established except by an understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union on matters which had hitherto divided them in Europe and in the rest of the world.25 NiD later associated the concept of multilevel federalism with the enrichment of various forms of democracy. The liberation aspirations of contemporaries, it argued, could be achieved in a system involving what it called three-dimensional democracy, meaning not only political democracy, but social and economic democracy as well. It was aware that such /

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ideas would appear totally theoretical in Central East Europe under communism. Nevertheless NiD’s leadership was convinced that their ideas for Europe’s future must be vigorously promoted in order to avoid a recurrence of the situation in 1918 when Polish political thought, with its concepts still rooted in the 19th century, had not developed a programme for solving the brand new problems faced by the revived Polish state. Discussion of the federal concepts of NiD should include Aleksander Bregman’s reflections on European integration. A political scientist by education and a historian and journalist by profession, Bregman was a temporary vice-president of the Movement. He left NiD at the beginning of the 1960s but continued to show interest in its plans. Bregman went through the Gaullist model of ‘the Europe of the states’ (‘L’Europe des patries’) and the model of ‘the Europe of the peoples’ with a fine toothcomb. He was absolutely in favour of the latter and opposed de Gaulle’s scheme. He identified the main elements of the Gaullist scheme as being: the principle of taking economic decisions by majority vote, but not extending the same principle to political matters; the right of veto vested in heads of governments; and opposition to the existence of the European parliament and to periodic meetings between heads of states. Bregman predicted that as long as France was ruled by de Gaulle, Europe would never achieve a federation. Bregman identified the basic elements in the model of ‘the Europe of the peoples’ as being: the rejection of the right of veto, and resolving political matters by majority voting; the establishment of the European parliament directly elected by the citizens of the federation countries; and the granting of wide prerogatives to the parliament.26 Bregman assumed that when de Gaulle left office federalists in France would come into their own since they were a significant force among French politicians, particularly those on the Left. However, the evolution of the community into ‘the Europe of the peoples’ could be obstructed by Great Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). Bregman believed, nevertheless, that Great Britain’s reputation as ‘the mother of democracy’ would, in the long run, favour the further strengthening of parliamentary authority in order to establish proper control over the executive branch. Consequently, ‘the British impediment’ could turn out to be much weaker than originally expected.27 In Bregman’s opinion, it was historic logic that made a federation the only practical system for meeting the needs of a united Europe, but it was not to be expected that evolution in this direction would be rapid. He opposed too obtrusive a promotion of ‘integral federalism’. Nor could he imagine a constituent assembly adopting a constitution

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for the Community in the short term. This could only be ‘a slow process achieved in stages’. In his opinion, the future unification of the continent based on the model of ‘the Europe of the peoples’ would provide Poland with indisputable benefits. ‘I do not doubt’ he wrote, ‘that if Poland could participate in the construction of a united Europe today, it would vote in favour of federal solutions. It is different in the case of a European edifice erected without our participation. But even in this case federal institutions would benefit us. Only a truly united Western Europe would be powerful enough to affect the balance of forces in the world.’28 It did not escape Bregman’s notice that Moscow’s potential manoeuvres in opposition to ‘the Europe of the peoples’ could be dangerous, and he did not exclude the possibility of the transformation of the entire Soviet block into a quasi-federation.29 However, was this plan to incorporate the entire area of Central and Eastern Europe, attributed to Stalin by Milovan Djilas, accepted by Stalin’s followers? By the 1960s this possibility may already have been excluded.

2. The League of Poland’s Independence This League was finally established in the autumn of 1947. It brought together groups and personalities from amongst Józef Pilsudski’s followers (including all the pre-war fractions) and merged them into a unified organisation. The League’s publication was the annual Information Bulletin. Its activities were mainly conducted in Great Britain, where the Council and the Main Executive Committee had their offices. However, it had members in West Germany and the United States, as well as in Australia, Denmark, France, Canada and Switzerland. On 18 March 1992, at a general meeting, the Council and the Main Executive Committee decided to dissolve the group.30 From its earliest days the League assumed that international relations should be based on cooperation between regional unions. At a meeting on 5 and 6 June 1948, the League called for Poland’s admission to federal unions and advocated permanent interstate connections between the nations of the Intermarium.31 M. Grazyn ˙ ´ski, later president of the League for many years, was an advocate and promoter of this idea. He became fascinated by the Intermarium concept in 1947 when he was living in Palestine. He thought it was very closely related to Polish historical traditions and to the Promethean doctrine. Grazyn ˙ ´ski did not conceal his ambition to continue the work of Józef Pilsudski, involving the parallel promotion of both federal and Promethean programmes.32 /

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The Intermarium project involved the 16 states of Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Baltic countries. The ideas behind this project were most clearly formulated in the declaration of the Rome club, the so-called ‘Free Intermarium Charter’.33 The authors of the plan assumed a close cooperation with both Anglo-Saxon powers in the political, economic and social fields. They also declared that the confederation would attempt to establish correct relations with the Russia ‘as soon as [Russia] renounced its imperialistic aspirations’. They indicated their interest in a continental federation, on the understanding that the regional confederation of the Intermarium states ‘would facilitate the organization of Europe as an integrated political, economic and cultural structure’.34 The authors of the Intermarium idea did not call for the establishment of a global union, and the concept of the global country cannot be found in the League’s programme. Nevertheless the programme did state that the union of Central and Eastern Europe together with other similar groups would constitute ‘a strong political foundation for the global organisation’.35 However, this did not mean that the League envisaged the creation of extra-regional and extra-continental institutions as an imminent possibility. Hence the difference between the concepts of the League and those of NiD was that the former did not support multilevel federalism, and limited itself to promoting the integration of countries on the regional and continental levels. The League offered clear support for the unification of Europe after the establishment of the EEC. But, first, League activists wanted to propagate a model scheme for a regional community and therefore tried to improve on the original ideas for an Intermarium confederation. Their most important task, they believed, was to outline the principles underlying the confederation. The highest priority was to establish a proper legal order. This was conditional on a clear understanding of how the principle of sovereignty should be applied between the confederation and the member states. They identified two faces of national sovereignty. The first, a positive one, was a condition for the full spiritual, cultural, and economic development of each of the nations. The second was negative, that is when a member state forced its point of view on fellow members. The Intermarium community would require the member states to retain within their sovereignty all that was necessary for the development of their cultures, and to transfer ‘in favour of the common good’ all the attributes of sovereignty necessary for ‘agreeable coexistence and common defence’. The relations between the nations of Central and Eastern European were obviously idealised; it

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was claimed that they had always been characterised by ‘moral moderation’, mutual help and respect, as well as tolerance for differences of religion and nationality.36 Characterising these societies in such an exaggerated way, focusing only on their positive aspects, was part of their vigorous promotion of the idea of regional unions. Within the unions there should be no privileges for larger states, including Poland, thus eliminating any tendencies towards hegemony. The nations should all be equal, and the obligations which they assumed should be proportional to the human potential and wealth of the member states.37 From the time that the League adopted the Intermarium concept it made every effort to maximise support for it. Its leaders did not expect any backing from the international federal movements. They were perfectly aware of the conflict of interests between the promoters of ‘integral federalism’ and the supporters of the idea of ‘European unity’. The first group, under the umbrella of the European Parliamentary Union presided over by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, wanted to create a federation with its own constitution and institutions of state.38 The latter, assembled in the European Movement, in which Churchill was originally a moving force, aimed to unite Europe gradually by creating specialist institutions and by supporting government initiatives through those institutions.39 The orientation to ‘European unity’ ultimately proved to be effective. League leaders were affronted by the reluctant attitude of the European Movement to approve their plans for the establishment of local and regional federations. Notwithstanding these developments, the League expected that ‘a parliament of exile representatives’ would be established and become a forum for the development and refinement of the Intermarium concept and its practical application.40 Proposals for the establishment of this ‘parliament’ were submitted by the Polish government-in-exile on several occasions, but they were not accepted by the principal centres of other emigrations.41 The question of the territorial extent of the community was not discussed. Although the League advocated self determination for many of the nations of the Russian Empire, including the Cossacks and the peoples of the Caucasus, this did not imply that they would be admitted to the confederation. It was proposed that the governments of the Anglo-Saxon powers, supported by the international community, should be the guarantors of these nations’ sovereignty. Here the League drew directly upon the Promethean doctrine which envisaged not only the separation of the union republics from the Soviet Union, but also the secession of some national areas which were part of the Russian state.42

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Only one of the principal leaders of the League, T. Komarnicki, elaborated his vision of a union of the Central and East European countries.43 Komarnicki thought that the best moment, and perhaps the only one, for developing the union, would be when the Soviet Union dissolved. At that point the union would have to create a coherent foreign policy and become a reliable partner in international relations, but its dependence on the western powers should be kept to a minimum. The tightening of economic ties between member states was of secondary importance for Komarnicki. As for defence, Komarnicki argued that if there were an effective transition to democracy following the collapse of authoritarian regimes the problem of security would recede into the background. Otherwise he assumed the necessity to organise Western and Central Europe into one military block. He did not think that fledgling democracies would be willing to give up control of their own armies in favour of some joint armed forces. Nevertheless, there would have to be informal and permanent cooperation of General Staffs. As for federal institutions, Komarnicki preferred a two-chamber parliament with only one directly elected chamber, and executive bodies to be created in stages. Komarnicki dismissed the idea of the United Nations taking over world government based on principles of equality and the right to self-determination for all nations.44

3. The Independent Social Group This Group, established in 1949, was mainly composed of social activists undertaking various political activities, but not associated with any of the historical parties, or with the League of Poland’s Independence or NiD.45 The Group took a neutral position on the question of the future political system in Poland.46 It was dissolved in April 1992.47 The leaders of the Group supported the Intermarium idea and were very active in promoting it, but later turned their attention to the development of the European Communities, in their view the most promising route to a united Europe. Their studies of federalism were stimulated by the outbreak of the Korean War. Membership of the Group included a large number of exarmy officers who usually demonstrate a deeper understanding of politics when politics is directly related to war. Under the impact of the Korean conflict public opinion concluded that the future system of European security would have to be based on the balance of forces between the powers, or the balance of forces between regional groups.48 General Sulik vividly illustrated this argument: ‘We can either surrender to Moscow or

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organise the world into communities of federal unions, which are strong enough to resist a few aggressive and rapacious nations.’ He thought that the unions would be needed immediately, although the Intermarium could only be achieved in the distant future.49 The political thought of the Independent Social Group is characterised by an open and unorthodox vision of federalism. Not surprisingly the group gave an enthusiastic welcome to the plans for the European Defence Community (EDC) and the European Political Community (EPC). These organisations were seen as the military and political structures of the future continental federation. Members of the group feared only one thing, namely the hegemony of Germany in an integrated Europe. To avoid this Germany would have to be balanced by a regional federation of Central and Eastern Europe.50 The fact that the EDC and the EPC were both rejected was a setback for the Group, but they continued to promote the Intermarium project. Their 1955 programme mentioned the common economic interests connecting the nations of the region, the community of their cultures and the imperative to create ‘a permanent political union’.51 In the 1970s and 1980s leaders of the group paid close attention to integration processes in Western Europe. They attached crucial importance to economic, scientific, technological, as well as cultural, developments and assessed the effects of the accelerating pace of the scientific and technological revolution in Europe. If medium and small countries in Europe were not to lag behind they had to coordinate their efforts, liquidating restrictive barriers in order to ensure the most rational use of their own resources.52 Another stimulus to integration, they believed, was the growth of pro-European attitudes among young people in both parts of the continent. The education of young people was profoundly important since these were the people with opportunities to make political decisions in the future, ‘in the spirit of European institutions and undertakings’. They supposed that such terms as ‘Europe’ and ‘European’ must mean for these young people specific transnational interests, aims and ambitions. This was the basis for a somewhat exaggerated expectation that ‘the place of a traditionally narrow understanding of nationalism’ would probably be taken by a wider ‘European nationalism’.53 They did not speculate, however, as to when and with what consequences these processes would occur in Central East Europe. They rejected the notion that ‘Central European nationalism’ would replicate the nationalism developed in the countries of the EEC. At the end of the 1980s the idea of a regional federation was somehow ‘flattened’ within the political thought of the Independent Social Group. This federation was now referred to only as ‘a platform for cooperation with our neighbours.’

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4. The Polish Socialist Party The Polish Socialist Party left the government-in-exile coalition as early as 1947. For many subsequent years the party was in opposition to the Presidency of the London government.54 The Party had branches in Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States, as well as Great Britain.55 In the years 1948–87 the party held as many as 11 assemblies. In 1959 it split into two factions; the faction which promoted the idea of ‘a socialist alternative’, presided over by Zygmunt Zaremba, was the dominant group. It retained the name of the Polish Socialist Party and published its journal Robotnik (‘The Worker’). The rival faction was presided over by Adam Ciolkosz, chairman of the Central Committee of the Polish Socialist Party. The factions merged at a joint assembly held in November 1987.56 Initially socialists seemed to pay little attention to the issue of European unification. An assembly of the Polish Socialist Party held in exile in Pontà-Lesse adopted the slogan ‘pluralistic solutions’. It opted for creating extra-national organisms on a global and a European scale. The resolution adopted by the assembly envisaged the transformation of the United Nations into ‘a union of nations’ with its own executive and the power to make decisions regardless of a veto exercised by one of the great powers. Socialists assumed that Europe would be integrated within the framework of the United Nations and form ‘a union including all nations who saw their duty as belonging to a European community’. However, they did not specify the precise shape of such a European federation.57 Polish socialists expected that federal projects would be designed and publicised by the Socialist International. In the autumn of 1949 the Council of the Polish Socialist Party suggested that the International’s objective should be the unification of Europe ‘based on a socialist planned economy, the freedom of nations, respect for human rights, as well as international cooperation based on equality of rights and obligations’.58 When, following the establishment of the International, these expectations were not fulfilled (no precise programme was established), the second Assembly of the party called for a plan for the future organisation of Central Europe to be devised and implemented by the Socialist Union of Central and Eastern Europe which had been established as early as 1948.59 The plan proposed a regional union based on federal lines. This preference was obviously influenced by the creation of the EEC which Polish socialists thought was determined by ideological factors and in response to economic conditions.60 They saw in the Treaties of Rome a basis for shaping a new political and economic /

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power in Europe, which would be able to confront the widening influence of the Soviet Union. The creation of the Common Market was mainly determined by economic conditions. It was intended to remove those economic and institutional restrictions which impeded the greater efficiency of modern production technologies in order to make it possible for the countries of Western Europe to achieve the same standard of living as the United States.61 The analyses of integration by Feliks Gross, a prominent Socialist thinker, require close attention. He argued that only extensive economic markets could ensure a high standard of living for societies. Small markets did not allow for the use of such modern production methods as automation or construction of large energy systems. He wrote that ‘mass production and automation facilitate the production of cheap goods in large quantities, but it may only be continued provided that there is a continuous and wide demand for them. This demand may be provided by large markets extending over not only countries but continents as well. The boundaries of the national state are in conflict with modern production and welfare requirements of the working masses’.62 Gross argued that the political and economic development of the world led to the creation of continental and even intercontinental political and economic groups. This development would loosen the boundaries of economic regions, which often did not match administrative and political boundaries. He did not envisage any blurring of differences between the nations. A nation, understood as a union of people with similar culture, history, tradition and customs, and also seen as ‘the community of fate’, would still play a significant role. However, the nations would have to delegate many of their functions to political institutions with an extra-national character which he believed would facilitate the creation of new social and political bonds between them. These processes would first have to be conducted in the countries of Western Europe. The solutions worked out in these countries could then be adapted for Central and Eastern Europe even though the new organisational forms would diverge from previously established forms of federalism.63 Gross strongly emphasised the importance of the geopolitical factor. He claimed that ‘the central European belt’ was still of primary importance for the strength and coherence of the European continent. Without the countries of this region Europe was ‘dangerously weak’. What were the effects of the creation of the Soviet block, he asked? ‘Europe’ he replied ‘has an open border and at the same time it has been pushed back to the sea coast and has shrunk to the size of a peninsula.’ There was a

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pressing need, therefore, to create a federation of West European countries. Indicating the need for integration of the countries of Central East Europe, Gross made a clear distinction between federation and confederation. The latter had the greatest chance of implementation, placing it within the framework of ‘a wider European union’. He formulated his proposals as follows: ‘Central and Eastern Europe organised as a regional group, and perhaps a confederate one, within the framework of the European Union, offers a solution for the federal and democratic future. Today, such a solution still seems very distant. Eastern Europe is a part of European culture and it is impossible to separate it from the West.... United Europe, being part of a larger democratic union and the Atlantic Union, would have a real possibility of development.’64 It is difficult to find in this project any analogies with a three-level federation of a universal character as suggested by supporters of NiD. There is no mention in Gross of other regional unions in Europe or other continental unions. His priorities are the unification of the two parts of Europe, namely Western and Central, and the inclusion of the countries of North America in the confederation. Gross presented similar proposals in a paper to a conference of the Council of the Socialist Union of Central and Eastern Europe held in July 1958.65 He recommended the creation of a regional union based on western models, but the Socialist Union leaders opted for a federation and the principle of socialist planning as employed in the countries of Eastern Europe. These ideas were supported by Zaremba’s majority group in the Polish Socialist Party.66 After the split with Ciolkosz’s faction, this point of view was expressed even more clearly. The Central Committee under Zaremba’s leadership resolved in November 1962 that the form the political union of Europe was to take depended on the economic system of the European Community. The Community should not become ‘an area of politics dominated by international cartels and trusts not controlled by society’. Rather, it must ensure constant and balanced economic, social and cultural progress for the nations of Europe, based upon the exhaustive development of its technological, scientific and cultural resources. If this were achieved then the countries of Central East Europe should come under the auspices of the EEC whose economic assistance would stimulate their growth and development.67 Meanwhile Gross conducted further studies on federalism and European integration. For him, the creation of the European Union required something more than ‘a mechanical process’ focusing on diplomatic negotiations and the writing of a constitution. Rather it required the setting of common values and the education of ‘a new human being’ /

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who, politically speaking, was supposed to think and feel more deeply through understanding the problems of the whole of Europe and not only those of one nation, city or ‘an immediate vicinity’.68 Attachment to the European Union would not necessarily clash with the national consciousness of a member state. Gross made the persuasive point that transformations in the political thought of Europeans and a redefinition of their social standards must precede or accompany the creation of the European Union. This revolution in thought and values should be achieved ‘without the use of a guillotine or of violence’. Without this revolution and ‘the transformation of states which act, vote and make decisions’ it would be impossible to obtain the consent of various nations for a new union. Gross could not predict how this transformation of values would be achieved though he considered two possibilities, namely the old values would either meld with the new, or brand new values would be created. One way or another, he believed that ‘a new political human being’ would be born. He described this human being as ‘a literal European’. Gross anticipated that the creation of extra-national loyalty required ‘a psychological revolution’ based on ‘the coordination’ of national loyalty and European loyalty. And this is how ‘HOMO EUROPEUS’ would be born.69 Gross emphasised the permanent weakening of nationalism in West European countries but he was anxious about its steady growth in the countries of Asia and in the Soviet Union. Hence federal solutions had to be made attractive to protect the European continent against threats and armed conflicts emanating from these sources. He referred to the terminology used in the resolution adopted by the first Assembly of the Polish Socialist Party in exile held in Pont-à-Lesse, where federalism was described as ‘a pluralistic concept’. Among the Polish socialists in exile Gross was arguably the one who provided the most precise definition of the federal idea. As ‘a pluralistic concept’ federalism was based on the assumption that respect for local, regional or national differences was a fundamental value in relations between societies. Socialists declared their willingness to protect different traditions and cultures and considered them as ‘a core of common and general values’. From the ‘pluralistic’ point of view then, the European community was not in conflict with national communities. On the contrary, the European community logically extended and complemented them. The community’s values would be complemented by various forms of democracy and self-government. Gross highlighted the division of powers among specific communities. The resulting ‘pluralistic solution’ was one in which ‘the diffusion’ of

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power created a balance against centralist trends as part of ‘a general system’. Gross construed this division of power as being most appropriate for meeting the various needs of European societies.70

5. The People’s Party ‘Freedom’ The People’s Party ‘Freedom’ was established in exile in London in May 1946.71 During the first post-war years ‘Freedom’ was a member of the Council of Polish Political Parties in Great Britain. In the years 1949–1954 it was a member of the 3rd and 4th National Councils and, later, of the Council of the Republic of Poland. The party published a journal, Freedom. The model adopted by the supporters of NiD was utilised by ‘Freedom’ in devising its own structure for a federation, but the party activists did not copy it exactly. Those who were active in Kuncewicz’s faction of the People’s Party associated East European regionalism with elements of Paneuropeanism. They preferred a variant of a three-level worldwide union; this would be composed of regional communities covering particular continents and forming a confederation, which would finally become elements in a superior ‘global block’.72 The justification of the concept was quite unconventional in that Freedom’s programme envisaged a special mission for the peasant (or popular) movements of Central Europe, and from this region the new pro-integrating values would radiate. The federation would cherish certain ideals, which, in the opinion of ‘Freedom’ leaders, were created by popular movements: in particular, the protection of human beings from fear, hunger and political persecution, and respect for the principles of freedom and justice.73 The political thought of this group presented ‘a new world order’, one which provided ‘conditions for cultural and economic development and total economic welfare for all peoples and entities’. It is surprising to read that the construction of this order was entrusted exclusively to the government of the United States.74 Poland was given the role of a pivot binding together the southern and northern parts of Central and Eastern Europe. However, Poland could play this role only if the nations of the region were liberated from Russian dominance.75

6. The Polish People’s Party The activities of this party in exile gained momentum when the former Polish Prime Minister Stanislaw Mikolajczyk arrived in Britain in 1947 after fleeing Poland, and, later, when he moved to the United States. In /

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1950 he established a separate political grouping known as the Polish National Democratic Committee, which was dissolved in 1955. The Polish People’s Party functioned in isolation for a number of years. A faction split off from the party calling itself the Polish People’s Party – National Unity Faction, which was part of the Provisional Government of National Unity (TRJN). At the fourth Unity Congress held in Brussels (October 1968) the factions merged.76 There are few references to the federal idea in the programmes and statements of leaders of this Party. In his appeal to Polonia (the Polish community in emigration) at the meeting of the Polish American Congress in Philadelphia in June 1948 Mikolajczik, who was president of the International Peasant Union, mentioned a possible East European union. He was confident that Polish exiles would find support and cooperation from representatives of all the countries behind the Iron Curtain. For example G. Dimitrov, a Bulgarian and a close associate of Mikolajczik, announced that the International Peasant Union would offer firm support for a federal platform. He saw that the future of Europe lay only in federal and regional unions or even broader ones, depending on ‘the further decisions of voters and their legislative bodies’.77 In the 1950s the Polish People’s Party supported federal concepts at various times. One example of this was the Philadelphia Declaration of 11 February 1951. Emigration politicians from various Central East European countries, including Mikolajczyk, were co-authors of this document. Most of these exiles were connected with the Free Europe Committee (see Chapter 10) which organised the meeting.78 The declaration stated that ‘freedom, similarly to peace, is indivisible’ for the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. As far as the issue of the future regional organisation was concerned, the declaration called for the creation of a federation which would become associated with a united Europe. The federation would include the Baltic countries, but membership of Ukraine and Belarus was not considered. The document was a collection of objectives and principles to be applied in Europe after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.79 Another manifesto of a similar character, the Declaration of Human Rights, was signed in Williamsburg, Virginia on 13 June 1952 by, among others, Mikolajczyk and S. Wójcik. It contained recommendations concerning the human rights of citizens and their status both in their nation of residence and in a future European confederation. The signatories wanted to base the future security of the world on ‘free nations fully exercising the right to internal development and, at the same time, united in larger groups’. The authors of this resolution emphasised that /

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a wholly isolated nation was exposed to great dangers and resembled ‘a vessel during a war, which is not escorted by a convoy and thus exposed to destruction and sinking’.80 The Polish People’s Party expressed its support for federalism most clearly in 1954. It wanted the Central European region to be an ‘integral and irreplaceable’ component in a unified Europe. The membership of the region in ‘free Europe’ would contribute to the suppression of many international conflicts and to the improvement in Polish–German relations. However, if Germany were to be a partner, it would have to ‘revive the spirit of democracy’ and renounce its hegemonial aspirations.81 This stance was re-affirmed in the programme adopted at the Fourth Unity Congress, which assumed the inevitability of regional integration in both politics and economics.82

7. The Democratic Party83 The question of the federation of Central and Eastern Europe was analysed by Stanislaw Olszewski in a Democratic Party publication in 1955. He attached great importance to the motives for creating the union. Conceding that it was impossible to determine the future shape of a united Europe he strongly emphasised the pro-integrating functions of modern technologies, the development of the natural sciences and the dynamic progress of communications and armaments. These factors determined the ability of states in the contemporary world to fulfil their fundamental duty of protecting their citizens against external aggression.84 The countries of Central and Eastern Europe were fated to establish a federation in the future, since ‘in international policy the only nations that count are those which are powerful, not only owing to their social structure, organisation, moral status or political skills, but also on account of the size of their populations, their material resources and their economic development’.85 Olszewski was aware of the difficulties in implementing the federation project. He divided the difficulties into those arising from countries objecting to the very idea of federation, including Germany and Russia (together with Russian emigrants), and those arising from the relations between the Central European countries, which could result from territorial disputes, the escalation of uncompromising nationalistic attitudes, and the ambitions of leaders. Given these two sets of difficulties the problem of the territorial scope of the federation seemed to be particularly complex.86 Olszewski also belonged to a group of Polish politicians in exile who were preoccupied by the question of the future status and /

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international position of Ukraine. He drew on three models: (1) Ukraine’s access to Russia, (2) Ukraine’s separation as a state loosely bound with communities in Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe and (3) Ukraine’s access to a regional federation and, later, the access of these two to a united Europe. While he opted for the third variant he believed that Ukrainian emigrants would prefer the second model.87 Olszewski was rather flexible in his approach to the relationship between a Central East European federation and Germany. He assumed that the federation’s policy towards Germany, based on principles of equality and partnership, together with the potential inherent in the federation itself, would lay the foundations for a regional system of security.88

8. The National Party The Political Committee of the National Party in exile after the Second World War had 60 members, including nationalists residing in various countries in the West. The president of the Central Council was Tadeusz Bielecki. The Party held seven conferences and published a journal entitled My´sl Polska (Polish Thought). The 7th Central Assembly meeting, held in September 1992, decided to dissolve the party and to merge it with the National Democratic Party in Poland.89 Many National Democrats (NDs) were fierce opponents of the Intermarium concept.90 W. Wasiutyn´ski was among the party’s sharpest critics of this concept in the early post-war years. ‘The unification’ he wrote ‘is to be a kind of a cure for all Polish ailments (. . .) I do not in the least deny the benefits for the nations of Central and Eastern Europe arising from closer cooperation or even political unification in a given form. However, considering this cooperation as a cure seems to be an erroneous idea to me. First of all, the nations joined together still do not have any significant power ( . . . ) We do not live in times when power was determined by the ability to raise a large number of army recruits . . . Power is determined more by industry than by the number of people. Ten weaknesses combined do not make power.’91 K. Hrabyk (known under the pseudonym of S. Twardzic), in rejecting this argument, observed that the implementation of the Intermarium project was the only possibility for balancing forces in Europe.92 Similarly T. Piszczkowski agreed that the idea of creating a union of the Central and East European countries had many weaknesses but at the same time acknowledged that the union as a system of regional policy was the only available alternative to the satellite arrangements created by the Soviet Union.93 The establishment of a regional union could be a stage in the realisation of the pan-European

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idea. He added that ‘Polish policy should broaden its horizons beyond Central Europe . . . We always have to watch for transformations in world politics. Depending on these transformations the very idea of Central Europe will also change its character. It can finally become an indirect route to wider international understandings . . . .’94 Piszczkowski’s opinions can hardly be considered representative of the National Party even though he later modified them. Wasiutyn´ski’s stance remained closer to the official interpretation. In the years 1946–48 the NDs were even more oriented towards panEuropeanism. At the same time they opted for ‘a voluntary union’ of the Central European countries, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, and possibly the other two Baltic countries. This block could join a similar group of Balkan countries to become a partner of the West European countries. The NDs rejected the idea of a regional federation, preferring instead a loose multilateral alliance embracing as many as possible of the continental countries.95 As one of the resolutions adopted by the Board of the National Party explained: ‘Western Europe, detached from the rest of Europe, would be an artificial creation as well as a mutilated and incomplete one. It would constitute a group of islands, peninsulas and coasts, which would sooner or later be doomed to destruction in the course of a political and spiritual conquest originating from the interior of the continent. Europe is a separate part of the world only if its dome is supported by strong thousand-year-old political and spiritual pillars standing on the Vistula and Danube.’96 J. Giertych also opposed the Intermarium project, particularly the assumption that there existed natural pre-requisites for unification in the region, as supporters of the project argued. He predicted that smaller nations, and particularly the Czech lands, would resist the idea. He saw Poland’s playing a leading role in the region in close alliance with Great Britain and France. The three countries would jointly be ‘pillars of European order’.97 National Democrats saw pan-European projects from the angle of ‘defence, and the enrichment of elements of European civilisation’. They wrote in My´sl Polska in February 1947: ‘What are the fundamental conditions for reviving something referred to as European civilisation, and what deserves to be defined as Christian civilisation, associated with the Greek traditions of worshipping beauty and freedom of human thought within a strong national organisation? If we want the revival of Europe as a cradle of civilisation, we have to treat it as a whole.’98 A year later the Assembly of the National Party promoted pan-Europeanism as a superior solution, and made the future

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of the countries of the region dependent upon the reconstruction of the entire continent. ‘The cooperation between Central East Europe and Western Europe within the framework of a new European system will constitute one of the main guarantees of the protection and development of our civilisation.’99 National Democrats did not try to determine the form of the proposed union. They assumed that it had to be based upon respect for national autonomies and economic interests, forgetting about past injustices and disputes.100 The pan-European concepts were adopted at the Continental Assembly in Paris in June 1948.101 NDs were even more determined in the 1950s in their opposition to the plans for regional communities. Their frontal attacks were obviously directed against the Intermarium project. In this respect there are no great differences in the group. Even Piszczkowski, once a cautious supporter of the idea of regional union, claimed as early as 1949 that the Intermarium concept was competitive with western plans for unification. He thought that Intermarium’s basic defect was drawing upon the model of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and copying the Jagiellonian idea by the proposal to extend the confederation to Ukraine and Belarus. He claimed that this would result in the loosening of the bonds with the West and the re-absorption of Poland by ‘the principal power in Eastern Europe, which is, and will always be, Russia’.102 Z. Abdank, a famous publicist and ND in the United States, did not see any pre-requisites for creating the union, which was impossible owing to the high degree of antagonism between the nations of Central East Europe. He claimed that ‘the mutual relations between Intermarium partners are best characterised by distrust. If any of them expects friendly relations, one has to look beyond the Intermarium. What the countries want most is a protector. . . . Any neighbourly relations in this region can only be imposed for the present. It is a painful, though temporary, situation, which will cease when the wounds inflicted by the imposition have healed and there will be time for reliable cooperation.’103 NDs proposed a Union of Central Europe which they thought more practical than the Intermarium idea. This Union was a more elaborated proposal than the version dating back to 1946–48. It envisaged ‘a union of countries based upon good relations between neighbours’. There would be five member states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary. Its defensive, and perhaps main, functions would be in relation to Germany. The Union’s main task would be to construct a stable order in Europe between ‘German and Russian dynamism’ and not to be their ‘competitor in disturbance’. It was also important to create bonds with West European countries. Bielecki thought the role of the Union should

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be a ‘balancing factor in the framework of a united Europe’, but he was strongly opposed to writing a constitution for a future union’.104 NDs assumed that international cooperation could be based upon ‘groups of countries’ with two kinds of characteristics, namely those with ‘tighter regional groups’ and those with ‘looser continental groups’. However, they had one significant reservation, namely that cooperation would not and should not limit traditional national autonomies. Hence the Union of Central Europe would not possess the power to limit the sovereignty of its member states except in emergencies such as the need to establish a common defence or to protect the standard of living. In short, NDs took the view that new forms of international relationships could be shaped by a synthesis of the national idea and pan-European concepts, and through ‘cooperation between separate nations in larger groups’.105 As early as 1955 NDs suggested that the attempts to create extranational communities in Western Europe might not be successful. A resolution of the first Central Assembly of the National Party held in London in the same year stated: ‘It is nations, not entities, classes, international organisations or multilingual empires that are the subject of these times’.106 The political thought of the National Party remained faithful to its motto, that a national state would best protect the moral power, patriotism, independence and individual character of each nation. They argued that no superior authority, not even one composed of the ‘brightest and best’ officials, could undertake this task. National Democrats considered a federation to be ‘too tight and rigid’ an international creation, which favoured the hegemony of Germany which was its strongest component. Consequently they opted for a looser form of international links such as a confederation. In the 1960s nationalists claimed that unification based on the Gaullist model of ‘the Europe of the states’ was the ideal form. They saw many virtues in the French plan for synchronising the foreign policies of particular European countries, implementing relations based on the balance of forces, and jointly resisting the hegemony of the most powerful partners. The French plan combined the defence of common interests with the protection of autonomy and national characteristics. In their view ‘the Europe of the states’ would become the confederation.107 Accordingly they saw the tightening of cooperation between Paris and Bonn as a positive phenomenon, a means by which ‘the German threat may lose its clear shape’.108 Our review of the ideas and attitudes of the exile political groups/parties has shown their differences of emphasis but also their unity in advocating, in one form or another, a federal or confederal organisation for the

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states of Central East Europe. Which states should compose this association, whether it should be a tight of a loose organisation, what its relationship with Western Europe should be and whether these states should become direct members of West European organizations such as the European Community were matters for debate. The divisions between the political groups were less important than their agreements. Yet in reaching these agreements the groups did not, in general, react to the pace of change in the Western world and in the relations between the Superpowers and the newly emerging European Community. To see those reactions one has to follow the evolution of ideas among those exiles who had more fully integrated themselves into organisations which interacted with Western political institutions, and appealed in their journals and in their resolutions to the wider English-or French-speaking readership. In doing so they attempted to shape events or, where appropriate, to prevent undesirable international developments which would impact adversely on the prospects for liberation of their countries. Their attempts to grapple with these events and to limit or control the damage done to their national interests will be the next subject for discussion.

9 Liberation, Détente and European Union

The ideas of Polish and other East European exiles were increasingly challenged during the three post-war decades by the changing relations between the Great Powers and the attempts of West European states to sustain their collective interests in a threatening international environment. For federalist thinkers among the exiles the first imperative was the liberation of their countries from Soviet control, followed by the introduction of democratic systems and free elections. These were the indispensable conditions for the establishment of confederal or federal relations between the states of Central East Europe, and for the integration of this region into a united Europe. Developments in international relations in Europe during the Cold War threatened to prevent or to postpone indefinitely the realisation of these objectives. The challenge for the Polish federalists was to persuade Western public opinion of the inadvisability of certain courses of action, and to keep in the forefront of Western minds the importance, in their negotiations with the Soviet Union, of never accepting as permanent the status quo in Central East Europe. In this respect they were guided by the Potomac Declaration of 1954, agreed by Prime Minister Churchill and President Eisenhower that ‘we will not be a party to any arrangement or treaty which could confirm or prolong’ the subordination of formerly sovereign states to the power of Moscow. The story of these decades is the continuing temptation of the Western states to confirm this subordination in return for a diminution of international tension and a lessening of the risk of nuclear conflagration. The exiles were constantly on the defensive during these decades. Their ambitions for their homelands were frequently challenged. Some retained a rigorous and unyielding anti-Soviet line, others were prepared to compromise, placing the freeing of their countries from Soviet rule 168

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and the maintenance of peace above their aims of political and economic integration for their region. In the early 1950s there was general approval of the line taken by President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, the American Secretary of State, that the states of Central East Europe should be liberated from the rule of Moscow. But later the challenges to the interests of these states, as the exiles saw them, came thick and fast. In chronological order these were: peaceful coexistence, proposals for the unification of Germany, neutralisation and disengagement, and finally détente. Each of these initiatives was resisted by a large majority of the exiles, and their resistance tended to widen the gap between themselves and significant sections of public opinion in the west. It is in this context that the exiles found a lessening of sympathy for their cause in the Council of Europe and the European Movement.1 In this chapter we intend to examine these challenges and the exiles’ response to them.

Liberation For a brief period liberation of Central East Europe by force was held out as a possibility by some of the exiles. American supremacy in nuclear weapons at the beginning of the 1950s strengthened this belief. Moreover the exiles hoped that the Soviet Union might withdraw voluntarily from its satellite states in Eastern Europe as a result of economic or political difficulties. There was a brief heightening of expectation as a result of the Republican Party’s rhetoric during the 1952 presidential election in the United States, when talk of liberation ‘raised a dream of noble minds’. Dulles, in attacking the previous ‘containment’ policy inspired by George Kennan, spoke of ‘roll back’ or liberation of the peoples of Eastern Europe. Liberation might be accomplished, he sometimes averred, by processes short of war, for example by moral pressure and by weight of propaganda. Some exiles were sceptical of the harder version of the Dulles line: Adam Ciolkosz, for example, thought that liberation through war was unrealistic and even harmful, ‘assuming it was ever seriously entertained’. The idea of self-liberation was equally unrealistic since the captive nations were too weak to cope unaided. Most unrealistic of all was the belief, or dream, that liberation might ensue spontaneously, without conscious political action. The Hungarian uprising in 1956 showed the bankruptcy of the liberation idea when the United States refused to intervene to help the freedom fighters. Worse, ‘the West lost some of its attractiveness as an exemplar of liberty because it tacitly consented to a flagrant violation of the liberty of a people in the very heart of Europe’. As Juliusz Mieroszewski commented in the journal Kultura, 1956 witnessed the total /

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ineffectiveness and complete failure of ‘liberation’. ‘Fine words’ wrote Polish Affairs ‘proved to be but empty promises’. Writing two decades later Ronald Steel acidly remarked that by liberation ‘Dulles did not mean freeing the satellites from Soviet rule, he meant “clucking his tongue” at Soviet perfidy’. After Hungary liberation quietly disappeared from Dulles’ vocabulary.2 If liberation by force was now ruled out, a section of exile opinion took refuge in Dulles’ idea of moral pressure and the heightening of propaganda to undermine Soviet control in Central East Europe. But others noted that the climate of opinion in both East and West was changing after the death of Stalin, most vividly illustrated by Khrushchev’s speech to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956 in which he denounced Stalin’s regime in graphic terms. There was wide agreement in Moscow that the Soviet Union should decrease tension with Western Europe, in part to get European assistance, in part to try to detach key west European countries from NATO.3 As a result of this and other developments the communist world no longer appeared as monolithic and unchangeable as previously. It was still powerful, but events in Poland and Hungary in 1956 showed how disunited it was and how prone to evolution, even revolution.4 Nationalist and liberal tendencies in these countries were becoming more visible, and the growing differences between the Soviet Union and China could not be ignored. There were more possibilities of international travel after the mid-1950s, some slight easing of the restrictions on intellectuals, a similarly slight improvement in living standards, and a growth of contacts with the free world.5 Some sections of western opinion were seduced into thinking that such forces should be encouraged and peaceful relations enhanced by closer cooperation between the Soviet world and the west. ‘We may have to confront a situation or series of situations’, commented one ‘revisionist’ exile, ‘where we have the opportunity of selecting and encouraging trends more favourable to ourselves.’6 The exiles sniffed danger in this approach, believing that their interests might be neglected in the search for accommodation with Moscow. The arch sceptics among them denounced the so-called liberalisation of the Communist regimes; this was simply the consequence of a brief relaxation of authority and discipline at the height of the struggle for power in the Kremlin. More recently Communist leaders in Moscow had returned to orthodoxy, taking a strong stand against all forms of revisionism and in favour of orthodox Leninist totalitarianism.7 The Paris exile journal Kultura was deeply absorbed by the changes taking place in the Soviet bloc. Contributors systematically analysed the course and the results of the Soviet Communist Party’s 20th

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Congress in 1956, devoting more attention to it than did leadership circles among the exiles. They believed that after the Congress the future of the Central East European countries would depend on the influence of destalinisation on the ‘emancipation processes’ in the Soviet bloc. Hence the journal closely analysed the October 1956 changes in Poland. It asked whether the partial destalinisation of Poland could be a model for other countries in the region. After the experience of the Hungarian uprising in the autumn of 1956 there was little doubt that the Polish solution in respect of destalinisation and ‘de-satellization’ would be applicable to other countries of the region. Kultura’s contributors were aware that breaking the bond between the Soviet Union and the other countries of Central East Europe was (at that time) completely out of the question. Desatellisation, therefore, could not mean the withdrawal of these countries from the Warsaw Pact nor the achievement of neutrality status.8 There was, accordingly, little hope of a significant improvement of conditions within a communist system under Soviet domination, and no reason to believe in an evolution of the system towards freedom. Westerners who responded positively to Soviet overtures were under an illusion. After 1956 hopes for the disintegration of the Soviet bloc were associated with the growth of nationalistic tendencies within it. Yet, as Mieroszewski pointed out, Marxist–Leninist doctrine, instead of ‘internationalising’ the Russians made them ‘prisoners of their own nationalism’. The slogan about a culture ‘nationalistic in form but socialistic in content will remain an empty platitude...[since] today Soviet policy is socialistic in form and imperialistic in content and this constitutes the heart of the matter’.9 Mieroszewski stressed that the Stalinist programme of nationalism was invariably carried out. The concept of ‘Soviet man’ was forcibly imposed and ruthlessly used as a tool in the ‘internationalisation’ of the non-Russian nations through Russification. According to one Kultura writer, on the other hand, this process served to strengthen antiRussian and nationalist attitudes in the societies of Central East Europe.10 There were, however, powerful factors pushing western opinion in the direction of some rapprochement with Moscow and its satellites. The chief of these was fear, and its accompanying desire for the reduction of tension. The West lived under the ever present shadow of nuclear war. Its citizens were fearful of any action on their part which might irritate the Kremlin and jeopardise peace. The weight of this responsibility lay heavy upon them. Many were weary under the burdens of the Cold War. Not surprisingly there was willingness in some quarters to recognise the status quo in Central East Europe as the necessary price for reduced tension.11

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Larres suggests that in the mid-1950s the British government was ready to accept existing realities, including the de facto recognition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Strengthening the stability of the GDR would help to overcome the tension of the Cold War, lower the temperature in Europe, and arrive at rapprochement with the Soviet Union.12 But Britain was not alone; many people of good will in the countries of Western Europe were eager for negotiations with the Soviet Union to ease the threat of war. The exiles feared that the price to be paid for rapprochement was the acceptance of existing realities, which included the domination of their homelands by the Soviet Union.13

Peaceful coexistence For many the bald alternatives were either war or peaceful coexistence. It was feared that in the existing state of tension war would ultimately break out. There would be no victors in such a war, only annihilation. In this light what was needed was a modus vivendi which would reduce tensions and move beyond Cold War confrontation. The idea of peaceful coexistence seemed to offer a solution. This also suited the Kremlin which had its own reasons for favouring it. In the mid 1950s it was prepared to accept the status quo to gain respite and to build up its own power. It could use the improvement in relations to consolidate its conquests in Central East Europe by securing for them international recognition. And it could gain other concessions from the West in return for the diminution of tension. Again the exiles smelled danger. Would the West be tempted to accept the status quo in Central East Europe in return for better relations with Moscow, or was there some other quid pro quo in return for confirming Moscow’s imperium? The exiles sought to disillusion credulous westerners by offering some home truths about Soviet communism, which they believed they were well qualified to offer as a result of bitter experience. In their view the phrase peaceful coexistence was calculated to deceive and lull everybody into a false sense of security. The Soviets’ idea of peaceful coexistence was to take one step backward in order to take two steps forward – reculer pour mieux sauter. Real and lasting peaceful coexistence would mean the communists’ abandoning their official thesis of ‘revolutionary peace’. They quoted Lenin: ‘As long as capitalism and socialism (communism) exist we cannot live in peace; in the end one or the other will triumph’.14 Communism’s ultimate aim of world conquest was not compromised by the Kremlin’s willingness to talk the language of peace. Stalin had

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proclaimed the idea of peaceful coexistence as early as 1925, again to meet temporary adverse circumstances and to gain advantage. But, as Ciol kosz observed, peaceful coexistence ‘does not exclude the fifth column, aggression from within’, subversive tactics abroad, and ruling foreign countries through puppet governments. In fact, peaceful coexistence meant bitter competition short of armed conflict.15 Both the author James Burnham and Representative Goedhart from the Netherlands rejected the ‘false alternative’ of war or peaceful coexistence. Rather, the alternative to war was ‘the maximum moral and political aid to the great oppressed masses of the Soviet Empire’, and permanent support for their political aspirations.16 The theme of competitive coexistence was welcomed by the exiles since it lessened the threat of war, which would suit western interests, while avoiding formal recognition of the status quo in Central East Europe, which suited the exiles.17 Consequently they were seriously concerned by President Kennedy’s speech at the American University in 1963 which welcomed peaceful coexistence between the United States and the Soviet Union but omitted any mention of the fate of Central East Europe. The speech created the impression that Kennedy was acquiescing in the status quo in the region in order to achieve wider goals.18 Although the exiles were unable to lessen the allure of peaceful coexistence to the fearful and nervous populations of Western Europe they were gratified that the results of this initiative did not include formal recognition of Soviet conquests in Central East Europe. /

German unification Another threat to the interests of Central East Europe appeared at around the same time, beginning in the mid 1950s and continuing for a decade and a half. Again, the exiles were apprehensive that the outcome might imperil their long-term ambitions for freedom and unity in the region. The threat in question was the Soviet attempt to negotiate the re-unification and neutralisation of Germany, a major theme of the Geneva conferences in 1955 and subsequent East–West meetings in the period up to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.19 The exiles all agreed that German reunification might indirectly lead to the acceptance of the status quo in Central East Europe. While Soviet control of Central East Europe had dominated the thinking of the exiles in the post-war period the question of Germany was still extremely sensitive, only ten years after the end of the war. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was making a startling economic recovery

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and was in the process of being admitted to NATO. There were demands on the Soviet side for the unification of the two halves of Germany which the exiles thought highly dangerous. For the FRG to be accepted as a peace-loving and non-expansionist country, the exiles believed, it needed to jettison the last vestiges of the Nazi period including the many ex-Nazi personnel retained in positions of authority. It should also offer compensation to its war-time victims and abandon the Hallstein doctrine. It should stop tolerating the activities of irredentist minorities which had been expelled from former German territories, the Sudetenland and the Eastern Provinces. It should, finally, recognise the Oder–Neisse line as the Eastern border of Germany and stop hankering after the borders of 1937. Mieroszewski called this process ‘the pacification of Germany’, which meant ensuring, under strict guarantee, that it would not possess nuclear weapons and would accept the Oder–Neisse border. The incorporation of an ‘unreconstructed’ FRG into NATO would lend credibility to Soviet propaganda that the West wanted to establish ‘a strong, united, militarist and imperial Germany’.20 Could not the Western powers see that German aspirations to reclaim the pre-war frontiers strengthened Soviet control over Poland, reinforced Moscow’s claims that the West supported German irredentism, and deferred the improvement of relations between the FRG and the states of Central East Europe? In short, putting off recognition of the existing border helped to consolidate the status quo in Moscow’s satellites and maintained the region’s dependence on the Soviets.21 The exiles tried to re-focus the debate away from unification to the idea of self-determination and free elections for Germans in both West and East Germany. If self-determination was achieved, unification would probably follow. On the other hand, demanding free elections had one great advantage; if East Germany achieved this right, why not the rest of Central East Europe? In other words the exiles wanted to create linkages between the resolution of the German problem and the situation in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other East European states. They particularly feared that if reunification of Germany was achieved everyone would forget about Central East Europe.22 As Ciol kosz pointed out, though, the unification of the two Europes should surely take precedence over the unification of the two Germanys – if order and justice were worth anything the victims of aggression should have priority over its perpetrators. Treating the German issue in isolation would almost certainly perpetuate the existing political situation in Central East Europe and place the ambitions of the exiled federalists in cold storage for a generation.23 /

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Assuming that the two German states were reunited after free elections in both parts of Germany, and assuming also that self-determination had been applied in the states of Central East Europe, what should the future hold for these states? Should a united Germany remain in NATO? Should the independent Central East European states remain in the Warsaw Pact? Should the whole or part of the Central East European region including Germany be neutralised and denuclearised? This last possibility had quite wide appeal in Western Europe and even among some East European exiles.

Denuclearisation The author of the first proposals for a nuclear free zone was the Polish Foreign Minister, Adam Rapacki. The so-called first Rapacki plan of 1958 envisaged a demilitarised and denuclearised zone comprising the two Germanys, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Under his proposals the production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons in the zone would be banned, and the nuclear powers would come to an understanding not to use nuclear weapons in these territories. This plan had some appeal in Central East Europe for obvious reasons, but in the West the reception was less favourable since it neglected the question of the withdrawal of foreign troops from the region. Moreover, the proposal disadvantaged the western powers since they did not yet possess Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and hence needed nuclear bases in Germany from which to launch medium range missiles. Without nuclear armaments NATO forces would be inadequately equipped since Soviet troops were far stronger in conventional arms.24 Rapacki modified his plan in November of the same year to take account of the criticism that he had not proposed a reduction of conventional forces in the denuclearised zone. In the same month Khrushchev went further, suggesting a complete rolling back of all foreign troops from West and East Germany and the withdrawal of the two German states from NATO and the Warsaw Pact. But, he did not envisage a withdrawal of any other East European states from the Pact. In the West proposals for the thinning out of troop levels in Central Europe or their complete withdrawal from certain areas, followed by the neutralisation of these areas, were advanced by George Kennan, the distinguished former U.S. Ambassador and, at the time of his proposal, head of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department. While acknowledging that the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the states of Central East Europe would be a great achievement, exile critics of his proposal noted that the Red armies, the Secret Police and the Party

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organisations of the respective countries would remain. Moreover, the Soviet Army would keep watch on the Soviet Union’s western frontier and could easily intervene if necessary; besides which Moscow would demand a reciprocal withdrawal of Western troops either beyond the Rhine or from Europe altogether. It was this possibility which led the American Joint Chiefs of Staff to oppose Kennan’s proposals since the United States would have to withdraw its forces more than three thousand miles whereas the Soviets need only withdraw theirs a few hundred. In neither case would the Federal Republic of Germany or the Central East European states be capable of resisting Soviet pressure. This would mean a weakening of the western alliance with no comparable benefits, for example the provision of free elections in the states of Central East Europe.25 A propos free elections, the same criticism was levelled at the so-called Gaitskell Plan, named after the then leader of the British Labour Party. He too proposed a raft of similar proposals – the withdrawal of foreign troops from Central East Europe and the two Germanys, a peace treaty with Germany recognising the Oder–Neisse frontier, a denuclearised zone, free elections in a united Germany, guarantees against the re-entry of Soviet troops and the withdrawal of Germany from NATO and the other countries of Central Europe from the Warsaw Pact. But ‘for the time being’ the existence of the Communist regimes in the region would not be challenged.26 For many of the exiles disengagement was not the answer since it would be detrimental to Western security and hence to the cause of freedom in Central East Europe. And the absence of a proposal for free elections in the satellite states made Gaitskell’s plan unacceptable in most exile circles.27 Nonetheless, elements in these proposals were tempting to some of the exile organisations. If implemented, they would help to crack the ice of the Cold War and bring the satellite states nearer to achieving their objective of self-determination and democracy. This was one of the few occasions when there was a serious division of opinion among the exile groups. The differences hinged on the question of neutralisation, the third of the challenges which the exiles had to face in the late 1950s.

Neutralisation The question of neutralisation was first raised by the Soviet Union as part of its proposals to the Geneva conference of 1955, involving the unification and neutralisation of the two German states as the basis for a programme of arms reductions and the conclusion of a European security

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pact. The neutrality idea was seized on by some representatives of the Central East European exiles as a way of improving the conditions of their fellow-countrymen. Unification of the states of Central East Europe had a lower priority for these observers than withdrawal of their homelands from the Warsaw Pact and the reduction of the potential threat of Germany. Hubert Ripka, for example, while endorsing neutralisation on the Austrian model and free elections in the neutral zone, proposed a prohibition on Germany joining any military alliance for 20 years. Free elections, however, were not a priority for some analysts such as Aleksander Bregman and Juliusz Mieroszewski, and since free elections were a precondition of federal arrangements, the implication was that a united Central East Europe ranked lower than other objectives. For Bregman a united Germany must be neutral since the Great Powers would not accept German membership in one or other bloc. The corresponding neutrality of the Central East European states would be guaranteed by the Great Powers after the withdrawal of Soviet troops. All that Bregman could offer with regard to free elections was the hope that when neutralisation had been effected these states ‘stood a good chance of regaining freedom and independence’.28 He added that proposals for neutralisation did not have a chance of success without German recognition of the Oder–Neisse frontier since no international guarantee of the neutral status of the countries involved could be granted if they had ill-defined or provisional frontiers.29 Mieroszewski, writing in Kultura was more pessimistic (he would say, realistic). For him the great advantage of these proposals was the denuclearisation and neutralisation of the whole of the zone of Central East Europe, including Germany, and the withdrawal of all countries of the zone from their respective military pacts. For him the choice was not between liberation and neutralisation but between neutralisation and the recognition of the status quo. In this context he considered the future unification of the whole of Europe, which would be facilitated by the Continent’s acquiring a semi-neutral status. The latter would emerge as West European countries became independent of the United States and, simultaneously, Central East Europe was emancipated from Soviet hegemony.30 He concluded that if the satellite system were eliminated and both parts of Europe were joined together then a system would have to be developed to protect Russia and Central East Europe against Germany since the great danger for these regions was a resurgent and revisionist Germany.31 Countering this danger was a higher priority than the establishment of democracy and self-determination in the satellite states. It would be, he asserted, ‘unreal to demand free elections’. His critics might argue that it was

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equally ‘unreal’ to expect the Kremlin to accept neutralisation for the states of Central East Europe.32 The Polish Liberation Movement, ‘Independence and Democracy’ (NiD), submitted two memoranda to the United States government in 1958 and 1959. The first of these, to the State Department, endorsed a neutral belt in Central East Europe which would be guaranteed by the Great Powers after their troops had withdrawn. Without mentioning free elections the memorandum concluded that ‘no obstacles should be put in the way of neutral states regarding their economic or economicpolitical ties with other groupings’. It seemed to overlook the point that legitimate decisions about the future international relations of these states could only be taken by democratically-elected governments. In its second memorandum, this time to Vice-President Nixon, NiD made its position more explicit by stating that a neutral zone would lessen the dangers to peace and ‘allow a gradual restoration of freedom’. In this respect NiD’s position was not dissimilar from Bregman’s.33 Paul Auer offered a modified proposal to meet the doubts of federalists whose demand for free elections in the east after the withdrawal of Soviet troops could not be compromised. He suggested neutralisation of the area for between three and five years as part of a transition period, after which the states of the region could create federations or join western institutions, though he did not envisage their joining any purely military alliance. For him it was axiomatic that neutralisation should be accompanied by free elections.34 Each of the previous observers of the international scene gave neutralisation the highest priority but they differed as to the future political and security settlement in Central East Europe. Some envisaged free elections, others did not, some proposed membership of international organisations, others did not. What was abundantly clear was that the issue of the federalisation of Central East Europe or the question of joining a rapidly integrating Western Europe did not have top priority on the agenda of these writers, with the exception of Auer. For that you have to look to the London Committee of Free Representatives of East European Nations, which was closely connected with the ACEN. It was firmly in the tradition of Polish and other East European federalist thinkers up to this time. It ignored neutralisation, demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops, gave priority to self-determination and democracy, and insisted on the suppression of the Communist police system. Most important of all, it emphasised the integration of the liberated countries in a united Europe. The most explicit statement of the case against neutralisation and for integration in a united Europe was made

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by Jan Starzewski who was in charge of foreign affairs for the Polish Council of National Unity in London. He opposed neutralisation because it excluded alliances, which were the bedrock of security. At crucial moments a neutral country could be isolated and made vulnerable to attempts to influence it from outside, as interwar experience showed. Guarantees of neutrality for the region by outside powers were simply not credible. Rather, Poland should seek full sovereignty and freedom of choice in relation to external affairs. Its security should be pursued on the basis of formal links between the states of Central East Europe and by accession to a united Europe.35 The challenge of the neutralisation proposals divided the exiles. In retrospect it might have been better for those who saw some advantage in neutralisation to have waited for clarification of Moscow’s response before endorsing the idea. Given their claims to superior understanding of the actions of the Kremlin this would seem to have been the merest common sense. The neutralisation of a united Germany would have been a major prize for the Kremlin, but it should have been evident to informed observers of Soviet policy-making that neutralisation of Central East Europe did not offer Moscow compensatory advantages. In any case, neutralisation ceased to be a major point of discussion among the European states after the Berlin wall solidified the division between the two Germanys, and took reunification and neutralisation off the immediate agenda for both Germany and East Central Europe.

Détente The most serious challenge to the aspirations of the exiles emerged from attempts to create a new pattern of relations first between the superpowers, and then between the European states. This process known as détente was at first anathema to the Poles in exile who were convinced that it would fatally damage their ambitions for the unity of Central East Europe. Détente, they feared, would permit the consolidation of Soviet control in the region and offer very uncertain gains in return. They refused to accept some of the claims made on its behalf, that it would strengthen peace and bring about a gradual evolution of the Soviet system in favour of liberalisation and self-determination. On the contrary, they felt that Eastern Europe would be abandoned to the Soviets in the interest of agreements which would lessen international tension. But later, in the light of experience, they could see that détente offered some clear advantages, on frontiers and human rights for example, which between them helped to create a greater fluidity both

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in the international situation and in Polish domestic politics. Henry Kissinger, the National Security Adviser to President Nixon, contrasted this fluidity favourably with the petrifaction in Europe after the consolidation of East–West spheres of influence following the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.36 It is worthwhile looking more closely at détente in order to understand its impact on the exiles and their response to it. Détente, which has been defined as a relaxation of tension and a willingness on the part of both the Soviet Union and the United States to come to some limited agreements, was the consequence of a number of factors which came into prominence in the 1960s. The Cuban missile crisis of 1963 alarmed both the Kremlin and the White House, highlighted the dangers of nuclear war, and gave a new impetus to reducing tensions and limiting nuclear armaments. Dean Rusk, President Kennedy’s Secretary of State, observed that ‘the thousands of megatons that are lying around in the hands of frail human beings compel us to look for agreements which can reduce tensions between us. The avoidance of confrontations which come far too close to the edges of human survival must be the major objective of foreign policy.’37 The fact that the Soviet Union and the United States reached several agreements on arms reduction and limitation suggests that Moscow was equally sensitive to the risk of nuclear annihilation. Moreover the Kremlin was uncomfortably aware of the high costs of the nuclear arms race and wanted to reduce them. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the agreement on the demilitarisation of outer space of 1967, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 were precursors of the even more important arms control agreements of the 1970s.38 Moscow had other reasons for advocating a policy of détente. Its control of Central East Europe was being challenged, notably in Czechoslovakia and Romania, and the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine was developed to counter any undermining of the communist system in this region. In the Soviet Union itself there was intense agitation by Jewish groups for fewer controls on emigration, there were signs of growing dissent among intellectuals, and in 1968 the celebrated dissenting samizdat journal, The Chronicle of Current Events was born.39 This climate of insecurity was exacerbated by the ideological conflict with China and by her potential military threat along the Russo-Chinese border. This dispute weakened Moscow’s influence and lowered its prestige in the world communist movement. Faced with a sea of troubles the Soviets sought to strengthen their position by consolidating their hold on Central East Europe and ensuring that in any future conflict with China their security would not be threatened

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by the satellite states. Consolidation was not simply a question of strengthening military control of the region. The Kremlin’s main aim was to secure from the West an acknowledgment of the legality of the status quo in Central East Europe, and an agreement that could be interpreted as a full recognition of the political situation there and not merely one of ‘reluctant toleration’.40 Moscow also calculated that an agreement with the United States would give them access to loans, investments, technical assistance and trade to ease the burden of the arms race, modernise their industrial base, improve their stagnant agriculture, and help their economy to grow more rapidly.41 The exiles, in response, feared that such economic and technical assistance to the Soviet Union would allow it to build up its armaments further and multiply its subversive activities all over the world.42 The Kremlin calculated, they believed, that détente would give the Soviet Union the breathing space and the economic support it required to ensure that ‘socialism’ gained a victory over ‘capitalism’ by means short of war. All in all, they concluded, détente would allay Western apprehensions of the Soviet Union and encourage NATO to drop its guard. Bell believed that the Soviet welcome for détente was also a function of Moscow’s collective psychology. The Soviet leadership had an inferiority complex and wanted to be treated by the Americans as equals in important negotiations. Kissinger similarly argues that détente grew out of Moscow’s ‘deep-rooted sense of insecurity and unquenchable thirst for legitimacy’. Moscow, he added, acted as if in a constant need of reassurance. The negotiations and the various agreements which constituted détente offered them the recognition which they craved.43 The United States was drawn to détente by a variety of factors, one of which, the Cuban missile crisis, has already been mentioned. The possibility of a nuclear war in this case, which fortunately was averted by responsible discussions between Moscow and Washington, concentrated minds on the perils of the existing situation, and determined policy makers to impose some controls on the numbers and dissemination of nuclear weapons. Hence the importance of nuclear agreements with Moscow. These were so imperative in the interests of human survival that they overshadowed other facets of the relationship between Moscow and Washington, including the question of Central East Europe. Another motive for détente on the American side was American weakness; détente helped the United States to cope with it. Weakness resulting from the failed Vietnam War compelled Washington, according to Kissinger, to enter into negotiations with Moscow to cover a range of issues which needed to be settled peacefully. Kissinger believed that the United States should deal with the Soviet Union on balance of power

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terms rather than through ideological rivalry. He looked for a compromise ‘between abdication and overextension’.44 The first priority of the Nixon Administration was arms control which resulted in agreements over anti-ballistic missiles and strategic arms in SALT I in the early 1970s. These agreements were necessary to ensure that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was not let loose on the world. They did not end the superpower rivalry but subjected it to certain controls designed to avert nuclear conflict and prevent a runaway increase in costs.45 Another aspect of American weakness was the economic crisis resulting from the inflationary results of the Vietnam War. A deteriorating balance of payments put pressure on the dollar, forcing the U.S. government to allow it to float. An increased dependence on imported oil made the impact of the three fold increase in the price of Gulf oil in 1973 far more severe. In this critical situation détente could lighten the demands on the federal budget and offer relief to taxpayers.46 Détente was also welcomed on the American side because it offered an opportunity to create an ever-growing network of agreements with the Soviet leadership, for example on nuclear issues, on the environment, on trade and investment, on looser Soviet controls on emigration, all of which would increasingly tie the Kremlin’s hands and oblige them to normalise relations with the West. One illustration of this was the comment by Dean Rusk that under détente’s relaxation of tension the Central East European states would gain increased independence from Soviet control.47 Zbigniew Brzezin´ski, similarly, believed that much closer contacts and the creation of a web of cooperative relationships would make the two societies increasingly intermeshed. But the idea that increased contact between East and West would loosen the Soviet hold ‘by a kind of osmosis’ was derided by Adam Ulam who countered that détente was ‘simply giving the Russians what they want in exchange for face-saving concessions’.48 Richard Pipes, in the same vein, criticised the assumption that if the United States furnished the Soviets with the massive assistance they wanted the Soviet system would ‘through a number of unproven transmission belts’ eventually change its character. He rejected the belief that ‘increased sophistication, higher living standards and embourgeoisement of the establishment will lead the Soviet system to liberalize itself’. Equally implausible was the ‘European’ view that the Russians would mellow as they came into closer contact with Western civilisation ‘as all past barbarians’ had done. Détente on the Kremlin’s part was a tactical move made necessary by the backwardness of Soviet technology and the desirability of attracting Western aid and investment. The Soviets, he concluded, ‘must therefore come to terms with us’, and transfers of

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capital and technology should be carried out very carefully and a price exacted for every transfer and commercial deal.49 To what extent were the predictions about détente, both hopeful and sceptical, met by the actual agreements between the superpowers? The Johnson–Kosygin summit in New Jersey in 1968 set the tone and this was followed by four further summits during the Nixon and Ford administrations. The agreements on nuclear arms, already mentioned, were one outcome of these meetings. Another, and for the Central East European exiles an even more significant one, resulted from the Nixon–Brezhnev summit in December 1972. The two sides agreed to respect the territorial integrity of all states. They further endorsed the principles of the inviolability of frontiers, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, the sovereign equality and independence of all states, and the renunciation of the use or threat of force.50 The exiles immediately saw the implications for their homelands in these agreed principles. They meant that the Americans would respect the actual status quo in Eastern Europe, which had resulted from post-war Soviet conquests, and would not seek to undermine it. The only ray of hope for the exiles in this agreement was that it fell short of recognising de jure the status quo in the area. As for the principles outlined in the agreement, the exiles felt nothing short of contempt. The Kremlin was simply paying lip service to ideals which they had repeatedly violated, which they did not believe in, and which conflicted with the Brezhnev Doctrine – the right to intervene in any country in which the communist order was threatened. If Moscow was to put into practice the principles of the Moscow conference, such as the sovereign equality and independence of states, they would have to withdraw their troops and secret police from their East European satellites, which of course they had no intention of doing.51 Korbon´ski accused Nixon and Kissinger of sacrificing Central East Europe to détente. Three years later Herman Sonnenfeld, a senior U.S. official, gave substance to this accusation by contending that ‘an organic integration’ of the satellites with the Soviet Union served the interest of the United States as a means of preventing the outbreak of World War III.52 The Polish Council of National Unity offered the most authoritative response of the exiles to the Moscow agreement, pointing out that security and peace in Europe would not be established by declarations of principles which were largely meaningless, but by the withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Central East Europe followed by self-determination for the states of the region.53 Though this was no doubt true and the condition for a new political order in the area, the exiles’ response raised the suspicion in some western quarters

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that they cared less about nuclear annihilation than the future of their homelands. This was a position that many in the west found difficult to appreciate. One aspect of the Moscow agreement which the Poles and others failed to highlight was the recognition of existing frontiers. This was probably because the issue had already been a major part of previous agreements between the FRG and Poland, and between the FRG and the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was the FRG under the leadership of Chancellor Willi Brandt which pursued a radical Ostpolitik. Brandt took the initiative in breaking up the logjam in relations between the two Germanys, and between the FRG and the states of Eastern Europe. Brandt, thought Kissinger, believed that reliance on the West had produced stalemate, and what was needed was rapprochement with the Communist world in the interests of peace and stability. In due course even the chances of German unification would be improved if east–west relations were eased.54 Brandt’s approach to Moscow produced a treaty in August 1970 which spoke of normalising the position in Europe and developing peaceful relations among all the European states ‘on the basis of the actual position in this area’. This involved some form of recognition of the status quo in Eastern Europe. The two sides further agreed ‘to respect the territorial integrity of all European states within the present frontiers without reservation’, meaning that the FRG recognised all the Soviet gains in Europe since 1945.55 The treaty with Poland of December 1970 and the treaty between the two Germanys of December 1972 accepted the existing borders between the respective countries.56 Bell commented that, in his aim of improving relations, Brandt not only accepted the existing order in Europe but enshrined it.57 What Bell seemed to overlook was that Brandt’s acceptance of the Oder–Neisse frontier actually introduced more fluidity into relations between Central East Europe and Germany by lessening Polish dependence on the Soviet Union to counter German revanchism, thereby weakening one of the main claims to authority of the Polish Communist government.58 The exiles argued that anything that weakened Communist control in Central East Europe helped in their long-term objective of liberating their homelands from Soviet control and creating the conditions for self-determination and a possible confederal system. The third major element in détente was the Helsinki process for security and co-operation in Europe which culminated in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. Moscow had been seeking multinational talks on European security since at least 1966 when the Warsaw Pact proposed a conference to discuss it. In 1969 NATO agreed, provided there was progress in

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the discussions following Brandt’s launch of Ostpolitik. In November 1972 a preparatory meeting of the representatives of the European states took place in Helsinki. After several months of discussions it was decided in June 1973 that the conference should be in three stages: the first a meeting of Foreign Ministers in Helsinki; the second, meetings of experts in Geneva to prepare draft agreements; and finally a meeting of heads of governments and states in Helsinki to agree to or to modify the officials’ recommendations. This took place in July 1975 when the Helsinki Treaty was agreed by the representatives of 33 European states plus the United States and Canada.59 The treaty was prefaced by a Declaration which deserves to be quoted since it was so at variance with the existing situation in Central East Europe. ‘The participating states’ it began ‘will respect each other’s sovereign equality and individuality as well as all the rights of every state to juridical equality, to territorial integrity and to freedom and political independence. They will also respect each other’s right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems, as well as its right to determine its laws and regulations.’ It went on to affirm that the participating states would refrain from any intervention in the internal and external affairs falling within the jurisdiction of another participating state. As one exiled Polish critic commented, this declaration was ‘a manifest antithesis to the situation in the Soviet bloc where none of these sovereign rights existed’.60 It also meant that western states were, shamefully, prepared to recognise the fictitious independence of these regimes. At the same time the Soviet Union was undertaking by this formula to refrain from the practices it then employed. Why was the West prepared to accept a form of words which was in clear conflict with the Brezhnev Doctrine? The answer lay in the corresponding advantages for the West contained in the body of the treaty, and even in the Declaration itself. What were these advantages, as perceived by the Western negotiators? The treaty was divided into three sections or Baskets. Basket I was concerned with security in Europe. In effect it confirmed the political and territorial status quo in Central East Europe. It rejected the threat or use of force, accepted the inviolability of existing frontiers, recognised the territorial integrity of states, and recommended the peaceful settlement of disputes. It confirmed respect for human rights and fundamental liberties, including freedom of thought, conscience and religious or other convictions.61 If pressed it was unlikely that the Soviets would observe either the responsibilities imposed on them in the Declaration or the demands of Basket I. They would take what they wanted from these two sets of commitments, the most important gain being the

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recognition of the status quo in Central East Europe, which was considered a ‘decisive point’ by the Kremlin. However, both the Declaration and Basket I laid out codes of conduct which set a standard for the signatories, including the Soviet Union, before world opinion. The respect for human rights was to become of particular significance later when it was invoked by opponents of the Soviet and East European regimes. Moreover the Western states did not accede to the Soviet wish that the Helsinki Treaty should take the form of a post-war Peace Treaty, meaning that the recognition of the status quo in Central East Europe was one of fact, not law.62 Basket II made provision for co-operation in economic relations including trade and investments, in science and technology, in environmental problems and in the fields of transport, tourism and migrant workers.63 It offered the Soviet Union and the Central East European states access to the markets, including the capital markets, of the West; raised the prospect of increased trade, particularly in agricultural goods which were in short supply in the East; and laid the foundations for the modernisation of Soviet industry. Critics alleged that the increase in Western credits would be used to ease the burden of armaments on the Soviet economy. Additionally, Helsinki legitimised the Soviet system in Eastern Europe without providing anything meaningful in return.64 Finally, Basket III proposed an increase in cultural and educational exchanges, improved circulation and access to information through newspapers films and broadcasting, and the development of contacts between individuals. The latter would involve the reuniting of families separated by political decisions and permitting marriages between citizens of different countries.65 There were several major challenges, then, to the hopes and expectations of the Central East European exiles and their plans (some would say wishful thinking) for the future security and development of their countries after the fall of communism. Détente was one of these challenges and the Helsinki Accords were an important part of that. The exiles’ reaction to the challenge of Helsinki was more positive than at first appeared likely. Initially they were convinced that the Soviet Union had ‘lulled the West with offers of peace and co-operation’, just as Hitler had done to gain time. Moscow wanted the West’s acceptance of Soviet rule over the satellites, giving her a free hand in dealing with China and preparing world revolution. In fact, the West had capitulated to Moscow, and Helsinki was no more than ‘a multilateral obeisance’.66 Furthermore, the claims of the Western signatories that their acceptance of the status quo in Central East Europe was a guarantee of peace

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were entirely illusory. On the contrary, there could only be lasting peace in Europe if Central East Europe were liberated and allowed to decide its own fate.67 Meanwhile the ‘Polish nation’ would reject any decisions emanating from international conferences unless freedom for Central East Europe was achieved. Until this happened they would never stop demanding Soviet withdrawal from the region. Poles would not be satisfied with ‘trivial concessions’; only a fundamental change in ‘the present lamentable state of our country’ was acceptable.68 As for the Western hope that the Soviet Empire would evolve as a result of cultural, scientific, economic and human exchanges, this was a mirage and testimony to the naiveté of the signatories. On the contrary, the agreements for increased trade and investments and exchanges of various kinds would enable the Soviet Union and its satellites to concentrate their resources on huge military and naval investments and multiply their subversive activities.69 The exiles were initially very pessimistic about the alleged gains in the field of human rights, particularly in Basket III. But the results of Helsinki in this area were surprising and contradicted the exiles’ predictions that the treaty would cement Moscow’s control of the region. Instead, rather like the acceptance of the Oder–Neisse line, the human rights clauses in Helsinki created a fluidity and a sense of movement in the Soviet Union and Central East Europe which had rarely been present. Adam Ciol kosz wrote that after Helsinki the unexpected happened. The Final Act as a whole and Basket III in particular gave the people of Central East Europe a point of departure for urging the implementation of basic rights and freedoms. More generally Helsinki created an ‘international standard’ of behaviour against which Soviet conduct could be measured, and contributed to an explosion of desire for morality in politics.70 Helsinki obliged signatory states to observe the adopted principles but, equally important, made it their duty to ensure that these principles were adhered to by all signatories. As Kissinger commented, ‘for the first time in the postwar period, human rights and fundamental freedoms became recognised subjects of East–West discourse and negotiation’. Later, in the 1980s, during the martial law period in Poland when there was talk of abrogating the Helsinki Act, this step was opposed by the underground Helsinki Committee in Poland because it would kill their last remaining hopes and deal a blow to those who were still resisting military rule.71 The most authoritative analysis of the impact of Basket III from a Polish perspective came from the pen of Jan Nowak-Jezioran´ski who reviewed the Helsinki process in 1986. Basket III, he claimed, frustrated /

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Soviet plans to use the Helsinki agreements to their advantage. Their primary goal was to gain the ratification by the West of the status quo in Central East Europe. This they achieved. But they also hoped to use one of the clauses in Basket I, namely the non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states, to ensure that official concern regarding the violations of human rights would be construed as interference in internal affairs and therefore illegitimate. In fact, as Nowak-Jezioran´ski pointed out, the opposite happened. The introduction of human rights as an integral part of the Helsinki agreement raised hopes and expectations within the Soviet orbit. Helsinki clearly established the legitimacy of human rights issues in east–west dialogue and in bilateral discussions. The manner in which one state treated its citizens became a legitimate concern for all other states. The West acquired the right to intervene publicly and diplomatically across frontiers on a wide range of human rights issues.72 Western drafters hoped that these provisions would inhibit the Soviet repression of dissidents. The word Helsinki became a rallying cry for all kinds of groups and individuals, such as Helsinki Watch Committees and Helsinki Monitoring Groups. Moreover, the Soviets could not disregard the negative impact of their actions on the developing nations as well as on the working classes, the elites and the communist parties of the industrialised countries. As it turned out heroic reformers and dissidents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union used Basket III as a rallying point in the fight to free their countries from communist domination. Kissinger went so far as to say that Basket III ‘was destined to play a major role in the disintegration of the Soviet satellite orbit’.73 Helsinki then, so far from imposing stasis and immobility on Central East Europe, actually helped to loosen the bonds imposed by Moscow and contributed to achieving the liberation of their countries so longed for by the exiles. However, in the period of the Helsinki negotiations and immediately afterwards some of the exiles were unable to take this positive view. They believed that the West had consigned Central East Europe to the permanent control of Moscow. They had no faith in the effectiveness of the Basket III provisions. They would have agreed with Adam Ulam’s comment that détente was ‘simply giving the Russians what they want’74 They could have quoted Winston Churchill in support of their pessimism: ‘I felt bound to proclaim my confidence in Soviet good faith in the hope of procuring it’. It was not surprising therefore that they preferred initially to place their trust in American conservatives who were committed to ideological competition with Moscow rather than to the geopolitical approach of Kissinger and Nixon. Kissinger described

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the conservatives as ‘moral absolutists’ who distrusted any negotiation with the Soviet Union. For them, compromise was retreat. They favoured the Acheson–Dulles approach of waiting for the collapse of communism behind positions of strength. The geopolitical approach was rejected as so much ‘historical pessimism’ and ‘moral inadequacy’, a way of easing nerves. Fundamental change in the Soviet Union’s policies had to precede serious negotiations between the two superpowers.75 Kissinger described the differences between his approach and that of his conservative critics as the differences between foreign policy as strategy and foreign policy as crusade. The idea behind the latter, he alleged, was to make Russia change its system – it was ‘a means of forcing a Soviet domestic upheaval’.76 Ronald Reagan as President embodied this approach and found wide support among the exiles for his tough line with the Kremlin. The exiles were at the outset of détente more in tune with the conservative idealists than they were with the realism of Kissinger, though later they could see the advantages accruing from the détente process. As this chapter has shown, the exiles were reacting to the challenges which faced them during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Each of these challenges was interpreted as reducing the chances of weakening Moscow’s control of Central East Europe, and therefore had to be contested. Since the liberation of their countries was a condition for a new confederal or federal approach to the problems of the region, it was inevitable that the exiles would oppose western initiatives to come to some agreement with the Soviets. On the other hand, the exiles’ representatives adopted as well a constructive approach to the problems of their homelands, as they had done since the end of the Second World War. They began to see that détente, despite their initial apprehensions, offered Central East Europe some benefits. They also took heart from developments in the European Community on which they placed their hopes after becoming disillusioned with the Council of Europe and the European Movement. What aroused their enthusiasm was the prospect of the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979 which offered ‘a great hope, a new era’. The new Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) would be closer to public opinion than the formerly nominated representatives, and possibly more susceptible to the exiles’ objectives for Central East Europe. Otto von Habsburg and a group of European parliamentarians under his leadership lobbied to ensure that the future of Central East Europe became of central concern to the European Parliament. Writing in 1984 he claimed that ‘the European Parliament is now definitely engaged in following a course for a “greater Europe”’.77 He suggested that the peoples of Central East

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Europe had lost confidence in the west and expected nothing from it; the one hopeful element in this dismal prospect was the unification of a free Europe. His opinion was supported by the Union of Polish Federalists. ‘A strong, prosperous democratic United Europe’, they argued, ‘gradually increasing its membership, will become a centre of attraction, economic and political, for those nations still outside the European Community.’ In fact, ‘the gradual extension of liberty’ in Central East Europe largely depended on the progress of integration in the western part of the Continent. This approach had been anticipated by President Eisenhower two decades earlier when he said that ‘a solid power mass in Western Europe would ultimately attract to it all the Soviet satellites and the threat to peace would disappear’.78 With this in mind, the Polish Government in Exile appealed to MEPs in 1984 for understanding and support for the Captive Nations’ quest for freedom.79 It would be in the interest of their region, the exiles argued, if the EEC were broadened and deepened, exercising all powers as envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, not just the economic ones. A deeper solidarity among the peoples of Western Europe, leading to a stronger, more powerful Community was in the interest of the satellite states, an opinion shared by visitors from the region to the west.80 The exiles expected the newly elected MEPs to declare that the EEC was open to all the peoples of Europe who wished to join and met the democratic credentials. This would give hope to the people of the Central East region that they could be members of the new Europe that was emerging. The exiles also recommended that a Commission of Non-Represented Nations, similar to the one in the Council of Europe, should be established in the European Parliament to disseminate knowledge and expert opinion on Central East Europe. More contentious was the request that all refugees from the totalitarian countries, even if they did not hold citizenship in their countries of residence, should have the right to be represented in the European Parliament.81 By the mid-1980s the exiles had further clarified their position on the relationship between the liberated post-Communist states and the rest of Europe. In the late 1950s and the 1960s the most common approach to this problem was to envisage a regional union of the Eastern states with, ultimately, an association between this union and the EEC, essentially based on close economic relations, with the major aim of furthering the economic development of the region. A minority preferred direct membership in the EEC of the individual states of the region.82 By the 1980s, however, opinion among the exiles had clarified. In 1984 the Polish government-in-exile requested the European Parliament to move towards achieving a ‘truly united Europe’ by extending the European Community

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(EC) eastwards. There was no reference to regional unions preceding membership of the EC, and no specific allusion to economic unity. Now the emphasis was on incorporation of the liberated states of Central East Europe into the existing organisation of the European Community, as soon as they met the economic and political conditions for entry.83 The exiles were no doubt encouraged to take this view after observing the recent enlargement process incorporating West European states. In focusing on the potential of the European Community to become a powerful entity through the deepening and widening processes and thus to become a centre of attraction for the peoples of Central East Europe, the exiles believed that they had found a route towards the liberation of their countries and ultimately to their participation in a united Europe. The pessimism which had prevailed in the late 1960s owing to the exiles’ disillusionment with the Council of Europe and the European Movement was being replaced by a more positive outlook as the potential of the European Community became evident. One constant in all the multifarious activities of the exiles was the conviction that their commitment to a federal or confederal Europe was shared by their compatriots in Poland. How that goal was to be achieved was a subject for debate on both sides of the Iron Curtain, but unity in the interests of security and economic development was a shared ambition. How far was this assumption correct? And if correct, how had such a close identification been achieved? If this assumption was incorrect, how can we explain the decision of the first post-Communist government in Poland in 1989 to ‘rejoin Europe’, and to apply to join the European Community, as the exiles had requested in 1984? Had opinion in Poland evolved quite independently from that of the exiles or was there some important interaction between the ideas of the Poles at home and Poles abroad? Was there, in fact, one Polish nation where ideas circulated ‘by a kind of osmosis’, penetrating the Iron Curtain with relative ease and negating all efforts by the Communist authorities to protect their societies from external infections? The next chapter will discuss how far the exiles could be said to represent opinion in their homelands, and their attempts to influence opinion at home through newspapers, magazines and radio broadcasts. It will assess the impact of the western media on public opinion in Central East Europe and consider other methods by which opinion may have been shaped. From 1945 onwards there was both a Cold War and, to use Nowak’s term, ‘a war of ideas’. The exiles found their closest political and ideological allies in this war in the United States, and it was from there that they also drew on important sources of financial support.

10 War of Ideas

Polish exiles with federalist sympathies did not doubt that their aspirations for a united Europe were shared by their compatriots at home. If their assumption was correct, then the decision of the first postCommunist government in Poland in 1989 to apply for an association with the European Communities and ultimately to become a member of the European Union (EU) is readily explicable. On the other hand, compulsory membership in the Soviet-dominated Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON), and the absence of real independence under the aegis of the Kremlin, could conceivably have led to an outburst of national feeling once the communist rulers were toppled. In those circumstances would Poland have wished to circumscribe its newly achieved independence by joining another association of states, one based in Brussels rather than Moscow? On occasion the exiles showed themselves to be aware of this possibility and used what influence they had, through their journals and through conversations with visitors from their homelands, to avoid this outcome. While continuing to guard against what they considered to be a remote possibility, the exiles remained convinced that their compatriots were in tune with their own views about the desirability of a federal or confederal Europe. Sceptics might argue that confident claims to be representative were self-serving, rested on no hard evidence, and were designed to increase the exiles’ standing in western forums, adding that the exiles’ many journals were read mainly by members of the exile communities, not by the people behind the Iron Curtain. Interviews conducted with some of the most prominent politicians of the early post-Communist period who reached maturity in the later years of Communist Poland do not, in general, confirm the exiles’ claims to be fully representative of opinion in Poland. Most Poles, they averred, had 192

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many higher priorities than the relations of a post-communist Poland with the rest of Europe. While a ‘return to Europe’ was of course desirable in principle, the possibility seemed remote well into the 1980s. And very little thought had been given to the detailed form of any association: for example, should the states of Central East Europe form a regional federation or should they apply to join the European communities as individual states or as part of a regional grouping? Other questions were paramount in Polish minds, notably relations with the Soviet Union and Germany, the question of borders, and domestic conflict. On the other hand, the interviewees could hardly claim to form a representative sample of opinion, and there is a good deal of evidence to contradict or modify their conclusions, as we shall see later. If we are to throw some light on these problems we have to try to answer several related questions. First, did the exiles have the technical means to influence public opinion in their homelands? Second, to what extent did their compatriots’ ideas about Europe grow out of their own experience and reflections? Finally, how convincing were the exiles’ claims to be fully representative of public opinion behind the Iron Curtain? In approaching the first question we should remember that from 1947 onwards there was a more or less intense effort by the Communist rulers to Sovietise or communise the populations of Central East Europe. They aimed to transform the bases of political, economic and social life and to destroy the population’s identification with western European culture and traditions. The attempts by the exiles to preserve that sense of identity was heavily reinforced by the drive and commitment of United States’ agencies. When Jan Nowak-Jezioran´ski referred to a ‘war of ideas’ he had in mind the conflict between the Sovietising and westernising ideas which dominated the post-war world and continued into the presidency of Ronald Reagan, except for the brief interlude of détente when attempts were made in the West to soften that conflict and to find ways of peacefully coexisting. Attempts to shape opinion in the countries of Central East Europe and to resist the onslaught of communist propaganda were initiated as early as 1947 by George Kennan, who was then head of long-term policy planning in the State Department in Washington. In his previous post in Moscow Kennan had, in his famous ‘Long Telegram’, warned Washington that the Soviet rulers ‘learned to seek security only in a patient and deadly struggle for the total destruction of their rivals’.1 He recommended that Washington follow a policy of ‘containment’, responding to every Soviet challenge to American interests, wherever they occurred, with firmness and resolution. In his new post, however,

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Kennan took the lead in campaigning for what was called at the time, ‘Organized Political Warfare’. This was designed to undermine communism in Eastern Europe by means of covert and clandestine activity. This was a pro-active rather than a defensive policy of the kind adumbrated in the idea of containment. At the end of 1947 the National Security Council gave its approval to this policy of political and psychological warfare. Refugees from Central East Europe who were desperate to strike a blow at the new rulers of the region were to be among the major agents of this policy. Kennan envisaged a variety of actions under American direction: paramilitary operations, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, underground resistance, and every kind of subversion.2 With the full backing of the Truman administration Kennan set up the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) to promote and administer this programme. He emphasised that publicity for the OPC should stress only its planning and intelligence-gathering functions, not its covert operations behind the Iron Curtain. Alongside this government intelligence and political warfare agency Kennan’s other major objective at this time was to create a public organisation composed of prominent Americans with appropriate expertise and experience. The task of this committee was both to assist and to utilise the exiles, to ‘revive their sense of purpose’, to find useful employment for them, to encourage them to maintain contact with their homelands, and to keep alive among them the ideal of freedom. It was both condescending and inaccurate to imply that the exiles’ sense of purpose needed reviving or that they needed help in keeping alive their ideal of freedom. Nevertheless the exiles themselves worried about the younger generation born or at least brought up in the West. Juliusz Mieroszewski, the London-based writer on international affairs for the journal Kultura, called for the development of an educational centre for young exiles from Central East Europe to educate them in the ‘federal spirit’, and to prepare them for the new European order. He was convinced that the federal idea needed a new generation of activists ‘free from superstitions and prejudice’.3 Doubtless any assistance from the United States’ government would be welcomed by the exiles since it reinforced their own objectives.4 Consequently they warmly supported the creation of a National Committee for a Free Europe or, as it came to be known, the Free Europe Committee.5 It was intended that this Committee would keep its distance from government agencies and certainly not compromise the State Department, which could not be seen to be subverting governments which it had only recently recognised. Its original membership was composed of ‘the great and the good’ from many walks of life. It included

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General Eisenhower, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Adolf Berle, a former Under-Secretary of State, Allen Dulles, Wall Street lawyer, senior figure in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) (the leading American intelligence agency during the Second World War) and later Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and General Lucius D. Clay, a former U.S. Commander in Germany.6 The Committee professed to be a private organisation acquiring funding by public subscription, which was partly the case. But in fact it maintained an indirect connection with the State Department and a more direct one with the CIA. The latter provided the majority of the funds for the Committee on a confidential basis, and exercised policy control under the guidance of the State Department.7 To fulfil its role the Committee evolved into four basic divisions: the National Councils division (ultimately, around 12 national councils were set up, providing cover for anti-communist propaganda and for resistance generated by the OPC); Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL); the Mid-European Studies Center; and an American Contacts division providing exiles as lecturers to American audiences.8 From the perspective of influencing opinion in Central East Europe the most important of these divisions was RFE. But before considering the mission and the activities of RFE it is worth observing the irony of Eisenhower’s and John Foster Dulles’ call for the liberation of Central East Europe and the ‘roll back’ of communism there during and after the presidential election campaign of 1952. These calls came shortly after the CIA had absorbed the OPC and abandoned Kennan’s policy of ‘counter force’, that is political warfare and subversion in Central East Europe, owing to its manifest failure. The Republicans either failed to appreciate that the policy for which they were calling had already been employed clandestinely and abandoned by the previous administration, or cynically adopted the programme as a probable vote winner. The failure of the American administration to offer help to the Hungarian uprising in 1956 was the final nail in the coffin of a policy which had been supported after 1953 more in rhetoric than in practical action. The Eisenhower administration did not, however, abandon RFE and RL which were the most potent agencies created by the OPC for influencing opinion and attitudes behind the Iron Curtain. It is worth quoting from RFE’s mission statement to illustrate its objectives. It was expected to ‘encourage a constructive dialogue with the peoples of Eastern Europe...by enhancing their knowledge of developments in the world at large and in their own countries. In openly communicating information and ideas to peoples restricted by censorship RFE helps to maintain an informed public opinion.’ An addendum stated the obvious: that the station would operate

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in a manner ‘not inconsistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States’. We can assume that it would therefore support the movement for a united Europe, since that was an important element in the foreign policy of the United States when the RFE was created.9 RFE differed from the Voice of America radio station and the BBC’s European service in that it acted as a substitute for free domestic radio stations and a free press in the home countries. As one former director of the Polish service remarked, RFE broadcast what in Poland ‘was passed over in silence, suppressed or toned down by the censor’.10 By contrast the task of other radios such as the BBC or French Radio was ‘to project their nations’, to represent the national interest and cultures of Western governments and societies, to ‘pursue national diplomacy by other means’. The distinction was not absolutely clear cut since in reporting British opinion in the press or Parliament the BBC could not ignore critical comments on events in Eastern Europe which in themselves provided information and ideas which were antithetical to those provided by the official press in that region.11 As Sir Hugh Greene commented, the BBC European Service aimed to ensure credibility through truthful reporting and in the process ‘to get our audience to accept our view of events’. One BBC listener did not recall that the broadcasts talked much about European integration. On the other hand a Polish employee of the European Service ‘remembered distinctly’ that it propagated the idea of the unity of ‘the lands between the seas’. For the first time in history, said Urban, ‘the power of ideas and perceptions was being systematically deployed over a long period, as a weapon in its own right’.12 Mieroszewski confirmed that ‘some concepts such as the unification of Europe play an important role even if at the time they are unrealistic because they stimulate the train of thought of thousands of people in the desired direction and at the same time hasten evolution’.13 RFE began whole day broadcasting from transmitters in Munich on 3 May 1952, although its first transmissions had started in the previous year.14 The Central and East European Commission of the European Movement observed, correctly, that the radios were the principal means of communicating with the peoples of Central East Europe. The Western press also acknowledged that RFE was the ‘best and most efficient information centre’ for Central East Europe. Its effectiveness in offering a critique of the communist regimes and ‘countering mendacities’ can be measured by the retaliatory action of the governments of the region. Jamming of RFE’s broadcasts was commonplace even though it was very expensive. At the same time repeated and violent attacks on the radios by

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the regimes were an attempt to combat their influence and at the same time were an admission that listening was a widespread habit. Gomulka’s speech on 19 March 1968 was an example of such an attack. Other measures to restrict the size of the audience included, in the early 1950s, the doubling of the price of radio licences for radios capable of receiving foreign broadcasts, and the high cost of such radios.15 The regime’s alarm was an admission that the radios attracted a very large audience. In the late 1950s Edward Raczyn´ski commented that even the Research Bureau of Polish Radio conceded that 30 per cent of regular listeners listened exclusively to Polish broadcasts from the West, while 50 per cent listened to both western and domestic radio. Poles visiting the west recently, he reported, confirmed that RFE was universally known, widely listened to and appreciated.16 By the 1980s, when audience surveys were more sophisticated and reliable, data on audience figures indicated that RFE’s listeners represented 68 per cent of Poland’s adult population, equivalent to almost 19 million people.17 At its peak RFE was broadcasting up to 18 hours a day to each of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and slightly fewer hours to Bulgaria and Romania. To evaluate the impact of RFE on its target audience in offering a vision of a united Europe we need to understand its editorial policy. Raczyn´ski, who was a very well-informed and responsible observer, noted that the Polish desk of RFE was manned by a distinguished exile team of Polish intellectuals, journalists, writers, artists and so on. Jan Nowak-Jezioran´ski became the head of what became known as ‘The Voice of Free Poland’. But he and his counterparts on the Hungarian and other desks did not have full autonomy to broadcast what they liked. They had to operate within a structure where policy was discussed and agreed between the American management and the head of each radio service. Policy control over content was obtained by the formulation of general guidelines supplemented by daily meetings with the American policy adviser to determine the handling of specific news items. It was understood that news reports had to be as objective and accurate as possible, and that the radios were not to provoke ‘premature and suicidal’ internal revolt. Each month a check was made by CIA staff to identify mistakes in tone and content by reviewing one day’s tapes chosen at random.18 RFE was therefore very much an American operation, funded covertly by the CIA until 1971, its editorial control exerted by American management but nonetheless offering its scriptwriters and broadcasters a degree of autonomy. The station was therefore designed to meet the interests both of Free Poland (and the other states of Central East Europe) and the United States. Since the United States and the exile communities favoured the creation of a /

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united Europe it is probable that RFE would comment approvingly on the integration movement in Western Europe during the 1950s and subsequently. In the absence of detailed research into the RFE’s scripts over many years it is impossible at present to be more precise. Assessing the impact of RFE depends not only on editorial policy but also on the comments of listeners. After the end of communism when free expression returned to the states of Central East Europe, there were numerous accounts of the impact of RFE on individuals behind the Iron Curtain. Vaclav Havel thanked RFE in 1990 for decades of ‘broadcasting truthful information’ on developments at home and abroad. For many years, he said, ‘I myself was one of those who could address their fellow countrymen mainly or even solely through the medium of this radio station.’ Bronisl aw Geremek, one of the leading lights in the Polish Solidarity movement and later Foreign Minister of Poland, observed that Radio Free Europe had for decades been ‘the voice of freedom, the voice of Europe, and the voice of Poland’. Emil Constantinescu, the President of Romania, claimed that ‘the rockets that destroyed communism were launched by RFE’.19 Perhaps the most revealing comment came from Andrzej Gwiazda, one of the leaders of the Gdan´sk Shipyard strike, who wrote an article from his prison cell for the Polish underground journal SKORPION. All his friends in grammar school listened to RFE, he wrote; it was sufficient to hum a signature tune to get an immediate response from bystanders. RFE was the only institution with the exception of the Church which helped people to come together in a ‘terrorised and terrified society’. He thought it was impossible to say how the Poles would have lived and thought if RFE had not existed. Like the books you read the influence of RFE was intangible and impossible to evaluate. He doubted whether opinion polls taken after the event over the impact of RFE could be reliable guides since ‘memories are short and amour propre prevents the attribution of personal achievements to external influences’.20 For him, the major significance of the broadcasts was the revelation that a normal world existed ‘beyond the prison bars’. When you had to follow the official line you sometimes asked yourself if you were a madman or the only sane person. RFE showed you that you were not alone. Yet this testimony came from politically active people with a rebellious instinct. Could their reactions be considered typical of the mass of the population? In the early 1950s there was a lack of reliable audience research methods, results and analyses. Later on this failing was overcome. RFE carried out extensive interviews with visitors to the West from Central East Europe.21 McIntosh reported in the 1980s that for 25 years /

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surveys of opinion had been carried out by the Opinion Research Department of RFE among Poles, Hungarians and Czechoslovaks visiting Western Europe. Research had shown that those travelling were similar, though not identical, to those remaining at home. The samples were drawn from the four million people from the Central East region who had visited the west. Each overall survey was based on at least 1000 interviews with people who planned a limited stay.22 The surveys were carried out by nine polling organisations in six different countries. One of these surveys, in 1983, showed that only 4 per cent of respondents gave negative evaluations of RFE compared with 65 per cent who judged domestic radio unfavourably. News and current affairs programmes attracted the largest audiences. RFE was regarded by its listeners as helping to form opinions or reinforcing existing views; indeed 80 per cent of those interviewed believed that RFE had an effect on their opinions. It was through RFE and other radios that the great majority of respondents concluded that Western democracies were functioning well or very well. Ideas of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law were spread by the radios, particularly by RFE whose role was critical in exposing and publicising human rights abuses during the period of détente.23 One of the most telling comments on the impact of the radios came from Seweryn Bialer, an important Communist activist who escaped to the West from Poland in 1956. He revealed that the Polish regime attached the greatest importance to the impact of western broadcasts on public attitudes and, in an extraordinary comment, claimed that the government never embarked on any major operation without considering how Western broadcasts would influence public opinion towards it. Adolf Berle observed in the 1950s that RFE was the ‘recognised head of the non-Communist opposition in great parts of Central Europe’.24 It seems indisputable that RFE had an impact on Central and Eastern Europe. It supplied information, disseminated ideas, influenced opinion, helped to maintain cohesion, and reinforced democratic ideals. We began by asking how influential the exiles were in shaping public opinion behind the Iron Curtain. It is clear that exile scriptwriters and broadcasters and heads of national sections within RFE had considerable autonomy within broad guidelines set by the United States management. The broadcasts were listened to by a very large section of the populations of Central East Europe, and opinion surveys showed clearly that they had a significant impact in informing opinion and shaping ideas. Can we therefore conclude that this shaping of ideas also applied to the question of European unity, and to the formation and development of the European Economic Community (EEC)? It is impossible to offer a clear /

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and unequivocal answer to this question. We have found only one piece of evidence which is directly relevant. In 1957 the Committee of Non-Represented Nations of the Council of Europe concluded that RFE ‘paid much attention’ to the work of the Council of Europe and other international organisations such as NATO, Western European Union and the European Coal and Steel Community. More recently it had reported on the newly formed EEC. The Committee was convinced that the people behind the Iron Curtain were ‘greatly interested in all European manifestations’ and everything which aimed at greater unity.25 Until we have more of that kind of evidence we shall have to rely mainly on personal testimonies which often conflict, and on suppositions, allusions, off-the-cuff judgements and deductions from accepted facts. In the latter case, it would be logical to suggest that, since exiles from Central East Europe had powerful positions within RFE, since RFE was influential in shaping opinion, since the exiles were almost certainly supportive of some form of European unity because that was the consensus among the exile community in general as we saw in earlier chapters, it is inconceivable that they would not have reported, and reported favourably, on the development of European integration in Western Europe. But of course opinion was shaped by many other factors than RFE, influential though it may have been. Poles in Poland were very well aware of their country’s vulnerable geopolitical position and knew that Soviet protection was required until there was a satisfactory resolution of the German question. They also gave priority to the restoration of real independence, free from the direction of Moscow. Nevertheless RFE had provided a useful service in showing how national reconciliation, after centuries of hostilities, had been achieved in Western Europe and how that model of unity might be applied in Central East Europe when circumstances were right. This does not mean, of course, that the people of Central East Europe were au fait with the character and structure of the EEC. Rather, they could see that Poland’s future after communism lay in re-connecting with a culture and economy from which it had been forcibly torn in 1945. RFE and its exile employees possibly did not create this aspiration but they almost certainly reinforced it and provided practical examples of how it could be implemented. Information gleaned from interviews with prominent individuals in Polish politics after 1989 is contradictory and does not help us very much in clarifying Polish public opinion on the European question during the communist period. One individual claimed that the Polish public, even its most enlightened and politically radical elements, were hardly informed at all about the movement towards integration in

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Western Europe. When presented with information they subconsciously thought in terms of the Warsaw Pact and the CMEA. Generally the phenomenon of European integration was ‘beyond our conceptual framework’. While this might have been true for the 1950s and 1960s, another opinion suggests, there was a breakthrough in the 1970s, after which interest in the character and the enlargement of the EEC began to increase. The EEC was the subject of vigorous attack from the Communist regime in Warsaw – it was allegedly on the verge of collapse, it was unworkable, it was against all ideological principles. But, as we saw earlier, the regime’s response varied according to the perceived threat, which suggests that the idea of integration in Europe was beginning to make inroads in Polish popular opinion. When Zdzislaw Najder became head of the Polish desk of RFE in the early 1980s he started to put out programmes about the process of European integration. He discovered that this was a novel approach since he could find nobody in his organisation who knew anything on that precise subject.26 Other interviewees, however, argued that the intelligentsia at least were informed. A former foreign minister of Poland claimed he himself had followed the creation of a united Europe from the 1950s as part of his academic studies in Law. During the 1970s and 1980s many people gained access to the primary sources on the integration of Europe, either during travel abroad or by consulting them in Polish libraries. ‘There was no shortage of reading matter on European issues for those who knew in what libraries to find them and who knew western languages.’ In the 1970s and 1980s it was easier to travel abroad and to gain access to primary sources on European integration. People bought books during trips abroad: two examples were quoted, a book by Aleksander Bregman on Polish–German relations and the war memoirs of Edward Raczyn´ski.27 Bregman himself reported in 1962 that some Western newspapers and ‘many’ English and French books were on sale in Poland.28 Émigré publications sent by post might or might not be seized and confiscated by the postal censorship but, if not, they would circulate freely from hand to hand and might even be put up for sale at black market prices. Sometimes books published by Jerzy Giedroyc’s Instytut Literacki in Paris were smuggled into Poland and reprinted by underground publishers.29 Another former foreign minister picked up journals and papers from the West German and Austrian embassies in Warsaw in the 1960s and 1970s.30 On the other hand a former Polish prime minister thought there was very fragmented knowledge of European affairs and European politics in Poland. Institutional developments in Western Europe after /

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the war were perhaps observed by some analysts but not by ordinary people.31 An active politician and central banker believed that people who were intelligent and wanted to be well-informed listened to RFE and the BBC but, in her opinion, this did not apply to the mass of people. Even for those who did listen, the question of increasing unification in Western Europe was not a very important issue. She had the impression that quite a number of her contemporaries at university were interested in integration and believed that Poland would have been a member of European organisations had she been free to join.32 The most informed and most enthusiastic supporter of a united Europe from his days as a student in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a man who later became one of the chief negotiators for Polish membership of the European Union and later a Member of the European Parliament. At his university in Poland he and his colleagues organised a series of conferences on European integration from 1980 onwards. Integration with the European Communities was indispensable for transforming the Polish economy, they believed. His sources of information were academic books and journals published in the West, including the journal of the Union of Polish Federalists, which were accessed partly as a result of study in Western universities. For him the question of European integration was even more important than Polish relations with the Soviet Union or with the Federal Republic of Germany.33 The authors can confirm from personal experience that the movement to set up departments or institutes of European Studies in Polish universities began in the mid-1980s with the financial support of the European Community and with consultants from western European universities. Finally, a former Polish Foreign Minister made the important point that familiarity with what was happening in Western Europe became far more widespread after around 1970. Before that only the elites of writers, philosophers, sociologists, historians, artists and so on were even partially aware of events that took place in Western Europe. Yet it was still true that after 1970 the pressing problems for most people continued to be, how to survive, how to avoid repression, and how to educate one’s children, but developments in Western Europe assumed greater importance than hitherto. The credit for this lay in major part with RFE which was the main enemy of the communist system.34 If RFE and the other radios were the major source of Western news and comment for the peoples of Central East Europe, how important were the print media in conveying information and ideas? Here there seems to be wide agreement that the impact of English and Polish language journals

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published in exile such as Polska w Europie, Polish Affairs, Trybuna, European Press and the Central European Federalist was generally confined to the exile readership. Of course, some copies may have been smuggled into Poland or other countries of Central East Europe. Our interviewees were, however, unaware of ever seeing copies in Poland, so it is unlikely that they were widely read there. The journal Kultura, published in Paris by Jerzy Giedroyc and his collaborators, was a different matter. It began shortly after the Second World War and continued into the 1990s. The publishers of the journal were not formally connected with any of the exiles’ societies. Their political stance could be described as liberal-rationalist with leftist tendencies. The two most prominent journalists connected with the journal were its editor-in-chief Jerzy Giedroyc and its regular commentator on foreign affairs, Juliusz Mieroszewski, who supplied articles from his London base until 1975. Just as RFE saw itself, and was seen by others, as the Voice of Free Poland rather than an exile station broadcasting to other exiles, so Kultura was less of an exile paper than a national one published abroad. Its fellow Polish paper published in the West, Polish Affairs, admitted that Kultura was different since all its main articles were expressly intended for Poles in Poland.35 Kultura’s subscriptions were around 10,000; estimates by the Warsaw regime admitted that some 1,600 copies reached Poland by illegal means. The real figure may have been higher, depending on the effectiveness of the smuggling.36 Customs officials confiscated copies of Kultura from travellers’ luggage, police searched apartments and seized books by exile writers. Harsh sentences for cooperating with exiles were handed down at a series of trials. Naturally the readership of these journals was much larger than the number of smuggled copies since the issues were passed from hand to hand. Moreover, closed libraries possessed copies which were allegedly read by high-ranking Party and Government officials and others who had access.37 Wladislaw Gomulka testified to Kultura’s influence in Poland when he attacked Juliusz Mieroszewski’s articles and branded the journal a ‘German–American front organization’.38 To counter the threat posed by the journal the Communist authorities prescribed severe penalties for bringing Kultura into Poland, and on one occasion at least five people were imprisoned for ‘subverting the interests of the Polish People’s Republic’, that is to say smuggling in copies of the journal which was described in the charge as ‘collaborating with Kultura’.39 And yet one interviewee claimed that only a ‘thin layer’ of people had access to Kultura. In Poznan´ those who knew about the journal confessed to seeing it only rarely and the so-called ordinary people of the city knew nothing about it. This must have been true of other provincial cities and the rural areas, but in Warsaw, where there was access to foreign embassies, /

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foreign journals could be acquired more readily. It was perhaps against the Warsaw intelligentsia that the blasts of the regime against Kultura were mainly directed. Wandycz described Kultura as, in many ways, ‘the most influential and opinion-forming’ if controversial institution in the emigration, and had a major impact on the Polish intelligentsia in the homeland. He argued that the journal ‘operated on the assumption’ that politics alone, especially in exile, was bound ‘to degenerate into sterile controversies’ and loss of contact with the homeland. It therefore addressed Polish cultural and intellectual elites rather than politicians. It saw its role as being to help preserve the Polish cultural tradition, actually Poland’s western traditions, within a broad European culture. With Kultura’s assistance people in Poland would be more able to resist Soviet influences and preserve their own identities.40 This ‘spiritual’ movement, the journal believed, would have to precede Polish participation in the European movement since only through the renaissance of a European culture in Poland and the identification of Poles with it would the conditions be created for a political alignment with a united Europe. According to Suszko, on the other hand, Kultura worked ‘devotedly’ for a new European order to oppose the imperialism of the Soviet Union. The Poles around Kultura, he argued, were among the most enthusiastic supporters of European unity since the Second World War. ‘For years’, wrote Suszko ‘they have been trying to convince the rest of the Polish emigration as well as Poles in Poland to accept the idea of a united Europe and the necessity of Polish participation in it’. Another contributor to the journal, Józef Czapski, highlighted the major obstacle to the acceptance of the federal idea was the inveterate antagonism between nations, the ‘permanently reheated nationalisms’, illustrated by the 38 border disputes awaiting resolution in Central East Europe.41 Underpinning mutual national prejudices, according to Czapski, were the different and contested understandings of the meaning of integration. The Poles, for example, upheld the Jagiellonian idea as a model of freedom, ‘the Union of the free with the free’, whereas the slogan meant something completely different for the Lithuanians who saw in the idea a threat to their culture by a more powerful rival. The Ukrainians were similarly hostile, believing that Polish or Russian federalist ideas were a cover for nationalistic tendencies. The statements of Suszko and Czapski imply that Kultura had to work hard to convince the exiles of the desirability of European unity and the abandonment of an anachronistic nationalism.42 But, as we have seen in earlier chapters, this was not at all the case. From the earliest

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days after the war the exile leadership was firmly committed to both regional unity and the incorporation of Central East Europe in a broader united Europe. Indeed, a survey conducted by Kultura among exile leaders in 1953 showed that most were prepared to accept a limiting of state sovereignty in exchange for Polish participation in a European union. Others believed that a European union would not mean limitations on the real, as opposed to the formal, sovereignty of the states which composed it. Europe would not limit independence but would enlarge it, safeguard it not suppress it. The only way in which the Central East European states could preserve their existence and their cultural and political identity was by membership of a European association of states. As Raczyn´ski noted, ‘the best patriots are also the best Europeans’. It is arguable therefore that Suszko overstates the contribution of Kultura to moulding opinion on a united Europe among the exiles. The journal did not give a great deal of attention to the unification of Europe and, if one interviewee is to be believed, lost interest in European unity after around 1960.43 On the other hand Suszko is probably correct in emphasising the general impact of Kultura’s thinking on Poles in Poland, particularly the intelligentsia. Referring to the influence of the journal Ilya Prizel suggested that many of Kultura’s positions were adopted by intellectuals in the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR) and the Solidarity movement in the 1970s and 1980s Timothy Snyder has charted the influence of Kultura on Polish attitudes to the post-communist future of Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus, the essential element of which was an abandonment of traditional Polish attitudes to territories which were once part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among Poles both Czapski and Giedroyc had an exceptional understanding of the mentality of the Ukrainians and Lithuanians for whom to be called ‘the Russian nations’ was both irritating and insulting.44 Polish nationalism and Polish federalism, Kultura argued, had no place in the new relationships, only respect for the autonomy of the new states and the yielding of any claims to past borders. If Snyder is correct, one can conclude that Kultura created, or more likely reinforced, tendencies within the homeland to abandon national ambitions in the East. By extension, the weakening of this national sentiment would also have consequences for Polish attitudes to European unity.45 Thinking about the general impact of Kultura on Polish thinking, particularly on the possible evolution of the Soviet Union and Poland’s place in the Warsaw Pact, one has to reckon with the formidable analyses of international affairs presented in the journal over many years by

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Mieroszewski. From his base in London he offered opinions and prognoses which must have startled his compatriots in Poland, surviving as they did under the increasingly repressive rule of Gomulka. But by the 1980s, after Mieroszewski’s death and the rise to power of Gorbachev, his ideas must have seemed almost prophetic. His book Evolutionism predicted the fall of the Soviet empire under the influence of two parallel processes, the Europeanisation of Russia and the evolution of communism. ‘The Poles, in general’, he wrote, ‘do not have a choice or an alternative at all. Because neither communism nor Russia can be rejected, we have to try and influence the evolution of communism as well as Russia.’46 The process of Europeanising Russia has several aspects. In its most general meaning Europeanisation meant numbing ‘the Russian historical complex towards the Germans since, in the case of unification, Germany would become the “core of Europe” ’. Europeanising Russia would also mean the decolonisation of the satellite empire (a prerequisite for East European participation in a united Europe) which, he suggested, should take place in two stages. In the first stage, the Central East European countries, while keeping their current political systems, would be freed from Moscow’s protectorate in the area of defence. In the second stage, their political systems would be discarded and they would regain full independence. He repeated that if peace were maintained for the next 20–30 years in Central East Europe the totalitarian systems would evolve into parliamentary democracy.47 (Pondering the consequences of the Prague Spring of 1968 Mieroszewski tried to show that the ‘reformation of communism’ had become a fact and not just an ambition. He claimed that for the younger generation in Central East Europe the Czechoslovak model constituted ‘a native form joining together freedom and socialism’.)48 The final area of Europeanisation would be democratic change in Russia itself. Mieroszewski also mentioned material factors which would Europeanise Russia, namely the industrial revolution and technological progress, which would permit Russia to overcome its ‘inferiority complex’ towards the West.49 Mieroszewski also tried to predict at least some implications of the fall of communism for Russia and its neighbours. He harboured no illusions that Russia would cease to be the dominating superpower in Europe, even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He forecast that some former satellite states would choose ‘true federation’ with the new Russia and ruled out the possibility of creating a ‘protective barrier’ or cordon sanitaire, consisting of Central East European states. The greatest danger for Poland, he believed, lay in Russian nationalism, Bonapartisim and an extreme rightist dictatorship. ‘Against the Russian rightist government’, /

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he feared, ‘we could not find allies neither in Paris, London nor Washington . . . in only a few years the Russian “Adenauer” would be a much more influential ally of Washington than Poland.’ Hence Mieroszewski thought that the best solution to the Russian problem would be its transformation from a ‘neostalinist’ country into a state based on the model of ‘solid socialism’ resulting from the modification and reconstruction of the existing system. He believed that imported Western social-political forms would not succeed as they were not rooted in native historical tradition.50 Mieroszewski hoped that his concept of evolutionism would, sooner or later, reach the younger generation of political leaders in Central East Europe, people who in the future would assume power, meaning particularly the Soviet elite. One of the questions we posed at the beginning of this discussion was whether the exiles could justify their claim that they accurately represented opinion in their homelands on the question of Poland’s place in a united Europe. In an earlier chapter we observed how much popular support there was in war-time occupied Poland for a united Europe. Despite the onset of Stalinism after the Second World War, this European ideal would not have been completely obliterated. Of course, the Polish people, like the Hungarians and the Czechoslovaks, would have recognised that the membership of their countries in a united Europe was a very remote possibility. There were far more pressing immediate problems to command popular attention. But it would not have escaped notice, after Stalin’s death in 1953, that the relatively greater fluidity in Polish politics opened up new possibilities. After all, Poland’s geographical location remained the same, with or without communism. A hypothetical post-communist future raised the question of Poland’s security and economic development. The war-time ideas of regional associations and participation in a united Europe would inevitably have re-emerged. Public discussion of these ideas would have taken place on the radios and in Kultura, though obviously not in the regime’s media. There are in fact various indicators of public opinion in the decades after the War on Poland’s place in a united Europe which confirm these probabilities. ‘PSW’ writing in The Central European Federalist in 1953, while admitting the extreme difficulty of assessing the attitude of Poles in Poland to federation, believed that they were aware of the federalist movement in the West. Recent escapees from Poland reported there was a strong desire in their homeland to create a Central and East European federation after liberation. Because the Polish people were confused by Soviet propaganda they wanted to know, the escapees commented, what Western ideas were

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on the future of Central East Europe. The Poles at home had not quite decided whether they would prefer Poland to re-emerge as a fully sovereign state or whether it should join a wider association of states.51 The following year the same journal published an uncensored letter from Czechoslovakia. In it the correspondent stated unequivocally that ‘above all people talk about federation’ and hope that a future Europe will be a federation of states. These ideas were not confined to the intelligentsia or the ‘politically mature elements’. ‘In a vague and naïve way’, the author continued ‘the dream of being part of a large European community created by voluntary union is present in the minds of all people.’ For the Czechoslovaks, and there is no reason to suppose that the sentiments of the Poles were any different, European federalism meant essentially three things from which all would benefit: the right to move freely over a much wider geographical area; the free exchange of goods and services; and an end to the fear and hatred of neighbouring states. The peoples of Central East Europe, claimed this correspondent, were ‘preoccupied’ by steps in the West to create a European union and worried lest they be left behind. There was a great deal of support for regional federations composed of those states which had interests and traditions in common. This opinion was confirmed by the Hungarian exile Paul Auer who, through his many contacts, concluded that people behind the Iron Curtain were aware of the great importance for them of European political integration, and followed the activity of the European Movement with special interest.52 The Committee of Non-Represented Nations of the Council of Europe concluded that people behind the Iron Curtain ‘were greatly interested in all European manifestations, everything which aims at greater unity’.53 A rather different prospect was outlined by ‘a young Hungarian Exile’ in 1957. He admitted that people in Hungary were informed about the European Movement and about various plans and projects for the unity of Europe, gaining their information from Western radio broadcasts. The ‘framework’ of a developing European unification movement was becoming clear. However, he believed that the interest of Hungarians in a regional federation was very limited, partly because of their experience in the CMEA, which took no account of the wishes and national characteristics of the participants. Inevitably, he said, a movement towards national self-determination was the main result of this ‘federation’ (the CMEA) since people who are being ‘federated’ against their will are much more interested in national independence than in a putative federalism. Hence, and here his opinion was shared by at least some of the exiles, the first steps towards federation would

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be national independence. After that the people of the region would have to understand that a federation was the only solution for the problems of security and economic development.54 A meeting of intellectuals in Geneva in 1957 showed that the East European participants had an interest in European unity and were wellinformed about recent developments. Four Polish intellectuals including Leszek Kolakowski and Jaroslaw Iwaskiewicz engaged in debate with André Philip, P.-H. Spaak and Max Born on the meaning of Europe. The Polish speakers rejected a Europe of the Six for its exclusiveness, and insisted that Europe should be represented by all nationalities ‘which have shared its national mosaic’. Imre Nagy, the Hungarian Prime Minister, in his ‘dissertations’ address to the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party in 1955–56, supported the idea of a federation in Central East Europe on the grounds of security and economic development. These ideas were totally consistent with émigré accounts of thinking in Central East Europe, and strengthen the conviction that the exiles were accurately representing public opinion behind the Iron Curtain.55 Interestingly, the EEC’s concentration on the creation of a common market in the first decade of its existence made it easier, so it was argued, for the countries of Central East Europe to identify with it. Its economic success was acknowledged, albeit grudgingly in official circles, and even the communist regimes saw the economic advantages of a closer association. There was a growing awareness of the marked disparity between the prosperity of Western Europe and the economic stagnation in the east. Analysts reminded their readers that the economies of Western and Eastern Europe had been complementary for centuries, and a resumption of that earlier close association would be of mutual benefit, unlike the situation in the CMEA, where Moscow’s interests predominated at the expense of its satellites.56 By the 1970s and 1980s, as Urban from his long experience of RFE could testify, there was in Central East Europe ‘a yearning for the unheroic ordinariness of civil society, the retreat of the Soviet Union, and the return to Europe’. The average Pole’s idealisation of the European dimension and his enthusiasm to be part of it was, he believed, almost boundless. ‘For the worker Europe promised prosperity, for white collars a remarriage of cultures and values, and for Christians a re-absorption into some vaguely imagined Christendom.’ Urban’s conclusion was that the Poles’ enthusiasm for Europe and the desire to join it were so universal that they needed little encouragement. Jan Józef Lipski, a prominent political activist and dissenter during the 1970s, reporting on the Polish mood in late 1981 in an article in Kultura, confirmed Urban’s subsequent /

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diagnosis. ‘As a nation with a sense of membership in Western civilization and culture we dream of returning to our larger family Europe.’ Western Europe was Poland’s ‘cultural cradle’, but every year Poland was sinking deeper and deeper into Sovietism which was ‘corrupting our system of values, our social links and our conception of our own national traditions’.57 To sum up, the scattered testimony over four decades suggests that Poland’s place, and the place of the other Central East European states, in Europe was never far from the minds of the inhabitants of the region. These individual statements are not, however, the only sources of information on opinion in the region. Information reached the West in many and diverse ways and grew into a flood by the 1960s and 1970s. This enabled the exiles to claim with absolute confidence that their views were also the views of their compatriots, and that their support for European federalism was shared by people in the homelands. They never wavered in this assurance. It is almost impossible in the millions of words written by the exiles in their journals and spoken at their conferences to discover any self-doubt that they were the true spokesmen of their enslaved countrymen. Jan Starzewski, formerly of the Polish Foreign Ministry, and a leading figure in the London exile organisations, wrote that ‘only our organizations in exile are qualified to interpret the situation in the occupied countries and to express their wishes’. For the former Czech minister Stefan Osusky the exiles were ‘the articulate conscience of the captive nations on this side of the Iron Curtain’. Gregoire Gafencu, the Romanian Foreign Minister before the outbreak of war, claimed at The Hague conference in 1948 that he was expressing the ‘profound sentiment’ of the eastern countries in affirming their fidelity to Europe and their desire to form an integral part of a united Europe. This view was shared by Adam Ciolkosz, the Chairman of the Polish Council of National Unity on which were represented almost all the pre-war political parties. The fact that there was party consensus on this issue strengthens the claim for the Council’s representativeness.58 However, to make the case more convincing other evidence is required. This is to be found in the increasing contacts across the Iron Curtain between the people of Central East Europe and their exile compatriots in the west. During the Stalinist period there were few opportunities to compare opinions but, even so, contacts with the East, as the Central and East European Commission of the European Movement noted, continued to exist in all fields and proved to be fruitful. However, after 1956 the number of visitors in each direction rose rapidly as childhood family and friends re-established bonds.59 Westerners visiting Poland increased /

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from several thousand per annum in the Stalinist period to almost 135,000 in 1965. Bregman wrote in 1962 that people in the East were not afraid to talk to Western tourists. East Europeans were also permitted to go abroad and, between 1956 and 1966, more than 400,000 Poles emigrated to the West. There was a steady growth of exchanges of artists, writers, students and academics, an increase in sponsored visits of relatives and friends, some intermarriage between male exiles and females from the home countries, the organisation of lectures and exhibitions, the exchange of books and newspapers, and increased opportunities to study abroad or to visit the West as tourists. The statistics show that in 1954 200 visitors arrived in Britain from Poland. The figures for the following years were: 1955 – 377; 1956 – 1701; 1957 – 10,868. After March 1958 a number of Polish dissidents, usually highly educated and of left wing views, were expelled from the country, and some 15,000 to 20,000 Poles left following the purges after 1968. These included some celebrated Polish intellectuals such as Leszek Kol akowski, Wlodzimierz Brus, Zygmunt and Janina Baumann and the Smolar brothers, Eugeniusz and Aleksander. Between 1980 and 1989 around one million Poles emigrated.60 In this connection, former Polish Ambassador Kajetan Morawski recalled the ‘several hundreds of visitors from Poland he had met in Paris, who had conveyed to him the opinions and sentiments of the great mass of the population and had even conveyed the nuances of these opinions’. He believed that the several thousand Poles who had visited the West since the autumn of 1956 ‘constituted for the evolution of the psychological climate of the country, a decisive element’.61 Mieroszewski also referred to his discussions with hundreds of visitors from the East.62 Starzewski wrote in 1958 that ‘numerous witnesses are coming to visit us from Poland’; in the light of these visits he concluded that ‘nothing separates us from the nation and that everything unites us. There is’ he said, ‘one Polish nation, united in spirit and in aspirations . . .’.63 These interchanges leave little doubt that, at least after the mid 1950s, the exiles were in possession of an enormous amount of information about opinion in Central East Europe on many topics, among them the idea of a federal system for the Continent.64 By the late 1970s the exile communities began to play a greater role in Polish politics. Contacts between the Poles living in the West and those at home became more frequent and mutually productive.65 The exiles sent back information about the world and ‘truth about our nation’s history’, and ‘uncensored reflections on hope and hopelessness in Polish life’.66 /

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When Urban made the claim that RFE were the ‘rightful custodians’ of the national interests of Poles, Czechs etc., he could do so with confidence. His broadcasters could speak for East Europeans because in them ‘are vested the conscience and identity of these nations’. They knew this for a fact because they were constantly ‘taking the temperature’ through wideranging audience research. As well, they received ‘countless personal testimonies, letters and telephone calls’ from their listeners which impressed upon them the necessity of speaking in the name of the millions of East Europeans who could not put their views freely. He added that ‘their trust in us as keepers of their consciences and honour was...amazing’.67 There was in practice a significant feedback from the radio broadcasts, which led to the conclusion that the exposure of Central East Europe to Western information, ideas, historical experience, and economic and cultural influences ensured that the countries of the region, to a greater or less degree, regarded themselves as part of the ‘European family of nations’, and their inhabitants aspired to participate fully in the economic, cultural and political life of Europe.68 For the exiles as well as their contemporaries in the homelands ‘Europe’ meant an end to war, an increase in security and economic development, freedom and democracy. It was also a means of reconstructing and enriching the cultures of the Central East European states. Thirdly, Europe meant a closing of the ‘civilization gap’, namely better education, better knowledge of the outside world, the development of civil society, and greater politeness between persons, in short, a civilised life. More than one interviewee stressed this aspect.69 Europe also meant something which it was almost impossible to learn from books or other media. Those in exile could feel it and could attribute that feeling to their compatriots back home. When their compatriots visited the West they responded as Czesl aw Mil osz had done in Native Realm. It was, as one interviewee noted, a ‘completely different mental state’. The promise offered by Paris, to give one example, was infinite, ‘it was the promise of life’. This was pre-war but it applied even more strongly to visitors to the West in the decades after 1950. By that time since Europe offered not only life but a new beginning, in which nations which had fought each other for centuries now cooperated peacefully. The promise of the new Europe was a softening of conflicts, a resolution of disagreements, the removal of the threat of war and inter-ethnic conflict, and an increase in prosperity. Its watchwords were security and peace. This world may only have been vaguely understood by the mass of people in Central East Europe during communism. That it was sensed and intuitively grasped is supported by two facts which exist in a /

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kind of continuum over half a century. During the Second World War Central East Europeans had committed themselves to creating a new association of states in Europe. Then, half a century later, the decision by the first post-Communist government in Poland to seek membership of the European Community received popular support. Under the surface the desire to return to Europe was always present; the exiles seemed to understand this and ensured that the silenced voices of the east received a hearing in the west. As one interviewee who lived through the Communist period in Poland put it: ‘Being associated with other states was part of our culture, our tradition, and the risk involved in being integrated was less than being alone’.70 It would be incautious to suggest that the broad consensus among the Central East European exiles about the future of Europe was totally replicated among their compatriots. At the same time, claiming that there was no correspondence at all between the vision of the exiles and the ideas of their countrymen would be equally misguided. The evidence considered here suggests that the future of Europe and the place in it of the Central East European states was not uppermost in the minds of the peoples behind the Iron Curtain. Unsurprisingly, for much of the Communist period they had other priorities. Yet, if they had been asked to articulate their views, they would have said that Soviet control had confirmed their aspirations to return to a Europe which they had been part of for many centuries. ‘The permanence of Brezhnev – always Brezhnev’, as one interviewee put it, may have made this return seem improbable but, without doubt, it strengthened the appeal of a democratic and free Europe. Those who were informed of developments in the West could observe a model of economic and political evolution which had great attraction. Joined to the allure of a shared culture was the prospect of a Europe at peace, having put behind it the conflicts and hostilities of the past. In short, we suggest that what the exiles articulated would, in broad terms, have been subscribed to by their countrymen in the East. At the very least exile propaganda reinforced the identity of people behind the Iron Curtain as members of the broader European community. Hence, in the war of ideas, the European project triumphed. The decision of the first post-communist government in Poland to apply for membership in the European Community drew on a well of support from the Polish people. The political and economic context in which that decision was taken will be the subject of the final chapter.

11 Poland’s European Policy after Communism: Continuity and Change

When Tadeusz Mazowiecki became Prime Minister of Poland in September 1989 he led a ‘hybrid’ or coalition government composed of representatives of the Solidarity movement on the one hand and the communists, who had been in power in Poland since the end of the Second World War, on the other. Although the partly free elections in the preceding July had resulted in defeat for the communists, in the political circumstances of 1989 it seemed prudent to reassure Moscow that Poland’s new government would not make radical changes in foreign and defence policies, nor in questions of internal security. Mazowiecki, a former journalist and devout Catholic, was nominated as prime minister because he ‘would not startle the horses in Moscow’, and had the support of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.1 It was agreed that the so-called ‘power ministries’ of defence and interior would remain in the hands of Communists; General Jaruzelski, former prime minister and former leader of the Polish United Workers’ Party (the party of the communists), was elected President by the slimmest possible margin, again in the interests of stability. Krzysztof Skubiszewski, a political independent though a Solidarity sympathiser, and a distinguished professor of Law, was appointed foreign minister in the belief, correct as it turned out, that he would be cautious and realistic in conducting Poland’s foreign policy. He was acceptable both to the communists, because he had been a member of Jaruzelski’s broad consultative council, and to the Church.2 Skubiszewski remained in office until 1993, under four different Prime Ministers. In foreign policy terms the years from 1989 to 1993 may be described as ‘the Skubiszewski era’. In this period the broad lines of Poland’s post-communist foreign policy were laid down and skilfully implemented. European policy, to be precise Poland’s policy towards the European Communities, was set in this period and carried out consistently by subsequent governments. 214

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As we have seen in previous chapters Poles exiled in the West since the end of the Second World War had discussed Poland’s place in Europe and the necessity of their homeland being part of a wider grouping of European states. Early talk of a federation in Central East Europe as a route to membership of an all-European association was gradually superseded by the idea of direct membership of Poland in the European Communities. While broadly agreeing about the ends, the exiles could only speculate about the means since it was impossible to anticipate the precise circumstances under which a post-communist government would take power. They could only speak in very general terms that the regaining of independence (a condition of an association with west European states) depended on the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from its imperium in Central East Europe. But they were as ignorant as their compatriots in Poland as to when and how that withdrawal might take place. Consequently they had no blueprint to offer the new post-communist government in Warsaw. This was faced with an extraordinarily complex set of circumstances, in which the possibility of closer association with the European Communities was dependent on the successful resolution of a number of critical and pressing issues involving the Great Powers and Poland’s neighbours on her western and eastern borders. In considering the hypothetical influence of Polish exiles on the creation of Poland’s European Union policy, historians may be tempted to follow the path taken by Timothy Snyder, Ilya Prizel, Stephen Burant and others, who have argued that Poland’s policy towards its eastern neighbours of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine was shaped by the Parisan exile journal Kultura, which is said to have exerted great influence over Solidarity intellectuals in the 1980s. By 1980, Snyder comments, ‘a consensus in favour of the Kultura program was apparent among the Polish opposition intelligentsia who would play important roles in Solidarity’ and, one might add, in the first post-communist governments. When representatives of these intellectuals came to power in 1989 they thus had a ready-made policy which involved supporting the independence of Poland’s eastern neighbours, accepting their existing borders, and repudiating all claims to territory in the east.3 It is worth noting that among the Polish exiles Kultura had adopted an heretical position. Most exiles, including the Polish government-in-exile in London, demanded the restoration of the pre-1939 eastern borders of Poland (which would have extended Poland’s boundaries into the then Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine) and the return of those two quintessentially Polish cities of Lwów and Wilno. Clearly, if the exiles exerted any influence over Eastern policy, it was the Parisian rather than the London groups

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which did so. But, by analogy, it is worth asking whether the exiles, in London, Paris or New York, might have influenced the new government’s European policy too. We shall return to the question of influence at greater length at the end of this chapter. Of course, since the exiles did not know the circumstances in which independence would be achieved they could offer only the most general objectives of foreign policy, not the methods by which those objectives could be realised. For practising politicians like Skubiszewski and Mazowiecki, it was the methods, not the objectives, which were more problematic. Returning to the eastern policy for a moment, how was the independence of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine to be recognised when they were still constituent republics of the Soviet Union? This was clearly a difficult question which Skubiszewski wished to resolve in one way, namely ‘with realism’, while some of his critics on this issue would have pursued a policy described by Skubiszewski as ‘adventurism’.4 And as regards European policy, how could this be effected without first extricating Poland from the Warsaw Pact and the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON), establishing harmonious relations with the Soviet Union, and settling the important issue of Poland’s western frontier with Germany? The exiles could give no practical advice about these issues since they were not in possession of the facts which were available to Poland’s foreign ministry, nor were they au fait with the demands of Poland’s negotiating partners. And this leaves out of account whether they even had any influence in setting the foreign policy goals, still less the methods, a question to be discussed later in this chapter. So, to elucidate the question of ‘influence’ we first have to examine the difficult and complex issues which Skubiszewski and his prime minister had to negotiate before they could achieve their long-term objectives. In tackling these issues it would be highly implausible to suppose that Skubiszewski was asking himself what the exiles would recommend in those circumstances. In interviews and speeches Mazowiecki and Skubiszewski, from the earliest days of the Solidarity government, placed great value on the ‘recreation of a united Europe in which Poland should have its place’ and welcomed recent steps towards greater cooperation with the European Community (EC).5 Their ability to make these statements rested in part on an agreement concluded in the period of the previous communist government between the CMEA and the EC. After decades during which the CMEA had damned the EC as ‘a temporary creation of the capitalist states hostile to the Socialist countries’ a Joint Declaration on the establishment of official relations was signed in Luxembourg on

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25 June 1988 permitting individual members of the CMEA to enter bilateral talks with the EC. In Poland’s case this process culminated in a Trade and Economic Cooperation agreement of 19 September 1989.6 There was another element of continuity between the later period of communist rule and the Solidarity government, namely that in April 1989 the Solidarity Citizens’ Committee declared its support for the idea of European unity and the closest possible cooperation between Poland and the members of the EC. Despite the CMEA’s rapprochement with the EC and the possibilities for bilateral discussions between the satellite states and Brussels, it would be fanciful to suppose that a communist government would have identified with Skubiszewski’s statement in December 1989, that the Polish government supported ideas of a united Europe and that ‘what matters for us is the whole united Europe which we are joining belatedly’.7 So while there was some slight element of continuity in this respect, change was a more notable feature in the new government’s policy to Europe. Yet although the new government went further than the communists would have done in setting as one of its foreign policy priorities ‘very intensive relations with Western Europe’, it is noticeable that references to closer association with the EC are relatively few in the first six months of the new government’s existence. Other issues took priority. But that did not mean they were more important. Skubiszewski has stated that as early as the Autumn of 1989 he had decided to have negotiations with the EC on an Association Treaty. Yet he could not at that point announce it in such clear terms in a public speech since the foreign ministry had other problems to contend with which impinged on European policy, namely, relations with the Soviet Union and the border with Germany.8 Skubiszewski’s guiding principle in foreign policy was the interest of the state ‘within the dictates of morality and international law’. The state’s interest demanded that it be independent vis-à-vis other states, and that at home it should enjoy ‘internal sovereignty’. The main aim of foreign policy, then, was the implementation of the state’s independence. Despite perestroika in Moscow, the Soviet Union was still a nuclear superpower which shared a border with Poland and was the dominant force in the Warsaw Pact and the CMEA, of which Poland was a member. There were tens of thousands of Soviet troops stationed in Poland and there were numerous divisions over Poland’s eastern border. In the German Democratic Republic which was of critical importance to Moscow there were many thousands of Soviet troops which were reinforced and supplied by rail through Poland. To the north the Soviet exclave of Kaliningrad was a major military and naval base equipped with nuclear

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weapons. It seemed imperative to Mazowiecki and Skubiszewski that relations with Moscow should be conducted cautiously and pragmatically if the Solidarity experiment was to survive. Hence, while looking for respect for its own sovereignty, Poland had to take into consideration the interests of the Soviet Union as well. That meant inter alia not exporting Polish innovations to neighbouring Soviet republics such as Lithuania. While this did not mean that Poland would abandon its commitment to the principle of national self-determination, it did mean avoiding ‘loud declarations and demonstrative gestures’.9 Of course, Warsaw wanted a basic change in its relationship with the Soviet Union, but this had to be achieved by step-by-step and systematic negotiations. In his early speeches as Prime Minister Mazowiecki committed Poland to remaining a member of the Warsaw Pact owing to uncertainty about the relationship with Moscow, but in the long term Poland wanted to extricate itself both from the Pact and the CMEA.10 Prominent in the government’s calculations was the fact that one third of Poland’s foreign trade turnover fell to the Soviet Union which was the main source of Poland’s oil and gas and a substantial purchaser of her exports.11 From the point of view of moving closer to Western Europe and successfully negotiating an Association, or Europe, agreement good relations with the Soviet Union were imperative. That is why Skubiszewski was insistent that the main concern of Polish foreign policy in 1989 and at the beginning of 1990 was the relationship with the Soviet Union and ‘its attitude towards our effort to become an independent nation’. In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly in September 1989 he observed that relations with the Soviet Union were a key issue in Polish political strategy. Without a fundamental reshaping of those relations there would be no chance for Poland’s alignment with the West, ‘which was the principal aim of the foreign policy’ he was conducting. So, one can say that while the principal aim was alignment with the West, the ‘first concern’ of Polish foreign policy in the early months of the Solidarity government was relations with the Soviet Union.12 It was obvious to the Foreign Minister that there was little chance of Poland’s accession to EC institutions if its relations with Moscow were frosty or problematic. As he said ‘we would cease to be a partner for the West if we had any difficulties with the Soviet Union’.13 There was another very important factor in relations with Moscow. Alignment with the West depended on good relations with a reunified Germany, Poland’s nearest neighbour to the West and a member of the EC. Poland could not expect to obtain a Europe Agreement with the EC, and later full membership of the organisation, unless it had good

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neighbourly relations with the newly united Germany. However, when the Solidarity government came to power two German states still existed and, although they each had, in the past, recognised the Oder–Neisse line as the border with Poland, there was some ambiguity as to whether a united Germany would make the same commitment. From Poland’s point of view, unless the border issue was settled satisfactorily it would be impossible to establish a relationship with her western neighbour which would be free of disputes and disagreements, a vital prerequisite for membership in the EC. What was at stake here was not only the border but Poland’s Recovered (Western) Territories, formerly German, which had been incorporated in Poland at the end of the Second World War by agreement between the Allies. As Jaruzelski commented, acceptance of the border by Germany was ‘a matter of life and death for our state – this is one third of our territory, one third of Polish society’. His Solidarity opponent and later Foreign Minister Bronisl aw Geremek endorsed Jaruzelski’s comment – there had to be, he said, a ‘conclusive determination of the Polish–German border’ since Poland could not permit any territorial claims by Germany. In this context, then, the Soviet military garrisons in Poland and the German Democratic Republic was an essential guarantee of the security of the border and of the Western region of Poland.14 Hence this was another constraint on Poland’s relationship with the Soviet Union. When the border question was settled to Poland’s satisfaction Poland would be a step nearer to Europe and more flexible in its dealings with the Soviets. Issues such as the existence of the Warsaw Pact and the CMEA and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland could then be taken up with a greater degree of freedom. Even so, Poland’s long term interest required the democratisation and decentralisation of the Soviet Union, with sovereignty and independence returning to border Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.15 Freedom to negotiate with the Soviets therefore required an agreement between Germany and Poland over their mutual border. Since East Germany had accepted the border in 1950 and West Germany in 1970, what accounted for the Polish government’s uncertainty that a reunified Germany, which looked likely to emerge in 1990, might not ratify the existing border? On the one hand ministers thought it unlikely that a united Germany would not ratify. On the other, the issue was of such critical importance that Skubiszewski and his colleagues could not allow the slightest possibility of non-recognition. Consequently the government pressed the ‘Two plus Four’ negotiators (the two German states and the four Allied powers at the end of the War, the United States, the /

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Soviet Union, Great Britain and France), who were negotiating the reunification of the German states, to invite Poland to their discussions when issues relevant to her such as the border were to be discussed. This was regarded as vital in the light of the Big Three meetings at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945 which determined the future of Poland and set her western border without the involvement of Polish representatives. This time the Polish government wanted to ensure its presence at the relevant discussions – ‘nothing about us without us’. But was there any serious doubt that the new German government would not recognise the frontier? Skubiszewski thought that there was always the possibility that some ambiguity might remain which would leave the frontier issue open for further discussion. For example, the 1970 treaty between Poland and West Germany recognised the frontier as the frontier between East Germany and Poland but did not commit a putative united Germany to offer the same recognition. Moreover the treaty did not relinquish German claims to her 1937 frontiers (which would have led to the incorporation of the Polish Recovered Territories in Germany if the claims had been upheld). As Skubiszewski reminded the Sejm in December 1989 the so-called ‘legal pronouncements’ of the Federal Republic, its court verdicts and its administrative acts ‘[did] not dissociate themselves from the borders of 1937’. In addition Article 23 of the FRG’s constitution allowed for the incorporation of territories which were within the borders of the Reich in 1937.16 In this light Chancellor Kohl’s 10-point programme for German unity presented to the Bundestag in November 1989 reinforced Polish anxieties since it was silent on the issue of frontiers, while at the same time demanding an apology for German expellees from the Recovered Territories. Skubiszewski thought that this statement introduced uncertainty and ambiguity into the situation, ignored Polish state interests, and damaged European unity, since the latter could only be achieved within established and recognised frontiers and without territorial disputes. So, for Poland, there had to be a clear and unconditional acceptance of the established border by the united German state.17 Also required were guarantees that a united Germany would not, in Skubiszewski’s words, ‘be reborn as the force to annihilate the European order’. Mazowiecki confirmed that only under a pan-European process would German unification not evoke ‘fear and misgiving’ in its neighbours. This meant the united Germany’s membership in the EC and NATO.18 These guarantees were eventually forthcoming as a result of negotiations and treaty commitments in the course of 1990. The parliaments of the two German states adopted resolutions on the Polish–German border which created the right climate for the drafting of a treaty between the

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new unified German state and Poland to confirm the existing border. The Paris meeting of the ‘2 plus 4’ in July 1990 with Polish participation endorsed that border and noted a commitment that a united Germany would remove from its constitution provisions which gave grounds to question Poland’s border. Finally a border treaty was signed between Germany and Poland in November 1990, and this was followed by a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in June 1991.19 The significance of these treaties was that they rescued Poland ‘from the trap of geopolitics’, removing uncertainty and potential threats from her great neighbour to the west, opening the way for Polish membership of western institutions, and offering Poland the flexibility to extricate herself from dependence on Moscow. The latter was crucial if membership of the European communities was to be achieved.20 Critics of the government and of Skubiszewski in particular focused on the attention he gave to the border question at the expense of relations with the Soviet Union. Wale˛sa and his supporters, for example, accused Skubiszewski in the run up to the 1990 Polish presidential election of being ‘mesmerised’ by Germany. As a result he neglected the important task of extricating Poland from the embrace of Moscow and expediting the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Poland. In addition, Zdzislaw Najder criticised Skubiszewski for being too cautious in his Eastern policy, for wasting two years in ‘passive’ and ‘reactive’ behaviour, refusing to recognise the independence of Lithuania and Ukraine, and perpetuating a client relationship with the Soviet Union. The Polish Senate joined in this critique by accusing the foreign minister of having too few contacts with the western republics of the Soviet Union. This criticism was heightened after the killing of Lithuanian civilians at the Vilnius TV tower in January 1991.21 Skubiszewski had a robust response to these allegations. Poland had to have good relations with the Soviet Union/Russia if it were to be accepted by the west as a potential partner. The key to good relations was the democratisation and Westernisation of the Soviet Union. But until that desirable state was achieved he felt that quiet pragmatism was more useful in dealing with Moscow than ‘gestures and empty declarations’. Though Warsaw was willing to maintain links with its eastern neighbours of Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus these relations, he believed, must not compromise its relations with the Soviets.22 In practice Skubiszewski pursued a ‘dual track policy’ after the eastern republics declared their sovereignty. This policy involved keeping good relations with the Soviet Union while trying to build direct links with the republics. Such a balanced approach was particularly necessary in the

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light of the negotiations to withdraw Soviet troops from Poland. The Baltic states’ aspirations to independence were supported by Poland, but it was up to them, said Mazowiecki, to negotiate their independence with Moscow ‘by a method of rational dialogue . . . and in a peaceful manner’. Poland had made it clear that it accepted the existing borders and had no ambitions to recover former territory in the east currently in the Soviet republics of Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania. Creating direct links of various kinds was acceptable but sending an ambassador to Lithuania, as some of the critics demanded, violated international law in that only fully independent states could receive ambassadors.23 In fact the critics were always in a minority and failed to come up with specific advice about how to deal more effectively with an uncooperative Soviet side. Demanding something would not necessarily make it happen, as Skubiszewski pointed out.24 With the failure of the coup in the Soviet Union in August 1991 Poland seized the chance to recognise the independence of the neighbouring republics on her eastern border. The outcome was what she had sought all along, a group of friendly states to the east and not one single powerful neighbour.25 By this time too the CMEA and the Warsaw Pact had ceased to exist and Soviet troops were being withdrawn from Poland. Critics claimed that because of his state of mesmerism over the German border Skubiszewski missed the opportunity to begin negotiations about troop withdrawal as the same time as the Czechoslovaks and the Hungarians. By the time he was free to give the issue his full attention Soviet attitudes had hardened, which made the withdrawal negotiations far more prolonged than they need have been. Skubiszewski believed this to be a fundamental misapprehension; Poland was a special case and troops could not be withdrawn from East Germany until the 2 plus 4 talks had reached a satisfactory conclusion. Poland would have to wait, not because of its own dilatoriness but because the Soviets were not prepared to negotiate until certain conditions were fulfilled. Yet for all that Poland had established full sovereignty in the international arena and could begin to realign Poland with Euro-Atlantic structures. Negotiating an Association or Europe agreement with the EC was the first stage of this process. It is unnecessary to discuss the negotiations or the details of the agreement. What is more interesting and relevant is to compare the arguments for membership put by leading members of the Polish government with those of the exiles over the previous decades. There is in fact a close similarity of view. Skubiszewski observed that for him ‘security was the first consideration’, that is to say belonging to a group of states, thus

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‘putting an end to our eternal isolation’. In the second place came economic reasons, and thirdly there was the question of the ‘civilization gap’ which membership in the EC would help to fill. Filling the gap meant education, better knowledge of the outside world, and a new or modified way of life which would include the creation of a civil society. A statement of the Council of Ministers in April 1990 seemed to encapsulate Skubiszewski’s approach when it referred to the government’s intention to expand political, economic, cultural and ‘civilisational bonds’ with Western Europe.26 Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, Mazowiecki’s successor as Prime Minister, put greater stress on economic reasons for joining the EC. As an economist he emphasised the connection between economic reforms at home and membership of European structures. Bielecki did not believe that Poland was capable of pulling out of the economic crisis ‘single-handedly’: intensive foreign help and cooperation were needed and one way, perhaps the most important, was swift integration with the European Communities enabling Poland ‘to carry out business in those markets’.27 Wale˛sa similarly doubted whether Poland ‘could get there on its own’ and needed new technologies and new cooperation agreements.28 But for liberal economists like Bielecki association with Europe would also accelerate the liberalisation and stabilisation of the Polish economy and guarantee that the changes in the economic system would be sustained. Zdzislaw Najder, a foreign policy adviser to Jan Olszewski, Bielecki’s successor as Prime Minister, offered another perspective. For him the overwhelming argument for joining the EC was the strategic one. While NATO would shield Poland from military attack, the EC offered soft security. It would solve the problems which had beset Poland from the mid-eighteenth century until 1989 by enrolling her in an organisation which would free her from the perennial dangers of her geopolitical position. Moreover, European integration would be the instrument for reconstructing and enriching Polish culture, not only through what it could draw from the west, but also by the prospect of uniting Poland and her eastern neighbours (former members of the Polish Commonwealth until the Partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century), such as Lithuania and Ukraine, in one association.29 This selection of reasons for joining the EC is illustrative rather than comprehensive. To consider the ‘official’ objectives of membership we have to turn to the ‘Pro Memoria’ statement of the Polish government to the governments of the European Union (EU formerly the EC) following Poland’s request for membership of the EU in April 1994. In it the government offered the following reasons: consolidating the results of democratic and systemic transformations and accelerating economic /

/

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development; generating a stronger sense of security and contributing to maintaining peace and stability in Europe; and the ability to participate in the structures of political cooperation. It is noticeable that ‘civilizational’ considerations and historical legacies are absent from the official statement. Olszewski as Prime Minister, shortly after the Association Agreement was signed, referred to Poland’s entering Europe ‘where we spiritually belong and which we have been jointly creating for more than a thousand years’, but those kind of sentiments were usually absent from official statements. Perhaps they appealed more to members of the intelligentsia than to broader public opinion, or indeed to European bureaucrats. The implications of this government statement were that without European membership Poland would be, as Rachwald put it, at the mercy of international developments (e.g. the ‘social and economic turmoil of the East’) that were far beyond national ability to control or prevent. In that sense integration was ‘the last stage of the anticommunist revolution of 1989’.30 Considering the range of objectives outlined here we can conclude that the arguments of the politicians closely mirrored those of the exiles since the end of the Second World War. Whether the politicians’ opinions were shaped or influenced by the debates which went on among the exiles will be considered later in this chapter. David Warszawski, in criticising the government’s foreign policy, was puzzled by the seeming contradiction between Poland’s seeking to join west European institutions and her attempt to create a regional rapprochement with Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Was the latter designed to back the former aim or to serve as an alternative to fall back on should membership of the EC fail to materialise? This question touched on a major theme in the writings of the exiles. Admittedly, creating a regional association in Central East Europe had been eclipsed in the more recent past by the preference of most exiles for direct membership in the European Communities. But still there were some who remained committed to a regional association as a path to the wider European union, and even the war-time idea of a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation was still being pushed by prominent exiles in the 1980s.31 Polish leaders in the post-communist governments stated they were interested in regional ties. Skubiszewski said Poland wanted close relations not only with Hungary and Czechoslovakia but also with countries further south, such as Austria and Yugoslavia, and with states in the Baltic region.32 A meeting in Visegrad in Hungary in February 1991 between Wale˛sa, President Havel of Czechoslovakia and Prime Minister Antall of Hungary produced an agreement to coordinate their activities.

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After all, they had similar objectives, they were experiencing similar changes in economics and politics, and they shared an historical, cultural and intellectual heritage.33 They hoped that their agreement would help to stabilise the region and make a contribution to the development of a new democratic order in Central East Europe. If they could show that they could cooperate effectively, the leaders believed, they would have additional bargaining power when they came to negotiate with the European Communities. ‘Should each of us return to Europe on our own’ said Havel ‘it would probably take much longer and probably be more complex than if we proceed in mutual accord . . . We should approach the richer West Europe not as a poor apostate or an amnestied prisoner helplessly looking around himself but as somebody who is also contributing something.’34 It was this aspect of Visegrad which became dominant at the expense of deepening intra-regional cooperation. The Central European Free Trade Association (CEFTA) formed in December 1992 was similarly ineffective in creating regional economic integration – reducing tariffs had little impact when non-tariff barriers were untouched and agricultural markets continued to be protected.35 It soon became clear, however, that Poland’s partners, particularly Czechoslovakia were not as keen on cooperation as Poland itself, President Havel’s opinions to the contrary. Prague was extremely sceptical of Skubiszewski’s suggestion that the two countries should resurrect the idea of a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation or association as discussed between the Poles and the Czechoslovaks during the Second World War.36 Significant tensions remained between the partners, particularly between Czechoslovakia and Hungary over ethnic issues and between Czechoslovakia and Poland on cross-border trade. Poland was seen as too large and risky a partner. The Czechoslovaks and Hungarians thought they were ahead of Poland in their negotiations with the EC and were more advanced economically. Vaclav Klaus, the Czech Prime Minister, was uninterested in Visegrad and rejected the idea of coordinating the three countries’ applications to the EC. He thought that the Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia now having divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia) was ready for Brussels, meeting all requirements. So an association with the Poles and Hungarians might actually disadvantage the Czech Republic in attaining membership in the EC. After all, 10 million Czechs would be easier for the EC to absorb than 60 million Central Europeans. So, the politics of the situation and the competition between the members of Visegrad forced each country to proceed on its own in its negotiations with the EC. The dream of exiles over so many years that a regional association would

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provide the pathway to membership of a European-wide confederation was wrecked on the rocks of ambition.37 The potential difficulties which some exiles had warned about now emerged to sabotage the regional approach to Europe. Earlier in this chapter we remarked on the thesis of Snyder and others that Poland’s policy towards her eastern neighbours ‘derived ultimately’ from the Polish émigré journal Kultura. That is to say, it was heavily influenced, shaped or constructed by the journal’s editor Jerzy Giedroyc and its London correspondent Juliusz Mieroszewski. The thesis is a remarkable one, first of all because it asserts that a journal which printed at most 10,000 copies, an uncertain proportion of which reached Poland, could have such an impact. Remarkable too in its assumption that Poland, a country of 39 million people, could not or did not determine for itself what its eastern policy should be. After all, it was not as if Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus were of no particular interest to the Poles, despite the professions of some to the contrary. In the light of Poland’s long history and its particular situation since the end of the Second World War the Polish people could not have failed to speculate about relations with these Soviet republics should the Soviet Union implode. By the end of the 1980s there was a consensus in Poland that the independence and integrity of her eastern neighbours should be respected, there should be no territorial claims, and the existing boundaries should be accepted. Leszek Moczulski and his Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN) agreed but took the idea a stage further. He imagined that the eastern neighbours of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus might join with Poland to create a Baltic to Black Sea federation. As Snyder pointed out Moczulski saw the early modern Commonwealth as the basis for an alliance of modern nation states, not as a launch pad for Polish imperialism. Such an alliance would ensure security for its members and act as a barrier against Russia. There are echoes here of the mie˛dzimorze thinking of the exiles in the early post-war years but with less emphasis on Poland as leader.38 Most Poles rejected this idea in favour of friendly bilateral relations with their neighbours and a constructive and mutually beneficial relationship with Russia. Snyder and others ask us to believe that this consensus was largely created by Kultura and, by implication, that without Kultura it would not have existed. Yet, Poland developed a policy of returning to Europe and joining European organisations independently of Kultura since the journal was relatively uninterested in this issue and commented on it rarely. This raises the question as to whether Poland could not have developed its eastern policy autonomously in the same way as its western one? If Snyder’s

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arguments are accepted this raises the possibility that historians may look for exiles’ inspiration behind other aspects of Poland’s foreign policy after communism. It is important therefore to clarify the extent of Kultura’s influence over policy-making. The interviews we conducted with some leading political figures in Poland after 1989 offer an insight into this hypothetical influence but are not conclusive. On the one hand Skubiszewski denied that his and the foreign ministry’s policy was much influenced by Kultura since he was not and could not be a systematic reader of the journal. It is worth quoting Skubiszewski on this: I belong to the generation which nolens, volens accepted the territorial losses in the east and did not see any chance to recover anything there. That generation wanted and was ready to work for Poland in her 1945 frontiers. That generation’s position was that there could and should be no more changes, especially as most Poles including practically the whole of the intelligentsia had left the lost eastern territories and established themselves in Poland as it was, that is in its new frontiers including the former German territories. We did not accept the totalitarian system nor the rule of Soviet stooges but we did accept the territorial shape of the country though not without regret as to Wilno, Grodno and Lwów . . . good and close relations with our neighbours was an aim by itself. However, they were also part of a broader European policy in which the purpose of being one day admitted to the European Community dominated.39 Skubiszewski added that in his home city of Poznan´ among his friends and acquaintances none had access to Kultura. He himself might read it occasionally when abroad or when someone coming from abroad brought a copy. Possibly, he speculates, it was more easily accessible in Warsaw. Taking up that point, Bielecki conceded that Kultura may have had more influence in Warsaw than in the rest of Poland since it was possible to have discussions at foreign embassies and maybe have access to the journal there. But when Solidarity tried to write its first manifesto in the late 1980s the drafters referred more to ‘basic values’ than to arguments presented by Kultura. Bartoszewski, who lived in Warsaw in the 1960s and 1970s, claims he was reading Kultura as well as German magazines and newspapers which he obtained from the German and Austrian embassies. He believed that in the first post-communist governments ‘there were people who had been reading Kultura for ages’. On the other hand Gronkiewicz-Waltz saw Kultura very rarely and it was not easily

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available, although it seemed to be more accessible in the 1980s. She was familiar with much underground literature but all of it was written by Polish writers in Poland. She did not think that her colleagues who were members of Solidarity were much interested in Lithuania and Ukraine. If you were born in Central Poland, as she was, you did not have any special feeling towards these countries, which still belonged to the Soviet Union. You paid them little attention since you were passionately interested in Poland’s place in the West.40 Relating this preference to Skubiszewski’s policies, one could argue that interest in these countries was more likely to be stirred if it could be shown that good relations with them were a pre-condition for Poland’s membership in the European Communities. From these and other interviews it seems that the largest claims for the influence of Kultura were not made by political practitioners in Poland but by non-Polish writers, mainly from the United States. These writers also claimed that the ideas propounded by Kultura had ‘considerable influence’ on Poland’s non-communist opposition in the 1970s and 1980s, quoting articles in the numerous underground journals of the time, such as Obóz, Nowa Koalicja, Znak and Tygodnik Powszechny. The question has to be asked, how many and how representative were the journals publishing such articles and attributing the ideas to Kultura? One has to remember that dissenting or uncensored journals proliferated in the 1970s though they were officially considered illegal.41 In 1978 the government calculated that there were 20,000 copies of 19 illegal journals in circulation. Drawicz thought that there were at least 30 periodicals being published in 1979 which were often recopied and widely read. Lipski observed that every month at the end of the 1970s close to 100,000 copies of periodicals, brochures and books were being published.42 The advocates of Kultura’s influence fail to show how far its articles permeated the non-communist uncensored press, relying on assertions rather than supportive evidence. For example, statements that ‘some socio-political ideas propounded by Kultura became widely accepted’ by the Opposition in the 1970s or that ‘many of the positions advocated by Kultura had been adopted by intellectuals clustering around KOR and Solidarity’ imply cause and effect when both may have derived from the same or similar causes, namely an assessment of Poland’s place in the world carried out independently abroad and at home. This does not of course rule out influence since ideas generated independently may be reinforced by ideas circulating elsewhere and indeed this influence can work both ways. For example, Polish ideas may have reached the West by the agency of travellers and new generations of exiles or through Radio Free Europe. It is

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well known that Mieroszewski in London and Kajetan Morawski in Paris met hundreds of visitors from Poland in any one year. Morawski described them as ‘a very precious supplementary source which permits us to know the opinions and sentiments of the great mass of the population and to even gain the nuances in these opinions’.43 Who is to say that the thinking of these prominent exiles was not shaped to some degree by their interlocutors? Again, Prizel acknowledges that the bitter experience of the Second World War led to a reconsideration inside Poland of her international position. ‘The last vestiges of both an imperial mission in the East and a great power role within the European concert were permanently abandoned.’ Ukrainian and Lithuanian hostility to Poles during the war made it clear that Poland was not considered a ‘civilizing influence’ by its immediate neighbours. Prizel furthermore admits that after the Second World War ‘the remnants of the Polish elite – democrats in exile, national communists in Poland and the Roman Catholic Church all recognised that Poland needed a conservative paradigm based on “usable history”, and a new definition of Polish statehood’.44 Another source of the ideas attributed to Kultura was Pope John Paul II who championed the freedoms and national rights of Poland’s eastern neighbours.45 Two of the journals cited above as being influenced by Kultura’s ideas, Znak and Tygodnik Powszechny, were both in the Catholic tradition and more likely to be influenced by papal thinking than by Kultura. The quotations taken from Prizel lead us to conclude that Poles, both abroad and at home, were reaching similar conclusions about Poland’s future and its place in the world after communism, and that ideas generated independently in Poland and in exile were mutually reinforcing. If we conclude that Kultura’s influence on post-communist Poland’s eastern policy was less powerful than was supposed by a number of historians, there is even less reason to attribute Poland’s policy of ‘returning to Europe’ to the influence of exile writers. Kultura largely neglected the European Community and the possibility of Poland’s finding a place in it. Our interviewees claim that they did not read, or were not aware of, the exile journals published in London or the United States which lobbied for an association of European states in which Poland would have a place. These journals were simply not accessible to most Poles. How could they have any influence, Skubiszewski asked, when they were not known to public opinion? Similarly, so it is argued, very few people had links with the émigrés – many did not even know there was a government-in-exile. Yet all the evidence suggests that Polish public opinion after 1989 was overwhelmingly in favour of Poland’s closer association with European and Euro-Atlantic structures.

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These favourable attitudes were not dependent on precise or detailed knowledge of the European communities or other west European institutions such as the Council of Europe. Bielecki believed that knowledge of European affairs and institutional development in Western Europe was very fragmented. There was, thought Bartoszewski, a great difference in knowledge in Polish society about what was happening in the countries outside the communist block. Only the elites were better informed, and in his estimation they numbered hundreds rather than thousands of people. But he believes there was a break-through in such interest in the 1970s when Poles began to visit Western Europe in much larger numbers. Even so, for the mass of people there were more important issues than European unification. For those who listened to RFE and the BBC, Gronkiewicz-Waltz commented, the question of increasing unification in Western Europe was not a very important issue. This was a question which could only be seriously considered when Poland was free to associate itself with the west. Until then the question was hypothetical and most people did not concern themselves with it. Similarly, Najder noted that the public were hardly informed at all, and the Party was always against European integration which was seen as unfriendly and alien. The phenomenon of European integration, he believed, ‘was beyond our conceptual framework’ since it was difficult to describe in the old ideological terms. When Poles were presented with information about the EC they subconsciously thought in terms of the Warsaw Pact and CMEA. Najder went further than his fellow interviewees in asserting that his compatriots, even the most enlightened and most ambitious intellectually, thought about integration hardly at all. ‘To write about independence or the European Union was thought of as somewhat humorous, or a piece of poetry.’ So ‘we were completely unprepared to meet the world which opened to us in 1989’.46 How can we reconcile the alleged lack of preparedness of public opinion with the following factors? 1. Despite the formal hostility of the Polish Communist government to the EC, bilateral agreements between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the EC were negotiated in the 1970s which resulted in EC countries becoming important trading and cooperation partners with many communist countries. Between 1975 and 1989 Poland sent one fifth to one third of its total exports to EC states and the share of her imports from the EC was even higher.47 2. When the CMEA eventually recognised the EC in June 1988 Poland began negotiations for a trade and cooperation agreement with the EC

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3.

4.

5.

6.

which was signed in September 1989 – in other words these negotiations were virtually completed by the time the Solidarity government took power. Here was a notable example of continuity. These negotiations must have been known to sections of the public.48 The Solidarity Citizens’ Committee put out a statement in April 1989 declaring support for the idea of European unity and affirming that it was in Poland’s interest to have closer contact and cooperation with European institutions.49 When KOR was invited to participate in the Liberal International in 1979 Lipski, replying on KOR’s behalf, wrote ‘We believe in the unity of the nations of Europe and of the world based on their sovereignty. Such unity is impossible without the participation of the societies of Central and Eastern Europe.’50 As we saw earlier Skubiszewski and Mazowiecki declared in favour of a united Europe, in which Poland should have its place, shortly after they took office. They welcomed recent steps towards greater cooperation with the EC. Skubiszewski determined to seek an Association agreement with the EC in his first months in office but was inhibited from announcing this publicly owing to the necessity of first resolving delicate issues with the German states and the Soviet Union. A succession of opinion polls after 1989 showed a large majority in favour of close association with the EC. In 1994 the Polish government noted that Poland’s integration with the EC had found general support among the Polish people and among the forces active on the political scene. The issue had been accorded ‘paramount importance’ by each successive government. The course of the parliamentary debate on the Europe Agreement and its quick ratification proved that integration had focused the will of the Polish government and parliament.51 The Preamble to the Association agreement signed in December 1992 recognised ‘that the final objective of Poland is to become a member of the Community’.52

If there was a general ignorance of integration and institutional developments in Western Europe as some of the interviewees suggested, why was the Polish public ready to embrace the Solidarity government’s objective of integration with the EC? Was there a Damascene conversion after September 1989 in which opinion was radically transformed almost overnight? This is a highly improbable scenario. Much more plausible is the idea that below the surface of everyday life and everyday problems, which in the 1970s and 1980s were overwhelming in number and severity, was a general though rarely expressed attachment to the

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West, and to the idea of a united Europe of which Poland should be part. One example of this kind of thinking is to be found in one of the uncensored publication of the Polish League for Independence (PPN), published anonymously and in samizdat form. Later the Polish Prime Minister succeeding Bielecki, Jan Olszewski, claimed to have been the joint author of this publication. This article should be read in the context of cultural developments in Poland since 1945. The ruling Polish Communist Party in 1946 triumphantly claimed that ‘the ruling class of Poland is putting an end to this thousand years historical development in the vanguard of the West against the East and reversing the order. Poland is going to be the vanguard of Eastern culture against the West’. What happened in 1945 was in a sense the retreat of European culture. The pluralism of western culture gave ground to the monistic nature of Marxist-Leninism. Yet at the same time the East felt its European nature very intensely when it came under alien power. Russia, said Milosz ‘is beyond the orbit of the civilized (i.e. the European) world’ and Brandys wrote ‘Russia’s fate is not part of our consciousness . . . it is not our heritage’. The Poles felt no kinship for this ‘deranged void’. Rejecting this fate the Central East Europeans were reminded of their cultural affinity with Western Europe to which they were bound by so many historical and human ties.53 PPN tapped into this vein of feeling. A non-European Poland, the authors observed, would increasingly loosen its links with its own traditions enriched through the centuries by the interaction of antique and Christian ideals and influences flowing from Italy, France or Germany. They went on: ‘It would completely lose the sense of law as a code of conduct regulating human relations, of an understanding of self government, of respect for human dignity, respect for private property protected by a law independent of rulers.’ Without independence Poland’s efforts would be limited to the domain of ideas, cultural creativity, education and information.54 Such a preparation of minds was indispensable. It would appear that this preparation of minds did indeed take place but in a kind of subterranean way. The intelligentsia was prepared by what they read in uncensored journals, by RFE, by political participation in Solidarity, and by occasional perusal of the journals of exiles. They and the general public also learned from visits to the west and through meetings with exiles on visits to Poland. The numbers of those visiting the west, as we noted in Chapter 10, increased dramatically in the period after 1956 right through the 1980s, as did the number of those leaving for longer periods. On their return they brought ideas and impressions which they shared with others. They would not necessarily be familiar with the structure of European /

Poland’s European Policy 233

Community institutions but they would have noted more important phenomena, such as that Western Europe was at peace, that the old enemies France and Germany were engaged in constructive cooperation, and that the members of the EC were prosperous, even rich. Given their cultural and religious identification with the West, when the opportunity arose ordinary Poles, not just members of the political elites, sought affiliation with such an obviously successful institution as the EC. Close association, they believed, would strengthen their economy, reinforce their hardly won democracy, consolidate liberty, and generate a stronger sense of security. Membership in this rich man’s club was an enticing prospect which few could resist. Adam Michnik was initially dismissive of the influence of the exiles. He remembered from childhood the vicious comments about writers who had ‘chosen freedom’, the ironic jokes about ministers in the London government-in-exile who had settled down nicely in Britain while ‘grotesquely preserving’ the institutions of the pre-war state and issuing ‘arrogant advice’ to countrymen back home. The dominant view was that in order to speak about the most important Polish issues one had to be on the banks of the Vistula and the Oder. These were the comments of a young man who could not identify with the émigrés of his father’s and grandfather’s generations. But, he continued, after the late 1950s and especially after 1968, the exiles were now ‘friends of yours and mine’ and what they said about Europe and the EC could be listened to with interest and reliance. Allied with the Poles’ historical and cultural identity with Europe and the evidence of their own eyes about the dynamism of the European economy, the exiles’ ambitions for their homeland could only have had a favourable impact.55 Michnik’s contempt for the earlier generation of exiles was out of harmony with the long Polish tradition which considered the exiles, after the uprisings of 1830–31 and 1863, as being part of the broad Polish community at home and abroad. The most recent exiles, like the earlier ones, had suffered for their beliefs, been separated from their homeland but continued to care passionately about it, and deserved the respect and honour of Poles at home whose suffering under oppressive foreign rule was as acute as that of earlier generations. Poles everywhere shared broadly the same goals: independence, self-determination, the preservation of Polish traditions, and the reinforcement of Poland’s western identity. The major difference between them after 1945 was that the exiles had the opportunity both to envisage and to work for a future after communism, their fellows at home either could not imagine a post-communist future or were too preoccupied by material survival or resisting

234 Poland and European Integration

oppression to enjoy such a luxury. It was perhaps only in the 1970s and 1980s that their thoughts could begin to stray in this direction, and when they did it was obvious that their sentiments and ideals regarding Poland’s future closely resembled those of the exiles. In writing the obituary of those exile generations one could say that for over half a century they fought the good fight, defended their ideals, and worked assiduously to achieve their objectives. In 1989 Poland launched itself on a democratic path, protected human rights, regenerated its economy, and escaped its perennial geo-political trap by entering European institutions. The exiles’ objectives, expressed so vigorously and indefatigably since 1940, were achieved. How much of this was due to them? It is impossible to give a precise estimate of their contribution. The least one can say is that their activities kept alive an ideal and a vision of the future. Moreover they were very well informed about the politics of the western powers and about the evolution of the European Community. When visitors from Poland arrived in the West on short visits or exchanges, read the journals produced by the exiles and engaged in conversation with their fellow Poles abroad, or when Poles at home listened to radio broadcasts, they received ideas and up-to-date information which were unavailable to them from the official Polish media. In all probability these opportunities provoked reflection on Poland’s place in Europe, and perhaps brought to the forefront of their minds issues which were buried deep in their consciousness by the necessities of daily living. Ideas and values about Poland in Europe were not created, but rather refined, by these experiences, so that when the opportunity came in 1989 to create an independent foreign policy Polish statesmen were ready with a set of matured objectives which they proceeded to apply with the enthusiastic support of the exiles.56 Of course, many of the exiles of the war and post-war years died before their ideal of an independent Poland in Europe was achieved. But for those who survived and for their children this was a happy outcome and a justification of their indefatigable labours in the cause of European unity.

Notes 1

Concepts of Europe in a Polish political tradition

1. 3 May 1791 Constitution. Prepared by J. Kowecki, Warszawa, 1981, pp. 81–101. 2. The manuscript of this plan can be found in the Nancy library. Stanislaw Leszczyn´ski was elected king of the United Republic 1704–1710 and again in 1733 when he was driven out by the Russians. He was strongly influenced by the Enlightenment and advocated the cause of reform in Poland. 3. E. Cie´slak, Stanislaw Leszczyn´ski, Wrocl aw–Warszawa–Kraków, 1994, p. 214. 4. S. Leszczyn´ski, Inédits, Plans de paix, Nancy de L’Eglise, Nancy, 1984. 5. S. Skrzetuski, Projekt czyli ulo˙zenie nieprzerwanego w Europie pokoju, Warszawa, 1775. 6. S. Staszic, ‘My´sli o równowadze politycznej w Europie’, in Dziela Stanislawa Staszica, Warsaw, 1816, pp. 1–28. 7. M. Kukiel, Czartoryski and European Unity 1770–1861, Westport, CT, Greenwood Publishers, 1981, 1st pub. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1955, p. 45. 8. A.J. Czartoryski, Essai sur la diplomatie, Paris, 1830, pp. 407–19. 9. Kukiel, p. 45. 10. S. Kalembka, O nasza˛ i wasza˛ wolno´sc´. Studia z dziejów polskiej my´sli politycznej doby romantyzmu, Olsztyn, OBN, 1997 pp. 77–8. 11. B. Urbankowski, Filozofia i codzienno´s. My´sl romantyczna, Warsaw, 1995, pp. 113–14. 12. ibid., p. 115. 13. S. Buszczynski, Ameryka i Europa. Studium historyczne i finansowe, Kraków, 1876. 14. A. Molska, Pierwsze pokolenie marksistów polskich. Wybór pism i materialów zródlowych z lat 1878–1886, Warsaw, 1962, p. 83. 15. ibid., pp. 76–7. 16. B. Limanowski, ‘Jaka˛ droga˛ doszedlem do socjalizmu ?’ in Socjalizm, demokracja, patriotyzm, Kraków, 1902, pp. 85–7. 17. B. Limanowski, ‘Naród i pan´stwo’, in B. Limanowski, Socjalizm jako konieczny objaw dziejowego rozwoju, Wybór pism by J. Sztumski, Warsaw, 1989, p. 433. 18. B. Limanowski, Historia demokracji polskiej w epoce porozbiorowej, Warsaw, 1946, pp. 2, 358. 19. Roman Dmowski founded the National Democratic Movement in 1897 and in 1919 headed the Polish Delegation to the Peace Conference. He wanted a Poland for the Poles, rejecting expansion after the war into the ethnically non-Polish territories of the former Rzeczpospolita. Pilsudski, first a socialist then a nationalist, was accepted as President and then Commander in Chief in the Russo-Polish war 1920–21. His idea of Poland was an extensive federation of Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. 20. J. Pil sudski, Pisma, Mowy, Rozkazy, vol.V, Warszawa, 1937, p. 390. 21. M. Niedzial kowski, Demokracja parlamentarna w Polsce, Warsaw, 1930, p. 12; J. Pil sudski, Pisma, Mowy, Rozkazy, vol.V, p. 390. /

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22. B. Urbankowski, Józef Pilsudski marzyciel strateg, vol.2, Warsaw, 1997, p. 390; M.K. Dziewanowski, ‘Pilsudski’s Federal Policy, 1919–1921’, Journal of Central European Affairs, vol.10, no.2, July 1950, Part I, pp. 119–22. 23. M.M. Drozdowski, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Zarys Biografii politycznej, Warsaw, 1981, p. 133. 24. That is, the expansion of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth under the Jagiellonian dynasty, 1385–1572. 25. During the 1930s he published a magazine called Przeglad Wschodni entirely devoted to the problems of the Soviet Union. 26. J. Grzegorzewski, Ku czarnomorzu. Zarys baltycko – czarnomorskiej dynamiki ludów, Kraków, 1979, p. 19. ´ 27. J. Lewandowski, ‘Pierwsze próby integracji Europy Srodkowej po i wojnie ´swiatowej na tle rywalizacji polsko-czechosl owackiej’, in R. Gerber ed., ´ Studia z dziejów ZSRR i Europy Srodkowej, vol.II, Wrocl aw – Warsaw – Kraków, 1967, pp. 147–8. 28. ibid., pp. 153–5. 29. ibid., pp. 156–7. 30. Emmanuel Malynski, How to Save Europe, London, Cecil Palmer, 1925, first pub. France, 1922. 31. Feliks Gross and M. Kamil Dziewanowski, ‘Plans by Exiles from East European Countries’, in Walter Lipgens ed., The European Idea 1914–1932, Chapel Hill and London, University of North Carolina Press, 1983, p. 158; John Pomian ed., Józef Retinger: Memoirs of an Eminence Grise, London, Sussex University Press, 1972, p. 72. 32. Vojtech Mastny, ‘The Historical Experience of Federalism in East Central Europe’, East European Politics and Societies, vol.14, no.1, Winter 2000, p. 79; ‘News from Invaded Nations’, New Europe, vol.1, no.8, July 1941. 33. For an extended discussion of Retinger’s career see, for example, Thierry Grosbois, ‘The Activities of Józef Retinger in Support of the European Idea: 1940–1946’, in Thomas Lane and Marian S. Wolan´ski eds, Poland and European Unity: Ideas and Reality, Wrocl aw, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocl awskiego, 2007. 34. ‘O polska˛ teze˛ bezpieczen´stwa’, Kurier Warszawski, 29 March 1936. /

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2

A fine idea

1. Józef Garlin´ski, Poland in the Second World War, London, Macmillan, 1985, p. 25; John Erickson, ‘The Red Army’s March into Poland, September 1939’, in Keith Sword ed., The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces 1939–41, Basingstoke, Macmillan in assn. with SSEES, 1991, pp. 20–2. 2. Keith Sword, with Norman Davies and Jan Ciechanowski, The Formation of the Polish Community in Great Britain, 1939–1950, London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1989, p. 37; Malcolm J.Proudfoot, European Refugees 1939–1952: A Study in Forced Population Movement, Evanston IL, Northwestern University Press, 1956, p. 35; Michael Hope, Polish Deportees in the Soviet Union: Origins of Post-War Settlement in Great Britain, London, Veritas Foundation Publication Centre, 1998, p. 6; Garlin´ski, p. 55.

Notes 237 3. Sword, with Davies and Ciechanowski, p. 37; Garlin´ski, pp. 55, 88; Hope, pp. 6–8. 4. Hope, p. 8; Keith Sword, Identity in Flux: The Polish Community in Britain, London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1996; Jerzy Zubrzycki, Polish Immigrants in Britain: A Study of Adjustment, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1956, p. 54. 5. Sword, with Davies and Ciechanowski, pp. 40–50; Proudfoot, pp. 65–6; Zubrzycki, p. 55. For a broad overview of the exodus of Polish combatants and civilians to Britain see Thomas Lane, Victims of Stalin and Hitler: The Exodus of Poles and Balts to Britain, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 6. J. Laptos and M. Misztal, ‘American Debates on Central European Union 1942–1944’, in Documents of the American State Department, Brussels, PIE-Peter Lang, 2002, p. 19. 7. Wiadomo´sci Polskie, 15 November, 1940, quoted in Walter Lipgens ed., Documents on the History of European Integration, vol.2, Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1986, VIII ‘East European Plans for the Future of Europe: The Example of Poland’, p. 627. 8. Thomas G. Masaryk, The New Europe (The Slav Standpoint), Lewisburg, Bucknell University Press, 1918, p. 77. 9. L aptos and Misztal, p. 28. 10. Polish Library and Cultural Institute (henceforth POSK) London, Retinger Papers 1280/Rps, no.24a, ‘My Part in the Movement for the Unity of Europe’, p. 8. 11. Feliks Gross and M. Kamil Dziewanowski, ‘Plans by Exiles from East European Countries’, in Walter Lipgens ed., Documents on the History of European Integration, vol.2, Plans for European Union in Great Britain and in Exile, 1939–1945, Berlin, New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1986, p. 359. 12. Gross and Dziewanowski, p. 357; Lawrence L. Barrell, ‘Poland and East European Union 1939–1945’, The Polish Review, vol.III, nos. 1–2, Winter–Spring 1958, p. 101; the original and extended title of New Europe was New Europe and World Reconstruction, which indicated its initial universalist aspirations. 13. Gross and Dziewanowski, pp. 358–60. 14. Gross, Crossroads, pp. 25–6; Gross, ‘Views of East European Transnational Groups on the Postwar Order in Europe’, in Lipgens ed., Documents, vol.2, 1986, pp. 754–5; Barrell, p. 94. 15. Files of the Central and East European Planning Board, New York, 14 January, 1942; the civilian organisations were complemented by an organisation made up of officers and men of the Polish Second Army Corps in Italy called Intermarium, a precursor of a post-war organisation of the same name. This too called for a federal union of all countries between the four seas, the Baltic, Black, Aegean and Adriatic, Gross and Dziewanowski, p. 360. 16. Gross, ‘Views’, p. 775; Gross, Crossroads, pp. 40–1; Stephen Borsody, The Tragedy of Central Europe: Nazi and Soviet Conquest and Aftermath, revised ed. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1980, p. 104. 17. See for a brief discussion of this topic Oscar Halecki, ‘The Problem of Federalism in the History of East Central Europe’, The Polish Review, Summer 1960. 18. Dov Biegun, ‘A Mid-European Confederation’, September 1943, in Lipgens ed., Documents, vol.2. /

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19. Ilia Neustadt, Regional Understanding and Federalism (rept. From the Czechoslovak Year Book of International Law, 1942), London, Czechoslovak Branch of the International Law Association, 1942, p. 141. 20. In a speech to the Central and East Europe Planning Board, 27 November 1942, the Public Record Office London (now National Archives, henceforth NA), NA FO371 34560 C231/231/55, 1 January 1943. 21. Lipgens ed., Documents, 1986, 2, VIII, pp. 628–9. 22. Gross, Crossroads, pp. 35–6. 23. Feliks Gross, ‘United Europe or Spheres of Influence?’, New Europe, vol.IV, no.10, December 1944; Adam Zól towski, Germany Russia and Central Europe, Free Europe Pamphlet no.4, London, March 1942, pp. 6–9. 24. A. Suha, Economic Problems of Eastern Europe and Federalism, Cambridge, Galloway and Porter, 1942; Zól towski, p. 25. 25. The Polish Review, vol.III, no.1, 4 January 1943; Gross, Crossroads, p. 20. 26. Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London, (henceforth PISM), Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/19, ‘The Problem of Central and South-Eastern Europe’, memorandum of Polish Government to Anthony Eden, December 1942, pp. 1–2. 27. PISM Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/35, ‘The Doctrine and the Practical Aspects of a Central and East European Union of Nations’, lecture by Jan Wszelaki to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 17 March 1943, pp. 5, 22. 28. PISM Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/35, Report of a Special Meeting of the Polish and Russian Sub-Committee of the RIIA, 5 March 1941, p. 15. 29. Wszelaki, ‘The Doctrine’, p. 21. 30. Milan Hodˇza, ‘Central European Federation’, The Contemporary Review, no.910, October 1941, p. 234. 31. Lipgens ed., VIII ‘East European Plans’, p. 634. 32. ibid., p. 637; Jan Stan´czyk, ‘Speaking to Poland . . .’, The Polish Review, vol.14, December 1941. 33. Wszelaki, ‘The Problem of Central and South-Eastern Europe’, pp. 2, 4. 34. M. Szerer, Europe: Federalism–Leadership–Organization, London, Macdonald & Co., nd., p. 5; Wszelaki, ‘The Problem of Central and South-Eastern Europe’, p. 4; see also Ladislav Feierabend, ‘A Plan for Central Europe’, Polish Review, vol.14, December 1941. 35. Otakar Odloˇzilík, ‘Twilight or Dawn for the Small Nations?’, Journal of Central European Affairs, vol.1, no.1, April 1941, pp. 46–54. 36. Alexander S. Kohanski, ‘Problems of Minority Rights in East Central Europe’, New Europe, October 1943. 37. Independent Central European Federal Association in London, Commonwealth of Central Europe, London, 1943, pp. 5, 9. 38. Feliks Gross, ‘Destruction and Rebirth’, in Lewis Corey ed., Democratic Postwar Reconstruction in Central Eastern Europe, Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch Press, 1943, p. 12; for a definitive discussion of cultural autonomy see John Hiden, Defender of Minorities: Paul Schiemann, 1876–1944, London, Hurst & Company, 2004, Chapter 7. 39. Lewis Corey, Democratic Postwar Reconstruction in Central Eastern Europe, Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch Press, pp. 61–3. 40. Gross, Crossroads, p. 36. 41. Vojta Beneˇs, ‘The Mission of Small Nations’, in Lipgens ed., Documents, vol.2, p. 373. 42. Kohanski, New Europe, October, 1943. /

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Notes 239 43. Szerer, p. 5. 44. Rudolf Schlesinger, Federalism in Central and Eastern Europe, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1945, pp. 440–1, 478. 45. Polish Government, ‘Memorandum’, December 1942, p. 2. 46. Report of Special Meeting RIIA, p. 12. 47. Eduard Táborsk´y, ‘A Polish–Czechoslovak Confederation: A Story of the First Soviet Veto’, Journal of Central European Affairs, vol.9, no.4, January 1950, p. 380; Polish Government, ‘Memorandum’, p. 2. 48. W. Kulski, ‘Poland and Central Europe’, Journal of Central European Affairs, vol.2, no.4, January 1943, p. 369; Neustadt, p. 144; Zóltowski, p. 31; PISM, KOL414/7, Speech of Zygmunt Slawinski, Central European Federal Club, January 1950. 49. Gross, Crossroads, pp. VII, 16. 50. PISM KOL 414/1, Central European Federal Club, n.d. 51. Kulski, pp. 369–72. 52. Zól towski, p. 30. 53. These two confederations will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. 54. Ladislav Feierabend, ‘Czechoslovakia and Central Europe’, Journal of Central European Affairs, vol.2, no.4, January 1943, pp. 359–63. 55. Jan Ciechanowski, ‘The Need for New Statesmanship’, New Europe, vol.1, no.9, August 1941, p. 220; Report of Special Meeting RIIA, p. 13. 56. Gross, ‘Destruction and Rebirth’, p. 12; Polish Freedom Movement ‘Independence and Democracy’ (Polish acronym NiD), Charter of the Free Man, December 1947. 57. Gross, Crossroads, pp. 1, 16. 58. Ben Pimlott ed., The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton 1940–45, London, Jonathan Cape in assn. with the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1986, p. 781. 59. NA FO 371 26376, Kennard to William Strang, 15 January 1941. 60. NA FO 371 26376, Letter from Savery to FO, 12 January 1941. Though Savery was generally a supporter of Poland, this was an example of the Polonoscepticism of the Foreign Office. 61. NA FO 371 C5959/6/12, Dormer to Strang, 30 May 1941. 62. NA FO 371 26376, Strang, 19 January 1941; Roberts, 30 January 1941. 63. NA FO 371 C1132/6/12, Lockhart to Eden, 31 January 1941. 64. NA FO 371 31091 C13064/464/55 Dormer to Eden, 24 December 1942. 65. Lipgens ed., VIII East European Plans, pp. 611–28. 66. Lipgens, p. 614; Barrell, p. 91. 67. Lipgens, p. 612; Stefan Ropp, ‘General Sikorski’s Political Creed’, New Europe, July–August 1943; Wl adisl aw Malinowski, ‘Polish Labour Faces World Problems’, New Europe, January 1944; Polish Ministry of Information, The Polish Fortnightly Review, no.80, 15 November 1943. 68. Malinowski, pp. 13–14. 69. PISM Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/35, lecture to RIIA, 17 March 1943, pp. 6–7. 70. Wszelaki, loc.cit. /

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A predicable failure

1. This chapter is an amended and enlarged version of Thomas Lane’s ‘Integrating East–Central Europe: The Polish–Czechoslovak Plans and the Opposition of the Great Powers, 1939–1945’, The Central and East European Review, vol.I, 2007.

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2. Józef L aptos, ‘Józef Retinger, “le père d’ombre” de l’Europe: le rôle de Józef Retinger et de ses réseaux personnels dans les débuts de la construction européenne’, in G. Bossuat, ed., Inventer l’Europe: Histoire nouvelle des groupes d’influence et des acteurs de l’unité européenne, Brussels, PIE-Peter Lang SA, 2003, p. 181. 3. Polish Social and Cultural Centre, Polish Library (henceforth POSK), Retinger Papers, 1280/Rps, Box file II, Nr.24a, ‘My Part in the Movement for the Unity of Europe’; L aptos, p. 181. 4. Ben Pimlott ed., The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton 1940–1945, London, Jonathan Cape in association with the London School of Economics, 1986, pp. 130, 488. 5. Wiadomo´sci Polskie, 15 November, 1940, in Walter Lipgens ed., Documents on the History of European Integration, vol.2, Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter 1986, VIII, ‘East European Plans for the Future of Europe: The Example of Poland’, p. 626, fn 4. 6. Public Record Office London, now National Archives (henceforth NA), FO 371 24480, C1972/1972/55, 2 February 1940. 7. See Chapter 1. 8. Laptos, p. 181; J. Laptos and M. Misztal, American Debates on Central European Union, Documents of the American State Department, Brussels, PIE-Peter Lang, 2002, p. 30. 9. NA FO371 31091 C464/464/55, 11 January 1942. 10. The Polish Fortnightly Review, no.80, 15 November 1943, Speech of Polish Prime Minister S Mikol ajczyk to the National Council, 27 July 1943. 11. NA, FO371 26376 C5959/6/12, Letter from Sir C. Dormer to W. Strang, 30 May 1941. 12. Stephen Borsody, The Tragedy of Central Europe: Nazi and Soviet Conquest and Aftermath, revised ed., New Haven, Yale University Press, 1980, p. 103; Stephen E. Medvec, ‘Poland and Czechoslovakia: Can They Find That They Need Each Other?’ The Polish Review, vol.XXXVI, no.4, 1991; Piotr S. Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation and the Great Powers 1940–1943, Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Publications, 1956, pp. 40–1; Helen Lawrence Scanlon comp., ‘European Governments in Exile’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Library, Washington, DC, 25 January 1943, p. 4; Lawrence L. Barrell, ‘Poland and East European Union 1939–1945’, The Polish Review, vol.III, nos.1–2, Winter–Spring 1958. 13. Barrell, p. 91; The Polish Review, vol.II, no.35, 5 October 1942; Ladislav Feierabend, ‘A Plan for Central Europe’, The Polish Review, vol.I, no.14, 1 December 1941. 14. Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (henceforth PISM), Wszelaki Papers, KOL 39/35, 5 March 1941; The Polish Review, vol.III, no.1, 4 January 1943; Tadeusz Kisielewski, ‘The Problem of a Polish–Czechoslovak Confederation’, Polish Western Affairs, vol.XXXIII, 2, 1992; Kisielewski, ‘Project Federacji Polsko´ in Jery Kloczowski Czechoslowackiej i Idea Federacji Srodkowoeuropejskiej’, and Slawomir Lukasiewicz eds, O nowy ksztalt Europy, Lublin, Instytut ´ Europy Srodkowo-Wschodniej, 2003, p. 149. See also Kisielewski’s Federacja ´ Srodkowoeuropejska. Pertraktacje polsko-czechoslowackie, 1939–1943, Warsaw 1991. 15. Edvard Beneˇs, ‘The New Central Europe’, Journal of Central European Affairs, vol.I, no.1, April 1941. /

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Notes 241 16. Vojtech Mastny, ‘The Historical Experience of Federalism in East Central Europe’, East European Politics and Societies, vol.14, no.1, Winter 2000; PISM Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/35, 5 March 1941; NA FO 371 30827 C961/151/12 broadcast by Ripka 23 January 1942; NA FO 371, C12587/6/12, article by Beneˇs in Daily Telegraph ‘One Pillar of Future Peace in Central Europe’, 11 November 1941. 17. Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, p. 36. 18. ibid., p. 36; NA, FO 371 30827 C961/151/12, broadcast by Ripka, 23 January 1942; PISM Polski Ruch Europejski, KOL 408/218, ‘The Basic Principles of the Confederation between Poland and Czechoslovakia’ – draft presented by Czech delegates end 1941. 19. The Polish Review, vol.III, no.1, 4 January 1943; L aptos and Michtal, p. 50. 20. L aptos and Michtal, p. 35; Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, pp. 41–2, letter from Sikorski to Beneˇs, 3 December 1940, and p. 87; NA, FO 371 24292 C13276/8531/12, 7 December 1940. 21. L aptos and Misztal, pp. 51–2; Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, p. 109; PISM KOL 30/III/5, ‘The Future of Central-Eastern Europe’, Polish Fortnightly Review, 1 January 1943; Kisielewski, ‘The Problem . . .’, For Beneˇs too the fear of a communist revolution breaking out in Germany after the war was a major consideration. Hence Poland and Czechoslovakia should cooperate with the Soviet Union to dissuade the Soviet Union from backing a German revolution and sending the Red Army to its aid. 22. NA FO 371 32918, 7 February 1942. 23. NA FO 371 32918, 7 February 1942; FO 371 34564 C2296/258/G55, 22 February 1943. 24. Richard A. Walawender, ‘The Polish Question during World War II – A review of recent literature’, The Polish Review, vol.XXX, no.2, 1985; Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, Poland’s Place in Europe: General Sikorski and the Origin of the Oder-Neisse Line 1939–1943, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983, passim. 25. Walawender, pp. 217, quoting from a document in Anthony Polonsky ed., The Great Powers and the Polish Question, 1941–1945: A Documentary Study in Cold War Origins, London, London School of Economics, 1976; also p. 221. 26. Edward Raczyn´ski, In Allied London, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962, p. 46; NA FO 371 34334 C1020/206/12 12 January 1943, letter from Leo Amery on conversation with Beneˇs. 27. Borsody, p. 107. This was a reference to the proposed expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after the war. 28. NA FO 371 32918 7 February 1942; FO 371 30827 C5813/151/12, 8 June 1942; Wandycz, ‘Recent Traditions’, p. 51. 29. NA FO 371 30827 C5813/151/12 8 June 1942. 30. Wl adysl aw W. Kulski, ‘The Anglo–Polish Agreement of August 25th, 1939: Highlight of My Diplomatic Career’, The Polish Review, vol.XXI, nos.1–2, 1976; Wandycz, ‘Recent Traditions’, p. 51; L aptos and Michtal, p. 49; NA FO 371 30827 C6731/151/12, 3 July 1942. 31. NA FO 371 30827 C6731/151/12, 3 July 1942; Barrell, p. 34. 32. Edvard Beneˇs, ‘The Organization of Postwar Europe’, Foreign Affairs, XX, no. 2, January 1942; Wandycz, ‘Recent Traditions’; Borsody, p. 108. 33. Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, pp. 33–4. 34. Kisielewski, ‘Project Federacji’, p. 149. /

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35. NA FO 371 30827 C151/151/12, 6 October 1941, minute by Frank Roberts. 36. NA FO 371 30828 C12165/151/12, 3 December 1942. 37. PISM Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/35, address of Wszelaki to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), 8 March 1941, pp. 3–4; Eden’s comment in reference to the inclusion of Lithuania was that ‘Sikorski is wiser than most Poles, but doesn’t learn much all the same’, NA FO 371 31091 C12329/464/55, 9 December 1942. 38. Laptos and Misztal, p. 50; NA FO 371 31091 C12329/464/55, 9 December 1942. 39. NA FO 371 26376, Lockhart to Eden, 19 January 1941. 40. Barrell, p. 114. 41. Beneˇs, ‘The Organization’, p. 233. 42. NA FO 371 30828 C9648/151/12, 6 October 1942. 43. NA FO 371 30828 C11494/151/12, 19 November 1942; FO 371 C6578/6/12, 16 June 1941; FO 371 30827 C4835/151/12, 8 May 1942. 44. NA FO 371 30828 C10145/151/12, 23 October 1942. 45. Polish Fortnightly Review, no.10, 1 December 1940. These included a senior minister, Dalton, a senior civil servant, Harold Nicolson, Kennard, the British Ambassador to Poland, Victor Cazalet, Churchill’s liaison man with Sikorski, General Bridge, and Frank Savery, a Foreign Office Polish expert. 46. PISM Polski Ruch Europejski, KOL 408/218, article by T. Komarnicki ‘Modern Projects for the Union of Central Eastern Europe’. 47. ‘Joint Declaration of the Polish and Czechoslovak Governments favoring closer political and economomic association’. 48. Wandycz, ‘Recent Traditions’, pp. 45–6. 49. PISM, Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/35, lecture to the RIIA, 17 March 1943; NA FO 371 C13252/6/12, 26 November 1941. 50. The Polish side was composed of Sosnkowski, Zaleski, Seyda and Raczyn´ski (the first three resigning after the conclusion of the Polish–Soviet agreement in July), and the Czeckoslovaks were represented by Masaryk, Ripka, Slavic and Feierabend. 51. NA FO 371 26376, 28 December 1940, 12 January 1941; FO 371 C3298/6/12, 29 March 1941; FO 371 C13252/6/12, 26 November 1941. 52. PISM Wszelaki Papers, KOL39/35, lecture to the RIIA, 5 March 1941, p. 9. 53. Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, pp. 40, 46. 54. NA FO 371 C13252/6/12, 26 November 1941. 55. ‘Joint Communiqué issued on the anniversary of the Joint Polish–Czechoslovak Declaration, November 11, 1941’. 56. PISM Polski Ruch Europejski KOL 408/218, Polish Draft Constitutional Act of 21 May 1941; NA FO 371 C13370/6/12, 25 November 1941, Kulski to Foreign Office. See also Roberts’ minute giving an immediate British response. 57. T. Komarnicki, ‘Próba stworzenia zwia˛zku polsko–czechoslowackiego w okresie II wojny s´wiatowej’, Sprawy Mie˛dzynarodowe, nos.2–3, 1947, pp. 79–80. 58. Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, pp. 65–6. 59. Kisielewski, ‘The Problem . . .’, pp. 284–5. 60. Polish–Czechoslovak Declaration, signed 25 January 1942, United Nations Information Center, New York. 61. Kisielewski, ‘The Problem . . .’, p. 286. 62. PISM Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/35, lecture to the RIIA, 17 March 1943, pp. 27–8. 63. NA FO 371 30827 C7636/151/12, 29 July 1942. /

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Notes 243 64. Lord Gladwyn, The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972, p. 116. 65. Wandycz, ‘Recent Traditions’, p. 46. 66. L aptos and Misztal, p. 184, quoting US Dept. of State document R.38 T224, 28 January 1943 ‘British Opinion on Postwar Arrangements in Eastern Europe’; p. 202, Dept. of State doc. ‘Soviet and British Attitudes towards Eastern European Union’, 18 February 1943. 67. Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, p. 68. 68. NA FO 371 30828 C10671/151/12, 4 November 1942; FO 371 26376, 28 December 1940. 69. NA FO 371 26376, 28 December 1940, 12 January 1941, 15 January 1941; FO 371 C6251/6/12, 5 June 1941. 70. NA FO 371 30827 C5534/151/12, 28 May 1942, Makins’ minute. 71. NA FO 371 24480 C7401/151/12, 24 July 1942, Roberts’ minute. 72. NA FO 371 26376 Bruce Lockhart to Eden, 12 January 1941; FO 371 30828 C11953/151/12, 3 December 1942, Roberts’ minute. 73. NA FO 371 30828 C12165/151/12, 3 December 1942; FO 371 30828, 6 November 1942; FO 371 30827 C6364/151/12, 21 June 1942. 74. L aptos and Misztal, p. 202; NA FO 371 30828 C10670/151/12, 30 October 1942. 75. See Borsody, pp. 111, 113–15. Churchill gained no support from the U.S. government for his ideas, Roosevelt placing all his hopes in a new worldwide international organisation which might be threatened by regionalism. The Big Three discussions at Teheran 28 November–1 December 1943 placed the final nail in the coffin of Churchill’s regionalist notions. 76. NA FO 371 30828 C9428/151/2, 11 October 1942 and C10670/151/12, 26 October 1942; Borsody, p. 109. 77. The Rt.Hon. the Earl of Avon, The Eden Memoirs: The Reckoning, London, Cassell, 1965, p. 290; Táborsk´y, p. 388; NA FO 371 C10191/6/12, 7 September 1941. 78. Táborsk´y, p. 388. 79. PISM Wszelaki papers, KOL 39/35, lecture to RIIA 17 March 1943 p. 28; NA FO 371 36992 N4906/499/38, 10 August 1943. 80. Táborsk´y, p. 389; Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, pp. 81–2. 81. NA FO 371 30827 C7636/151/12, 29 July 1942. 82. NA FO 371 36992 N4906/499/38, 10 August 1943. 83. David Weigall, ‘British Ideas of European unity and regional confederations in the context of Anglo–Soviet Relations 1941–5’, in M.L. Smith and P.M.R. Stirk eds, Making the New Europe, European Unity and the Second World War, London and New York, Pinter Publishers, 1990, p. 159; Wl adysl aw R. Malinowski, ‘Towards Polish–Soviet Understanding’, New Europe, Supplement, November 1943. 84. Weigall, p. 159; Wandycz, Czechoslovak–Polish Confederation, p. 94. 85. Borsody, p. 106. 86. NA FO 371 C10670/151/12, 12 October 1942; FO 371 31535 U1742/1742/70, 23 October 1942. 87. NA FO 371 30828 C11666/151/12, 27 November 1942. 88. NA FO 371 30828 C11666/151/12, 27 November 1942. 89. NA FO 371 34334 C2304/206/12, 15 February 1943. /

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Notes

90. NA FO 371 30828 C10145/151/12, 23 October 1942. 91. NA FO 371 30828 C10670/151/12, 30 October 1942. 92. NA FO 371 30827 C5534/151/12, 28 May 1942.

4

Creating a movement

1. In August 1945 it embraced delegates of the following emigration societies: Belarussian, Czech, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Slovakian, Ukrainian and Hungarian. The president of the club was General L. Prchala, a Czech and its secretary was S. Karalus, a Pole. Two other Polish federalists, namely E.W. Kozorowski and Z. Slowin´ski were management board members. In the autumn of 1945 a statute was adopted, which served as a model statute for later established clubs. A declaration entitled ‘Our Aims’ was adopted as the club’s policy paper. The Polish circle of the club included, among others, K. Dziewanowski, B. Doman´ski, S. Grocholski, J. Nowak (T. Jezioran´ski), ˙ towski. J. Lerski, S. Olszewski, J. Starzewski, I. Widawski, A. Zagórski and A. Zól In May 1948 the Coordinating Committee of the Youth of Central and Eastern Europe was set up which became a youth annex to the London club. The Polish group had the biggest membership, several dozen members in total, and included such activists as E. Kudrewicz, J. Krok-Paszkowski, J. Cydzik, J. Opolski and B. Sulik. See Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum London (hereafter PISM), Central European Federal Club, London, henceforth CEFCL, KOL 414/1 Korespondencja 1949–1950; ‘Nasze cele (London, 12 October 1945)’, Biuletyn Intermarium, Rome 1947; PISM, CEFC, KOL/11, Polancy w General Council, pp. 1–2; PISM KOL 414/13, Korespondencja, 1949–50, pp. 1–3; Karta Wolnego Mie˛dzymorza, Rome 1946, pp. 7–13. 2. PISM A11E/874, Kluby Federalne, ‘The East Central European Movement’s Aims and the Present Framework of Organisation’. 3. The Free Intermarium Charter was published by the Central European Federal Club, Rome, 1946. Among the most active members of the club were Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovakians, Hungarians and two other Poles. 4. As its name implies the Intermarium referred to the area between the seas, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean. The Rome Club set up two branches in the Near East, in Beirut and Jerusalem, where there were substantial numbers of East European exiles immediately after the war, but these clubs had a very short life and ceased to exist as early as 1948. Informacja dotycza˛ca form organizacyjnych Ruchu Federalnego, London, 12 July 1949, p. 4. 5. Ambassador W. Grzybowski became chairman, and J. Gl e˛bocky secretary. Members came from Belarus, the Baltic States, Poland, Romania and Hungary. 6. The Polish language version of the text was published in The Intermarium Bulletin, no.12, May 1949. 7. PISM CEFCL KOL 414/7, Klub Francuski 1947–50, Paris 10 April 1948, pp. 1–3. 8. ‘Federacja Amerykanów Srodkowo i Wschodnioeuropejskiego Pochodzenia’, Tygodnik Polski, 12 May 1946. Representatives of many East Central European national groups were members of this Federation. 9. The chair of the Brussels Club was a Pole, J. Straszewicz. PISM, CEFCL KOL 414/10, Klub belgijski, p. 1. /

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Notes 245 10. W. Sidzikauskas, a Lithuanian diplomat, was elected its president and K. Hrabyk, a Pole, became its secretary. K. Hrabyk, May 1949, Re˛kopis Biblioteki Ossolineum, Wroclaw. 11. These included M. Grabyn´ski, a former Polish consul in Munich, J. Koblyan´ski, president of the Union of Polish journalists in the western zones of Germany, and J. Bialasiewicz, the editor of Kronika. See Informacja dotyczaca..., pp. 7–8; the Federal Club in Innsbruck was established as late as March 1949. Its secretary was a Pole, Jerzy Hauptmann, who later became a prominent writer on federalism. 12. PISM CEFCL KOL 414/9, Klub szwajcarski, 1948–1949, pp. 1–4. 13. ‘Polski Instytut Badania Spraw Mie˛dzynarodowych’, Kronika, 1 February 1948. ˙ towski became vice-presidents and T. Komarnicki 14. J. L ukasiewicz and A. Zól its general secretary. 15. Biuro Studiów Europy Srodkowo-Wschodniej przy Polskim Instytucie Spraw ´ Mie˛dzynarodowych (BSESW). 16. Informacja dotycza˛ca form organizacyjnych Ruchu Federalnego . . . p. 11. 17. PISM KOL 415/11, Róznice ˙ programowe mie˛dzy rzymskim a londyn´skim o´srodkiem federalnym, p. 4. 18. J. Hauptmann, ‘Austria a federacja regionalna’, Biuletyn Intermarium, September 1949, no.13. 19. ‘Po ustaniu dzial an´ wojennych (sierpen´ 1945)’, Biuletyn Intermarium, Rome 1947. ´ 20. ‘Ideowe pol o˙zenie konfederacji Europy Srodkowo-Wschodniej’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no. 5. 21. Karta Wolnego Mie˛dymorza, p. 11; ‘Nasze cele . . .’, pp. 25–6. 22. Karta Wolnego Mie˛dzymorza, p. 12. 23. ‘Nasze cele . . .’, p. 26. 24. Karta Wolnego Mie˛dzymorza, pp. 10–1. 25. ‘Projekt Konwencji Pan´stwo Intermarium’, Biuletyn Intermarium, May 1949, no. 12. 26. ibid., p. 7. 27. ibid., p. 8. 28. ibid., pp. 11–12. 29. ibid., p. 12. The ‘Project’ said about economic policy: ‘The economic policy as well as the industrial and agricultural production of the member states shall be coordinated by the Union in order to establish close cooperation and common use of the disposed means. The member states will facilitate the establishment of the Union Bank, when appropriate, in order to ensure the stability of the currency. They will not conduct a policy which could delay the implementation of a customs union between them’. 30. Karta Wolnego Mie˛dzymorza, p. 13. 31. PISM KOL 415/11 Róznice ˙ programowe mie˛dzy rzymskim a londyn´ski o´srodkiem federalnym, p. 4. ´ 32. PISM KOL 415/11, BSESW, p. 2. 33. ibid., p. 6. ´ 34. PISM, KOL.415/8, BSESW, J. Starzewski, Ku mie˛dzynarodowemu ustrojowi prawa (28. IX. 1948), p. 3. ´ ˙ cal kuja˛ce a 35. PISM, KOL 415/8, BSESW, J. Starzewski, Wspól czesne da˛zenia federalism regionalny, pp. 6–7. /

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246 Notes 36. Polish federalists drew on the ideas of Ely Culbertson, a son of an American engineer who rendered considerable services to the development of the Caucasus oil industry. His mother was a daughter of a Russian general. As the property of the Culbertson family was confiscated after the Bolshevik revolution, Culbertson went to the United States and started to earn by playing bridge. With time he created a system referred to as ‘contract bridge’. He also published several studies on international relations. Culbertson wanted to establish a global organisation, which would ensure the equality of all countries, protect the interests of larger countries and guarantee rights for small countries. He considered the following countries as leading or initiating states: the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Russia, China and Japan. Each of the countries was to preside over a federation, the United States over a panamerican federation (the United States and all Southern American countries), Great Britain was to preside over a British federation (the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Africa), France – a Latin federation (France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal), Germany – a German federation (Germany and Austria), Poland – a Central European federation (Poland, Lithuania, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania and Greece), Turkey – a Near East federation (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Afghanistan and Egypt), Russian – A Russian federation (the USSR, Estonia and Latvia as autonomous countries and Bessarabia), China – a Chinese federation and Japan – a Japanese federation. The Malay and Hindi federations were to be restricted autonomies. Any other countries would be outside any of the communities. See Ely Culbertson, Total Peace. What makes wars and how to organise peace, London, 1944. 37. T. Komarnicki, Uwagi w sprawie projektów organizacji pan´stw Europy Wschodniej, London, 1948, p. 3. 38. ibid., pp. 9–10. 39. ‘Nasze spory’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no. 7. 40. Federalists opposed ‘opening’ competition between national cultures by their emancipation in the common area, as they were afraid that antagonisms between the regional communities might prevail or become even deeper there. Therefore, they opted for ‘closing’ of national cultures within national borders. 41. J. Steficki, ‘Wste˛p do rozwazan ˙ ´ federalnych’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.9, 1948. 42. ‘Inauguracja Klubu Federalnego Europy Srodkowo-Wschodniej w Niemczech’, Kronika, 5 September 1948. 43. ‘Ukrainiec o Mie˛dzymorzu’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.8, 1947. 44. ‘Za czy przeciw federacji?’, Kronika, 30 January 1949. 45. The latter was also known as the Promethean League of the Atlantic Charter. 46. ‘Mie˛dzymorze i ALON’, Kronika, 1 February 1948. The founders and most important members of the ABN were politicians assembled around the Ukrainian Chief Liberation Council (UHWR), dominated by the followers of S. Bandera. 47. Forming the Nationalist Union of Ukraine, the main Ukrainian centre in exile. 48. S. Paprocki, Kwesta ukrain´ska, London, 1949, pp. 28–9. 49. PISM, KOL 414/8, Klub niemiecki 1947–1948, p. 1. 50. ibid., pp. 1–2.

Notes 247 51. ‘Rozwazania’, ˙ Biuletyn Intermarium, no.7, 1947. ´ 52. PISM, KOL 415/11, BSESW, Tezy dotycza˛ce problemu rosyjskiego, 2 December 1947, pp. 2–3. 53. T. Schaetzel, ‘Wschodnia granica Mie˛dzymorza’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.12, May 1949. 54. ibid., pp. 3–4. 55. ibid., p. 1. ´ 56. PISM, KOL 415/11, BSESW, Protokól z posiedzenia Komisji Zagadnien´ ´ Srodkowo-Wschodnio-Europejskich I Federalnych PIBSM, 5 March 1948, pp. 1–2. ´ 57. PISM, KOL 415/11, BSESW, Uwagi Komisji dla Spraw Sowieckich PIBSM, 19 May 1948, p. 2. 58. S. Karski, ‘Une Semaine dans le Monde’, Le Monde, 10 April 1948. ´ 59. PISM KOL 414/8, CEFCL, Stanowisko zasadnicze Srodkowoeuropejskiego Ruchu Federalnego w sprawie traktatu z Niemcami, 27 December 1946, pp. 4–6. 60. ‘Rozwazania’, ˙ Biuletyn Intermarium, no.7, 1947; ‘Przeciweuropejska gra o Niemcy’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.8. 61. ‘Przeciweuropejska gra o Niemcy’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.8. 62. PISM KOL 414/8, CEFCL. Stanowisko zasadnicze...27 December 1946, pp. 4–6. 63. The Club proposed the following eight ‘components’: Rhine Westphalia, Hanover, Friesland, Hesse, Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony and MecklenburgBrandenburg. 64. PISM KOL 414/8, CEFCL, Stanowisko zasadnicze . . . 27 December 1946. 65. ibid., p. 5. 66. PISM KOL 414/7, CEFCL Klub Francuski 1947–1950, pp. 1–3. 67. M.S. Wolan´ski, ‘Ruch Europejski w latach 1948–1952. Geneza, struktury, inicjatywy polityczne’, in R. Gelles and M.S. Wolan´ski eds, Studia i szkice z dziejów najnowszych, politologiee i socjologii, Wroclaw, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclkiego, 1994, p. 212. 68. PISM, A11E/874, Kluby Federalne, ‘The East Central European Movement’s Aims and the Present Framework of Organization’. 69. Zbiór dokumentów, nos.10–1, 1946, pp. 370–3. 70. W. Churchill, ‘One way to stop a new war’, The Daily Telegraph, no.30, December 1946. 71. J. Steficki, ‘Realista buduje na piasku’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.6, 1947. 72. J. Librach, ‘Zagadnienie zjednoczonej Europy’, Sprawy mie˛dzynarodowe, February 1948. 73. PISM KOL 414-13, CEFCL Koresponencja, 1949–1950. Memorandum of the Central European Federal Movement, presented to the Congress of Europe to be held in The Hague, 4 May 1948, p. 1. 74. ‘Odezwa do Europejczyków przyje˛ta na zakon´czenie Kongresu Europejskiego w Hadze (May 1948)’, in W. Grodzicki, J. Pomian ed., Wspólnota Europejska. Przewodnik dokumentalny, London, 1982. 75. J. Jankowski, ‘Po kongresie w Hadze’, Kronika, 6 June 1948. 76. J. Bial asiewicz, ‘Problem zjednoczenia Europy’, Kronika, 23 May 1948. See, however, Chapter 5 below for a different and more optimistic interpretation. 77. PISM, KOL 414/7, CEFCL Klub francuski 1947–1950. Wnioski z ostatnich do´swiadcen´ federalnych – referat przewodnicza˛cego PKR, E. Straucha, p. 1. /

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248

Notes

78. ‘Do wszystkich zrzeszen´ narodów Mie˛dzymorza na emigracji (Rome, May 1946)’, Biuletyn Intermarium, nos.3–4, 1946. ´ ´ 79. PISM KOL 415/11, BSESW, Protokól z posidzenia Komisji Zagadnien´ SrodkowoWschodnio-Europejskich i Federalnych PIBSM, 5 March 1948, p. 1. ´ 80. PISM KOL 415/11 BSESW, J. Poniatowski, ‘Uwagi o notatce londyn´skiej pod tytul em’, Wnioski, 24 August 1947. 81. PISM KOL 414/11 CEFCL, Grupa polska Klubu Londyn´skiego, 1947, p. 1. 82. PISM KOL 414/7 Klub francuski 1947–1950. Wnioski z ostatnich do´swiadczen´ federalnych – referat przewodnica˛cego PKF, E. Straucha, p. 2. 83. ‘Wezwanie’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.11, November, 1948. 84. W. Anders, ‘Przedmowa do pracy A. Plutyn´skiego’, Jest nas 115 milionów. Stany ´ Zjednoczone Europy Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Rome 1946, p. 6. 85. J. Poniatowski, ‘Jeszcze o trudno´sciach zjednoczenia “Mie˛dzymorza” ’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.12, May 1949. 86. G. Celmins, ‘Refleksje rozzalonego ˙ Europejczyka’, Biuletyn Intermarium, no.12, May 1949. 87. ibid. 88. List K. Hrabyka do J. Starzewskiego, Re˛kopis Biblioteki Ossolineum, 16/352/11, Papiery Hrabyka, 26 July 1949. 89. ‘Club Fédéral de l’Europe Centrale á Paris – Déclaration’, The Intermarium Bulletin, no.15, May 1951. 90. The activities and ideas of the Union of Polish federalists and the Polish political parties in exile are respectively discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 below. 91. See Chapter 8 for more information about the ideas of this League. 92. ‘History of Central European Federalists’, European Press, April 1964. /

5

Great expectations

1. See M.B. Biskupski, ‘Spy, Patriot or Internationalist? The Early Career of Józef Retinger, Polish Patriarch of European Union’, The Polish Review, vol.XLIII, no.1, 1998; Thierry Grosbois, ‘The Activities of Józef Retinger in support of the European Idea’, in Thomas Lane and Marian Wolan´ski eds, Poland and European Unity: Ideas and Reality, Wrocl aw, Wrocl aw University Press, 2007; Józef L aptos, ‘Józef Retinger, “le père d’ombre” de l’Europe: Le rôle de Józef Retinger et des réseaux personnels dans les débuts de la construction européenne’, in G. Bossuat, ed., Inventer l’Europe: Histoire nouvelle des groupes d’influence et des acteurs de l’unité européenne, Brussels, PIE-Peter Lang SA, 2003; J. Pomian ed., Joseph Retinger: Memoirs of an Eminence Grise, London, Sussex University Press, 1972; Prince Bernhard, ‘Hommage à un grand Européen, J.H. Retinger’, Bulletin du Centre européen de la Culture, no. 5, 1960–61, p. 2. 2. Biskupski, p. 24, fn 8; Michel Dumoulin, ‘Les Débuts de la Ligue européenne de Coopération économique (1946–1949)’, Res Publica, no.1, 1987. 3. Zdzisl aw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 415. 4. Polish Library and Cultural Institute London (henceforth POSK), Retinger papers, 1280 Rps, nr.24a, Box file II, ‘My part in the movement for the Unity of Europe’. /

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Notes 249 5. POSK, Retinger Papers, Box IV, File 6, Korespondencja A–Z, profile of Retinger in The Observer, 9 May 1948. 6. It is not necessary here to explore in detail the various allegations made against Retinger, that he was a Jew and a Zionist, a British or a Soviet agent, a Freemason or a misguided anti-clerical – when taxed with Retinger’s Jewishness Sikorski replied ‘First of all Recio was baptized and his godfather was Count Zamoyski of Kuznice ˙ himself’. Sufficient to note here that two respected Polish exiles, the historian Jozef Garlin´ski and the diplomat who worked with Retinger during the Second World War, W. Kulski, believed him to be a British agent. Malcolm Muggeridge, the British journalist, colourfully described him as ‘A Metternich of S.W.1, a Machiavelli of the Inner Circle, a Talleyrand of Notting Hill’. If this language seems exaggerated it should be noted that Muggeridge worked for British Intelligence during the Second World War and perhaps had inside knowledge of Retinger’s activities. As Spaak said about him, ‘he would have lunch every day with one British politician or another, or with a member of one of the governments in exile. He knew everybody and no door was closed to him’. At the same time he observed that Retinger was ‘a man of unique qualities’. His access to prominent political figures both in the U.K. and in the U.S. and his close association with General Colin Gubbins who was a leading figure in British Intelligence in the war, and General William.Donovan, a counterpart in the U.S., suggests that his entrée to high political circles was not simply related to his role as adviser to Sikorski. Nevertheless this role seems to have been very important in establishing his position in Allied government circles. As Jaspar commented, anyone who was informed knew ‘the exceptional role played by Mr. Retinger at General Sikorski’s side’, and his policies were, to a great extent ‘formulated by his collaborator’. But compare this with the terse remark of Edward Raczyn´ski, that Retinger was an adventurer who did not have great influence over Sikorski. See Paul-Henri Spaak, The Continuing Battle: Memoirs of a European 1936–1966, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971, p. 202; Biskupski, p. 28, fn 5; Jerzi Lerski, Poland’s Secret Envoy 1939–1945, New York, Bicentennial Publishing Co., 1988, p. 77. 7. Lerski, p. 77; Lerski added that ‘Sikorski maintained a chummy personal relationship with this shadowy figure who served as a sort of confidential “cicerone”in England’. 8. Biskupski, p. 62; Edward Beddington-Behrens, Look Back – Look Forward, London, Macmillan, 1963, p. 194; Polish Library Paris, Tymc 27 [ak], December 1963, Beddington Behrens discourse to the European Movement. 9. European League for Economic Cooperation, (ELEC) ‘In remembrance of Joseph Retinger 1888–1960’, 1996, p. 33; Dumoulin, pp. 100–1; Grosbois, passim. 10. Grosbois, passim; the close contacts which existed between the Dutch and Belgian governments produced thinking about their binational future (which led ultimately to the formation of the Benelux) and a general sense that any world organisation post-war should reflect the interests of small states; Pierre-Henri Laurent, ‘Reality not rhetoric: Belgian-Dutch diplomacy in wartime London, 1940–44’, in M.L. Smith and P.M.R. Stirk eds, Making the New Europe: European Unity and the Second World War, London, Pinter Publishers, 1990, pp. 137–9.

250

Notes

11. Public Record Office London (now National Archives, henceforth NA), FO 371 30871 C2230/1543/62, 23 March 1942; FO 371 30871 C10396/1543/62, 14 November 1942; Laptos, p. 185. Christopher Warner of the British Foreign Office wrote that ‘We are under a treaty obligation to discuss with the Soviet Union, and they will always be inclined to accuse us of not properly fulfilling this obligation whenever we reach conclusions after formal or informal discussions with others that do not suit the Soviet government’, FO 371 31535 U1742/1742/70, 23 October 1942. 12. NA FO 371 30871 C2230/1543/62, 23 March 1942. 13. Grosbois, p. 40. 14. NA FO 371 30871 C2230/1543/62, 23 March 1942. The Greek and Yugoslav governments were also apprehensive of the effect of these projects on their relations with the British and Soviet governments and Norway was positively opposed, preferring a closer alliance with the United States in a transatlantic community. 15. NA FO 371 30871 C10396/1543/62, 14 November 1942, minute of Roger Makins, 10 February 1942. 16. Pomian ed., pp. 205–7. 17. F. X. Rebattet, ‘The “European Movement” 1945–1953: A Study in National and International Non-Governmental Organizations working for European unity’ (unpub.D.Phil dissertation, Oxford University, 1962), p. 3. 18. Dumoulin, p. 101. 19. ibid., p. 117. 20. ELEC, p. 23. 21. ELEC pp. 23–4; Pomian, pp. 209–12; Dumoulin, pp. 106–7. 22. L aptos, p. 188. 23. Rebattet, p. 3. 24. Dumoulin, p. 111. 25. From the perspective of Central East Europe it was fortunate that Retinger was present with Sandys at the EUF meeting at Montreux since he was able to counteract the west European centrism of the EUF delegates in his organisational role at The Hague. The memorandum of the Central European Federal Movement to the Hague Congress complained that the EUF congress ‘completely disregarded the existence of the nations of Central Europe’ and applied the term ‘Europe’ to its Western part only. See PISM A11E/874, Memo of the Central European Federal Movement presented to the Congress of Europe at The Hague, 7–10 May 1948. 26. Europe Unites: The story of the campaign for European Unity, including a full report of the Congress of Europe held at The Hague, May, 1948, pp. 2–4; Pomian, pp. 213–15. 27. Europe Unites, p. 30. The logic of this statement was that a failure to seat the delegates on equal terms would demonstrate a lack of the ‘sincere desire to unite the peoples’ of all Europe. 28. POSK, Retinger papers, Box 10, European Movement, ‘The Story of the Campaign’, no.42, 1952, p. 7; Aleksander Bregman, ‘Congress of Europe’, Polish Fortnightly, vol.1, no.8, 24 May 1948; Pomian, pp. 238–9; Laptos, p. 190; Rebattet, pp. 324–5. 29. Europe Unites, p. 6. /

/

/

Notes 251 30. Denis de Rougemont, The Meaning of Europe, London, Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd., 1963, pp. 82–3. 31. POSK, Retinger Papers, Box 10, ‘The Story of the Campaign’, pp. 7–8. 32. European Movement, ‘Congress of Europe, The Hague – May, 1948, Resolutions’, p. 5. 33. ‘The Story of the Campaign’, pp. 8–9; Pomian, p. 222; Rebattet, p. 354. 34. Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (henceforth PISM), Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/211, Speech of Churchill to the International Council of the European Movement, 25 February 1949. Churchill’s warm welcome to the Central East Europeans on this occasion contrasts markedly with his earlier coolness. 35. PISM, Ciol kosz Papers, KOL 133/217, ‘Speech by Mr. Churchill’, p. 2. 36. Beddington-Behrens, p. 185. 37. E. Raczyn´ski, ‘The Brussels Session of the European Movement’, The Eastern Quarterly, vol. II, no.1, June 1949. 38. PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/209, ‘Principles of a European Policy’. 39. PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/227, Brussels Conference of the Central and East European Commission of the European Movement, 10 January 1964. 40. PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/215, European Movement, Central and Eastern European Section ‘An Eastern European Policy’, December 1949, p. 8. 41. PISM, Ciol kosz Papers, KOL 133/217, International Council of the European Movement, 25 February 1949, speech of Duncan Sandys. 42. PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/218, Central and East European Commission, ‘Statement of Policy on East–West Cultural Exchanges’, March 1955; POSK, Retinger Papers, 1280/Rps, Box II, File 7, speech of Duncan Sandys, The Daily Telegraph, 26 October 1948. 43. The Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) did not include states from Central East Europe since Stalin had ordered these states not to join. 44. PISM, Raczyn´ki Papers, KOL, 23/H/220, ‘Europe does not end at the Iron Curtain’; POSK, Retinger Papers, Box 10, ‘The Story of the Campaign’, pp. 8–9, 12; PISM, Ciolkosz Papers, KOL 133/218, Mouvement Européen, International Council 25–8 février 1949, ‘Objectifs et Organisation’, pp. 12–15; Europe Unites, p. 9. 45. There were eight Vice-Presidents, two from Western Europe and six from the occupied countries. 46. POSK, Retinger Papers, 1280/Rps, European Unity, Box II, File 4. 47. POSK, Retinger Papers, 1280/Rps, Box X, ‘The Story of the Campaign’, p. 15; European Press, September, October, November 1964. 48. The founding conference at Brussels in February 1949 was followed by one on economic policy in London in April and one on cultural policy in Lausanne in December of the same year. A conference in Hamburg on Germany’s place in Europe was held in 1951. 49. L aptos, pp. 191 694; Polish Affairs, February 1952. 50. Polish Affairs, Report on the ‘One Europe’ Conference at Church House Westminster, February 1952. 51. Pomian, p. 234. 52. PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/212, Raczyn´ski to Macmillan, 22 June 1950. 53. ‘The Story of the Campaign’, p. 11; A.H. Robertson, The Council of Europe: Its Structure, Functions and Achievements, 2nd edition, London, Stevens & Sons /

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252

Notes

63.

Limited, 1961, pp. 2–6; Robert Boothby, ‘The Future of the Council of Europe’, International Affairs, vol.XXVIII, July 1952; Rebattet, p. 382. Pomian, p. 243. PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/211, 1949; KOL 23/H/214, letter from Raczyn´ski to Macmillan, 22 June 1950; KOL 23/H/215; PISM, Ciolkosz Papers, KOL 133/218, European Movement, ‘European Consultative Assembly – Recommendations’, p. 3. Edward Raczyn´ski, ‘The Central and East European Section of the European Movement’, The Eastern Quarterly, vol.IV, no.1, January 1951; Tufton Beamish, ‘Absent Friends’, Eastern Europe’s Monitor, vol.I, November–December 1955; PISM, ACEN Papers, KOL 408/209, Address of Stefan Korbon´ski, 22 April 1959 and KOL 408/210, ACEN doc 213 (VII), 9 September 1960, p. 8. Polish Affairs, November 1952, p. 15; The Central European Federalist, vol.II, no.2, July 1954, p. 25, Resolution of Consultative Assembly proposed by M. Goedhart; PISM, ACEN Papers, KOL 23/H/246, ‘Intégration Européenne et Collaboration avec Le Conseil de l’Europe (Rapport)’. PISM, KOL 23/H/246, ‘Intégration Européenne...’, and ACEN Papers, R. No.21 (Gen), ‘Collaboration with the Council of Europe’. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 408/209, ACEN Res. 151 (V) Gen, 16 April 1959, and report on Council of Europe, 14 September 1959. Beamish, ‘Absent Friends’; PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, ‘Europe does not end at the Iron Curtain’ n.d., probably 1957; PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 23/H/246, ACEN R.no.21 (Gen), 1955, ‘European Integration’, pp. 8–9; Robertson, pp. 20 and 238. Idesbald Goddeeris, ‘Stefan Glaser: Collaborator in European Umbrella Organizations’ in Michel Dumoulin and Idesbald Goddeeris eds, Integration or Representation: Polish Exiles in Belgium and the European Construction, Louvain-la-Neuve, Bruylant-Academia s.a., 2005, pp. 89–94; Idesbald Goddeeris, ‘Exiles’ Strategies for Lobbying in International Organisations: Eastern European Participation in the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales’, European Review of History, vol.11, no.3, 2004. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/228, letter from Raczyn´ski to the SecretaryGeneral of the European Movement, 16 February 1965. Of the Committee members Raczyn´ski, Ciolkosz, Starzewski, Lis and Sabbat were, or had been, members of the Executive Committee of the Polish Council of National Unity in London. J. Mieroszewski, ‘Polska-Rosja-Chiny’, Kultura, no.3, marzec (March), 1964.

6

Thwarted plans

54. 55.

/

56.

57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

62.

/

1. ‘Danubian Federation’, Polish Affairs, July–August 1952; Elizabeth K. Valkenier, ‘Eastern European Federation: A Study in the Conflicting National Aims and Plans of the Exile Groups’, Journal of Central European Affairs, vol.14, 1955. 2. PISM Ciolkosz Papers, KOL 133/217, International Council of the European Movement, Speech by Count Raczyn´ski, 28 February 1949; M. Grazynski, ˙ ‘The Odra-Nysa Line – A Frontier of Central European Federation and a Guarantee of Lasting Peace’, The Eastern Quarterly, vol.V, nos.1/2, January–April; Francis Honti, ‘Union – The Condition of the Independence /

Notes 253

3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

of the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe’, The Eastern Quarterly, vol.V, nos.3/4, August–October, 1952; Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 48, speech by General Anders to the French Federalist Movement, 22 March 1952; J.S., ‘The Philadelphia Declaration’, The Eastern Quarterly, vol.IV, no.2, April 1951. J.S., ‘The Philadelphia Declaration’. Biographic note about the author H. Ripka, Kultura, no.12, grudzien´ (December), 1952. Ripka had close ties with a number of federalists among the Polish exiles. H. Ripka, ‘O federalizacje˛ polsko-czeska˛’, Kultura, no.12, grudzien´ (December), 1952. H. Ripka, A Federation of Central Europe, New York, 1953, pp. 41–5. The institutions of the respective federations would consist of the following: a federal parliament, a federal army with a common minister of defence and a high command, a federal arbitration tribunal and supreme court. The parliament would have two houses of which the lower house would be chosen by elections and would express the collective will of the whole region. The upper house, formed by national parliaments, was intended to protect the interest of the member states. Londyn´czyk (J. Mieroszewski) ‘Federacja o´smiu’, Kultura, no.4, kwiecien´ (April), 1954. See also the welcome for Ripka’s project from Edward Raczyn´ski in ‘Europeizm czy regionalism?’, Kultura, no.5, maj (May), 1954. Francis Honti, ‘Union...’; PISM Wszelaki Papers, KOL 408/202, Polish National Council, Pan-Europe Committee, 1956; Polish Affairs, no.1, 2nd year, January 1953. Jerzy Jankowski, ‘Union of Polish Federalists’, Anglo–Polish Review, vol.II, no.2. PISM, ACEN papers, KOL 408/208, Dr. J. Starzewski, ‘The Problem of Central and Eastern European Union’, 26 June 1958. PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/218, ‘A Polish Plan’, Eastern Europe’s Monitor, vol.I, nos.1–2, July–August, 1955 and KOL 23/H/219, ‘Draft Plan for a Central and Eastern European Coal and Steel Community prepared...under the auspices of the Central and Eastern European Commission’, October 1953. Polish Affairs, no.5, 5th year, May 1957; Mieczyslaw Sokolowski, ‘CentralEastern Europe and the Western-European Set Up’, Polish Affairs, no.3, 7th year, March 1959. This was the economic pact between the Soviet Union and the communist states of Eastern Europe, often referred to as COMECOM. PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/219, ‘Draft Plan for a Central and Eastern European Coal and Steel Community’, pp. 1–4. J. Starzewski, ‘Tendencies towards Integration and Regional Federal Movements’, The Eastern Quarterly, vol.II, no.1, June 1949; Speech of M. Sokol owski at a meeting of the Polish National Council, 27 January 1950, The Eastern Quarterly, vol.III, no.2, April 1950; Honti, ‘Union . . .’. See Chapter 7. Francis Honti, ‘The Problem of the Independence of the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe’, The Eastern Quarterly, vol.IV, no.2, April 1951; PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/219, ‘Draft Plan for a Central and Eastern European Coal and Steel Community . . .’, pp. 21–2 and KOL 23/H/215, Section on Eastern and Central Europe, Project dated 28 September 1950. /

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17. 18.

254

Notes

19. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/215, European Movement, Central and East European Section, ‘An Eastern Policy’, 28 September 1950; Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 42, Study Commission on International Relations: ‘We say simply that for the foreseeable future . . . the integration in Central and East Europe would be according to the principle of functionality’. 20. ‘Federation Studies of the Free Europe Committee’, The Central European Federalist, vol.II, no.1, April 1954; Mojmor Povolny, ‘Theories of Supranational Integration’, The Central European Federalist, vol.XI, no.1, 1963. 21. Sokol owski, p. 5. 22. J. Starzewski, ‘The Problem . . .’; Review of Michael Gamarnikow, Polska, Wspolny Rynek i Zjednoczona, in Central European Federalist, vol.XIV, no.2, December 1966; Vilem Bernard, ‘The Socialist Union of Central and Eastern Europe and European Unification’, European Press, June, July, August, 1965; K. Sieniewicz, ‘Les Démocrates Chrétiens en Exile preparent leur Fédération Future’, European Press, June, July, August, 1965. 23. Adam Romer, ‘A Realistic Approach towards European Unification’, European Press, September, October, November 1964. Romer was a prominent exile federalist and Secretary-General in the war-time Polish government. 24. PISM Starzewski Papers, KOL 357/13, ‘Le représentants de l’opinion . . .’.‘Dans une fédération de nations il n’y a pas de minorités nationals, car tous les citoyens appartiennent à la majorité de plein droit’; PISM European Study Bureau, KOL 415/4, Central European Federal Movement Conference 26–29 May 1950, ‘General Statement’, p. 9. 25. Valkenier, pp. 365–7. 26. Joseph Mikus, ‘L’Intégration Politique: Impératif de l’Europe Centrale et Orientale’, PISM KOL30/III/1, Information Conference of the Federal Movement of Central Europe Paris, 12–13 January 1950. 27. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/215, ‘An Eastern European Policy’. 28. G. Zdziechowski, ‘Making Europe’, Polish Affairs, no.3, 4th year, June 1956; ‘East-West Trade’, Polish Affairs, no.1, 2nd year, January 1953. 29. The Assembly also emphasised that the western part of Europe could not fully develop its cultural and economic resources nor defend itself against external aggression without the integration of the countries of Central East Europe. 30. A.H. Robertson, The Council of Europe: Its Structure, Functions and Achievements, 2nd edition, London, Stevens & Sons Limited, 1961, p. 83. 31. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers KOL 23/H/243 Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, 4th Ordinary Session, 3 September 1952, Doc.36; Polish Library and Cultural Institute, London (hereafter POSK), Retinger Papers, 1280/Rps, European Movement, ‘Observations on the Statute of the Council of Europe’, 1947–49; Directorate of Information, the Council of Europe, Concise Handbook of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 1954, p. 13; Frederick L. Schuman, ‘The Council of Europe’, American Political Science Review, vol XLV, no.3, September 1951, pp. 724–40. 32. Council of Europe, Concise Handbook, p. 15. 33. Robertson, p. 10. 34. ibid., p. 6; Council of Europe, Concise Handbook, p. 29. 35. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/244, memorandum to Tufton Beamish, May 1952. /

Notes 255 36. PISM Raczyn´ki Papers, KOL 23/H/220, ‘Europe does not end at the Iron Curtain’, n.d. prob. 1957, pp. 9–10; PISM, ACEN Papers, KOL 408/215, ‘Absent Friends’, 1955; ACEN, KOL 23/H/246, ‘European Integration Draft Report’, p. 9; ACEN, KOL 408/205, ‘ACEN News’, 1 April 1955, vol.1, no.1. See also Resolution of 29 September 1952 reaffirming faith in the unity of the whole of Europe, Robertson, p. 238; The Central European Federalist, vol.II, no.2, July 1954, ‘The Council of Europe, Consultative Assembly’, 28 May 1954. 37. PISM ACEN papers, KOL 408/207, Doc. No. 86 (Pol), 27 April 1957, p. 2; ACEN, KOL 408/209, Res 151, 16 April, 1959; Polish Affairs, no. 9, 4th year, December 1956. 38. Polish Affairs, no. 9, December 1956. 39. PISM Raczyn´ki Papers, 23/H/237, Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, 3 September 1952. 40. G. Zdziechowski, ‘Road to European Unity’, Polish Affairs, no.1, January 1952. 41. PISM ACEN papers, KOL 408/209, Address of Stefan Korbon´ski, 22 April 1959 and report of Adam Ciol kosz, 1959. 42. PISM ACEN papers, KOL 408/217, 5 May 1961; Council of Europe, Concise Handbook, pp. 51–2; Robertson suggests that the most prominent issues in the Council’s discussions in the 1950s were: 1949–51, attempts to create a political authority with limited functions but with real powers; 1952–53, the inter-relation of the Council of Europe and the Europe of the Six; 1953–60, attempts to establish the Council of Europe as the general framework of European policy; 1953–60 discussion of general issues of foreign policy, Robertson p. 82. 43. George Zdziechowski, ‘Making Europe’, Polish Affairs, no.3, 4th year, June 1956. 44. PISM Ciol kosz Papers, KOL 133/217, International Council of the European Movement, 25 February 1949, speech of Duncan Sandys. 45. The purposes and functions of this Committee were outlined in Chapter Five. 46. PISM ACEN KOL 408/209, address of Korbon´ski, 22 April 1959. 47. Polish Library Paris, Morawski papers, Tymcz 26, The Times, 22 October 1966, ACEN Communique 18 January 1967 and letter from Auer to Director of ACEN Paris, 15 February 1967. 48. Polish Library Paris, Tymcz 26, ACEN document no. 438 (XIV) Gen., March 1968. 49. PISM, Polski Ruch Europejski, KOL 408/218, Free Central European News Agency, 4 May 1967. 50. PISM ACEN papers, KOL 23/H/246, Memorandum to NATO Powers, 16 December 1957; Polish Library Paris, Tymcz 27 [ak], Organisation Française du Mouvement Européen, paper from Auer ‘La Construction Européenne et les pays de l’Europe de l’Est’, n.d.; Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, Ealing, London (hereafter PUMST), Ciol kosz papers, KOL 133/6, ‘Wanted: An Eastern Policy of the West’, p. 13. 51. PISM ACEN papers, KOL 408/207, doc. no.86 (Pol), 27 April 1957; ACEN papers, KOL 408/209, speech of Korbon´ski, 22 April 1959; ACEN KOL 408/213, ‘Polish Point of View’, by Adam Ciol kosz, reporting on ACEN conference 5–7 May 1963; ACEN KOL 408/216, 20 October 1961; ACEN KOL 408/217, Delegation of ACEN in GB, 5 May 1961; ACEN KOL 23/H/246, 2 June (year not given); ACEN, KOL 408/213, doc. 346 (IX) Gen, ‘The Road to Freedom in East Central Europe’, 5–7 May 1963; PUMST, Ciol kosz papers, /

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256

52.

53.

Notes KOL 133/6, ‘Wanted: An Eastern Policy of the West’, p. 13, KOL 133/7, 3 January 1958, lecture by Paul Auer and ACEN minutes 14 January 1959. PISM, ACEN KOL 408/213, doc 346 (IX) Gen, ‘The Road to Freedom . . .’, 5–7 May 1963; ACEN KOL 408/206, Minutes of conference . . . interested in protecting the workers of Poznan´, New York City, 11 July 1956; ACEN KOL 408/208, ‘L’Intégration Européenne et la Politique du Conseil de L’Europe’, 29 April 1958; Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 26 ACEN/1, Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, 17 September 1962. PISM, ACEN KOL 23/H/246, meeting of Ciolkosz and Starzewski with Lord Birdwood, n.d.; POSK Radomyski Papers, 1495/Rps/13, letter from Polish Freedom Movement ‘Independence and Democracy’ (NiD) to U.S. VicePresident Richard Nixon, 17 August 1959; PUMST, Ciolkosz papers, KOL 133/6, ‘Wanted: An Eastern Policy of the West’, pp. 14–15, n.d., but after 1960. PISM ACEN KOL 408/214, Doc. 1740, n.d., ‘Tâches qui incombent au Conseil de l’Europe’; ACEN KOL 408/207, Minutes of the Second Meeting of the Delegation in London of the ACEN 10 July 1957; ACEN KOL 408/207, Minutes of the Second Meeting of the Delegation in London of the ACEN, 10 July 1957; PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, 23/H/244, Memo to Tufton Beamish, May 1952; PUMST, Ciol kosz papers, KOL 133/6, ‘Wanted: An Eastern Policy of the West’, p. 16. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers KOL 23/H/217, ‘Programme of future action of the European Movement’, 19 September 1954 – see also Raczyn´ski’s statement 10 March 1954; POSK Retinger Papers, 1280/Rps, European Unity, The Daily Telegraph, 26 October 1948, outlining ideas of Duncan Sandys; W. Folkierski, ‘Cultural Aid to Exiles’, Polish Affairs, February 1952 and comment in Dziennik Polski. POSK Retinger Papers, Box IV, File 7, ‘Programme of future action of the European Movement, response of the Polish Committee’. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, 23/H/234, letter of Raczyn´ski to Hallstein, 29 April 1971; PISM Polski Ruch Europejski, KOL 408/218, 4 June 1968. Possibly 1963, from internal evidence. Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz [27ak], Mouvement Européen, Beddington-Behrens, discourse, n.d. POSK Retinger Papers, Box 6, Korespondencja, ‘Draft Notes on the European Movement’ and Box 12, November 1954. POSK Retinger Papers, Box 6, File 7, Reply of the Estonian National Committee 1956. See Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 27 [ak], Message aux Européens, 1961. Jerzy Jankowski, ‘Problems of Eastern Europe at Three European Congresses’, The Central European Federalist, vol.XVI, no.1, June 1968. PISM Polski Ruch Europejski, KOL 408/218, Address of Hallstein to the Federal Council of the European Movement, 20 January 1968; Jerzy Jankowski, ‘Que faire jusqu’en 1980?’, Polska w Europie, no.2 (140), février, 1968, XVII, nos. 4–5 (177–78), avr–mai, 1971, and nos.5–6 (190–1), mai–juin, 1972; PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, 23/H/231, 20 January 1968. Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 27 [ak], Introductory Report of M. de la Vallée Poussin, 10–11 January 1964; European Press, September, October, November 1964. /

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54.

/

55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65.

Notes 257 66. Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 6, Letter from Morawski to E. Rehak, 5 February 1964. 67. PISM ACEN KOL 408/214, telegram to ACEN representations, 3 January 1964. 68. Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 26, ACEN/1, Meeting of ACEN Paris, 17 May 1965. 69. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/236, letter to Raczyn´ski from Thomas Philippovich, 26 July 1973. 70. Polska w Europie, nos. 9–10 (182–3), Sept–Oct 1971 and nos. 5–6 (190–91), mai–juin 1972. 71. Robertson, pp. 26–55; Schuman, pp. 730–3; Council of Europe, Concise Handbook, pp. 13–32. 72. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 408/207, Speech by Adam Ciol kosz, 26 April 1957. 73. Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 26, Central and East European Commission of the European Movement, 12 July 1962; Hendrik Brugmans, ‘The Dynamics of European Integration’, in C. Grove Haines ed., European Integration, Baltimore, MD, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1957. 74. Polish Library Paris, Morawski Papers, Lecture by Paul Auer, London, 3 January 1958; Peter van Ham, The EC, Eastern Europe and European Unity: Discord, Collaboration and Integration since 1947, London and New York, Pinter, 1995 (first pub. 1993), p. 99; conclusions of Polish Political Council, 6–7 June 1952, Polish Affairs, May 1952. 75. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 408/209, Minutes 22 Meeting of Delegation in GB of the ACEN, 8 April 1959; Polish Political Council 6 & 7 June 1952, Polish Affairs, May 1952; PISM ACEN KOL 408/208, Speech of W. Czerwin´ski, London Committee of Free Representatives of Central and Eastern European Countries, 18 July 1957. 76. Jean Monnet, Memoirs, Garden City, NY, Doubleday Inc., 1978. 77. Walter Hallstein, Europe in the Making, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972. 78. PUMST Ciol kosz papers, KOL 133/6, ‘Wanted: An Eastern Policy of the West’, n.d., p. 13. 79. Michel Tatu, ‘L’Invasion de la Tchecoslovaquie et la Détente en Europe’ in Jerzy Lukaszewski ed. The People’s Democracies after Prague, p. 103. 80. ‘Forgotten Allies’, Polish Affairs, no.4 (9th year), April 1961; ‘A Stalemate in Central and Eastern Europe’, Polish Affairs, no.5 (7th year), May 1959. 81. E. Osmanczyk, ‘Argument about Europe’, The Central European Federalist, vol.5, no.2, December 1957. 82. PPN (Polish League for Independence) Statement, ‘Poland and Europe’, Survey, vol.25, no.1(110), Winter 1980. 83. PUMST Ciol kosz papers, KOL 133/6, ‘Wanted: An Eastern Policy . . .’, p. 13; Polska w Europie, nos. 9–10 (182–83), Sep/Oct, 1971, ‘Les Fédéralistes Européens et les Pays de l’Est’. /

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7

The union of Polish federalists

1. This chapter is an enlarged and revised version of Marian S. Wolan´ski, ‘Federalism as a Doctrine and Method in the Activity of the Union of Polish Federalists’, in Thomas Lane and Marian Wolan´ski eds, Poland and

258

Notes European Unity: Ideas and Reality, Wrocl aw, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocl awskiego, 2007. J. Mieroszewski, ‘Nazajutrz po zwycie˛stwie’, Kultura, no.12, grudzien´ (December) 1951. J. Jankowski, ‘Polacy w ruchach europejskich’, Polska w Europie, no. 4, 1964. ´ M.S. Wolan´ski, Europa Srodkowo-Wschodnia w my´sli politycznej emigracji polskiej, Wroclaw 1996. ‘Zasady polityki s´rodkowo-europejskiej, uchwalone przez Rade˛ naczelna ZPF na Zje´zdzie’, London, 6 December 1951. J. Jankowski, ‘Polacy w ruchach europejskich’, p. 3. ‘Co warto wiedzie´c o Zwia˛zku Polskich Federalistów (ZPF)?’ Paris, May 1953, pp. 1–2. ‘Federalizm. Zwia˛zek Polskich Federalistów i jego metody pracy’, pp. 1–2. ‘ZPF – Okre˛g kontynentalny, Federalizm-nowoczesny s´rodek walki o wyzwolenie czlowieka i narodu’, ZPF – Okre˛g kontynentalny, Paris, September 1952. ‘Rezolucja uchwalona przez Rade˛ Naczelna˛ ZPF w dniu 16 stycznia 1955’, Wiadomo´sci ZPF, January 1955. ‘Rok 1956 dobrze zasl uzyl ˙ sie˛ Europie’, Wiadomo´sci ZPF, December 1956. ‘Walne Zebranie Zwia˛zku Polskich Federalistów’, Wiadomo´sci ZPF, March 1957. ‘Sil a naszej idei’, Wiadomo´sci ZPF, May 1957. J. Jankowski, ‘Polacy w ruchach europejskich’, p. 3. ibid. ibid. ‘Europa zaczyna sie˛ od gminy’, Polska w Europie, nos.7–9, 1973. ‘Dzial alno´sc´ Zwia˛zku Polskich Federalistów 19.XII.1959–17.II. 1962’, Wiadomo´sci ZPF, March 1962. ‘Traktaty europejskie otwieraja˛ nowe horyzonty’, Wiadomo´sci ZPF, September 1957. Papers were given by Hendrik Brugmans, Rector of the College of Europe in Bruges, Eugène Claus-Pete, ex-Minister of Reconstruction in the French government, Claude-Marcel Hytte, a representative of the French federalist movement, and Paul Auer, a former Hungarian Foreign Minister. ‘Federali´sci w sprawie Europy Wschodniej’, Wiadomo´sci ZPF, February 1957. ‘Thèses sur l´intégration politique Européenne’,Wiadomo´sci ZPF, January 1956. ‘Tezy Zwia˛zku Polskich Federalistów odno´snie planu politycznego dla ´ Europy Srodkowej i Wschodniej’, Wiadomo´sci ZPF, January 1959. The chair, Jerzy Jankowski, along with St. Paczyn´ski, J. Cydzik, J. Dehnel, ˙ J. Zlobiki and J Mickiewicz, participated. ‘Kongres AEF w Luksemburgu’, Polska w Europie, no.5, 1963. ibid. ‘Deklaracja ogólna’, Polska w Europie, no.7, 1963. J. Jankowski, ‘Polacy w ruchach europejskich’, p. 3. Polska w Europie was partially funded by the French foundation ‘La Fédération’. For a detailed discussion of the relations between the East European federalists in exile and the European Movement see Chapter 6. ‘Rezolucja Ruchu Europejskiego’, Polska w Europie, no. 4–5, 1963. J. Jankowski, ‘A gdzie jest nasze miejsce?’, Polska w Europie, no.5, 1963. ‘Europa polityczna: kto, jak, kiedy?’ Polska w Europie, nos.7–8, 1964. ‘Plan Spaaka czy plan Erharda?’ Polska w Europie, nos.7–8, 1964. /

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2. 3. 4.

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

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10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

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Notes 259 34. M. Czarnecki, ‘Druga strona medalu’, Polska w Europie, no.4, 1963. 35. ‘Europa trwa’, Polska w Europie, no.2, February 1963. 36. S. Paczyn´ski, ‘Integracja europejska i kraje ujarzmione’, Polska w Europie, no.4, 1964. 37. ‘Europa Wschodnia: pretekst do rozbicia Wspólnot Europejskich?’ Polska w Europie, no.5, 1965. 38. ‘Zainteresowanie Wschodem Europy’, Polska w Europie, nos.7–8, 1967. 39. ‘1 lipca 1967 r.: Próba bilansu przed nowym etapem’, Polska w Europie, no.6, 1967. 40. Dr. Dieter Roser was vice-president of the AEF. 41. ‘Nie ma polityki europejskiej bez Europy politycznej’, Polska w Europie, no.11, 1967. 42. ‘Bilans niedobrego roku’, Polska w Europie, no.12, 1968. 43. Though Norway did not join as the result of a subsequent referendum. 44. ‘Budowa Europy: s´ wiatl a i cienie’, Polska w Europie, nos.1–3, 1972. 45. ‘1972’, Polska w Europie, nos.11–12, 1971. 46. ‘Rza˛dy buduja˛ Europe˛’, Polska w Europie, no.4, 1972. 47. ‘Po paryskim “szczycie” ’, Polska w Europie, nos.9–10, 1972. 48. The commission presented its conclusions at a press conference in Paris on 23 September 1974. 49. ‘Federali´sci wskazuja˛ droge˛ do Europy politycznej’, Polska w Europie, 1974. 50. ‘Rozwazania ˙ nad Europa’, Polska w Europie, nos.1–2, 1975. 51. ‘Gdzie narodzi sie˛ zjednoczona Europa: w Strasburgu (1978) czy w Belgradzie (1977)?’ Polska w Europie, nos.1–2, 1977. 52. ‘Krok na drodze ku obywatelstwu Europy’, Polska w Europie, no.3, 1965. 53. ‘Europa zaczyna sie˛ od sa˛siadów’, Polska w Europie, nos.9–10, 1966. 54. A. Bregman, ‘Integracja europejska a stosunki polsko-niemieckie’, Polska w Europie, no.4, 1964. 55. ‘Nasza Europa, nasi sa˛siedzi’, Polska w Europie, nos.3–9, 1977. 56. ‘Czego od nas oczekuje Europa?’ Polska w Europie, nos.3–9, 1977. 57. ‘W poszukiwaniu “koncepcji kierunkowej” ’, Polska w Europie, nos.7–8, 1965. 58. ‘Nacjonalizm ⫹ suwerenno´sc´ pan´stwowa ⫽ koniec marzen´ o zjednoczonej Europie’, Polska w Europie, nos.1–3, 1974. 59. ‘Jedno´sc´ w ró˙znorodno´sci’, Polska w Europie, nos.3–5, 1975. /

8

European ideas of Polish political parties

´ 1. M.S. Wolan´ski, Europa Srodkowo-Wschodnia w my´sli politycznej emigracji polskiej 1945–1975, Wroclaw, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego, 1996, pp. 84–110, 168–83, 297–305. 2. S. Grocholski, Polski Ruch Wolno´sciowy ‘Niepodleglo´sc´ i Demokracja’. Pierwsze dziesie˛ciolecie, London, 1955, p. 4. The group mainly consisted of young people who were former activists in a number of organizations. These included ‘My´sl Mocarstwowa’ [‘The Power of Thought’] (R. Pilsudski, Z. Jordan), the Association of Young Polish Democrats (B. Laszewski, B. Wierzbian´ski), the Young People’s League (J. Ponikiewski), young officers of PSZ and AK [Home Army] (J. Radomyski, A. Bregman, A. Pomian, J. Nowak-Jezioran´ski, J. Lerski and F. Miszczak) as well as writers (T. Terlecki). /

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3. J. Radomyski, ‘Polski Ruch Wolno´sciowy “Niepodleglo´sc´ i Demokracja” ’, in A. Szkuta ed., Kierownictwo obozu niepodleglo´sciowego na obczy´znie 1945–1990, London, 1996, pp. 490–508. 4. R. Pil sudski, ‘Polska w Europie’, Trybuna, October 1946. 5. Polski Ruch Wolno´sciowy ‘Niepodlegl o´sc´ i Demokracja’ (NiD). Zadania emigracji, Paris, November 1945, pp. 3–4. 6. R. Pil sudski, ‘Jedno´sc´ Europy a problem niemiecki’, Trybuna, May 1947. 7. Zasady programowe uchwalone na i Walnym Zje´zdie PRW (NiD) 8 December 1947, pp. 1–4. 8. ibid., p. 5. ´ 9. Z. Jordan, Swiat w epoce atomowej, London, Biblioteka ‘Niepodlegl o´sc´ i Demokracja’, 1947, pp. 6–7. 10. ibid., p. 7. 11. ibid., p. 10. 12. ibid., p. 11. 13. ibid., pp. 11–2. 14. ibid., pp. 18–19. 15. ibid., p. 19. 16. ibid., pp. 20–1, 23. 17. ibid., pp. 23–4. 18. T. Terlecki, ‘Przez Europe˛ do Polski’, Trybuna, August 1948. 19. NiD’s supporters thought that disapproval by other groups of their participation in the European Congress in The Hague in May 1948 was an unpleasant episode. 20. Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (hereafter PISM), Kancelaria Cywilna Prezydenta Rzeczpospolitej (hereafter KCPR), Korespondencja ogólna 1948, sygn.A.48.1/C.9, Interview with R. Pil sudski, 24 May 1948, p. 2. 21. PISM TRJN Posiedzenia Rady, sygn. KOL 408/319, Przemówenie Z. Jordana w imieniu Klubu PRW ‘Niepodleglo´sc´ i Demokracja’ na posiedzeniu TRJN w dniu 2 July, c.1955, pp. 1–2. 22. Grocholski, Polski Ruch Wolno´sciowy, p. 12. 23. Zasady programowe, p. 10. 24. ‘Referat R. Pil sudskiego, Polska a Zachód – Polska w Europie’, in Na progu drugiego tysia˛clecia. Niektóre wnioski polityczne na przyszlo´sc´ z do´swiadczen´ przeszlo´sci, London, 1967, p. 42. 25. ibid., pp. 46–7. 26. R. Zakrzewski, ‘Stronnictwa polityczne mówia˛. Rozmowa z Rowmundem Pil sudskim’, Orzel Bialy, June 1987. 27. A. Bregman, Polska i Nowa Europa, London, 1963, p. 54. 28. ibid., p. 55. 29. ibid., p. 56. 30. ibid., p. 57. The presidents of the League included Juliusz L ukasiewicz, Michal Grazyn ˙ ´ski, Mikol aj Dolanowski, Bohdan Podoski, Jerzy Zaleski and Jerzy Ostoja-Ko´zniewski. Among its more famous members were Wacl aw Grzybowski, Tytus Komarnicki and Tadeusz Schaetzel. 31. J. Ostoja-Ko´zniewski, ‘Liga Niepodlegl o´sci Polski’, in R. Zakrzewski, Stronnictwa . . . , June 1987, pp. 49–50. 32. ‘Uchwal a Zjazdu Ligi Niepodlegl o´sci Polski (5 and 6 June 1948)’, Kronika, 15 August 1948. /

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Notes 261 33. See Chapter 4 for details. See also T. Borelowski (pseud. for M. Grazyn ˙ ´ski), Zarys programu niepodleglo´sciowego. Zbiór artykulów, Jerusalem, November 1947, pp. 24–5. 34. Karta Wolnego Mie˛dzymorza, Rome, 1946, p. 11. 35. ibid. 36. ibid., pp. 12–13. 37. Trzeci Walny Zjazd Ligi Niepodleglo´sci Polski. Uchwal y, London, December 1950, p. 3. 38. W. Grzybowski, ‘Zasady przyszlej federacji Mie˛dzymorza’, in Za Wasza˛ i Nasza˛ Wolno´sc´, New York, 1951, p. 9. 39. ibid., p. 10. 40. Zjazd Ruchu Europejskiego w Brukseli (25–28 February 1949), Freiburg 1949. 41. M. Grazyn ˙ ´ski, ‘Analiza i wnioski’, Sprawa Polska, June 1952. 42. ‘Uchwal a V Walnego Zjazdu Ligi Niepodlegl o´sci Polski (19–20 April 1952) w Londynie’, Sprawa Polska, May 1952. 43. Komarnicki was secretary-general of the Polish Institute for Research on International Issues in London from 1946 – see Chapter 4 for information about this Institute. In the years 1954–1967 Komarnicki represented the League in the Polish Council of National Unity. His thesis drew on several past and present projects but his ideas were dominated by the Intermarium programme. PISM, Rada Narodowa, Diariusz Rady Narodowej z 29 czerwca 1949, sygn A.5/100, Wysta˛pienie J. Lukaszewicza, p. 97. 44. J. Lukaszewicz, ‘Wczoraj i dzi´s’, in Za Wasza˛ i Nasza˛ Wolno´sc´ . . . , p. 7. 45. T. Komarnicki, Uwagi w sprawie projektów organizacji pan´stwo Europy Wschodniej i Poludniowo-Wschodniej, London 1948, p. 1. Among its founder members were General Zygmunt Podhorski, General Nikodem Sulik, Colonel Kazimierz Iranek-Osme˛dzki, Z. Korytowski, Krystyn Ostrowski and Zygmunt Szadkowski. General Podhorski was elected first president of the Group, holding this office until his death in 1960. He was followed by Kazimierz Sabbat (in office until 1986) and Mieczyslaw Sas-Skowron´ski. 46. ibid., pp. 9–10. 47. M. Sas-Skowron´ski, ‘Niezalezna ˙ Grupa Spol eczna (N.G.S.)’, in Zakrzewski, op. cit., September–October 1987, p. 17. 48. W.E. Choroszewski, ‘Niezalezna ˙ Grupa Spol eczna. Zarys historii’, in Szkuty ed., Kierownictwo obozu niepodleglo´sciowego, p. 436. 49. PISM, Wypowiedz˙ K. Korytowskiego (N.G.S.) na posiedzeniu Rady Narodowej RP w dniu 11 April 1953, in Dariusz Rady Narodowej RP, Londyn 1953, p. 45. 50. PISM, Rada Narodowa, 8 posiedzenie 1 sesji Rady Narodowej RP w dniu 22 March 1952, sygn. A.5/118. Wysta˛pienie gen. N. Sulika (NGS). 51. PISM, Rada Narodowa, 2 posiedzenie 3 sesji Rady Narodowej RP w dniu 28 March 1953, sygn. A.5/132, Wysta˛pienie Krystyna Ostrowskiego (NGS). 52. Program dzial ania NGS ze stycznia 1955 in Choroszewski, op. cit., p. 416. 53. M. Sas-Skowron´ski, ‘Dwa programy rozwoju Europy’, Rzeczpospolita Polska, February 1974. 54. M. Sas-Skowron´ski, ‘Niezalezna ˙ Grupa Spol eczna (NGS)’, pp. 17–18. Among the prominent socialist leaders in exile were Tomasz Arciszewski, Zygmunt Zaremba, Lidia and Adam Ciol kosz, Artur Szewczyk, Stanisl aw Wa˛sik and Ryszard Zakrzewski. /

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262

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55. S. Wa˛sik, ‘Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (C.K.Z.)’, in Zakrzewski ed., op. cit., July/August, 1987, p. 14. 56. S. Wa˛sik, ‘Polska Partia Socjalistyczna’, in Szkuty ed., Kierownictwo obozu niepodleglo´sciego . . . , pp. 448–51. 57. Uchwal y Zjazdu w Pont-à-Lesse w Belgii. Sytuacja mie˛dzynarodowa i mie˛dzynarodowy ruch socjalistyczny in Zadania PPS na Obczy´znie (24–30 May 1948), p. 4. 58. ‘Rezolucja polityczna Rady Centralnej PPS z 5 wrze´snia 1948’, Robotnik Polski w Wielkiej Brytanii, October 1949. ´ 59. ‘Rezolucja polityczna II Zjazdu PPS na Obczy´znie (July 1952)’, Swiatl o, March 1952, no.1. 60. One contributor to the Paris journal argued that ‘the Common Market is the outcome of democracy, capitalism, free initiative, the free market economy and free competition. For many it is sad to think that the experiment may succeed’. ´ J. Pomian, ‘Wspólny Rynek Europejski’, Swiatl o, August–September 1957. 61. ibid. 62. F. Gross, ‘Uwagi o Europie Wschodniej’, Kultura, October 1958, no.10. 63. ibid., p. 100. 64. ibid., p. 101. 65. Lydia Ciol kosz refers to his opinions in this period as a departure from orthodox Marxism, which considered socialism as an ultimate aim in comparison to Gross’s ‘empirical socialism’. This explains the divergence of view between Gross and the Council of the Union. L. Ciolkoszowa, ‘Publicystyka’, in T. Terlecki ed., Literatura polska na obczy´znie 1940–1960, vol.II, London, 1965, pp. 291–2. ´ 66. ‘Unia Socjalistyczna o jedno´sci Wschodniej Europy’, Swiatl o, no.9, September 1958. 67. ‘Resolucja w sprawach mie˛dzynarodowych’, Robotnik, November–December, 1962. 68. F. Gross, O warto´sciach spolecnych, New York, Studia szkice, 1960, p. 167. 69. ibid., pp. 169–70. 70. ibid., pp. 173–4. 71. ‘O´swiadczenie’, Biuletyn Stronnictwa Ludowego Wolno´sc´, May–June 1946. ‘Freedom’ was presided over by Jerzy Kuncewicz, and B. Doman´ski and L. Marchwicki were its leading activists. 72. PISM, Rada Narodowa, Sygn. A.5/95, Tezy w spraciew polityki zagranicznej zl o˙zone przez Klub Ludowy 5 May 1949. 73. ‘Nasz rodowód i program’, Biuletyn Stronnictwa Ludowego ‘Wolno´sc´’, May–June 1946. 74. ‘Czekamy na dalsze etapy’, Biuletyn Stronnictwa Ludowego ‘Wolno´sc´’, April 1947. 75. PISM, Rada Narodowa, 7 posiedzenie Rady Narodowej RP w dniu 13 July 1949, sygn. A.5/100. 76. B. Czaykowski, B. Sulik, Polacy w Wielkiej Brytanii, Paris, Paris Cultural Institute, 1961, pp. 458–9, 498. Among those who worked closely with Stanisl aw Mikol ajczyk were Stanisl aw Kot, Franciszek Wilk, editor of Jutro Polski (‘Poland’s Tomorrow’) for a number of years, Tadeusz Paul and Stanisl aw Wiszniewski. 77. Z. Nagórski, ‘Wywiad z Dymitrowem’, Kultura, no.2/19, 1949. 78. See Chapter 10. /

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Notes 263 79. F. Conti, ‘La Déclaration de Philadelphie vue d’Europe’, The Intermarium Bulletin, May 1951, no.15. ´ 80. ‘Deklaracja Celów i Zasad Wyzwolenia Srodkowej i Wschodniej Europy. Filadelfia i Williamsburg’, New York, June 1952. 81. ‘PNKD w rocznice˛ agresji’, Jutro Polski, 15 September 1954. 82. ‘Declaracja ideowo-programowa uchwalona na VI Kongresie PSL w Brukseli’, Orka, October–December 1968. 83. The leaders of the Democratic Party were Stanisl aw Olszewski and Jerzy Brylin´ski. The party was for many years in opposition to the Polish government-in-exile. It was affiliated to groups such as the Democratic Concentration (1947), the Agreement of Democratic Parties (1948–1949), the Polish National Democratic Committee (1950–1954), and the Provisional Council of National Unity (1955–1962). From 1963 the Democratic Party joined the Federation of Democratic Movements. See Czaykowski and Sulik, op. cit., pp. 458–9, 472, 496. ´ 84. S. Olszewski, Kryzys emigracji. Problem Federacji Srodkowo-Wschodniej Europy, London, 1955, p. 20. 85. ibid., p. 22. 86. ibid., p. 27. 87. ibid., p. 28. 88. ibid., pp. 28–9. 89. The executive organ of the party was referred to as the Central Executive Division. There were also Local Divisions of the National Party. The Central Executive Division was headed by Antoni Dargas (after 1968) and, after his death, by Józef Baraniecki (from 1991). Other leading members of the party in exile were Zygmunt Berezowski, Wladyslaw Folkierski, Tadeusz Piszczkowski, Marian Emil Rojek, Edward Sojka, Zbigniew Stypulkowski and ˙ towski. See J.P. Baraniecki, ‘Stronnictwo Narodowej Demokracji’, in Adam Zól Szkuta ed., Kierownictwo obozu niepodleglo´sciowego, pp. 528–48. 90. PISM, Posidezenie Rady Ministró – protokol y, sygn. PRM – K. 102/93 D. Protokol posiedzenia z dnia 24 February 1947, Wysta˛pienie Z. Berezowskiego (SN). 91. W. Wasiutyn´ski, ‘L atwizny i anachronizmy’, My´sl Polska, May–June 1946. 92. S. Twardzic (pseud. K. Hrabyk), Rozwazania ˙ polskie, Niemcy Zachodnie, 1947, p. 68. ´ 93. T. Piszczkowski, ‘Polska a Srodkowa Europa’, My´sl Polska, August 1946. 94. ibid. 95. Polityka Polska. Przemówienie min. Z. Berezowskiego. Stronnictwo Narodowe w walce o Polske˛, London, 1948, pp. 25–6. 96. ‘Polska, Niemcy Europa. Z Prezydium Stronnictwa Narodowego’, My´sl Polska, October 1946. 97. J. Giertych, Pól wieku polityki polskiej, Zachodnie Niemcy, 1947, pp. 256–8. 98. ‘Na rozdro˙zu’, My´sl Polska, February 1947. 99. ‘Wskazania programowe Zjazdu Delegatów i Me˛˙zów Zaufania Stronnictwa Narodowego z dnia 3 May 1948’, in Stronnictwo Narodowe w walce o Polske˛ . . . p. 8. 100. ibid. 101. ‘Zjazd Kontynentalny Delegatów i Me˛˙zów Zaufania Stronnictwa Narodowego w Paryz’, ˙ My´sl Polska, July 1948. /

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´ 102. T. Piszczkowski, ‘Zjednoczenie Europy Srodkowo Wschodniej’, My´sl Polska, July 1949. 103. Z. Abdank, ‘Refleksje z prerii’, My´sl Polska’, 1 June 1951. 104. ‘Przemówienie T. Bieleckiego na sesji plenarnej konferencji londyn´skiej (22 stycnia 1952)’, My´sl Polska, 1 February 1952. 105. ‘Przemówienie T. Bieleckiego na Zjezdie ˙ Stronnictwa Narodowego w Stanach Zjecnoczonych (7 czerwca 1952)’, My´sl Polska, 1 July 1952. 106. ‘Uchwal a Pierwszego Centralnego Zjazdu Delegatów Stronnictwa Narodowego za Granica˛, Londyn 27 maja 1955’, My´sl Polska, 20 June 1955. 107. Glówne zagadnienia polityki polskiej. Referat wyglosony przez Z. Bieleckiego na Drugim Centralnym Zjezdzie ˙ Delegatów SN w Londynie dniach 19–22 maj 1961, London 1961, p. 5. 108. ‘Stanowisko Klubu Narodowego w RJN (16–17 marca 1963)’, My´sl Polska, 1 April 1963; ‘Konwencja paryska’, My´sl Polska, 1 February 1963; ‘Trzeci Centralny Zjazd Stronnictwa Narodowego. Uchwal y’, My´sl Polska, 1/15 June 1968. /

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9

Liberation, Détente and European Union

1. See Chapter 6 for a discussion of the widening gap between the exiles and the Council of Europe and the European Movement. 2. Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, Boston, Toronto, Little, Brown & Co., 1980, p. 503; Adam Ciol kosz, ‘Wanted, An Eastern Policy of the West’, Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, Ealing Common, London (henceforth PUMST), Ciolkosz Papers, KOL 133/6, n.d.; F.J. Goedhart, Address to Assembly of Captive European Nations (henceforth ACEN), Strasbourg, PUMST, Ciolkosz Papers, KOL 133/6, April 1956; Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum London (henceforth PISM), Raczyn´ski Papers, 23/H/226, European Movement, Central and East European Commission, ‘Conference on Problems of Eastern Europe’, 1963; Kultura, no.7/141–8/142, July–August 1959; Polish Affairs, no.2 (2nd year), February 1953; Polish Library Paris, (henceforth PLP), Morawski Papers, Tymcz 7, Dulles’ address to a Committee of Congress, 19 May 1953; PISM, Starzewski Papers, KOL 357/13, Jan Starzewski, Speech to the ACEN, Strasbourg, 25 April 1958. 3. Odd Arne Westad, ‘Preface’, in Wilfried Loth ed., Europe, Cold War and Coexistence 1953–1965, London and Portland, OR, Frank Cass, 2004, p. vii. 4. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/226 European Movement, Central and East European Commission, ‘Conference on Problems of Eastern Europe’, 1963; PLP, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 27 [ak], Introductory Report of M. de la Vallée Poussin to the conference at Brussels of the Central and East European Commission, 10–11 January 1963. 5. PISM KOL 265, Bregman Papers, article by Alexander Bregman in The Daily Telegraph, 18 October 1962; PLP, Morawski Papers, Tymcz 27 [ak], de la Vallée Poussin. 6. Polish Library and Cultural Institute (henceforth POSK), London, Retinger Papers, 1280/Rps European Unity Box, Background Paper, n.d. unsigned. 7. PISM KOL 23/H/246, ACEN Memorandum to the Powers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 16 December 1957. /

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Notes 265 8. Z. Broncel, ‘Polska rewolucja pa´zdziemikowa’, Kultura, no.12, grudzien´ (December), 1956; F. Fejto, ‘Od prowaokacji do rewolucji’, Kultura, no.12, grudzien´ (December), 1956. 9. J. Mieroszewski, ‘Rosyjski Commonwealth’, Kultura, no.6, czerwiec (June), 1961. 10. J. Mieroszewski, ‘Problem centralny XX wieku’, Kultura, no.5, maj (May), 1964. 11. PISM KOL 23/H/246, ACEN, report on European Integration, probably 1955, pp. 11–12; ‘ACEN Conference in Strasbourg’, Polish Affairs, no.5/6 (11th year), June 1963; PLP Morawski Papers, Tymcz 27 [ak], Paul Auer, ‘La Construction Européenne et les Pays de l’Europe de l’Est’, nd. prob.1964. 12. Klaus Larres, ‘Britain, East Germany and Détente: British Policy toward the GDR and West Germany’s “Policy of Movement”, 1955–65’, in Loth, Europe . . . , p. 112. 13. Larres, p. 112; PUMST, Ciolkosz Papers, lecture by Paul Auer, 3 January 1958. 14. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 23/H/246, ‘European Integration’, prob.1955, pp. 2, 11. 15. PISM, KOL 23/H/246, ACEN ‘European Integration’, p. 12; PUMST, Ciolkosz Papers, KOL 133/7, ACEN Special Session, 12–15 April 1956 and Paul Auer, ‘Memorandum’, 30 September 1959. US Senator Hubert Humphrey challenged the term peaceful co-existence in 1956, suggesting the word ‘peaceful’ be amended to ‘competitive’ since the Soviets did not understand the meaning of peace. 16. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 408/206, ACEN Plenary Meeting 30 November 1956, quoting Hubert Humphrey, and KOL 408/207 quoting James Burnham in National Review, 30 May 1956; PUMST Ciolkosz Papers, KOL 133/6, Address of Goedhart to ACEN, April 1956. 17. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/226 European Movement, ‘Conference on Problems of Eastern Europe’, 18 December 1963, p. 1. 18. Tony Judt, A History of Europe since 1945, London, Heinemann, 2005, p. 253. But Kennedy’s speech in Berlin in June 1963 reiterated the Potomac Declaration and assuaged the anxieties of the exiles. 19. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, ‘Europe does not end at the Iron Curtain’, n.d., probably 1957, pp. 12, 15; John W. Young, Cold War Europe 1945–1989: A Political History, London, New York, Edward Arnold, 1991, p. 11. 20. PUMST Ciol kosz Papers, KOL 133/6 ‘Wanted: An Eastern Policy of the West’, p. 14, n.d. and Memorandum from Paul Auer, 30 September 1959, pp. 2, 3; J. Mieroszewski, Ewolucjonizm, Paris Literary Institute, Paris, 1965, pp. 25–9. 21. Polish Affairs, no. 4, (7th year) April 1959; PISM Starzewski Papers, KOL 357/13, ‘Declaration of the Executive Committee of the Polish Council of National Unity on the ratification of the Warsaw Treaty’, 22 May 1972; Kultura, no. 7/141–8/142, July–August 1959, article by Juliusz Mieroszewski, Digest in English; PISM Bregman Papers, KOL 265, Alexander Bregman, ‘Poland and German Unity’ in Modern Age, Spring 1962. 22. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, paper read by Hubert Ripka at meeting of the Central and East European Commission, 19 January 1957 and KOL 23/H/218, Hubert Ripka, ‘Negotiations with Moscow and the problem of Central Europe’, 2 May 1955; KOL 23/H/245, Memorandum by Paul Auer, 30 September 1959. /

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266

Notes

23. Adam Ciol kosz, ‘Winds of Change’, Polish Affairs, vol.xiv, no.2, [Oct–Dec], 1966; PISM Starzewski Papers, KOL 357/13, ‘Neutrality in Central Europe’, n.d.; PISM, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/218, Central and East European Commission of European Movement, 20 May 1955. 24. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 408/209, ‘Message of the Assembly of the ACEN to the Council of Europe, 15 April 1959. 25. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 408/208, ‘The Problem of Central and Eastern Europe’, 17 January 1958; Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History 1929–1969, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973, p. 285. 26. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 408/208, Jan Starzewski ‘Existing Proposals for a New Security System for Central Europe’, April 1958, pp. 5–6. 27. PISM ACEN Papers, KOL 408/209, ‘Message of ACEN to the Council of Europe’, 16 April 1959, pp. 3–4. 28. PISM Bregman Papers, KOL 265, I, Folder 4, Bregman, ‘Poland and German Unity’, pp. 187–8. 29. Bregman, ‘Poland and German Unity’, p. 190. 30. J. Mieroszewski, ‘Motyw spoleczny sojuszów’, Kultura, kwiecien´ (April), 1969; Jan Kempa, ‘ “Kultura” – a Polish Institution’, The Central European Federalist, vol. IX, no.2, December 1961. 31. J. Mieroszewski, Polityczne neurozy, Paris, 1967, pp. 101, 103. 32. J. Mieroszewski, ‘Militarization or Neutralization’, Kultura, Digest no.7/141– 8/ 142, July–August 1959; The Editor’s comment, Kultura Digest, no.5/139, May 1959. 33. POSK, Radomyski Papers, 1495/Rps/12, NiD’s letter to Nixon, 17 August 1959; NiD’s submission to the US State Department, 16 April 1958, in The Central European Federalist, vol.VI, no.1, June 1958. 34. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/246, memo by Paul Auer, 30 September 1959. 35. PISM KOL 23/H/220, Raczyn´ski Papers, ‘Europe does not end at the Iron Curtain’, n.d. prob. 1957, p. 12; Starzewski Papers, KOL 357/13, ‘Neutrality in Central Europe’ and ‘Memorandum’, n.d. The memorandum of the ACEN to the Council of Europe in 1959 carried a similar message. 36. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Simon and Schuster, 1994, p. 733. 37. P.M.H. Bell, The World since 1945: An International History, London, Arnold and New York, OUP inc., 2001, pp. 269–70; Dean Rusk, ‘Co-existence without Sanctimony’, in G.R.Urban ed., Détente, London, Temple Smith, 1976, p. 246. 38. Bell, pp. 270, 301–2; Young, p. 18. 39. Bell, p. 271. 40. J. Starzewski, ‘Soviet Terms for Peace in Europe’, Polish Affairs and Problems of Central and Eastern Europe, no.88, June 1972; ‘Polish Government in Exile and the Conference at Geneva’, Polish Affairs, no.93/4, June 1975; Bruno Pitterman, ‘The moral factor in the conduct of foreign affairs’, in Urban ed., Détente, p. 10. 41. Pitterman, p. 15; ‘Mutual Appeal to the Western Participants of the Geneva Security and Co-operation Conference’ (from the Polish Committee for European Cooperation), Polish Affairs, no.95, December 1975. 42. ‘Documents’, Polish Affairs, no.95, December 1975. 43. Bell, pp. 290–1; Kissinger, p. 758. /

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Notes 267 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52.

53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69.

Young, p. 18; Bell, p. 286. Jerzy Gawenda, ‘The Prospect of a New Yalta’, Polish Affairs, no.93/4, June 1975. Bell, p. 289. Stefan Korbon´ski, ‘President Ford and Eastern Europe’, Polish Affairs, no.91/2, July/December 1974; Rusk, p. 256. Adam Ulam, ‘Why the status quo in Eastern Europe is a threat to Soviet security’, in Urban ed., pp. 225, 226. Richard Pipes, ‘Détente and Reciprocity’, in Urban ed., pp. 186–7, 192. Zdzisl aw Stahl, ‘The Nixon–Brezhnev Summit and the European Security Conference’, Polish Affairs and Problems of Central and Eastern Europe, no.89, December 1972. ibid. Korbon´ski, ‘President Ford and Eastern Europe’; Note of Foreign Minister to Dr. H. Kissinger, 8 April 1976, Polish Affairs, no.96/97, July 1976; Ulam’s comment on this was that Sonnenfeld was buying into Soviet propaganda to the effect that ‘the East Central European states were traditional hotbeds of parochial nationalism and instability’. They strongly contributed to the outbreak of two world wars and could cause a third were it not for the overwhelming presence of the Soviet Union. Hence the Soviet Union was doing the world a service. Ulam in Urban, ed., p. 213. ‘Memorandum of the Executive Committee of the Polish Council of National Unity’, Polish Affairs and Problems of Central and Eastern Europe, no.84, July 1970. Kissinger, p. 734. Young, pp. 17–18; ‘The Soviet–German Treaty: A Case of Unjustified Euphoria’, Polish Affairs, no.85, November 1970. ‘Memorandum by the Polish Council of National Unity’, Polish Affairs, no.85, November 1970; Bell, p. 309. Bell, p. 331. ‘Memorandum . . .’, Polish Affairs, no.85, November 1970. Bell, p. 310. Zdzislaw Stahl, ‘The Helsinki Declaration and Political Prospects’, Polish Affairs, no.95, December 1975. Bell, pp. 311–2. Stahl, ‘The Helsinki Declaration . . .’. Cyril E. Black et al., Rebirth: A History of Europe since World War II, Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford, Westview Press, 1992, p. 128; Bell, p. 312. Young, p. 20. Black, p. 128; Bell, p. 312. Polish Affairs, no. 95, December 1975, and ‘Appeal of the ACEN to the United States Congress’, Polish Affairs, no. 91/2, July/December 1974. ‘Memorandum from the Polish Government in Exile’, Polish Affairs, no.93/4, June 1975. Polish Affairs, no.95, December 1975; ‘Polish Committee of Co-operation and Security in Europe to the Conference in Geneva’, Polish Affairs, no.93/4, June 1975. ‘Declaration of the Polish Government in Exile on the forthcoming international conference in Helsinki’, Polish Affairs, no 95, December 1975; Stahl, ‘The Helsinki Declaration . . .’; Polish Affairs, no.99, April 1977. /

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268 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78.

79. 80.

Notes Adam Ciol kosz, ‘Let Them Be Bold’, Polish Affairs, no.99, April 1977. Kissinger, pp. 759–60; Polish Affairs, no.119, Winter, 1986. Jan Nowak, ‘Review of the Helsinki Process’, Polish Affairs, no. 119, 1986. Kissinger, p. 759; Nowak, ‘Review . . .’. Ulam in Urban ed., p. 225. Ulam, p. 222; Kissinger, pp. 745, 756. Kissinger, p. 752; Pipes, ‘Détente and Reciprocity’ in Urban, ed., pp. 185–6. Contrary to Kissinger’s assertion, Pipes argued that ‘the purpose of détente was not so much to make Russia change its system of government as to reduce the threat which it poses to Europe . . . a complete internal transformation is not what we are after . . .’. George R. Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy: My War within the Cold War, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1997, p. 110. Michel Korné, ‘Les Propositions du Groupe de Paris’, Polska w Europie, no.1–3, January–March, 1979; ‘L’Autre Europe: Sera-t-elle représentée?’ Polska w Europie, no.1–3, January–March, 1979; PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, The Polish Committee of the ‘Britain in Europe’ Campaign, May 1975, and KOL 23/H/234, letter of Raczyn´ski to The Times, 24 July 1971; Geoffrey Warner, ‘Eisenhower, Dulles and the Unity of Western Europe, 1955–1957’, International Affairs, 69, 2, 1993. ‘European Parliament’, Polish Affairs, no.113–14, Spring–Summer, 1984. Jerzy Jankowski, ‘Les Fédéralistes Européens et les Pays de l’Est’, Polska w Europie, nos.9–10 (182–3), Sept–Oct 1971; Conclusions of the Conference of the ACEN, PUMST, Ciol kosz Papers, KOL 133/6 n.d. prob. 1961. ‘L’Autre Europe: Sera-t-elle représentée?’. Polish Affairs, nos.1–2, February 1959. ‘European Parliament’, Polish Affairs, nos.113–114, Spring–Summer 1984. /

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81. 82. 83.

10

War of ideas

1. Hugh Thomas, Armed Truce: The Beginnings of the Cold War 1945–46, London, Hamish Hamilton, Sceptre edition, 1988, 1st pub.1986, p. 676. 2. Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War behind the Iron Curtain, Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000, pp. 94–5. 3. J. Mieroszewski, ‘O mie˛dzynarodowa˛ brygade˛ europejska˛’, Kultura, no.11, listopad (November) 1951. In fact an institution of this sort already existed, namely the College of Free Europe in Strasbourg, which had been founded on the initiative of Kultura, but Mieroszewski had reservations about the way the college functioned. 4. Grose, p. 98; Cord Meyer, Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA, New York, Harper and Row, 1980, p. 111; John Foster Leich, ‘Great Expectations: The National Councils in Exile 1950–1960’, The Polish Review, vol.XXXV, no.3, 1990. 5. The Free Europe Committee had founded the College of Free Europe under the inspiration of Kultura, Mieroszewski, ‘O mie˛dzynarodowa˛...’. 6. The chairman of its Executive Committee was Joseph Grew, a retired ambassador, and another former OSS member, De Witt Poole, became President of the organization. Leich, p. 184; Grose, p. 124; Meyer, p. 111; Richard

Notes 269 J. Aldrich, ‘European Integration: An American Intelligence Connection’ in Anne Deighton ed., Building Postwar Europe: National Decision Makers and European Institutions 1948–1963, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1995, p. 162; Sl awomir L ukasiewicz, ‘Polish Federalists in the United States after 1940’, in Thomas Lane and Marian S. Wolan´ski eds, Poland and European Unity: Ideas and Reality, Wrocl aw, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocl awskiego, 2007, pp. 157–8. Meyer, p. 111; Richard Aldrich, ‘OSS, CIA and European Unity: The American Committee on United Europe, 1948–1960’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol.8, no.1, March 1997. Leich, p. 183. William A. Buell, ‘Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in the mid 1980s’, in K.R.M. Short ed., Western Broadcasting over the Iron Curtain, London & Sydney, Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 85, 88. Zdzisl aw Najder, ‘Talk to Listeners in Poland’, Polish Affairs, no.109, Winter, 1982. George R. Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy: My War within the Cold War, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1997, pp. ix, 53. Gary D. Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda: The BBC and VOA in International Politics, 1956–64, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996, p. 69; Urban, p. 2; interview with Mr. Krok-Paszkowski, July 2004; the Radio Nacional de España, in Poland called ‘Radio Madrid’, was ‘profoundly anticommunist and even belligerent’ – see José M. Faraldo, ‘Peripheral Europeans. Polish Émigrés in Franco’s Spain (1939–1969)’, in Lane and Wolan´ski eds, Poland and European Unity, p. 141. J. Mieroszewski, Polityczne neurozy, Paris, 1967, pp. 105–7. Polish Affairs, May 1952; Trevor Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War: The CIA and American Foreign Policy in Europe 1946–1956, Part II’, The Historical Journal, 25, 3, (1982). Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (henceforth PISM) London, Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, letter from Raczyn´ski 27 January 1957 and Memorandum on broadcasts of Radio Free Europe, 29 January 1957; Polish Affairs, February 1952; Rawnsley, p. 69. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, Memorandum, 29 January 1957. Mary McIntosh, chief, Statistics, ‘Analyses and Attitude Research, East European Audience and Opinion Research’, in Short ed., p. 246; Buell, p. 75. Meyer, pp. 112, 117; Aldrich, ‘OSS, CIA and European Unity’, p. 189; Urban, p. 59. Christopher Felix, A Short Course in the Secret War, Lanham, MD, New York and London, Madison Books, 1963, 1991, 1992, p. xiv; Urban, p. 107; Grose, p. 221. Polish Affairs, no.109, Spring 1983. Rawnsley, p. 69. McIntosh, p. 245. McIntosh, p. 245; Grose, p. 221; Jan Nowak, ‘Review of Helsinki Process’, Polish Affairs, no.119, 1986. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, Memorandum, 29 January 1957; Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs eds, Navigating the Rapids 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973, p. 631. /

/

/

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

/

/

270

Notes

25. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, Central and East European Commission, letter from John Pomian, 15 April 1957. 26. Interview with Z. Najder, 30 July 2004. 27. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September 2004. 28. PISM, Bregman Papers, KOL 265, The Daily Telegraph, 18 October 1962. 29. Maria Danilewiczowa, ‘Polish Literary Scene in 1959’, Polish Affairs, no.6, 7th year, June 1959; Robert Kostrzewa ed., Between East and West: Writings from Kultura, New York, Hill and Wang, 1990, xii. 30. Interview with W. Bartoszewski, 30 July 2004. 31. Interview with J.K. Bielecki, 24 March 2004. 32. Interview with H. Gronkiewicz-Waltz, 16 December 2003. 33. Interview with J. Saryusz-Wolski, April 2004. 34. Interview with W. Bartoszewski, 30 July 2004. 35. ‘Kultura on trial in Warsaw’, Polish Affairs and Problems of Central and Eastern Europe, no.84, July 1970. 36. Konstanty A. Jelenski, ‘Introduction’, in Kostrzewa ed., p. 9. 37. M. Suszko, ‘Kultura and European Unification 1948–1953’, The Polish Review XLV, no.2, 2000; Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison and other Essays, Berkeley CA and London, University of California Press, 1985, p. 18; Kempka claimed that the black market price for a ‘second hand dog-eared issue was enormous’, Jan Kempka, ‘ “Kultura” – a Polish Institution’, The Central European Federalist, vol.IX, no.2, December 1961. 38. ‘Kultura on trial’ and Michnik, p. 18. 39. ‘Kultura on trial’. 40. Piotr Wandycz, ‘Polish, Hungarian and Czechoslovak Political Emigration and the Origins of the Cold War’, The Polish Review, vol.47, no.2, 2002; Suszko, ‘Kultura and European Unification’. 41. J. Czapski, ‘W Berlinie o zjednoczonej Europie’, Kultura, no.9, wrzesien´ (September), 1951, p. 112. 42. Suszko, ‘Kultura and European Unification’. 43. Interview with Z. Najder, 30 July 2004. 44. C. Mil osz, ‘O Autografii na cztery re˛ce Jerzego Giedroycia’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 21–22 stycznia (January), 1995. 45. Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 226–31; Ilya Prizel, National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 79, 86, 95. 46. J. Mieroszewski, Ewolucjonizm, Paris, Paris Literary Institute, 1965, p. 8. 47. J. Mieroszewski, ‘Polska-Rosja-Chiny’, Kultura, no.3, marzec (March), 1964. 48. J. Mieroszewski, ‘Konfrontacja w Pradze’, Kultura, pa´zdziemik (October), 1968. 49. Mieroszewski, Ewolucjonizm, pp. 25–9, 32. 50. ibid., pp. 38, 53–4. 51. PSW, ‘Poles and Federalism’, The Central European Federalist, vol.1, no.1, April 1953. 52. ‘An Uncensored Letter from Czechoslovakia, brought out in March 1954’, Central European Federalist, vol. II, no.2, July 1954; PISM Ciolkosz Papers, KOL 133/218, Paul Auer ‘La Construction Européenne et les Pays de l’Europe de l’Est’, n.d. /

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Notes 271 53. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, Central and East European Commission, letter from John Pomian, 15 April 1957. 54. ‘A Young Hungarian Exile speaks about Federation in East Central Europe’, The Central European Federalist, vol.V, no.2, December 1957. 55. E. Osmanczyk, ‘Argument about Europe’, The Central European Federalist, vol. V, no.2, December 1957; Bela Kiraly ‘Imre Nagy’s Road to Federalism’, The Central European Federalist, vol.XII, no.1, July 1964. 56. William R. Keylor, The Twentieth-Century World: An International History, New York, Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 28; Review of Michael Gamarnikow, Polska, Wspólny Rynek, i.Ziednoczona Europa, The Central European Federalist, XIV, no.2, December 1966. 57. Urban, p. 131; Jan Józef Lipski, ‘Two Fatherlands, Two Patriotisms’, Kultura, October 1981. 58. PISM Starzewski Papers, KOL357/13, 25 April 1958, speech by Jan Starzewski; PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL23/H/246, Stefan Osusky, Rapporteur, Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN) General Committee, Draft Report to the Council of Europe; for Gafencu, PISM Raczin´ski Papers, KOL 23/H/220, undated and unsigned report ‘Europe does not end at the Iron Curtain’, possibly 1957; for Ciolkosz see Polish Library Paris (henceforth PLP), Morawski archive, Tymcz 26. 59. Jelenski in Kostrzewa, p. 15. 60. Keith Sword, Identity in Flux: The Polish Community in Britain, London, SSEES, University of London, 1996, pp. 40, 45–7; ‘A Young Hungarian Exile Speaks’; Bogdan Zaporowski, ‘The Young Generation of Post-Stalin East Europe’, The Central European Federalist, vol.XIV, no.2, December 1966; Aleksander Bregman, The Daily Telegraph, 18 October 1962. 61. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, KOL23/H/218, March 1955; PLP, Morawski archive, Tymcz 26, 27 April 1957, address of Morawski to the ACEN. 62. Juliusz Mieroszewski, ‘Militarisation or Neutralisation’, Kultura, no.7/141– no.8/142, July August 1959, (Digest). 63. Starzewski, loc.cit. 64. PISM Raczyn´ski Papers, 23/H/229, 1965, Memorandum of the Central and East European Commission of the European Movement; Zaporowski, p. 23. 65. Kostrzewa ed., xii. 66. Michnik, p. 19. 67. Urban, pp. 107, 112, 131. 68. ‘The Mission of RFE and RL Broadcasts’, in Short ed., Western Broadcasting, p. 95. 69. Interviews with K. Skubiszewski and H. Gronkiewicz-Waltz. 70. Interview with H. Gronkiewicz-Waltz, 16 December 2003. /

11 Poland’s European policy after communism: continuity and change 1. The quotation is attributed to Lech Wale˛sa in Roger Boyes, The Naked President: A Political Life of Lech Walesa, London, Secker and Warburg, 1994, p. 317. 2. Louisa Vinton, ‘Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy, 1989–1993’, in Ilya Prizel and Andrew A. Michta eds, Polish Foreign Policy Reconsidered: Challenges of Independence, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1995, pp. 32, 45–6. /

272 Notes 3. Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 219–31; Ilya Prizel, National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 79, 151; Stephen R. Burant, ‘International Relations in a Regional Context: Poland and its Eastern Neighbours – Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol.45, no.3, 1993. 4. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September 2004; Radio Free Europe Research, (hereafter RFE Research) vol.14, no.41, Part II, 12 October 1989. 5. RFE Research, vol.14, no.41, Part II, 12 October 1989. 6. John F. Dunn, Widening the Community? E.C. Relations with European and Global Partners, London, HMSO, 1991, Wilton Park Papers no.40, p. 10; Renata Stawarska, ‘Poland’s Association with the EEC’, Polish Western Affairs, vol.XXXIII, no.1, 1992; Ilona Romiszewska, ‘The European Communities and the Central and East European Countries: From Aloofness through Co-operation to Association and Membership?’ Polish Western Affairs, vol.XXXIII, no.1, 1992; Peter van Ham, The EC, Eastern Europe and European Unity: Discord, Collaboration and Integration since 1947, London and New York, Pinter, 1995, 1st pub.1993, pp. 142–3. 7. Uncensored Poland News Bulletin, no.24/89, 31 December 1989, and no.9/89, 31 May 1989. 8. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September 2004. 9. BBC Monitoring, Summary of World Broadcasts (hereafter SWB), Part 2, Eastern Europe, Third Series EE/0561, 14 September 1989; Vinton, pp. 26–31. 10. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September 2004; Vinton pp. 37–8. 11. Ilya Prizel, ‘Warsaw’s Ostpolitik: A New Encounter with Positivism’ in Prizel and Michta eds, p. 105; SWB, Eastern Europe EE/0622, 24 November 1989. 12. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September 2004. 13. ibid. 14. SWB, General and Western Affairs, EE/0711 A1/1, 13 March 1990 and Third Series, EE/0609, 9 November 1989; George Sanford, Poland: The Conquest of History, London, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999, p. 83. 15. Prizel ‘Warsaw’s Ostpolitik,’ pp. 101–3. 16. SWB, General and Western Affairs, EE/0711 A1/1, 13 March 1990 and Third Series, EE/0609, 9 November 1989; SWB Special Supplement EE 0637 C/1, 12 December 1989, speech of Foreign Minister Skubiszewski to the Sejm, 7 December 1989; Sanford, Poland . . . p. 83. 17. Prizel, National Identity and Foreign Policy, pp. 113–15; Barbara Donovan, ‘Eastern Europe and German Unity’, in Radio Free Europe Research, ‘Report on Eastern Europe’, 2 March 1990; SWB Special Supplement, EE/0637 C/1, 12 December 1989. 18. SWB Third Series EE/0560 13 September 1989 and SWB Special Supplement EE/0697 C/1, 24 February 1990. Mazowiecki’s comment had been anticipated by Skubiszewski six months earlier when he said that the idea of the unification of Germany without the consent of all members of the European home was unthinkable. Furthermore unification ‘must be adjusted to European security requirements’. 19. SWB EE/0799 A1/7 25 June 1990, EE/0819/i 18 July 1990; Uncensored Poland, no. 8/91, 28 June 1991.

Notes 273 20. SWB EE/0865 i 10 September 1990. 21. Interview with Z. Najder 30 July 2004. Najder remarked that Skubiszewski was very cautious, rejecting internal pressure that Poland recognise the independence of Lithuania on the grounds that this ‘would make the Russians angry’ (Najder’s words). Skubiszewski, said Najder, ‘did not want to rock the boat’; Prizel, ‘Warsaw’s Ostpolitik’, pp. 101–3. 22. Vinton, pp. 25–6, 37–8; Prizel, ‘Warsaw’s Ostpolitik, pp. 100–1. 23. Vinton, pp. 25–6; Mazowiecki’s address to an election meeting in Wroclaw, SWB 3rd Series, EE/0775, 28 May 1990 and Skubiszewski to the Sejm, SWB EE/0997 i 15 February 1991 and SWB EE/0998 i 16 February 1991; Mazowiecki to the Sejm 22 November 1990, Uncensored Poland, nos. 22–23/90, 16 December 1990. 24. Vinton, pp. 42–3. 25. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September, 2004. 26. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September 2004; SWB EE/0732 B/6 6 April 1990. 27. Bielecki’s speech to the Solidarity Congress, 24 February 1991 reported in SWB EE/1007 B/9 27 February 199 and SWB EE/1250 B/12 9 December 1991. 28. Wal e˛sa’s speech on his impressions of a visit to the Federal Republic of Germany, 14 September 1989, SWB EE/0561 14 September 1989. 29. Interview with Z. Najder, 30 July 2004. 30. ‘Pro Memoria’, submission of the request of the Republic of Poland for membership of the EU 8 April 1994, sections 1 and 9; Marcin Zaborowski, ‘Power, Security and the Past: Polish–German Relations in the Context of EU and NATO Enlargement’, German Politics, vol.11, no.2 (August 2002); Arthur Rachwald, ‘Looking West’, in Prizel and Michta eds, pp. 131–2. 31. David Warszawski, ‘A New Vision is Needed’, Uncensored Poland, no. 9/90, 11 May 1990, first published in Rzeczpospolita, 5 April 1990. 32. SWB EE/0750 C1/1, 28 April 1990, report to Sejm by Foreign Minister Skubiszewski 26 April 1990. 33. ‘Declaration of Visegrad Summit’, 15 February 1991, in SWB EE/0999 A2/1 18 February 1991. 34. Dunn, p. 13; SWB Third Series, EE/0674 29 January 1990; SWB EE/0788 A2/1 12 June 1990; Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, ‘Poland’s foreign policy since 1989: The challenges of independence’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 33, 2000. 35. Terry, pp. 16–17. 36. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September 2004. 37. Dunn, p. 21; Terry, pp. 10, 16, 18; Rachwald, p. 149. 38. Prizel, National Identity, p. 132; Snyder, p. 229. 39. Interview with K. Skubiszewski, 11 September 2004. 40. Interview with H. Gronkiewicz-Waltz, 16 December 2003. 41. Alexander J. Matejko, ‘The Structural Roots of Polish Opposition’, The Polish Review, vol.7, nos. 1–2, 1982; Jakub Karpin´ski, ‘Polish Intellectuals in Opposition’, Problems of Communism, July–August 1987. Some of the more prominent of these underground journals were Biuletyn Informacyjny, Opinia, Res Publica, Spotkania, Robotnik, Gospedarz, Glos, Krytyka, Puls, Zapis, Bratniak, Droga, Znak and TygodnikPowszechny. A number of them were associated with KOR, the Workers’ Defence Committee, some others were in the /

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274

42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57.

Notes Catholic tradition. Lipski summarises their role as fighting for workers who were beaten, imprisoned and dismissed from their jobs and later supporting the movement for democracy and independence. The issues were often re-copied and widely read. Books were also published regularly, often by NOWA, an independent publishing house, as were policy studies by anonymous writers calling themselves the Polish Independence Alliance or Polish League for Independence (PPN). Jan Józef Lipski, KOR, a History of the Workers’ Defense Committee in Poland 1976–1981, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1986, p. 305; Karpin´ski, p. 52; Nika Krzeczunowicz, ‘Uncensored Press in Poland’, Polish Affairs, no.103, January–February–March 1981; Andrzej Drawicz, ‘Experience of Democratic Opposition’, Survey, vol. 24, no. 4 (109), Autumn 1979. Polish Library Paris, Morawski archive, Tymcz 26, 27 April 1957, Address of Morawski to the Assembly of Captive European Nations and Tymcz 6, Speech at Commission of the Nations not represented in the Council of Europe, XIII session, 6 July 1961. Prizel, pp. 74, 86, 151. Prizel, p. 100. Interviews with K. Skubiszewski, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, K. Bartoszewski, Z. Najder and H. Gronkiewicz-Waltz. Romiszewska, ‘The European Communities’. Dunn, p. 10; Stawarska, ‘Poland’s Association’. Solidarity Citizens’ Committee, Statement on ‘Poland and the World’, 24 April 1989, Uncensored Poland, no. 21/89, 17 November 1989. Lipski, p. 361. ‘Pro Memoria, pp. 1–2. Stawarska, ‘Poland’s Association’. Francisco M. Catalucci, ‘Introduction: In Search of Lost Europe’, in Bronislaw Geremek, The Common Roots of Europe, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1996, p. 14; Kazimierz Brandys, A Warsaw Diary 1978–1981, translation Richard Lourie, London, Chatto and Windus, Hogarth Press, 1984, p. 47. PPN in Survey, vol.25, no.1 (110), Winter 1980. Romiszewska, ‘The European Communities’; van Ham, p. 73; Heather Grabbe and Kirsty Hughes, Enlarging the EU Eastwards, London, Pinter and RIIA, 1998, p. 83; ‘Pro Memoria’, pp. 1, 7. Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison and other Essays, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1985, pp. 16–18. There was one exception to this; the London exiles did not share the government’s policy of recognising the existing Eastern frontiers. /

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Index Action Européenne Fédéraliste, see under European Federalists’ Action American Committee on European Reconstruction, 22 Anders, General Wl adysl aw, 75 Anglo–Soviet Treaty 1942, 50, 53, 55 Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations (ABN) activists of, in Germany, 68 Anti-Bolshevik League of Liberation of Nations (ALON), 68 stagnation of, 68 arms reduction and limitation agreements, 180–2 Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN), 96, 105 advice of, to Council of Europe, 110–13 aggressive policy of, to Communist states, 106 criticism by, of acceptance of status quo in Central East Europe, 106 militant policies of, 110–12 Atlantic Charter, 24, 51, 53 Auer, Paul, 86, 94, 109, 178 /

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Baltic Conference, Helsinki 1920, 13 Bartoszewski, Wl adisl aw, 227, 230 Baumann, Janina, 211 Baumann, Zygmunt, 211 Beddington-Behrens, Edward, 84, 90 Belgian participation in Inter-Allied Committee in WWII, 82 leading to disagreements between Belgians and Poles, 82 Beneˇs, Edvard, 34–5 attitude to Polish–Czechoslovak confederation idea, 37, 39 confidence of, that Soviet Union would win the war, 42 and Czechoslovak–Soviet Treaty 1942, 50 and indispensability of Soviet support, 42–3, 53 /

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and membership of an East European association, 45 opportunism of, 37–8 relations of, with Sikorski, 37 support of, for a loose association of states, 39, 46, 49–50 views of, on post-war frontiers, 42, 43–4, 50 worries of, regarding German power, 43 Beneˇs, Vojta, 28 Berle, Adolf, 85, 195, 199 Bevin, Ernest, and the Council of Europe, 93 Bielecki, Jan Krzysztof, 223 belief of, that knowledge of European affairs in Poland very fragmented, 230 doubts expressed by, over influence of Kultura, 227 Bielecki, Tadeusz, 86, 91, 163, 165 Bogomolov, Alexander, 55 Boothby, Robert views of, on Council of Europe, 92 Brandt, Willy acceptance by, of Oder–Neisse frontier, 184 and policy of Ostpolitik, 184 Brandys, Kazimierz, 232 Bregman, Aleksander, 150–1, 177, 201, 211 Brezhnev Doctrine, 180, 183 Briand, Aristide, 14, 15 British Broadcasting Corporation European Service, 196 support of, for European unity, 196 British government attitude of, to the confederation in Central East Europe, 51–2 criticism of, 53 criticism by, of Czechoslovakia and Beneˇs, 52

298

Index 299 and frontiers of Poland and Czechoslovakia, 42, 47, 52 recognition by, of necessity for Soviet support, 53–4 Brugmans, Hendrik, 85, 115, 119, 130–1, 136 Brus, Wlodzimierz, 211 Brzezin´ski, Zbigniew, 182 support of, for détente, 182 Buczyn´ski, Stefan, 10 Caucasus federation, 69 Cazalet, Victor, 81 Central East Europe advantages of a regional federation in, 25–8, 35, 36, 64–5 customs union in, 66–7 essential unity of, 30, 58, 61–2, 152–3 federation in, and its institutions, 62–4 great differences in the region of, 30, 58, 66, 164–5 Central and East European Planning Board, 22, 27 Central European Federal Club, 30 Central European Federalist, 203, 207 Central European Free Trade Association, 225 Christian Democratic Workers’ Party, 32 Churchill, Winston call of, for a United States of Europe, 72 comment of, on Soviet good faith, 188 contradictions in federalist thought of, 72–3 Polish reactions to ideas of, 73–4 and Potomac Declaration of, 111 sees necessity to keep Soviet support in World War II, 53 United Europe Movement of, 72, 85 welcome of, to exiles in European Movement, 89 Zurich speech of, 72, 83 Cieszyn dispute, 43–4, 50, 52 Ciol kosz, Adam, 23, 31, 78, 91, 97, 112, 119, 156, 169, 173–4, 210 Clay, General Lucius D., 195 /

Cold War challenge of, to Polish federalists, 168 Confederation of federations in Europe, 31, 33 Congress of Central and East European Nations, 75 Constantinescu, Emil, 198 Constitution of 3 May 1791, 6 Consultative Assembly of Council of Europe, 75, 92 powerlessness of, 93 Resolution 47 of, 94, 107–8 Resolution 87 of, 95 resolutions of, 94–5 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Count Richard, 15, 72, 85 leadership of, in European Parliamentary Union, 85, 153 and Pan-European movement, 15 Council of Europe, 75, 77–8, 133 alleged failure of, to adopt liberation policies, 106 Committee of Ministers of, 93 confidence in, by Polish exiles, 97, 107–8 criticism of, for appeasement policies, 108–10, 169 diminishing trust in, of Polish exiles, 108–9, 133 the formation of a Special Committee of (Watchdog Committee), 94, 96 foundation of, warmly welcomed by exiles, 92 Founding Statute of, 93, 107, 118 membership of exiles in, 88 reasons offered for this failure of, 118–21 requests of exiles for representation in rejected, 93–4 tension in, between Assembly and Committee of Ministers, 93 Watchdog Committee of, as the conscience of West Europe, 109 Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), 102, 119, 192, 216, 230–1 agreement between, and the European Community 1988, 216–17

300 Index Courland, 6 Cuban missile crisis, 180 Czartoryski, Adam, 8–9 and Essai sur la Diplomatie, 9 Czechoslovak ‘Fundamental Principles’, 49 Czechoslovakia’s ambivalence on European federation, 35–6, 45–6 Czechoslovak–Polish relations 1920–21, 13 Czechoslovak Russophilia, 46 Czechoslovak–Soviet relations, 50 Czechoslovak–Soviet Treaty 1942, 50 Dalton, Hugh, 31–2, 36 Danubian Club of London, 22 Danubian federation, 15, 100 Dehousse, Fernand, 133 De la Vallée Poussin, Etienne, 85, 91, 116 controversy involving, over policy of the European Movement, 116 criticism of, by ACEN, 116–17 criticism of, by Morawski, 116 proposal of, to invite observers from Communist states, 117 Democratic Integral Federalism (or inner federalism), 28 De-nuclearization, 175–6 d’Estaing, Giscard, 85, 139 Détente, 121, 169, 179–80 advantages of, to Moscow, 180–1 advantages of, in view of exiles, 179–80 attractions of, to the U.S., 181–2 scepticism about, by exiles, 179, 181, 183 stimuli to, 180–2 Disaggregation of states into nations, 103–4 Disengagement, 176 Dmowski, Roman, 11, 13 Dormer, Sir Cecil, 32 Dulles, Allen, 195 Dulles, John Foster, 85, 169–70, 189 ˙ nierza, 60 Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Zol /

Eden, Anthony, 25 position of, on Polish–Czechoslovak ‘Agreement’, 51–2, 53 Eisenhower, Dwight, 111, 169, 190, 195 Estreicher, Stanisl aw, 15 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), 102 European Economic Community (EEC), 103 enlargement of, 132, 136, 190 evolution of, into a political community, 132, 190 membership in, of increasing interest to Polish exiles, 103, 189–91 European Federalists’ Action, 131, 136, 149 European League for Economic Cooperation (ELEC), 72, 84 European Movement, 77–8, 114, 153 alleged failure of, to adopt robust policies towards communist states, 105, 113–15 Central East European Commission of, 90–1, 196 confidence of exiles in, 98 constitution of, 88, 90 criticism of, 113–15 initiative of, in establishing a European Assembly, 92 loss of trust in, by exiles, 105, 120–1, 133–4 membership of exiles in, 88 organizes Westminster Conference, 91–2 proposals to downgrade Central East European Commission of, 117 purposes of, as seen by Polish exiles, 97 reasons for the failure of, 117–20 role of, in promoting widest possible European unity, 89–90 support of, for exiles, 91–2 European Parliament popular voting for, 130, 189 European Parliamentary Union, 72, 85 European Political Community, 134 /

Index 301 European Press, 203 European Union of Federalists (EUF), 72, 85, 131, 149 L’Europe des Patries, 150 Europe of the Peoples, 150 Europe of the Six growing sentiment among exiles for membership in, 103 Federal Clubs, 59 attempts of, to broaden the base of, 74–5 the Brussels Club, 60, 76 constitutions proposed by, 62–4 demise of, 76 the Frankfurt Club, 60, 67, 68, 76 the London Club and its support for a federal union, 59, 63 the London Club’s solution of the German problem, 71–2 the Paris Club, 59, 61, 63–4 the Paris Club and the future of the Soviet Union, 69 the Rome Club, 59, 61, 152 Federal Research Associations, 60–1 Federation of Americans of East and Central European origin, 59–60, 76 Federations, 20–1, 23–4 advantages of, 24–7, 129–30 conditions for success of, 30–1, 62 disadvantages of, 29 factors impelling the creation of, 126–7 federation or confederation?, 23–4 minority problems eased by, 103–4 multi-level, see Multi-level federation power and prosperity of member states enhanced by, 103 preferences among exiles for, 23–4 the preservation of national cultures by, 27–8 results of, 127 structure and membership of, in Central Europe, 29–31, 100 voluntary character of, 127 Freedom International, 68 Free Europe Committee, 103, 161

Free Intermarium Charter, 59, 61, 64, 152 French Union of Federalists, 59 Functionalism as a method for integration in Central East Europe, 102–3 Gafencu, Gregoire, 86, 94, 210 Gaitskell, Hugh, plan of for denuclearisation in Central Europe, 176 Gaullism, 150 support for, by Polish National Democrats, 166 Geneva conferences 1955, 173, 176–7 Geremek, Bronisl aw, 198, 219 German–Polish Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, 221 German problem, 70–2 German unification, 169, 173–5 consequences of, for membership of NATO etc, 174 danger of, for interests of exiles, 173–4 exiles’ conditions for acceptance of, 174, 177 would follow self-determination in both halves of Germany, 174 Germany border issues in, 71, 174 democratization and decentralization of, 70–2 fear of, 25, 66–7 federation of, proposed, 72 pacification of, 174 re-education of, 71, 173–4 self-determination in, producing benefits for exiles, 174 Germany–Poland border treaty 1990, 221 Giedroyc, Jerzy, 201, 203, 226 Giertych, J, 164 Glaser, Stefan, 97 Global country, see World Commonwealth Goedhart, F.J., 96, 110, 173 Gomul ka, Wl adisl aw, 197, 203 Gronkiewicz-Waltz, Hanna, 227–8, 230 /

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302 Index Gross, Feliks, 21–2, 24, 27–8, 29, 30, 31 federal ideas of, 157–9 and the transformation of values, 158–9 Grzegorzewski, Jan, 12 Gwiazda, Andrzej, 198 Habsburg, Otto von, 189 Hague Congress 1948, 73–4 delegates at, divided on tight or loose European unity, 87 East European exiles represented in, 86 and failure of Polish federalists to act quickly, 73–4 failure of, to take a clear position on East Europe, 73–4 key recommendation of, 87 major achievement of, 87 proposal of, for a European Consultative Assembly, 87 report of Economic Committee of, 87 resolutions of Political Committee of, 73–4, 87 Hallstein Doctrine, 174 Hallstein, Walter, President of the European Movement, 113 few references to Eastern Europe in autobiography of, 119 inaugural speech of, to European Movement, 115 Jankowski’s criticism of, 115 Havel, Vaclav, 198, 224 Helsinki Final Act, 184–6 human rights clauses of, and their advantages, 187–8 impact of, on oppositionists in Central East Europe, 188 no acceptance of, as a Peace Treaty, 186 Helsinki process, 184 reaction to, of exiles, 186–9 Helsinki Watch Committees, 188 Hertenstein conference, 72 Hodˇza, Milan, 26 Home Army in Poland, 23, 26, 33 support of, for a loose association of states, 33

Hrabyk, K, 60, 163 Hull, Cordell, 53 Hungarian Revolt 1956, 95, 169, 195 Independent League for Economic Cooperation (LICE), 84 character and policies of, 85 Independent Social Group, 143, 154–5 ideas of, 154–5 initial support of, for Intermarium, 154 membership of, 154 origins of, 154 Instytut Literacki, 201 Integral federalists, 72 Inter-Allied Committee, 81–2 reasons for establishment of, 82 suspicion of, in London and Moscow, 82 US attitudes to, 83 The Intermarium Bulletin, 59–60, 70–1, 76, 83 Intermarium project, 61, 152 broadening of, to include Cossack and Caucasus groups, 68 customs union in, 66–7 and the future of the Soviet Union, 68–70 opposition to, of National Democrats, 163–4 and the solution of ethnic and minority problems, 66 and voluntarism of, 62 Intermarium union, membership of, 61, 68 International Committee of the Movements for European Unity, 86 International Labour Organization Conference 1941, 22 International Peasant Union, 161 Ionescu, Take, Romanian Foreign Minister, 13–14 Isthmus, the, 12, 13 Iwaszkiewicz, Jarosl aw, 120, 209 /

Jankowski, Jan, 144 Jankowski, Jerzy, 59, 114, 122–3, 126, 128–9

Index 303 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 214, 219 Jarzembowski, Wojciech, 9 Jaspar, Marcel-Henri, 81 Jordan, Zbigniew, 145–8 Journal of Central European Affairs, 22 Kalembka, Sl awomir, 6 Karolyi, Michael, 23 Katyn, 46, 50, 83 Kennan, George, 119, 169, 175 and ‘Organized Political Warfare’ – ‘counter force’, 194–5 and the policy of containment, 193, 283 proposals of, for neutralization of Central Europe, 175 Kennard, Sir Horace, 32 Kennedy, John F., 173 Kerstens, Pieter, 81, 85 Khrushchev, Nikita, 170, 175 Kirk, Peter, 94 Kissinger, Henry, 180, 181–2, 183, 187, 188–9 Klaus, Vaclav, 225 Kohl, Helmut and the 10 point programme, 220 Kol akowski, Leszek, 120, 209, 211 Komarnicki, Tytus, 48–9, 65, 154 constitutional proposals of, 65, 154 ideas of, 154 Kotowicz, P., 67 Kronika, 60 Kul akowski, J., 91 Kulski, W., 30, 46 Kultura, 60, 194, 203 and European unity, 204–5, 229 and federalization of Central East Europe, 100 influence of, in Poland, 2–4–6, 215 influence of, on Polish policy to eastern neighbours, 226–7 numbers of copies of, circulating in Poland, 203 opposition of, to Polish nationalism, 205 penalties in Poland for possession of, 203 /

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scepticism about influence of, on eastern policy, 227–9 and Solidarity intellectuals, 215–16 La Fédération, 59, 132 proposals of, for a federal constitution for Europe, 132 League of Poland’s Independence, 76, 143, 151 differences of, from Polish Liberation Movement, 152 ideas of, 151–4 origins of, 151 Lednicki, Aleksander, 15 Lerski, Jerzy, 144 Leszczyn´ski, Stanisl aw, 7–8 liberalization in the Soviet Bloc, hopes of, 170 liberation policy, 129, 169–72, 195 LICE, see under Independent League for Economic Cooperation Limanowski, Bolesl aw, 10–11 Lippmann, Walter, 119 Lipski, Jan Józef, 209–10, 228, 231 Lithuania, 15 Lithuanian people, 11 Little Entente, 13 Livonia, 1 Lockhart, Robert Bruce, 32, 52, 56 London Committee of Free Representatives of East European Nations, 178 Lublin, Treaty of, 1569, 6 /

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Macmillan, Harold, 85 belief of, in unity of Europe, not federalism, 87 commitment of, to freedom of Central East Europe, 89 Presidency of, of Central and East European Commission of the European Movement, 91 proposal of, to form the ‘Watchdog’ Committee of the Council of Europe, 94 speech of, at Westminster Conference, 91–2 Maisky, Ivan, 42, 54, 55

304 Index Makins, Roger, 52 Malynski, Emmanuel, 14–15 and How to Save Europe, 14 Marc, Alexandre, 85 martial law in Poland, 187 Masaryk, Jan, 22, 37, 46 Masaryk, Thomas, 20 and European unity, 20 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 214 importance to, of united Germany’s membership in EC, 220 initial commitment of, to membership in Warsaw Pact, 218 support of, for Poland’s membership of a united Europe, 216, 231 Michnik, Adam, 233 Mickiewicz, Adam, 10 Mie˛dzymorze idea (Intermarium), 226 Mieroszewski, Juliusz, 100, 123, 169–70, 203, 206–7, 211, 226 and the advantages of neutralization of Central Europe, 177 and the education of young exiles, 194 and the implications of the fall of communism, 206–7 and the power of ideas, 196 predictions of, about the demise of the Soviet empire, 206–7 Mikol ajczyk, Stanisl aw, 37, 160–2 Mil osz, Czesl aw, 232 minorities, and how to protect them, 27, 28–9, 66, 103–4, 129 Moczulski, Leszek, 226 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 42 criticism by, of confederations in Europe, 53, 55 and temporary support for regional understandings, 55 Monnet, Jean, 80, 119 Montreux Congress, of European Union of Federalists, 85–6 Morawski, Kajetan, 97, 116, 211 Motz, Roger, 81, 85 multi-level federation, 58–9, 64, 73, 122–3, 125–6 Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), 182 My´sl Polska, 163 /

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Nagy, Imre, 209 Najder, Zdzisl aw, 201, 221, 223, 230 National Democrats (Poland), 13 Nazi–Soviet Pact 1939, 18 neutralization, 106, 169, 175–6, 176–7 ceases to be an issue, 179 opposition to, among exiles, 178–9 support for, among some exiles, 177–8 New Europe, 22, 33 Nixon, Richard, 178, 182, 183 Non-Proliferation Treaty, 180 Nouvelles Equipes Internationales, 72, 85, 96 Nowak-Jezioran´ski, Jan, 193 and an assessment of Helsinki Final Act, 187–8 head of Polish desk of Radio Free Europe, 197 Nowa Koalicja, 228 Nowa Polska, 22 Nowe Drogi, 33 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 1963, 180 /

Obóz, 228 Oder–Neisse line, 71–2, 112, 126, 128–9, 174, 177 advantages resulting from recognition of, 112, 184 failure to recognise, strengthened Soviet grip, 112, 174 necessity for recognition of, by a united Germany, 219–21 Office of Political Coordination, see under United States Olszewski, Jan, 223, 232 Olszewski, Stanisl aw, 162 Orzel Bialy, 60 Ostpolitik, 184 Osusky, Stefan, 210 /

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Paderewski, Ignacy, 12 Pan-Slavism, 8, 10 Partitions of Poland, 8 peaceful co-existence, 169, 172–3 appeal of, to the Kremlin, 172 attraction of, in the West, 172 scepticism of, among exiles, 173

Index 305 People’s (or Peasants’) Party ‘Freedom’, 143, 160 ideas of, 160 origins of, 160 Petlura, Simon, 68 Philadelphia Declaration, 76–7, 100, 161 Philip, André, 120, 209 Pierlot, Hubert, 81 Pil sudski, Józef, 11 federation programme of, 11 followers of, among the exiles, 151 Pil sudski, Rowmund, 86, 91, 94, 125, 144, 149 Pipes, Richard, 182 hostility of, to détente, 182–3 Piszczkowski, T., 163–4 Poland an integral part of Europe, 92–3 belief in, in Poland’s membership in Europe, 212 citizens of, visiting or migrating to the West, 210–11 and conditions for membership in a united Europe, 89 dissenting journals in, 228 impact of western print media in, 202–3 long-term interest of, in the democratisation of the Soviet Union, 219 priorities of the population in, 202 public opinion in, on European integration, 128, 130, 192–3, 200–2, 207–13, 228–9, 230, 231–3 public opinion in, on the meaning of ‘Europe’, 212 smuggling into, of western books and journals, 203 Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement between, and EC, 216–17, 230–1 western books and journals available in, 201–2 western boundary of, see Oder–Neisse line /

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western visitors to, during Cold War, 210–11 Poland’s first post-communist governments, 214 complexity of problems facing, 215 ‘first concern’ of, was relations with the Soviet Union, 218 flexibility of, in relations with the Soviet Union, 219 importance to, of recognition of the Oder–Neisse line, 219–20 indispensability for, of the Recovered Territories, 219 necessity for, of good relations with Germany, 218–19 principal aim of, was alignment with West, 218 reasons of, for Poland’s membership, 222–3 recognition by, of independence of Eastern republics, 222 and a regional association of states, 224–6 support of, for Poland’s membership of a united Europe, 217 Polish Affairs, 103, 105, 203 Polish American Congress, 59–60, 161 Polish casualties 1939, 18–19 Polish Committee for the European Movement, 97 Polish Commonwealth, 36 Polish–Czechoslovak agreement 1921, 13 Polish–Czechoslovak Agreement on confederation 1942, 31–2, 36, 49 and British scepticism about, 32, 51 and British support for, 32, 37, 50–2 lack of support for revival of, by Czechoslovaks, 225–6 objectives of, 40 proposal to revive, by Skubiszewski, 225 significance of, 49–50 Soviet opposition to, 37, 50–1, 55–6 a victim of Great Power politics, 56 Polish–Czechoslovak Committee of Coordination, 47

306 Index Polish–Czechoslovak confederation proposed by Mieroszewski, 100 Polish–Czechoslovak ‘Declaration’, 46–7 Polish–Czechoslovak negotiations, 47–9 Polish–Czechoslovak policy differences, 38 over frontiers, 39, 44 over the members of a Central East Europe confederation, 39 over public opinion in homelands, 45 over relations with the Soviet Union, 39–44 over social structures in homelands, 45–6 Polish Democratic Party, 143, 162–3 and federation ideas of, 162–3 Polish Draft Constitutional Act, 48 Polish exiles ambitions of, for Poland in a united Europe achieved, 233–4 belief of, in benefits to Western Europe of the unity of the whole of Europe, 104–5 belief of, in deepening and widening of EEC, 190–1 claims of, to represent public opinion in Poland, 31–2, 33–4, 92, 191, 192–3, 209–12, 213 confidence of, in activities of Council of Europe and the European Movement, 98 expectation of, that a regional association in Central East Europe would not be federal, 102 influence of, on Polish policy-making, 215–16 as part of the broad Polish community, 233 political parties of, 142 preference of, for regional groupings in Europe, 100–3, 190 purpose of activities of, 96–7 support of, for membership of their countries in EEC, 190 Polish federalists’ proposals for the unity of Europe, 73–4 Polish Fortnightly Review, 22

Polish government-in-exile, 19, 35 dissociation of, from Poland’s pre-war policies, 43 endorsement by, of deepening and widening of EEC, 191 lack of flexibility of, over frontiers, 56 support of, for a broad confederation in Central Europe, 44 support of, for membership of a liberated Poland in EEC, 190–1 unity of, in support of federalism, 36–7 Polish Institute for Research on International Issues (PIRII), 60 and a federal system in Russia after communism, 70 Polish interviewees, by RFE, 192–3 opinions of, on Poland in Europe, 193 representativeness of, 193 Polish League for Independence (PPN), 120–1, 232 Polish Liberation Movement ‘Independence and Democracy’ and the formation of the Polish Union of Federalists, 149 ideas and programme of, 144–5, 148–50 membership of, 144 ‘NiD’, 125, 143–4 origins of, 144 proposal of, for neutralization of Central Europe, 178 three-level union proposed by, 145 Trybuna, journal of, 144 Polish migration to Britain, 19–20 Polish National Party, 143, 163 ideas and programmes of, 163, 165–6 opposition of, to Intermarium concept, 163–5 pan-Europeanism of, 164 support of, for Gaullism, 166 Polish Peasant/People’s Party, 24, 32, 143, 160–2 federal ideas of, 161–2 Polish Review, 22 Polish–Romanian alliance 1921, 14

Index 307 Polish Socialist Party, 24, 26, 32, 143 activities of, post-war, 156 attitude of, to EEC, 156–7 and European integration, 156 and ideas of Feliks Gross, see under Gross, Feliks proposals of, for reform of the United Nations, 156 Robotnik, journal of, 156 socialist planning proposed by, in integrated Europe, 158 Polish Solidarity movement, see under Solidarity Polish–Soviet relations, 25–6, 37, 40–1, 50, 54–5, 56 Polish–Soviet Treaty, July 1941, 25, 40, 41, 48, 54 divisions about, in the Polish government, 40 severing of Polish–Soviet relations, 83 Polish Underground, 16, 33 federalist ideas of, 21, 24, 32–3 and a reconstructed Europe 1941, 16, 32 support of, for a confederation, 33 Polish Uprising 1830, 9 Polska w Europie, 114–15, 122, 133, 136, 139 Pomian, Andrzej, 144 Pomian, John, 91 Poniatowski, J., 59, 67, 74 Ponikiewski, J., 67 Posner, Stanisl aw, 15 Potocki, Count George, 22 Potomac Declaration, 111, 168 Projekt Konwencji Pan´stwo Intermarium, 59, 61 Prometheus and the Promethean Project, 68–9, 151, 153 /

Raczkiewicz, Wl adisl aw, 19 Raczyn´ski, Edward, 197, 205 assertion of, that Central East Europe indispensable to prosperity of Western Europe, 104–5 attitude of, to Polish frontiers, 41 belief of, that liberation of Central East Europe imperative, 89 /

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chairs the Inter-Allied Committee, 81 comment of, on Westminster Conference, 91 commitment of, to European unity, 36, 78, 90 critical letter of, to Walter Hallstein, 113–14 criticism by, of Council of Europe, 108 criticism by, of European Movement, 113–14 fear of, that liberated states might reject federation, 102 and membership of Council of Europe’s Special Committee (Watchdog Committee), 94 negotiation of, with Czechoslovaks on a federation, 46 Polish representative on International Council of the European Movement, 90 preference of, for a regional federation, 101–2 President of Polish Committee for the European Movement, 97 represents exiles at Hague Congress, 86 and the responsibilities of the European Movement, 89 speech of, at Westminster Conference, 91 welcome of, for creation of the Council of Europe, 92 Radio Free Europe, 128, 195–6 attacks on, by Communist governments, 196–7 impact of, on individuals in Central East Europe, 198 importance of, in communicating with Central East Europe, 196–7 influence of, on public opinion in Poland, 198–9 jamming of broadcasts of, 196–7 policy decisions of, how made, 197, 200 Polish desk of, 197 size of audience of, 197 speaking for Central East Europe, 212 support of, for European unity, 199–200

308 Index Radio Liberty, 195 Rapacki, Adam, 175 Rapakci Plan, 175 Reagan, Ronald, 189, 193 Research Bureau of Central and Eastern Europe, 60 Resistance movements in Europe, 20 Retinger, Józef, 16–17 aide and counsellor to Sikorski, 79 biographical details of, 79–80 character of, 80 close collaboration of, with van Zeeland, 83 federalist beliefs of, 80, 83 genius of, in establishing personal contacts, 84–5 mission of, to occupied Poland, 83 participated in WWII discussions of exile governments, 79, 80–1, 82 resignation as Secretary-General, 114 Secretary-General of Executive Committee of European Movement, 90 Secretary-General of the International Committee of the Movements for European Unity, 86 Secretary-General of LICE, 85 and the security of Poland, 16, 83 work for European unity by, 83 Riga frontiers, 41 Ripka, Hubert, 39, 43, 46, 55, 56, 86, 94, 100, 177 Risings in Poland and Hungary 1956, 130 Roberts, Frank, 32, 52 Robotnik, 22, 31 Robotnik Polski, 22 Roll back policy, see under United States Romer, Adam, 86, 103 Roosevelt, Franklin, 25, 34 Roser, Dieter, 136 Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), 26 Rusk, Dean, 180, 182 ‘Russian Assumptions’, 69–70 Rzeczpospolita (the United Republic of Poland–Lithuania), 6, 11, 12, 13, 15, 46

Saint-Pierre, Charles de, 7 Sandys, Duncan, 85–6 Chairman of Executive Committee of European Movement, 90 and representation of exiles at the Hague Congress, 86 views of, on role of European Movement, 90 Sargent, Sir Orme, 52 Savery, Frank, 32 Serruys, Daniel, 85 Sikorski, General Wladislaw, 16, 18, 19 and the creation of a new Europe, 20–1 death of, 50, 83 and differences with his government, 56 and federalism, 20–1, 35, 38 and a federation of states in Central East Europe, 16, 35–6, 37, 38, 45 inspires declaration of post-war solidarity, 82 policy of, to Baltic States, 44–5 position of, on Polish frontiers, 41 support in Poland for, 32 views of, on nature of Polish– Czechoslovak association, 38–9 willingness of, to compromise with Beneˇs, 39–40 Skrzetuski, Stanisl aw, 8 and Project for Uninterrupted Peace, 8 ‘Skubiszewski era’, 214 Skubiszewski, Krzysztof, 214 acceptance by, of Eastern borders, 222 conviction of, that relations with the Soviet Union were a key issue, 218, 221 critical importance to, of German recognition of Oder–Neisse line, 219–20 criticism by, of Kohl’s 10 point programme, 220 decision of, to negotiate on an Association agreement, 217 denial of, that policy influenced by Kultura, 227 dual track policy of, to the Eastern republics, 221 /

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Index 309 foreign policy of, criticised, 221–2, 224 guiding principle of, in foreign policy, 217 practical problems facing, 216 proposal by, to revive Polish–Czechoslovak confederation idea, 225 pursues a policy of ‘realism’, 216, 221–2 robust response of, to his critics, 221–2 strategy of, in conducting relations with the Kremlin, 217–18 support of, for regional ties, 224–5 support of, for a united Europe, 216, 231 Slavism, 8, 10 Smithers, Peter, 110 Smolar, Aleksander, 211 Smolar, Eugeniusz, 211 Socialist International, 156 Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe, 85 Socialist Union of Central and Eastern Europe, 156, 158 Solidarity, 198, 205, 214 Citizens’ Committee of, and support for European unity, 217, 231 Sonnenfeld, Herman, 183 Sosnkowski, General Kazimierz, 36 Soviet–American summit meetings, 183 Sovietization of Central East Europe, 193 Soviet Union attitude of, to Polish–Czechoslovak confederation, 40–1, 54–5 conditions of, for supporting this confederation, 55 liberation and future of, 68–9 objectives of, in Central Europe, 25–6 opposition of, to federations in Central East Europe, 25, 55–6, 73 Spaak, Paul-Henri, 81, 120, 209 plan of, to encourage further European integration 1963, 134

recognition of, that reform of Council of Europe impossible, 93 Sprawy Mie˛dzynarodowe, 60 Stalin–Eden conversations December 1941, 54 Stan´czyk, Jan, 22, 31 Starzewski, Jan, 60, 97, 103, 179, 210, 211 Staszic, Stanisl aw, 8 State system in Europe pre-war, failure of, 24 Steficki, J., 73 Strang, William, 32, 54 Strassburger, Henryk, 24 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, 182 Sully, Maximilian, 7, 9 /

Táborsk´y, Edvard, 39 Treaty between the Two Germanys, 184 Treaty of Versailles, 13, 14 Trybuna, 60, 203 ‘Two plus Four’ negotiations, 219–21 endorsement by, of Poland’s western border, 220 Tygodnik Powszechny, 228–9 Ukraine, future of, in Europe, 162–3 Ukrainian National Council and composition of Intermarium, 68 Ulam, Adam, 182 hostility of, to détente, 182, 188 Union of European Federations, 12 Union of Polish Federalists, 59, 75–6, 102, 122–4 affiliation of, to European Federalists’ Action, 131–2 arguments of, for internal federalism, 124, 129 belief of, in economic integration as stepping stone to political integration, 130, 132, 134 and the benefits of federalism, 128, 136, 138–9

310 Index Union of Polish Federalists – continued concern of, at defeat of the European Defence Community, 127 criticism by, of European Union of Federalists, 131 emphasis of, on the development of the EEC, 122–3, 130, 189–90 as a gadfly, 124 great hopes of, for the directly-elected European Parliament, 139 hostility of, to ‘egotism of the nation state’, 126–7, 134, 141 and how to create a political Europe, 138–9 and how federalism could advance social conditions, 124, 126 on how liberation and European unity would be achieved, 122, 135, 141–2, 190 importance for, of EEC becoming federal, 13l, 140–1, 189–90 and the importance of the German issue, 128–9 and the notion of polycentrism in international relations, 136 opposition of, to Gaullism, 124, 134–5 political initiatives of, 132–3 and the preservation of national identities, 123 press and publications of, 133 programme of, 125–6 propaganda of, in Poland, 128–9 proposal of, for a world federal system, 125–6 reaction of, to the EEC summit 1972, 138 relationship of, with Polish Liberation Movement, 125 support of, for the idea of European citizenship, 140 support of, for West Germany’s membership in EEC, 128 United Europe Movement, 72, 85 United States attitude of, to Polish–Czechoslovak confederation, 50–1, 53, 56–7

Central Intelligence Agency, 195, 197 Free Europe Committee, 194–5 Office of Policy Coordination, 194 United States of Europe, 10 Urban, George, 196, 209–10, 212 Utrecht, Treaty of, 1713, 7 Van Zeeland, Paul, 81 assertion of, that Europe not limited to the West, 84 personal style of, 83–4 preferred tactics of, 84 proposal of, for regional customs and monetary union, 82 proposes world association as framework for regions, 84 support of, for European union, 83, 87 Visegrad meeting, 224–5 Voice of America, 196 Vyshinsky, Andrei, 54 Wakar, Wlodzimierz, 12 and The Union of the Emancipated People, 12 Wal e˛sa, Lech criticism by, of Skubiszewski, 221 and meeting at Visegrad, 224–5 support of, for Poland’s membership in EU, 223 Wandycz, Piotr, on the impact of Kultura, 204 War of ideas, 193, 196 Warsaw Pact, 175, 216 membership in, for independent Central East Europe, 175 winding up of, 222 Wasiutyn´ski, W., 163–4 Welles, Sumner, 39 Western rapprochement with Moscow, 171–2 fear of, among the exiles, 171 West German claims to 1937 frontiers, 220 West German–Polish Treaty, 184, 221 /

Index 311 West German–Soviet Treaty 1970, 184 West Slavonic Bulletin, 22 Wiadomo´sci (of Polish Home Army), 26 Wistrand, Senator, 91, 96 Worcell, Stanisl aw, 9 Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR), 205, 231 World Commonwealth (global country), 31, 33, 145–7, 149–50 Wszelaki, Jan, 26, 30, 39, 47 /

Yugoslav–Greek Confederation, 31 Zaleski, August, 15–16, 32, 37, 60 opinion of, about Beneˇs, 37 and presidency of Polish Institute for Research (PIRII), 60 Zaolzie (western part of Cieszyn (Teschen), 12, 43–4 Zaremba, Z., 86, 156, 158 Zdziechowski, G., 91, 109 Znak, 228, 229