The Polish Way by Adam Zamoyski6/9/2023 What's the problem? But the entire history of Europe has been like a kaleidoscope, someone always grabbing it and giving it a shake to make a new arrangement of borders and peoples. We assume that all these countries we see delineated neatly on the political maps have always been there - always been a France there, and a Germany about there, Spain is the bit that sticks out here and Italy looks like a boot kicking an oblong football. Poland appears in Europe as the restaurant where despots may dine without paying the bill.Īn English or an American person will at some fundamental level never really be able to understand the anxieties of being European. Sounds harsh, coming from a Polish American, and a little unreasonable for anyone in the year 2013, but he's referring to the melodramatic facts that Poland as a country was removed from the map of Europe not once, but twice, first by Austria and Prussia, and secondly by Hitler and Stalin. To the average inhabitant of Western Europe, the history of Poland is a yawning chasm whose edges are obscured by an overhang of accepted commonplaces (what a beautiful phrase!) - that the Poles are a romantic people, good at fighting, riding, dancing and drinking, pathologically incapable of organisation or stable self-government, condemned by geography and their own ineptitude to be the victims of history. This is an excellent history of Poland which I read some years ago.
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