TVP WEEKLY: 60 years ago you came to Poland for the first time. What did a young lad from the land of football and the Beatles find most surprising about our country?

NORMAN DAVIES: It was 1962, the era of Sputnik, and the Soviet Union was fashionable as an interesting place and few people still knew the dark side of its history. I was a fourth year student at Oxford and with a group of colleagues we decided to go to Moscow. However, it turned out that entry for British students into the USSR was not easy. We were not given visas. And we had already bought train tickets to Terespol. Another thing was that none of us knew where this Terespol was. Once we had checked, the idea came up to go to the communist consulate in London and try to go to that country. The Polish official, when he heard of our predicament, said warmly: “you are welcome, anyone who has not been granted a visa to the USSR will be welcome in Poland”. It was then, I think, that I understood for the first time that Poland was not the same as the Soviet Union, and that the people behind the Iron Curtain were not a monolith.

The young people of communist Poland, however, were perhaps a little different from you?

When we arrived in Warsaw it was, of course, grey, but the young people at the same time were very energetic and open. We started cracking jokes right away: “do you know why Poland is like a radish? Because it is red on the outside, but white on the inside”. People did not lose their spirit and had a sense of humour, although when we toured the ruins of Warsaw, no one wanted to tell us what had happened here. The guide, only when she made sure no one could hear her, started to talk about the Warsaw Uprising and the events of 1944. At that time we really knew little about Polish history. When I turned up in Kraków and stood in front of the Wawel Castle I thought: “damn, something was happening here through all these centuries”.

Your first topic of interest at the Jagiellonian University fell into the category of “forbidden history”.

The Polish-Soviet war was a taboo subject. When we visited Polish schools it turned out that it was not even mentioned in the history books. At the same time, people who had fought in it were still alive, such as my future father-in-law, at the time only a teenager. Due to the fact that I had already started learning Russian and Polish in England, I was able to tackle the subject. Although, of course, the very title of the thesis was a ploy: “Britain’s policy towards Poland in the period after the Treaty of Versailles, 1919-1920”. Meanwhile, I was writing about the Soviet invasion of Poland. None of the censors of this work had read it, of course; they approved it just by looking at the title.

We can talk about censorship in the communist Poland, but, after all, among British historians, both 100 years ago and after the Second World War, many were sympathetic to the USSR, as you interestingly describe in Mała Europa. Szkice polskie [Sketches from Poland].

Bolshevik propaganda was very effective from the start, and Russian Panslavism dominated geopolitical thinking. When Piłsudski entered Kyiv in the spring of 1920, even the British Foreign Secretary was convinced that it was aggression on Russian territory. Besides, this view was later shared by many British historians believing that Kyiv had always been Russian and overlooking the fact that Ukraine had previously been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Western world did not realise that Ukraine also wanted to gain independence, and the headlines shouted “Hands off Russia!”

The notorious “useful idiots” are the result of stupidity, ignorance or the skilful efforts of Bolshevik agents of influence?

Sympathy for Russia did not emerge in Britain during the First World War, but long before it. For the British Empire, the state of the Tsars had always been a counterweight to Prussia or France, and before that also an ally during the Napoleonic wars. Therefore, even after the October Revolution, many people were willing to believe what the Russians said about Eastern Europe. Even Stalin’s crimes entered the consciousness of scholars and the public very slowly.

Take, for example, the eminent historian Professor Robert Conquest, whom I know well. He was a pioneer in Soviet studies, and in 1968 wrote The Great Terror, the first monograph in world historiography on the USSR during the Great Purge. For years he was regarded as a madman and extremist. Only later, after the collapse of the USSR, did his description of Stalin’s totalitarian state gain recognition, partly even in Russia.

In Poland, until a few years ago, anyone warning against Putin was treated as a Russophobe out of their mind.

In 2010, I was in Smoleńsk for the commemoration of the Katyń massacre, to which Vladimir Putin had invited Donald Tusk. Together they were at the cemetery at Katyń. And it was a breakthrough of sorts, the first time in history that a Russian leader paid this kind of tribute. A few days later, there was a plane crash that changed everything in Polish-Russian relations.

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  Of course, Western countries wanted to believe that Russia could be civilised through economic cooperation and trade. Even when Putin began to be seen as a “villain” and was building an anti-democratic state that was aggressive towards its neighbours. In the British Isles, much was only changed by the gruesome events: when Russian agents murdered Alexander Litvinenko in the heart of London, and in Salisbury tried to kill Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

Then the mood was definitely changed by the war in Ukraine. In my opinion, we have finally reached the point where even the average person, hearing what the Russians say, knows that it is not true. Even a semi-intelligent person, watching Putin repeating that there will be no aggression and then attacking Ukraine, realises that there is something wrong with this country. That’s why, for the first time in my life, I don’t hear a chorus of defenders of Russia in the West who are somehow trying to justify what is happening.

Is it obvious for everyone, though?

Attitudes towards Russia are indeed different in other European countries. For example, in Germany, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz is in favour of a peace and ceasefire in Ukraine and is afraid to call a spade a spade. In my opinion, Russia is a country in decay, which is sinking to the very bottom thanks to Putin. This leader is weak and all he has is an outdated arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Would you agree that there are some parallels between 1920 and 2022? During the war with the Bolsheviks, not everyone wanted to help out either.

Of course. The Polish-Soviet war and the invasion of Ukraine have a number of similarities, not only in terms of aggression or cruelty. Above all, it brought the Polish nation very close to the Ukrainian nation. It showed how Polish society is capable of selfless help, regardless of the painful experiences Poles have had in their history of contact with Ukrainians. Polish-Ukrainian history did not begin with the tragedy in Volhynia in 1943, something we talk little about. Polish thinking about Ukraine is also somewhat distorted by Sienkiewicz, who perpetuated the stereotype that Ukrainians are just Cossacks and generally a savage people.

The Ukrainians themselves have now finally gained confirmation of how much separates them from the Russians. I recently met a Ukrainian writer, Andrei Kurkov, who is a “native Russian speaker”. He told me how he feels about Russians from Russia: that he cannot understand them, even though they speak the same language. It is a situation similar to that between the English and the Irish, who, after all, speak the same language, but the difference in culture or historical experience is enormous.

In Poland we are very often polarised when discussing history. I don’t suppose people in Britain are at each other’s throats debating Churchill’s defeat at Gallipoli or Clement Attlee’s policies.

Not really! Britain is very divided. In Poland there is a dispute over the evaluation of recent history, while in Britain there is a dispute over Brexit, and this too has a historical basis. Well, Brexit is not just about opposition to the European Union, it is the result of English nationalism and the dismissive attitude of the English towards the Scots and the Welsh.

In terms of divisions in society, the UK is in a much worse situation than Poland and I am not very optimistic about the future of the UK.

Coming back to Poland – don’t you have the impression that we are, however, mixing the discussion of history with patriotism?

History is a never-ending task. The political authorities that use it change, the circumstances that resurrect certain themes change too. The situation in which Poland found itself – nationally and religiously – after 1945 was new and artificial in the history of the country, caused by the murder and deportation of millions of people by the occupying powers. In this land, for nearly 1,000 years, multinationality and living among people of other faiths and nations was the normal state of affairs. Meanwhile, nationalism today is being used by politicians, and used instrumentally, and this is very harmful.

Lately, I have been observing the work of Polish historians less and have not been following the latest publications. But I have received Professor Wojciech Roszkowski’s latest textbook for history and civic studies. I have not yet read it. For now, I am judging by the cover: the Margaret Thatcher shown there signals to me that it is more a political than a historical work.

Which figure in Polish history needs total reassessment?

I will say something unpopular: you have to appreciate and understand the people with whom you disagree. I’m not going to say that I love Roman Dmowski. He is not the type of politician I take a liking to, but you have to take a fair approach to how influential he was during the period when Poland was regaining its independence and what merits he had at the time. Of course, I was surprised when a monument to Dmowski was erected near the cabinet council building in Warsaw. But this figure, from a historical point of view, has to be understood, as well as why Józef Piłsudski fought with him all his life. Bearing in mind also that Dmowski had nationalist views, not so far removed from those of Stepan Bandera.

Professor, there is about to be a media outrage -- Norman Davies comparing those two! After all, Dmowski’s actions did not lead to mass murders after all...

We forget that Bandera was sitting in a Nazi concentration camp at the time of the atrocities that took place in Volhynia and was not involved in this massacre. It was carried out by another faction, created after his imprisonment. We must understand that there are nationalist groups in every nation, even among Jews. Extreme factions of Zionism were responsible for terrible things in Palestine. Meanwhile, when discussing history, we make a mistake: just because we talk about something and try to understand it does not mean approval. The historian must be “cool”, because understanding the facts is the most important thing.

And what do you think of the much-discussed “exceptional anti-Semitism” of Poles?

I don’t like dialectical language in history. It has been a way in the past to divide people into anti-Semites and anti-Poles. Take this discussion about anti-Semitism. It is putting the case that you are either with us or against us. Logic taken directly from the old era, when Soviet historians also tried to accuse everyone of anti-Sovietism and shouted about anti-Soviet lies, tried to convince that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was made-up. You cannot keep talking about the dark sides of the nation, because history is neither black nor white, but colourful, multicoloured. The richness and colours of Polish history come from pluralism and consideration of all aspects. It is necessary to talk about everything.

What is the teaching of this colourful Polish history like in Western countries? Are there no blank spots that need to be filled?

The problem is not black holes or blank spots in historiography. It is much broader than that, because in the US, in the UK and elsewhere, there is almost no study of Poland, except in Polish philology studies. Take the example of Oxford. Here we have 120 historians and only two are involved in Polish history.

Polish can only be studied at Oxford as an auxiliary subject, subsidiary to Russian. There are 130 universities in the UK and only one, Cambridge, runs a solid course on Polish culture. The subject as a broader academic discipline does not exist.

Even on the popular European Studies course, where students choose one country, go to it and write a dissertation, there is no option to choose Poland, there are only Western European countries on the list: France, Germany, Spain, Italy… The School of Slavic Studies in London, where I come from, has been totally transformed. At the same time, of course, there are “oriental studies” departments everywhere, Turkology, Middle Eastern studies, now also Sinology, not to mention powerful German or Russian studies. Surprisingly, even Ukrainian studies are treated better than Polish studies.

Is this your goal for the coming years?

Please bear in mind that I have moved away a bit from dealing with Poland and I am not some crazy polonophile (laugh). I am a man of letters, so I don’t quite have the organisational skills to deal with such activities.

I recently attended a ceremony organised in London by the Polish ambassador to mark 500 years of the establishment of the first diplomatic relations and Bishop Jan Dantyszek’s journey to England. At this event, a huge research project, underway at the University of Warsaw, to edit and publish Dantyszek’s letters and manuscripts was presented. Wonderful! But I had the impression that more scholars in Warsaw are researching documents written by this one man than we have historians in the whole world who deal with Poland. This should give us food for thought.

So you are already thinking about retirement in your dream Montenegro?

My mother already told me 60 years ago: “why are you going to this cold country?” And indeed, I keep putting off the matter of living in some warmer and sunnier place. You see, yesterday I spoke to my London publisher, who offered me writing about the history of France. Maybe it will actually be some kind of great comeback, because it was with the history of France and Italy that I started my academic work. I think history will come full circle here.

–interview by Cezary Korycki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

–translated by jz