![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ludovika.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/k\u00f6rk\u00e9p3_1-754x1024.jpg\")
Propaganda poster from the period of the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
The Polish statesman believed that the interests of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarussians and Lithuanians were common. The federative structure that they imagined would have included Poles, Lithuanians and Belarussians (i.e. the former Lithuanian Grand Duchy) in the same state and a federation with an independent Ukraine, which was in the making. According to Pi\u0142sudski, this could have been realized exactly in the year 1920. However ambitious his plans were, he missed taking the Lithuanian national awakening and its anti-Polish content into consideration, and he also disregarded the fragility of the Ukrainian national consciousness as well as that Ukrainians did not perceive the Bolshevik threat as a fatal danger. At the same time, we shall recognize that if Pi\u0142sudski\u2019s plan had been realized, there would have been a buffer zone set between Poland and the Soviet Union which came into existence soon thereafter. Eventually, the Peace Treaty signed in Riga on 18 March 1921 created another framework. The buffer zone was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union and the Lithuanians, Belarussians and Ukrainians who landed on the Polish side, thus failed to receive autonomy. Therefore, when Pi\u0142sudski apologized for the Treaty to the Ukrainian units that fought along with him, it was not a gesture out of proportions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, Pi\u0142sudski\u2019s concept remained the baseline of the Polish foreign policy after 1989. The goal was to create or maintain a clear division between Russia and the nations mentioned above in political, economic and cultural terms. The Russian annexation of Crimea increased the level of Polish anxiety to a level not seen in the last 100 years. Thus, in the course of the centenary celebrations of 2020, memory politics focused on the Polish-Ukrainian alliance and the anti-Russian elements of their common history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The way the Hungarians\u2019 role came to the foreground was an interesting sidestory of the memory politics of this alliance. It was for P\u00e1l Teleki\u2019s first government that provided munitions\u2019 supply to the Polish army, which proved decisive during the battle of Warsaw. In the past decades, a number of Polish settlements have inaugurated memorials to recall this support. Among these, one stands in front of the railway station of Skierniewice, where the cargo of arms reached. The plaquettes in the city of Warsaw and in Oss\u00f3w commemorate the event, too. In 2020, new monuments were erected. First, the statue of P\u00e1l Teleki was unveiled in Krakow, then a new plaquette was presented in the small town of Brok, finally, a group of statues, that of Charles de Gaulle, P\u00e1l Teleki, Simon Petljura and J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski were erected in Skierniewice. The statues reprensent the group of politicians who provided real aid to Poland in the fight against the Bolsheviks. This was quite a unique contextualization of the post-Trianon Hungarian politics \u2013 this is a novelty in terms of the international context and not only if we juxtapose it with how Hungarians tend to perceive this history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The events of 1918 and 1920 are the foundations of the current Polish memory politics. They are the symbols of realizing and securing independence. Most importantly, those events are not only commemorated and celebrated, but also they serve the essence of their content resurface in the current domestic and foreign policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Year of the Miracle Along the River Vistula At the end of World War I, on 11 November 1911, an independent and sovereign Polish state was created again, for the first time in 123 years. Thus, in the interwar period and after the systemic change of 1989, the most import- ant national holiday in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":15042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1507],"tags":[4087],"class_list":["post-15007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-european-diaries","tag-history"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.ludovika.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/k\u00f6rk\u00e9p3_2_uj_219.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Mitrovits Mikl\u00f3s","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ludovika.hu\/en\/author\/mitrovits-miklos\/"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ludovika.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/k\u00f6rk\u00e9p3_2.jpg\")