An extraordinary row between Russia and Poland over the second world war is refusing to die down and threatens to overshadow commemorations for the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has suggested Poland is partly to blame for the war’s outbreak. Poland’s president Andrzej Duda has hit back, accusing Putin of an ‘historical lie’. ‘The words of Vladimir Putin are a complete distortion of historical truth,’ he added.
This war of words has hit a nerve in two countries shaped by what happened in the second world war. For Russians and Poles, the war is of immense cultural significance. Russians are proud that they defeated the Nazi invasion; Poles are proud that they never stopped resisting in the face of Nazi and Soviet aggression.
The problem is that these interpretations are almost incompatible. How can the Russians and the Poles remember the second world war together when Russians believe it represented a glorious victory over the barbarous Reich and Poles believe it began with the Soviets carving up their country with that very same regime and ended with their installation of a brutal communist government?
For decades, under the Polish communist government, this contradiction was veiled under obscurantism and censorship.
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