Federalism and Nationalism in
Polish Eastern Policy

Timothy Snyder

As the European Union admits more and more states of the former communist bloc, the eastern border of the European Union will overlap with a number of other very important divides: between more and less prosperous states, between western and eastern Christianity, between states with historically friendly ties with the United States and those without. Integration into the European Union will become far more than a metaphor, as its borders will function like those of a sovereign state.

Where will the European Union find its eastern policy, its Ostpolitik? During the Cold War, West Germany was the main source of eastern policy, for good reason. A divided Germany then marked the border of eastern and western Europe. Today, Germany has been reunified, and soon the European Union will enlarge to include Germany's eastern neighbors, most importantly Poland and Lithuania. The cold war lasted for two generations; the new divide between eastern and western Europe promises to last at least as long. Poland and Lithuania will soon become, and long remain, the eastern marches of the European Union. Their ideas and initiatives are likely to guide whatever eastern policy the European Union devises.

What exactly their inclinations will be, however, is far from clear. The eastern question persisted throughout modern Polish and Lithuanian political history, from the founding moment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569 to its collapse, from the recreation of Poland and Lithuania in 1918 to the Second World War, and through the Cold War to modern-day European integration. Eastern policy has been an uneasy mixture of two distinct concepts: the creation of common institutions with neighbors, which I shall call federalism, and the incorporation of territory, which I shall call nationalism. In general, nationalism proved to be simpler but more risky, while federalist solutions were more complicated yet also more durable.

The tension between nationalism and federalism was overcome perfectly only once, in a grand strategy formulated in the 1970s that radically reinterpreted nationalist and federalist legacies. This strategy was based on the idea that Polish interests demanded the creation of Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian nation-states. However, the success of that eastern strategy has made it redundant since its application after 1989 (along with other reforms) helped assure Poland's (and Lithuania's) accession to the European Union.

Once this integration is complete, the entire eastern question will be posed anew, with different, and perhaps higher, stakes…

Timothy Snyder is Assistant Professor of History at Yale University. His most recent book is The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999.