History of Poland

Halecki has written a one-volume history of Poland, from prehistory to the first non-Communist government in 1989. He covers a lot of ground, with necessary brevity on each topic. I will focus on only a few points. Ever so often we hear, to this day, about the "injustice" of the fact that large numbers of Ukrainians and Byelorussians found themselves within the borders of the prewar Polish state. The Soviet Union, ironically an ethnic-composite state consisting mostly of non-Russians, prattled about the need for Poland to have "ethnographic borders". The west bought into it, and agreed, at Teheran, to the giveaway of Poland's eastern half (Kresy) to the Soviet Union. Halecki points out that the prewar Polish eastern frontier also had left millions of ethnic Poles outside of Poland, and as minorities in Byelorussia and the Ukraine (p. 296). One could just as easily have argued that this situation was unfair, and that Poland's border should have been relocated further EAST. In any event, one wonders why the non-Polish inhabitants of the Kresy had assumed the significance they did in British and American thinking, while the Polish minorities east of the Zbrucz never assumed such significance. An obvious double standard was at work! But Halecki is no apologist for Polish conduct towards her minorities. He acknowledges the fact that Polish policies towards Ukrainians failed to reconcile them to the Polish state. In his earlier discussion of the Chmielnicki (Khmelnytsky) revolt, he points out that the aristocracy under attack was not only Polish but also Ruthenian (Ukrainian) in large part (p. 156).