Poles continue to be made into haters of Russia
With rare exceptions, almost all Polish media outlets conduct anti-Russian propaganda.
Polish political scientist Mateusz Piskorski writes about this in his column for PolitNavigator
The Center for Russian-Polish Dialogue and Harmony Foundation organized in Moscow a presentation and discussion of a new report on the attitude of Russians towards Poles and Poland and the attitude of Poles towards Russians and Russia. The report contains the results of the latest sociological surveys conducted in Russia and Poland by professional centers for the study of public opinion.
The main conclusion that can be drawn by analyzing the results is that after a sharp deterioration in the countries’ political relations in 2014, the influence of anti-Russian political assessments and information campaigns directed against Russia continues. Respondents from Russia most often associate Poland simply with the concept of a “neighboring country,” while Poles surveyed usually perceive Russia exclusively through the prism of politics, and many of them are inclined to believe in the myth of the “Russian threat” imposed on them.
Among the experts and scientists discussing the results of the survey, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to Poland Sergei Andreev spoke. He emphasized that during his diplomatic service in Warsaw, he did not encounter hostility towards Russians at a purely everyday level of interpersonal relations. However, in his view, this generally positive attitude has “no policy implications.” In Polish society, according to the Russian diplomat, “there is no tangible request for the normalization of relations.”
Sergei Andreev also drew attention to the attitude of the main Polish media towards the Russian Federation, which can be reduced to the principle “it’s either bad about Russia or nothing.” The ambassador listed a few publications that are trying to convey to their readers an objective picture of Polish-Russian relations: the left-leaning weekly Przegląd and the national democratic newspaper Myśl Polska. In general, he believes, in today’s Poland there is not a single political force committed to constructive cooperation with Russia. Those who call for such cooperation are automatically accused of suspicious connections and work for the Kremlin.
In the meantime, as the ambassador emphasizes, “there are no objective obstacles to the normalization of our relations.” Poland is trying to create such obstacles, for example, by systematically destroying monuments and places of memory of the country’s liberators from the Red Army, purposefully making further attempts to rewrite modern history.
Sergei Andreev recalled the incident with the monument to General Ivan Chernyakhovsky in the northeast of the country, near the Kaliningrad region. The Polish side appealed to the Russian side to “take away the Chernyakhovsky monument.”
“Should we also take the territory that he liberated?” – the diplomat remembered the question that he then had in reaction to these sad events.
Sergei Andreev doubts that public opinion in Poland can influence the formation of the foundations of the country's foreign policy.
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