Historical traumas—wars, genocides, and other crimes—can exert a profound and long-lasting influence on bilateral relations between countries. Yet that historical path does not fully predetermine the present or the future. Reconciliation and normalization are quite possible, as evidenced by Franco-British or German-Israeli ties. Behind every relatively successful case of reconciliation lies painstaking domestic work in both societies and carefully constructed interstate engagement.
In Russia-Poland relations, the 20th century alone left such an accumulation of debris that clearing it is extraordinarily difficult. One need only recall the Katyn Massacre, not to mention earlier conflicts of the 17th-18th centuries and the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Nevertheless, in the early 21st century Moscow and Warsaw took several meaningful steps toward each other.
The subsequent reversal of that process should not be viewed as an absolutely inevitable or natural outcome of historical traumas. It is far more useful to examine the specific reasons this phase of reconciliation failed. Such analysis is vitally important to avoid repeating similar mistakes in the future.
A promising beginning?
Against the backdrop of the Russian Empire’s collapse, Poland regained independence in 1918. But already in 1919 a two-year Polish-Soviet war began, ending with the rout of Soviet forces outside Warsaw. Poland’s eastern border was fixed by the Treaty of Riga and recognized by the international community, yet Moscow regarded it as temporary and unjust.
The interwar period brought no stable trust. Moscow saw Poland as a potential adversary and Western ally; Warsaw viewed the USSR as yet another incarnation of the Russian Empire bent on absorbing Poland. In 1939 the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols paved the way for a fresh partition of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation of eastern territories was accompanied by mass deportations and repressions, culminating in the execution of Polish officers at Katyn and elsewhere.
After World War II, a socialist regime was installed in Poland that was politically and militarily dependent on Moscow. Though officially presented as a new form of «friendship,» societal tensions persisted. One of the main fault lines remained memory of the war.
In Soviet society the war became the central pillar of state legitimacy and collective identity—a symbol of immense sacrifice, victory, and historical righteousness. For Poles it signified above all a national catastrophe: loss of sovereignty, annihilation of much of the political and cultural elite, and the experience of dual occupation—Nazi and Soviet. This fundamental asymmetry of memory persisted throughout the postwar era and became one of the deepest roots of future disputes over shared history.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s discontent in Poland was mounting and erupted in the Solidarity movement. Unlike in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the USSR—due to economic and foreign-policy considerations—refrained from military intervention this time. Still, Soviet leadership remained deeply wary of Polish society.
A turning point emerged in the late 1980s amid perestroika in the Soviet Union. In 1987 a Polish-Soviet commission of historians began work, immediately focusing on Katyn. For the Polish leadership and parts of the communist elite, addressing the issue became a way to bolster domestic legitimacy by positioning themselves as defenders of historical truth. Poland demanded access to archives and a revision of the Burdenko Commission’s conclusions, which had blamed the Katyn killings on the Nazis. The Soviet side clung to the old version for a long time, but the very existence of open debate gradually undermined it and prepared the ground for Moscow’s eventual reversal.
At the same time a more contradictory logic was taking shape in Soviet leadership circles regarding the past. While acknowledging the need to answer for Katyn, Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage sought ways to «balance» that admission in Soviet eyes. The fate of Red Army prisoners from the 1919−1921 Polish-Soviet War was mentioned with increasing frequency. Deaths in Polish camps did occur by the thousands, but they resulted mainly from disease rather than deliberate murder. Nonetheless, from the late 1980s onward Moscow began employing a «symmetrical accounting of victims» scheme—one that later became a fixture of Russian historical policy and served to diminish the moral and political weight of the Katyn crime.
Publicly, however, change did occur. In 1989 the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies condemned and denounced the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact along with its secret protocols. In 1989−1990 documents concerning the fate of Polish officers began to be declassified; the prospect of their publication pushed Soviet leaders toward admitting genuine responsibility. On April 13, 1990, TASS issued a special statement acknowledging that the executions had been carried out by the NKVD. That same day Mikhail Gorbachev handed Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski transport lists from Kozelsk, Ostashkov, and Starobelsk.
After the USSR’s collapse the process continued. In 1992 Boris Yeltsin ordered the declassification of the entire «Package No. 1,» including the Politburo decision of March 5, 1940, to execute Polish POWs and prisoners. On October 14 those materials were transferred to Polish President Lech Wałęsa. During his August 1993 visit to Warsaw, Yeltsin laid a wreath at the Katyn memorial with the words: «Forgive us.» In 1996 Russia and Poland agreed to establish memorial complexes at Katyn and Mednoye.
Overall the 1990s marked gradual normalization of bilateral ties. The 1992 Treaty on Good-Neighborly Relations, joint memorial ceremonies, and archival exchanges laid groundwork for cooperation. Yet despite apparent progress, those years never became the foundation for genuinely warm and trusting relations.
Over time the two countries’ paths diverged further: Poland steadily built its security in tandem with NATO and the EU, while Russia underwent painful internal transformation and loss of regional influence. Tensions were by no means inevitable. On August 25, 1993, in Warsaw, Boris Yeltsin signed a joint Polish-Russian declaration stating that Poland’s aspiration to join NATO did not contradict Russian interests. Nonetheless deep distrust of Moscow persisted in Warsaw—fed both by memories of 20th-century tragedies and by new events, including the Chechen war. In Moscow, NATO expansion—despite all assurances and signed declarations—came to be seen increasingly as a potential threat.
The Orange Revolution and new conflicts
With Vladimir Putin’s arrival in the Kremlin came interest in finding fresh points of contact with Poland. During Putin’s 2002 visit to Warsaw it was decided to establish the Russian-Polish Group on Difficult Matters—a special bilateral format for addressing historical contradictions and easing political dialogue. Subsequent events, however, quickly nullified those efforts.
The 2004 events in Ukraine became the key source of renewed tension between Moscow and Warsaw. Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski was the first European leader to publicly refuse to recognize Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in the second round of Ukraine’s presidential election, calling it an unsatisfactory «test for Ukrainian democracy.» Vladimir Putin, by contrast, congratulated Yanukovych twice: first by phone on November 22, then with an official telegram on November 25.
Kwaśniewski emerged as one of the main international facilitators of the Orange Revolution. He actively promoted the idea of revisiting the election results on European and transatlantic stages, appealed to EU leaders (without much success, given their reluctance to antagonize Russia), and then secured backing from the George W. Bush administration. It was the Polish president who played the central role in organizing negotiations among Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yanukovych, and Viktor Yushchenko, which ended with the decision to hold a third round.
Moscow viewed this activism as direct interference in a strategically vital space for Russia. The confrontation over Ukraine quickly took on the character of a personal clash between Putin and Kwaśniewski.
As an Orange victory became inevitable, the conflict spilled into public view. Kwaśniewski remarked that «Russia without Ukraine is a better solution than Russia with Ukraine.» Putin retorted by likening the Polish president to «a man looking for a job because his term is expiring» (alluding to rumors that Kwaśniewski might seek a high EU or NATO post after leaving office). As a result relations remained in crisis for several years, and the Russian-Polish historians’ group created in 2002 never really got off the ground.
Difficult historical questions
In February 2008 Foreign Ministers Radosław Sikorski and Sergei Lavrov officially announced a relaunch of the Group on Difficult Matters, giving it a broad political mandate. Co-chairs were MGIMO Rector Anatoly Torkunov and former Polish Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld. In June that year the sides declared that historical disputes should not be exploited for propaganda and that work on the past must proceed on an expert level. Fundamental disagreements—especially over the legal qualification of the Katyn crime—persisted, but a common language for discussing them began to emerge. The tragedy was openly acknowledged, the role of Soviet agencies was publicly discussed, and joint memorial events took place regularly in both capitals.
Interaction among historians was complemented by striking political gestures. In September 2009 then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin traveled to Poland for a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of World War II’s outbreak. In his speech he called for respect for victims’ memory and reflection on past mistakes. The day before, on August 31, his article appeared in Gazeta Wyborcza previewing the key points of that address. In both texts Putin condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact but framed much of the argument in a broader historical context: prewar history as a chain of compromises and errors by various European powers. Alongside the pact he mentioned the Munich Agreement and Poland’s occupation of part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. This approach allowed formal condemnation of the Soviet-German treaty while embedding it within collective European failures.
Polish President Lech Kaczyński’s response was immediate and in many ways unprecedented. Speaking right after Putin, he publicly admitted that Poland’s actions toward Czechoslovakia in 1938 had been not merely a political mistake but a sin. By doing so Kaczyński effectively deprived the Russian side of the chance to use that episode as a mitigating argument regarding the pact and related decisions by Stalin’s leadership.
Ambiguity remained evident in Russian policy at the time. Just weeks before Putin’s visit, on August 19, 2009, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service published and heavily promoted the collection «Secrets of Polish Politics,» edited by retired General Lev Sotskov. Public presentations emphasized that Poland had not only been a victim in 1939 but had actively undermined the prewar European security system. This narrative effectively reduced—or at least substantially diluted—the responsibility of Stalin’s USSR for the pact and the occupation of eastern Poland.
In essence, while taking public steps toward Poland, Russian leadership was not prepared for a radical reassessment of Stalin-era crimes and errors. The Kremlin’s goal was apparently to craft a compromise evaluation: formally condemn the pact while minimizing the USSR’s role in unleashing World War II.
The 2010 tragedy and intensified contacts
The tragic death of Poland’s leadership in the Smolensk air disaster on April 10, 2010, unexpectedly accelerated Russian-Polish contacts. Just days earlier, on April 7, Vladimir Putin and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had visited the Katyn memorial together. Putin knelt before the monument, laid a wreath, and openly confirmed the Stalin-era USSR’s responsibility for the execution of Polish officers, stressing that this assessment could not be revised. Yet in his statements he again referred to the fate of Soviet soldiers in Polish captivity in the 1920s, framing Katyn as an act of Stalinist revenge for those deaths.
In May 2010, at President Dmitry Medvedev’s direction, key archival documents on Katyn were declassified and published, with volumes of Russian investigative materials handed to the Polish side. That autumn the Russian State Duma adopted a special resolution explicitly calling the shooting of Polish POWs a crime of the totalitarian regime and declaring that position the basis for extending a «hand of friendship» to the Polish people.
This line continued with the joint historical collection «White Spots—Black Spots.» Russian and Polish historians compared interpretations of key 20th-century episodes—from the 1920−1921 Polish-Soviet War and World War II to the Katyn executions and USSR-Polish People’s Republic relations. The book recorded points of agreement as well as persistent fundamental differences. The historians’ group’s work was highly praised: in 2012 Russian co-chair Anatoly Torkunov received Poland’s Order of Merit.
Church dialogue developed in parallel. In August 2012 Patriarch Kirill and Polish Episcopal Conference chairman Józef Michalik issued the first joint message to the peoples of both countries, calling for reconciliation based on respect for victims’ memory, forgiveness, and renunciation of enmity. The church leaders also aligned on several contemporary issues: defense of the traditional family and opposition to abortion and euthanasia.
In November-December 2012 VTsIOM and Polish CBOS conducted a large-scale bilateral study (representative surveys and focus groups) on mutual perceptions and bilateral relations. Results revealed marked asymmetry: 39% of Russians viewed Poland’s attitude toward Russia as friendly and 47% as unfriendly; meanwhile 70% of Poles believed Russia treated Poland rather negatively. Perceptions of «ordinary people,» however, were softer: 49% of Russians thought ordinary Poles viewed Russia positively, while 53% of Poles saw Russians overall as well-disposed toward Poland.
By the early 2010s noticeable shifts had occurred in bilateral dialogue—from symbolic gestures to real progress in archival work and expert projects. Yet a key question remained: how solid was this foundation? Despite steps toward Poland, the Russian side was not ready for a fundamental reassessment of its attitude toward Soviet crimes. Condemnation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact invariably came with references to the 1938 Munich Agreement and the fate of Soviet POWs, creating an effect of «justification» or at least contextualization of Stalinist actions. In those years the myth of the Great Victory only grew stronger in Russian political rhetoric, so any serious revision of the USSR’s role was perceived as a potential threat. Criticism of the Soviet Union was automatically seen as criticism of Russia. That focus largely predetermined the subsequent collapse of dialogue.
After Euromaidan
With the start of Euromaidan in Kyiv, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and the outbreak of war in Donbas, the previous logic of Polish-Russian rapprochement collapsed within months. In Warsaw the Ukrainian events were seen as a direct replay of the 2008 Georgian scenario and final confirmation of what Polish politicians had warned about then: Russia was prepared to use force to restore its sphere of influence.
In September 2014 Polish President Bronisław Komorowski, addressing the Bundestag, delivered a telling speech. He noted that Poland, like Germany, had made serious efforts to draw closer to Russia and that the Group on Difficult Matters had «achieved a great deal.» Yet he immediately added that Kremlin policy—wars in Georgia and Ukraine—had definitively destroyed the notion of Russia as a possible Western partner.
Institutionally this led to the gradual, then complete, withering of the platforms that had sustained dialogue in 2008−2013. In February 2015 Warsaw still hoped to hold another meeting of the Group on Difficult Matters, but a month later it was postponed again—and ultimately never took place. In December 2015 Adam Daniel Rotfeld—one of the key architects of reconciliation policy—stepped down as Polish co-chair. Formally presented as a personal decision, it was in reality an admission that the old model of dialogue had run its course.
At the same time, as often happens in transitional periods, inertia from previous years coexisted for a while with rapidly escalating confrontation. In February 2017 Poland’s new foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski appointed Professor Mirosław Filipowicz as co-chair, and in March new Polish members were approved. Warsaw sought to demonstrate that despite sanctions, the war in Ukraine, and a sharply negative political backdrop, it remained open to at least an expert, professional conversation about the past.
Moscow’s response was decidedly cool. Russian authorities questioned the point of reviving the Group, claiming political dialogue had been «frozen on Warsaw’s initiative» and that the historical mechanism created under it had therefore lost all foundation. The field of historical-research cooperation narrowed rapidly. In October 2017 Russian historian Dmitry Karnaukhov was deported from Poland at the demand of local counterintelligence for «working for a hostile state.» In December that year Polish historian Henryk Glebocki—a specialist on NKVD repressions who had worked in Russian archives—was expelled from Russia.
Formally some cooperation formats lingered. In February 2018 MGIMO Rector Anatoly Torkunov and Polish co-chair Mirosław Filipowicz publicly spoke of continuing work on a joint methodological handbook on history for teachers. Yet at the same time Russia’s ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreyev, stated that so long as Poland did not officially recognize a «debt of gratitude to Soviet soldiers» and ceased calling them occupiers, «there was nothing to discuss on historical matters».
The theme of World War II—which even in the best years of dialogue had never been adequately reflected upon—became an extremely painful trigger for both sides. This was especially acute during Poland’s decommunization policy, which led to the dismantling and relocation of several Soviet military monuments. In Poland itself attitudes toward those monuments had always been ambivalent: many remembered the Red Army’s role in crushing the Polish underground and in occupation. For the Russian side any action against the monuments was perceived solely as sacrilege and an insult to the fallen. Russia’s official position drifted noticeably toward justifying Soviet actions.
A vivid manifestation of this shift came during Vladimir Putin’s annual press conference on December 19, 2019. The president called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact a forced step, claiming the USSR had no other options. He recalled that Western leaders had themselves dealt with Hitler and that Poland had participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. The entry of Soviet troops into Poland in September 1939, Putin explained, occurred because the Polish state had effectively ceased to function, having lost control over its army and territory—”there was no one to talk to." In essence this was almost verbatim repetition of the justifications voiced by People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov in September 1939.
That said, after 2019 avenues for restoring dialogue had not entirely vanished. As late as March 2020 Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz publicly expressed a desire to improve relations with Russia, stating readiness to meet Sergei Lavrov and continue work on historical issues. But the COVID-19 pandemic, further escalation around Ukraine, and Russia’s increasingly hard turn toward a «patriotic» version of history quickly reduced those efforts to almost nothing.
Opinion polls conducted in 2012, 2014, and 2020 paint an instructive picture of mutual perceptions. Distrust remained significant and stable. Poles’ conviction of Russia’s hostile attitude toward Poland rose from 43% in 2012 to 71% in 2014 (after Crimea’s annexation and the start of the Donbas war). By 2020 the figure had eased but stayed high at 63%. In Russia Poland ranked among hostile countries in only 11% of mentions in 2020.
At the same time both societies continued to view each other largely through the lens of traditional values. Russians most often described Poles as religious, traditional, and enterprising. Poles attributed to Russians national pride, attachment to traditions, and family orientation. Majorities in both countries favored more constructive relations. Among Poles only 5% believed Warsaw should treat Moscow as an enemy and 24% as a rival; 42% saw Russia as a potential ally and 22% even as a friend. The Russian picture was similar: 8% saw Poland as an enemy, 16% as a rival, 40% as a potential ally, and 28% as a friend.
Full-scale war
After February 24, 2022, the previous framework of dialogue collapsed completely. Poland became one of Ukraine’s most active and consistent allies: a key logistical hub for weapons and humanitarian aid deliveries and one of the main drivers of the EU’s tough sanctions policy toward Russia.
In March 2022 Warsaw expelled 45 Russian diplomats, accusing them of working for special services. Moscow responded in kind, declaring 45 Polish diplomatic staff personae non gratae. In public rhetoric both sides ceased hiding mutual enmity: Polish politicians openly labeled Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, while Russian diplomacy regularly included Poland among the most «Russophobic» countries.
In practice bilateral relations sank to the bare minimum of diplomatic infrastructure. Warsaw systematically closed Russian consulates in response to Moscow’s unfriendly moves: Poznań in October 2024, Kraków in May 2025, and Gdańsk in December 2025. Russia reciprocated by withdrawing consent for Polish general consulates in St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, and Irkutsk. Ultimately only the embassies in the respective capitals remained, with consular services severely restricted.
In this new reality any talk of reviving the Group on Difficult Matters sounds almost anachronistic. In 2025 Russia’s ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreyev, stated bluntly: «No such group exists anymore. Given the approach Polish authorities demonstrate to questions of our shared history, we see no sense in discussing those issues with them. We have our own view of our country’s history, and we have no intention of adjusting it to suit anyone.»
From reconciliation and accord—to what?
Alongside the Group on Difficult Matters, another important institutional platform in Polish-Russian relations was the «Centers for Dialogue and Understanding.» The decision to create mirror structures was taken in April 2010 by Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk shortly after the Smolensk disaster. The original intent was to build sustainable humanitarian infrastructure based on joint research, educational programs, and youth exchanges. In the first years the Centers did operate in that spirit: supporting historical projects, academic conferences, cultural initiatives, and direct youth contacts between the two countries.
Crimea’s annexation in 2014 became a turning point, though programs were not immediately terminated. The most telling episode came in 2015: Polish schoolchildren and teenagers, instead of the announced visit to St. Petersburg, were taken to Crimea. Pro-Kremlin media presented this as a demonstration of «normal life» on the annexed peninsula. In Poland the move predictably provoked a negative reaction: Warsaw viewed it as a violation of international law and an abuse of youth exchanges for propaganda purposes.
Meanwhile rhetoric from the Russian Center’s leadership radicalized. Its director Yuri Bondarenko increasingly spoke in public of «Russophobia as Warsaw’s main tool,» «the worst period in relations since 1991,» and «Poland’s ingratitude» in refusing to recognize a «debt to the Red Army.» Still, in 2019−2021 the Russian Center and its Polish partners continued supporting intergenerational dialogue initiatives, joint translation schools, and humanitarian events in both countries.
Only Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine made the Polish Center’s existence politically untenable. On July 15, 2022, Poland’s Sejm and Senate adopted amendments to the relevant law; on July 27 the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding was officially renamed the Juliusz Mieroszewski Dialogue Center. Its new mission became supporting dialogue between Poles and the peoples of Eastern Europe—above all Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, Moldovans, and Russians. The specifically bilateral Polish-Russian format receded into the past, replaced by targeted work with individual representatives of Russian civil society.
A similar process occurred in Russia. Without fanfare the activities of the Russian-Polish Center for Dialogue and Accord ceased in October 2023.
Conclusion
It cannot be said that Polish-Russian dialogue was doomed from the start. Complex historical relations influenced political decisions both at the end of the 20th century (in the context of NATO expansion) and later. Nevertheless until 2014 stable formats existed for interaction on history, culture, religion, and public dialogue.
The key issue remained how ready Russian leadership was to critically assess the Soviet past and draw a line under it. During the 2000s, despite visible progress in dialogue, emphasis in Russia intensified on memory of victory in World War II. That made serious revision of the USSR’s role in the war practically impossible: the themes of Katyn and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact clearly did not fit that heroic narrative. Although the Polish side repeatedly took steps toward compromise, memory of World War II remained foundational for Polish society as well.
Analyzing Russian statements and actions in 2009−2014 reveals the form of «reconciliation» Moscow found acceptable. It envisaged placing Katyn and the 1939 occupation of Poland in a wider context: the Munich Agreement, Czechoslovakia’s partition, the deaths of Soviet POWs in the 1920s. Such an approach effectively blurred the essence of the Soviet crime and partly justified it.
A fair assessment of Katyn in Russia would inevitably demand rethinking the causes and character of World War II and the USSR’s role in starting it. Russian leadership chose not to take that path, preferring instead to align with the Soviet version of events and rest on the victors’ laurels. Yet refusal to critically reassess the Soviet past essentially undermined prospects for genuine reconciliation with Poland. Justifying Soviet actions made Russia, in the eyes of many Polish observers, merely another iteration of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
Any new attempt at dialogue between Russia and Poland can succeed only on one condition: if Russia demonstrates its difference from its historical predecessors and embarks on an internal path toward a more objective assessment of its own past. It is largely in distancing contemporary Russia from Soviet history that the possibility lies of building relations with neighbors on fundamentally new foundations.
