The Polish Origins Of Russia’s National Unity Day Are Still Relevant

Russia nowadays believes that Poland has been the most consistent threat to its national unity.

Russia marks National Unity Day every 4 November in remembrance of the national uprising that expelled Polish troops from Moscow, the only time that the Russian capital was ever occupied by a foreign power (the Mongols vassalized “Old [Kievan] Rus”). This holiday’s Polish origins are still relevant even though there’s no realistic possibility of history repeating itself. The piece will briefly review Polish threats to Russian unity across the centuries before concluding with some words about the present.

Following the Mongols’ shattering of Old Rus, the loose federation of East Slavic and majority-Orthodox polities from which Russia’s civilization-state emerged, the Grandy Duchy of Lithuania eventually came to control most of today’s Ukraine. It soon united with Poland in 1385-86, began to undergo Polonization, formed a Commonwealth with Poland in 1569, and then accelerated Polonization led to the 1596 Union of Brest that created the Uniate Church, basically Orthodox believers loyal to the Pope.

Putin explained in parts of his July 2021 magnum opus “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” and February 2024’s “Interview with Tucker Carlson” that Russia considered these developments to have divided the Rus people via the creation of a proto-Ukrainian identity. He also recounted how some 19^th-century Poles “exploit[ed] the ‘Ukrainian issue’” (the “chlopomania” period) against Russia, but then the Austrians later took advantage of this to divide their national movement.

Th end of World War I resulted in several Ukrainian states, thus representing a milestone in the division of once-united Old Rus, the land of which was ultimately partitioned between Poland and the USSR through the 1921 Treaty of Riga that followed the Polish-Bolshevik War. The interwar period was then marked by the unsuccessful application of Polish independence hero Jozef Pilsudski’s strategies aimed at Balkanizing the Soviet Union (“Prometheism”) and ruling over the whole region (“Intermarium”).

Poland recognized its Soviet-drawn eastern borders after the USSR’s dissolution 1991 per the Giedroyc Doctrine but still sought to become its neighbors’ big brother, which today takes the form of the “Three Seas Initiative”. This neo-“Intermarium” policy is integral to the attempted revival of Poland’s lost Great Power status in a contemporary geopolitical context. “Prometheism” hasn’t been abandoned, however, as proven by former President Andrzej Duda calling for Russia’s “decolonization” in summer 2024.

It’s with the preceding facts and more in mind that Russia nowadays believes that Poland has been the most consistent threat to its national unity, which the Russian Military-Historical Society elaborated on in their recent outdoor exhibition about “Ten Centuries Of Polish Russophobia”. Amplifying this perception in the present is meant to refocus average Russians’ attention onto Poland in preparation of it playing a leading role in containing their country in the region once the Ukrainian Conflict finally ends.

To be sure, Poland also believes that Russia has been the most consistent threat to its national unity for self-evident historical reasons, the perception of which has also been amplified in the present to rally Poles behind the aforesaid containment efforts. Regardless of one’s opinion about these perceptions, the point is that they’re responsible for the recent revival of the historical Russian-Polish rivalry, which is expected to once again become a defining feature of regional geopolitics in the coming years.