Apartments for Rent in Odessa, Ukraine
Poland's cold shoulder warning up to Ukraine
After the Orange Revolution the attitude of Poles towards Ukrainians changes for better.
Warsaw experienced an orange boom at the end of 2004 and beginning of 2005. I then served as the spokes-man of the Ukrainian Embassy to Poland and was impressed by the huge number of orange ribbons fluttering on trees, lampposts and residents in the Polish capital. This was the way in which expressed their solidarity with the political force in Ukraine that, in their opinion, was the personification of democracy, progress and Ukraine's path towards European integration. The events in Ukraine for Poles of the older generation were the reflection of their revolutionary past - times of the anticommunist trade union movement Solidarnoscz (Solidarity). For Polish youth, this was a real opportunity to support their colleagues in Ukraine by joining the wave of democratic change in our country.
The splash of Poles' sympathies towards Ukraine and Ukrainians was explosive and somehow unexpected against the backdrop of the complex problems of a common historical past. The hostile attitude of Poles towards Ukrainians was the result of the dramatic history of Ukrainian - Polish relations. As public opinion polls conducted prior to the events during the Orange Revolution testified, 50% of Polish citizens had a negative attitude towards Ukraine, while 12% though positively and 38% were neutral.
Pointing out the changes in the attitudes of Poles at the beginning of 2005, Director of the Polish Institute in Kyiv Petro Kozakevych emphasized: "It suffices to look at the latest opinion polls conducted in order to see how much better the attitudes of Poles towards Ukrainians were a nation considered to be among the worst. Nowadays, one - third of the population of Poland is convinced that we are not only neighbors with Ukraine, but also friends and brothers."
Of particular importance was the change in the hostility of Poles towards Ukrainians: in 2003 every second respondent alluded to such a change (51%) and by the end of 2004 every third Polish citizen had assumed such an attitude. On the whole in the period 1993 - 2004 the level of Polish hostility towards Ukraine reduced by half. Optimism as to the future of good neighborly relations between Ukrainians and Poles increased notably - 81% of Polish citizens supported the possibility of the gradual improvement in Ukrainian and Polish relations.
According to the 2005 poll on perspectives of positive development of Polish relations with foreign countries Ukraine received the fourth place having 34.4% being inferior to Germany (44.1%), the USA (38.3%) and Great Britain (35.4%) and leaving France (28.5%) behind.
At the end of the 1990s the Poles stressed their identity with the Western European community and tried not to compare themselves to Ukrainians. During the visit of Polish President Lench Kaczynski to Kyiv this past February, he stated that the attitude of average Poles towards Ukraine and Ukrainians has changed for the better, because the westernized policy of the "orange" team gave Poles a hope for the future co-existence in a European family to which Poland already belongs.
It is critically important that Poland's support of Ukraine is stable. It not only about "big politics", but also about the desire of Polish citizens to help Ukrainians solve the problems of migration and seasonal job search, as well as put an end to attacks on the part of the Russian and Polish mafia. This is exactly the reason citizens of Ukraine are feeling safer in Poland a year after the Orange Revolution and a lot more comfortable than in the 1990s.
The number of Ukrainian teachers doctors, engineers, etc., who were granted permission for permanent work in Poland is currently on the rise. Quotas for Ukrainian students in Polish institutions of higher learning are also increasing and cooperation between non - government organizations is becoming more intense. The major NGO conference held on March 24 - 25,2006 in Warsaw on issues of the future of Europe, in which the participation of Ukrainian non - government organizations was completely financed by the Polish side, serves as a good example of this.
However, as of late the degree of loyalty towards Ukrainians has gradually decreases. At the beginning of March this year articles in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza pointed out that Polish politicians, businessmen and citizens do not think of Ukraine the same as they did a year ago. And this is naturally because after the revolutionary euphoria came a time of pragmatism and concrete actions. According to public opinion polls conducted last December, the sympathy towards Ukrainians dropped to 25$ and hostility grew to 50%.
Leonid Bilousov,
President of Spilna Sprava
a Ukrainian think tank
Kyiv Weekly
March 22,2006
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