Between hatred and cooperation : Stalinist foreign policy in the Lithuanian and Polish debate in emigration

Abstract

Stalin’s regime left a deep scar in the memories of Lithuanians and Poles in emigration and brought about a change in their geopolitical imagination. In the real threat, Lithuanian-Polish relations were reviewed anew. Concentration camps and massive murders - the signs of Stalin policy - caused disagreements and mutual offenses to be forgotten. After very strong hostility, mistakes were rethought, which was followed by the attempt to cooperate for expressing the common painful experiences to the world. While trying to form their identities anew, both Lithuanian and Polish emigrants were trying to show to the world what was happening in their homelands beyond the Iron Curtain. Speaking publicly about these things to the West became their only form of fighting. By analyzing the case of Lithuanian-Polish relationship in emigration, this article shows how Stalinism was manifested in Soviet foreign policy and demonstrates how this policy caused and even determined the political imagination of its neighbors in the West, the Poles and the Lithuanians. While this geopolitical imagination could not be legally achieved in occupied Lithuania and Poland, a Soviet satellite state, émigrés in the West were undoubtedly thinking about a different outcome for their countries. If Stalinism is mainly described by showing the behavior with its own society, does that mean that it is also revealed by specific shapes in the exterior? Occupied Lithuania and satellite state Poland could not consider that legally but emigrants in the West were thinking about that undoubtedly. The period between the two world wars (1918-1939) was marked by a deep mistrust and hostility in Lithuanian-Polish relationship. 1920 Polish troops occupied Vilnius. The „liberation“ of Vilnius became a common national mission. When Germany attacked Poland, Polish political circles started emigrating to the West immediately. [...]