We continue to review doctrines, the essence of which is submissive response to the behaviour of more powerful partners. Today about satelliteism, which also made its mark in the history of Polish foreign policy.
Satelliteism is based on the hegemonic control of one’s own policy by another country. In a political sense, it is cession of sovereignty, submission to the will of a foreign state, to the full or a limited extent.
Satelliteism results from various reasons. Most often it is associated with the inability of the state to perform its basic functions in the sphere of external relations. A country turning into a satellite is not able to ensure external security in the face of possible threats, it is not able to conduct an independent economic policy, it does not generate income that would ensure the maintenance of the country. Or it is a de facto conquered country.
In the past, satelliteism has been associated with fief (vassal) submission and various forms of tributarism. Ancient Egypt controlled such vassals as Ugarit, Nuhasse or Byblos. Ancient Persia had an extensive network of vassals, from Armenia to Macedonia. The Ottoman Empire vassed Moldova and the Crimean Khanate.
In feudal Europe, hierarchies and networks of dependencies intertwined and became complicated as a result of wars and dynastic marriages. The symbol of this feudal aporia was the sovereignty of William the Conqueror as King of England and his submission to the King of France as Duke of Normandy.
And in the history of Poland, there was no shortage of feudal tangles, too. Even Bolesław the Brave, under the peace treaty in Merseburg in 1013, had to recognize himself as a vassal of the King of Germany (although he had no intention of fulfilling his feudal duties). In turn, a prominent place in our historical consciousness is occupied by the fact that in 1525 the Ducal Prussia became a vassal of Poland.
In the imperial era, many colonies or dominions, even if embellished with state symbols, were dependent entities.
In Polish history, we have practiced satellite, and more even puppet politics in the formula of the Duchy of Warsaw (upon Napoleon’s will, but accepted) and the Kingdom of Poland from 1815-1830 (from a foreign dictate).
Puppet states, being the extreme incarnation of satelliteism, were often created by occupying states or as a result of victorious wars. Father Tisa’s Slovakia, Ante Pavelic’s Croatia functioning on the map of Europe designed by Hitler are the most frequently cited examples.
In Western political science, the term “satellite state” stuck to the group of states that fell under the domination of the Soviet Union in the years 1918-1990. The list begins with Mongolia (declared independent in 1924) and Tuva (torn from Chinese control in 1921 and absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1944). Perhaps their satelliteism was a better solution than succumbing to Chinese domination.
States are under hegemonic influence, often against the will of the people, and sometimes even against the will of the elite. However, they try to prove their own sovereignty, even if it is limited in size. The most interesting phenomenon in satellite policy is how the satellites use up this margin for conducting independent policy.
The foreign policy of the Polish People’s Republic was a policy of limited sovereignty. In all international matters important for the USSR, decisions on Poland’s position were made in Moscow. People’s Poland talked with the USSR mostly from the position of a petitioner. Especially in difficult matters, such as just after the war related to the repatriation of Poles, the return of cultural goods.
Until 1956, the margin for independent maneuver in the politics of the Polish People’s Republic was in fact small and slack. When in 1947 Poland received an invitation to the July Marshall Plan Conference in Paris, it accepted it (similarly to Czechoslovakia) and even began to prepare for the conference. It seemed earlier that Stalin, although he himself rejected the participation of the USSR, would not discipline other states under Soviet control. And yet, at the last moment, he forbade the participation of the allies. The Polish government learned that it would not be represented in Paris from a press statement by TASS. (By the way, it is difficult not to find a parallel with the contemporary situation and Moscow’s policy: Armenia in 2013 learned from Moscow on the eve of the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius that it would not sign an association agreement negotiated with the EU).
The Polish Workers’ Party, despite Gomułka’s negative opinion, entered the Cominform in 1947, while hosting the meeting at which it was established. The Polish delegation found out about the proposal to establish the Cominform at the last minute. Gomułka was told about it during the meeting. Apparently, the Soviets had previously signaled that the result of the meeting would only be the establishment of a joint theoretical journal. Gomułka was furious. During the break in the session, he was even reported to resign from the position of Secretary General of the Polish Workers’ Party. But in the end he came to terms with the Kremlin’s decisions.
Polish officials learned in 1948 about Tito’s “betrayal” from the correspondence exchange between the communists of the USSR and Yugoslavia, when the conflict was already reaching a turning point. Polish communists were informed at the last minute about the exclusion of the Yugoslavs from the Cominform and the transfer of the Bureau’s seat from Belgrade to Bucharest. They knew the formal reasons for condemning Tito (bad attitude towards Soviet advisers or tolerating the presence of “British spies” in diplomacy and the military), but they themselves did not believe that the reasons were real. They suspected that the decisive factor throughout the game was Tito’s resistance to the Soviet idea of creating a Balkan federation of socialist states. But they meekly joined the Moscow policy of condemnation and exclusion of Yugoslavia.
Poland’s membership in Comecon or the Warsaw Pact was not subject to a sovereign decision. The other satellites had no choice, with a small exception, because Albania was allowed to leave the Pact.
Poland supported Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 and participated in the pacification of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Under Moscow’s dictatorship, Poland severed diplomatic relations with Israel after the June 1967 war (Romania managed to break out of block discipline). Another thing is that the leadership of the Polish United Workers’ Party decided to use the criticism of Israel for its own purpose in order to unleash an anti-Semitic campaign in the country. On the wave of nationalist, low emotions, attempts were made to legitimize the communist power in Poland.
Polish diplomacy blindly supported every important international initiative of the USSR.
Of course, Polish diplomacy had its plots of activity, where it was not led by the Soviet hand. After the Second World War, this concerned, first of all, efforts to make Western states recognize Poland’s new borders and new political realities. In this field, Poland could show unhampered initiative, because it was assumed a priori that Polish goals coincided with the Soviet goals, because Moscow also wanted to recognize the territorial and political realities in Europe. A great success of Polish diplomacy was undoubtedly de Gaulle’s declaration of 1959 on the recognition of the Polish western border.
In 1953, Poland joined the Supervisory Committee of Neutral States in Korea (while the neutrality of Sweden and Switzerland could not be raise any doubts, the neutrality of Poland and Czechoslovakia, especially after the creation of the Warsaw Pact, was more than questionable). In the years 1954-1975, Poland participated (along with India and Canada) in the work of the International Commission of Control and Supervision in Indochina. In 1966, the Americans launched the “Marigold” operation, the aim of which was to start direct talks with North Vietnam, in which Polish diplomat Janusz Lewandowski was to play a significant role. Unfortunately, this diplomatic initiative was abandoned. We also joined the International Commission of Control and Supervision in South Vietnam in 1973 (with Indonesia, Hungary and Canada replaced by Iran). Even if, in a strategic sense, Polish peace and conciliation activities were controlled by the Soviets, it was a lever for building a good image of Poland and a training ground for developing diplomatic abilities.
The UN forum became as well a catalyst for Poland’s emancipatory attitudes. Suffice it to say that as early as 1946, when the seat of the UN headquarters was decided, Poland, unlike the USSR, did not support New York’s candidacy. It spoke in favour of locating the UN Secretariat in Europe. Another thing is that the Soviets did not try to discipline the newly formed bloc at that time.
But when Poland sat on the UN Security Council in 1946-1947, the Polish delegate, Oskar Lange, must have had to get under the skin of his Soviet comrades with his “unorthodox” positions. The first UN Secretary General, Trygve Lie, mentioned in his memoirs that the then Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko complained strongly about the behaviour of Lange (who was later accused of being registered as the so-called NKVD agent of influence). The fact remains that Lange ended his diplomatic career at the end of the Polish term in the Security Council and that the party did not entrust him with more tasks in the diplomatic field (only on an ad hoc basis, for example when he was asked to accompany, due to his membership in the Council of State, Vice President Nixon during his visit to Poland in 1959).
As Poland, we were co-initiators of the establishment of the European Economic Commission. We submitted many significant initiatives to the UN forum, including those related to the Convention on the Rights of the Child or the education of societies in peace. It was Rafał Lemkin, a Pole of Jewish origin, a former pre-war Polish delegate to conferences on the unification of criminal law, although already settled in the USA after the war, who was the author of the Convention against genocide, adopted in 1948.
Poland was allowed to come up with its own initiatives. Rapacki’s plan on the nuclear-free zone in Central Europe (1957), Gomułka’s plan on the freezing of nuclear arms in Central Europe (1963-64), Jaruzelski’s plan on reducing armaments and increasing confidence in Central Europe (1987-88) were sovereign concepts developed by Poland. Obviously approved beforehand in Moscow. At the same time, the USSR did not interfere in the substantive layer of these proposals. The Rapacki plan, despite the revelations announced by a former communist diplomat who fled to the West, that it was of the Kremlin’s provenance, was created in fact on Aleja Szucha (then Aleja I Polish Army). Rapacki himself admitted that the inspiration came from Gomułka in a loose discussion at a meeting of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers’ Party. Yet, the Plan was drafted by experts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, excellent lawyers with Manfred Lachs, and policy planners, who then joined the Bureau of Studies established in the early 1960s. Gomułka’s plan was praised even in western circles. It was complimented by, inter alia, George Kennan.
Polish ideas could not be implemented in the political and military realities of the time. They were too risky, especially in the West German perspective. But they conceptually entered the history of international relations for good. It was the Rapacki Plan that served as the basis for the concept of nuclear-free zones. And it materialized in the Antarctic (Washington) Treaty of 1959, the Tlatelolco Treaty (1967), the Roratonga Treaty (1985), the Bangkok Treaty (1995), the Cairo Treaty (1996), the Semipalatinsk Treaty (2006). The concept of nuclear-free zones is undoubtedly an effective idea and perhaps the most important achievement of Polish conceptual thought in international politics. For obvious reasons, it is completely underestimated and not cared for today.
The name of Rapacki is also associated with the initiative of convening a conference on European security. He proposed it at the session of the UN General Assembly in 1964. The idea was taken over by the Soviet allies and it was co-authored later by the entire Warsaw Pact, which issued the so-called The Budapest Appeal of 1969. The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe was an opportunity for Poland to shape its own diplomatic creativity. It was convened “outside the political and military blocs”, and Polish diplomacy used this formula at later review meetings to argue that the proposals submitted by the East should not be signed by all allies and avoided co-authorship of the most “hardcore” proposals developed in Moscow. Instead, it did submit its own, including those relating to the legal foundation of the Helsinki principles, as well as cultural and economic cooperation. It also submitted initiatives in the field of military security. The most important of them was undoubtedly the idea of the Conference on Military Détente and Disarmament in Europe developed at Szucha in the declining years of the Gierek era. It was one of the inspirations for the convening of the Stockholm Conference on confidence-building measures in Europe in 1984, and the Swedes confided in their contacts with Polish diplomats that they had stolen our idea and put forward a competitive initiative, explaining that they had to do it because Poland, due to martial law, had no chance to host the conference.
Polish diplomacy had a lot of room for maneuver on the German issue, and more precisely on the normalization of relations with the Federal Republic of Germany and the recognition of Polish western borders. In German affairs, the Soviets seemed to be firmly convinced that the Poles realized that the shape of our western border made Poland a total hostage of the USSR. The ruling communists in Poland, for many years, even after the conclusion of the Zgorzelec Pact with the GDR in 1950, were concerned that any serious insubordination of Poland would end with the revision of the western border, the handover of the western territories or part of them to Germany (such allegations were made to the Polish delegation as late as November 1956, when Poland called for more equal relations in Moscow).
Gomułka is credited with the doctrine that Poland had the right to co-create the German policy of the bloc and conduct its own policy with key Western countries without looking at others. Within the Warsaw Pact, Gomułka successfully pushed the thesis that it was impossible to normalize relations between West Germany and the socialist states without the prior agreement of Germany with Poland and recognition of the Polish western border.
When Willy Brandt’s government approached the socialist countries with a proposal to agree bilateral declarations of non-violence, Gomułka set tough conditions and effectively prevented Germany from holding talks with other socialist countries on its own terms. The agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the USSR in August 1970 took place before the agreement with Poland was concluded in December 1970, and even caused a temporary slowdown in negotiations with Poland, but in the final hour Germany adopted the Polish concept of an agreement on the basis of normalization of relations, which was an evident political success of Gomułka.
There were, of course, diplomatic platforms where allied obedience was strict. This was the case at the Vienna negotiations on the reduction of conventional weapons in Central Europe (MBFR), conducted fruitlessly from 1973 to 1989. As part of them, Polish representatives read speeches written for them by the Soviets at informal meetings, and the General Staff of the Polish People’s Army presented as their own data on Polish armed forces retouched by the Soviets. At the end of the 1980s, the then member of the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of Poland instructed his subordinates that in matters of disarmament, the line of Polish policy consisted in blindly supporting the position of the USSR, because the USSR, as the guarantor of Polish security, knew better what was good for Poland’s security.
The imposition of martial law provoked Western sanctions on the People’s Republic of Poland, and the authorities were exposed to political isolation on the part of Western countries. Breaking this isolation became at that time the main task of Polish diplomacy. The Soviets did not interfere in these efforts.
In the mid-1980s, the atmosphere in East-West relations deteriorated ominously. During the Gorbachev-Reagan summit, it was partially defused.
The Soviet-American negotiations on medium-range missiles in Europe (finalized in 1987) led Polish disarmament experts to believe that the priority for the USSR was to sanctify its own territory, or at least protect the Soviets from a rapid nuclear attack with the use of tactical missiles and cruise missiles. Countries at the junction of both blocs, such as Poland, would still be threatened with the use of short-range nuclear weapons and a massive attack by conventional forces. In the Polish diplomatic and expert environment, there was a growing conviction that our specific sense of threat should find public expression, preferably in the so-called constructive form (easier for the Soviets to accept) as a diplomatic initiative. This is how the idea was born, which was later called the Jaruzelski Plan. Jaruzelski was not a vain person, but approaching him with a proposal that would bear his name was treated as a way not only to ensure the happy birth of the initiative, but also to give it adequate publicity.
The Jaruzelski plan was an expression of the desire to shape the disarmament agreements, especially those between Moscow and Washington, that would take full account of Poland’s security interests.
The Jaruzelski plan was also a reaction to operational military doctrines suggesting a massive attack on the so-called follow-on force on the line separating NATO and UW (FOFA). Since most of the second-line forces of the Warsaw Pact were to be deployed on Polish territory, Poland would become the main target for NATO strikes.
At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the first draft of the Plan was prepared at the beginning of March 1986. And it was because of the editing of one of the first versions of the Plan that, in July 1986, I had to sacrifice the already purchased vacation for the only time in my career at the behest of my superiors, and instead of sitting on the beach with my family I had to spend my summer in the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But the content of the Plan was rubbed off for a long time in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence, because similar ideas were also worked on in the Ministry of National Defence. Experts from Polish Institute of International Affairs also added their ideas.
The idea left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the summer of 1986 in order to obtain the necessary political approval. And it ran into the first obstacles. The then Minister of National Defence, General Florian Siwicki, reacted to the draft of the Plan prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a sweeping remark on the first page of the text: “Who will watch the Germans?” And he did not mean only Western Germans.
It was then, in order to ensure that the Polish project was treated seriously, that it was decided to “hook” it under the person of W. Jaruzelski. Jaruzelski accepted the idea, but on one condition – the Soviet comrades would not oppose it.
The plan was supplemented and made more precise in a collective effort at the turn of 1986 and 1987, so that it would not provide an excuse for blocking it in Moscow and disregarding it by the West. The situation was complicated by the fact that the USSR itself was preparing new disarmament ideas, including those related to the pan-European negotiations on conventional disarmament, proposed in June 1986 by the Warsaw Pact.
In the spring of 1987, a working mission at the level of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Polish People’s Army (Gen. Mieczysław Dachowski) and the Director of the Policy Planning Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (director Jerzy M. Nowak) went to Moscow to convince the Soviets to support the Polish initiative. A key conversation for the fate of the Plan was held at the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. The delegation was received by Marshal Sergey Akhromieev, the then Chief of Staff (he committed suicide after the failure of the Yanayev coup in 1991). At first, Akhromeyev was curious about one thing only, and that was what our initiative would serve. He was not interested in the assumptions of the initiative, specific parameters, or the military effects of implementing the Plan. He wanted a clear declaration of the motives for our actions. His first reaction to the presentation of the Polish delegation was in the original version: “Wsio poniatno, no zachem?”. And with this “zachem?” he checked out Polish reactions every now and then. Which, as a note taker of the Polish delegation, I carefully noted. It was evident that the Soviet side had already internally prepared an action plan in the field of disarmament and was afraid that the Polish initiative would only complicate it. Akhromieev asked questions and listened to explanations, but he did not want to evaluate the Polish initiative unequivocally. He effectively held in suspense not only the Polish side. Everyone, however, sighed with relief when he finally concluded the conversation with an approving wave of his hand and the instruction: “Nu, ladno!” It was an unambiguous directive also for the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And the Polish generals were relieved to report to General Jaruzelski that the Soviet comrades did not raise any objections.
Jaruzelski officially announced the Polish plan in May 1987. It was immediately presented by Minister Orzechowski at the CSCE review conference in Vienna. In July 1987, it was possible to publish the relevant memorandum of the Polish government, or literally – the Government of the Polish People’s Republic. I was entrusted with the task of drafting this document (with the support of Andrzej Karkoszka, then a PISM expert, and in the Third Republic of Poland – deputy minister of defence). The text in Polish received the appropriate approval without any problems. However, a problem was caused by the vigilant attention of our Diplomatic Protocol, suggesting that in this type of diplomatic documents abbreviations cannot be used, and the name of the country should only be given in full. We took this remark into account, and then director Jerzy M. Nowak came running with sober observation: “Gentlemen, there is too much of this People’s Republic in this text!” However, in the English version, which we worked on much more meticulously than on the Polish one (the original translation was made for us by Ben Scotland, a journalist), we symbolically ignored the remarks of the Diplomatic Protocol and the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Instead of “the Polish People’s Republic”, we entered the words “the Government of Poland” and “the Polish Government” twice. Blink of an eye for our friends in the West, just like that. Of course, no one noticed it.
The Jaruzelski plan was implemented to a large extent, and on its own, due to the success of the then disarmament negotiations (CFE), and above all, by the political changes that transformed the political and military face of Europe. For a good few months after the presentation, it allowed Polish diplomats to conduct dialogue with Western countries, where we could present our point of view on disarmament problems sovereignly. And until the end of the nineties, under the new political conditions, we developed the habit of creative and initiative thinking in disarmament matters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the rule of PiS not much remained of it. Then the old directive came back in new guise that since the USA is our guarantor of security, Polish disarmament policy should consist in blindly supporting the American line.
Satelliteism is selling poorly today. Of course, it can be presented as a specific form of commensalism, benefiting both sides. Even Lukashenko, left entirely to Putin’s devices, had an obvious problem with agreeing to the direct involvement of Belarusian military troops in the war against Ukraine. And Tokayev, alone in fear or Putin, that one day he would take a healthy bite of Kazakhstan’s territory, he did not want to recognize the independence of Donbas separatisms. Emulating the hegemon with faithful declarations is one thing, but giving it full control over politics is another. If it happens, there must be total fear behind it today. And so is satelliteism being driven out of consciousness. Few of the satellites can confess openly today that they do something only under the dictation of the hegemon.
