POLAND – LITHUANIA:
The never ending neighbour dispute

A few years ago my wife and I fell into conversation with two Poles in Oslo. When they heard that my wife was from Lithuania, they were quick to assert that the Vilnius area is actually Polish and never should have been given to Lithuania after World War II. My wife immediately responded that the area Punsk in eastern Poland in reality is Lithuanian and should be re-incorporated into the mother-country. The dispute was in full swing.

I have subsequently many times seen texts reminiscent of history forgery when Polish and international historians describe the Polish-Lithuanian relations in the later Middle Ages. The relationship is often described as if Poland was the leading nation and Lithuania a province in the east, while the reality was as the map above shows, with Lithuania as Europe’s biggest nation for centuries.

But Lithuania is not much better in its attitudes versus Poland and the Poles. In a comment article this week, Gary Peach has some interesting reflections on this topic in the European Voice. This is an excerpt of what he writes:

“Foreign minister for only two years, Audronius Ažubalis cannot be blamed for all of Lithuania's external mishaps and misfortunes. With neighbours like Belarus's Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Russia's Vladimir Putin, diplomatic successes are hard to come by. But as regards Poland and Latvia, Ažubalis shoulders some responsibility for the sorry state of affairs.

In fact, the minister alone set the tone for relations with Poland this year when, in an interview released on 2 January, he lashed out at Warsaw, saying that issues involving Lithuania's minorities, which include approximately 200,000 ethnic Poles, are a domestic matter and that Vilnius should not be lectured. “We don't need a big brother,” said Ažubalis, who in not-so-subtle terms went on to compare Polish pressure on Lithuania to bullying by Russia and the Soviet Union.

This was exceptionally harsh rhetoric, and will probably lead to a new nadir in bilateral ties.

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