Poland's preoccupation with Russia and Germany alters in drive to EU

"You don't get between a hippopotamus and water." So runs an African proverb used by an Irish observer depicting Poland's drive for membership of NATO and the EU. Particularly, one might add, if it has been in bed with an elephant. The same point applies to the other candidates for NATO and EU enlargement, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Their determination is reinforced by Russia's economic crisis, which now casts a shadow over their economic growth. In Warsaw the business press is dominated by headlines such as "Bank turmoil, an uninvited guest spoils the party" and "The facade crumbles - will Russia drag down central European business?"

Note the marked differentiation drawn between this region and Russia's new and reduced sphere of influence. It reminds us that new boundaries are being drawn in Europe by these enlargements, even though debate continues as to how closed or open the new frontiers should be. In a week when NATO's decision to endorse air strikes against Serb targets in Kosovo led to talk of a new Cold War in Europe, it is important to note this well.

And it looks as if things can only get worse. An investment analyst quoted in the Financial Times says that "if there is a choice this winter between importing food and paying creditors I think it is fairly clear they will import food". This would mean defaults on some of Russia's $185 billion external debts, according to the paper.

Polish, Czech and Hungarian economists and officials are irritated by the continuing misperception among western investors and publics that their economies are over-determined by the Russian events. But they are very worried by Russia's political instability and its regional consequences.

The Polish government has reduced its estimates of economic growth by one percentage point from nearly 7 per cent. But this is largely because of the reduced growth in global and EU economies rather than the prospect of reduced exports to Russia, which are anyway now only a very small share of their imports and exports - in Poland's case 6.3 and 6.5 per cent, respectively. A Russian decision to import food would benefit Polish (and Irish) farmers, but the prospects of defaults are likely to affect their economies more.

The reorientation, or rather the reoccidentalisation, of their trade patterns since 1989 away from Russia's old sphere of influence means they do on average 70 per cent of their business with EU states, compared with less than 30 per cent before then.

Poles are intrigued by Ireland's diversification of its economy, politics and foreign policy away from dependence on Britain in the EC/EU and wonder if it holds lessons for them to reduce their inherited preoccupations with Russia and Germany.

Given their long and tangled history of occupation and partition as a stateless nation by Russia, Prussia and by the Austrian Habsburgs from the 1790s to 1918, the achievement of independence in the inter-war years and then the catastrophe of the second World War followed by incorporation of communist Poland into the Russian sphere of influence, it can readily be seen why these preoccupations remain. The huge population transfers after the end of the war, which saw 10 to 11 million German-speakers expelled from eastern Poland, who were replaced by five to six million Polish-speakers from Ukraine and Lithuania, coming on top of the extermination of Polish Jewry, rendered the country much more homogeneous.

All this makes for a passionate and involved patriotism, which suffuses the political system and crosses its many cleavages. It was summed up by the then Archbishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyla, who is celebrating 20 years as Pope this weekend, as follows: "Each of us possesses a heritage within us - a heritage to which generations and centuries of achievement and calamity, of triumph and failure, have contributed: a heritage which somehow takes deeper root and grows new tissues from every one of us. It is this heritage, variously labelled the Fatherland, or the Nation, by which we live."

Despite the outbursts of nationalist extremism these sentiments can give rise to, Poles remain committed to their patriotic past. They are determined to maintain its traditions as they negotiate their way back into the European mainstream. The Pope is a universally venerated figure and a symbol of regeneration. His achievements look much more positive or radical seen from Poland than from many other compass points.

Thus his extraordinary work with the Jewish world community must be understood against the background of the Holocaust which reduced the number of Polish Jews from its pre-war four million to 4,000 today. His role in bolstering Polish self-confidence through the 1980s is a crucial element in the collapse of Stalinism. Observers say, too, that his appointments and involvement in the Polish church do not follow the reactionary pattern stereotyped elsewhere.

It is widely noted that Poland's President, Mr Aleksander Kwasniew ski, the most trusted Polish politician according to the opinion polls and a former communist, has paid full honours to the Pope. He also strongly defended Poland's decision to join NATO on his visit to Moscow, despite the criticisms made there about it. There is a similar cross-party consensus on joining the EU, although a real debate is getting going on the precise terms and conditions of entry.

Poles have no intention of losing a national and political identity so recently re-established. Polish leaders are concerned, nevertheless, to keep open their lines of communication and so far as possible their borders with their eastern neighbours.

Preoccupation with Germany and Russia will not easily be eradicated, despite the efforts at reconciliation, which have gone much further with the Germans. A Polish joke asks which of the two should be fought first in the event of a war. Germany, of course, is the reply - "first business, then pleasure".