It is traditionally accepted to divide the Polish conception of its geopolitical mission into two directions: the Jagellonian idea and the Piast idea. Each refers to two epochs of Polish history and two dynasties: the Piasts, who founded the Polish state and conducted an active foreign policy in the West (Germany, the Czech Republic and Hungary) and the Jagellonians, who united Poland with Lithuania and shifted the focus of Polish foreign policy eastward.

Jagellonian geopolitics sees Poland as the protector of the Western Christian world from Russia; Poland as the bearer of a mission to promote Western civilization in the East. It is a symbolic reference to the days of Rzeczpospolita, Pilsudski’s geopolitical and ideological legacy (national-conservatism), sarmatism, nobility, concepts of “Inter-Sea”, “Prometheism”, Giedroyc-Meroszewski’s ULB (Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus). This is the contemporary geopolitics of Poland.

In contrast, the Pästovian idea has always been characterized by an emphasis on confrontation with the Germanic West. The Pästovian paradigm was characteristic of Roman Dmowski and the National Democrats, Piłsudski’s opponents “on the right.” The Nationalists and National Democrats (symbol of the “Sword of the Brave”) and peasant parties (“Polish Peasant Piast Party”) logically turned to symbols that referred to the ancient Piast era.

On the one hand, the Piast became a symbol of authenticity, of “polity” (this is why in Rzeczpospolita times a candidate for the royal throne was called Piast, and not of foreign origin). On the other hand, the reference to the Piast heritage became both a symbol of connection to the land and a peasant dimension, partly opposed to the “noble” and “Jagellonian” dimensions of Polish nationalism, which the peasants regarded with suspicion. Not surprisingly, as the first Prime Minister of independent Poland Witos Wincenty, founder of the Piast party, pointed out, in 1918 the peasants were apprehensive about the reconstitution of the Polish state, fearing the return of the old feudal orders [1]. Notably, at the end of World War II, Vincenty became one of the vice-presidents of the Krajowa Rada Narodowa, Poland’s pro-Soviet government, which in 1944 undertook extensive land reform that eliminated the last remnants of “panchyna” [2] in Polish lands.

The Polish Communists, among whom-unlike many of their Comintern brethren-were traditionally strong left-wing nationalists, once they came to power began to build socialism with a “Piastian face”, not just a Polish one. Symbolic references to the Piastian rather than the Jagellonian era implied an appeal to the people and peasants, ethnic entrenchment (instead of the multi-ethnic federalism of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), but also an anti-Western foreign policy in bloc with the USSR, even justifying the shift of Poland’s borders westward as a return to the “Piastian heritage”.

According to Polish historian Adam Zamoyski, the regime “presented itself as a socialist version of the medieval Piast Kingdom” [3]. The symbolic invocation of Piast’s legacy took place at all levels: from emphasizing in official documents that the Polish coat of arms is “Piast’s eagle” to propaganda posters showing ancient Slavic kings looking forward to territorial conquests in the West. The creation of the Warsaw Pact Organization, aimed at countering the West, where Poland was the second military power after the USSR, can be seen as the culmination of Poland’s “Piastian” geopolitics in the 20th century.

Contemporary official historical discourse in Poland tends to overlook both the left-nationalist character of the NDP in the early years of its existence and after Vladislav Gomulka’s return to power in 1956, and the massive support for peasant reform carried out by the Communists themselves.

The repressions and involvement of the Soviet state security organs, mass dissatisfaction with Soviet military patronage, the alienated nature of Marxist ideology – all these contribute to the demonization of the NDP’s legacy and experience in contemporary Poland, and to a large extent this is what has caused the decline of the NDP as a distinctive “national-Bolshevik” project.

At the same time, both the geopolitical as well as the social and historiographical aspects of the re-creation of the “Piast kingdom” into a socialist envelope testify convincingly that this form opposed communist orthodoxy in many ways and became an expression of Poland’s internal social and political tendencies, especially those that opposed Piłsudski’s “Jagellonian” Poland. This may explain the collaboration with the communists of Witos Wincenty or Bolesław Piasecki, leader of the national conservative-revolutionary Falanga movement, who became the head of the Catholic PAX association in the new Poland [4]. Other leaders of the national-democratic camp, who supported a number of transformations in the new Poland, include writer Wladyslaw Grabski (son of the Polish prime minister) and Roman Dmowski’s collaborator, historian Stanisław Kozicki.

An interesting and tragic example is the fate of another leading figure in national democracy, Adam Doboszyński. A categorical opponent of Bolshevism and Marxism, he returned to Poland in 1947. Not accepting the communist regime, he sought links with the armed underground, trying to prove that the capitalist West would not come to the aid of Polish nationalists. Doboszyński, while rejecting communist ideology, praised the shift of borders in a Western direction and the nationalization of enterprises and argued that economic changes and especially the communists’ land reform “represent a step toward a Christian order, not toward Marxism” [5].

Doboszyński, in his unfinished book Halfway Through, noted that “neither the victory of U.S. grassroots capitalism nor the totalitarian Marxism of the Soviets” in the ongoing Cold War would bring humanity to a cure. On the contrary, in his view, the rapid development of technology and the fall of religious and moral values heralded an “apocalyptic scenario” from which, after a succession of wars and catastrophes, a new humanity would emerge.

For Poland he saw salvation in relying on Catholicism, advocating an intellectual (neo-Thomism) and spiritual renewal of the faith and the building of a new political, social and economic system based on Christian values and broad popular self-government. Doboszyński, however, left as a legacy not to discard the entire legacy of the days of socialism, to preserve what corresponds to the Christian anti-capitalist spirit and to try to change the socialist system from within.

In 1949 Adam Doboszyński was executed in Warsaw. After the fall of socialism, his will was not realized. Poland took the path of market transformations and “shock therapy” in the neoliberal spirit.

The position and life path of Adam Doboszyński, and some other postwar Polish national-democrats, are similar to those of the Russian Eurasians and National Bolsheviks who preceded him by two decades. They were also clearly opposed to the ideology of Marxism, but they believed that many anti-bourgeois transformations in Soviet Russia could serve the cause of national revival. Like Doboszyński, many Eurasians and the National Bolshevik ideologue Nikolai Ustryalov visited the USSR and bet on internal changes to the system or its undermining by patriotic groups from within. Like Ustryalov, Doboszynsky paid with his life for his return to his homeland.

On the one hand, the repression or marginalization of the supporters of “national Bolshevism” in real socialism can serve as an argument for the failure of their projects and the inability of the Marxist system to be fundamentally reborn in a neo-Nazi spirit. On the other hand, their very presence, as well as the “narodnic” and heterodox characteristics of real socialism, do not allow us to regard this phenomenon as accidental or unimportant.

In the Polish case, where the symbolic references of the nationalists to the popular component of the PRP officialdom and of the peasant forces to the figure of Piast organically combine continental geopolitics, anti-bourgeoisness, autochthony, authenticity, appeal to the peasant horizon, and the Slavic popular dimension of Polish identity, we can speak not only of a symbol, but also of a “Gestalt of Piast.”

“Gestalt” in this case is understood in the most general sense of this Germanic language term as an integral structure, not derived from its constituent components, but preceding them, standing behind them. A Gestalt is not an artificially constructed unit, but a found totality that expresses itself in the context of various ideologies, shining through the actions, statements and thinking of individuals.

The “Gestalt of the Piast” – the Sun Slavic plow king, founder of the first historical dynasty of Polish kings – is that dimension of Polish identity whose appeal alone can develop an understanding of Poland’s geopolitical role and future different from that currently offered to it.

This is extremely important for Russia in the current historical circumstances, when Poland has become one of the most important bastions of Atlanticism and Russophobia, when it is through Poland that the Kiev regime in opposition to Russia is largely nurtured. However, both Russians and Poles will eventually have to find a common language and somehow coexist in the Eurasian space. The current pseudo-conservative ideology of the ruling Polish Law and Justice party does not suggest such coexistence at all, leading Warsaw if not to geopolitical suicide, to a serious crisis. An alternative can be found if we go beyond the historiographical clichés of permanent enmity and turn to the ideas, figures, and symbols associated with Piast’s Gestalt.

Addressing Piast’s Gestalt as a semantic unity in which geopolitics, ideology, and historiography are revealed is a revolutionary gesture because it requires a refusal to regard contemporary Polish geopolitics and the underlying national-romantic tradition as a normative or self-evident imperative. But it is also an emphatically conservative gesture because it means addressing the oldest and deepest aspects of Polish Slavic identity.

Common Slavic and Christian unity, the traditions of Slavic people’s democracy and self-government, and the appeal to the peasant horizon are also important areas of research in geosophical and noological analysis [6]. They can also be related specifically to Pestvo Gestalt.

The development and understanding of Pästätlt’s Gestalt could also become an important component of Polish-Russian dialogue and research in the spirit of the Fourth Political Theory [7]. On the Russian side, this topic requires extreme sensitivity, understanding of the Polish context, empathy and respect for the interlocutor, and rejection of Soviet and post-Soviet ideological clichés.

Instead of acting as an obedient tool of the Euro-Atlantic West in its struggle with Russia and seeking to avenge past wrongs and defeats, ultimately promoting values in the East that are incompatible with the Christian-Catholic or popular pre-Christian dimension of Polish identity, Warsaw could become a bastion of tradition. The real challenge to polity today comes not from the East, but from the de-Christianized West. But this also requires a rethinking of the sarmatic and noble component of the Polish national idea, which is the prerogative of Poles themselves.

For more on the geopolitics of Russian-Polish relations, see A.L. Bovdunov’s book “Greater Eastern Europe: Geopolitics. Geosophy. The Third Traditionalism”.

[1] “So how did the peasants become Poles?”
https://whereispoland.com/en/who-was-polish/7

[2] Mikołaj Gliński. Colonialism the Polish way, or the long shadow of panchyna https://culture.pl/ru/article/kolonializm-po-polski-ili-dlinnaya-ten-panshchiny

[3] Kozdra, J. R. (2017). “What sort of communists are you?” The struggle between nationalism and ideology in Poland between 1944 and 1956.
https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1955  

[4] Engelgard. J. Bolesław Piasecki 1939-1956. Wydawnictwo Myśl Polska, Warszawa 2015

[5] Doboszyński А.  W pół drogi cz. III.
https://dzienniknarodowy.pl/adam-Doboszyński-pol-drogi-cz-iii/

[6] Dugin A.G. “Noomachy: Wars of the Mind. Eastern Europe. Slavic Logos: Balkan Navi and Sarmatian Style” – M.: Academic Project, 2018.

[7] Dugin A.G. “The Fourth Political Theory”, M.:2009, Dugin A.G. “The Fourth Way. Introduction to the Fourth Political Theory”. М.: 2014.