Troubled Russian-Polish relations require sound, humane approach — experts

Dec. 19, 2014 - PRLog -- Troubled Russian-Polish relations require humane ways to solve them, such as direct and constructive dialogue that allows people from both countries to hear and listen to each other, said guests of the Russian-Polish youth forum hosted in Moscow and Russia on December 13-17, 2014.

The Polish guests and the Russian participants researched the problem of repairing Polish-Russian contacts, and discussed the role and the potential of younger generation in this process during the three forum workdays that took place in the “Chistye Prudy” hotel complex in the Penza region.

Several experts paid particular attention to the problem of establishing contacts between the new generations in Russia and Poland. One of them, Paula Nangnerowicz, project coordinator at the Polish Center for Citizenship Eduction, pointed out the importance of early contacts, when their opinion of each other is formed while they are under constant influence of many factors, such as international history studies, and various potentially false notions.

In her opinion, youth conferences such as the Russian-Polish forum provide a real opportunity to openly ask questions, learn more about each other, and establish closer contacts that may be useful in the future.

“I think the best thing that we can do is meet, talk about what is important for us, what is important for you, what are our problems which are the same for us, where we are different, what we can do to remember about these similar situations and similar problems, and forget about differences,” the expert stressed.

However, Cornelia Reichel, culture management at the fund “Yulanovsk – Capital of Culture” fund for the Robert Bosch Stiftung, noted that establishing dialogue may sometimes not be easy.

“You can have dialogue only when you know the topic. I have been living in Russia for a year, and I have an impression that people in Germany and, I think, in Poland do not know what the Russians are thinking, and vice-versa – the Russians do not understand what people in Poland and German are thinking. Finding the issues we must talk over to understand each other – this is my primary mission, my primary task, and I think this idea must always be present in contacts between Russia and Poland, between Russia and Germany, between Russia, Poland and Germany,” she pointed out.

In the expert’s opinion, Russian-Polish relations have good development potential, but bringing them up to a new level would require many decades of regular and close contacts supported by various platforms for people-to-people communication.

“This is the first step, then more joint projects: if we work this way, I think it will be much better 10-20 years from now,” Cornelia Reichel believes.

At the same time, Marek Baranski, co-chairman of the Russian-Polish Youth Council, regretfully stated that current relations between two countries are far from ideal.

“We stopped understanding each other. In the last 25 years, we lost the ability to understand each other perfectly well. Of course this also shows in our international relations,” he said in an interview to “PenzaNews” agency.

In his opinion, there were several reasons for this change, including the uneasy 2014 Ukrainian conflict.

Marek Baranski stressed that establishing contact is the only way to bridge the gap between Moscow and Warsaw.

“Right now, people in Russia are sticking to their opinion, people in Poland to theirs, and there are very few platforms for discussion like this one. We simply will not luck out without dialogue,” he said.

Dmitry Gorodov, public relations specialist of the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding, spoke in support of this point of view.

According to him, cultural and scientific contacts are vital for overcoming political and ideological issues in order to move on to mutual cooperation.

“The next year of culture [of Poland] in Russia is not cancelled – on the other hand, it’s been boosted. There was a large press conference of the Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky: he said that culture cannot be cancelled, it’s impossible to do, and we will be opening even more for our partners in Poland and other countries. There will be other projects as well: I’m speaking not only about Russian-Polish relations, but also other projects with other countries. We are not canceling anything, only boosting the campaign in order to establish dialogue with other countries,” he stressed.

However, Dmitry Gorodov reminded that several recent events had negative impact on international relations, and current political climate forced the Russian-Polish Group on Challenging Issues to temporarily shut down.

“It included many respectable persons from both countries, and the group was active until now. Around this time, in November, they would have had another meeting in Lublin, but this did not happen at the initiative of the Polish party. We fully supported [the event], and all our representatives were ready,” he said.

Nevertheless, the representative of the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding expressed his belief that constructive dialogue will resume despite the present issues.

“The politicians can negotiate, and out countries have all the potential for future mutual cooperation, including cultural affairs,” he explained.

According to Mateusz Czerniga, board member of the Polish Council of Youth Organizations, both countries need such cooperation even more than ever before.

“In Poland, one institution took some experiments. According to them, 65% of Polish people think that our relations are the worst in the history ever. The important thing is that 40% of these people think that better relations are possible, but we just have to come to the round table and talk about the problems, talk about the things which have to be solved,” he said.

From his point of view, Polish-Russian cooperation must be based not on official contacts, but on common culture, Slavic roots and common identity of both peoples.

Full text news agency "PenzaNews":http://penzanews.ru/en/opinion/57093-2014