30 POLSKA
unhistorical, and contrary to common sense. In the past, and particularly in
the era of the united Polish-Lithuanian Republic between 1569 and 1795, eth-
nicity counted for little. The united Republic was a multinational state, whose
citizens drew their sense of common identity not from the blood in their veins
or from their mother tongue but from their common allegiance to the ruler and
the law. In the past 'Polish' was not so much an ethnic term, as a political and
cultural one. Like 'British' or 'Soviet' today, it referred to all sorts of people
and provinces whose origins lay beyond the sphere of the dominant English,
Great Russian, or Polish elite. In ethnic terms, Lithuania is no more 'Russian'
today than it was 'Polish' in the past, although in respect to specific periods
both attributes make exact political sense. Similarly, Silesia, which a hundred
years ago could fairly be described as 'German', is now undoubtedly 'Polish'.
Despite the clouds of propaganda, ancient and modern, which dim the subject,
'nationality' and 'national identity' cannot be detected in the soil. In so far as
the people of Eastern Europe and their outlook have been in constant motion,
so too have been the attributes applied to the lands where they live. The rea-
sons why land which once was 'German' and is now called 'Polish' belong to
the realm not of law, science, or fundamental rights, but only to that of power
and politics. In the twentieth century, Poland is a state of secondary standing,
and is not supposed to make territorial claims beyond her ethnic limits. At the
same time, many major powers of the day are fully confirmed in their posses-
sion of multi-national territories. As usual, what is 'right' for superpowers is
'wrong' for lesser mortals.
The modern concept of frontiers is equally confusing. In times when land was
in superabundant supply and people alone had political value, there was no
point whatsoever in defining the territory of state or of staking out its bound-
aries with a tape-measure. Rulers were less concerned to claim land as a whole
than to dominate the people who could work and develop the scattered oases of
settlement and industry. Political power radiated from a few centres of author-
ity, whose spheres of influence constantly waxed and waned, and very fre-
quently overlapped. These centres can best be likened to magnets, and the
people living in between them, to iron filings pulled hither and thither by fluctu-
ating and conflicting magnetic fields. In the medieval and early modern periods,
the typical pattern showed small metropolitan areas, where royal power could
be directly enforced, surrounded by huge intermittent expanses of undefined
border territory, where marcher lords enjoyed far-reaching autonomy. In
Eastern Europe where the distances were so much greater than in the west, these
conditions prevailed to the end of the eighteenth century. In Poland-Lithuania,
no accurate territorial survey was attempted until after the First Partition, in
- In the greater part of the Polish lands the pull of Cracow's or of Warsaw's
authority was not much stronger than that of rival political centres in Prague,
Vienna, Berlin, Stockholm, or Moscow. In border areas such as Silesia or the
Ukraine, the local communities were as safe from the enforcement of central
power, as they were exposed to the threats and incursions of foreign powers. At