FREEDOM REGAINED 517not ideal, did not represent the worst scenario. As wartime resources faded,
however, the argument for clinging to the Soviet alliance grew ever weaker.
West Germany, which accepted nearly a million Polish refugees in the 1980s and
early 1990s, had completely lost its bad reputation. Far from being the bogey-
man of Communist propaganda, it had become, for the younger generation at
least, the Promised Land. As Poland's historic resentments against Russia
revived, its sense of common ties with a pre-Nazi and pre-Prussian Germany
revived as well.
Membership of NATO, therefore, presented few terrors. It merely involved
the lengthy processes of application for candidate status, of 'compatibilization'
that is, retraining and re-equipment - and eventually of graduated integration.
The re-education of officers probably presented the hardest task. Men who had
been trained in Soviet academies did not always take easily to NATO's military
doctrine, which was essentially defensive in nature, nor to the lack of guidance
from an all-powerful military-political machine.
All the overt resistance, therefore, came from outside, from Russia. Despite
the collapse of the USSR, Moscow's supposedly democratic leaders were not
inclined to recognize the freedom of action of their former subordinates. They
talked of the ex-Soviet republics as the 'near abroad', in which they often con-
tinued to station troops; and psychologically they still regarded everything east
of the Oder as their 'sphere of influence'. The fall of Communism did not halt
Russian talk of legitimate conquests bought by the blood of Stalin's legions.
Throughout the 1990s, Moscow huffed and puffed paranoically about NATO's
expansion to the east, and about the alleged threat to Russian interests. Moscow
took part with no good grace in the Partnership for Peace (1994- ), a NATO-
sponsored organization which included Poland and other ex-members of the
Soviet Bloc and which was designed to demonstrate the non-aggressive aims of
the new security order. Fortunately, Poland's entry to NATO was complete
prior to the emergence of Vladimir Putin and of Russia's return to a more tra-
ditional and openly imperialist posture. It received decisive backing from a vote
in the US Congress in 1997, and was marked by formal ceremonies in Brussels
and Warsaw on 11 March 1999.
Meanwhile, Poland's application to join the European Union was taking
longer to mature. Although it received the unwavering support of all Polish
Governments in the 1990s, it encountered several obstacles. On the Polish side,
it faced the opposition of the more nationalistic sector of right-wing opinion,
which saw the EU as a hungry predator eyeing Poland's hard-won indepen-
dence, and the suspicions of certain Church circles, who saw it as the embodi-
ment of a new form of demonic materialism. Within the EU itself, it came up
against the strategic decision to give priority to the old Maastricht agenda of
'deepening' the existing Union in place of the new agenda of enlargement to the
east. 'Deepening' and 'widening' were not viewed by the European Commission
as alternatives. But the balance had undoubtedly shifted. The delay in reform-
ing the Common Agriculture Policy and the haste in introducing a common