POSTSCRIPT 521more consciously 'Western' in their tastes and attitudes than did the citizens of
most Western countries.
Poland's traditional refusal to conform to the demands of its political masters
had turned it into one of Europe's perennial trouble-spots. After the First World
War, Aristide Briand, the French Premier, had called Poland 'Europe's rheuma-
tism'. At the end of the Second World War, President Roosevelt called it 'the
world's headache'. Since then, the Polish trouble spot has been relatively
untroubled. But tensions abounded beneath the surface, and Poland's reliability
in any future international crisis could not have been assured. In any serious
confrontation, especially within Europe, Poland's loyalty to the Soviet bloc
remained suspect. There was undoubtedly an element of wishful thinking in the
speculations of those western strategists, who saw Poland as the flashpoint of
the Third World War. But the idea was not entirely without substance; and
there must have been people in Moscow who also saw Poland as their own
Achilles heel.
All thoughts about Poland's future, the Postscript concluded, were bound to
turn on estimates of the over all strategic position of the USSR.
Poland's post-war predicament, however, reflected above all the outcome of
the titanic contest between Russia and Germany which had preoccupied Eastern
Europe for the first half of the twentieth century. A Nazi victory, if it had not
annihilated the Poles completely, would surely have left them as German slaves.
So the fact that Stalin's victory had left them as a Soviet satellite should not have
caused undue dismay. Things could have been worse. It was simply a fact of his-
tory that the Poles lived in the heart of Europe's gangland, where the anti-social
activities of their neighbours ruled out the possibility of a tranquil, independent
life. The epic war between the two leading mobsters was bound to determine the
fate of everyone in the area for years to come. It is true that Stalin had been dead
for a quarter of a century, but the ageing heirs of the Soviet Godfather were as
loath to disburse his ill-gotten gains as they were to admit how he acquired
them. The conspiracy of silence continued.
In such circumstances, it was essential that Polish youth be given the oppor-
tunity to see the richness and the complexities of their own heritage. Polish
History was a vital aid to the self-awareness of the Poles, an essential guide for
their national salvation. Unfortunately, most Polish youngsters enjoyed only
limited access to the treasures of their past. Censors and political ideologists
worked unceasingly in their efforts to control, to restrict, and to deform histor-
ical knowledge. The absence of political independence inevitably cramped the
right to an independent view of history. Yet in a world of increasingly sophisti-
cated controls, few Poles were aware of the directions in which their minds were
turned. Whilst most educated people repudiated the Leninist elements in his-
tory-making, and whilst many questioned the validity of Marxist interpreta-
tions, very few were aware of the persistent Nationalism which constituted the
main strand of official ideology. It was a curious irony. Nationalism, which
in the era of statelessness was used as a powerful weapon against the spurious