380 GRANICE
In general, the history of modern Polish frontiers makes sad reading for any-
one who may have imagined that the map of modern Europe had been drawn
with regard either to magnanimity or to precision. The principle of national
self-determination has been overruled with cynical monotony. As a result of the
two wartime alliances between the Anglo-Saxon powers and the Russians, the
Poles never were granted the luxury of paying host to national minorities within
their state in the way that was judged perfectly fitting for the British, or the
Russians, or for that matter, for the Czechs. Danzig was denied them in 1919 on
ethnic grounds, just as Cieszyn was denied them on economic grounds. The
industrial area of Upper Silesia was granted to Poland in spite of a clear-cut
German victory in the plebiscite. The wishes of the population of Lwow or
Wilno were no more consulted in 1945, than they had been in 1939 or in 1919.
At no point, seemingly, was simple justice intended to prevail. The sole strand
of consistency is to be found in the aims of Russian and of Soviet policy. In 1914,
the Tsarist Foreign Minister, Sazonov, published his vision of Eastern Europe in
the future. He called for the restoration of the old frontier of the Congress
Kingdom on the Bug; for the partition of East Prussia; for the conquest of East
Galicia; for the cession of Danzig to a new Polish state united with Russia; and
for the expansion of Poland to the Oder. In the short-term, his plan was frus-
trated. In the longer term, in Stalin's hands, it was carried out with uncanny
attention to detail.^21
Much can be said for the present frontiers of the Polish Republic. They are
compact, well adapted for military defence, and based in the main on the line of
the mountains, the sea, and the major rivers. For the first time in history, they
enclose a Polish state which is inhabited almost entirely by Poles, and which
leaves no important Polish minorities abroad. It is a fine state of affairs, and
entirely praiseworthy, were it not for the torrents of blood, suffering, and spe-
cious arguments which have been expended in its achievement.
Poland's fluctuating frontiers have caused fascinating complications in the
realm of onomastics. Indeed, the profusion of Polish place-names is often
taken as a good reason for studying some other part of the continent. Faced
from the start with rather unfamiliar and apparently unpronounceable names,
the bemused Anglo-Saxon is apt to despair completely when confronted in
every instance with two, three, four, or even five variations. 'Wroclaw', it
seems, is the same place as 'Breslau'; Wilno', it appears, is sometimes disguised
as 'Vilna', or nowadays as 'Vilnius'; 'Lwow', unaccountably, can also be
described as 'Leopolis', 'Leopol, 'Lemberg', 'Lvov', and 'L'viv'. Different
authorities prefer different versions for reasons that are not always clear.
Students in search of the 'correct version' are lost in a fog of conflicting advice
until someone eventually tells them that in the right context all variations are
equally correct.^22