Remembering 1st September 1939 in Warsaw

Much has been written about today's ceremony at Westerplatte. The commemoration of the outbreak of WWII in Warsaw was a simpler affair. Held by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Płac Piłsudskiego, it was addressed by the mayor, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, and the marszałek (speaker) of the Polish parliament, Bronisław Komorowski. As well as the representative companies of the armed forces and police, there was also a fair number of veterans present, a goodly number of them over from Britain. Shortly after 12:00 there was a 12-gun salute. Above: Two of the guns from the representative battery. In the distance, the tomb. It is situated in all that remains of the Pałac Saski (Saxon Palace).

Having lived in Poland for both the 60th and 65th anniversaries of the outbreaks of WWII and of the Warsaw Uprising, I must say that the 70th anniversaries resonated far more here and around the world. Perhaps its because so few of the veterans will be around for the next one. But also because Poland is becoming better at getting its point of view about its own history across. Above all, bear in mind that for Poland, closure came but 20 years ago. It was only then that the Soviet Union finally relinquished its hold over the countries it ruled over since replacing Nazi occupation with its own control.

Above: An exhibition was erected on the square; simple stories of lives cut short, and figures. So as they will not be overlooked: Polish population in 1939: 35 million. Polish population in 1946: 28 million. Six million killed (half of whom were Jewish). A million ending up after the war in exile. And another six million wounded, imprisoned in concentration camps or Gulags, or persecuted in other ways. Of those 12 million, 11 million were victims of the Nazis, another million were victims of the Soviet Union. The break-up of Poland resulting from the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact saw 48% of Poland's territory under Nazi occupation and 52% under Soviet occupation. Population-wise, 22m Poles found themselves in Nazi-occupied Poland, 13m in the less-densely populated east occupied by the Soviet Union.

Above: A gate of the University of Warsaw. On this day in 1939, German bombs rained down upon this city. 25,800 civilians died in Warsaw in September 1939; the city held out until 27 September. A further 200,000 civilians would die during the Warsaw Uprising in August - October 1944.

What Putin wrote

A two-page article, written by premier Putin, appeared in today's Gazeta Wyborcza. Translated into Polish by the Russian embassy in Warsaw, the article sets the tone for Putin's visit tomorrow to Westerplatte for the official commemoration of the outbreak of WWII.

If you believe that the Kremlin plays a coordinated game, you will have witnessed in the Russian media over the past weeks a planned series of 'Aunt Sallies' set up to infuriate Polish public opinion. "Poland and Germany were plotting to invade the Soviet Union!" "The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a good thing for Russia!" "Poland to blame for WWII!" "Katyń - It wasn't us!"

Putin's article and tomorrow's visit seem at first sight to knock these specious arguments for six.

"Today" writes the Russian premier, "I propose that we, without any consideration, without any hesitation, admit that the one trigger of the second world war was the Soviet-German non-aggression pact of 23 August 1939."

Well, that looks clear enough - no 'consideration' (zastanowienie) nor 'hesitation' (wahanie) needed for us to admit what the real cause of WWII was.

But the next sentence seems to negate this very proposal:

"Supporters of such a point of view do not ask themselves any elementary questions - whether the Treaty of Versailles which summarised the first world war did not leave in its wake many 'ticking time-bombs'?"

OK then, do we accept that Molotov-Ribbentrop was the 'one trigger'? Or do we ask ourselves 'elementary questions' first? Putin (his speech-writers and/or his translators) leave us deliberately unclear as to whether the Kremlin wants us to actually think.

The key thing to me in Putin's article is the sense of continuity between the 'rogue state' that was the USSR - and modern Russia. The Soviet Union was a 'captured nation' - indeed 15 captured nations - that had become terrorised from within by a band of ideologically-motivated gangsters. During this 70 period, Russia, by far the largest of those captured nations, extended its empire way beyond the borders of what the Tsars held sway over.

Returning to Putin on Molotov-Ribbentrop:

"I would like to remind you that in our country the immoral character of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was unambiguously assessed [as such] [on 24 December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR passed a declaration condemning the pact from 1939]" .

In our country - the USSR? Or Russia? It is as if Chancellor Adenauer of West Germany were to justify his position on an issue by quoting a declaration passed by the Nazi Party in 1942.

Putin talks of Molotov-Ribbentrop in the context of other pacts and treaties entered into with Hitler by the West, such as Munich. Yet these were not preparations for the invasion of Britain and France, of say Belgium and Holland. Molotov-Ribbentrop was paving the way for the Soviet invasion of independent Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Finland, eastern Poland and eastern Romania. This was a land-grab on a far larger scale than what Hitler had managed to achieve through Anschluss, annexation and invasion from March 1938 to September 1939.

Putin talks about the lack of an 'Anti-fascist coalition'. Anti-fascism as a common bond between the West and the USSR is entirely specious. Stalinism had far more in common with Nazi fascism than with the democracies of Britain and France. Collectivist repression, Gulags and concentration camps, arbitrary persecution on ground of race or class, personality cults around the Leader, no freedom of expression. The list of similarities between Stalinism and Nazi fascism goes on and on. Two forms of poison.

Putin mentions "the 600,000 soldiers of the Red Army who gave their lives liberating Poland". Here we have a profound difference of view. "...Who gave their lives so that one tyranny could replace another in Poland" would be the way I'd have phrased it. These soldiers too are victims, let us not forget, driven west by Stalin in his quest to conquer as much of Europe as possible.

Putin also mentions Katyń. "The Russian nation, whose fate was misshapen by a totalitarian regime, understands well the sensitivities of Poles concerning Katyń. We should keep in our common memory the victims of this atrocity. The cemetaries at Katyń and Mednioye, as well as the fate of the Russian soldiers who became PoWs in the [Polish-Soviet] war of 1920 should become a symbol of common sorrow and forgivenness." [No mention of the fate of the Poles captured by the Bolsheviks in that same war, then.]

To enter into the Putin mindset regarding WWII, consider this part of his article.

"Because the war took the lives of 27 million of my countrymen [rodacy] and every Russian family feels the personal pain from those losses, from generation to generation, the pride is passed down, pride of the Great Victory, of the heroic deeds of our fathers and grandfathers who fought on the Front."

Again, continuity with the USSR. 27 million Soviet citizens (including those like my maternal grandfather who were Soviet citizens against their will) might have died (best academic estimate - 26.6 million). But of that awful, unimaginable total, Putin's Russian countrymen numbered 14 million. A horrific death toll by any human measure, but in percentage terms, Ukraine (6.8m) and Belarus (2.6m) suffered far worse than Russia-proper. And 2.5m civilian dead from the lands seized by the USSR as a result of Molotov-Ribbentrop. And up to 1.7m Gulag victims. By saying "27 million of my countrymen", Putin seems to be still considering himself Soviet. And the 'Great Victory' was, for the peoples of central Europe - the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, the beginning of 45 years of another kind of totalitarianism.

The fact that Putin has come to Poland and is talking about Molotov-Ribbentrop and Katyń is a small step forward. But Russia needs to be more clear that it has separated itself from those 70 years of lawless totalitarianism. Maybe this can only happen when it is no longer ruled by those with the KGB mindset at the core of which is mistrust.

My thanks to Adthelad for this link to Norman Davies's article on the causes of the outbreak of WWII from The Independent.

And definitely worth reading this in-depth article by Charles Crawford, the former British ambassador to Warsaw, on the subtext of Putin's article.

Late summer dad'n'lad bike ride

Finally, the school holidays are at last coming to an end. Ten weeks of leisure. "Won't be long till summer time is through!"

To celebrate, I dragged a reluctant Eddie out on his bike for a spin around the Las Kabacki forest, then to the edge of the airport for a spot of spotting.

Above: The railway line that connects Warsaw's metro to the outside world. Rust suggests it's not been used for a while. The only traffic that comes this way is the occasional drezyna (technical railcar). But worth remembering that every single piece of rolling stock that runs daily between Kabaty and Młociny once came down this track.

We rode west from the forest towards ul. Puławska. Eddie waits, bored, while I adjust the circular polarising filter, set the correct exposure and get the pic.
This path, from the forest to ul. Żolny, is particularly atmospheric and is one of my 'spirit of place' locations.

On to the airport. The large earthworks screening the S2-S79 expressway junction (Węzeł Lotnisko) are an excellent place for watching planes land. Below: An Austrian Arrows Dash-8 flies overhead, taken with lens at 55mm, uncropped, so you can see how close it was.

Below: Eddie making his descent from the man-made plateau. There was quite a crowd up here, plane spotters and mountain bikers. Neither of us rode down - you need a full suspension bike to do it comfortably, it is steep. But we saw other guys doing it - hair-raising!

On the way back to Jeziorki, we rode along the untarmacked stretch of ul. Wirażowa. Work on the new expressways starts next month; so we are witnessing the last moments of semi-rural tranquility here (currenly interrupted only by frequent landings and occasional trains).
Below: Back in Jeziorki. Still parallel to the railway tracks. Still rural. Close to home now.

The Next Hundred Years

I've always found futurology fascinating. An article in this week's New Statesman by George Friedman that peers 100 years into the future attracted my attention, not least because of the important role that Poland plays in its author's vision.

Friedman asserts that America's global power will wane; three countries will emerge far stronger, economically and politically, during this century - Poland, Mexico and Turkey. Using the analogy of the rise of South Korea since the 1950s, Friedman believes that Poland needs to become a strategic partner for the US - for the best interests of America.

Delighted though I am to see confirmation of what I firmly believe - that Poland is a country on the rise - I feel that Friedman's predictions for the 21st Century are missing something.

Reading and re-reading this article, I'm amazed that its author ignores any mention of what's obviously the biggest geopolitical fault line of them all - the 2,700 mile (4,400km) border between the world's most populous nation, China and the world's largest one, Russia, along the Amur river.

To its south, China - over-crowded; economically dynamic, short of living space and raw materials. To the north, Russia, with a shrinking population, vast empty territories and an economy almost entirely dependent on the exploitation of rich reserves of raw materials.

On the Russian side of the Amur lies the Amur Oblast, population 870,000 and shrinking, and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (a bizarre relic of Stalin's obsession with relocating peoples), population 190,000 and shrinking. By contrast, Heilongjiang province to the south of the Amur has a population of 38 million.

Chinese traders are crossing into Russia with those ubiquitous check pattern cubic bags in which they bring T-shirts and sweaters and tights and cheap consumer electronics. They come from the numerous towns in the north of Heilongjiang and from the north-east of Inner Mongolia. Some of these Chinese traders are settling in Russia, marrying local women (who see them as hard-working and not overly fond of vodka). Ethnic tensions will rise. As they do so, China will start flexing its military muscle to protect its people... Russia's crumbling transport and energy infrastructure will hamper its attempts to shore up the Amur region militarily.

Russia's weakness and China's strength and strategic needs will ensure that there's a casus belli here that's waiting for a spark, a provocation (and Russia is good at thoughtless provocation), something that will cause world opinion to side with an outraged China - and the People's Liberation Army (600 million men and women available for military service) could turn its attention northwards.

It is worth reading about the Sino-Soviet Border Conflict of 1969 to see how a military showdown could escalate. Of course Russia is a nuclear power; but how many of its nukes will be in working order in 2040? The Russian armed forces, mired in corruption, would be no match numerically nor organisationally to deal with Chinese incursions.

How would these look? My guess is that at first, we will see small-scale cross border raids to punish Russia for local anti-Chinese pogroms. The Russians will be unable to repel these raids, China will hold the land despite UN Resolutions. By the end of the century, I predict the Russian-Chinese border will no longer run along the Amur.

From the point of view of the Anglo-Saxon world, this will not be a war of 'an ally' versus 'an enemy'. Like Hitler's war against Stalin, this will be a war of 'two bad guys'. Russia has not been endearing itself to the West in recent years, nor has China. Neither the US nor the EU will want to take sides in a Sino-Russian border conflict. Russia and China will both work hard to sway western public opinion, but the west will simply not care. In bar-room discussions, Joe Sixpack and Eddie Punchclock will conclude that it's a faraway conflict that doesn't remotely impinge on their lives.

But it will be, in my opinion, the biggest geopolitical shakeup of the 21st Century.

Russia needs to win friends in Europe; its short-sighted foreign policy is not endearing the very people it should need as allies. The only way Russia can avoid its fate on the Amur is to join the structures of western Europe - NATO and the EU.

More on this here and here.

This time last year:
Of dams and brass bands

Honing the Art of the Written Word

I spent much of the weekend (the third one in a row), with Ziggy going over our translations of General Stefan Bałuk's wartime memoires, Byłem Cichociemnym. The fact that the very title has undergone revision since its first translation shows what a gruelling task this has been. Originally, we'd settled on The Silent, Dark Ones. Now, the book's English title will be Silent and Unseen.

This work has been a great learning experience for me. The actual translation itself did not take that long - I translated around a fifth of the book, the last 57 pages or three chapters in 12 days, around my normal working routine (evenings and weekends). The real work was to take our raw translation of the General's text and beat it into something that reads perfectly in English. Right: General Stefan Bałuk, 95, earlier this month at the commemoration of the 65th Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising.

And it has to be perfect. The difference between a first-rate narrative told in second-rate translation and one translated so that it doesn't actually read like a translation is the difference between a something that shifts a few hundred copies and a best-selling history. My bookshelves are littered with poorly translated titles. Example. The Polish edition of Norman Davies's Europa. It shows what happens when publisher is in too much of a rush to check it thoroughly first. General Franco's mausoleum, we learn here, is in the valley of the river Fallen. (Valle de los Caídos in Spanish, translated into English as Valley of the Fallen, then translated into Polish by someone who really should know better as 'dolina rzeki Fallen').

So we spent a lot of time checking facts. Wikipedia makes this easier (today I needed to know how the Hungarian dance, spelt czardasz in Polish, is spelt in English*. Heavens knows how else one would have found this out without access to a reference library or Mastermind-grade general knowledge.) Wikipedia alone is not the absolute arbiter; facts needed checking and re-checking in text books and history books. Ziggy is a professional military historian with dozens of books under his belt as author and many more as translator (into English). And I have a pretty good all-round general knowledge, and am strong in 20th C. military history.

There are three main interferences that face translators - linguistic, lexical and cultural. The first is to do with the differing structures of language - word order, grammar (Polish has four tenses, English has sixteen, for example). The second to do with the precise meaning of words and how those meanings vary across languages (Komisja can mean commission, but commission can also mean prowizja, which does not always mean provision. That's reserwa, which can also mean reserve). The third is to do with what the intended reader is reasonably (what's reasonably in Polish?) expected to know. Words like peerelowski or Wlasowiec need to be explained, not just translated. A translator needs awareness of these three interferences.

Ziggy and I spent two weekends going through the book on screen, checking facts and improving on our original translations; making the words flow more easily, tightening the sentences, before sending the text for setting. And this last weekend, we finally printed off the typeset page proofs, and read them aloud. Which is excellent exercise - it is good for you to read aloud! Good for the lungs and vocal chords, good for self-confidence and presentation skills. Reading page after page, a chapter (typically 20-30 pages long) at a time, for 16 hours (eight hours each) over two days, was gruelling.

It's only when you do this that you spot the natural patterns of linguistic flow. You find yourself reading aloud how the passage should sound, not how you've translated it. So you correct it - and then you find - hey! That's much better! Taking out or inserting commas; breaking up over-complex sentences, tweaking the word order, smoothing out the rhythm of the language. Any words which could possibly be construed as ambiguous are replaced by ones that the reader's brain can absorb without interruptive thoughts getting in the way.

So all in all, this exercise soaked up a lot of my time. Much, much more than the publishers have paid me for. I could have just handed in a first draft translation, collected the payment (I was paid for this job in April!) and walked away. But no. This is no longer a question of cash. It's about Polish history, it's about disseminating a gripping first-person wartime narrative to a potentially huge global English speaking readership - and it has to be perfect. Here the missionary kicks in and takes over from the mercenary. And so I've given up three weekends pro bono to help ensure that Silent and Unseen will be as good a read in English as it possibly can be. So that Stefan Bałuk's amazing testament - his escape from the Nazis and the Soviets in September 1939, his training by the SOE to be a parachute commando, master forger and insurgent leader, his part in the Warsaw Uprising and his subsequent imprisonment by Nazis and communists - can be as widely known as possible. Ensuring there are no mistakes denies ammunition for ideologically motivated falsifiers of history - "that's wrong - so therefore this is likely to be a mistake too".

Review of Byłem Cichociemnym Polish by Daniel Passent in Polityka.

* Csárdás, since you ask; the original Hungarian spelling is used in English. A csárdás will be played at the 14th Last Night of the Proms in Kraków, supported as ever by the BPCC and its members. I was checking the programme's translation.

This time last year:
Michael Palin was right
Back for some more steam

This time two years ago:
Heron spotted over local pond
Agricultural scenes in Jeziorki "cause flashbacks"
Our garden spiders getting big and fat
Ul. Kórnicka loses dirt track status
Electrical storms continue

The first notes of autumn in the air

I awoke just after six to find mist in the garden and fields behind our house. A late summer/early autumn morning; equinox is less than a month away. I shall write more about the onset of autumn anon, when I really start to feel it. Now, it is still but an early intimation. Above: View from the balcony. Click on it see it full size; it really is quite atmospheric. The garden is full of spiders' webs with some huge specimens on them!

Last week saw the opening of further stretches of cycle path along ul. Puławska. Each new section civilises the city further. Today's good weather brought plenty of cyclists out, though none are evident in this photo. Above: the cycle path crosses ul. Poleczki. Raz, dwa, lewa, prawa/Co raz bliżej jest Warszawa!

Cycling burns up calories, so on my way home I have an excuse to pop in for some Kentucky Fried Chicken. Below: The Honda power tools showroom and offices, caught by the last rays of the setting sun.

It won't be long until sunset is so early I'll not be able to leave the office in good time to reach home in daylight - and that is when this season's cycling will cease. There's a couple of weeks left.
Although it's still warm enough to cycle both ways without an outer garment over my shirt, as I approached the house this evening, I found myself cycling in and out of pockets of cooler air. Autumn is approaching at a tentative pace.

I suppose it's too much to ask

Seventy years on from the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which led directly to the outbreak of WWII and the carving up of central Europe between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia - an act of diplomacy which was to decide the fate of my family and scores of millions of families from Finland to the Black Sea.

Seventy years on from 1 September, at the place where the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein fired the first salvos of the war, Russia's Premier Putin and Germany's Chancellor Merkel will both be present to commemorate of the outbreak of WWII.

For decades, Germany has consistently atoned for its bringing about the war and for its inhumanly brutal conduct. Indeed, that atonement is the very cornerstone of the modern German state. German chancellors have wept at the Umschlagplatz, at the Warsaw Ghetto, begging for forgivenness and reconcilliation. My aunt, Ciocia Jadzia, who survived Auschwitz, receives a monthly pension from the German state. German text books are unequivocal about Germany's role in the War. But for my mother, her family, and the millions of deportees from central Europe to the Gulags and labour camps of the USSR, there's never been a word of apology from either Soviet or Russian leaders.

I'd dearly love to see Russia's prime minister Putin take the opportunity at Westerplatte to set history right. To accept that in 1939, Russia was ruled by a genocidal despot, who'd gained power by murdering the rest of the terrorist gang with whom he'd wrested control of Russia in 1917. To accept that the invasion of eastern Poland, the Baltic States and parts of Finland, Czechoslovakia and Romania were naked acts of territorial aggression. To accept that millions of citizens of those territories, forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, were wrongly deported, imprisoned and murdered. To ask, as German leaders have been doing for the past 40 years, for forgivenness.

And then - and only then - can Russia be looked on by Poland as a great country; a majestic nation with a proud culture that has spawned so much great literature, music and art, a country of unimaginable natural beauty, a friendly neighbour. Until such a time, Russia can only be associated in the minds of the peoples of central Europe with the image of a boot stamping down repeatedly on their faces.

The disasters on the Yenisei, the Kursk, Chernobyl - and the ones the West never learned about at the time - Kyshtym, Sverdlovsk, Baikonur, reveal a careless, megalomaniac, secretive state, in which the individual is subsumed to the Greater Good of the Masses (Soviet or Russian).

If it is to be accepted as a 'good country', the Russian state needs to win the trust of its neighbours, and its own citizens. The best place to start is to come clean about its 20th Century past.

Funny old cars - Poland 1989

Above: The FSO Warszawa M-20; a licence-built version of the Soviet GAZ M-20 Pobieda (Victory). Although the bodywork styling was revolutionary in 1946, the M-20's mechanicals came from the Model-B Ford of 1932.

Above: The GAZ Volga M-21, successor to the Pobieda. Same engine block, bored out from 2.1 to 2.4 litres, with overhead valves (rather than sidevalves). In the mid-eighties I owned one of these back in England, a 1963 model with right-hand drive (rare!), in black.

Above: The GAZ Volga 24-10, late production version of the M-24, successor to the M-21. Something based on this is still in production in Russia today. Unlike the other photos on this post, which were taken in Poznań, this one was taken in Warsaw. Note the red Datsun Stanza, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen trucks, and lack of Fiat 126P Maluchs in the background.

Above: Moskvitch 407. Mechanically, this car was based on the pre-war Opel Kadett. In 1945, the Soviets seized the Opel factory in Germany and transported the whole thing to Russia. Three generations of Moskvitches followed; the first were basically still pre-war Kadetts, the second (1956-64) were re-bodied (above), while the third generation was square-shaped and boring.

Above: This rear-engined car is the Zaporozhets. Despite resemblance to the West German NSU Prinz, this was a genuine all-Soviet design. Not intended for Party luminaries, this was the USSR's very own 'people's car'. I saw one in Ursynów this week, so they keep on going!

Above: And finally a non-Soviet car - the original Skoda Octavia. These six photos were taken because the cars were characteristic of the communist world, yet unusual in Poland, where the ubiquitous Fiat 126P (visible in the background of all but one of the pics) and Fiat 125P between them represented well over half of all cars on the road. Once economic transformation kicked in, a flood of used western vehicles were brought into Poland, with VWs and Mercs being the most popular.

And indeed. Twenty years on, people drive old cars because they want to, not because the only alternative was a Maluch. Above: A Mercedes 190D on ul. Karczunkowska earlier this week.