History / Lwów, Wilno ... kresy - Poland have lost enormoust part of our heritage... [389]

Dear Alexmac,

It seems to be so important for you that certain nations in Europe share a Slavic heritage, but in doing so you forget that there are many more things that differ between the Slavic people.

Religion for instance is a very important part, then there are different histories, also different neighbour states are very important whose influences must not be underestimated, then there is a different folk culture and psychology. Russians and Poles may have a similar language but their way of looking at the world could hardly be more different. It appears to me that you are a Russian nationalist that looks for another way to construct a new empire but those days are definitely over!

And I surely don't judge nations or people by the fact if the language we speak share a common ancestor or if thirty or fourty generations before we had a common progenitor. This way of thinking belongs to the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. After the horrible catastrophy the Nazis put Europe in this way of thinking should be obsolete.

News / Does Poland support the idea of Slavic unity? [129]

You can't possibly know where your ancestors came from, maybe they came from the Pripjet swamps maybe from somewhere else. How can you know? Proven is only one thing: about 30,000 years before now the homo sapiens that came from Africa arrived in Europe and superseded the indigenous Neanderthals. So in the end we all are Africans. ;-) Your Slavic Comonwealth is only a myth!

News / Does Poland support the idea of Slavic unity? [129]

The idea of panslavism is from the penultimate century, where people and nations where categorized by language. There may be a close relationship between the slavonic languages, but culturally the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks are definitely closer to Hungarians, Austrians and Germans than to Russians or Bulgarians for instance.

And regarding origin I would claim that the modern Polish people are at least as related to Western European people as to Russians. Just imagine how many German settlers came to Poland in the Middle Ages. Most of them became part of the Polish nation very soon just like many people from Eastern Germany (Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania and Saxony) have Slavonic ancestors.

So why shoud Poles aspire a Union with Russia just because the Polish and Russian language are related? There is not very much Russia can offer to be honest.

And my advice to you is you should update your way of looking at people. It may be good to categorize languages by origin and similarities but this does not necessarily mean that the people are genetically related or even if they are that nations feel affinity because of that fact. Or do you think that Dutchs, Luxembourgers, Swiss and the Skandinavian people want to live in a Union with Germany alone?

And let's be honest: Almost every slavic speaking nation was part of the Russian dominated Eastern Bloc from 1945 to 1990 and every nation exept Russia was glad to leave it in 1990.