Category: Articles

“[…] there are no more occupiers. We’re our own masters and hosts,” rejoiced Warsaw politician and columnist Ignacy Baliński in November 1918. But Poland’s newly regained freedom still had to be defended against Russia – just as Ukraine does today. “Life goes on with astonishing haste. […] Something is happening every hour,” noted Maria Dąbrowska […]

Freedom and independence seem synonymous, except that the former is more readily associated with personal freedom, the latter with states or nations. The fundamental question we are faced with today is whether the two represent a good in itself or a means to an end. But to understand freedom correctly, we must first differentiate between […]

On the 3rd of May each year the Poles celebrate the anniversary of the passing of their 1791 constitution, the first such document of its kind in Europe and only the second in the world. An enthusiastic crowd thronged Świętojańska Street in Warsaw’s Old Town that day. A whole cross-section of Polish society was present […]

“You have your principles, we have structural funds” – whose words are these? They were uttered by the French president François Hollande in 2017. From his perspective, the “you” referred to the new EU members states from Central and Eastern Europe, whereas the “we” stood for the countries of the so-called Old Europe. Fateful words […]