Poles’ Success Not Echoed by All Neighbors

Signs in Cyrillic letters hawking furniture, auto parts and rooms for rent are an amusing reminder on Poland’s eastern border of just how much the world has changed.

“It’s really funny how people now react to the sight of Russian, which we last saw so openly during the Soviet occupation after World War II,” says Jaroslaw Guzy, a former deputy defense minister who now runs a security think tank.

Fiercely independent Poland’s relationship with its Slavic brothers in the Soviet Union used to be one of silent resentment--from the effort to impose atheism on its devoutly Catholic people to the enforced camaraderie that compelled farmers and factory workers to deliver their best output to Moscow.

In the new, post-Communist world, it is the Poles themselves who are putting up signs in Russian. Visitors from the east mean business.

“Now they are welcome, as they give people a sense of positive connection with those across the border,” Guzy says.

Bridging the distance between Germany and the former Soviet Union, the 375-mile expanse of Poland graphically illustrates the gamut of post-Communist experience.

To the west, Poland’s Communist-era comrades in neighboring East Germany simply erased their country from the map and are rebuilding ties of language and culture. On the eastern border, Russia and its partners in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have fallen into conflict and despair. Meanwhile, Poland has propelled itself to the head of the pack among the new democracies of Eastern Europe.

Warsaw, the Polish capital, is a beehive of commerce, with soaring new skyscrapers and avenues clogged with the cherished fruits of labor--personal cars. Kielbasa sputters on grills and soft ice cream flows from kiosks. Mimes and musicians delight strollers in the Old Town.

The veneer of prosperity gets thinner along the 150-mile drive from Warsaw to this flat, dusty town on the border with Belarus, which is now the eastern frontier of an expanded NATO. But living standards anywhere in Poland contrast sharply with those in the unreformed former Soviet republic across the border.

Invaded, plundered, divided and conquered throughout most of its existence, Poland is a country not inclined to take its recent tranquillity for granted.

The clash between NATO forces and Yugoslavia over Kosovo this spring drove home the benefit of being under the security umbrella of the only surviving superpower.

“No one fears that Belarus will suddenly invade us. Most people realize that all of the CIS countries are economically weakened and therefore militarily weakened,” says Terespol Mayor Zbigniew Banach.

Peter Havlik, deputy director of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, says dangers stem from new divisions in Europe--between East and West, as well as within Central Europe. “Poland and Hungary are catching up with Western Europe, while the former Soviet republics, Bulgaria and Romania are falling behind,” he says. “Basically, the farther east you go, the worse the situation.”

It doesn’t get much worse than Belarus, where President Alexander G. Lukashenko’s reversion to Stalinism has made his 10 million people even poorer than Russians.

But along the Polish-Belorussian border, a proliferation of grass-roots trading reflects a gut-level understanding of the region’s enmeshed security, culture and economy. In Terespol, many of the 6,000 residents are somehow involved in small-scale smuggling.

The border actually is less rigidly patrolled now than a decade ago, when the two countries were on the same side ideologically. Soviet authorities had tightened the border in response to the rise of Poland’s independent Solidarity trade union in the early 1980s.

The relaxation of border controls when Poland broke away from Moscow initially brought mostly crime and black-market commerce. Police Chief Wladyslaw Filatiuk says that gave many Poles the impression that freedom damaged their security.

But corruption and organized crime have subsided because the more attractive markets are now farther west, and Poles are better able to put the gains and losses in perspective. Poland’s economic ties have so diversified that it is now a major market for goods from the European Union, as well as from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

As Poland seeks to lighten up the gray fringes of its economy in its bid for membership in the EU, the cross-border trade has contracted, hurting both sides.

Banach insists that Poles, especially those along the eastern border, are less interested in political alliances than in putting food on the table. And those living along the border say they feel no change in personal relations, even though NATO membership now divides Poland from its Soviet-era allies.

Stanislawa Rafalska is an example. While never living more than a few miles from her birthplace, she has endured shifting borders and a dizzying series of political and military allegiances in her 72 years. “The land on the other side of the border used to belong to Poland--I was born there,” she says.

Each morning, the unemployed and underpaid from Belarus arrive with meager wares that command slightly higher prices in Poland.

Nina Solkova lost her job as a baker due to Lukashenko’s economic meddling.

“My husband’s pension is worth about $24 a month. We couldn’t hope to get by on so little, so we buy what there is there and bring it here to sell,” said the 54-year-old, who comes to Terespol twice a month from Gomel.

Like many Poles who appreciate the daily influx of cut-rate food, cigarettes, vodka and clothing, 44-year-old Danuta Mikitczuk, a mother of two unemployed sons, helps shield the illegal traders from customs crackdowns by signaling the approach of unfamiliar cars or shoppers. Each suspicious arrival triggers a scramble at the tiny outdoor market two blocks from the police station as sellers hide vodka and cigarettes.

“They have to come here and do this. There is no work in their country, and even a dollar can make a difference in whether they can feed their children,” says Mikitczuk.

Lena, a 30-year-old Belorussian widow so cowed that she fears giving her full name, acknowledges humiliation at having to scrounge out a living as one of the “ants,” as the desperate-but-industrious cross-border traders are known here. But her teacher’s salary amounts to only $22 a month, and she is now the sole support for her 4-year-old daughter.

“They look at us with different eyes now that they are part of NATO,” said the emaciated mother, whose lined face and slack shoulders exude resignation. “I don’t feel threatened by this expanding alliance--I feel diminished.”

Political problems caused by Poland’s economic vibrancy and its priority status for membership in the European Union can be surmounted at the grass-roots level, said Andrzej Olichwiruk, chief of the border guard detachment for Terespol.

“Politics is one thing but people are another,” he said. “The mutual dependence acts as a buffer.”

Although Belarus poses little threat, the new “haves” such as Poland are best advised to draw Western sympathies to the plight of “have-nots,” Guzy said.

He noted that Russia’s ties with nationalist regimes like those of Lukashenko and Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic help Moscow retain influence, even if only as a spoiler.

“Russia did a lot to push us toward NATO,” Guzy said. “But we cannot leave it as a black hole. The West needs a policy on how to deal with Russia and the rest of the east, but I fear if they have one at all, it is to ignore them.”