Rafał Martyniak Blog

We can consider the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as the beginning of Polish geopolitical thought. It was then that prominent Polish intellectuals tried to understand the peculiarities of Poland’s position in Europe and the world. Our country was severely affected by the partitions, and after the defeat of the January Uprising, the search for the reasons for the failures began in intellectual circles.

One of the forerunners of Polish geopolitical thought was Oskar Żebrowski (1809-1883). His publications entitled “Poland. A general outline of the causes of the rise and fall of the former Polish state,” we can consider the first Polish book to use a geopolitical approach. Poland’s borders as he envisioned them were to reach the Dvina and Dnieper rivers in the east, the Oder River in the west, the Baltic Sea in the north and the Black Sea coast in the south.

Another of the Polish geopoliticians was the prominent Polish geographer Eugeniusz Romer (1871-1954). He played a key role in establishing the borders of the Second Republic after World War I, providing expert opinions and maps that supported the Polish delegation at the Versailles Conference. He was the author of the groundbreaking “Geographical Atlas” and creator of modern Polish cartography. His work combined physical geography with political analysis, making him one of the forerunners of Polish geopolitics. He is called the “father of Polish geopolitics.”

The leading figure of the Polish national movement before World War I was Roman Dmowski (1864-1939). He created a geopolitical work entitled “Germany, Russia and the Polish Question,” where he assumed the inevitability of a German-Polish conflict. He criticized both German expansionist policies and Russian authoritarianism, pointing out that both powers posed a threat to Polish independence. Dmowski sought to show how Poland could take advantage of international tensions to gain allies in the struggle for independence. In particular, he points to the need for cooperation with France and Great Britain.

Adolf Bochenski (1909 – 1944) criticized Dmowski for treating Germany as Poland’s eternal enemy, arguing that foreign policy is dynamic and contingent on circumstances. He was a representative of political realism in geopolitics. He stressed the need to maintain a balance of power between Germany and the Soviet Union so that Poland could avoid domination by either power. Bochenski was a proponent of cool political analysis, which made him one of the more sober-minded theorists of Polish geopolitics in the interwar period.

Leszek Moczulski (1930-2021) was one of the most important contemporary Polish geopoliticians and historians. In his work he combined historical knowledge with the analysis of Poland’s geopolitical conditions, promoting a realistic approach to international politics. His book Geopolitics: Power in Time and Space (1999) was one of the first works to introduce the field into Polish scientific debate after the fall of communism. Moczulski saw Poland as a key country in the region, whose strategic location between Germany and Russia determines the need for an active and thoughtful foreign policy. He advocated strengthening alliances within Central and Eastern Europe and cooperation with the West as a counterweight to potential threats from its eastern neighbors. His works significantly influenced the development of geopolitical thought in Poland in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.