Publications

Since 2008 a more realistic approach has become an interesting trend in the foreign policy of various Western countries towards Russia. The declared pragmatism of the governments in Moscow, Washington, Warsaw and Berlin, and the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis have all led to a chain of attempts to "reset" Russian-Western relations.
Polish-Russian relations have also become a subject for experimenting with "reset" by tackling the most difficult topic in international relations - the treatment of the often ambivalent historical legacy of mutual ties. This is only one of the reasons why Russian-Polish relations deserve special attention.
This paper seeks not only to clarify the historical background and processes within the "reset" policy, but primarily to examine ways of evaluating the balance of negative and positive results of the "reset" policy, and find out reasons behind trends dominating in Russian-Polish relations today. Our general thesis is that the idea of rapprochment between Warsaw and Moscow is currently in decline, due to the policies of both sides. A more interesting question in this regard would probably be not what Polish and Russian governments should do now or in the near future, but what lessons can be drawn from the story of Russian-Polish rapprochement for both countries' foreign policies in general.