Imperial borders still shape politics in Poland

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POLES VOTED in droves this week to depose the populist-right government that has ruled the country since 2015. But as some things change, others stay the same. Observers once again remarked that Poland’s modern electoral maps displayed a familiar pattern: the east voted for the incumbent Law and Justice (PiS) party, whereas the west supported various opposition groups, mostly the liberal Civic Coalition (KO). More remarkable, however, is that rather than following a gradual gradient from east to west, modern Poles’ political loyalties remain firm right up to the edge of a historical line that cuts down the middle of the country (see map).

From 1795 to 1918 Russia, Austria (later Austria-Hungary) and Prussia (which was absorbed into Germany in 1871) controlled the land that now constitutes Poland. The borders that used to separate those empires have vanished from world maps, but still divide the landscape. On the ground, paved Prussian roads dissolve into gravel at old border crossings. From the air, the former Habsburg and Russian territories look like a patchwork mosaic of small farming plots, whereas the west is divided into sprawling fields designed to facilitate mechanised agriculture.

The stubborn persistence of these ancient borders—with the big exceptions of large eastern cities, like Warsaw, where younger and better-heeled voters push up the liberal vote—reflects the legacy of different 19th-century development trajectories. The west formed part of a rapidly industrialising empire, and today has a dense railway network to show for it. Meanwhile, most of the east belonged to tsarist Russia, where serfdom remained legal until 1861. By 1900 incomes in what is now western Poland were five times higher than in the east. This gap remains today: Poland’s four eastern provinces are all among the EU’s poorest 20 sub-national regions. Young people growing up in the east quickly move to larger cities, seeking education and private-sector jobs. Those who feel left behind have flocked to PiS, which offers both nationalist rhetoric and monetary hand-outs.

Another potential cause of the enduring political divide is population transfers following the second world war. The Soviet Union claimed a chunk of eastern Poland as the spoils of victory, while Germany was forced to relinquish its own eastern borderlands to Poland. The Polish government responded by resettling millions of people from the territory it lost to the areas it gained. Separated from their families’ fields and villages, these “repatriates” developed a more open and cosmopolitan identity, and grew less receptive to fist-thumping nationalism. Meanwhile, Catholicism remained strongest in Poland’s historic eastern heartland, which developed a fiery sense of pride and suspiciousness of change.■