Poland’s Left Out On a Limb

He shares the view that Putin has initiated an illegal and heinous war against Ukraine. Yet he's quick to add that it is the West that has sinned with years of ignoring and not listening to Russia. Instead of arming the Ukrainians or imposing sanctions, which have negative effects on ordinary Russians, the West should even now continue to pursue diplomacy, he argues.

Such an attitude is not so strange. A similar tone effectively minimising Russia's responsibility for the war has been played out across Europe's left. Academics, including Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, as well as many Western left-leaning politicians, keep blaming the unprovoked invasion on the blood-thirsty nature of capitalism and the eastward expansion of NATO, rather than Vladimir Putin's authoritarian and revisionistic instincts.

"Current Russia is a capitalistic oligarchy and not an easy partner," Wisniowski says. "But the narrative that it is an unequivocally hostile country, an immanent evil, raises my objection. I oppose racism and hatred towards Russia's citizens, culture and Russian civilisation."

Wisniowski's views may indeed echo the voices of the mainstream global left. However, in Poland they're somewhat of a rarity.

"These opinions are on the margin of the debate and mean absolutely nothing," says Jakub Majmurek, a columnist for Krytyka Polityczna, a circle of left-wing intellectuals gathered around a journal of the same title.

Maciej Konieczny (L) and Robet Biedron (R) from the Left bloc attend a press conference in the Sejm headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, 17 October 2019. EPA-EFE/Tomasz Gzell Standing alone

Unlike many of its counterparts in the West, Poland's mainstream left - which is constituted around the Lewica (Left)...