Pro-Russian Organizations in Poland after 1986

Agents of Chaos

Przemysław Witkowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040615140
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book shows how, for 35 years, Russia has been supporting its agents of influence and allies in a seemingly highly hostile society – Poland. Conspiracy narratives, ideological harmony, and old alliances from the period of the Eastern Bloc are primarily the glue that binds the Russian network of influence. In-depth journalistic investigations, spy trials, and embarrassing email leaks – here, you can find many answers to how Moscow works when it wants to influence the political situation in third countries, in this case, Poland. The Polish case study of the "pro-Russian camp" shows how the Kremlin operates in NATO's eastern flank, wanting to increase political polarization, supporting radicalism, and strengthening the message of extremists, from both the right and the left. This book tells us what political circles Moscow's Polish allies come from, their goals, and their beliefs. It also shows their international alliances, outlining the Russian network of influence in the European Union and more broadly. The author also tries to impose on this set of political entities a network of concepts, doctrines, and theories the Moscow center uses to show permanent mechanisms of action. As a result, this book ceases to be just a case study of Poland and becomes a much more helpful study, allowing the use of patterns obtained from many years of research summarized in this publication to understand Russia's influence in other regions. Having examined the reasons for cooperation with Russia – ideological, geopolitical, and historical – in a country as reluctant to form alliances as Poland and understanding the mechanisms of selection and influence on such actors by the Kremlin, we can transfer this knowledge to understand the pattern to other countries. It will be of interest to researchers of Russian and Polish politics, right wing nationalism, and hybrid warfare.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: “Near Abroad” – Mechanics of the Activities of the Russian Federation’s Secret Services in Eastern European Countries with Particular Emphasis on the Example of Poland
• 1 “Kremlins Orphans” – The History of the Activities of the Polish pro-Russian Milieu from the Second Half of the 1980s to Poland’s Accession to the European Union (2004)
• 2 “Quiet, Honest People with a Small Camera”: pro-Russian National Communist Milieu in Poland
• 3 “Slavic Unity and Revolutionary Myths”: Self-Defense and the Change – Main Polish pro-Russian Organizations Referring to National Communism, National Bolshevism, Pan-Slavism, neo-Paganism, and Revolutionary Nationalism
• 4 “The Camp of Great Russia”: Activity of the Camp of Great Poland Group in Anti-Ukrainian Activities
• 5 Changes After the Change: New Parties, Organizations, and Groups Created on the Fall of the Change Party (After 2016)
• 6 “His Excellency Vladimir Putin”: pro-Russian Ultraconservative Liberals in Poland
• 7 “Secret Services, Mafias, Lodges” – Polish pro-Russian Catholic Traditionalists in Poland
• 8 How the Conflict Was Built: Building Polish-Ukrainian Tensions in the Przemyśl Region in 1989–2022 and the Relationship of the Groups Initiating Them With Russia
• 9 Volhynia Remembered: Borderlands-Oriented Organizations and Their Activity in Increasing Ethnic Tensions in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania
• 10 “Project Mayhem”: Polish pro-Russian Non-Governmental Organizations and Protest Movements after 2004
• Conclusions
• Index