In the twentieth century, two world wars and mass genocides, committed by totalitarian regimes, destroyed natural human rights and suppressed people’s personalities, becoming a self-contradiction of civilization. These pan-European processes left their mark on local processes which derived from them. The diffi cult Russian-Polish neighborhood is nothing else but a local manifestation of the pan-European history of the twentieth century.
The situation was diff erent in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. It was then, in the seventeenth century, that Poland gained a predominant role as a mediator in Russia’s attempts to bring its protracted era of Middle Ages to an end. The essence of this phenomenon was embedded in the fact that for Russianness, Polishness was a mirror of contemporary Europeanism, and, at the same time, a model of its adjustment to the culture of their Slavic neighbor. In the eighteenth century, as a result of levelling out the high Russian and Polish culture, the role of the latter as a mediator and a model ceased to give way to equal partnership. The implementation of universal ideas of the Enlightenment era and Poles’ desire to regain independence were understandable and close to the hearts of representatives of the Russian civil society. This very kind of Europeanism connected Russians and Poles in the sphere of culture, and, subsequently, the politics as its derivative.

In the twentieth century, two world wars and mass genocides, committed by totalitarian regimes, destroyed natural human rights and suppressed people’s personalities, becoming a self-contradiction of civilization. These pan-European processes left their mark on local processes which derived from them. The diffi cult Russian-Polish neighborhood is nothing else but a local manifestation of the pan-European history of the twentieth century.
The situation was diff erent in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. It was then, in the seventeenth century, that Poland gained a predominant role as a mediator in Russia’s attempts to bring its protracted era of Middle Ages to an end. The essence of this phenomenon was embedded in the fact that for Russianness, Polishness was a mirror of contemporary Europeanism, and, at the same time, a model of its adjustment to the culture of their Slavic neighbor. In the eighteenth century, as a result of levelling out the high Russian and Polish culture, the role of the latter as a mediator and a model ceased to give way to equal partnership. The implementation of universal ideas of the Enlightenment era and Poles’ desire to regain independence were understandable and close to the hearts of representatives of the Russian civil society. This very kind of Europeanism connected Russians and Poles in the sphere of culture, and, subsequently, the politics as its derivative.