(Based on articles at Niezalezna_pl): 160 years ago, on January 22, 1863, the January Uprising, the largest Polish national uprising in the 19th century against being part of the "Russkiy mir" (Russian World").
Poles have never agreed to let others decide their fate. The 19th-century January Uprising – a heroic guerrilla war against the Russian occupiers – is part of this attitude, wrote Karol Nawrocki, president of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, in a text on the Ukrainian website, Ukrinform.
“Someone will ask why, despite this, the insurgents fought for almost two years, fighting over a thousand battles and skirmishes with the overwhelming Russian army. For the same reasons that many times before and later, Poles decided to take up arms when others wanted to subdue them. Out of disagreement with enslavement, for the preservation of honor and personal dignity. This was already the case in the 18th century when the weakened Commonwealth tried to break free from Russian tutelage. This was the case throughout the 19th century when Poland was fighting to return to the map of the world. And in the 20th century, when it fell victim to two totalitarianisms: German Nazism and Soviet Communism. The freedom we enjoy today was won for a long time only by the generation of "Solidarity" - a great social movement that was born on the wave of the August 1980 strikes," writes Nawrocki. "[...] when Ukraine defends itself against a Russian invasion, we see clearly that freedom is not given once and for all. It still needs to be nurtured and, if necessary, put up a fight."
In turn, the website LB_ua published an article by a Polish historian and Sovietologist, Professor Andrzej Nowak, "Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarusians do not bend their necks."
“The sense and importance of the act of the January insurgents cannot be understood without the historical context of the entire region of Central Europe, today's territory of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus. The dominant aspect, looking at over three hundred years of the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, when it was inhabited and co-created by about ten generations of citizens, remains the tradition of freedom and citizenship, which was shaped by two hundred and several dozen Seyms (Polish parliament), by thousands of regional assemblies" - writes the scholar.
"The deep roots of this tradition meant that people drawing from the spiritual achievements of the Polish-Lithuanian state, brought up by the stories of their ancestors, could not agree to live with a bent neck," - says the professor.
This is why the Polish people support Ukrainians, and that is why Poland is next on the Russian list of countries that need to be destroyed.
