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The title of your book evokes strong emotions but some sceptics will say - "well, the title was invented for marketing purposes". Isn't Empire of Evil a bit of an exaggeration? Were the Soviets in 1920 truly such an Empire of Evil?
Well the title comes from 1983, so in this sense it is an anachronism, but the phrase used by President Ronald Reagan at his speech at the annual evangelical convention in Orlando, a phrase that later entered history as a very important phrase. In 1983 it seemed a little bit exaggerated, a little bit overstated. But the justification of the concept of the Empire of Evil provided by Ronald Reagan and one which I write extensively about the in the introduction to this book in order to explain the title, answers the doubts which you referred to. Well, the justification of the concept of the Empire of Evil refers to the very essence of the communist system based on the communist ideology and to the association with moral valuation, which requires the distinction between good and evil. The blurring of this valuation and the attempt to reverse the signs of moral valuation has a fundamental place in communist ideology. In his speech, Ronald Reagan referred to the considerations presented by the great English writer C.S. Lewis, who is probably known to many listeners from "The Chronicles of Narnia," but is also known from the text to which Ronald Reagan referred, i.e. "Letters of the Old Devil to the Young," where a vision of evil is presented, which is not only born when it becomes visible as in Auschwitz or in the Katyń pits, but is born in the secluded offices of power. The ideological authority, where it is decided that people can be killed en masse in the name of some beautiful idea. Beautiful with or without quotation marks. An idea - as justification for mass violence.
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The source of word empire lies in a Latin word, which simply means the power to command others. This is a military word, referring to the tradition of ancient Rome, which was later transferred to a state, imperial structure that gives the centre the power to command the periphery.
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In your description, the geopolitical environment of our homeland at the time was not favourably inclined towards the country that had recently regained its independence. Even those we consider our allies, the Western Allies, the United States, were not that happy with what we were doing. Actually, one country, a little country was trying to extend a helping hand to us. And that was Hungary.
Indeed, it was so, that Poland as a "Congress Poland" so called since the Congress of Vienna, was such a tiny creature, a dwarf, attached to the Russian Empire, under the sceptre of the Russian Tsars, and existed for a hundred years under the name of the Kingdom of Poland. This Poland limited to 120,000 square kilometres plus perhaps Western Galicia, or the area of Kraków, was something that would not be particularly disturbing to our neighbours.
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Poland had to face a conflict in which it found support from Hungary. Very important support at a crucial moment in the summer of 1920, when the Hungarians sent, themselves in a very difficult situation, a huge transport of ammunition as well as rifles that could be used in the last, crucial moments of war with the Bolsheviks.
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rozmawiał Marcin Bąk
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