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Comment by hiAndrewQuinn | Hacker News Reader

Wait, do Polish people not consider themselves part of the West?

Genuine question. I've met and worked with quite a few Poles since moving to the EU and my current takeaway is that it's in a really interesting fusion time between West, East, and some more mysterious third thing.

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"The West" is a very murky sort of definition. Arguably the colloquial "Cultural West" is what is on the Western side of what used to be called the Iron Curtain. Poland was definitely on the Eastern side of that.

I think being strongly Catholic draws Poland into the Western sphere in spite of the Cold War divisions.

Iron Curtain was a political, not cultural border. Western civilization usually includes all European catholic countries, i. e. also Poland. (Huntington is a notorious example)

>Western civilization usually includes all European catholic countries, i. e. also Poland. (Huntington is a notorious example)

What about European Orthodox countries? Does civilization only tie to catholic religion?

Only person I know to try to actually sit down and draw civilization borders was Huntington and put the Orthodox on a separate but linked civilization to the Western world, but even he admitted that's arguable.

Although even then Poland counts as West.

It’s no coincidence that the term “Eastern Orthodox” is widely used for that communion of churches; while the Orthodox world is still traditionally considered part of Christendom, it is still distinguished from the “West”.

Yeah of course it was a political border but it absolutely had cultural consequences.

You can literally see the difference in Berlin on either side of the wall. The Eastern side is similar but still different to the Western, culturally.

Even the architecture is still quite different between the two sides.

You can see stronger cultural differences within western Germany (or any country, really), e.g. between Bavaria and North Germany.

One of the classic dividing lines between East and West, the Hajnal line, goes straight through modern Poland. It’s closer to the historic border between Poland and Germany though.

> One of the classic dividing lines between East and West, the Hajnal line

Hajnal line is pretty controversial / outright rejected by many academics.

Irrespective of whether it is true or not, the idea that this should be somehow defining the border of (Aryan) West and (Slavic/Untermensch) East was pushed by Nazis. Otherwise it's just one line out of thousands without special merit.

Hajnal himself was a refugee from Nazi Germany of Hungarian Jewish descent; it’s offensive and glib of you to dismiss him, of all people, as a Nazi.

On the other hand an American (migrant) doing an about face about a group of people based on preconceived notions is completely expected.

Historically, Poland was both and is a transition region between central and Eastern Europe.

Even when Poland was conquered, it was still the interface between a central/western empire (Reich Germany) an eastern empire (Russia) and an in-between empire (Austria-Hungary) but I would certainly call a city like Białystok ‘eastern’, but not necessarily Warsaw, Krakow or Wrocław.

The trouble is that what counts as ‘Eastern’ Europe can be demarcated by several large historical events (Mongols, flavour of Christianity, Communism, etc) so a definitive answer is hard to give.

It is complicated. Most people in Poland do consider themselves part of Europe, sometimes even part of the West. At the same time people in Poland often contrast the West (as in Western Europe and US) with Poland and perceive west as something different and better. It is sort of post colonial mentality but with a twist, because it is not tied to race. This idealised “West” is often very far from real situation in Western Europe. On the other part of the spectrum you got polish conservatives who see west as degraded and fallen. They used to say things like: France no longer exists. Meaning France is not what it used to be; it is not true west because they lost the spirit of real west.

I guess it was a shorthand for western Europe.

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