Interbellum Poland remains an important example of a polyethnic state and society in European history. Its short existence between the wars does not diminish the importance of its many peculiar aspects, nor does the fact that it can be defined as an unsuccessful example in organizing, institutionally and socially, a polyethnic community. The theoretical definition of the Polish experience has puzzled historians in the past. Polish historiography substantially ignored or steadfastly marginalized the nationalities in the Second Republic and in earlier historical times, an attitude echoed by Marxist historians in post-bellum Poland. Now, indirectly, the topic is attracting attention again as a consequence of the new problematic caused by current European historical events both in the East and West.

At the formation of the second Polish republic in 1918 the Communist Workers Party of Poland (KPRP) displayed total disregard for the Polish national feelings. Polish communists actively opposed the creation of the new Polish state which they thought would impede the march of revolution from Russia to the West. They saw Polish national liberation as an expression of a bourgeois ideology hostile to the interests of the Polish workers. True national liberation, they maintained, could only be achieved by the way of the international proletarian revolution.

With the end of the Cold War, the Great Game in Central Asia has heated up once again. Once more, Central Asia has become a place for international rivalry. But this time the Great Game is not between Britain and Russia. In this second half of the Great Game, Turkey, Russia, Iran, India, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Israel are all vying for influence. China, the key player, however, is left out of the game in most accounts and is overlooked as a Central Asian power. Moreover, it is forgotten that China won the first half of the Great Game, at least as far as Xinjiang is concerned. It is my contention that China will catch everyone by surprise once again and win the second half of the Great Game in Central Asia; the Uighurs of Xinjiang will play a predominant role in this victory.

Nationalism became the bane of the Soviet empire. The disintegration of the USSR due to nationalistic forces has occurred with a swiftness that few, if any, Western Sovietologists anticipated. The four Central Asian states, with high rates of population growth and a strategic location at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, now acquire a new significance. Of these Uzbekistan, with a population of twenty million, seventy percent of whom belong to the titular national group, looms largest in terms of demographic and economic potential. The population of Uzbekistan is almost twice as large as the other nascent Central Asian nations combined, and despite severe ecological damage, produces almost two thirds of the cotton in the region, along with natural gas, gold and other minerals.

For fifty years the Soviet Bloc constituted one pole of an essentially bipolar world power distribution. Although not unprecedented (consider Imperial Germany's defiance of most of the world during 1917–18, or later phases of Napoleon's challenge to Europe), bipolarism has usually been very brief. The sheer length of time the Soviet-American confrontation dominated world politics created, on the contrary, mind-sets and reflexes which only a conscious effort can overcome.

The Communist movement in interbellum Poland was a small political entity that did not constitute a threat to the power of the state, nor did it become a visible presence since it failed to attract a majority of the working class. The movement, overall, consisted of a number of parties, organizations and groups, usually illegal, but some at times provisionally legal. The Communist Party of Poland - CPP (Komunistyczna Partia Polski - KPP) was the main party, entrusted with the guiding role by the Comintern, and also the umbrella organization and ideological reference point for the Communists throughout the twenty-year existence of the Second Polish Republic. The CPP was originally formed under the name “Communist Workers' Party of Poland” - CWPP, (Komunistyczna Partia Robotnicza Polski-KPRP). In 1920, it briefly took on the designation “Section of the Communist International” of which it was a founding member. By virtue of its name, the Party proclaimed a total proletarian orientation, ignoring the reality of an almost completely agricultural Poland at the time.

The official interpretation of the histories of the nations of the USSR emerged between 1934 and 1953 on the basis of decrees signed by Stalin and/or the Central Committee. This interpretation subsumes the histories of the non-Russian Republics within the “history of the USSR” that begins not in 1917 or 1922 in Moscow, but in prehistoric Asia. The official view recognized the non-Russian nations and republics as separate historical entities, yet imposed upon their pasts a Russocentric statist framework while denying the Russians a separate history of the RSFSR. Within this scheme the history of non-Russian nationalities before they became part of the tsarist state was built around the idea of “oppression” of “the people” and their “struggle” against native and foreign ruling classes. Russian and non-Russian “working people” were assumed always to have been “fraternal” while non-Russian political leaders, before and after incorporation, were judged according to their sympathy and/or loyalty to Russia. Russian political and cultural tutelage of non-Russians was stressed and activists in nineteenth-century national movements were labelled “reactionary” if they were not radical socialists. Official historiography admitted that non-Russians suffered political and cultural oppression but not economic colonialism under tsarist rule. In keeping with the logic of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia, the official view argued that tsarist economic development was “progressive” for non-Russians because it centralized production and tied “outlying regions” of the empire to the world market. Accordingly, the non-Russian “national bourgeoisie” were “reactionary” because both threatened the integration supposedly demanded by the forces of production. By contrast, during the twenties and the thirties, Russian/non-Russian relations in the Tsarist Empire were presented in terms of Lenin's Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Historians argued that tsarist centralism impeded the development in non-Russian provinces and that “national liberation movements” were “progressive” responses to Russian economic colonialism.

Over the past several decades the discipline of political science has, perhaps, degraded its competence and hence its eligibility for handling this issue by saddling itself with a flawed language, or, rather, flawed use of language for doing so. At any rate, that is true of political science as written and taught in English. Not that the other social-science disciplines are in better shape (perhaps History is). Still, political scientists have, for example, committed the following intellectual offenses:

“In modern or transitional societies, politicized ethnicity has become the crucial principle of political legitimization and delegitimization of systems, states, regimes and governments.” While accepting Rothschild's formulation in general, most political analysts did not expect it to be realized in the USSR so soon in its variant of “delegitimization.”

In a time of international crisis, a small group of Polish Communist intellectuals on Soviet territory, with approval from the Stalinist government, harnessed the national myths of a people faced with total destruction in the name of fascist Aryan supremacy. These intellectuals, ethnic Poles and Polish Jews, rejected, revitalized, or revolutionized old national myths and created a new mythology. They coordinated their efforts closely with the anti-Hitlerite National Front Strategy adopted by the Comintern following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941. They sincerely, albeit naïvely, believed that their creation manifestly assured the Poles of their national identity. They also believed that the new mythology promised not only the survival of an honorable people but also the rebirth of their state in a brighter future in solidarity with fellow Slavs, and ultimately with the Stalinist Soviet state which they admired.