After the scandal caused by the death of two residents of Poland from the explosion of an unidentified missile (most likely a Ukrainian air defense missile that accidentally hit Polish territory while trying to repel a Russian missile attack), Vesti Nedeli showed a “historical” story that Poland had behaved for centuries aggressively, tried to plant Catholicism in neighboring lands and has always been an enemy of Russia. The story says , in part:
“We must understand that this is a purposeful Polish mentality: polonization, catholicization and equating everyone with the same brush. And the most important Pole is the gentry. He is pan. And all the rest are second-class people,” said Alexei Plotnikov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, member of the Association of World War II Historians.
Polish expansion to the East would culminate at the beginning of the 17th century. Taking advantage of the Russian Troubles, the Polish king Sigismund III decided to completely subjugate the lands of the Muscovite state and seize the Russian throne. Blessing his crusade, the Pope will send the Polish king a sword consecrated in the Vatican. Thanks to the betrayal of part of the Moscow nobility, which the people called the Seven Boyars, in the fall of 1610, the Polish-Lithuanian troops entered Moscow and captured the Kremlin. It was possible to knock them out of there only after 2 years by the forces of the People's Militia, assembled by Minin and Pozharsky. <…>
On the eve of World War II, the leaders of Poland not only took an active part in the division of Czechoslovakia, but also offered Hitler military assistance in the campaign against the Soviet Union and even dreamed of a joint parade with the Germans on Red Square.
“The Poles, due to some peculiarity of the Polish mentality, which very often let them down in history and, I think, will still let them down, for some reason they staked absolutely on the wrong people. For some reason, they believed that Poland is the navel of Europe. She is the most honest, the most sacrificial, the most noble. Gentry pride. Poland is the hyena of Europe. Let's remember who said it. We didn't say. Churchill said it. He captured this inner quality of the Polish soul. I don’t want to say anything about the whole people, but the soul of the gentry is very bad, so vile. Snatch a piece quietly so that everyone owes you, ”said Alexei Plotnikov.”
The phrase about the "hyena of Europe" is actually a distorted quote from Churchill's War Memoirs:
"And now Great Britain comes forward and leads France to guarantee the integrity of Poland – the same Poland that, with the appetite of a hyena, only six months ago joined in the plunder and destruction of the Czechoslovak state."
It relates to a single shameful historical episode, when in 1938 Poland, taking advantage of the weakness of Czechoslovakia, annexed the small Teszyn region, where ethnic Poles lived compactly. Later, Polish President Lech Kaczynski, apologizing to the Czech people, called it a sin, after which "one can hardly count on forgiveness." The interpretation of this phrase as an assessment of the entire historical role of the Polish state is clearly the work of numerous Russian propagandists .
And the history of the "crusade" of Sigismund III looks like this. In 1603, when the Rurik dynasty was interrupted in Rus' and Tsar Boris Godunov, appointed by the Zemsky Sobor, ruled, an adventurer appeared in Poland, surrounded by the Orthodox Prince Adam Vishnevetsky, posing as the miraculously saved son of Ivan the Terrible Dmitry, who was actually killed in 1591. Vishnevetsky managed to convince King Sigismund that it would be beneficial to support Dmitry, who has more rights to the Moscow throne than Boris. Having received a promise from False Dmitry to transfer Smolensk and Chernigov-Seversk land to Poland, in 1605 Sigismund began a campaign against Moscow.
False Dmitry converted to Catholicism, probably in order to marry the daughter of the governor, the Polish senator Marina Mniszek. This could hardly have been a political decision, since the Mnishek family was not noble enough for a pretender to the throne. After that, he turned to the Pope with a letter, about which the leading Russian historian Nikolai Kostomarov writes as follows:
“Demetrius wrote a letter to the pope, but so deftly that there was neither an explicit acceptance of Catholicism, nor a positive promise for his people: everything was limited to ambiguous expressions of disposition. Thus, if the Catholics could interpret his words in their favor, then Demetrius left himself the opportunity to interpret them in the sense of tolerance of the Roman Catholic confession in line with other confessions in his state.
In April 1605, the extremely unpopular Boris Godunov died, his 16-year-old son Fyodor became king, but the majority believed that the throne should go to "Dmitry", whose rights were doubted by few. In July, as a result of a boyar conspiracy, Fyodor and his mother, Boris's widow, were killed; the boyars turned to the "legitimate king" with an invitation to the throne. The Moscow army, which before that had not shown serious resistance to the detachments of False Dmitry, which consisted mainly of Poles and Don Cossacks, swore allegiance to him, and on July 30, the Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius crowned him king. During his short reign, False Dmitry maintained good relations with the pope, but, according to Kostomarov, “in the letters of Dimitri to the pope that have come down to us, there is not even a hint resembling a promise to introduce Catholicism in Russian land,” and the pope criticized him for the fact that he "surrounds himself with heretics and disobeys pious men."
After the murder of False Dmitry in May 1606, the head of the conspirators, the actual organizer of the murder, the boyar Vasily Shuisky, became king. He tried to fight the Polish detachments that came to Rus' with False Dmitry, but the troops were defeated by supporters of the new impostor, False Dmitry II. At the same time, Sigismund III laid siege to Smolensk. In 1610, Tsar Vasily was overthrown, power, in the absence of a legitimate claimant to the throne, briefly passed to the government headed by Fedor Mstislavsky, known as the Seven Boyars. There were practically no combat-ready troops in the Seven Boyars, and detachments of False Dmitry II were advancing on Moscow from Kaluga. In this situation, the Seven Boyars decided to enlist the support of the Poles and entered into negotiations with Sigismund about calling his son Vladislav to the throne of Moscow. Evgeny Anisimov, a modern Russian historian, chief researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, describes these events as follows:
“The idea of inviting Prince Vladislav began to win more and more supporters. The Seven Boyars, meeting public opinion, concluded on August 17, 1610 with the commander of the Polish king Sigismund, hetman Zolkiewski, an agreement on calling the king's son, 15-year-old prince Vladislav, to the Russian throne. The Russian boyars wanted Vladislav to convert to Orthodoxy, marry a Russian, and lift the siege of Smolensk. Zholkiewski did not promise all this, but he undertook to send a representative Russian embassy to the king for negotiations. Muscovites swore allegiance to Tsar Vladislav for seven weeks in the Kremlin. The oath became a genuine expression of the people's will: 8-12 thousand Muscovites a day entered the Assumption Cathedral, took the oath of allegiance to Tsar Vladislav, kissed the cross and the Gospel. And so 300 thousand people passed through the Kremlin! Meanwhile, the Kremlin itself and other important centers of Moscow began to be occupied by regular Polish troops. Soon the capital was actually occupied by the Polish army. This happened on September 20–21, 1610 <…>
Why were the boyars in such a hurry to swear an oath to Vladislav, why did they bind hundreds of thousands of people with sacred oaths, obliging them to obey an unknown ruler? They, as often happens in history, took care of themselves first of all. In the troubled era of the interregnum, the boyars most of all feared the capricious mob of Moscow and False Dmitry II, who, inspired by the defeat of the Russian army near Klushino, made a rush to Moscow. At any moment he could break into the capital and "sit down on the kingdom" – the impostor in Moscow would have found many supporters. In a word, the Seven Boyars could not delay. The Polish forces, on the other hand, seemed to the boyars a reliable shield against the robbers of the Tushinsky thief and the unfaithful Moscow mob. After the Poles agreed in principle to the election of Vladislav, all other problems seemed unimportant to the boyars and easily resolved at a personal meeting with Sigismund.
According to other sources, an agreement on the transition of Vladislav to Orthodoxy was nevertheless reached. The outstanding Russian historian of the first half of the 20th century Sergei Platonov wrote :
“When Tsar Vasily was overthrown, [the Polish commander, crown hetman] Zholkievsky, having come to Moscow, immediately informed the Muscovites about the Tushino agreement [that is, the agreement of part of the supporters of False Dmitry II with the Poles] and demanded that Vladislav be recognized as king. The Moscow boyars themselves desired the accession of Vladislav and thought it was to convene elected representatives from the cities to elect him as king. But it was impossible to wait for the congress of the elected, since the Thief [False Dmitry II], standing near Moscow, raised the Moscow mob in his favor, and things went to open civil strife. Having gathered at the cathedral those who could hastily be found in the capital itself, the boyars elected Vladislav as a cathedral, drew up a special letter defining his rights and obligations, and entered into negotiations with Zholkievsky. According to the conditions drawn up by the boyars, Vladislav had to convert to Orthodoxy and rule the state through the boyars, convening a Zemsky Sobor in the most important cases. The Muscovite state ensured its complete independence and isolation from Poland and Lithuania, conducted a special foreign policy and retained its former internal system. Zholkevsky accepted all the conditions and took the oath for Vladislav, and the Muscovites kissed the cross to the prince. So hastily and hastily the election of Vladislav took place (in August 1610) ”
In this situation, fearing the capture of the Moscow Kremlin by False Dmitry, the Seven Boyars invited Polish troops there. Some modern Russian historians regard this as a betrayal, but in fact it was done to support a legally invited and quite popular pretender to the throne, to whom many have already sworn allegiance. However, the agreement broke down; Vladislav, who was expected in Moscow, never came to the ceremony of baptism into Orthodoxy and the wedding to the kingdom. Sigismund did not agree to the wedding of his son and instead proposed his candidacy as the regent-ruler of Rus', but this was clearly an unrealistic idea. As a result, the Seven Boyars were overthrown, and Mikhail Romanov was elected tsar. Later, in 1617, Vladislav tried to overthrow Mikhail, whom he considered a usurper, and regain the Moscow throne, but he could only capture the Smolensk, Chernigov and Seversk lands.
One way or another, all these events are least of all similar to an attempt by the Poles to convert Rus' to Catholicism, and even more so to “Polish” it. In troubled times, after the Rurik dynasty was interrupted, both False Dmitry I, supported by Poland, and the Polish prince Vladislav were perceived in Rus' as popular contenders for the throne; there is no reliable information about the intentions to annex Rus' to the Commonwealth, and even more so to plant Polish orders there.