r/poland • u/bllshrfv • 5d ago
[The Economist] Why Poland is becoming less central European and more Baltic
https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/08/28/why-poland-is-becoming-less-central-european-and-more-balticPoland has long been viewed as a central European country.
Yet as its green transition takes hold, and the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine settles across the region, the country’s centre of gravity is starting to move north.
The Baltic Sea’s transformation into a geopolitical flashpoint has boosted the importance of Poland’s ports, which have been booming.
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u/Vhermithrax 5d ago
So are we now part of the Baltic States?
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u/nonpopping 5d ago
The return of the Commonwealth!
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u/kakao_w_proszku 5d ago
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u/nonpopping 5d ago
Alternative History where this changed and instead Sweden became part of the Commonwealth? 🤣
Someone call Whatifalthist or History of Everything Podcast.
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u/GalacticSettler 5d ago
The Commonwealth was fully Eastern Europe though.
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u/nonpopping 5d ago
Well, Lithuania is counted as a Baltic (not nordic or eastern) country, so the joke was more about Poland and Lithuania being together again.
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u/LiteratureFew5805 5d ago
Poland has long been viewed as a central European country
But guys, we are already too good for Central Europe 😉
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u/Wanda7776 5d ago
Idk what kind of drug the author has taken, but I want some.
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u/HadronLicker 5d ago
I don't recommend. The last time I took it, I came to in the middle of banging Syrenka. I still have abrasions down there, her lower half is more like a perch than, say, a trout.
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u/AnalphabeticPenguin 5d ago
Now we only need some South and West stuff and we will become radical central Europe.
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u/MinecraftWarden06 Lubelskie 5d ago
I attended a conference on this at Warsaw University, and the experts said that a major setback is that the Nordics and Baltics are sort of afraid of Poland dominating them with its population and economy. We should build two things - trust, and Rail Baltica.
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u/kakao_w_proszku 5d ago
If our politicians have any brain cells at all they should try to sell this as an advantage. The Nordic countries despite being very rich couldn’t become true heavyweights in European politics like Germany and France due to low demographics, even after adding the Baltic states to the mix. Poland can bring in the mass they need to finally tip the scales.
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u/kakao_w_proszku 5d ago edited 5d ago
We never looked East, and Central Europe has too low of a potential to be more than a meme. That leaves North and West, and the former is more attractive to us due to shared geopolitical interests. Fun times ahead for sure.
Edit: apperentely no one has read the article lol
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u/DefenestrationPraha 5d ago
"Central Europe has too low of a potential to be more than a meme. "
This sort of clashes with the fact that the core of Polish economics and population is far away from the Baltic coast. I like Trojmiasto and Szczecin, but they are small fish compared to the insanely densely populated belt of cities in Silesia and stretching to Krakow. Just consult the map.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8ek3l6/distribution_of_population_in_poland_983x972/
This alone nudges Poland towards economic integration with the countries south of it.
I don't deny the friendship- and security- bonds with the North, though. They absolutely exist and are important.
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u/HearingDifficult7143 5d ago
Like the Baltics has more potential than Central Europe with those small populations and collapsing demographies? Poland is neither a Northern or Western country because you cannot change geography :D
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u/kakao_w_proszku 5d ago edited 5d ago
The article refers to the „Baltic” region as Scandinavia + Baltic states. They may not have the most robust demographics but they’re some of the richest countries on Earth, and we share a similiar outlook on security matters. It would be insanely dumb not to tap into that potential.
Central Europe is fine as a political concept but IMO Poland was always the least fitting member in there, hence I said it has low potential for us. For Hungary and Slovakia Russia is just another large country to make deals with, for us it’s an existential threat we don’t want to have anything to do with. Czechia may soon flip to that side too with the upcoming elections, the current ruling party is very unpopular. In Poland, it doesn’t really matter who is in power since going pro-Russian would be downright suicidal for both the people in power and the country as a whole. We cannot hand-wave Russian imperialism just as easily as the Hungarians do, as someone’s else’s problem to solve.
Again, all of this is mentioned in the article, which apparently no one except me has read (thanks paywall!).
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u/HearingDifficult7143 5d ago
Ok but I dont think anybody would consider Poland "Scandinavian or Baltic" since its not :D There are historical concepts and where you are in the map :D Security wise obviously you have to cooperate but there are other alliances also in Europe in different forms which are not really equal to V4 or the 3 Baltics or Nordics. "Poland was the least fitting there" Idk man Poland was incredibly poor in the 90s and nobody took your country seriously meanwhile Visegrád has existed since hundreds of years where you were a founding member in an alliance with 3 Western slavic nation 😂 Now that you made some development well thats not what Nordics care about but Poland has a great military outlooks and they realized it might be beneficial for them. But I can guarantee you they dont include other nations in that group in most aspects and if you will have a new conservative government in 2027 the moment the elections are over, they will consider you another Hungary. I am a huge fan of the Nordics and would like to live there but Central Europeans shouldn't act like they think about these countries as equals. And on other note you could be the leading nation in V4 (if it would exist) but not in the Scandinavia+Baltics form. And just because I depsise Russia it doesnt mean that I think its an existencial threat to Poland since this country is in NATO which protects the country from Russian imperalism and no, nobody on earth is idiot enough to attack whole Europe with the US
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u/kakao_w_proszku 4d ago edited 4d ago
But I don't want Poland to be considered Baltic/Scandinavian/Nordic/North European/whatever. I just want it to cooperate with likeminded nations wherever possible, no matter their background. If there is a value in pursing a relationship with Baltic/Scandinavian countries, and the article makes a few compelling arguments there is, then I say we should go for it.
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u/oGsMustachio 5d ago
Central Europe has too low of a potential to be more than a meme.
Cries in /r/2visegrad4you
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u/No-Exercise-6031 5d ago
You're saying that, somehow, Central Europe, with 25 Million people and somewhat functional demographics, Czechia's growing export economy and a mostly stable energy grid...
is somehow worse than Lithiania, Latvia and Estonia, all of which are bumfuck shitholes outside their Capitals, run their economies like Ponzi Schemes on Crack Cocaine, and have an age pyramid that someone turned upside down?
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u/OverEffective7012 5d ago
Bohemia was a kingdom in HRE
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u/No-Exercise-6031 5d ago
The Czech Republic is still part of Central Europe, I do not see how this impacts anything.
Half of modern Poland was also part of Germany (or various Pre-German Kingdoms) for like 800 years and yet I don't think anyone here says that, say, Wrocław is a ,,Western" city while, I dunno, Łódź is an Eastern one.
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u/PotentialMistake7754 3d ago
Is this some kind of geographic hierarchy?
Lowest teir : eastern europe aka uncilivized brutes, asian hordes , wrong religion, funny looking letters.
Mid tier: central europe aka use the right alphabet and the right religion but still poor
Top tier : baltic, use the right alphabet, right religion, allied with Axis during www2
Absolute S tier: honorary ary... er I mean Western Europe
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u/taotau 5d ago
I've always wondered why Poland wasn't more of a seafaring nation. Even tho I was born in szczecin, I really only went to the coast a few times to Międzyzdroje and Świnoujście as a kid and then most of my family moved south and inland.
A couple of weeks ago I took the ferry from Świnoujście to Malmo for the first time and sat on the deck wondering about this question. It also seemed like there wasn't a ton of boat traffic in the area until.we.got.xloser to Denmark.
I don't know much about Poland in the Viking era, and my only real reference is from the show Vikings when at the beginning the jarl was planning to raid south and east as they usually did which I presume meant polish, Lithuanian and Estonian coasts, so these cultures clearly had contact. Why did the poles not adopt a similar sea based raiding strategy ?
If anyone has some interesting historical material that covers this era from a polish perspective, I'd love the references. .polish or English language is fine.
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u/Maciek_1212 5d ago
Poland the majority of its history has a really limited access to the sea, if it has in the first place. Our only port city was Gdańsk, which, for example was inhabited by the majority by Germans and Dutch during commonwealth times. And it was these cultures that usually performed seafaring functions in PLC.
But Pomeranian Tribes in middle aged was this type of seafaring rides culture. They called they warriors Chąśnicy.
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u/paulatryda 5d ago
At the beginning it was hard to keep sea coast in control: many rebellions and failed attempts to christianised. Later local aristocracy like House of Griffin (they actually liked the see more and acted like vikings as "chąśnicy")started to look for independence and foregin powers (Teutonic Order) took those lands.
After we finally secured the Baltic cost our military tradition wasn't really abut the navy. Sigismund II Augustus was trying to establish some kind of navy (of course the aristocracy opposed it as a way to give the king more power) but no one really flowed after his death. I guess the fact later Gdańsk (which was kind semi-autonomous city) openly revolvted (1575) didn't help either. After all there wasn't a need to build big navy (we had more troubles in different part of our Kingdom). In our history we had basically only one significant naval battle - battle of Oliwa in 1625 and the most of our soldiers were Dutch sailors. Later we again lost access to the sea so navy tradition couldn't develop.
After regain independence many of our admirals, etc. we simply germanized Poles who served in German navy. We didn't have a proper harbour because Gdańsk was a separate state and it took some time to build Gdynia. Józef Unrug the commander-in-chief of navy knew German better than Polish and after our capitulation in 1939 he was even offered to rejoin German army but he refused, saying he forgot how to speak German.
So period after 1945 it's to certain degree first time in our history we have a possibility to fully enjoy the sea
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u/Cultural-Chicken-974 5d ago
Before the 9th century, the Baltic coast of present-day Poland was inhabited by non-Slavic Baltic tribes related to Lithuanians and Latvians. They were pagans, skilled sailors, pirates, and fierce warriors, trading with Vikings or occasionally fighting alongside or against them. Unlike the Vikings, they did not conduct large-scale raids and never formed a unified political entity.
With the creation of the Duchy of Poland in the 10th century, some of these tribes were assimilated, while those who remained independent were eventually exterminated by the Teutonic Order in the 13th century.
So, Proto-Poles never had direct access to the Baltic Sea. Then Poland's feudal fragmentation prevented the creation of naval power. After the consolidation, resources and military efforts were focused on land defense rather than naval power. Devastating Mongol raids between the 13th and 14th centuries, two centuries of conflict with the Teutonic Order, Tatar and later Ottoman raids, and wars with Muscovy and Russia meant that expanding and defending the eastern borders remained the kingdom’s primary concern.
Source: God's Playground by Norman Davies
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u/kakao_w_proszku 5d ago
Our land wasn’t a frozen, rocky wasteland, there was much less of an incentive to raid and loot others for basic commodities such as food. Land was plentiful, with wide open plains perfect for growing crops stretching far into the horizon.
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u/CharacterUse 5d ago
It's much easier to expand over land than sea. Logistics is much easier and you can build roads and fortified settlements as you go, and Poland had the wide open plains and underpopulated steppe and forests to the east (what is now Belarus and Ukraine). Conversely you also have to defend that vast expanse from people trying to do the same thing in the other directions (e.g. Tartars or Mongols).
On the other hand the Baltic is small, already filled with other seafaring peoples and with little option to expand out of (you have to push past the narrows past Denmark) and not much to raid northwards, it was rather the northerners raiding south where they could pick the spoils of the trading ports and coastal towns.
Historically the primary seafaring and raiding cultures (and later maritime colonial empires) are the ones with little choice geographically but to expand over the sea despite the danger and difficulty. The Norse where much of the interior is mountainous or arctic unsuitable for farming and settlement, islanders like the British, or peoples surrounded by larger neighbours blocking their expansion over land like the Portuguese and later the Dutch, or Spain blocked by the Pyrenees and France to the north and by the Venetians and Ottomans in the Mediterranean.
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u/FUBAR_1939 5d ago
Shocking…almost as if…Poland had Baltic shoreline?
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u/usesidedoor 5d ago
But have you read the article? It contends that Poland's center of gravity has progressively been shifting from south to north due to changes in geopolitical and energy dynamics. It is a nice observation and a compelling argument.
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u/FUBAR_1939 4d ago
They lost me at the title - Poland cannot become less central European and more Baltic as it is geographically already that: a central European country with Baltic access, and mixing a current political sphere of interest/influence shift with geographical location is not just poor semantics, it doesn’t make sense.
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u/Bisque22 5d ago
The Economist making shit up that no one in their right mind would say, more news at 10.
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u/GrinchForest 5d ago
Plot twist: Poland is actually chimera. Part Baltic, part Scandinavia, part Central, part Western, part Eastern, part Balkans. You just don't know which part you will meet.