the cosmopolitan review

By Kinia Adamczyk, editor-in-chief

editor[at]cosmopolitanreview.com

WARSAW, Poland -- There is no better place than the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw, to discover what others think about Poland. Founded as a sister campus to its Bruges counterpart in 1992 in response to the revolutions of 1989 and in anticipation of the European Union’s Eastern enlargement, Natolin hosts a diverse, fly-in faculty who cannot stay indifferent to the country’s rich and complex history.

This renowned faculty includes Marc Maresceau, a law professor and the director of the European Institute from the University of Ghent in Belgium. I followed a 12-hour course he gave on European Neighbordhood Policy in Natolin. As a young man, he held the chair of European Law at Ghent.  “But I wanted to do something new, something related to external relations,” professor Maresceau explained to his students. “I was faced with the new situation of the arrival of Gorbachev in 1985. This was a breaking point for the European Community. After a couple of weeks, I was an expert on this subject, because nobody else was writing about it.”

Interview by Noora Valkonen with an introduction by Irene Tomaszewski

noora[at]cosmopolitanreview.com

WARSAW, Poland -- The long separation of Eastern Europe from Western Europe created, among other things, some language that is not always understood by the other. Two such words come to mind immediately because of their importance in the history of the former Soviet Bloc: nomenklatura and lustration. The first, nomenklatura, defines the ruling elite of Communist countries, a class so privileged that it was a society set quite apart from those they ruled; and the ruled, in turn, were aware of them more as a force than as fellow citizens.  (Left: photo of Georges Mink by K. Adamczyk.)

Interview by Kinia Adamczyk

WARSAW -- As one of the rare specialists in the history of modern nationalism and the history of Central and Eastern Europe who give thoughtful insight on current events in the light of the past, Timothy Snyder, from Yale University, was the perfect interview subject to answer questions about how Poles could use their past to build a better future. As a visiting lecturer at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw, Snyder took 20 minutes between two lectures to chat with CR.