Bunevich D.S. The polish diaspora as a tool of "soft power" of Warsaw in the East

Abstract: The article is dedicated to the study of main aspects of the history and the here and now of Polonia in the East: Polish organizations, Polish-speaking media and the government support provided to them. The purpose of this research is to determine the role of the "Polonia" project in the implementation of Poland's eastern policy at the present time. The object of this study is the Polish diaspora in Russia and the CIS as a tool of soft power. Polonia is obviously a political project: Warsaw tries to maintain and strengthen its influence in the former Soviet republics with its help, using it as a primary resource loyal to the Polish diaspora. The methodological basis of the study is a systemic, structural and functional, comparative political approaches, the methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, observation. The Ukrainian crisis of 2014 marked the beginning of the acute phase of the next stage of geopolitical confrontation that stretches from the Baltic to the Black Sea area, a zone of collision of interests of Russia and Poland for centuries. Official Warsaw strongly declares its "lack of interest" in the fate of land in Western Ukraine  that belonged to the Polish state for centuries, while accusing Moscow of allegedly making secret proposals to "divide Ukraine." But the history of the previous five centuries suggests that the Polish elite have always considered the land located to the east of Poland, the main direction of its foreign expansion.

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