Abstract
Poland has always lied at the crossroads of Europe, as suggested by the title of one of Norman Davies' famous history books Heart of Europe. Intermediate between the West and the East; buffer state; ally or enemy of the main European powers, Poland was once a very powerful country whose territory extended as far as the Black Sea. Towards the end of the 18th century, the Polish state had to overcome three subsequent partitions which finally led to the downfall: A hundred and twenty three years of complete disappearance from the map of Europe (1795 -1918). As a result of a common Slavic cultural heritage and tightly interwoven history – of which one mustn't forget fifty years of « communist rule » during the Cold War - Poland has had throughout the past decades a specific relation to its Eastern-neighbour countries, namely Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Of these three states, Russia has always stood as the most powerful one, greatly feared by the Poles. Since the collapse of the USSR and with it of the Russian domination over Eastern Europe, Poland has conducted a very Western-oriented foreign policy, joining NATO (in 1999) and - later on - the European Union (on 1rst of May 2004).
