From Times Online, April 19, 2010

Polish tragedy opens door to West for Russia

From the grief a new era is emerging in Poland’s relations with its feared neighbour

Roger Boyes

(...) The President and the 95 other passengers died on their way to commemorate the thousands of Poles slaughtered by Soviet hitmen in 1940 in Katyn forest. The slaughter was denied for decades. Now the Russian Government — that is, Vladimir Putin — has declared that both Poland and Russia are the victims of Stalin, equal partners in victimhood. Mealy- mouthed, maybe, but a first step. “A big country is beginning to realise that a smaller country has its own historical point of view,” Bartek Nowak, of the Centre of International Relations in Warsaw, says. “Until now Russia hasn’t really understood why dialogue with Poland is so difficult, why the Poles keep coming back to their history.”

More: www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7101359.ece