This book shows how, for 35 years, Russia has been supporting its agents of influence and allies in a seemingly highly hostile society - Poland. Conspiracy narratives, ideological harmony, and old alliances from the period of the Eastern Bloc are primarily the glue that binds the Russian network of influence. In-depth journalistic investigations, spy trials, and embarrassing email leaks - here, you can find many answers to how Moscow works when it wants to influence the political situation in third countries, in this case, Poland. The Polish case study of the "pro-Russian camp" shows how the Kremlin operates in NATO's eastern flank, wanting to increase political polarization, supporting radicalism, and strengthening the message of extremists, from both the right and the left. This book tells us what political circles Moscow's Polish allies come from, their goals, and their beliefs. It also shows their international alliances, outlining the Russian network of influence in the European Union and more broadly. The author also tries to impose on this set of political entities a network of concepts, doctrines, and theories the Moscow center uses to show permanent mechanisms of action. As a result, this book ceases to be just a case study of Poland and becomes a much more helpful study, allowing the use of patterns obtained from many years of research summarized in this publication to understand Russia's influence in other regions. Having examined the reasons for cooperation with Russia - ideological, geopolitical, and historical - in a country as reluctant to form alliances as Poland and understanding the mechanisms of selection and influence on such actors by the Kremlin, we can transfer this knowledge to understand the pattern to other countries. It will be of interest to researchers of Russian and Polish politics, right wing nationalism, and hybrid warfare.

Autorentext

Przemyslaw Witkowski is an assistant professor at Collegium Civitas. He is the author of the monographs Laboratory of Violence: The Political History of the Roma (2020) and Needle and Chipping. Political Dimension of the Movements Opposing Mandatory Vaccinations and Fifth-Generation Telephone Networks (2024). He is the deputy director of the Institute of Political Thought.