President Bush and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki of Poland Trade Toasts
Annotation
Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a founder of Solidarity, who became Poland’s first noncommunist prime minister in forty years, visited Washington for three days of meetings in March 1990 as European and American diplomats were engrossed in negotiations to devise a plan for German reunification that would be acceptable to all nations involved. The Polish government feared that a powerful reunited Germany might attempt to claim land ceded to Poland at the conclusion of World War II. While West German Prime Minister Helmut Kohl proposed that Germany would agree after reunification to the current border between Germany and Poland along the Oder-Niesse rivers, Mazowiecki persuaded French President François Mitterand, who wanted to slow down the reunification effort, to support his position that a border treaty should be signed prior to reunification, not after. Before his meeting with Mazowiecki, Bush told Kohl that he favored Poland’s participation in international negotiations concerning the border issue. To resolve the dispute, Kohl then suggested that Bush tell Mazowiecki that Kohl was willing to agree with him on language to be included in a text concerning borders that the two German nations afterwards would officially issue. Bush misunderstood Kohl, however, and during his talk with Mazowiecki, he offered to convince Kohl to agree to a text that Mazowiecki would approve of a German-Polish treaty. The misunderstanding, nevertheless, served to move negotiations further along, and in June, the parliaments of both Germanys issued resolutions prepared by the German and Polish governments that declared the current borders as final. In June 1991, Poland and Germany signed a border treaty. In the excerpt below of toasts by Bush and Mazowiecki, the Polish leader took the opportunity to put forth his views on the matter.
Text
Toasts at the State Dinner for Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki of Poland
March 21, 1990
The President. Mr. Prime Minister and His Eminence Cardinal Szoka and distinguished
guests and friends of Poland, Barbara and I are delighted to host this dinner tonight and,
as I said this morning on the lawn of the White House, to return in some small measure
the warm hospitality that we felt on our visits to Poland.
On our last visit this past July, that warm hospitality was coupled with a heat wave in
Warsaw -- ninety degrees. Would have done Washington proud last week. [Laughter] But
everywhere we went, Barbara and I felt right at home. I don't want to inject a partisan
political note into this lovely nonpartisan evening, but at one point, Barbara even saw one
fellow in the square at Gdansk wearing a Bush-Quayle '88 T-shirt. [Laughter] I know I
shouldn't have mentioned that.
But I do remember my first visit to your country, Mr. Prime Minister, in the fall of 1987.
Solidarity, Solidarnosc, was outlawed, underground, but still very much alive. And I
remember well meeting with members of Solidarity. And afterward, as I rode to lay a
wreath at the grave of Father Popieluszko, the murdered priest, in protest the state
security agents removed the Polish flag from our car. But that was in 1987.
And 2 years later I went back to Poland in the summer of 1989, and I thought back to that
first visit, about that incident with that red and white Polish flag. As I was riding through
Gdansk, Solidarity's birthplace, to the Monument of the Three Crosses, thousands of
Poles lined the streets, in their hands thousands of American flags and, of course, the red
and white of Poland, your national flag, and the banner of Solidarnosc, high above the
crowd.
What a world of change in those 2 years. On that first visit in 1987, everywhere
undeniable determination, but just as undeniable, deep anxiety over the fate of Solidarity
and the future of Poland. And on my return this past summer, on the eve of the
Revolution of '89, everywhere we found a feeling of hope -- a feeling that Poland once
more held its destiny in its hand, that the time had come once more for Poland to live in
freedom, for Europe to be whole and free.
Mr. Prime Minister, I assure you all Americans agree that Poland's time has come, and all
our prayers are with you at this time of Poland's rebirth.
Our meetings this morning accomplished a great deal. I found a wonderful frankness. We
spoke from the heart, in candor, I felt, as friends. And tonight, Mr. Prime Minister, I offer
this toast to old and enduring friends, the nations of Poland and America; to the future of
a free Poland. And to you, sir, Mr. Prime Minister, let me return the kind wish that your
countrymen made me in the Hall of the Sejm, in the streets of Warsaw, and the square of
Gdansk: Sto lat, may you live 100 years.
The Prime Minister. Mr. President; esteemed Mrs. Bush; your Eminence, Cardinal; ladies
and gentlemen, I would also prefer to refrain from talking politics here. But I will have to
speak something about politics, and please forgive me for that.
Allow me to invoke here a classical piece on modern democracy, which is at the same
time a classical work on America. It is a book by Alexis de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville
referred to the unstoppable march of democracy; it was 150 years ago. Nowadays, we're
witnessing an enormous acceleration of that march in Nicaragua, Chile, even Mongolia,
but most of all in Eastern and Central Europe.
Democracy is a system which secures the freedom of the individual, the freedom without
which no normal life is possible. Indeed, it has just been that deeply rooted need of
normal life which has most strongly inspired the march observed in your country so many
years ago by the famous Frenchman. It is also just to that need that, under the pressure of
Eastern and Central European nations, totalitarianism is giving way -- the disease of our
century which had devoured tens of millions of human lives, forcing hundreds of millions
of others into a dead end history for many years. We in Poland are now emerging from a
long night of totalitarian oppression.
In 1939 we were ravaged by the Nazi invasion. Our people suffered more than any other
on Earth. Poland lost 6 million of its citizens, half of them Polish Jews. The Third Reich
was crushed, and the war ended, but to our part of Europe, peace failed to bring an order
based on freedom. For the next 45 years, we were forced to live under an alien political
system, a totalitarian one which was imposed on the whole Eastern and Central Europe.
The Poles never accepted their fate and were the first to challenge it. They succeeded in
defending peasant homesteads, churches, and their own families against the greed of the
totalitarian state, even through the most difficult times. The struggle by the Polish people
to preserve their dignity and franchisement played a great role in sparking the change
which today has gained such momentum.
Just as we stood in the forefront of struggle, so today we wish to be in the forefront in
establishing the rights and institutions of a stable, democratic order. We're making Poland
a state of the rule of law, which guarantees all political freedoms to its citizens. We're
building a free-market economy based on free enterprise. It is a program which calls for
great sacrifices. Polish people are aware of it. We know that our economy needs to be
repaired by our own effort. And so, now that this effort has been undertaken, we have the
moral right to seek the support of other countries.
Today Poland enjoys such support, and I am confident that it will continue. A great share
of it has come from the United States -- the American Congress and personally yourself,
Mr. President. Allow me to thank you for that.
Ladies and gentlemen, the changes in the Eastern and Central Europe are making the
situation across the whole continent essentially different. The era of Yalta is becoming
history. A need is emerging for a new structure which would operate within the parity of
powers to gradually free Europe of military rivalry and bring the two separated parts
closer together. Such a structure needs to be based on a solid foundation. Reconciliation
between nations is possible only when they do not fear either for their present or their
future. For this reason, an important component of the building must be the recognition of
the Polish border along the Oder and Nysa Rivers in the form of a treaty. The direct
participation in the talks about that, for Poland, was a very important matter for Poland;
and it has already been guaranteed.
To create a new political facet of Europe is going to be a difficult challenge, and one
calling for time and an enormous amount of work. A variety of ideas emerging, in this
respect, need to become ripe, which in turn requires certain conditions. In our view, a
helpful factor would be to form the Council for European Cooperation. Its job would not
be to replace any of the existing organizations: it would serve as a platform whereby,
within the CSC framework, work might be launched to give the ideas a concrete form.
One can hardly imagine such work without a significant role on the part of the United
States. After all, your country is linked to Europe by bonds of blood and by experiences
of history.
Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, after General Sikorsky visited the White House in
1943, mine is only the second-ever call by a Polish Prime Minister here. How different
the circumstances and how different, I believe, the perspectives of this period in history. I
would like the United States to view Poland as one of the important actors of the presentday European politics. A strong Poland engaged in building a democratic order and freed
of economic difficulties will be a stable factor of the new European order, an order based
on freedom, respect of human rights, and economic and political balance on the
Continent. I trust that the United States, with so many of its people linked to Poland by
their origin and with the affection for Poland so much alive, will see a friend in the
democratic, strong, and economically sound Poland.
Permit me, ladies and gentlemen, to raise in a moment a toast to the good health and the
well-being of the President of the United States.
I raise this toast also to the good health of Mrs. Barbara Bush. I wish you strength and
perseverance in your difficult role here. It is well-known that the house, even if it's called
White, becomes a home only upon the touch of a woman. I know how much Americans
like you, and I want to tell you that so do the Poles.
I raise this toast, also, to the well-being of your great country and the millions of its
citizens, as well as to our friendship, which at the Polish end has for long been extremely
profound.
I raise this toast to you, Mr. President.
Note: The President spoke at 8:15 p.m. in the State Dining Room at the White House.
The Prime Minister spoke in Polish, and his remarks were translated by an interpreter.
The toasts were released by the Office of the Press Secretary on March 22.
Credits
Office of the Press Secretary, Notes from the State Dinner for Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki of Poland, 21 March 1990, Bush Presidential Library, Documents and Papers, Bush Library (accessed May 14, 2008).