Hello, welcome to SS Unitec Associates site and this is continuation of SQL Server performance training. So today we want to discuss about table scans, cluster indexes scan and cluster indexing and what are the difference between these three. So let's start with table scan. So what is table scan? So when query performs a table scan it starts from the physical beginning of the table and goes through every record in the table. Like in our table we have 1000 records then if table scans will occur then it will goes all the records which is our label in the table it means 1000 records. So scan would be 1000 times. If row meets the condition then include into our result set and it would access if table doesn't have any index. So this is the table scan and this is bad for the performance. If we are getting all the data from the table then it may be good or may not be. Next is cluster index scan. So if table has a cluster index and it scales table as a cluster index. So let's assume you have a table and it contains many columns and you have created a cluster index on id column. So if id is not going to use in the where clause then that would be the cluster index scan. Query doesn't use non-cluster index or table doesn't have non-cluster index and it's bad in the performance until uses large data with the most of the columns and rows to be retrieved. And next is cluster indexing. So table with the cluster index scan is accessed and it uses that column in where clause. So it would scan as a cluster indexing. So it's better in the performance among these three. So go to our SQL server management studio to check about table scan, cluster index scan and cluster indexing. So as I am using SQL 2017 you may have other versions of SQL server. So here I am using adventure works 2k16. So here I just want to make the copy of adjustable. So let me execute this query to be created table temp. So this is adjustable and it shouldn't contain the constants like any cluster index, non-cluster index or any other. So we can check by using this SP help index. So we can execute as we can see the object adjustable doesn't have any indexes or you don't have permission. So we have permission but table doesn't have any constants right now. Now if I want to access data from this address temp table and we don't want to use any where clause then let me execute the query. So before that I just want to enable statistics IO. So we can execute set statistics IO on. So let me execute this query. So before going to execute let me enable execution plan. So now we can execute and it has around 19,614 records go to one execution plan and here as we can see it is using table scan. So this is bad for the performance as we go on messages tab. So here we can check the logical reads. So logical read as we can see 342. So now I just want to use where clause where city is Boston. Now we can execute this query and we can check logical reads. So before going to check the logical read go to one execution plan and here again we can see table scan go to one messages tab. So again it's going to scan all the pages which is 342. So this is bad for the performance because here we just want to get only one record but it is going to scan all the data and all the pages which is available in the table. Now let me create a cluster index on city column. So we can execute this create index. This time I just want to get all the records from this address tab table but here I am not going to use where clause. So let me execute and we can check. So as we can see it's having around 19,614 records go to one execution plan and here this time we can see cluster index scan. So if we have created any cluster index on the table and we don't want to use that cluster index then that execution plan will be referred as cluster index scan. So go to one messages tab and here we can check the logical reads. So logical read is 360 and before creating this cluster index as we can see 342. So why we are getting this difference because in case of cluster index it is going to create a tree and that tree could also contain some pages to arrange the data. That's why in case of cluster index scan it would going to return more logical reads. Now last is cluster indexing. So what is cluster indexing? Here as we have already created the index on the city column. So let me execute the query with city Boston. So we can execute and we can check. So here we are getting only one record go to one execution plan and here we can see cluster indexing. So cluster indexing is going to happen over here just because of we have used city column in where clause. So go to one messages tab and here we can see logical reads. So this time logical read is 4. So getting this data we just need to scan only 4 pages. So this is very best in the performance because as we have seen in case of table scan it was 342 then in case of cluster index scan it was 360 and now is only 4 logical reads. I hope you have understand about the table scan cluster index scan and cluster indexing and I hope you can create any cluster index on the where clause like in where clause we have 3 or more columns then we can create any cluster index among these columns. Then that would be cluster indexing and in case of cluster indexing it is going to scan less number of pages as compared to others. So thank you so much for watching this video. If you like this video please subscribe our channel to get many more videos. Don't forget to press the bell icon to get the notification of our newly uploaded videos. Thank you so much.


Night 18 ticks, 111, the 30 year up 25 at $120.04, and the 10-year right now is at 4.3, no 4.3, no 4.1, 4.180 and King Dollar, King Dollar down 289 ticks trading 103, 867, Euro at 108, yen at 150 British pound, 126 to 1 US dollar. We're going to take a look at the spy folks, they're all breaking highs out here, so let's take a look at this baby. And if you, you know, the volume expansion yesterday at the close was huge. And, you know, you get lower volume here today, that's for sure. Let's just put this on a weekly, because yesterday the surge was big. Yeah, it's going to weekly you're going to have volume, it's not going to be bad. You get the spies up at 4.80, 5.12, we're in window dressing too. And then we take a look at the cues. Okay, so the cue, oh, that's a real wide price spread. Okay, the cues up 7.446. Yeah, on a weekly they could use a little bit more, but the bottom line is that they, wide price spread accelerated spread makes, makes a difference. There's no two ways about it. Gold, this is a big move on gold. Gold has a wide price spread accelerated volume. It's a sign of strength. You get over 300,000 contracts traded. So gold's going to make another run. You know, we'll see how this shakes out. My bottom line, you know, every time we've got up to this 2150 area, it's had some flak, but I'll tell you, this is a nice time of strength out here in a monster way, when in fact the dollar still isn't broken down. You know, so the dollar is still being mean, not getting inside this lower range. Dollar got up to 104, 292 today, and then, you know, back down 500 ticks. Notes and bonds, they go in the right way for the metals market and for the S&P. You get the 10-year up here. Oh, yeah, yeah, we're on the way again. That's the end of that correction. Man, 10 years up 18 ticks, 2.3 million contracts traded. Stay right there folks. Come right back.


Okay. Let's start another session. First of all, thank you. First of all, you probably noticed that the food trucks are already available. So, two of them are here in the main square and another three are in a parking lot behind the e-pevillons. So, right now, we are going to have a rootless containers presented by Giuseppe Scrivano, principal software engineer in Red Hat, and Akira Suda, software engineer in NTT Japan. In this talk, we'll discuss how to build and run containers without root privileges. So hi, everyone. Today, we are going to talk about rootless containers, that is how to run containers without having root privileges. So, we are Giuseppe Scrivano. I work with Red Hat. I work with containers related stuff on different projects. I'm Akira Suda. I'm a software engineer at NTT, which is a large technical company in Japan. I'm also a manager of mobile, which is formerly known as Droga Engine. I'm also a manager of build kits, the next generation background of Droga Build. I'm also a manager of Contrandee, which is a CS project. So the rest of the stuff is demo of user NTT, which is distribution of Kubernetes that can be executed as a normal user. So, on this note, my ID is 1000. So, my user name is user. And I don't have Suda. And I have binary of Kubernetes and Pryo on disagree. And apparently, this one doesn't have CPU ID plus. And everything is running as an unprivileged user. So, we can see Pryo is working as an unprivileged user and also HyperCube is working as an unprivileged user. Also, even PrimeMD, which provides much of networking, is running as an unprivileged user. And the cluster is composed of three nodes with Pryo nodes and Droga nodes and Contrandee. So, the cluster makes three different sort of runtime. So, this node is running Pryo, but we have Contrandee nodes and Contrandee is running as unprivileged as well. And Droga nodes is also running DrogaD as unprivileged user. On this cluster, we're running pods of NZX. And NZX has three instances running on three different nodes. And this one has different IP address. And also, the NZX process is running as an unprivileged user as well, of course. And we also have cross-node networking. So, for example, on the cluster nodes of NZX Instance, the IP is 10.5173. And we can connect to the Instance of G1 node as well as easily. And so, this is unprivileged, but in the Contrandee, we can gain root for the limitation of the scope. So, the ID becomes root. And also, we can even do some package management as APK. So, Wi-Fi is pretty. So, the APK is operating. But we have seven APK works as well. So, let's go to the presentation. So, let's start with the introduction of rootless containers. Rootless containers refers to the ability for unprivileged users to create run and otherwise manage containers. It's not just about running containers as unprivileged user. It also entails running container runtime such as client and orchestrator such as Kubernetes as an unprivileged user. So, this must be confusing. So, don't confuse with Docker run dash dash user for which executes a process in the container as a non-root user. So, it still executes Docker ID and Contrandee and runs it through running as a root. So, our work is also different from the user instruction in Docker file. This is substantially same as Docker run dash dash user. In this Docker file, notably, you can do a run a DNF install because you are not root in the container. Also, our work is different from user mode dash edge in Docker full which adds the user full to the Docker binoc group which are not really used to connect to a slash bar slash run slash Docker.soc. This is substantially equivalent to our user to gain the root on the host. So, the user can do Docker run dash dash privilege dash way slash dot slash host to gain the root on the host. Of course, our work is not about running through Docker or just search mode plus s which sets your ID bit on Docker binary, of course. And also, our work is different from Docker D dash dash user NS remap which executes container as a non-root user called doc remap using user name spaces. In this remap, inside the containers, doc remap can behave as if it was a root. This is very similar to our root containers, but it still requires the Docker ID quantity in the run to be executed as a root. So, this is different from our work. So, as a multiplication of our rootless container is to mitigate a potential vulnerability of container run times and orchestrate this primary motivation. But our work can be also used to allow users of shared machines such as HPC to run containers without the risk of breaking other users environments. Our work can also be also used for isolating nested containers such as Docker and Docker. So, the container run times has been suffering from many vulnerabilities. For example, five years ago, a vulnerability called Shoka was found by security researcher. So, a malicious container was accessed host file system as a root using CAPDAC research capability which was effective by default. Also, there was a vulnerability in Docker build command which could run arbitrary binary on the host as a root because of some archive issue related to LZMA. Also, last year, there was issue in container D. So, a malicious container image could remove the TMP on the host when the image was pulled from the registry. This is not when actually the container was created. It happens when the image was pulled from the registry. Also, just a couple of weeks ago, we found a fixed serious issue that relates to Minikube. So, a malicious container could gain the right access to a proc file system and a sys file system when the host root file system is in RD. So, it can result in arbitrary command execution as a root on the host via proc sys kernel core pattern or sys kernel event helper. As far as I know, Minikube was known to be affected and it was fixed in the latest release. So, you can try container breaking Minikube using this command. And also there was a bunch of vulnerability, for example, in Kubernetes. So, two years ago, there was some vulnerability that allows malicious container to access host file system via volumes. Also, last year, there was an issue that could be used to gain cluster as a mean and it has root privilege on the north. And there was a vulnerability in Git which affects Kubernetes repo volumes. And also, play with docker.com, which is all right docker playgrounds implemented using docker. Docker with custom app profiles has access vulnerability that allows loading malicious kernel modules. This is not really an issue of docker itself, but this is a misconfiguration of upper-end profiles. So, our root containers can mitigate these vulnerabilities, but it's a part of especially it's a power against kernel vulnerability and also hardware vulnerability. So, our work is just a new layer for what is called a caster approach. So, it should be used in conjunction with the security layers, such as SIG comp or SELinux. Yeah. So, now we can start looking at some implementation details on how rootless containers work. Namespaces are the kernel feature that allow us to have containers. There is the mountain namespace that gives the process a different view on the file system that there is from the host. There are other namespaces like network that gives the process a different view on the network stack. I think the username space is the most interesting one because it enables really nice scenarios like rootless containers. What username space does is to create a mapping from IDs from the host or more in general from the parent username space as you can have nested three to the process running in the rootless environment. So, a process can be lived to be running like root, but in reality it's running like the unprivileged user that created the username space. Not every ID from the host must be mapped inside the username space, only a subset. In fact, for rootless containers this is very important because once you get root privilege inside the username space, you have control on any other user present and defined in the namespace. By default, the user can map only itself inside the new environment. So, you can create a mapping between the unprivileged user to any other ID because anyway from the kernel it will be just mapped to the same user. The process can keep full capabilities like if it will be running as root, but of course there are restrictions. Like I said, you can change your ID but it's only limited to the IDs that are present already in the namespace. You can't change it to any ID you want or you have the capability of changing the network, but it's just the network devices that are defined in the new environment. I think just one ID is not enough for running most images out there. You can't run DNF, you can't install it in packages. For that, there is a statue ID program that allows to define additional users for each unprivileged user. In addition to your own ID, you can have multiple IDs mapped inside the rootless environment. These tools are now basically packaged for any distro. So, if you add a user on the system by default, you will get a ready range allocated for your user. Well, statue ID programs are dangerous and we tried for anything else to avoid them, but in this case it makes a bit sense because the logic of managing the additional ranges, it's managed on the system, not by the kernel. So, there were a few issues with these tools and also there is a need to maintain a centralized database of all the ranges allocated and to what user. You can't allocate the same users to the same IDs to the same user otherwise they will be able to, well, to read each other resources. Well, the simple alternative way, of course, is to use a single mapping, but as I said, that will break many images. It can work in some cases like applications that are not a single user, but that's very limiting. The other way we tried to, the other part we tried to follow is to limit the privilege of this statue ID application. And in fact, new versions now are not installed as a statue ID programs, but they are using file capabilities because all they need are just two capabilities of all the sets that you get when you become root. So, even if now this application will break, they will still have only two capabilities available. So, it's limiting the damage. So, you can create network name spaces with recent kernel, along with user name spaces. So, with network name spaces, I'm sure the user can create IP tables rules and also isolate abstract unique targets, which is a kind of unique target but doesn't have parts on the file system. And also the user can even set overline networking with BXLan. Also, the user can run TCP dump and also do bunch of stuff. But there's a problem. So, I'm pretty sure the user cannot set up the virtual Ethernet pair across the host and the name spaces. That means the name space cannot connect to the Internet. The prior work by LXC folks was to use the binary code LXC user NIC for setting up the virtual Ethernet pair across the host and containers. But there's a problem. So, the binary can be dangerous. And LXC is the NIC 2CB is so far. So, our approach is to use swap, which is completely unprivileged user-mode network stack. And inside the name space, we create a top device. And we send the file descriptor of a top device using unique sockets to the pairs name space. And pairs name space has a swap process. And the swap process provides TCP IP networking to the top file descriptor. And we have several swap implementations. But the swap for net NS, which is our own implementation based on QM swap, is the fastest because it avoids copying extra packets across the name spaces. So, the swap for net NS can reach more than 9 gigabits when the MTU is about 64 kilobytes. And also we need to provide port for the which is used for inbound connection. And user-mode for the further can be implemented independently of swap. So, even swap for net NS has built an important further that can reach 7 gigabits. But if you use sockets in the center, that can reach more than 9 gigabits. And our all optimized implementation can reach 28.2 gigabits. It's still freaky, but it's very fast compared to other implementations. And we can also support multi-node networking. As far as we know, BXLan and FlanNen is known to work. BXLan encapsulates inside the packets in UDP packets and provides L2 connectivity across rootless containers on different nodes. And other protocols should work as well except ones that require access to raw Ethernet headers. So, probably GRE is not likely to work. So, before a container can be used, the image should live somewhere. Most of the backends that work fine with root containers are not usable with rootless containers. Just because an unprivileged user has not enough privileges to set up the storage. Ubuntu unlocked the overlay and it's usable like you would do with root. But that is not supported upstream because kernel focusing is not safe to enable overlay to an unprivileged user. But RFS allow a privileged volume management. But it needs to be configured before by the admin. And device mapper is completely out of reach for an unprivileged user. The simplest to work around is to just extract the full image for each container. This works fine until you use a busy box. But once you start using bigger images, you realize that it doesn't scale. Each container will duplicate the entire image. There are a few alternatives. One is to use reflinks. Reflinks is a new feature that you can find in XFS and ButterFS that creates the inode of the file, but still the data, it's internally the duplicated. And the issue with reflinks is that you still need to create the inode. So if you have many files in the image, you will still create that many inodes. Since Linux 4.18, there is a nice feature in the kernel that allows you to use file system from a user namespace. So what we did was to re-implement overlay FS as a fuse file system. So all the advantages of using overlay as a root, you will still have a rootless user. There is the same duplication for layers. It's very fast to set up a new container because you don't need to copy any new file. In addition to the basic support for the kernel features, we added the built-in support for shifting IDs. I will talk more in detail later. The cost, of course, it's complex. It's quite a lot of new code that can bring new bugs in the stack. So when you create a user namespace, by default we map your unprivileged user to root. And then all the additional IDs specified in the IDC sub ID from one to as many as you have available. But you can still play around and you can create your own mapping with user namespaces. And we allow that. But this has a cost on the storage because each time you create a different mapping, you need to be sure that the image on this reflects the mapping you are using. If you start using, for example, some files that are honed by the wrong user, you will see in the user namespace that all IDs are wrong. So if you are not using FuseLayFest, the solution now is to create a copy of the image. For each different configuration of user namespace, you will need to create a clone of the image. What FuseLayFest does instead is to lie to the system on the ownership of the file. So it does this remapping on the fly without creating a different image first. Of course it's less expensive than copying and showing all the files as you will need to do using OvalDay. C-groups are the biggest problem with rootless containers at this point. C-group V1 is not safe to be used by a rootless user. By default, it's completely owned by root and managed by systemd. There were some workarounds that, of course, they introduced their own set of issues, like using again a CID, a CID program, as LXC does. C-group V2 will solve the issues that we had. But still, it cannot be used because it's missing some features that are needed for running container. So once it will be feature complete, it will solve all the issues and any rootless container will be able to manage its own C-groups sub-3. So let's look at the current options and start from the runtime. So Ranty started supporting rootless mod since two years ago. It was basic support, single user, not C-groups. I had, after a new release, added support for multiple IDs. And also, if you make the C-groups path writable, Ranty will start using it. So Podman, that demo-less alternative to Docker that then introduced before, and they already showed all the nice stuff you can do with rootless. So it uses all the features we showed before. By default, for rootless container, it's used to live for net ns. It uses a very fast for the storage. And then I think that you can use rootless Podman in the same way as you would use rootful Podman. There is no difference in the CLI. Each user will have its own storage and configuration that are completely separate from the system. When we create a Podman container, we create every time a new user namespace. This adds an extra layer of security of what we were used to have before.  And if you don't do a proper cleanup, they will be leaked. The restriction we had with user namespaces, that's with rootless user namespaces, but you can't create any resource on the host. Well, it was beneficial to solve this problem because the kernel simply blocks us from leaking the resource on the host. And also, since containers run in different user namespaces, they can't join each other in namespaces. It's like, well, another layer of protection. But Podman has pods, and pods are by definition a group of containers that needs to share resources. So this conflicts with what I was just saying before. So what we do for our pod is to create just one user namespace, and every container that is part of the pod will join the same namespace. So they are able to share resources and still feel like part of the same environment. And Droga is also going to support rootless mode in version 19.03. But unlike Podman, Fuse over Ray is not yet supported. And actually, a rootless container is started by Edoxy folks, and Edoxy supports what we call rootless mode since six years ago. But unlike our work, rootless Edoxy requires security binary for setting up a network named spaces. And also, there is EdoxyD, which is a demo for mining Edoxy containers. But EdoxyD still requires a demo to be executed as a root. And security, which is popular in HPC community, also supports rootless mode when dash-dash-user NS is specified. But unlike our work, security doesn't support creating network named spaces with integrated connection. And also, CloudFoundry garden container supports rootless mode. But unlike work, CloudFoundry requires setUID binary for setting up a network named spaces. And we are also working on another OCI runtime called runRootless. RunRootless is not about rootless runC. It's different from rootless runC. So runRootless doesn't require subUID, subGID configuration because it can emulate subUID and subGID using p-tores and X attribute. This is suitable for LDAP environment because subUID configuration can be difficult with LDAP. But current implementation has significant overhead because of p-tores. So we are planning to replace p-tores with Tycho Anderson's new second framework that is going to be merged in Karnish 5.4 and blah, blah, blah. And there's also UDOKA, that's another implementation of DOKA. It supports both p-tores mode and runC mode. But unlike runRootless, the p-tores mode can be used for persistent shOVM. Also, the p-tores mode can be used in conjunction with runC. For the image builders, also rootless mode is fully supported by builder. So like Podman, it has the same set of features. It uses fusible AFS, it's sleeper for the network. And running rootless mode you should really be able to build the same images that you are able to build as root user. Also build additionally, Podman supports different isolation modes. It supports... When you run a command to build the image, builder creates a new container. The default mode is OCI, that creates a container that will run by runC as root. The rootless isolation mode creates an OCI configuration that is usable by a rootless user. In addition to these two, there is Cheeroot isolation. And this is usable when your builder is already running inside of a container. So you don't need to isolate the build from the host since you are already in a container. So when you run a command, it just gives a basic environment that is more similar to Cheeroot than what we have in this container. Our build kit is a new background hold Docker build that is used in Docker since version 18.06. But build kits can be also used as a standard error and rootless demo. And rootless build kit has been used in OpenFox cloud. And also build kit is used by Image, which is created by Jersey Frazer. So Image is also same as build kit, but it doesn't need demo. And rootless build kit and Image can be launched as an unpublished user on the host without any extra configuration. But when you deploy this rootless build kit on the Kubernetes, you need to set up security-contest.proc mount to unmasked so as to unmask files under the proc file system so that build containers can mount proc and first with dedicated PIE name spaces. This seems problematic but not really concerned as long as running in rootless mode. Also, the next version of build kit will no longer require security-contest configuration, but in that case, there's no PIE name space isolation across the build kit, the demo container and build containers. Google last year released KaniCo, which is kind of amplified to container image builder, but this is different from our approach. The KaniCo itself needs to be executed in container and Docker file run instruction executed without creating nested containers inside the KaniCo container so the run instruction gains the root in the KaniCo container. So we consider it seems appropriate for malicious Docker files because of lack of isolation. Also, recently, Uber released Marquise. This is very similar to KaniCo with regards to unprivileged execution. The next is current adoption status in Kubernetes. So, Kubernetes and Kube Proxy still needs to be patched for running with the C-groups and 6CTL, but we don't need any patch for Kube API server and Kube scheduler. So for Kube Proxy, we have some proof-of-concept patches and we are going to propose Kubernetes enhancement proposal of signals soon. We are also planning to work on Kube ADM integration. With regards to CRY run times, both cryo and continuity support rootless model already. For CNI plug-ins, front-end is known to work without any modification. And we provide user-natives which is experimental binary distribution of rootless contributors that can be installable under the home directory with that myth. So just download binary archive from github.com. And unpack the archive and just run .sh. And you can form a single-node cluster just with this run.sh and you can do a Kube CDL. We also provide Docker Compos YAML for demonstrating showed multi-nodes cluster. The cluster is a composite of Docker streaming nodes and cryo nodes and continuity nodes. And the front-end big plan is configured by default. But this Docker Compos YAML is just a proof-of-concept. So it doesn't set up here as it. So we need some contribution. We are also planning to provide YAML for deploying user-natives on existing Kubernetes cluster. So any questions? Sorry, speaker loudly. So the question is what happens as a root in rootless container performs some file system operation? How does it affect on the... So when you ask user in rootless container how does it affect on the host? So the answer is that the real root on the host needs to provide sub-UID file like this. So the new user ID is in the range of this sub-UID file. It's fine. But if it's out of the range of this sub-UID file, the other user commands will fail. Four months of what? The question is if we benchmark a few sovereign LFS. No, we don't have numbers for that. I did some tests like building containers and it takes the same time. I would expect few to add some extra costs but we have no numbers for that. The question is if C-group V2 will allow C-group inside of a rootless container. Yes, because you will be able to delegate your sub-tree inside the rootless container. So a root inside the container will be able to manage that and it shouldn't be no different than using it from the host. The question is if there is any new work happening in the kernel name space, in the kernel space for a rootless container. Not that I'm aware of. Is there anything happening? Tycho understands new second-frameworks that can replace P-trace. So this is very useful for rootless containers. So with a new second-framework, we don't need sub-UID and sub-GID configuration. So this is very useful for LDAP environments. Overlay, maybe at some point it will be usable for rootless. So the question is when Tycho's patch is going to be merged upstream. I'm sorry, I'm not sure. I hope it will be merged soon. Sorry, could you speak loudly? Modify kernel to... What device? If the kernel... Change the kernel to allow adding and removing the device from user space. Well, a rootless container will not gain any additional privilege that your unprivileged user had. So except managing additional IDs. That's the only extra privilege you gain. But besides that, from the host's perspective, it must look exactly as an unprivileged process. So there won't be any difference for about the devices related to rootless containers. If you can do that, I read some privilege. Okay, so it seems we have no more questions. Thank you all for your attention.


This is the post-lunch panel. We've lost one of our panelists, David Kramer, unfortunately, who deals with the entire world, has to deal with the crisis now in Egypt, I gather, this morning. So he won't be available, unfortunately. But anyway, we still have three excellent speakers. And let me set a little bit of context here. What we'd like to do now is to look at what the Poland-Russia dialogue means for the countries in between, or the common neighborhood, particularly for Belarus and Ukraine. We don't have anybody from Moldova, so it's very difficult to address. And I think it's a little bit removed from the Polish context anyway, whereas Belarus and Ukraine are immediate neighbors, very important countries to Poland. Now, I believe there is one fundamental question here that needs to be asked. Does the Warsaw-Moscow rapprochement make these states feel more secure or less secure? For example, is Russia less inclined to try and re-bundle these countries, to use an energy term, because Poland may be toning down the campaign for NATO enlargement eastwards, because the Eastern partnership seems to be, if not fading, seems to be running out of steam? Or conversely, does the Kremlin perceive Warsaw's policies as potential weakness in decision, encouraging it to exert even greater pressure on Belarus, Ukraine, and other post-Soviet countries, and undermining their sovereignty? And an additional question I think which is worth exploring, and again it's a pity David's not here, but maybe our speakers could look at this as well, is what impact, if any, does the Polish-Russian dialogue have on the democratization process in the region? One, are governments that feel secure more likely to democratize than those that feel under threat? And secondly, does taking Russia as it is, to quote the Polish Foreign Minister, mean that Poland and the EU should take Belarus, Ukraine, and others as they are, and not push the democracy agenda? Or are there different standards here at work for Russia and its near neighbors, the countries in between? Anyway, feel free to answer or not answer these questions, I just wanted to raise them. And in order of appearance we have three excellent, eminently qualified speakers. First of all, in order of appearance, Mikhail Ryabchuk, Research Fellow, Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine, who can give us a Ukrainian perspective on the Warsaw-Moscow rapprochement. Second, Jaroslav Romanczuk, President of the Scientific Research Center in Belarus, who can explain how Belarus fits into this regional picture. And third, Mikhail Dolbiloff, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, who is well qualified to give us more of a historical perspective on the Polish-Russian thought. Is it a flash in the pan or is there real food on the plate? I thought I'd throw it in after lunch, sounds good. Okay, we'll start with Mikhail and I don't know whether you want to come up here or speak from, maybe easy to speak from the table. It's up to you, yeah? Sure, more convenient. Thank you for introduction and thank you for invitation, but also thank you for the recognition of the fact that there are some countries, there is some common neighborhood between Russia and Poland. I represent this neighborhood. Actually, this neighborhood is made up of two countries only, Ukraine and Belarus, and so we have full representation here of the entire neighborhood. Well, in my way to Washington, I happened to be a few days in Slovakia and in the hotel I picked up, just incidentally picked up a newspaper left by some Russian tourists. It was newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. It's very interesting newspaper. Well, please, please don't laugh because it is the most, it's a newspaper which has the highest circulation in Russia, a daily newspaper. It's published daily 600 copies and two and a half million on the weekend. It's a newspaper which made very interesting evolution from Komsomol mouthpiece to yellow tabloid, but still retained their title, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and they retained all the orders on the title, orders of Lenin and on and on and on. Five orders together. Well, it draw my attention because it was related to our eventual discussion. First of all, there was very interesting article inside, under the title, myth about millions of raped Germans was invented by Hebels. It's a huge article. And another one on the cover page is a quotation from Mr. Lavrov, the head of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, entitled, this outrageous action wouldn't remain without our response, without our retaliation. He refers to alleged machinations at the Eurovision Song Contest. Just, please, just imagine any politician in any country who would react to whatever happens and some, you know, pop song competition. But from the Russian point of view, it's very important. It's political issue and it should be retaliated. So why I made this reference? I feel that it's very difficult to carry out any dialogue with the partner like this. It's really, it's not quite clear how to do this and who is a partner actually in this dialogue. Because on one hand you have, probably you have Russian government, various governmental institutions, and probably you have also Russian society which can be also a partner. But as to the government, of course, as Dr. Sherbury aptly pointed out, it's kind of corporation which pursues personal, rather personal corporate interests rather than national interests. Somebody may call it mafia state, so of course it's very difficult to have mafia state as a partner. State which pursues zero sum game. And as you know, it's very difficult to compromise with a partner who pursues zero sum game. Of course, any politics is a sort of pragmatist pursuit, whatever it means. And any politician has to find some trade-off between bigger and lesser evil, between values and interests, between ideology and morality. So Western politics are not exceptions from this rule. They have to find this trade-off, to pursue this trade-off. But the difference is that they still, usually they do this. Usually they try to take into account some values, some moral considerations, and their opponents on the Russian side usually do not care about this. And again early in the morning we discuss this kind of pragmatism. So the state is a very difficult partner, as you see. And what about society? Society is also a very problematic partner because it's harassed, it's repressed, it's atomized. So it's also very, very difficult to cooperate. Still it doesn't matter, it doesn't mean that the dialogue is not needed, of course. First of all, the state, the government, the governmental institutions are not monolithic. Probably there are different people, at least we'd like to believe that there are very different people. And maybe cooperation with some of them would, eventually, would bring some fruits in the future. Society also does exist in Russia and also can be a partner. Moreover, I would, I dare to argue that dialogue with the state, with the government, facilitates or actually enables dialogue with society because society in Russia is castigated as foreign agents. So of course it's much easier to carry out dialogue with society if you, at the same time, carry out dialogue with the state. So what does this dialogue, Polish-Russian dialogue, mean for Ukraine? First of all, I'd like you to keep in mind that all these neighboring countries, not only Ukraine and Belarus, but also all neighbors of the European Union are challenged, as Josef Langer put it long ago. All these countries are challenged, all these countries, European Union is challenged by some other spiritual power. Muslim fundamentalism in North Africa and Middle East, and some sort of Russian orthodox, Islamic, Eurasian, Messianism, in the case of Russia. All these countries, as Josef Langer argues, are involved in a sort of cold civil war about adoption or rejection of Western values, including Russia itself, including Turkey, by the way. So obviously everything that helps to tip the balance, to change this equilibrium, to promote Western values in Ukraine in Russia is welcome. And secondly, Polish-Russian dialogue establishes the new pattern of relations with Russia that might be emulated sometimes by the Ukrainian. It's a very good example how Middle-sized country, by the virtue of its good standing, of its very successful reforms, of its authority within the EU by successful economic politics, became real and serious a partner in such a dialogue. So I cannot imagine such a dialogue in the case of Ukraine. I cannot imagine some group for difficult matters, discussing difficult matters between Ukraine and Russia, even though we have probably as many difficult issues as Poland has with Russia. But so far Ukrainian-Russian relations, of course, do not look like any sort of dialogue. It's rather relations between Robinson Crusoe and Friday. Robinson Crusoe loves Friday, as you know, but as long as Friday recognizes superiority of Robinson. So this, you know, this does not meet, of course, a complete subordination of Ukraine to Russia. And here I would definitely disagree with colleagues who predict some sort of Ukraine's, maybe not absorption, but Ukraine joining customs union. I don't think it would happen whenever. Just because, you know, just because if you have one powerful mafia state, this mafia state can be contained either by rule of law, by some legal system as it happens in Poland, and Poland is very careful about penetration of Russian economy, of Polish economy by this very dubious Russian capital, which is not just capital, it's political capital. It's politically connected capital. Or powerful mafia state can be contained by another mafia state, and this is what happens in Ukraine. This is the main reason why Ukraine would never join customs union. Even if you can imagine that it happens, it wouldn't work anyway. Probably you notice that within the past 20 years there were a lot of integration projects promoted by Russia. Maybe I can count a dozen of them, and not a single of them worked. Yesterday I read that Armenia didn't participate, didn't move recently to the meeting of Tashkent military bloc. It's a very interesting sign. I don't know what it means, but anyway. All these integration projects were allegedly accepted by Russia's neighbors. Not a single of them is strong enough to say no. Maybe Georgia tried, but you know the story. All other neighbors usually say yes, but. And this but is very important. They pretend they accept this project. They pay lip service to them, but they use all sort of sabotage to derail this project. And this is why so far neither allegedly pro-Russian Lukashenko was good for Kremlin nor Mr Voronin nor Shevarnadze, because Kremlin usually does not need friendly governments in neighborhoods. They need fully obedient governments. So they don't need Lukashenko or Voronin or Shevarnadze. They need somebody like Mr Kadyrov. But I wonder if any neighbors would agree to have such a government. So to sum up, I believe that Polish-Russian dialogue is very important, but it's important rather as a process, not as a result. So far we cannot expect any palpable results from this process. But the process per se is important. It gives us some chances, and it can be considered a result by itself. Thanks. Thanks. Next we have in your revision song contest the Belarusian representative. Yaroslav, it's all yours. Thank you. I'd like to thank the organizers for having me here and knowing that I will be speaking after lunch. I think that visual aid would facilitate post-lunch understanding. So that's why I have prepared some slides to see, to grab the difficulty or the complexity of the process. And if you have a look at the courts of arms of three countries, you see two eagles, and you see just a round or ball, right? And it's extremely difficult to find a place for an independent country with its own foreign policy within such two great powers. And in Belarus, many people perceive and authorities in Lukashenko Poland as an empire. That's why by trying to explain the hostility to what Poland, they say, well, they would like to restore its borders as of 1939. And when I was running for parliament in 2006, one of the accusations I got from the authorities was that I would like, if I had won, I would have sold Grodna to Poland. So that's kind of the propaganda the authorities use. But just looking at the courts of arms, I came up with the concept of Balarussian foreign policy or strategic policy vis-a-vis Polish-Russian integration. And this is the strategy called Kalabok. For those of you who know Russian fairytale, that's easy, right? It's a round little bun that happens to be smart and cunning, so he tries to escape from different animals, and there are many animals around. So Lukashenko is smart enough to escape the deadly embraces of all its neighbors, primarily that of Russia. So if you want to understand the behavior of Lukashenko, it's very important to understand what Balarussians are. So first of all, we are two nations within one state. These are the poll result that was conducted in February, March. And you see the very strict division between Balarussians. I'm not talking about Balarussians, this is not the opinion poll conducted by presidential administration. This is the opinion poll conducted based on IRA and Gallup methodology, so we can somehow trust it. So you see that there is a division line that comes exactly in half. Is country going in the right direction? 38% says yes, 47 wrong. Democracy or strong leader? 34 for strongly hand, 56 for democracy. By the way, the number of Balarussians who are in favor of democracy right now is higher than that in Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania. Because of the experience that these countries had in the last 20 years. Personal freedom, then government has too much influence on your life. 61% said no. That's something that is horrible. In the country where the government controls you from cradle to grave, still 40% of the people believe that this is exact influence of the government. Then do you support privatization? In the country where 80% of the country belongs to the state, 55% of the population believe no, we don't support privatization. Another question is why, but still, if you come up with the policy of privatization, private economy, well, you would rather be in minority. But at the same time when people are asked, people are better off in free market than in the country where government plays a major role, 62% believe that free market is better. The reason is that they know the level of life in Poland, end traders, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia. In Russia, wages are like two and a half times higher. That explains an enormous labor immigration to Russia. That also is one of the major sources of domestic demand in the country. The volume of remittances that National Bank admits is over $900 million, but we estimate that to be about $3 billion. If you add $3 billion earned by Belarusians abroad, mainly in Poland, mainly in Russia, but then Poland and other countries, that's how Belarusians adjust to the situation that the government cannot create jobs and doesn't let private sector do that. But something that is really important that is the common value ground for Europeans, Russians and Belarusians. The question about the wealth gap or income gap and whether it is a problem and should the government do that. This is where Belarusians are like Europeans. And egalitarian sentiments are getting stronger and stronger in Europe and Russia, and Belarusians are within this particular trend. But you see the number, 44.8% both in favor of changes and for status quo. So that's why Lukashenko is trying to please both sides, but of course he's a Soviet type of a collective farmer. And a very sophisticated politician that rather relies not on based on formal education but on his gut feeling. But probably gut feeling is something that works in this situation because you are in the environment that is not so linear as like in relations within the European Union. But this is something, the final question about Belarusians. Good laws or good leaders? Again, have a look at the difference. About 60% of the Belarusians believe that good leaders are more important than good laws. So if you manipulate public opinion, you can get to the point that we don't need any European democracy. We don't need something that Poland has because based on Belarusian television, Poland is absolutely subservient as a servant of NATO, EU and Lithuania, Poland, other European countries, they don't make decisions of their own. They are just manipulated by Brussels or Washington. So Belarus and Russia, we are political partners. Union state that nobody knows what it is, but it's still on paper.  Military partners, we have also the organization allegedly to challenge NATO, but that's a joke. Strong supporters of Soviet version of the World War II history and that's when Lukashenko once likewise put him to believe that whoever criticizes and tells the truth about what happened in 1939 before that and during the war is a revisionist. He's an enemy of the state because he does not respect the past, the true past. And that's why for Russians and Belarusians, it's such a sensitive issue that if you start talking about Katyn, about murders, about rapes, as my colleague said, no, no, no, you lie. They don't want to see facts. They just want to have this wave because this is something that is the only probably solid factor of building up statehood, both in Belarus and in Russia. Religious and ethnic brothers, that's obvious. Partners in anti-NATO interwest campaign. Energy partners including a nuclear power station that I will talk about a little bit later. Close ties between shadow economy agents, smugglers and gangs. Something that is underestimated but gives a lot of economic power to the customs union. It explains why so many people in both countries primarily in Russia support this idea because the way to squeeze money from the Russian budget is done in a very good way using a foreign state. So formally we are one state but using these different schemes both in goods market and in finance, they can really do many things like money laundering, like capital cash outflow from Russia primarily. So Belarus doesn't have much cash to send out of the country but it provides services to Russian companies and Lukashenko is smart in finding partners for this. Belarus and Poland. Again, this is the perception of the authorities. Cold neighborhood. That's obvious. Especially after 2010 presidential elections. Before that Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sikorskiy, Westerwelle went in Belarus. We had very high hopes that things would be better off after elections but reality was absolutely different. Limited trade and investment cooperation, due to the investment and the economic mode inside Belarus. No military cooperation whatsoever. Agreement on cross-border movement of people is on standby. Poland would like to have that but Belarusian authorities don't want to do that because having one million people going freely to Poland would mean that many more people would see lies and the character of Belarusian economic model. Because if you start talking to ordinary Belarusians about prices, if you talk about democracy and human rights, well, okay, we have a third of the population who care. But we start talking about prices and wages. This is where you get the people. Why is it that fish and apples and the sausage in Poland are twice cheaper than in Belarus? The so-called socially oriented economy. And now even pensioners start gaping. Wow, is it really true? No, you're lying. Expensive and cumbersome visa regime, something that is really at its grace. We have a 60 euro visa. We have huge lines. And again, one of the conflicts, not conflicts but essentially scandals, is the way to get registration for getting a Polish visa in Belarus. Now, one of the versions is that Belarusian telecom monopolist Bel Tilekom somehow has his hackers to get all these slots and then sell them to the people for $200. So if you want to go to Poland and get a visa, just imagine 60 euros, and we don't get an annual or three-year visa, because a visa for three months and you pay like 250-300 bucks, which is a very effective visa curtain in our situation. And sensitive issue of the Polish minority in Belarus, which I think was inspired partially by Russia in 2005, because Union of Poles, which I'm a proud member of, was a political organization and did not get involved in politics at all. But the assumption was that as it is so big and Polish minority is about half a million people, so they may turn political and somehow be the center of resistance to the Belarusian regime, which was like a cock and bull story from the very beginning. Russia's input, and this is almost solely the achievement of Alexander Lukashenko, his unique contribution to this is that there is not a single person in the world that could get so much cash and support from Russia without getting anything in return. Absolutely unique case. He should just start teaching Howard, MIT, to know how to explain how to do that. Generous energy integration grant, because when you talk about the parallel comparisons, we have like, okay, Soviet-style country, centrally planned economy, it must be poor. When people come to Belarus, they are shocked, because it's a clean country, white streets, a lot of lights, and the problem is with even a perception of Belarus, even in Poland. I remember talking to one Polish businessman, he wanted to understand what's going on in Belarus and saying, do you guys have ATM machines in Minsk in Belarus? So do you use banks? Like, because he remembered how it was in Poland in the 80s, it was very poor and uncivilized and he believed that Belarus is a country like this. So there's definitely a lot of misunderstanding because of the way Belarus is covered in Polish media and in Russian media too.  If the price you pay will come somewhere in like three, four, five years, or may not come at all if oil prices fall and Russia starts dealing with, well, the problem of falling apart. Almost free access to its domestic market, which neither Poland, nor European Union, nor Ukraine has. Diplomatic information support in all areas. Engagement in joint military projects, including military and arms trade. Belarus increased arms trade by 65%. There's a recent announcement from the Swedish think tank. And it's not in the Belarusian statistics. Engagement in credits, which also a very important part to sustain the Belarusian model. Free access to Russian labor market, which Ukraine, Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan don't have or have in a limited way. Free access to Russian educational institutions. Free access to train, to get young talents to Russia. And visa trade regime, which is also very important. What we get from Poland, again, as perceived by the authorities, tough resolutions that Polish diplomats and European parliamentarians came up with in Brussels. Then support of radical part of Belarusian opposition. Those who don't want to talk and just dictator go and no ties, introduce economic sanctions. Information support of TV channel Belsat. Attempts to bring Polish SMEs to Belarus. There are some attempts, but in this kind of environment, when authorities dictate terms of engagement, that's kind of difficult. And which is also important destination of Belarusian end traders. And these people bought goods, usually buy goods in Poland for about $700 million. So that's extremely good for eastern part of Poland, Białystok and this part of region, Lublin, because many Belarusians go there and they have VAT schemes, which are very good, and they somehow survive without any restrictions from the government. Lukashenko's input in relations with Russia. So he got so much, what he does in return. Formal support of the Kremlin integration initiatives. Just formal, because we've been in customs union with Russia since 1995. Few people know that, but formally on paper. So paper is nothing. Reality is absolutely different. Military cooperation, which again, if we have the probability of a military conflict with Poland less than 1%, well, you can do whatever you want, especially if Russia pays for that. Orthodox Church conquered that and support of conservative values, conservative as Lukashenko in the post-Soviet society in Belarus.  He just said, many kind of uncivilized remarks, but Belarusians, they still believe that it is something of a moral degradation in Russian Orthodox Church and both Kremlin also support that. Gas transit, oil transit and refining. Opportunities to select Russian oil barons to share oil scheme with Belarus is extremely important, because if Lukashenko agrees with Igor Sechen, with Gutzeriev, with Alekperov, with some other guys on rules of engagement in all markets, and they build another oil refinery in Belarus without paying expo due to the Russian budget, so the value of the Russian oil contribution to the Belarusian model will even increase. And something that, again, Lukashenko benefits by using the bans in Russia, Kazakhstan and Poland is gambling. We have probably more casinos now than in any European party and we're getting closer to Las Vegas. That's all cash. That's all and that now he's looking for a partner to get a bank that would provide offshore services because Switzerland is no longer there. British Virgin Islands cannot do that, but Belarus is under control, stable, and if he finds somebody from either Europe or Asia or any other country, he can get like one, two trillion dollars to take care about. So if you look at the theme of so-called sanctions versus engagement, I would like to see to analyze whether there is any impact on the trade. And do you see the trade with Poland? Sure, sure, I'm not finishing. Export to Poland from Belarus about, it did not change much. It's on the same level. While the share of Polish export to European Union, as you see, is just, well, 2.1%. It's really very small. It is number five, our trading export partner, unlike Netherlands or Latvia that are huge because the basis of these flows are all products. Import from Belarus against Poland, it didn't change much for the last 10 years. So no matter what politicians do, trade is still there and there is a huge potential in understanding. So to conclude, dependence on Russian resources is increasing and that creates a lot of dangers to Lukashenko because by 2015 he either should sell a lot of valuable assets or there will be a different scenario from the Kremlin to challenge Lukashenko politically in the presidential election campaign. Potential of Polish-Belarussian relations still frozen and I think that if Lukashenko somehow is out of politics or he changes his mind, then there will be a lot of improvement in this area. Lukashenko is still playing the role of Kalabok between Russia and EU so far successfully. Belarus is trying to diversify in an orthodox way, meaning gambling, entertainment, money, financial services. Belarus still has assets to sell to make it beyond 2015 without grave political concessions to Russia. And finally, Lukashenko pursues the policy of building bridges with politically powerful billionaires rather than countries and governments, which is also very important to note. He tried to deal with Kultuk, he tried to deal with and he's quite successful in dealing with Austrian rich men, Ukrainians, Russians, and he may be on very bad terms with governments but if he has money of that kind from billionaires he doesn't care much because he believes that his reputation is not the factor. Thank you so much. Thanks Yaroslav, very informative, wide-ranging. Mikhail, you're on next. Thank you. I notice that I'm the only representative of Russia in this distinguished assembly but I'm not going to speak on or in behalf of Russia and certainly I have a Russian educational and career background but I teach it in American University for a number of years and my perspective on the subject of our meeting will be that of the other historian who is practicing research in this field but stays outside of institutionalized dialogue. I mean a dialogue institutionalized in such structures or bodies as the mentioned group for difficult issues, complex issues, maybe difficult issues, I think it's the accepted translation, difficult matter, sorry. But I'm involved in a dialogue with a number of Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian historians who study the past of this mega-region.  That is the subject is how the actors, political actors or actors relatively close to politics use the past, use the history, use the past for political purposes. That is manipulation of the past, uses of the past for politics, for political campaigns, for shaping identities, for shaping political attitudes and so on. And I would touch upon the similarities and differences between Russian and Polish approaches to historical politics and I will try to make a point for potential for furthering this dialogue, historians or other historians' contribution to Poland-Russia dialogue. To begin with, I would partly agree and disagree with Mikola about the existence of a dialogue, of any dialogue between Poland and Russia. I wouldn't be so pessimistic about Russia's actors or about actors on the Russian side, their capability of conducting a dialogue. I think that some dialogue is underway. But what is right is that a dialogue is often a conventional level to define or to designate some form of cooperation, some form of rapprochement. And necessarily this rapprochement is really a dialogue, especially as regards historians' analysis or historical analysis or the analysis of historical past. And sometimes it's just a series of monologues addressed very often not to the opposite, not to the other side of presumed dialogue, but to the domestic constituencies to be in their support, to be in their favor, and so on and so forth. So really one can detect some very positive signs in how Polish-Russian relations of the recent years affected the historical memory, so to say. The discussion of shared past, the discussion of controversial issues about shared past. And just getting back to the period of time, 10 years ago, for example, we see how much passion, how much irrational passion was there in Polish-Russian relations, and one can point to extreme forms, extreme patterns of politics of memory. On the Russian side, we can recall such notorious an enterprise as the establishment of the commission to fight to quote its name, to commission to fight falsifications, historical falsifications to the detriment of Russia's state interests. A bit earlier, several years earlier, the Putin government established a very controversial new holiday, the Day of National Unity, established in 2005. Obviously designed to recall, to remind controversial issues in the Polish-Russian past, namely, the Polish, the Zheczpospolita participation in the Russia's, in the Moscow's, rather, times of Trebs as early as the beginning of the 17th century. So it's obvious that very, very distant past was instrumentalized to produce immediate political results. On the Polish side, one could point to a number of manipulations of historical past by the famous Institute of National Memory, a whole institution, a multifunctional institution, that whose activity, whose functioning stirred up also much controversy in the Polish society. So what happened next? What is continuing to happen, to go now? One can consciously, with many reservations, point to, really, to a kind of rapprochement between Polish and Russian governments and Polish and Russian historians. And we see that the events of the, of the events of the 2009-2010 relatively positively affected the discussion of the Katina massacre. And it's, this process began before the Smolensk tragedy of 2010, and it was tragically, it was facilitated by the Smolensk tragedy, and the Russian authorities sped up the process of passing the volumes of the Katina affair to the Polish part after that. Also, there were several meaningful gestures on the Russian side, highly ritualistic, so to say, not very, from some perspective, just hollow, just paying lip service, but nevertheless meaningful. One of them was the famous Putin's Westerplatte speech of 2009 at the meeting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the, sorry, the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War in September 2009. And in that speech, Putin very reluctantly, not directly, but a drop in mention of the Russian invasion in Poland in 1939. So that, I mean, that meant something against the background of the previous rhetoric, previous militant and xenophobic rhetoric. That sounded, that came to sound like a concession. So we also, so all this served to mitigate a little the state of things in Polish-Russian relations. But the question is, how, in what way did historians on both sides benefit from it? The dialogue between historians that benefited from this rapprochement was conducted by, so to say, high-placed figures in respect of historical communities of each country. So the level of discussion was very closely related to government politics, so to say. And this dialogue was sponsored, was encouraged, was supported by governments of both sides. And just, I'm not sure that this is the only form of dialogue that historians are allowed to dream of, so to say. And how did it, so this form of dialogue that is strongly government supported, just look at the, for example, look at the publications, very impressive, very available publications of the group for difficult issues, for difficult matters. This public publications features members of this committee, converse meet with presidents, with prime ministers of both countries. That is, the government, the state's presence, the states in both states' involvement in this dialogue is very, very palpable. And it can, how it can, how can it impact, how can it affect, so to say, broader historical communities, broader historical developments. I would point to just to one possible consequence of the Polish-Russian rapprochement and evictivization of historical dialogue in 2010. Being a historian, being committed to empirical evidence, I cannot prove it convincingly, but my feeling is that Polish-Russian rapprochement affected politics of memory in Ukraine in 2010. I'm just sorry for encroaching the domain of Mikola, but this is just an observation. Viktor Yanukovych's coming to power almost coincided with the Smolensk tragedy and following thaw in Polish-Russian relations, and one can surmise that Yanukovych, in his initial gestures toward Russia, tried to imitate this spirit of detente.  The whole construction of the memories about Holodomor was not cancelled, was not sent to oblivion. It still remains a part of, so to say, officially sponsored memories about Ukraine and part of the historical narrative of the nation. However, Yanukovych was quick to play down the genocidal aspect of previous Yushchenko's campaign, not making direct announcements, not recognizing it directly, so he withdrew from making strong points about the Holodomor as a genocide against the Ukrainian nation. Obviously, that was part of general thought, so to say, of historical politics in the region, and that was more particularly a gesture of reconciliation toward the Russian government and Russian government-sponsored historians. Immediately after that, then Russian President Medvedev visited in a benevolent gesture the Holodomor Memorial in Kiev, doing precisely what he refused to do, had refused to do a couple of years before just rejecting Yushchenko's invitation. And I'm not quite sure that this kind of thought really can fully benefit multileveled and multifaceted historical dialogue. As a consequence, just talking about common neighbors, for example, my feeling is that these politics of reconciliation or other politics of playing down historical controversies resulted, for example, in hindering, in the Ukrainian part, in hindering a critical number of Ukrainian historians from confronting the issue of the Valin massacre, yet another burning issue this time in the Polish-Ukrainian relations in the Polish-Ukrainian historical dialogue. And because Yanukovych's reversal, Yanukovych's revision of previous politics of memory obviously created a feeling of threat to the Ukrainian nationhood, to the Ukrainian national consciousness, and historians, really historians, feel vulnerable in their efforts to build up a strong national narrative. And such a complicated issue, such a burning issue as the Valin massacre of 1943 is one of the issues that cannot be discussed fruitfully in this climate, very strongly affected by the government dialogue. And just maybe I will take advantage maybe from possible questions to expand on this, but my final point would be about, very briefly, about Polish, about what has not been but maybe still could be borrowed from Polish experience, both by Russia and, for example, and Ukraine as Poland and Russia's common neighbor. I mean that for all passions, for all maybe for all vitriol of debates, public debates in Poland about historical issues, Polish historians were able to develop meaningful public discussions, meaningful public debates and come up with a kind of consensus. And the very eloquent example here is the case of Yudbabne, the first brought up by the Polish-American historian Jan Gross, the case of mass murder of Jews in a small town in eastern Poland in 1941. A case that made the Polish society at large face the issue of collective responsibility and guilt for the participation in the Holocaust. So debates were enormously passionate and they, in fact, they are going on, although they pick fell on the 2002-2005, and in fact some meaningful segment, a considerable segment of Polish historian profession came up with a new sense of responsibility for national, for the crimes, for the historical crimes for which the nation should fail responsibility. Nothing comparable, in my view, to my knowledge, nothing comparable happened in Russia and Ukraine. Just, let me call it mentioned, this notorious issue of the atrocities committed by the Soviet army against civilians in Germany and Eastern Europe in 1945. Another possible issue to serve as a trigger to discuss the collective responsibility for the nation's crime could be the issue of collaborations of Soviet citizens with the Nazi in the present-day territory of the Russian Federation, but nothing comparable with the Yudbabne case just can be seen, can be detected in Russia. And the case of Ukraine, I'm afraid here, is similar to Russia rather than Poland. Also, the Valin massacre is a muted issue in present-day politics of memory in Ukraine. The issue of the Ukrainian insurgent army in the Holocaust that is hotly debated now in the historical professions also seemed to be far, just to be very, very remote from the core of public debate in Ukraine. And here is the, I think that here is the, here is the perspective for, here is prospects for furthering a dialogue between historians and that's really a point where the Ukrainian and Russian historians could borrow more boldly and more fruitfully from Polish grappling with the really difficult issues of the past. Thank you, Miha. I had to interrupt you because this was very interesting. Thank you very much. Okay, questions now. I'm going to jump in with the first one. From what I gather, maybe establishing a Belarusian Russian and a Ukrainian Russian group similar to the Polish Russian would be very difficult unless we call it the group for currently impossible matters. But I have a question, both of you raised, particularly in the case of Belarus, it sounds as though you would need an internal dialogue, Belarusian, Belarusian and Ukrainian-Ukrainian dialogue on difficult matters. How far is this, is anybody thinking about this? Is anybody moving this in a similar way? I don't mean sort of both sides shouting at each other, but sitting down actually discussing things seriously. In Belarus, there is no dialogue and the situation is that the opposition probably in the worst shape ever. Lukashenko has so much resources from Russia that he doesn't care even to have a dialogue with IMF so much. Things may change in the second half of the year because he is facing a difficult loan problem. He has to pay a lot of cash and the macroeconomic policy inside the country is far from being sane. But this Polish-Russian dialogue on the platform, I think the mere existence of such an institution is a very positive factor because that destroys not just much but sends a very good signal to people inside Belarus and a very disturbing signal for Lukashenko. But if Poland and Russia agrees on something and start talking to each other instead of blaming each other for so many things, then it will be very difficult for him to play this game of, okay, I'm in favor of Russia, I'm against Poland, I'm in favor of Poland-EU, I'm not with Russia. So the mere existence, I really hail this kind of dialogue attempt because really we're very far from the culture of dialogue itself and in 1991-19, let me remind you, we are much closer when Ambassador Wieg, that time I was the head and Ambassador Kozak, they managed somehow to set up a dialogue. Then that was destroyed. But I think that the only kind of realistic factor that could push us to the dialogue is the crisis. First of all, I not quite agree with what he told about difficult issues like Volin or UPA completely muted. Yes, of course they are muted but not completely. I mean that we have, luckily enough, we have pretty good dialogue between Ukrainian and Polish societies at least between intellectuals. We have, we see good partners in Poland and there are Polish partners in Ukraine for such a dialogue. And as you remember, there was pretty successful reconciliation gestures in 2002-2003, in Volinia, in Lviv, this Sventosz Orlet military cemetery. And now we are also preparing in July, two weeks we are preparing also a number of actions commemorating Volinia massacre. So it's not that bad. What is really bad is that these issues like UPA are hijacked in Ukraine by Soviet file, largely Ukraineophobic political forces and they try to employ this issue to discredit all things Ukrainian. That's a problem which really complicates the entire issue. It's really, I feel it, I feel this very powerful challenge how to say the truth but at the same time not to identify yourself with this very ugly people like Kulesnichenko and all these guys who are really very speculative, very demagogic and very dirty actually. They don't care about truth, they just care about discrediting everything. That's really a very special issue. Regarding Ukrainian-Ukrainian dialogue it's really very important issue. I fully agree that we need it maybe even more than Ukrainian-Russian or whatever. It's still, I would say it's only in embryonic form today. There are some attempts but not powerful enough. Thanks, Michal. Let's open up now to questions, comments. James, you already have been introduced as speaker. So a question, should I say? So please go ahead. Thanks very much and my compliments, congratulations to the panel. I was hoping I could get the three of you to focus on the values issues that were raised in the last panel by putting it in the following way. Yanukovych, like all his predecessors in Ukraine has publicly identified Ukraine's future with Europe and the European system and therefore in that context the Europe's involvement in discussion about values and internal matters has an essential legitimacy in Ukraine and no one can quarrel with it. But in the case of Russia you are looking not only at elites but a large part of society who define their values and their policy in opposition to those that are advanced by Brussels. And the question then I think has to be who in Russia benefits from conducting a public argument over internal matters in Russia about this question. And just to put this in very practical terms what has the greater influence in Russia today in a positive sense? The Magnitsky Act or the EU's third energy package which is an example of upholding our values and practices and our own jurisdiction about the way the business is conducted. So I will just leave it there but I'd be grateful if you could engage with that issue. Thanks. Thank you very much. In fact my intention is to explain because it seems to me that misunderstanding because I was impressed by comments made by Mikhail Dolbilov but it seems to me that he does not understand that the group on difficult matters is not a group of historians. There are some historians but the problem was not to find something new to make a kind of the research, not at all because we have had different interpretations of history in Poland and in Russia and we will have this difference also in the future because all the nations they have the right to their own national memories. The problem is only how to discuss to introduce the language between intellectuals, historians, sociologists etc. Just to discuss the real problems not something what is invented by politicians and therefore I raised that question that the very fundamental point of departure was the politicized dialogue. In other words to discuss the real facts the truth. The truth is not detrimental it could be uncomfortable it is very often uncomfortable but it has to be accepted that as a point of departure it should not be the victim of the dialogue it should not be the victim of reconciliation. Reconciliation starts by recognition of facts and then one can interpret. Having said that I would like to say that the aim of the dialogue which was initiated in 2008 between Poland and Russia was with an intention to open the public debate and the public debate which should be based on truth and facts with an intention that politicians will not discuss about the history. They should discuss about the problems which are oriented to the future because up to 2008 we have had the situation that ministers of foreign affairs discussed about the facts and my last point is the following just to demonstrate what I have in mind we organized in 2009 not only the meeting connected with cutting and many other issues which were sensitive for example Pact Molotov-Ribbentrop it was an international conference organized in the Royal Castle by the way originally Germans wanted to organize this in Berlin, Russians in Moscow and I told them that it would be very difficult for us to accept to discuss Pact Ribbentrop Molotov Pact in the same building where it was signed it would be better to discuss in the Royal Castle in Warsaw they accepted eventually after many meetings and discussions and my intention was to demonstrate as a kind of the small exposition to display map which was signed, the original map which was signed by Stalin and Hitler not only Ribbentrop and Molotov it was the map which was signed by Stalin personally about the frontier this map was by the way attached to the secret protocols in later on it was not in August but in September 1939 and the Russians told me that unfortunately we do not have an original it disappeared, we do not have an original and I said ok we ask them the Germans because I have seen in German Foreign Ministry and we displayed I would say this map with an intention to demonstrate what happened it was done by the way for the first time and in such a way this problem is not more a kind of the political element of the discussion because facts are now accepted, they are known that was an intention to establish and those meetings by the way when you mentioned the photographs was put in Tusk etc they were with an intention to demonstrate that those independent intellectuals who accepted to participate in the work of the group opened the way for the politicians to continue negotiations about the future about the presence this is in my view very important element just to understand what the whole group was about very short two questions, two issues I would like to follow Adam Daniel Rothfeld point and remind all of us that in September 1999 the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an official statement with an official interpretation of free banter mode of fact it was quite a unique situation where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs engaged itself in the kind of historical debate that's one comment another comment it was inspired by Mihail Dauview in intervention I would like to hear his comment on the following thought Russian historiography is divided into two camps nowadays first first one writes for let's say global reader so it has to shape the argument in the way which may be challenged by the other authors and there is another group of Russian historians who write mostly for domestic purposes and domestic reader they can afford to ignore the facts or to shape the interpretation having in mind that nobody is able to contest it engaging this historians from the second group to the project of a joint book which is going to appear which appeared in Polish first then in Russian and is going to appear in English as well is also the method of influencing the way how they carrying debate about historical issue in Russia it serves because they have to shape the argument in completely different way they have done until now thank you let's start with you Mikhail thank you for comments very briefly just I would direct very briefly to the comments and questions from Professor Rotfeld and Professor Damsky I regret if I so if I if I sounded as if I cast doubt on the activities of the group for difficult issues certainly that was not my intention maybe just I put I just made my point to Bluntly but certainly I wasn't aware that the group was created to develop interpretations to develop to elaborate a consensus around difficult issues and certainly focus on historians and historical stuff that's because of my perspective on as a historian but another point would be that the very notion of difficult issues difficult matters how they are how they are conceptualized just very briefly give an example this current year and 2014 is the sesquicentennial anniversary of the January prize in Russian Poland of 1863 that's enormously that was an enormously important event for both Polish and Russian history both Polish and Russian as much important for Poland as for Russia during the last decade there has been much a lot of debate and brilliant publications brilliant monographs on this issue and this is an extremely controversial issue for historians dialogue this is very difficult issue in terms of interpretation both in facts and interpretations it's not yet still quite researched so in Russia this anniversary is completely is completely forgotten just an occasional conference an occasional mention no clear just no clear attitudes on the part of historical community in fact it's passing a notice during the year Polish attitudes are just Polish reaction Polish discussion public discussion certainly more active but again this so this occasion was not used was not used by historians to elaborate put forth a kind of consensus about a very very important issue of still not yet very distant past that just 150 years that means that just this is an impartial remark that the 20th century politically fraud politically charged issues are issues that can resonate in current politics issues that can be instrumentalized for political purposes regardless regardless of the intentions of conscientious and competent historians so these issues are qualified for difficult other issues that are from the perspective of professional historians deserve no less attention and debate don't qualify that was just this is not like a kind of attack or assault or on the very idea of getting together and discussing the issues under the offices of governmental structures but this is just a remark that that current politics and political agenda still affect historians dialogue institutionalized dialogue and okay I think I should stop here okay you want to go next okay there were two issues I feel I need to address first of all pardon yeah all right regarding the value issues yeah that's true Yanukovych fully accepts his political team accepts European orientation European identity but of course it's a lip service I agree that it plays very important normative role because at least they could be pressed both domestically and internationally in order to meet their promises their declarations but at the same time of course they never believed in these values absolutely moreover they sincerely do not believe they sincerely believe that politics everywhere all over the world is about playing with rules not by the rules the West is simply more skillful in this play and because of this value the West is able to pressure Ukraine poor Ukraine government which is not so skillful so it's important of course it's important that they accept this normative value because it enables society and international actors to press them I I agree that the truth cannot be detrimental but can be uncomfortable for us for everybody and it's not a matter in Ukraine it's not a matter of any denial of all those things that happened it's not a matter of justification of UPA crimes or participation in Holocaust or something like this but it's rather a problem of indifference it's a serious problem that issues not properly discussed and of course there are some attempts to undermine this but there are no significant attempts to deny or to justify I'd like you to understand that in Ukraine and in these terms Ukraine is much very different from Russia we don't have any and never had any unified politics of memory or historical politics there was no monolithic government there are very different policies both in the central level and in the regional levels and of course there are very powerful external agents Russia first of all so Ukraine has never had any unified any homogeneous so to say integral politics of memory what is serious problem that all these issues are very difficult to discuss we have very strong tradition of Soviet propaganda which discredited everything wholesale which painted everything in black and white color and still today we have this division like in Belarus and Belarusia we have also Ukraine and Ukraine probably and Soviet Ukrainian still draws on Soviet nationalism and Soviet nationalism was banal nationalism if you remember Michael Billick's excellent book you probably understand that it's much easier to hide this banal nationalism it's powerful, it's very strong but at the same time it's almost invisible because it's banal, it's usual in daily formulas in daily discourses, practices it's much more difficult to notice it but it's very powerful and today today's Soviet, Ukrainian Soviet part of society inherited this all these discourses and because of this they can adopt they can apply old rhetorical discursive formulas against their opponents and this complicates any historical discussion in Ukraine I feel it it's very challenging to talk about value-based policies and dialogue in the country where Brezhnev is considered to be the most successful prime minister Stalin is considered to be a good manager and the breakup of the Soviet Union as the biggest geopolitical catastrophe this is not about Putin this is about a lot of people in Russia and from different consolidated groups something that is missing from the picture of geopolitical people and democracy people and human-right people is something that we really should revise somehow or add to the potential of all our missionary work and the group that is the most likely to talk about value-based policies and change is entrepreneurs and small business something that is part of many, many activities but these people have a lot of things to lose they learn how to do business how to be independent they value achievement the cultural achievement and this is something that is not part of the agenda of traditional democracy-based organization so I think that if we include SMEs not talking about big guys like AxonMobil these transnational corporations they find very good ways to talk to big governments but SMEs plus civil society activists who talk about for example corruption and the case of Navalny shows you in Russia that I'm talking about this particular person with his nationalistic agenda I'm talking about the corruption as an issue and this is getting much more important in Belarus as well because Lukashenko deals with that issue at a time and he's been fighting with corruption 20 years without exactly and now he just yesterday he said that construction is a mafia and corruption again so I think that this is what we should take into account and integrate into any activities support small SME initiative entrepreneurship development through the tools because this is what people understand if you talk about just democracy like history this is the thing that probably make more division lines than dialogue platforms unless somebody has a burning question I can't wait till the next conference which we're going to be planning soon I think we'll finish there and I'd like to thank our panelists I think they all finished in first place in our own song contest so give them another hand Svavik you want to come up you have some concluding thoughts some concluding remarks first of all I would like to say that we are going to disseminate a brief paper a brief policy paper on the basis of this conference and the paper is going to be written jointly by our center and Hitlikon, Janusz Bugański and their team the second concluding remarks concerns next conference I would like to invite all of you for the next year we are going to bring this platform of Polish-Russian dialogue to Washington DC again cooperating in this regard with CSIS and this leads me to the last concluding remarks I would like to thank Hitlikon Janusz Bugański their team, CSIS for giving us the floor here in this next conference is going to be held in new venues congratulations so I think that the crowd in this room they showed that there is need to talk more about the region about the dialogue between Poland and Russia and last but not least to think more strategically about the impact well Polish-Russian terms may have on why the Europe and transatlantic relations I think the next conference we should focus even more on a strategic approach giving the fact that we already took conferences on description what's going on between Poland and Russia and how it may influence the European theme that was my last sentence during this conference, thank you


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