- May 22, 2020
- 2,880
"For two hundred years, the Commonwealth existed only in memory and textbooks.
Then, one chilly morning in February, thousands of people gathered at a border and demanded that it be returned"
Then, one chilly morning in February, thousands of people gathered at a border and demanded that it be returned"
Budzisko, Poland — 0445
It was well before the sun crested over the horizon when the first headlights appeared along the road.
One by one, cars pulled onto the shoulder near the border crossing, their headlights illuminating the darkness and casting long shadows across the empty road. At first, the border guards assumed the drivers were simply making final preparations before crossing into Lithuania. Then the flags began to unfurl. Red and white Polish flags appeared first, then came the Vytis, and finally, flags that had not been seen in public for centuries—bearing the royal coat of arms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The demonstrators remained quiet. There were no chants. No speeches. No drums. They simply stood along the roadside, holding their flags as more and more Polish citizens arrived. Cars continued to pull in from the darkness, their occupants joining the growing crowd before dawn. The only sounds that night were the occasional barking of a confused village dog and the steady rustling of flags in the morning wind.
By the time the first residents of Budzisko awoke and began preparing for the day, hundreds of cars lined the roads between the village and the border crossing. Twice that number of protesters stood shoulder to shoulder across the roadside. The border guards of both nations watched them carefully. For the moment, no one knew what they intended to do.
By noon, the first buses began arriving. The first few had been painted in the colors and symbols of the National Heritage Front, Poland's far-right nationalist political party. More buses followed, carrying hundreds of additional demonstrators. With their arrival, the character of the protest changed and the quiet demonstration of the morning began to become something louder. Drums began beating and flags were raised higher. The nationalist demonstrators surged toward the border, shouting across the road at the Lithuanian border guards, and the growing number of Lithuanian civilians who had gathered to watch. Then the chanting began.
"Jedna granica! Jedna przyszłość!"
One border! One future!
"Naród chce jedności!"
The nation wants unity!
"Litwa! Polska! Wspólna Rzeczpospolita!"
Lithuania! Poland! A Common Commonwealth!
It did not take long for the once-peaceful countryside to disappear beneath the cacophony. The pounding of drums echoed through the village and the surrounding farmland. Thousands of voices shouted toward the Lithuanian border. The wind carried the sound across the frontier, where Lithuanian police and border guards watched the demonstration grow by the hour. By sunset, the number of protesters had grown from the dozen who had arrived before dawn to several hundred. And the number would continue to grow as day by day more cars and buses arrived.
People came from Suwałki, Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk, and dozens of smaller towns across Poland. Some came carrying modern Polish flags. Others carried the banners of the National Heritage Front. But many carried red-and-white banners of a Commonwealth that had disappeared from the map more than two centuries earlier.
Within a week, the village of Budzisko had nearly vanished beneath a sea of red, white, and Commonwealth colors. The elderly residents of the once-sleepy village began leaving. Some stayed with relatives and others simply wanted to escape the noise. The roads that had once carried only trucks and travelers heading toward Lithuania were now filled with protesters, journalists, police, and political activists. What had begun as a quiet demonstration had become an international spectacle.
And then, on the seventh day, the cameras arrived. The first journalist to reach Budzisko was not from a major Polish television network or newspaper but an independent political vlogger. A self-described journalist and committed far-right nationalist. He arrived with a camera crew of two, a satellite uplink, and a livestream audience already numbering in the thousands. He had spent years covering Polish nationalism and criticizing the Royal government in Warsaw for what he called "weakness towards the enemies of Polish civilization." Now he stood on the edge of the largest nationalist demonstration Poland had seen in decades and behind him thousands of protesters waved Polish and Commonwealth flags.
The lithuanian border stood in the distance before the vlogger turned towards the camera.
"Good evening, Poland," the crowd erupted behind me with chants of 'Polska! Polska! Polska!' "My fellow countrymen and women, for seven days the government has remained silent on both sides." He turned towards the border and gestured towards it with his hand. "For seven days our brothers and sisters have stood here. Their message is simple." The camera panned across the road showing the roughly a thousand protesters. "Their message is simple. Two nations." The crowd behind him began chanting. "One commonwealth." With a smile, he turned back towards the camera and continued to speak. "For two hundred years, they told us that the Commonwealth was dead but they were wrong. It is alive in each of us."
The livestream went viral within hours. By midnight clips of the demonstration had spread across Poland. By the next morning, videos were being watched by the international community. By the afternoon the Royal Government of Poland could no longer pretend that the events at Budzisko were merely a protest. Something larger had begun.
