WARSAW — People in Poland are eating apples these days. Lots of apples. Here in Warsaw, they’re pressed into your hands at a street festival, or baked into piles of pies and cakes. You see them everywhere.
It’s an act of defiance. Moscow has banned the importing of fruits and vegetables to Russia, in retaliation for the West’s sanctions against the country for supporting the separatists in Ukraine. Last year, Poland sold more than $400 million worth of produce to Russia, 90 percent of it apples. Now that market has disappeared.
So Poles are being urged to eat apples and then eat some more. It’s their patriotic duty. Cider sales have skyrocketed. Janusz Palikot, a controversial Polish businessman and politician declared to a local magazine, “Russia doesn’t want our apples? Then let’s make jam and booze!” The Polish ambassador to the US has even pronounced them “Freedom Apples,” in the dubious tradition of “Freedom Fries,” urging Yanks to take up the slack and buy more from Poland.
We were in Warsaw for the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds and the third World Conference of Screenwriters, part of the group representing the United States at several days of panels, meetings and receptions. Throughout, the conversation was lively and informative. Andrzej Wajda was there, the grand old man of Polish cinema. So was Andrew Davies, creator of the original TV version of “House of Cards” and countless other British adaptations; and so were several Scandinavian writers, flush with the success of such innovative television series as “The Killing,” “The Bridge,” and “Borgen,” the story of a woman Danish prime minister.
What almost never came up, even with the many Poles in attendance, was the 500-pound-gorilla that wasn’t precisely in the room, but just 700 or so miles away. A couple of weeks before, a German newspaper reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly had told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, “If I wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest.”
It’s a sobering thought but not likely, most of those with whom we spoke claimed. Maybe their optimism is partly the ongoing euphoria of a nation that has largely escaped the economic meltdown of 2008 and that seems for the most part to have embraced democracy – Poland just celebrated the 25th anniversary of its first post-World War II, non-Communist government, not to mention the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Poland is now a member of NATO and the European Union – in fact, the new president of the European Council is Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister whose successor in Warsaw is Ewa Kopacz, a chain-smoking physician who used to carry a stethoscope in her purse and wrote prescriptions for fellow members of parliament. She recently took some heat when she told a press conference that “Poland should act like a reasonable Polish woman,” protecting her children first instead of heedlessly jumping into a fight – like a man.
Nonetheless, in some places, there is definitely a low hum of anxiety. But Article V of NATO’s founding treaty says that “an attack on one is an attack of all,” meaning, in theory at least, that the armed forces of Britain, France, Germany and the US, among others, would come to Poland’s defense. And a new NATO rapid response force is being headquartered here. Vladimir Putin may be boastful, many Poles think, but not foolhardy. Besides, he has his hands full with Ukraine, not to mention Chechnya and a host of other problems within. Then again, given Putin’s past actions in Georgia and Crimea, would Poland’s allies stand strong in the face of further, greater aggression?