The Russian Other and Foreign Policy Divergence Among Eurosceptics: Poland and Hungary During the War in Ukraine

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a significant foreign policy divergence among Eurosceptic politicians in Central and Eastern Europe has emerged. While both countries have been under Soviet control, and later simultaneously joined both the EU and NATO, Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS), has adopted a hawkish, security-first and EU-aligned security policy. In contrast, Hungary’s Fidesz positioned itself “on the side of peace”, calling the EU policy escalatory, while opposing sanctions and aid to Ukraine. This paper aims to explain this divergence via collective memory as a constraining factor in foreign policy change during times of crisis. Specifically, I argue that variation in the role of the Russian “other” in state autobiographical narratives, which is sustained through memory regimes, and activated through contestation and discourse, is what shapes the perception of threat in light of Russian actions, and dictates the range of viable foreign policy adaptations to the events in Ukraine. The Polish hegemonic narrative of its history, portrays Russia as an existential and longstanding antagonist, allowing for the activation of historical analogies such as the Katyn massacre and Polish partitions to renewed Russian aggression. The Hungarian narrative, in contrast, in which Russia plays a comparatively diminished role, allows for a discursive separation of present Russian aggression from past control from Moscow, analogizing such events with the present “leftist foreign power” in Brussels. Thus, Hungarian elites may preserve and justify a friendly policy towards Russia by re-framing past events, and even omitting less convenient narratives, in a manner that is not feasible in Poland. Empirically, the paper employs comparative process tracing across critical junctures between 1989 and 2022, triangulating elite speeches and media appearances with institutional memory politics, with a focus on sites of memory, significant events, dominant narratives and contestation, and significant agents of memory. This paper contributes to the literature by linking memory regimes to populist foreign policy adaptations to shocks in the region, as well as highlighting how European security alignment in Eastern and Central Europe, is conditioned by existing mnemonic infrastructure and hegemonic memory during times of geopolitical crisis.