Russian and Polish clerics have agreed to draw up a document on the reconciliation of the two nations in a bid to put an end to long-standing tensions in Russian-Polish relations, a press-secretary of the Polish Catholic Bishops Conference has said.
The agreement was reached during a Friday meeting of hieromonk Philip Ryabykh, deputy chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, and the Polish senior cleric, Archbishop Henryk Muszynski, in the Polish capital of Warsaw.
"As representatives of Christian churches, we are strongly concerned with the fact that in modern conditions, despite developed mass media, much animosity and enmity between the two nations still exist," the Russian cleric said.
Muszynski said in his turn there were no obstacles to the reconciliation of Poles and Russians in the present, adding "problems appear when we speak about history."
For centuries, there have been several Polish-Russian wars, with Russians controlling much of Poland in the 19th century and crushing several Polish revolts.
Immediately after regaining independence in 1918, Poland fought a new war with Bolshevik Russia, securing its independence in the post-World War I Europe.
A dispute over Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's 1939 deal with Nazi Germany, which Warsaw says triggered the invasion of Poland and the start of WWII, have hampered relations between the two Slavic nations in recent years.
Poland and former Soviet countries such as Ukraine and the Baltic states view Stalin's Soviet Union as an aggressor during the war and have compared it to Nazi Germany.
Russia has resisted attempts to challenge the Soviet role in World War II, in which 27 million Soviet citizens died, according to official figures.
In early February, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin invited his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk to attend a memorial service in April to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1940 execution of several thousand Polish POWs, mainly officers and soldiers, in Katyn, western Russia. Tusk confirmed his participation, which is widely seen as a further step towards rebuilding relations between Poland and Russia.
The Soviet Union in 1990 acknowledged the massacre, which was ordered by Joseph Stalin. Modern Russia recognized Soviet responsibility for the mass shooting, but has not classified it as a war crime or genocide, something Warsaw has demanded.
MOSCOW, February 27 (RIA Novosti)
