Toward the end of the 20th century the economic and technological success of the democratic West, based on individual freedom, placed Soviet communism, which curtailed this freedom in the name of class interests, on the defensive. This ultimately led to its ideological, moral and, in time, economic bankruptcy. The Soviet Union’s ideological defeat in its clash with the West ended the Cold War and initiated the process of disintegration of the last European empire—Russia. The triumph of democracy, human rights and individual freedom ended the post-Yalta division of Europe and—as Józef Piłsudski put it—“ripped Russia along its national seams.” Historical experience indicated that imperialism is an existential threat for Poland. The growing intensity of imperialist trends in European politics of the 18th century first led to the Polish state’s inability to decide about its own affairs and then, at the end of the century, to Poland being erased from the map of Europe by its three neighbour empires—Russia, Prussia and Austria.