Polish Patriotism After 1989

Polish Patriotism After 1989
Author: Dorota Szeligowska
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: National characteristics, Polish
ISBN: 9783034319928

This book analyses the concept of patriotism and the contestation over its meaning in key public debates in Poland over the last twenty-five years. It focuses on the strategies used to define, re-shape and «bend» the notion of patriotism, which during this period has become a central issue in Polish political discourse. Contemporary Polish society is characterized by a growing polarization of the public sphere. Rivalry between former communists and former dissidents has been progressively replaced by internal opposition within the ranks of once-dissident allies, now divided into civic-minded «critical» patriots and nationalist-oriented «traditional» patriots. This division re-emerges regularly during key moments in Polish public life - most recently in the aftermath of the highly contested 2015 parliamentary elections. By tracing the evolution of the debate over patriotism since 1989, this book provides crucial insights into the current political situation.

Between Past and Future

Between Past and Future
Author: Sorin Antohi
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789639116719

"The list of contributors is impressive withnot a single dull chapter...; the editors are to be congratulated for making available such a stimulating and timely, if not timeless, collection" - Slavic Review "[T]his is a book that will serve many intellectual tastes and interests, and that will certainly prove thought provoking for anyone who reads it... I recommend it to anybody who wants to witness the analythical depth and span with which the meaning of 1989 can be approached." - Extremism & Democracy The tenth anniversary of the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe provides the starting point for this thought-provoking analysis. Between Past and Future reflects upon the past ten years and considers what lies ahead for the future. An international group of distinguished academics and public intellectuals, including former dissidents and active politicians, engage in a lively exchange on the antecedents, causes, contexts, meanings and legacies of the 1989 revolutions. At a crossroads between past and future, the contributors to this seminal volume address all the crucial issues -- liberal democracy and its enemies, modernity and discontent, economic reforms and their social impact, ethnicity, nationalism and religion, geopolitics, electoral systems and political power, European integration and the tragic demise of Yugoslavia. Based on the results of recent research on the ideologies behind one of the most dramatic systematic transformations in world history, and including contributions from some of the world's leading experts, Between Past and Future is an essential reference book for scholars and students of all levels, policy-makers, journalists and the general reader interested in the past and future prospects of Central & Eastern Europe

Reassessing Communism

Reassessing Communism
Author: Katarzyna Chmielewska
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2021-04-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9633863791

The thirteen authors of this collective work undertook to articulate matter-of-fact critiques of the dominant narrative about communism in Poland while offering new analyses of the concept, and also examining the manifestations of anticommunism. Approaching communist ideas and practices, programs and their implementations, as an inseparable whole, they examine the issues of emancipation, upward social mobility, and changes in the cultural canon. The authors refuse to treat communism in Poland in simplistic categories of totalitarianism, absolute evil and Soviet colonization, and similarly refuse to equate communism and fascism. Nor do they adopt the neoliberal view of communism as a project doomed to failure. While wholly exempt from nostalgia, these essays show that beyond oppression and bad governance, communism was also a regime in which people pursued a variety of goals and sincerely attempted to build a better world for themselves. The book is interdisciplinary and applies the tools of social history, intellectual history, political philosophy, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies to provide a nuanced view of the communist regimes in east-central Europe.

Recovered Territory

Recovered Territory
Author: Peter Polak-Springer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781782388876

"From 1919 to 1989, the borderland of Upper Silesia, one of Central Europe's most important industrial regions, was at the center of a conflict between Germany and Poland. In their interaction with--and mutual influence on--one another, political and cultural actors from both nations developed a transnational culture of territorial rivalry. Architecture, spaces of memory, films, radio auditions, museums, folklore, language policy, mass rallies, and archeological digs marked just some of the features that gave the borderland a 'German'/'Polish' face. This case, representative of the wider politics of twentieth-century Europe, played a critical role in one of history's most violent and uprooting eras"--Provided by publisher.

After '89

After '89
Author: Bryce Lease
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2016-09-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 152610105X

After '89 takes as its subject the dynamic new range of performance practices that have been developed since the demise of communism in the flourishing theatrical landscape of Poland. After 1989, the theatre has retained its historical role as the crucial space for debating and interrogating cultural and political identities. Providing access to scholarship and criticism not readily accessible to an English-speaking readership, this study surveys the rebirth of the theatre as a site of public intervention and social criticism since the establishment of democracy and the proliferation of theatre makers that have flaunted cultural commonplaces and begged new questions of Polish culture. Lease argues that the most significant change in performance practice after 1989 has been from opposition to the state to a more pluralistic practice that engages with marginalized identities purposefully left out of the rhetoric of freedom and independence.

Two Roads Diverge

Two Roads Diverge
Author: Christopher Hartwell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2016-09-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 110711201X

This book compares the economic outcomes of Poland and Ukraine by focusing on political and economic institutions.

Patriotic History and the (Re)Nationalization of Memory

Patriotic History and the (Re)Nationalization of Memory
Author: Kornelia Kończal
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2023-06-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000899306

This book charts and traces state-mandated or state-encouraged “patriotic” histories that have recently emerged in many places around the globe. Such “patriotic” histories can revolve around both affirmative interpretations of the past and celebration of national achievements. They can also entail explicitly denialist stances against acknowledging responsibility for past atrocities, even to the extent of celebrating perpetrators. Whereas in some cases “patriotic” history takes the shape of a coherent doctrine, in others they remain limited to loosely connected narratives. By combining nationalist and narcissist narratives, and by disregarding or distorting historical evidence, “patriotic” history promotes mythified, monumental, and moralistic interpretations of the past that posit partisan and authoritarian essentialisms and exceptionalisms. Whereas the global debates in interdisciplinary memory studies revolve around concepts like cosmopolitan, global, multidirectional, relational, transcultural, and transnational memory, to mention but a few, the actual socio-political uses of history remain strikingly nation-centred and one-dimensional. This volume collects fifteen caste studies of such “nationalizations of history” ranging from China to the Baltic states. They highlight three features of this phenomenon: the ruthlessness of methods applied by many state authorities to impose certain interpretations of the past, the increasing discrepancy between professional and political approaches to collective memory, and the new “post-truth” context. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of international politics, the radical right and global history. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.

Uprooted

Uprooted
Author: Gregor Thum
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 551
Release: 2011-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400839963

How a German city became Polish after World War II With the stroke of a pen at the Potsdam Conference following the Allied victory in 1945, Breslau, the largest German city east of Berlin, became the Polish city of Wroclaw. Its more than six hundred thousand inhabitants—almost all of them ethnic Germans—were expelled and replaced by Polish settlers from all parts of prewar Poland. Uprooted examines the long-term psychological and cultural consequences of forced migration in twentieth-century Europe through the experiences of Wroclaw's Polish inhabitants. In this pioneering work, Gregor Thum tells the story of how the city's new Polish settlers found themselves in a place that was not only unfamiliar to them but outright repellent given Wroclaw's Prussian-German appearance and the enormous scope of wartime destruction. The immediate consequences were an unstable society, an extremely high crime rate, rapid dilapidation of the building stock, and economic stagnation. This changed only after the city's authorities and a new intellectual elite provided Wroclaw with a Polish founding myth and reshaped the city's appearance to fit the postwar legend that it was an age-old Polish city. Thum also shows how the end of the Cold War and Poland's democratization triggered a public debate about Wroclaw's "amputated memory." Rediscovering the German past, Wroclaw's Poles reinvented their city for the second time since World War II. Uprooted traces the complex historical process by which Wroclaw's new inhabitants revitalized their city and made it their own.

Being Poland

Being Poland
Author: Tamara Trojanowska
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 853
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442650184

Being Poland offers a unique analysis of the cultural developments that took place in Poland after World War One, a period marked by Poland's return to independence. Conceived to address the lack of critical scholarship on Poland's cultural restoration, Being Poland illuminates the continuities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Poland's modern and contemporary cultural practices, and challenges the narrative typically prescribed to Polish literature and film. Reflecting the radical changes, rifts, and restorations that swept through Poland in this period, Polish literature and film reveal a multitude of perspectives. Addressing romantic perceptions of the Polish immigrant, the politics of post-war cinema, poetry, and mass media, Being Poland is a comprehensive reference work written with the intention of exposing an international audience to the explosion of Polish literature and film that emerged in the twentieth century.

Myths and Nationhood

Myths and Nationhood
Author: George Schopflin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1136677178

Myths are central to the way we live and how we define ourselves. In this pioneering book, a group of specialists--among them Anthony Smith, Norman Davies, Geoffrey Hosking and George Schopflin--look at the general and theoretical nature of myth on a universal basis and examine the specific myths of various nations. With nationhood and ethnicity at the centre of political attention, the book is timely in illuminating the deeper, underlying issues of nationalism that cause so much conflict throughout the world.