The Un-Polish Poland, 1989 and the Illusion of Regained Historical Continuity

Description

This book discusses historical continuities and discontinuities between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, interwar Poland, the Polish People’s Republic, and contemporary Poland. The year 1989 is seen as a clear point-break that allowed the Poles and their country to regain a ‘natural historical continuity’ with the ‘Second Republic,’ as interwar Poland is commonly referred to in the current Polish national master narrative. In this pattern of thinking about the past, Poland-Lithuania (nowadays roughly coterminous with Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia’s Kaliningrad Region and Ukraine) is seen as the ‘First Republic.’ However, in spite of this ‘politics of memory’ (Geschichtspolitik) – regarding its borders, institutions, law, language, or ethnic and social makeup – present-day Poland, in reality, is the direct successor to and the continuation of communist Poland. Ironically, today’s Poland is very different, in all the aforementioned aspects, from the First and Second Republics. Hence, contemporary Poland is quite un-Polish, indeed, from the perspective of Polishness defined as a historical (that is, legal, social, cultural, ethnic and political) continuity of Poland-Lithuania and interwar Poland. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxix From the First to the Third Republic (Tomasz Kamusella)....Pages 1-10 Remembering and Forgetting (Tomasz Kamusella)....Pages 11-14 ‘The Republic of Nobles’ (Tomasz Kamusella)....Pages 15-36 The Polish or Noble Uprisings? (Tomasz Kamusella)....Pages 37-60 The Second Republic: A New Poland–Lithuania or a Nation-State? (Tomasz Kamusella)....Pages 61-92 Conclusion: A Third Republic? (Tomasz Kamusella)....Pages 93-117 Back Matter ....Pages 119-133