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This paper focuses on the memoryscapes of Cieszyn Silesia, Orawa and Spisz in a context of the border conflicts of the twentieth century. The regions located on the current Czech-Polish and Slovak-Polish border have lived through paralleled histories of the border demarcation after WWI, which was unprecedented there. In both cases the national minorities were left behind the border, outside of their home states. Their stories and memories are, however, not being researched together. This paper contrasts the patterns of memory production related to the border shifts in the landscape in both regions. Emphasis is placed on the memory sites, their narratives and memory activism related to the conflicting past. The results show that the main axes of both memory debates are contrasting. While the conflict over Cieszyn Silesia was most shaped by the short war in 1919, the lesser-known dispute over Orawa and Spisz was marked by numerous smaller incidents, assimilation efforts and a layer of post WWII violence. This has important consequences for the memory production. The other important differentiating factor is the scope of memory activism inside of the national minority group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Strategic Review / Przeglad Strategiczny is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents the preliminary results of the 'Pandemic Diaries' research project, carried out by a 5-member team of Polish researchers under a form of open diary writing competition. Its aim was to gather a possibly widest body of personal accounts of the coronavirus pandemic experiences. Within it, 403 entries were submitted, providing a detailed insight into the daily practices, emotional and material difficulties of all age, gender and education-based groups of the Polish society. The paper presents initial observations on the dataset and the most often expressed notions that arise, including a widespread exacerbation of mental health issues as well as the process of defining the period of pandemic through references to collective memory and patriotic milieus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Bal’s narratology, underlaid by participant observation, and complemented by interviews, this paper provides a cultural analysis of the permanent exhibition of the Schindler Factory Museum which opened in 2010 in Krakow, Poland. The paper points to current heritage making processes in connection to both the communist period and World War II (WWII) in Poland. The paper suggests that despite an apparent focus on WWII, the exhibition narrative may, albeit indirectly, address the history written under communism and its protracted collective memory. Such an analysis offers a case to investigate cultural heritage as participating and reflecting dynamics between history writing and memory in contemporary Poland between local, national and transcultural memory making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ethos (0860-8024) is the property of John Paul II Institute, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The proposed research analyzes the external and internal factors that determine the specificity of Solidarity as a community of civil society and driving force of social and cultural changes in Poland. The external factors of these processes are connected with the critical interpretation of social cynicism and 'Marxist collectivism' by autonomic group in Polish society. These processes of social corrosion are considered as a social alienation and consequences of social fragmentation in Soviet period. The paper focuses on the danger of collision between national and colonial versions of memory as well as the social challenge of guarantee the possibility of an integral development of man and community. The internal factors actualizes the interpretation of Solidarity as a community of social changes, the positive activities of Catholic church, religious and secular leaders, of their theoretical ideas in the context of evolution of Solidarity from traditional community to modern one based on democratic values, social and economic motivations. The analysis is centered on the theoretical problem of civil trust, and the meaning of cultural, religious, and moral factors in the activities of Solidarity movement. We regard the problematic of Solidarity at the same time from republican and liberal positions. Synthesizing the different approaches to the historical memory, and to the experience of formation and evolution of community, the paper also explores the role and significance of Solidarity in the process of post-soviet values transformation. The article deals with the value prerequisites of moral-normative community in the country of the former socialist camp, the revival of national identity, as well as the elimination of historical contradictions provoked by the communist regime. The study confirms that social changes became possible due to the successful combination of communitarian and liberal foundations of civil society, the elimination of external influences, and achieving autonomy from the Russian and Soviet historical heritage. In the period of Soviet occupation in Poland, throughout two decades a fundamentally important intellectual discourse was formed, which, in spite of the unfavorable political context, became a consolidating and integrating socio-political force that successfully resisted the totalitarian and unifying tendencies of communist regime. Intellectuals, along with the Catholic church, have become a driving force for social change, playing a key role in shaping the social strategy of national development that has changed the social landscape of 'communist' Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to analyse a specific case of transformation of communicative memories into cultural memories under the influence of state institutions in Teschen Silesia [Cieszyn Silesia; Těšín Silesia]. In 1920, the multi-ethnic territory of the former Duchy of Teschen was divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia. The author focuses on the state of local social memories after one hundred years since the division and raises the question, what kind of social memories are supported by the Polish and Czech local administrations and what kind of social memories are ignored or suppressed by them. Both sides of the Polish-Czech state border have at least one common feature today, namely the colonization of the past by the national states present here, in that the history of the Polish part of Teschen Silesia is commonly seen here as the history of Poland, and the history of the Czech part of this area as the history of the Czech Republic. It is an unconscious - and thus unreflective - conceptual structure that affects local national identities. The author calls this cognitive structure "demarcation logic". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses a selection of graphic narratives from Poland spanning the period from the 1940s to the 2000s. First, it shows that while the atrocity was far from being considered “unmentionable” by comic book artists, for much of the Communist period, the Jewish victims were, leading to a peculiar de-Judaization of the Holocaust. Second, it argues that despite the liberalization of memory after 1989 and the ensuing “Jewish turn,” which brought about a mass revival of interest in Jewish culture and heritage, this tendency largely persists. Analysing a selection of newspaper cartoons, graphic novellas and educational comic books, not only does this paper show how the genre has been subservient to ideological causes but also how its roles and functions changed throughout decades, from light-hearted stories addressed to a mass readership to educational narratives produced with school children in mind. This paper also shows how the graphic narratives in Poland reflect wider public debates, such as those on the Polish national identity, Christian–Jewish relations and the formation of collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The memory of World War II in Poland is sometimes plagued by an us/them mentality or a competition of suffering. This paper will attempt to answer several questions: how are non-Jews contributing to Holocaust memorialization in Poland today? How can recognizing this contribution serve to heal rifts and change deep-seated stereotypes? We will present a case study, based on participant observation, of Bridge To Poland, which emphasizes memory work conducted by non-Jewish Poles. Bridge To Poland’s latest project in conjunction with the Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre Centre, The Neshoma Project: Conversations with Poles Rescuing Jewish Memory, highlights those whom Tec calls “Rescuers of Memory”. Exposing people to their work, Tec believes, results in breaking down negative stereotypes about non-Jewish Poles and building bridges between people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museums are a constantly developing segment of cultural tourism. Poland is in line with current trends in museums, expanding its offer and adapting it to the requirements of the world of contemporary image culture and multisensory experiences, which is increasingly dominated by technology. The authors of the paper undertook to recognise the specificity of military museums, by conducting a survey of approximately a third of all such institutions in Poland. Due to the subject-matter of their exhibitions, military museums create a broad field of research both in terms of aesthetics and museum practice, as well as the issues of shaping and maintaining collective memory and the identity of the nation. They form a special mirror in which the country's ideas and aspirations are reflected more often than any real characteristics. In reference to contemporary trends in museums, the article aims to place Polish military museums between locality and universality, education and entertainment, stability and dynamism, knowledge and experience. The results obtained allowed the authors to distinguish three groups of military museums in Poland, as well as indicate conditions conducive to the further development of such attractions in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem setting. Novelty. At the present stage, the issue of memory locations and the related memory conflicts are particularly relevant in Ukrainian-Polish cooperation. Exploring Ukrainian- Polish cooperation, she concluded that memory policy is the subject and instrument of foreign policy, and the policy of historical memory became the leading direction of Poland’s foreign policy towards Ukraine. It is in front of this new direction of foreign policy relations that the difficult task is to resolve and resolve the conflict of memory of Ukraine and Poland. Paper objective. The purpose of the study is to establish the role and significance of memory locations in Ukrainian-Polish interstate relations. European integration pushes Ukraine and Poland to overcome the effects of interethnic disputes and prejudices. Ukraine and Poland have borrowed a European model of rethinking the historical past, reconstructing the stereotypes of collective consciousness, building national policies for memory and national identity. Historical memory became a subject of foreign policy and directly influenced the course of Ukrainian-Polish cooperation. In Ukraine and Poland, the political level of relations played a leading role in the legitimization of historical memory, which put foreign policy relations in a constructive direction to the events of 2015. Commemorative events of 1991-2013 played an important role in resolving the conflict of memory in the region and reinterpreting the historical past. Conclusions. It is proved that the important elements of the memory policy of Ukraine and Poland are places of memory and commemorative practices, as well as one of the factors that complicate the process of Ukrainian-Polish reconciliation is the memory conflict. The principles of scientific, systematic, structural and complex approach were used in writing the article. Research at the theoretical level was carried out using induction and deduction methods, analysis, synthesis and generalization, as well as analytical, systematic and comparative analysis methods. Methodology. The article uses principles of scientific, systematic, structural and complex approach. Research at the theoretical level was carried out using induction and deduction methods, analysis, synthesis and generalization, as well as analytical, systematic and comparative analysis methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research was to analyse poetry written by Israeli high-school students during or after visiting Poland within the framework of Holocaust education. I describe first the stages of shaping the discourse of Holocaust memory in Israel, and of Holocaust education; the Holocaust's place in the world of young Israelis; and the journeys to Poland as reflected in research. Following that, I present the results of the research and an analysis of the findings. The paper will discuss how Israeli adolescents cope with a cultural trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes Polish experience with overcoming the communist past and its legacy. It deals with legal and social aspects of the lustration and decommunisation as well as attempts to punish communist perpetrators. Collective memory and remembrance as well as changes in symbolic sphere in the public space are also discussed. Finally, the abovementioned problems are placed in the international context, specifically in the Central European arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensitive topics in qualitative fieldwork typically include health problems, sexual practices, addictions, illegal activity and death (Campbell 2002; Lee 1993; Liamputtong 2006). Yet, the situation of memories of intergroup violence committed by ingroup members on outgroups - where a community is confronted with the fact that their fellow members have harmed members of other groups - should also be considered as a sensitive topic. An especially sensitive situation occurs when research is conducted in a small community with relatively strong social control maintained through networks of relationships between its members. The aim of this paper is to explore the sensitivity of respondents in their remembering and forgetting of the harm done by members of their own group to the "Others" in local communities, to diagnose the difficulties in conducting fieldwork on this topic, and to present various methods of overcoming them. This article is based on experience from a project dedicated to the social memory of violence committed by Poles against members of other ethnic groups within local communities during World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Critique of Law: Independent Legal Studies / Krytyka Prawa: Niezalezne Studia nad Prawem is the property of Akademia Leona Kozminskiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article has two related goals: theoretical and empirical. First, it develops the theory of hegemony by integrating it with the concept of the collective emotional field in the context of nationalist memory politics. It then draws on the concept of hegemony to analyze the commemoration of the postwar anticommunist underground in Poland after 1989 and its grassroots reception. The article shows how memory politics work not only on the symbolic but also on the emotional level as a manifestation of a nationalist exclusionary affective politics of citizenship that creates a collective emotional field of pride but also of fear and threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Socjologiczne is the property of Studia Socjologiczne and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Death is one of those universal parameters of life, yet very little attention is given to it in neither the work of planning practitioners nor that of landscape research. During the 19th and 20th century's many Western societies turned to cremation as a more sanitary, less costly and space saving way of human disposal. This paper highlights the cemeteries and crematoria as two types of facilities associated with cremation practices in Poland and in selected European countries. On the basis of analyses of contemporary funerary landscapes for cremation practices from Europe (31 objects from 9 countries) a catalogue (,pattern book') of design solutions was developed. Countries were selected on the basis of similarity to Poland in the aspect of the dominant religion (Austria, France, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia), convergent provisions of cemetery and funeral law (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Slovenia, Sweden), and index of average population served by 1 crematorium (Belgium). Moreover, assessment of Polish contemporary places for cremation (39 objects) was developed. To strengthen the multifaceted meaning of funerary landscape and to link it more with the landscape, design considerations and potential outcomes for improved cemetery design accommodating cremation practices and burial was developed. The funerary landscape is defined as a specific type of landscape that focuses on the phenomenological relation between death, disposal of the body in the environment and the social memory of the group participating in the remembrance of the burial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper challenges the view, rooted in the argument that groups lack a mind in the Davidsonian sense, that collective responsibility may be assessed mainly according to pragmatic criteria. I argue in favour of a kind of mental web of holistic collective attitudes and mindsets in the weak sense. I further connect this mental web to the dimension of collective responsibility via a reflection involving the existentialist dimension of Jaspers' dilemma of seeing individuals in the position of having to embrace not only those aspects of the collective identity that make them proud, but also those for which they feel guilt. My argument is also inspired by Sartre's view of a task reflected in die individual mind by the group as a special kind of subjectivity living 'for' and 'through' individuals. I illustrate my argument with the 2018 controversies surrounding the approach of Poland's political leaders to die Polish continuity of collective identity and collective responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research studies on collective memory in Poland have long tradition and clear cultural perspective. The aim of the text is to show this research tradition, which is deeply associated with Durkheimian School legacy, very strong in Poland, both in prewar as well as in postwar period, especially in the work of Stefan Czarnowski, the only Polish member of this School. In this perspective the social memory is closely connected with culture and time. These two categories: culture and social time as important factors in collective memory studies conducted in Poland are object of the present paper. The paper is composed of three parts. In the first one author explains why relations between social memory, culture and social time are important for evaluation of the Polish research tradition. The second part concerns its cultural perspective and is dedicated to the works of Stefan Czarnowski, who started many years ago the cultural stream in Polish memory studies. The third part presents the idea of social time and relations between sociology of time and memory studies in Polish sociology. This specificity of the Polish research studies on collective memory is unknown today, especially for foreign researchers. This tradition is worthy to be recollected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I present an analysis of Adam Michnik's notion of "Amnesty without Amnesia." His was a wise political judgment presented at a critical moment in the struggle to constitute a democratic polity in Poland. Mine is an appreciation of his political position, along with a sociological analysis that highlights the empirical difficulties of its realization in practical action. I will show how at critical moments of social change creative political action works to erase memories of the relevant past, which act as a repressive force, while "re-remembering" (to use Toni Morrison's formulation). Three cases will be compared, Michnik's, after the fall of the communist regime in east central Europe, and cases drawn from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the American presidential campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important developments in the incipient Berlin Republic's memory regime has been the return of the memory of German suffering from the end and aftermath of World War II. Elite discourses about the bombing of German cities, the mass rape of German women by members of the Red Army, and, above all, the expulsion of Germans from then-Eastern Germany and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe have gained massive visibility in the last decade. Although many voices have lauded these developments as liberating, many others within Germany and especially in Poland—from where the vast majority of Germans were expelled—have reacted with fear. Yet, do these elite voices resonate with mass publics? Have these arguments had demonstrable effects on public opinion? This paper delves into these questions by looking at survey results from both countries. It finds that there has been a disjuncture between the criticisms of elites and average citizens, but that the barrage of elite criticisms leveled at German expellees and their initiatives now may be affecting mass attitudes in all cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider the Polish Diaspora community in Scotland that has its origins in the post-war exile of Polish soldiers who fought alongside Western Allies after the occupation of Poland in 1939. I employ an autoethnographic approach, combined with wartime records published by the Polish Ministry of Information in 1941, as well as contemporary theory on the development and maintenance of collective identity, to examine some of the factors influencing this community's shared mythology - their collective memory - of Poland and, in particular, of Poland's role in the Holocaust. Who are this community? Who do they think they are? How have they maintained their cultural identity in exile and how do they reconcile this identity with apparently conflicting and accusatory accounts of Polish anti-Semitism? I propose that, as with many Diaspora communities, this community's collective memory has been "frozen" in Diaspora. I conclude with some reflections on the role of similar frozen Diaspora narratives in complicating commentary on, analysis of and resolution of continuing conflict situations around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Komunikaty Mazursko-Warminskie is the property of Komunikaty Mazursko-Warminskie and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article aims to analyse the mobilisation of a collective memory for political purposes by the Law and Justice party in Poland. PiS is often presented as a populist party, which came to power thanks to an anti-elite rhetoric and social programme. The party portrayed itself as a representative of socially excluded groups as well as a defender of 'normal' people against corrupted elites. At the same time, PiS mobilised its supporters by referring to a certain construction of the national past. We analyse the tension between populist rhetoric accompanying social reforms aimed at social inclusion and the practice of mobilising exclusive historical memory and strengthening exclusionary Polish national identity. In the selected examples of education reform, museum policy and the cult of the Cursed Soldiers, we demonstrate the traditional and nationalist approach of the party to history, which is reduced to heroic struggles for national freedom. In the image of the past evoked by PiS, the sharp division between 'we, the simple people' and 'elites' weakens; instead, the dichotomy between 'us' and 'them' is constructed in the national terms 'Poles' vs. 'Others'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football stadiums are one of the places where nationalistic views are presented. This is done by means of displays held by organised supporters – ultras. This study aims to examine (1) to what extent the postulates of performative national ideology presented by ultras in Polish stadiums are shared by fans of Polish football clubs; and (2) whether they translate into corresponding attitudes at the individual level. The study is based on a survey conducted on a sample representative for Polish citizens (N = 4030) from which football fans were extracted (N = 643). The results show that being a fan of a Polish football club accounts for significantly higher scores on postulates referring to ethnic and racial criteria of national identity, belief in permanent struggle of nations, small nation type of collective memory and glorification of past war heroes. They also indicate that a higher level of acceptance of these postulates by fans predicts higher levels of prejudice against minorities and other nations, and higher levels of national pride. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book is yet another attempt (after such endeavors as the I Polish American Encyclopedia i [2]) to bring their heritage to the awareness and attention of future generations of Polonia and the American mainstream. Ewa E. Barczyk, ed., Footprints of Polonia: Polish Historical Sites Across North America (New York: Hippocrene Books, 2022). This short review of the recently published I Footprints of Polonia: Polish Historical Sites Across North America i claims this book belongs to the field of public history and to a subfield that can be called ethnic public history. [Extracted from the article]

During the years 1946–1989, the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny; ŻIH) was forced to navigate between conflicting imperatives – on the one hand, safeguarding the memory of Polish Jews by means of extensive documentation of the scope and devastating outcome of the Holocaust; and, on the other, adhering to the official Polish historical narrative and constraints imposed by the Communist regime. This article examines the varying ways in which research connected with the Ringelblum Archive was carried out during this period, and how this mirrored the changing situation of the Jewish community in postwar Poland. For many, the institute's work of cataloging and publishing documents from the archive served as a proof of the continuity of Jewish life in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the history of the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny; ŻIH) from its creation in the late 1940s until the late 1960s. During this period, ŻIH was not only a documentation center but also a principal source of knowledge about the Holocaust beyond Poland and the Soviet bloc. It played a significant role in the establishment of a transnational collective memory of the Holocaust, one that transcended the Iron Curtain. Equally important in these years was its contribution to the continued existence of Jewish life in Poland after the Holocaust. In particular, the article highlights the significant role of its director, Ber Mark, who led the institute from 1949 until his death in 1966. A convinced Communist, he nevertheless remained deeply rooted in Polish Jewish culture. Under his direction, ŻIH sought to preserve its autonomy to the greatest extent possible and to maintain international contacts with scholars in Israel and Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why have Polish state institutions constructed an official public memory of martial law (1981–1983) despite plural interpretations and growing apathy and amnesia in the broader society? Between 1992 and 2018, parliament passed eight commemorative resolutions endorsing a single interpretation of martial law as treason. This political consensus is surprising given not only the lack of social consensus but also the political polarization that existed between and among post-communist and post-Solidarity parties. Drawing on LaClau and Mouffe's discourse theory as well as Brian Grodsky's theory of transitional justice measures as political goods, this article analyzes the official discourse of martial law as articulated in commemorative resolutions, transcripts of parliamentary deliberations, parliamentary journals, court rulings, and reports of committees, subcommittees, special commissions, and governmental offices. It considers how this discourse has been deployed to legitimate the ruling elite, attack political rivals, and justify controversial initiatives, policies, and reforms. It contributes to the literature on the politics of memory during times of political transformation by examining a case of surprising stability despite factors that would seem to favor change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Solidarity Center (ECS) makes time out of space. Public memory, essential to the birth of Solidarność, and as created anew here, is a constellation of recursively moving time points. ECS's rhetorical arrangement of rooms and passageways allow for a recursive invention of time. Expanding rhetorical scholarship on public memory with Polish memory concepts, this essay shows how the ECS cultivates a sense of the movement that allows for reinscription of Solidarity's memory. This temporal solidarity can offer opportunities to develop civic action and layers of identity constituting a sense of Europe, Poland, and Solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the stories by Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn (1880–1950), the leader of the Chabad Hasidic movement, this article explains the significance of nostalgia for the survival of Hasidic communities following the First and Second World Wars. By examining the social and performative function of these stories, it shows how Schneersohn’s nostalgic depictions of his lost ancestral home in Lubavitch translated into ideas, collective memories, tangible practices, and brick-andmortar institutions that helped him forge a new Chabad community in interwar Poland and safeguard its survival in 1940s America. The article also argues that the deployment of nostalgia in Schneersohn’s stories testifies to the realignment of the medium of the Hasidic story with contemporary trends in modern Jewish literature and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the multifaceted meanings of Rzeszów’s Monument to the Revolutionary Act to understand how decommunization is taking place in Poland locally. Using Alexander Etkind’s framework of memory hardware and software to interpret the monument's physical symbolism and its appearance in local discourses, the article analyzes various memory events in which the meaning of the monument is contested and competing identity claims are advanced. By doing so, the article explores the limitations of legislating the past and the fluid function of monuments in the formation of city brands and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memory politics in contemporary Poland has often been described as a limitation to historians' freedom of research. Against this backdrop, this article explores how historians of the Polish People's Republic (PRL) have been contributing to memory politics in the context of the democratic transition. It argues that the dissidence of the 1980s has paved the way to the post-1989 historiographical renewal, by favoring the development of an anti-communist historiography that ultimately facilitated the advent of the historical policy (polityka historyczna) of the 2000s. After 1989, the Polish historiography of the PRL was extensively reshaped on the basis of the dissident historiography of the 1980s. The main protagonists of the 1990s were largely drawn from the ranks of dissent, and many of them saw their scholarship as an extension of their past anti-communist engagement. Additionally, political changes turned the legacy of the old regime into a central issue of post-communist politics. History was called upon as a policy tool at the service of the democratic transition, whether it involved criminalizing the communist regime or maintaining the collective memory of the dictatorship. This conception of history resulted in the creation of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) at the end of the 1990s, but also in the affirmation of a historical policy justified by the need to redress the wrongs of the memory politics conducted in communist Poland. Contemporary history in the post-1989 years was thus far from free of politicization, even if it took different forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship is often found to be highly persistent over time. Although the historical roots of persisting effects of entrepreneurship are partially uncovered, their mechanisms remained largely unclear. To understand the historical roots of contemporaneous regional entrepreneurship, we exploit different types of historical self-employment in regions of Poland, a country that experienced different types of disruptive developments. In contrast to previous studies on other countries, we do not find a persistent effect of the general level of historical private sector self-employment. There is, however, a pronounced positive relationship between high regional levels of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship in the 1920s and current start-up activity in general, even in areas where large parts of the local population were displaced after World War II. We find that the magnitude of this effect is independent of the mobility and an exchange of the local population. Our main conclusion is that the historical regional knowledge stock, as reflected by knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship, can be an important and stable historical root of modern entrepreneurship despite disruptive historical shocks and population discontinuities. Plain English Summary: Historical knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship is a major root of current entrepreneurship despite disruptive historical shocks and population replacement. We draw on Poland's turbulent history since the 1920s to investigate the regional roots of today's entrepreneurship. Compared to previous studies, we do not find a persistent effect of the general level of historical private sector entrepreneurship. Only historically high levels of high-quality entrepreneurship are positively related to current start-up activity, even in areas where much of the local population has been displaced. This suggests that the historical regional knowledge stock can be an important historical root of modern entrepreneurship despite disruptive historical shocks and population discontinuities. Therefore, entrepreneurship policy should seek to stimulate the regional knowledge stock and the creation of high-quality start-ups in a region. Examples of successful current and historical local entrepreneurs can provide important roadmaps on how to become successful entrepreneurs and potentially create a place-based collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the democratic transition, Poland-United States relations have been framed by the Polish authorities as a strategic threat-management tool in the securitization process of Poland's geopolitical position, particularly concerning the Russian Federation. We analyse the process of securitization regarding Poland-US relations through latent topic modelling of Polish parliamentary speeches in the years 1991-2017. We demonstrate that the discourse on Polish-US relations is heavily dominated by security topics, narrowly understood as military security. Furthermore, even when economic issues are discussed, they are frequently linked to military operations. Based on Floyd's (2011, 2019) model of the moral rightness of securitization, we argue that the close relationship between securitizing moves (debates on Poland-US relations) and security practices (security events) suggests the basic sincerity of the securitizing actor, while the historical context reflected in the Polish collective memory strongly influences the audience's frame of reference and strengthens the power of the securitizing actor. However, although the case fulfils Floyd's (2019) criteria of morally right securitization, we have shown a historical disparity between the scope of securitizing moves with security practices and the existing level of threat. This demonstrates that the securitizing agent has been abusing securitization by exceeding the 'least harmful option', particularly due to the large asymmetry of power of the participants in the relationship, the securitization process stretched over a long period and the threat severity varying over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship points to a growing political prominence of various non-liberal civil society organizations in many countries around the world. In Poland, this phenomenon is simultaneous with the emergence of political division in civil society driven by the policies of the United Right government. I argue that a wider historical perspective emphasizing reciprocal connections between civil society organizations and political parties helps to understand this recent surge. In Poland, the growing division in civil society builds upon the relationship between right-wing political parties and civil society organizations bound together since the beginning of the 1990s by the common vision of social memory. After taking power in 2015, the right-wing coalition in Poland centralized the supervision over the distribution of funds to civil society, providing financial support to organizations closer to its conservative agenda. At the same time, organizations that have been in frequent conflict with the right-wing government due to their main area of focus (human rights, anti-discrimination, women's rights, environmental protection, and immigration) had limited access to government funding and were presented in a negative light by the government as well as its allied organizations and the state-controlled media. The argument in this article is based on secondary data about the organizational sphere of civil society and a case study of a set of right-wing civil society organizations, Gazeta Polska clubs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to draw attention to the importance of the body in the shaping of personal, family and national memories, and in the process of giving meaning to history and making it understandable, even in its contradictions. Through an ethnographic research carried out in Poland, the paper focus mainly on the construction of family resemblances as an embodied experience of the past, and an entry point for studies on collective and personal memories. Three points will be discussed. First, the relationship between body and memory occurs in the tension between history and heredity, the latter covering both social and biological transmissions. A second nexus between corporeality and memory in family narratives is constructed on a "gendered" and "ethnicized" image of the individual and the social body. Third, memory has been considered as a technique of the body involving senses and practical skills. The concept of embodiment then contributes to a more dynamic, performative and inter-subjective understanding of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on "Erinnern und erinnert werden. Das Türkengedächtnis und seine Funktion in Zentral-und Osteuropa," a conference that focused on the collective memory of and about the Turkish people in European history that took place in Krakow, Poland. Papers presented at the conference discussed topics such the memories of the Siege of Vienna, Austria by the Ottoman Empire, visual representations of Turks in art, and how Turks were portrayed in Hungarian literature.

Abstract: This paper investigates collective memory in inhabitants of two twin cities, Lviv (Ukraine, previously Lwów, Poland) and Wrocław (Poland, previously Breslau, Germany). Due to territorial changes in Eastern and Central Europe after World War II, the two cities changed their state belonging and—consequently—their populations. This study focused on memory of residence place and on its relationship with place identity and place attachment. A sample of 200 participants from three districts of Lviv and 301 participants from four districts of Wrocław were investigated on a number of issues, including reported place identity (city district, city, country region, nation, Europe, world, human being), place attachment (apartment, house, neighborhood, city district, city) and place memory (memory of the city, the city district, the street, and the house). Collective memory showed a powerful ethnic bias, equally strong in both cities, but with different underlying mechanisms: predictors of the bias were national identity in Lviv and demographic variables (age) and lack of place identity in Wrocław. Place (city) was constructed as national symbol in Lviv, and as an autonomous entity in Wrocław. Some evidence was also obtained that the degree to which place attachment is associated with the higher-order (national) or lower-order (local) identity predicts the amount of ethnic bias in perceptions of the pre-war past of the two cities. The findings are interpreted within the dual-process models of perception, here applied to perception of places. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article belongs to the special cluster "Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe", guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka. The rise of historical memory, which began in the 1970s and 1980s, has made the past an increasingly important soft-power resource. At its initial stage, the rise of memory contributed to the decay of self-congratulatory national narratives and to the formation of a "cosmopolitan" memory centered on the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity and informed by the notion of state repentance for the wrongdoings of the past. Laws criminalizing the denial of these crimes, which were adopted in "old" continental democracies in the 1980s and 1990s, were a characteristic expression of this democratic culture of memory. However, with the rise of national populism and the formation of the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the politics of memory has taken a significantly different turn. National populists are remarkably persistent in whitewashing their countries' history and using it to promote nationalist mobilization. This process has manifested itself in the formation of new types of memory laws, which shift the blame for historical injustices to other countries (the 1998 Polish, the 2000 Czech, the 2010 Lithuanian, the June 2010 Hungarian, and the 2014 Latvian statutes) and, in some cases, openly protect the memory of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity (the 2005 Turkish, the 2014 Russian, the 2015 Ukrainian, the 2006 and the 2018 Polish enactments). The article examines Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian legislation regarding the past that demonstrates the current linkage between populism and memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dealing with the past is an essential part of transitional justice. It combines the four main pillars: the right to know, the right to justice, the right to reparation, and the guarantee of non-recurrence. Dealing with the past indicates that a significant amount of time has passed since the crime and injustice. Therefore, the problem of forgetting and modifying history deliberately or unconsciously forms the core of the instrumentalisation of dealing with the past. On the one hand, unconscious forgetting or modifying is usually the result of a non-responsible educational system (youth and adult education); on the other hand, deliberate modification of the past is driven by the desire to reach an aim which morally cannot be supported by its measures. One can observe governmental desire to modify and therefore instrumentalise history to secure the government's power, divert attention from domestic issues and thus shape national pride/patriotism which is built on a selective historical memory. This article highlights the development of German and Polish relationships in the context of reparations for World War II and a selective history spread by the German movement called 'Prussian Claims Society' that fights, using selective Nazi analogies, to reclaim former German property from Poland represented by the Polish government. The movement also wants to create a selective history to divert attention from the national separation of the population. The aim of the article is to show how Germans and Poles handle the topic of reparations for World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorises the nexus between mnemonical status anxiety and militant memory laws. Extending the understanding of status-seeking in international relations to the realm of historical memory, I argue that the quest for mnemonical recognition is a status struggle in an international social hierarchy of remembering constitutive events of the past. A typology of mnemopolitical status-seeking is presented on the example of Russia (mnemonical positionalism), Poland (mnemonical revisionism), and Ukraine (mnemonical self-emancipation). Memory laws provide a common instance of securing and/or improving a state's mnemonical standing in the relevant memory order. Drawing on the conceptual analogy of militant democracy, the article develops the notion militant memocracy, or the governance of historical memory through a dense network of prescribing and proscribing memory laws and policies. Similar to its militant democracy counterpart, militant memocracy is in danger of self-inflicted harm to the object of defence in the very effort to defend it: its precautionary and punitive measures resound rather than fix the state's mnemonical anxiety problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the struggle to shape and dominate the collective memory of the June 25, 1976 protest in the Polish city of Radom. First, I explain how the Polish Communist state attempted to shape the memory of the event as a criminal riot by stigmatizing the protesting workers' as hooligans. Second, I describe the campaign by the Workers Defense Committee, KOR, to create a counter-narrative of the event. Finally, I describe the continuing efforts by local leaders in Radom to remember and commemorate the protest. The combined effect of these various projects has resulted in pushing the actual participants, the protesting workers, to the symbolic margin of the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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