Red Nationalism? A Brief Overview of the Origins of Polish Stalinism

This article argues against the still-dominant idea that Polish Stalinism must be interpreted in “exteriority” and “rupture” due to the Soviet Union’s political grip over the country. The period of Stalinist rule constitutes a particularly dense and fecund time in Polish history, one that can only be understood within the framework of Poland’s past and present: the period's origins and metahistory. The discursive gesture of depriving certain historical actors of their legitimate agency echoes the struggles over ethnicity and politics within Polish socialist circles at the turn of the twentieth century. There is, however, a disturbing paradox in the historical outcome of this distant debate: The ones who carried out the project of a Polish mono-ethnic state were the disciples of Polish revolutionary internationalists.