The article presents the emergence and rooting of the concept of ‘fascism’ in Polish right-wing discourses, especially in the widely understood local nationalist movement of the 20th century (National Democracy, Endecja). According to the author, the early 1920s, and above all the period of Mussolini’s gaining power in Italy, was a decisive time (Sattelzeit by R. Koselleck) for the reception and transfer of both fascist concepts and ideas as a transnational phenomenon. Still, it also significantly influenced the radicalisation of the native right-wing identity in interwar Poland. However, the author proves how vital the role of radical anti-Semitism was in forming indigenous right-wing discourses and their subsequent political practices.
Global theses with local omissionsTimothy Snyder’s book is an ambitious monograph which attempts at placing Shoah in a more appropriate context of the murderous fight between the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Russia from the perspective of civilian victims. However, the book offers no new evidence or new arguments. On the one hand, most of the interpretations come from established scholars. On the other hand, Bloodlands presents a sort of synthesis of the latest discussions of the Holocaust historians and Eastern European experience of the Soviet rule. Nonetheless, as Snyder himself has stated, the novelty of the book lies rather in a parallel insight into systems and events. Such “parallelism” must, and surely will, trigger a wealth of reflections.The review article focuses on one particular aspect of the book. One of the most suggestive assumptions of Snyder’s method is that the book overcomes national narratives by examining the cruelest period in the 20th century from the above-mentioned universal point of view. However, for Snyder, a leading scholar of Eastern European, and first and foremost, Polish history, these “national” motifs play a significant, and often even crucial role in his book.Yet, as it is claimed in the review, the author frequently cannot free himself from them. On the contrary, his narrative delivers systematic permeations of Polish martyrological stereotypes and biases, which in the end results in a reproduction of many handbook schemes and even metaphorical figures from the so-called Polish “historical politics”. This also leads to many false and misleading juxtapositions with the most striking one being the comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Warsaw Uprising.Interestingly enough, evading many national particularities, Snyder relapses in deeply rooted national, and to be specific, Polish tales. He proves to be more “national” than many other “national” scholars critical in their research of this period.
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To understand what was happening in Polish political life in the 1930s regarding the ‘Jewish question’ one needs to look back to at least the second half of the 1920s. The early form of Polish pre -fascist organisation – not counting minuscule, insignificant groups and circles – was the Camp of Great Poland established in 1926 as a nationalist answer to Pilsudski’s coup d’etat. At the very beginning Pilsudski’s regime borrowed from Mussolini’s model, especially in rhetoric.1 But if a fascist regime was not introduced in Poland until 1935, it was because of lack of support and resistance amongst the regime’s elites and Pilsudski himself. On the other hand the semi -nationalistic climate under Pilsudski’s regime favoured the growth of real facist -style movements.
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