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Politics of History of the Third Polish Republic: ReOrientation (1989–2007)

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Nowak A.

Institute of National Remembrance Review

2020

vol. 2

225-261

This article summarises the concepts behind the direction of Polish politics towards Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus and Russia in placing Poland’s new international relations in Central and Eastern Europe due to its historical ties with the countries of the region. A significant verbal role was played by the reception in Polish politics of the doctrine of Mieroszewski and Giedroyc-the so-called ULB (Ukraine–Lithuania–Belarus). It assumed the establishment of special relations with these countries, and, at the same time, waiving claims to territories lost by Poland after 1939. The application of this idea was conditioned by the internal political dynamics of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Lithuania, and their mutual relations that determined the effectiveness of this doctrine. A key role in shaping Poland’s policy towards these countries was played by an “historical factor”-the exchange of mutual declarations concerning the past; this sometimes included the transmission of documentation-for instance the Katyn massacre evidence documents were transferred to Poland in 1990 by the Russian authorities. These actions served as tools of political rapprochement, and they sometimes resulted in opening the way to re-examine previous historical interpretations (especially in Polish–Lithuanian and Polish–Ukrainian relations). The question of investigating the crimes of the USSR against Poles, including above all the Katyn massacre (1940), played an important role in the rapprochement in Polish–Russian relations in the early period of President Yeltsin’s rule. One of the repercussions of implementing this concept and its conciliar priorities in Polish foreign policy and in its internal formal discourse was the suppression of some recently recreated areas of collective memory and currents of historical discourse; this especially concerned Polish–Ukrainian relations, in the context of, among others, the massacre in Volhynia in 1942–1943. Another result was transferring possible settlements to the responsibility of the state and the Polish community-a particular example of which was a resolution of the Polish Senate concerning Operation “Vistula” (Akcja “Wisła” in 1947) that was adopted in 1990.

History as an Apology for Totalitarianism

100%

Nowak A.

Institute of National Remembrance Review

2019

vol. 1

311-349

This article discusses selected publications which reinterpret Russian history in a spirit of rehabilitating the Soviet past and highlighting the USSR’s role as a vehicle for Russia’s assumed historical role (including Utkin 1993, Utkin 1999a, Utkin 1999b, Solzhenitsyn 1995, Solzhenitsyn 2001–2002, Mel’tyukhov 2001, Narochnitskaya 2005c, Narochnitskaya 2005a, Mitrofanov 2005). In addition to this, it contextualises them with initiatives undertaken by the Russian Federation’s government (including the standardisation of history textbooks’ content and the activities of the Presidential Commission to counteract attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russian interests). The points of view presented here, which are considered representative for a certain part of the historical discourse in contemporary Russia, integrate Russia’s totalitarian period (the USSR from 1917 to 1991) into the course of its broader history, as the basis of an interpretation which accepts a priori statements regarding the sense of Russia’s history and her role in world history. Among the observed trends, this text highlights the approval of certain features of the communist dictatorship as corresponding to Russian ideology; the adaptation of Soviet ideology to Russia’s policy of memory; the emphasis on ideological, political and military confrontation with the Western world as a permanent feature of Russian history; and the reinterpretation of Russian history in such a way as to continuously justify all the actions of the Russian state over the centuries, both externally (interpreting Russian aggression and imperialism as a means of defence against her enemies, liberation, or the reintegration of the Russian community) and internally (presenting terror as a means of defence against an alleged ‘fifth column’, or as the modernisation of the country).

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2 Institute of National Remembrance Review

2 Nowak A.

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1 2019

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Politics of History of the Third Polish Republic: ReOrientation (1989–2007)

History as an Apology for Totalitarianism