by Julia Piórko Bermig
Poland has periodically disappeared off of the world map since the late 1700s. It's been partitioned by its neighbours for 123 years, invaded, reduced to a battle zone, a setting for humanity's greatest atrocities and later subjugated by the Soviet Union. It is natural then, to assume it has been virtually stripped of an independent political or cultural identity, that its grim tumultuous history has inflicted too much pain, and that its language and traditions have been effectively erased.
Indeed, its contemporary history is one synonymous with suffering, yet it’s ultimately one of hope. It is a national identity that has been, by necessity, sustained through memory as opposed to territory. As history unfolded, over and over, Poles found themselves forced to live under a protectorate that sought to “russify” or “germanize” them. The Polish spirit is one of resistance and steadfast resilience. In the words of Ryszard Kapuściński: “In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.”
The plight of the Soviet puppet state, the PRL (Polish People's Republic- Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa), exemplifies this stubbornness. Creatives hid behind satire to avert censorship and sought escape from the confines of a brutalist reality in distinctly Aesopian writing. The shipyards of Gdańsk, and eventually every metropolis, staged protests, demanding independent, free trade unions and workers’ rights. This morphed into the Solidarność (solidarity) movement, which championed the fight for democracy through means of civil disobedience. While the imposition of martial law and a military junta suppressed the movement, its undercurrents ran rampant. The Solidarność strikes and protests culminated in the first free elections in a Soviet-bloc nation since the 40s.
Of course, to declare oneself a proud patriot, in today's climate, conjures uncomfortable connotations. It reeks of vitriolic xenophobia. No doubt, there are deep rooted, far right, nationalist factions of the electorate, who conflate pride with supremacy and weaponise it to justify backwards views. But it is crucial to avoid misinterpreting this deeply racist animosity towards anything foreign as a form of necessary patriotism. Polish patriotism has, at least historically, fought the oppressor, which has always been a foreign state, whilst nationalism characteristically oppresses the foreign. The two are diametrically opposed.
The Polish national anthem opens with the line “Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, Kiedy my żyjemy.” - Roughly, "Poland is not yet lost (or “has not yet perished”), so long as we still live." This distinctive anti-imperialist patriotism has been, in my view, a driving force behind the unlikely survival of the Polish nation, both as a legitimate independent state and as a culture. It seems that the Polish spirit, and the reason for its implausible endurance, is a form of patriotism in which rebellion against authoritarian and oppressive forces is regarded as a civic duty and means of survival.
Works Cited
"An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing About Suffering." U-M Library Digital Collections, 1 Oct. 1998, quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jii/4750978.0006.107/--interview-with-ryszard-kapuscinski-writing-about-suffering?rgn=main;view=fulltext. Accessed 2 Oct. 2023.
"Jak Polska Przetrwała Zabory? Poczucie Polskości Okazało Się Trwalsze Niż Państwo." Newsweek, 11 Nov. 2017, www.newsweek.pl/historia/zabory-jak-polska-je-przetrwala/wjhh3pj. Accessed 2 Oct. 2023.
Kapuściński, Ryszard. Imperium. Czytelnik, 1993.
"Polskość: The Legacy of Polish Past in Its Present Identity Struggles." BlogOxford Law Blogs, blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2018/02/polskosc-legacy.
"Powstanie Solidarności I stan Wojenny - Zintegrowana Platforma Edukacyjna." Zintegrowana Platforma Edukacyjna, zpe.gov.pl/a/powstanie-solidarnosci-i-stan-wojenny/D1CygZdik.
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